SCHEVENINGEN PRISON, THE HAGUE
21 DECEMBER 2005
Vietnam! Was this a sick joke? Anna stared across the table at the man who had infiltrated her life so very long ago. She had known so little of the truth about him back then that she had come to think of him as an imposter. But this …
Vietnam!
It was as if he had finally led her to an uncrossable bridge. She could not stay still. She scrambled to her feet and stood behind the chair, gripping it.
‘No!’ she said. ‘You have to stop.’
She could not have described her own conflicted feelings, she could not pin them down: bewilderment and sadness; sympathy and contempt. She stared at Marin. In his face she saw helplessness and resignation, but what did she really know about his true nature? What did he know of it himself after all these years of fighting and killing?
And now he had played Vietnam like a bloody trump card. She shook her head.
‘I just …’ she began. ‘I can’t take in any more of this right now.’
He looked at his watch.
‘Our time’s nearly up,’ he said. ‘They’ll be here soon to take me back.’
Anna drew in a breath. Our time’s nearly up. He said it as if they’d just been discussing the weather. Yes, it’s cold outside. It’s terrible this time of year in Scheveningen. Make sure to put on your coat. Don’t forget your gloves.
How the hell was she supposed to respond to his revelations? All of it, everything he had told her, seemed to have bubbled up from the unquenchable well of male violence. He couldn’t know, he could never know, that she was trying to find a way to deal with the fact that her daughter’s father came from the bottom of that well.
‘Fuck, Marin,’ she said. ‘You really have no idea.’
‘What about?’
‘You’ve had decades to think about this, but I’m hearing it today for the first time. And, honestly, I’m finding it … excruciating. That’s the truth. I don’t know how you thought I’d react, but I’m not going to fall on my knees in gratitude to you for saving me from a rapist by beating him half to death. And the rest of it … Moriarty … Fuck, Moriarty! I just need time to think. It’s all too much.’
‘I understand.’
She smiled faintly at that.
‘I’m not sure you do,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure you have the tools to do that. But I do know one thing. You’re telling the truth, as you understand it. And I do thank you for that.’
•
From the moment Marin began telling his story, it was obvious to Anna that he was saying it aloud for the first time. There was a vividness to the words that poured out of his mouth. She knew very well that old stories, especially about moments that have irreversibly changed you, tend to be told over and again to different people in the course of your life, subtly altering with each retelling until they begin to sound scripted and to lose their impact. By contrast, Marin’s account seemed unrehearsed, except perhaps in his mind, and even as he told it he appeared to be reliving each moment as if it had just happened. She believed him when he said he had never told this story to another soul.
Tom Moriarty was perhaps the only other person living or dead who could have put their two stories together, but Moriarty didn’t count as a soul, not in her mind. If she was wrong and that fucking monster had a soul she only hoped it was burning in endless flames. She sometimes wished that she did believe in hell because that’s where Moriarty belonged. He was an emissary of the devil, Mephistopheles, in the form of a dissolute spy.
As she had listened to Marin, she had soon stopped taking notes. She didn’t need them. His story was indelible and now his memories were wound together cinematically with her own. It had been like an out-of-body experience, watching yourself through the eyes of another. She remembered bouncing on the bed the morning of the demo; she remembered warning him that he’d signed up for this; she remembered the passion of the night before; she remembered kissing him and telling him to wait for her; she remembered looking back at him from the door; and she remembered everything she had done that day.
It was a long time since she’d thought about it, but Marin’s story put her back into the terrible embrace of those two cops. The would-be rapist was again pressing against her. She remembered screaming at him. She remembered picking up on his hatred of women and throwing it back in his face. She couldn’t recall her words, but the sense of it was clear. He was a pathetic, inadequate excuse for a man, a limp creature whose resort to violence was proof of his sexual inadequacy.
She had pushed every button imaginable and set off the unexploded bomb inside him. Not that she blamed herself. The two cops had had her pinioned and helpless, under threat of rape at the back of a dark lane, a violation both hideous and primal.
Anna turned and saw that the prison guard was at the door. Marin got to his feet.
‘I’ve been told that van Brug will be here tomorrow at midday,’ he said. ‘Will you be with him?’
The guard entered the room and walked over to Marin. ‘He must come with me now, Madame,’ said the guard.
