24 DECEMBER 2005
RACHEL ROSEN repeated the journey her mother had made nearly two weeks earlier, though having travelled business class she was in substantially better shape when she came up the lifts in the morning from the train platform into the cavernous arrival hall at Den Haag Centraal. She wore a grey Burberry goose-down jacket like a suit of armour against the cold.
Pierre Villiers saw her coming and ran forward to greet her.
‘Rachel,’ he called.
She heard ‘Wa-chel’ and immediately smiled, turning to see the familiar shambling figure with his Coke-bottle glasses and messy hair—now streaked with grey, she noticed.
‘Hello, Godfather,’ she said and hugged him tightly.
‘Oh,’ said Pierre, ‘I thought you’d have forgotten. I’ve been pretty useless at my duties.’
She laughed. ‘The spiritual side was always a lost cause,’ she said. ‘But, here you are, so …’
‘I’ve done what you asked,’ he said, taking her wheeled suitcase. ‘The car’s outside.’
She had emailed him before she left Sydney, told him she was coming and why, and begged him not to say anything to Anna. Pierre had suggested she stay at his apartment and share the spare room with her mother—a chance, he said, for them to talk this through. Rachel didn’t want that; she wanted to keep her distance from Anna until she had resolved matters for herself.
Then, during the stopover in Singapore, she had picked up a paper and read about the attack on Marin Katich. When she rang him for news, Pierre had told her that Katich had come through surgery but was in an induced coma.
‘What’s the news on my father?’ she asked him now.
‘You want to call him that?’
‘I’ve been lied to all my life, Pierre,’ she said harshly. ‘I’m not going to resort to euphemisms now that I know the truth.’
‘You know your mother only told me ten days ago.’
‘Okay,’ she said.
‘They’ve brought him out of the coma,’ he said. ‘I made arrangements with the tribunal. I had to get the Registrar to approve it. You can visit as next of kin.’
Rachel was silent. Now it was real. She had half hoped some bureaucrat would refuse her request.
‘Where’s Anna?’ she asked.
‘I respected your wishes and didn’t tell her you were coming. She went to Zagreb for a meeting. Now she tells me she’s flying to Bosnia. She says she’s on to some new lead on Katich … Your father, I should say.’
‘He doesn’t mean anything to me, Pierre,’ said Rachel carefully. ‘It’s just something I have to understand.’
Pierre nodded and began moving. ‘Let’s go, shall we? Car’s on a meter.’
Outside, the freezing air stung Rachel’s face.
‘I think it’s going to snow,’ said Pierre. ‘White Christmas.’
Rachel screwed up her cold face. ‘Anna texted me in Singapore,’ she said. ‘She said she wants to talk. But she didn’t say anything about Zagreb or Bosnia. Still keeping secrets. Last thing she said was: “Happy Christmas”.’
Pierre flipped the hatch and shoved her suitcase in. She folded her coat and laid it on the back seat. He waited for a tram to hum past before pulling into the traffic.
‘I know you didn’t want to stay at the apartment,’ he said. ‘But now Anna’s gone, you’re welcome to change your mind. I had the cleaner fix up the room.’
‘Thanks, Pierre. I had booked a hotel, but actually I really don’t fancy being on my own,’ she said.
‘Great. Shall we go home and drop your bags?’
Rachel considered the offer. It would be easier to have a rest, but she didn’t want to break the momentum. There had been too much time to think on the long flight, especially after she read her father’s war crimes indictment.
‘He’s awake now,’ she said. ‘Do you mind? I don’t want to wait.’
•
Rachel looked up at the immense fortress-like prison gates. Finding that her hands were shaking, she shoved them deep into her pockets. She felt a terrible sense of dread, unlike anything she could remember.
For some reason, her grandmother entered her thoughts. The torments of Eva’s life made her own concerns seem trivial and she rebuked herself for her own weakness, for her emotional fragility.
She struggled to control her breathing as Pierre ushered her through the various security zones. But each staring face she encountered—whether that of an armed policeman, or a prison guard, or a trustee sweeping the corridors—seemed to contain a particular vice: slyness, misogyny or desire. Pierre smiled reassuringly and explained where they were going, but she felt as if she were being led through the circles of hell.
Behind its own high-wire fence and many locked doorways was the prison hospital. Yet once she was inside, it was a familiar scene of wards and doctors and nurses; people she had been brought up to trust. But in one of those wards was the source of her dread.
Pierre spoke to a woman at the front desk, produced his ID and asked Rachel for her passport. The woman looked at the passport and scrutinised her with open curiosity before signing them in. Rachel barely comprehended the instructions the woman gave to Pierre, but followed him as he led her without ceremony to her father’s bedside.
