25.

OVER THE NEXT few weeks, three more people were shot to death in places that had been assumed to be inaccessible to snipers.

A man was found early one morning, splayed out beside the parking spots in the enclosed courtyard of the Presidency Building on Marshal Tito Boulevard. He lay face down over a scattering of crushed plastic water bottles, a single 7.62 X 39-millimeter bullet lodged in his right shoulder blade, no identification in his pockets, and a face that no one professed to recognize.

“A drifter, a squatter, a pain in the ass,” said Tedic. “But dead he is a marker for dangerous territory.”

A Bosnian captain at the scene who had once competed in the biathlon with Coach Dino Cosovic found the shot that felled the man highly improbable. “Not unless they have a balloon they can use to hover above us,” he said, pointing to the severe downward trajectory of the bullet. The captain told Tedic that the man must have been shot a block away, on an open section of Marshal Tito Boulevard, and had staggered into the courtyard for help; or just to die.

But no one on duty in the basement of the building recalled hearing a cry or shout. Perhaps they were merely loath to reveal that they had not dashed out of their brick citadel to help a wounded man. Tedic found the theory suspect, in any case. There was no trail of blood leading to the man’s body. And, as Molly pointed out, no blood had trickled down from the wound, as would have been the case if the man had staggered upright for a block. The man’s slacks were inescapably filthy—stretchy, maroon nylon Tito-era trousers—but there were no fresh tears or abrasions along the knees to suggest that he had crawled before collapsing atop the clutter of squashed bottles.

“If he had crawled,” said Molly, “the shooter would have finished him off back in the street.”

“Why waste a bullet on a man who’s bleeding to death?” asked Tedic.

“Compassion,” Molly said with grim humor. “They’ve got bullets enough to be generous.”

Tedic bent over the dead man’s body, pinching folds of the shiny maroon fabric in his fingers and stretching it out the way a child might tug on a rubber band. “Imagine,” he said, “meeting your Maker wearing”—and here Tedic pulled on the slacks in comic disdain—“these circus pants. Just a lucky shot?” he asked after a pause.

“Fluky. If we’re lucky,” said Molly, “I’d say someone got up somewhere and arced one lonely, lovely round exactly right.”

         

THE VERY NEXT day, a woman pushing her child in a stroller toward a water line behind the barrier of gutted trucks and buses on Sutjeska Street was shot in the top of the head. She fell forward—Allah be praised, said the Home Minister—onto the stroller and thus protected her two-year-old son.

The citizens standing in line had believed they were sheltered behind the barrier. The woman gasped and blood sputtered out of her mouth while her son screamed. People rolled into gutters and under the bus, a chorus of screams mingling with the scraping and clattering of empty water bottles. The boy shrieked; his mother bled. Voices began to call out from gutters and behind walls.

“We must help her!”

“She’s dead!”

“How do you know, Dr. Without Borders?”

“She’s not breathing! That’s a hint!”

“Her child is screaming!”

“His mother is dead and he’s scared. He’ll bloody scream for the rest of his life!”

“We should at least lift her body off him.”

“Her body shields her child. She wouldn’t want to be moved. It’s not worth the risk.”

“Whoever you are, you’re a selfish pig!”

“Run out yourself! We’ll bury you with your medal for stupidity!”

It was almost ten minutes before a brewery truck bearing Tedic could pull up to the scene and take the dead mother into their load. She was dark-haired and thin-boned, and felt as light as a sack of dry leaves when Tedic took her shoulders and Mel lifted her feet to place her in the truck. Tedic himself picked up the frightened brown-headed boy, his small legs churning, and tucked him into the arms of a policeman. Tedic then made a point of pacing around the splatter of blood surrounding the empty stroller, while people cautiously began to creep out of their burrows along the street.

“Brave and noble Sarajevans,” he intoned. “I hear about you all on the BBC. I must say, you don’t look the way you have been described.”