‘Yes,’ said Anna. ‘I’ll be with him.’
‘Good,’ said Marin. ‘I’ll see you then.’
Marin put out his hand. She shook it briefly and let it go.
•
Anna texted Willem van Brug before she left the prison and was surprised when an early-model VW Beetle, letterbox-red, pulled up beside her at the fortified gates. The lawyer reminded her of a praying mantis as he emerged from the car, all elbows and limbs, and rushed around to open the passenger door for her. A bicycle was racked onto the VW’s roof, creating the illusion that an invisible trick cyclist was using it as a ramp. She tested how securely it was attached before climbing in.
‘I am training later at the velodrome in Alkmaar,’ van Brug explained as he restarted the motor, which sounded oddly like her mother’s old sewing machine.
‘Listen, do you know Koppelstokstraat in Geuzenkwartier?’ she asked.
‘Ja, it is not far.’
‘Could you head there? That’s where I’m staying. There’re a few restaurants close by. If you’ve got time, we can stop for lunch. I need a drink.’
The lawyer seemed lost for conversation as they drove down the Strandweg past the Kurhaus, the pier and glimpses of the North Sea, which she decided was not quite so ominous under a bright winter sun. The familiar Tibetan gong chimed and she checked her Blackberry, prompting a rapid text exchange.
Pierremob: So, how’d it go?
AnnaR: Ahhh!
Pierremob: ??
AnnaR: Talk later. With lawyer.
Pierremob: Rachel come up?
AnnaR: NO!
Pierremob: Singarasa making Katich statement today!
AnnaR: Fuck!
Pierremob: Back at 6. See you then?
AnnaR: Yes.
Things were going to get messy much faster than she had hoped.
‘Fuck!’ she cried, startling the sedate lawyer who was driving with the caution of a man twice his age.
‘Has something happened?’ he asked, trying not to take his eyes off the road.
‘The fucking Registrar,’ she said. ‘He’s putting out a press release on Marin Katich today.’
‘Godverdomme!’ van Brug exclaimed.
‘What?’
‘God damn it,’ he said.
‘Yep,’ said Anna.
•
Concerned about the security of his bicycle, van Brug suggested a seafood place he knew near her neighbourhood and where he could park out front to keep an eye on it. It was in The Haven, on the edge of the boat harbour where the herring fleet took refuge behind a double sea wall. There were small lighthouses on either side of the calm channel in from the North Sea.
Anna liked the idea of havens, but when she had last come here to buy wine it had been as mist-shrouded, dark and foreboding as a New England port town in a Stephen King novel. Now it was cold and bright and the fishy fragrance of the fleet wafting shorewards on the sea breeze carried the promise of a fresh catch.
The lawyer was relieved to find a table at the window. He ordered black tea and a flutje of Grolsch for Anna, who had decided to start with a beer. She was disconcerted when the tiny glass arrived, raised an eyebrow at van Brug, and immediately ordered a second one. The lawyer seemed not to notice, sipping his tea as he examined the menu.
‘I can recommend Gegrilde Makreel met saffraasaus,’ he said without looking up. ‘Or Tonijnsteak met groenten, frites en terikaykisaus. Would you like me to translate?’
‘Grilled mackerel with saffron sauce, or fish and chips?’
‘Tuna steak with fresh vegetables and potato chips,’ said van Brug. ‘Yes, correct and with teriyaki sauce. So, a bit Japans.’
‘I’ll have the mackerel and some oysters to start,’ said Anna. ‘Will you have some with me?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I cannot eat live animals.’
Of course you can’t, she thought—no live animals, no booze, no cigarettes, no drugs, no speeding, no jokes. The most interesting things about this man were the idea of him racing around a velodrome and his Dries van Noten suits which, she had to admit, were really sharp. If they were going to spend time together, she was going to have to get him to lighten up.
‘Is that someone checking out your bike?’ she asked suddenly, and his head jerked sideways to peer through the window.
‘I see no one,’ he said after a moment.
‘Just kidding,’ she said. ‘Let’s talk about Marin Katich.’
