In the summer of 2006 there was an outdoor ceremony in a leafy, shaded courtyard of the Ministry of Defence in Zagreb. The Croatian president was there with a few of his officials. The ceremony was also attended by a handful of veterans of the War for Independence, a few journalists, intelligence officials and two women from Australia, a mother and daughter.
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Earlier that day, Anna Rosen left Rachel with a list of things to see in the Croatian capital and went to meet the most senior of those intelligence officials, Jasna Perak.
‘I brought you a copy of my book,’ said Anna, after warm greetings.
Jasna paused to light a cigarette before responding. ‘If I’m in it,’ she said, ‘I may have to detain you in basement cell.’
‘Not by name, or even gender,’ said Anna, handing her the book. ‘I kept your secrets.’
‘Funny title,’ said Jasna, scrutinising the cover. ‘In Darkness Visible? I think it makes no sense.’
Anna smiled at that. She knew it was fanciful to think of Marin Katich as one of Milton’s fallen angels, though he had certainly dwelt most of his life in darkness. Writing the book had been cathartic. Urged on by Leon, her editor—who was desperate to capitalise on the intense public interest in the drama which his writer was at the heart of—Anna had done it quickly over three months. She had flown back to Sydney with her daughter, nursing Rachel in the apartment as she mapped out a structure. She had gone to Canberra see the dying Tom Moriarty and taken down what was, in effect, his final confession. The corrupt old spy did not live to read her account of his own treachery and manipulation.
When Rachel was well enough, Anna had flown back to Croatia and travelled to Rovinj, the town where Marin had hidden himself away for so many years, living under the name Tomislav Maric. There, searching for people who knew him, she had met the old historian Alberto Rossi. She found that Rossi had not only been a good friend to Marin but also his landlord. At his suggestion she had rented the apartment, which was still full of Marin’s belongings. It was in this apartment that she finished the book.
Anna spent many hours working at the long table in the front room, the shutters open to the view over the boat harbour and out to Katarina Island. As she wrote, she felt Marin’s presence in that beautiful place and she imagined that this was his paradise lost. She had naturally searched the apartment but found remarkably few clues to his past. Those few she did would make their way into the book. The first was an old black and white picture, which she recalled he had shown her back in 1970: it was a faded picture of Samira with her two sons, the baby, Petar, and Marin, the resolute boy beside her. Then Anna found another picture of Samira standing arm-in-arm with an elegant, white-haired Bosnian man. They were next to a sparkling fountain in the courtyard of their Ottoman-built house in Mostar, the house in which, Anna knew, they had died together.
The front room was lined with bookshelves, and among Marin’s eclectic collection of classical literature and history she found her own book, Australian Nazi, about his father. When she opened it another photograph fell out. This one was of herself in 1970, before the year went bad. She was sitting in the revolving captain’s chair at her desk in the Glebe house. The chair was tilted back on its springs and the young Anna was looking up at the photographer, Marin it was, with a loving smile. Anna barely recognised in herself the serenity she clearly felt at that moment. As she sat transfixed by the forgotten image her mind leapt forward to the terrible event outside Scheveningen Prison and she saw again Marin’s bloodied head in her lap, his eyes losing focus, his essence draining away.
It was Alberto Rossi who helped her to reconnect with the absent man. He took her out in the beautiful old wooden boat named Anna, which was still tethered at the back of the fleet in the harbour. Like most of the town’s inhabitants, Rossi was at ease on boats and patiently taught her how to drive the finely engineered machine and to harness its power. Later, he helped her with the paperwork to buy the boat, which had become by law an object in a deceased estate, and to take over the highly sought-after mooring. Rossi agreed to maintain the boat, as he had for Marin, for as long as he was physically able to.
So it was that when mother and daughter came back to Croatia in summer for the special ceremony, Anna first took Rachel down to the Adriatic coast to Rovinj. There she was able to astonish her daughter by taking her out in a boat to picnic and swim in the unpopulated islands south of the town. She imagined that Marin would have done this with his daughter had he survived his brief moment of freedom.
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In Zagreb, the simple ceremony was coming to a close. At the appropriate time, Rachel was urged to come forwards to where the president was waiting with an open wooden box in his hands. As she got closer she saw, nestled in the velvet-lined interior, a golden medal. The president mumbled a few words, which she understood to mean that this was being given to her with the thanks of a grateful nation. The box he handed to her contained the posthumous award for her father, Marin Katich. It was the Order of Petar Zrinski and Fran Krsto Frankopan, the tenth most important medal given by the Republic of Croatia. The order, which was founded on 1 April 1995, has two levels. For reasons no one could explain, nor did anyone seek to discover, Marin was given the golden award for valour in combat.
Jasna Perak, watching the simple ceremony from one side, whispered to another senior intelligence officer. ‘This is too good, honey. We love our martyrs, but we need for them to remain dead.’