SCHEVENINGEN PRISON, THE HAGUE
22 DECEMBER 2005
MARIN KATICH lay waiting for Zwolsman to come and unlock his cell. He thought about what he had told, and what he had not yet told, Anna Rosen. He had seen that Anna was repulsed by his history of violence. She drew away from him as if she wanted to cover her ears and shout. That was natural, and yet it caused him pain. It reminded him how far he had removed himself from the civilised world, remaining attached to it by only the most fragile skeins of memory.
One thread still connected him to that strange fellow Rob in Anna’s Glebe apartment block, a man he had met once and never seen again, but who had nonetheless given him a gift. In the years Marin spent in Rovinj, slowly putting himself back together, classical music had been a balm almost as soothing as the morphine he had eventually forced himself to let go of. He had begun his listening where he had started—with Mahler’s fourth symphony, a CD he picked up in the town market, and it moved him just as it had when he first heard it.
The composer had understood that, alongside the transcendence humans are capable of, there is evil too and that murderous impulses lurk in their souls. Marin believed that the violence from which he had never escaped had darkened his soul. The voices of the dead were constant reminders of that: they told him that he would soon join them.
The cell door rattled and clanged open. Zwolsman, unusually, came inside and stood close to the bunk.
‘Mr K,’ said the guard. ‘Mr K, no longer Mr M …’
Marin sat up. ‘What?’
‘K for Katich.’
‘So, it’s out?’
‘Since the news last night, you are the big celebrity,’ said Zwolsman. ‘I have breakfast early with the other guards. One of them, he picked up a butter knife and he says to me: “When you wake up Crocodile Dundee, tell him this is a knife!”’
Marin lifted his right hand and raised the middle digit. ‘Tell him this is a finger.’
For some reason this appealed greatly to Zwolsman’s sense of humour; he was still chuckling as he left the cell.
•
Later, waiting in the corridor to go down to the exercise yard, Marin was aware that he was the centre of attention. A number of the other inmates were openly staring, heads together, murmuring. The usual suspects—Mejakic, Borovcanin and Ademi—were scowling at him. Strangely, none of them confronted him. Milosevic was back in hospital and he was grateful for his absence.
He stood apart from them, alone until the Bosnian Halilovic came up and spoke to him quietly.
‘So—Marin Katich,’ he said. ‘It may take a little time to get my tongue around that.’
‘Take as long as you want,’ said Marin, and the Bosnian produced a knowing smile.
‘So, it turns out you are one of us,’ said Halilovic. ‘I can see why you wanted to keep that quiet.’
‘Believe me, Adem,’ said Marin, ‘when I tell you I’m not one of anyone.’
Halilovic regarded him silently for a moment before responding. ‘Marin, you were a commissioned Major General in the Bosnian Army,’ he said. ‘For me, you are a comrade in arms. For them’—he gestured with a movement of his head towards the muttering Serbs—‘you’re an even bigger enemy than you were before. A Croat in the Bosnia army—it was not unheard of but unusual, especially in a command rank. Did you have a reason?’
‘My mother was a Muslim, she lived in Mostar,’ said Marin. ‘It was men like these who killed her.’
Halilovic nodded gravely and put an arm on Marin’s shoulder: ‘If you need help …’
‘Thanks,’ said Marin. ‘You coming down?’
‘Not today,’ said the Bosnian. ‘I’ve got a meeting with my lawyers.’
Marin went to join the group that was already heading downstairs, led by Zwolsman. As was his usual practice, he entered the exercise yard and began walking to the far end, avoiding contact with the inmates from different floors who had gathered in small groups to talk or join some organised sporting activity. Marin was especially alert since being cut by the Gypsy and he took care to stay well away from other walkers.
Most of the men in the yard he recognised by sight, but he only knew the names of those on his own floor. He skirted a group of younger inmates playing a half-court basketball game at the near end of the yard, pausing only to watch a big black guy dunk the ball after a languorous lay-up.
It was a cold, clear day, colder for the absence of clouds, and there was a thin layer of ice on the ground in areas untouched by the sun. He stayed in the sun, trying to leach out of it what little warmth it had to offer. When he reached the end, he stopped and lit a cigarette under the high steel fence topped with razor wire. Beyond the wire was an overgrown, rubbish-strewn patch of wasteland. He put his back to it and looked up at the blue sky. He let his mind go back to when he was a boy floating on his back, drifting in the Towamba River on the far south coast of New South Wales, under the same sky. No one could take the sky away from him.