•
Anna began briefing him on the morning’s meeting, deliberately avoiding Marin’s revelations about September 1970, which she was happy to have an excuse not to think about. She stuck to issues relevant to the war crimes case, about which they would have to go into much more detail at tomorrow’s meeting. It was clear to her now, she told him, that Jure Rebic was at the heart of this and that he was the key to unravelling the truth or otherwise of the war crimes allegations against Marin Katich. She set out what she had learned about Rebic: Katich fought alongside him during the siege of Vukovar; they escaped just before the city fell to the Serbs and took their surviving men south to Bosnia; Rebic became Katich’s deputy in the five thousand strong militia force they had put together in Bosnia and their headquarters was in the predominantly Croat town of Ljubuski. The militia had been comprised of Bosnian Muslim and Croat fighters, and Katich had it incorporated into the structure of the Bosnian army command, taking orders from the Muslim-led government in Sarajevo.
Anna paused her narrative when a dozen fine de claire oysters were brought to the table. She squeezed lemon onto one and watched the frilled edges shrivel in reaction. ‘They’re alive all right,’ she said, and, noticing the lawyer’s almost imperceptible grimace as she sucked one from its shell, cried: ‘Oh, that’s delicious.’
She scooped one up and offered it to him over the table. ‘You really don’t want to try?’
‘No, for me this is onsmakelijk,’ he said, his face crumpling like a child’s. ‘Distasteful.’
Anna shrugged and sucked down another, taking a swig of beer. ‘I thought everyone in Northern Europe ate oysters in winter,’ she said, continuing to work her way through the dozen. ‘You know, when I was a young journalist in radio, we would sometimes finish the morning shift, go down to the harbour and buy a sack of Sydney rock oysters, just like these fine de claire, except we eat them in summer when they’re spawning. That’s very much frowned upon here.’
‘This is the convict manners, ja?’
Anna drank some beer and smiled at him. ‘Oh good,’ she said. ‘You’re fighting back. Anyway, the case. Like I said, Rebic is the key to all of this. We know that on 15 June 1992, General Cvrčak, that is to say Marin Katich, and eight of his staff officers were returning to Ljubuski in two cars when they were stopped at a roadblock and shot to pieces in an ambush from both sides.’
‘This is in the foreword of your book,’ said van Brug. ‘I read this morning that you went to Ljubuski at that time to find Marin Katich and got there too late.’
‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘A day later, the shot-up cars were sitting in the courtyard of their headquarters. Jure Rebic was there—General Rebic, as he called himself then—and he was the one who told me that their commander, Cvrčak, had been killed. He said they were all grieving for him. By the way, the name Rebic knew Katich by was Illija Lovric. To this day, no one knows that he’s really Marin Katich. They had a big funeral for Cvrčak/Lovric, buried him as a hero. But now we know he wasn’t killed at all. He was carried away severely wounded, rescued by some of his Muslim soldiers, and he survived. I don’t know how they managed to fool Jure Rebic.
The lawyer looked puzzled. ‘Why did they go to all this trouble to hide that he had survived?’
‘They did it, Willem, because it was Jure Rebic who organised the assassination. If he knew Katich was still alive, he’d have sent people to kill him.’
‘Pleurislijer!’
‘What?’
‘What a scoundrel!’ said van Brug. ‘And this is the story Katich has told you about Jure Rebic?’
‘It is,’ said Anna. ‘And it’s completely believable because of what happens next. Rebic assumes command of the militia. Remember, he was already calling himself General when I met him. The first thing he does is to purge the militia of all Bosnian Muslim fighters. They are gathered together, disarmed and disbanded. No doubt some of them, the most dangerous ones, were eliminated like those loyal officers killed in the ambush.’
‘But why?’
‘It’s all about geopolitics,’ said Anna. ‘The assassination of Marin Katich was ordered at the top levels of the Croatian government.’
Van Brug was still puzzled. ‘They wanted to kill their own man?’
‘He was not their man,’ she said. ‘That’s the point. Even though he’s a Croat, General Cvrčak/Lovric was commissioned by the Bosnian Muslim government as part of their army. God, too many aliases—let’s just call him Katich. Katich made speeches, broadcast on radio, about how it was the destiny of Croats and Muslims to fight together against the Serbs. More than thirty per cent of his soldiers were Muslims. What Katich didn’t know, what he couldn’t have possibly known, was that the Croatian President, Franjo Tudjman, had made a secret deal with Belgrade, with his bitterest enemy Slobodan Milosevic, to carve up Bosnia between their two countries. It was a shocking betrayal of the Bosnian government, whose backs were already against the wall.