Marin Katich was in a partly raised electric bed, hooked up to a drip and a monitor, a chest drain emerging from under stained bandages. He was slumped into pillows. His eyes were closed and fluttering. He had broad shoulders and strong arms, but he looked sallow and haggard.
Rachel saw no sign of the vital, aggressive energy she had observed in his military portrait, nor of the bruised, angry resentment in the prison photos that Pierre had emailed to Anna. More particularly, she saw no hint of the handsome young man who had been forced to reject her mother.
She could not say what she felt on seeing him in the flesh for the first time. If she’d had to pick a word, it would have been emptiness.
‘Katich!’ said Pierre loudly. ‘Are you awake?’
Her father’s eyes fluttered open and a shaft of light through the barred window illuminated their startling green hue. She knew him then, and felt something beyond mere recognition.
‘Do I know you?’ he said. He was talking to Pierre and his voice was strong.
‘I’m Pierre Villiers. The last time I saw you was September 1970.’
‘What?’
‘No, it’s not a dream.’
‘Fuck! Pierre? What are you doing here?’
‘I’m not going to beat around the bush, Katich,’ said Pierre. ‘I’m here to introduce you to your daughter.’
Rachel stiffened; she had had no warning Pierre would do it like this.
‘What did you say?’ said Marin, his eyes flicked to Rachel and they stared at each other until her father shook his head. ‘It can’t be.’ ‘But it is,’ said Pierre. ‘This is Rachel Rosen and I am going to leave you two. You don’t need me here. I’ll be outside, Rachel.’
Pierre turned and strode out, his crepe soles squeaking on the polished vinyl floor. Rachel didn’t respond, didn’t turn to watch him go. She was fixated on Marin Katich: she saw tears glistening in his eyes.
‘You’re really my daughter?’ he said, and Rachel nodded.
‘Anna didn’t tell me,’ she said. ‘She doesn’t even know that I know. I found some evidence in her files, old photos and papers. But it was Tom Moriarty who confirmed it. I went to see him two days ago. He’s in a hospice. He told me about the night you were with Anna in her hotel room. The night I was conceived.’
Marin’s thoughts were still fogged by narcotics. ‘Moriarty,’ he whispered.
‘Yes.’
‘He was spying on us.’
‘I know,’ said Rachel.
‘It’s—’
‘I know.’
‘—incredible.’
‘But true,’ she said. ‘That night was in March 1973, I was born on the twelfth of December that year. I got your eyes.’
‘You did,’ said Marin. ‘I see that. I really had no idea—’
‘Nor did I.’
‘—you even existed.’
‘No, Anna kept this secret from me my whole life. There’s no way either of us could have known.’
Marin grimaced. He was obviously in pain. He made a move as if to get up and she flinched, thinking he might reach out to her. Instead he slumped back. ‘What do you want from me, Rachel?’
She gripped her hands together so tightly her knuckles were white. ‘I have to know who you are.’
‘What did Moriarty tell you?’
‘He’s dying,’ she said. ‘He has a lot to confess.’
‘He destroyed my life.’
‘He said that.’
‘So you know what I am,’ said Marin, his voice strained with emotion. ‘What he made me.’
‘I do.’
‘Why did you come?’ he demanded. ‘I must seem like a monster to you.’
‘You do,’ said Rachel. ‘At least, you did, but now I see you and I just don’t know. There’s so much I don’t understand. I’ve wondered about you my whole life.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I don’t want your pity,’ she said sharply. ‘I want the truth.’
Marin tried to swallow. He choked before lapsing into a fit of coughing, as if the truth might kill him. He pointed to the bedside table as he struggled to regain his breath. ‘Can you pass me the water?’
She put the cup in his hand, waited while he drank and took it back.
‘I read your indictment on the plane,’ she said. ‘It made me sick. I locked myself in a toilet and threw up.’
Marin reached out his left hand, sought the morphine button and gave himself a hit. He waited in silence for it to take effect.
Rachel’s patience ended and she cried out. ‘Are you at least going to deny it?’
‘I learned in prison that nothing sounds more false than an accused man protesting his innocence.’
‘It’s better than admitting your guilt.’
‘Rachel, I am guilty of many things. It was your country, your government that made me what I am. They twisted and tortured my nature. They turned me into a killer. They left me haunted by what I had done for them. But they didn’t turn me into a man who would kill civilians, women and children.’
‘What about the indictment?’
‘I just said that I have done terrible things in my life,’ he said and his voice was hoarse. ‘I’m prepared to confess to those things, but that indictment is a pack of lies … Rachel, if you’re prepared to listen, I will tell you what really happened, but you’ll have to sit down.’