Marin smoked the cigarette down to its butt and flicked it through the fence. He stood still for a time, letting his mind drift as if he were still in the river. He didn’t move until he saw a pair of men heading in his direction, then he put his cold hands in his pockets and continued the circuit, staying well ahead of the walkers.
The basketball players were noisier now, the score must be close because there was no trace of languor remaining in any of them; the game was being played in a frenetic scramble and spectators had gathered, egging on their champions. As he got nearer, Marin realised he would have to pass close behind the tight-packed group of men. He looked back, but the walkers were gaining on him so he hunched his shoulders and pressed on. The spectators were so enthralled by the game that none seemed to notice him edging behind them.
When he was near, a tall man holding a spare basketball turned towards him and called: ‘Katich! Think quick!’
The tall man threw him the ball, a fast, hard pass. Marin reacted instinctively, pulled his hands from his pockets and caught it, immediately realising his mistake. The tall man was on him before he could drop the ball.
The man smiled grimly as he set to work. Marin felt a series of swift blows to the left side of his chest. It happened so quickly that he was still gripping the ball. The tall man grabbed it and bent close to his ear.
‘Rambo sends his love,’ he said before pushing him hard in the chest with the ball.
Marin staggered backwards, assailed by a sudden, overwhelming rush of pain. He saw the man moving away behind the crowd as swiftly as he had appeared. Marin clutched at the growing patch of warm blood flowing from the wounds. He tried vainly to staunch it as it seeped through his fingers. He pushed his way through the crowd and collapsed onto the basketball court. The last thing he saw was the face of the black man, staring down at him, wide-eyed.
•
When Pierre rushed into Anna’s room that same morning she was sleeping off the effects of excessive drinking. She had woken in the middle of the night, parched and hungover, and swallowed aspirin with, it must have been, half a litre of water. Now Pierre shook her awake and she sat up blinking, red-eyed and startled.
‘Katich has been attacked in the prison yard. Stabbed in the chest.’
‘What?’
‘He’s still alive,’ said Pierre. ‘But critical.’
‘Who did it?’
‘They don’t know. Our boys have called in the Dutch police.’
‘They don’t know?’ cried Anna. ‘In a prison yard? They don’t have cameras?’
‘It happened behind a crowd watching a basketball game. They found a homemade shiv, no prints on it.’
‘Is he in the prison hospital?’
‘Yes.’
Anna threw off the covers and got to her feet.
‘I’ve got to get there,’ she said, grabbing up her phone from the bedside table.
‘I’ll put coffee on,’ said Pierre, ‘while you get ready.’
Anna rang van Brug and learned that he had already been informed of the attack. He had tried calling her, but when the phone went through to messages the lawyer had sent her a text and moved quickly to make arrangements for them to visit the hospital. He offered to pick her up outside the apartment.
Anna had a one-minute shower, dressed fast, went downstairs and told Pierre what was happening. He handed her coffee and a croissant.
‘It’s too much of a coincidence, isn’t it?’ said Pierre. ‘The morning after we go public with his identity.’
‘It is,’ she said, sipping the coffee. ‘So, who are the suspects? Who’d want him out of the way?’
Pierre considered the question. ‘Someone who hates him,’ he said. ‘Or someone who’s got something to lose.’
‘Jure Rebic?’ said Anna. ‘He already tried to kill him once, thought he’d succeeded. Now Katich has come back from the dead. Whatever happened in 1992, Rebic won’t want him telling the tribunal about it.’
‘If this was done on Rebic’s orders, the odds are the hit man is a Croat,’ said Pierre. ‘I’ll run your theory past our investigators.’
‘Can you also ask around, see if anyone’s got anything on Rebic? Who he is? Where he is?’
‘I’ll see what I can do. No promises on that, but I did get a reply from Jasna Perak in Zagreb. She says she’s happy to meet you.’
Pierre handed Anna the printed email with Perak’s details.
‘Just remember that Jasna’s a spook. She’ll want something in exchange for whatever she tells you.’
Anna folded the printout and put it into her pocket.
‘Thanks, brilliant Pierre, thank you,’ she said. ‘She must know Rebic, right?’
‘You’ll have to be very careful how you broach that,’ he said. ‘If Rebic was acting on Tudjman’s orders to eliminate Katich back in 1992, it’s possible Jasna was in the loop.’
Anna’s Blackberry rang out its SMS tone.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Pierre. ‘That fucking gong. You really should change that.’