‘Tudjman and Milosevic had a clandestine meeting, can you imagine! They effectively agreed to stop fighting each other, and both turn on the Bosnian Muslims. Under the deal, the Serbs would keep the Bosnian territory to the east of Mostar and whatever they could steal in the north—don’t forget they had Sarajevo under siege at this time. And the Croats would keep Herzegovina in the south, including Mostar as its capital and all the territory to the west of it—a Greater Croatia, with borders stretching right down to the coast. To achieve this land grab, all the Croats had to do was go to war with the Muslims and steal it from them. And what was the biggest obstacle to that? Marin Katich and his Croat–Muslim army!’ ‘So, this Jure Rebic,’ said van Brug, ‘he agrees to tear down this obstacle.’
‘Exactly,’ said Anna. ‘This is why I believe Katich’s story. Can you imagine what they must have offered Rebic? One Shakespearean betrayal and he could transform himself into one of the most powerful men in Croatia. There is much more to this story that Katich has not yet told me. We must get to the bottom of this with him tomorrow, but I know one thing for sure: the next step will be to find Jure Rebic.’
Their meals began to arrive. When the grilled mackerel with its aromatic sauce was placed under Anna’s nose, she realised that, having skipped breakfast due to nerves, she was famished. She ordered a glass of German riesling while van Brug asked for sparkling water. The lawyer picked unenthusiastically at his overcooked tuna before homing in on the frites, sprinkling on extra salt and eating them with his fingers.
After a while he paused, holding an extra long one mid-air. ‘Before I forget this,’ he said, putting the chip in his mouth and wiping his fingers. ‘I found something interesting.’
Van Brug picked up his briefcase, opened it on his lap and produced a highlighted document, which he handed to Anna.
‘This is the arrest document for when they picked up Katich from Rovinj. I have heard about this town before this. Many Dutch tourists go there in summer to fight with the Duitser, the Germans, for space on the beaches. Anyway, it makes sense why Katich ended up there. In the 1990s, Rovinj had a special hospital for wounded soldiers.’
He watched Anna begin to flick through the document and said, ‘There is not much in there about the hospital. That’s not the interesting thing. See where I have used yellow to highlight a name. Ja, do you see?’
‘Jasna Perak,’ Anna read.
‘Ja, that is her,’ he said. ‘This woman, Jasna Perak, she was the representative of the Croatian government who was there with the SAS team that arrested Katich—Tomislav Maric, as they thought he was—in the middle of the night. I think she would also be a person to talk to, ja?’
‘Ja,’ said Anna, sipping on her wine. Her thoughts were going round and round, faster and faster, like a rider in a velodrome.
•
That evening, Pierre prepared them a light supper, while Anna built a fire in the living room. He had brought home a copy of the press release.
‘The Katich is out of the bag,’ he said as he handed it to her.
The release was headlined: ‘Australian Facing War Crimes Trial.’ It named Marin Katich as the Australian citizen; it stated that he had been hiding under an alias in detention after being arrested in Croatia and deported to The Hague under indictment to face trial for war crimes. Prometheus Singarasa was quoted: ‘Mr Katich’s true identity and his Australian nationality have no bearing on the serious nature of the crimes he is alleged to have committed. He was arrested in Croatia in August 2005, living under the alias Tomislav Maric, and was committed for trial for Crimes Against Humanity under a sealed indictment, which will now be amended to include his real name alongside various aliases he has used over many years.’
Anna read it one more time, then threw it into the flames. She watched it blacken, curl up and incinerate before she picked up her drink and joined Pierre in the kitchen.
He looked up from washing the salad. ‘What are you going to tell Rachel?’
‘It’s the middle of the night in Sydney,’ said Anna. ‘I’ll call her later.’
‘That wasn’t my question.’
Anna finished her wine, grabbed the bottle and poured herself another glassful. ‘I’m going to tell her I won’t be home for Christmas.’
Pierre put the salad aside, dried his hands and picked up his own drink. ‘Fuck, Anna, really?’ he said. ‘Maybe you should fly home for Christmas, sit her down and tell her the truth. She has a right to know, doesn’t she?’