Rachel brought a chair up and sat near the bed. It felt strange to be so close to this man. She noticed his large, coarse hands lying above the sheet. She listened as he told a story about a man named Jure Rebic. How they had met. The fighting in Vukovar, the escape from the siege, the trek to Bosnia, and how they had built together a Croat–Muslim militia in Herzegovina. As he continued, she sat silently, absorbed in the tale.
‘We had five thousand men under arms when the fighting began and we were stretched over a wide territory. I have already told you that Rebic was a brave fighter. I felt I owed him my life and I trusted him completely. He assumed command of the eastern sector where some of the hardest fighting was. I gave him autonomy in that sector and that was a terrible mistake. Eventually, I began to hear stories that the men under his command were out of control, that he had built a prison camp where men had been tortured and women raped, and that his men had murdered civilians. At that time, we were engaged across many fronts in fierce battles. I was in command of forces around the city of Mostar, which was under siege, and I couldn’t leave to go chasing rumours about Rebic, as terrible as they were. I spoke to him by radio and I sent him written orders to make sure no such atrocities were committed by men under his command. I ordered him to investigate the claims that prisoners of war had been abused and to deal with the perpetrators. I should have gone there immediately, but the Serbs were bombarding our lines and the civilians in Mostar.
‘Rachel, I don’t know how much Moriarty told you about me, but you should know that my mother, your grandmother, was living in Mostar at this time, not far from the Old Bridge, which we call Stari Most. Her name was Samira, Samira Begovic, and she was a Bosnian Muslim. I see that you’re surprised, please wait and ask your questions later … You will come to understand that our identities are more complex than you can imagine.
‘On one of the worst days of the bombardment a shell came down through the roof of my mother’s house. Samira had refused to go to a shelter or even to her own basement. I found her body myself and that of her husband, and carried them out of the ruins. It is their practice that the bodies must be prepared and buried within twenty-four hours …’
Marin’s voice seemed to catch here and Rachel saw that he was trying to stop himself from weeping. He clutched the bedclothes in his fist, fighting, it seemed, to contain his own raw emotions. He struggled to control his breathing and then continued.
‘Can you imagine how hard it is to bury your mother and give her respect as shells are raining down? I was not in my right mind after that, Rachel …
‘That is another story, but it took some time before I was able to travel to Jure Rebic’s sector. The day that I did, his men were conducting an assault on a number of small Serbian villages. It was one of those days when the clouds are so low over the mountains that the colour seems to have leached out of everything. On days like that, the brightest colour is blood.
‘I had only one bodyguard with me, a trusted man—Ante Lovren was his name. Why would I need anyone else when I was visiting our own troops? I came to a village which they had overrun and everywhere I looked were bodies. Old men, old women, children, all dead. Of course, the young men of fighting age were not there; they were long gone, recruited into their own armies. These were the families they had left behind—old women like my mother, old men like her husband. I was in a rage. I ordered the men to cease their operations and gather in the village square. I went looking for their officer, who they told me was a man named Mesic, the second in command to Jure Rebic.
‘I found this man coming out of the basement of a house. He was hitching up his trousers. I ordered Lovren to take his weapons and hold him outside the house, and I went down into the basement. On the floor was the body of a young women, perhaps sixteen years old, she was naked. It was quite obvious that she had been raped, her throat had been slashed and she had bled to death. I wrapped her body in a blanket, carried her up the stairs, and told Lovren to bring Mesic and follow me.
‘We went back to the village square where the other animals were gathered. I laid the body of the young girl in front of them. I had my men bring Mesic forward and made him look at the dead girl. I told him this was a field court martial and I pronounced on him the sentence of death. I shot him in the head right there and he fell next to the body of the girl.
‘His men cried out, cringed backwards, thinking they would be next. I had Ante Lovren write down all of their names and told them that they would one day face the consequences of what they had done. I intended to strip them of their weapons and have them transported back to our headquarters in Ljubuski.
‘But at that moment Jure Rebic himself arrived at the village. He found Mesic’s body and he knelt down and began to weep. I told him what the creature had done and why I had had no choice, but he shouted that the dead man was his brother-in-law and the life of some Serbian slut could never be weighed in the balance against such a man. I told him to look around the village, that Mesic’s men had committed a massacre here, and he screamed at me that they were following his orders, cleansing the region of terrorists and those who breed terrorists. I ordered Jure Rebic to hand over his weapons and told him I was stripping him of his command, effective immediately and that the men in the square would be taken to Ljubuski to face court martial.