But by the time Tedic reported to the Home Minister in the basement of the Presidency Building, his sarcasm was directed at the deceased. “What is a mother doing with her child out on that kind of street, anyway?” he asked.

“Going for water, like everyone else,” answered the Home Minister. “There were two empty bottles alongside the boy.”

“So!” said Tedic. “If she had left the boy behind, she might have carried back more water.”

“Tedic, it is surely best for the world that you have no children,” the Home Minister said with a weary shake of his head. “Claimed and acknowledged, in any case. Best for you. Certainly best for the children. Anyone with even a few nieces and nephews will tell you that you can’t leave a child cooped up all the time, never breathing fresh air.”

But Tedic came back credibly. “I have so many broken windows and mortar holes in my apartment, I gag on the fresh air,” he said.

         

THE HOME MINISTER licked a finger and tried to smooth one of a score of crinkles on his soiled silver London tie. “What do we have here?” he asked finally. “A series of lucky, improbable, unrelated shots, or a pattern?

“Have you heard the Knight?” asked Tedic.

The Home Minister shook his head.

“His words would encourage the latter view.” Tedic read some lines from a transcript. “Perhaps they are just words,” he said. “Okay. Just yesterday morning our friend begins playing Peter Tosh. Brothers of scorn in exile for so long, we need majority rule. Early morning dew, fight on, et cetera.” Tedic’s Caribbean accent was unconvincing.

“A favorite of my daughter’s,” said the Home Minister gloomily. “Twisted to become a Serb anthem with steel drums.”

Tedic ran his finger over a new paragraph. “Okay. Then he says, ‘You know, Muslims, there’s something your government won’t tell you. They don’t think you deserve the truth. You are dolls in a shooting gallery to them. They force you to dodge bullets and go hungry until they can strike their deals and fly into lush exile in the south of France.’ ”

“If we get to choose,” the Home Minister interrupted, “I’d prefer Florida. I find I’m always cold.”

“Winter in San Juan, summer in Gstaad is how I’ve arranged my fantasy life,” said Tedic. “Our friend goes on. ‘What do you think they’re doing,’ he asks, ‘when they jet off to conferences in Vienna and London? They don’t come back waving peace treaties, do they? No gifts for you. What has your mixed-ethnic assembly of Muslim fanatics, Serb stooges, thick-skulled Croats, and anteater-nosed Jews actually done?’ ”

“Well, this thick-skulled fanatic,” observed the Home Minister with an edge, “hasn’t been to so much as Zagreb since the start of things.”

“He has a phrase coming up,” said Tedic, scanning the next section. “ ‘They have only gotten your friends and family killed. They have only made you starve and freeze. The Americans have a new grinning possum for president. He wouldn’t fight for his own country. What makes you think he will risk any precious, pink-assed American boys for your lives?’ ”

“He’s got a point there,” said the Home Minister.

“ ‘Here’s what your government won’t tell you, Muslims.’ ” Tedic put the Knight’s voice back into his own. “ ‘We can hit you anywhere. All those barriers and blind spots? Mere decoration. They are fortifications for fools. Their barricades are as flimsy and worthless as toilet tissue—if you remember toilet tissue. And your leaders know it. Ask around. Every week people are getting shot in what are supposed to be safe zones. The truth? No place is safe. We Serbs have a viper here who can thread a bullet into your brain even if you lock yourself inside the basement vault of a bank on Branilaca Sarajeva Street. He is that good. His bite is fatal. He is that poisonous. Where can you turn? How can you breathe? Every step you take—’ ”

“It should not be difficult to guess the musical accompaniment,” the Home Minister interjected, signaling that the point had been made. “Every breath you take?” The Home Minister’s voice rose in a question. “Every move you make, step you take, I’ll be watching you?”

“Sting,” agreed Tedic. “Like the sting of the viper.”

“Let’s not get carried away with metaphor,” said the Home Minister. He rose from his seat and began to slap his own arms against the gloom and frostiness of the basement.