‘What? That her father’s a fucking war criminal? And her fucking grandfather was a Nazi war criminal and a vicious anti-Semite?’
Anna drained her glass and filled it again.
‘Steady on,’ said Pierre.
‘You’re going to police my drinking now?’ she asked.
‘No,’ said Pierre. ‘Knock yourself out.’
Anna found herself, unexpectedly, on the verge of tears. She ran her hands back through her hair and sat down. She felt exhausted.
‘I’m sorry, Pierre,’ she said, softening her tone. ‘Today was … You’ve got no idea the extent of this mess.’
Pierre moved closer, put his hands on her shoulders and looked into her eyes.
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I’m going to make us a couple of steaks. We’ll go sit in front of the fire and you can tell me what happened, what he said. I’m obviously curious, of course I am, but just tell me what you’re comfortable with, okay?’
‘Okay,’ she said and he went back to work in the kitchen. After a moment, she interrupted him. ‘How’s your memory of 1970?’
Pierre paused from spreading crushed garlic and salt into the steaks. ‘1970?’ he said. ‘When exactly?’
‘September, the second Moratorium.’
‘Yeah? We were both there …’
‘Did you take peyote that day?’
Pierre looked startled. ‘How on earth do you know that?’ he said. ‘Did I tell you?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s true, then?’
‘Yeah, I swallowed a button in the morning. I was completely off my dial. I was fully hallucinating when things got violent. It was absolutely terrifying, worst trip ever. I never touched the stuff again.’
‘Do you remember seeing Marin Katich?’
‘Fuck no. Well, I honestly don’t know—at one point I saw Mahatma Gandhi walk into a brawl, like hovering just above the ground, and everyone stopped fighting. Did Katich tell you he saw me?’
‘Yeah,’ she said with a laugh. ‘It’s a long story.’
‘I do remember thinking the cops were zombies come to kill us all.’
•
Anna kept drinking as she paced restlessly around the living room. There was so much to think about, so much to be done to get to the bottom of this. She paused from time to time to throw a log onto the fire. Staring into the flames, she thought about Pierre’s hallucinations. She was relieved when little details of Marin’s story checked out. There were so many details to be confirmed, so many people she needed to find and talk to, still so many unanswered questions.
But if there was the remotest possibility that Marin was, as he claimed, innocent of the charges in the indictment, she owed it to her daughter, their daughter, to find out the truth. Pierre was correct about that—as painful as it was for Anna to admit it, her daughter had a right to know the truth about her father and about who and what he was. But Anna also understood that she couldn’t talk to Rachel until she knew what that truth was.
Pierre brought their plates in and set them on the coffee table with the bowl of salad and a freshly opened bottle of wine.
‘Thanks for taking care of me,’ she said.
‘It’s easy,’ he said. ‘I probably wouldn’t make a proper meal if it was just me, so … Mustard?’
Anna shook her head. ‘No, thanks,’ she said putting her glass down. ‘There’s something that came up today with van Brug.’
Pierre spooned mustard onto his plate, anxious to start. ‘What is it?’ he said.
‘When you lived in Zagreb, did you ever come across a woman called Jasna Perak?’
In spite of his hunger, Pierre pushed the mustard aside and looked up, intrigued. ‘Jasna Perak,’ he said. ‘She was a spook, very close to Franjo Tudjman. Where’d you come across her?’
‘She was with the team that arrested Katich in Rovinj.’
Pierre shook his head, the food temporarily forgotten. ‘That’s really surprising,’ he said. ‘Jasna Perak is seriously connected. She was an intelligence advisor to the president during the war. She was a founding member of the H.I.S., Tudjman’s original intelligence service. They split it up a few years ago, took military intelligence out of it, and she ended up in the new secret service, the O.A. I don’t know at what level, but she must be close to the top.’
‘Do you know her?’
‘Yeah, we used to talk,’ said Pierre. ‘I’ve still got her old mobile number.’
‘Would you call and ask her if she’ll see me?’
‘In Zagreb?’
‘Yeah,’ said Anna. ‘I’m going to have to go there.’
‘It’s almost Christmas,’ he said.
‘I’ll take a present.’