‘The alternatives are worse,’ she said, reading the message. ‘Van Brug’s out front, I’ve got to go. Can I call you later?’
‘Yup,’ said Pierre. ‘Did you call Rachel yet?’
Anna blushed. ‘I didn’t,’ she said. ‘I drank so much last night I just conked out.’
‘At least send her a text,’ said Pierre. ‘She must be wondering what the hell’s going on.’
‘I will,’ said Anna as she rushed to the door.
•
After navigating three security checkpoints, Anna and van Brug were sitting in plastic chairs in the dreary, utilitarian waiting room of the prison hospital. Also in the room were two middle-aged men in plain dark suits who turned out to be Dutch detectives waiting to interview Katich if and when he came around. Once Anna realised who the men were, she tried to engage them in conversation, but they refused to respond, except with monosyllables. Typical cops, she thought, with their ingrained habits of suspicion; they were the same the world over.
Sitting in a room filled with awkward silence, Anna had time to think after the morning panic. First, she cursed herself for not having asked Marin more about Jure Rebic when she had had the chance. Of course that was exactly what they had planned to do today, but someone, perhaps Rebic himself, was determined to make sure that he talked to no one. For a fleeting moment it crossed her mind, although she was ashamed to admit it, that life would be easier in many ways if Marin would go back to being dead.
That perverse thought prompted her to think about what, if anything, Marin Katich meant to her. After all, here was a man whose life had been turned upside down because he had stepped in to protect her. It had taken her thirty years to understand what had really happened that day, but she had finally learned why he had broken up with her and disappeared. At that time, on that day, she had been heartbroken; so what did she feel now? Her closest friends would ask her if there had been even the faintest spark when she saw him again for, despite the ravages of his life, he was still a good-looking man.
And what, she wondered, had gone through his mind when he had seen her again? With a flash of inspiration, Anna remembered Othello’s contemplation on Desdemona: She loved me for the dangers I had passed, And I loved her that she did pity them. Could Marin have thought like that? Did he possibly imagine, as he told her his stories of war and death, that she might love him for the dangers he had passed? Had she fed such a delusion when she sent him the photograph?
She contemplated how she would truly feel if he never regained consciousness. She had repeatedly told herself that she was only here for Rachel, to discover the truth about her biological father, and the truth about the war crimes he was accused of committing. It was all for Rachel, she told herself again—but she wondered if she was protesting too much.
•
They waited for more than two hours like an estranged family brought together by tragedy. Eventually a tired-looking surgeon in a disposable scrub cap came in to talk to the four of them. The surgeon was lean, well-proportioned and almost as tall as van Brug. Anna could imagine the two of them in Lycra suits jostling for position in the velodrome. The surgeon had the face of an aesthete and long delicate fingers. He spoke in Dutch and van Brug translated.
‘Mr Katich has come through some difficult surgery and they are hopeful he has a good chance of recovery,’ said van Brug, struggling to keep up with the surgeon. ‘But they have put him in a—what do call it …?’
‘A medically induced coma,’ the surgeon interrupted. ‘I will continue in English for the lady. You are Australian, like Mr Katich?’
‘Yes,’ said Anna.
‘I was saying that one of the knife wounds pierced his heart. Luckily only one chamber was damaged and we have been able to repair that. But he had what we call a pericardial tamponade, that is to say the wound caused fluid to build up in the pericardium, the sac around the heart, and this put pressure on the heart and it began to arrest. We had to do an emergency thoracotomy, but lucky for him we did not have to open his chest for the repairs.’
‘What does that mean?’ said Anna.
‘We were able to spread the ribs under his arm to make the repairs; it means he should recover more quickly. To be honest, he was lucky in other ways: the bleeding might have been worse but, as you may know, he had already lost his left lung in what seems to have been a traumatic battlefield injury. Strange …’—the surgeon chuckled—‘the missing lung made him harder to kill this time. Of course he is still in danger if there are complications—infection, further bleeding, cardiac arrest. He has chest tubes to drain air and fluid from the site.’
‘How long will you keep him under?’ asked Anna.
‘Some days for sure, perhaps a week or more. It depends on his progress. So, as I said to the detectives, there is no point in waiting here. We will take your numbers and call if there is a change.’
‘Can I see him?’ she asked.
‘Are you his next of kin?’
‘No.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said the surgeon. ‘They are strict here. Only next of kin.’
When they left the hospital, Anna asked van Brug to drop her back at Pierre’s apartment. She intended to pack a bag and catch the first flight to Zagreb.