‘Rebic then pulled out his side-arm and cocked it. He called on his men to pick up their weapons. My bodyguard Lovren now had his weapon up, but of course we were outnumbered. I told Rebic that he would face charges of mutiny, but he laughed in my face and said that, had we not been comrades in Vukovar, he would kill me now. Lovren and I had no choice but to leave.’
At that point, Marin stopped and put his hands up to his face, as if behind his fingers he was still seeing the ruined body of the young girl. He reached for the water, took another drink and continued.
‘Over the next two days, I called the officers of my general staff together to decide how to deal with Rebic. My biggest fear was that he would try to incite rebellion in other units. We travelled to different parts of the battlefield to make sure it didn’t spread.
‘What I didn’t know was that we had a far more dangerous enemy than Jure Rebic. The Croatian president, Franjo Tudjman, had made a secret deal with Slobodan Milosevic, the very man who had tried to crush us in Vukovar. Tudjman agreed to stop fighting the Serbs in Bosnia and promised the Croat army would go to war against the Bosnian Muslims. Tudjman planned for his army to occupy a huge swathe of Bosnian land in the south and create a Greater Croatia, allowing the Serbs to pursue a Greater Serbia in the north.
‘It was a betrayal so craven, so profound, that I could not have even conceived of it. I should have been more cynical. If I had understood better the nature of this man Tudjman, I might have been able to predict that the force I commanded, being forty per cent Muslim, would be targeted for destruction.
‘I don’t know exactly what happened next. Either Zagreb made contact with Jure Rebic, or he with them. What I do know is that it was Rebic who organised the ambush on our cars. I was coming back with seven of my staff officers from the meetings where we had determined to send an armed force to arrest him. We were attacked while driving back to our headquarters in Ljubuski. My officers were killed; I only escaped death by a miracle.
‘I was secretly transported by loyal Muslim soldiers to the battlefield hospital in Mostar. Ante Lovren was with them, and it was he who sent word back to Ljubuski that I was dead. My men shaved off my beard and my hair and gave the hospital false papers for me, giving me the new name of Tomislav Maric. Under Rebic’s command, meanwhile, every Muslim fighter in my battalions was disarmed and purged; and I know that many of them were killed.
‘Until a few days ago, Jure Rebic still believed that I was dead too and no threat to him. As soon as he learned I was alive, he moved quickly. The man who stabbed me in the prison gave me a very clear message: “Rambo sends his love.”’
Rachel had not said a word throughout her father’s long saga. It seemed to her like something from another age. What he was, what he had done, was beyond her comprehension—he was military commander; judge, jury and executioner. But she found that she could not judge his Old Testament morality under such extraordinary circumstances as he had described. Above all, she instinctively believed that he was telling the truth and, if that was the case, the war crimes indictment she had read should have been brought not against her father but against Jure Rebic.
‘Is there anyone still alive who can back up your story?’ she asked simply.
Marin held her gaze as if trying to see beyond the question into her thoughts. ‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ he said. ‘I lost track of most of my old comrades after the ambush, but there is this one man, the one of whom I spoke earlier, Ante Lovren. When Lovren joined us in Ljubuski, he was just a pimply young man who had been training to be a priest. This same Lovren was my most trusted bodyguard and, as I told you, he risked his life to help get me secretly to the hospital after the ambush. I believe it was Lovren who substituted another body in the coffin with my name on it. Being a Croat, he was not purged, but stayed on after Rebic took command.’
‘Do you know if he’s alive?’
‘Yes, I saw him not long before I was captured in Rovinj. There is a medieval fortress town on top of a hill not far from Rovinj called Motovun, and I’d sometimes go there to have lunch and to play chess with an old friend. I was there one Sunday visiting a church off the main square called St Stephen’s. I liked to look at the frescoes, but that day I heard a familiar voice. There, in front of the altar, the priest was conducting the mass and, when he turned to face the congregation, I recognised Ante Lovren. I asked an old lady and she said that, yes, it was Father Lovren and he was the priest of St Stephen’s. I should have gone up to him there and then, but the long habit of secrecy stopped me. I left the church and never tried to contact him. But now I’m worried.
‘Rachel, you must ask your mother to pass this information to the police. I know this about Jure Rebic: now that he has failed to kill me, he will try to silence anyone who can give evidence against him. I think Father Lovren could be in danger.’
•
Pierre took Rachel back to his apartment. He wanted to sit down and talk her through what she’d learned, but she excused herself, pulled out her laptop and went up to her room.
Half an hour later she came back down to find that Pierre had prepared lunch, and she sat with him and set out her plan. She explained to him why she wanted to be in Motovun for Christmas Day. Once he understood that there was nothing he could do to stop her, Pierre insisted on accompanying her.