ON THE OPENING DAY of the Holy Assembly of Bishops, the Rivet Joint powered through a cloud layer and leveled above a pearl undercast. Gold glanced outside through the cockpit windows when she got up to stretch her legs. The mist spanned from horizon to horizon; it appeared to wrap the entire earth in a peaceful embrace. Gold felt a twinge of irony as she gazed out from behind her sunglasses, knowing what lay beneath the clouds. She returned to her seat beside Irena, took off her shades, put on her headset, and began listening.
Now that authorities knew Muslim fighters were trickling into Bosnia, attracted by the new tensions, Gold owned a bigger piece of the mission. The Rivet Joint flew mainly to zero in on Dušic and his men, and that remained Irena’s focus. But Gold tuned to a broadband setting, listening to a wide spectrum of channels to pick up on signs of more triggermen arriving from abroad. Whatever she heard might not help capture Dušic, but it might measure how dangerous the atmosphere had become. With her fluent Pashto and smattering of Arabic, she was glad to help. She just wished the circumstances were different.
Gold adjusted a volume setting, clicked her ballpoint pen. She tapped the pen on the top page of a fresh notepad. The effort left a pattern of little black dots.
“Nervous?” Irena asked.
“More like worried,” Gold said. “I hope Lieutenant Colonel Parson and the other guys don’t run into trouble today.”
“Me, too. Have you heard anything interesting?”
“Negative. You?”
“Snake eyes. It’s like Dušic has dropped off the grid.”
Gold did not like the sound of that. You could call a man like Dušic a lot of things, but not stupid. He had figured a way to exploit religious and ethnic hatreds so deftly that he might just start a new war almost by himself. What a tragic human failing that people so often killed over what they found most holy. After years of reflection, Gold thought she had finally begun to understand why. God was eternal and unchanging. But religion—how man approached God—was a human institution. So of course religion could be as flawed and misused as any other human institution.
The airplane banked into the initial turn of a holding pattern. Gold heard one of the officers up front check in with Parson on the ground in Belgrade.
“Dragnet,” the crewman called, “this is Motown on station. How copy?”
“Dragnet has you five by five,” Parson said. “Got anything for me?”
“Negative. We’ll advise. Everything normal down there?”
“Pretty much. Just a lot of people who don’t like to have to wait.”
That relieved Gold a little. Parson seemed safe enough for now with Cunningham and Dragan close by. So far so good, but the day had only begun.
Irena loosened her shoulder straps and leaned back in her seat. Fiddled with the controls on her console.
“Still nothing,” she said.
Gold listened to her own channels. Eventually she picked up a conversation in Pashto. Pakistani accent.
“I have made it to Bihac, my brother,” the voice said. Gold tried to bring up a map of the Balkans in her head. She did not have a photographic memory, but like most experienced soldiers she possessed a fair knowledge of geography. Where was Bihac? Oh, yeah. Northern Bosnia.
“What mood did you find?” An older voice in Pashto. Maybe some organizer or middleman.
“The faithful are tense, but things remain quiet at the moment. The crusaders burned a mosque a few days ago.”
“If they try to wipe out our people again, we will take revenge.”
“Indeed. The supplies have arrived in good order.”
Supplies? Probably weapons and ammunition. With the cycle of mosque and church burnings, Dušic had created the perfect backdrop for what he wanted to do, and it continued to feed on itself.
“Are we recording this?” Gold asked on interphone.
“Always,” a crewman answered. “What do you have, Sergeant Major?”
“Foreign fighters coming into Bosnia, I think.”
“Lovely.”
• • •
AT THE SPECIFIED TIME, Dušic met Stefan and the razvodniks at Pionirski Park. Dušic drove Stefan’s van. Stefan arrived in the Citroën, now heavy, wired, and deadly. Nikolas, Andrei, and the other men came in two Land Rovers. Mist drizzled from an overcast sky. In the distance, a church bell tower tolled a trezvon while Dušic addressed his team. Though Dušic still held to the agnosticism taught by his earliest Communist teachers, he took the triple rings of soprano, alto, and bass bells as an auspicious sign. As a commander on the verge of his signature mission, he wanted his words to inspire.
“History teaches that any war left unfinished must be fought again,” Dušic said. “And so we shall. I know you may find today’s operation distasteful. I share your feelings. But today we only set the priming charge. The real explosion comes later. A few of the good must die so that we may eliminate the evil, the Turks who have infested this land long enough. Go with courage. If you survive, I will reward you and offer you further missions. If I should fall, press on without me. Stefan will know how to see that you get the other half of your checks.”
Dušic explained how the tactical situation had changed, and he outlined his plans for addressing that problem. The razvodniks would no longer fire indiscriminately, at least not at first. They were to aim for police officers and any defensive snipers on the rooftops. Stefan had his own specific targets: the machine gunner and anyone else who looked particularly dangerous. Further, Dušic himself would drive the car bomb. When he finished speaking, he slipped his arms into his body armor, hefted the armor into place, and began snapping the fasteners closed. He held out his hand for the key to the Citroën.
“Are you sure about this, Viktor?” Stefan asked.
“I am. I need you for your marksmanship now. Any fool can drive a car.”
Stefan smiled faintly, handed over the key. “And you have the number to call to detonate the weapon?”
“I do.” Dušic patted an outer pocket attached to his body armor, which contained his mobile phone. “But if something happens to me, you know what to do.”
“I have the number as well. Do not forget that you must turn on the trigger phone and your own cell.”
“Then all is in readiness,” Dušic said. “Gentlemen, execute the mission.”
Stefan pumped his fist into the air and sat down in the van. The razvodniks climbed into their SUVs. At the wheel of the Citroën, Dušic inserted the key into the ignition. As he started the engine, he eyed the trigger phone duct-taped to the console. Two wires led from the phone. The wires ran under the seat and back toward the trunk.
• • •
INSIDE A MOBILE COMMAND POST on Kralja Petra, Parson listened on VHF through a lightweight headset. He still felt a little strange performing official duties in civilian clothing. Performing those duties surrounded by Serbian policemen made it all even weirder. At one time, these guys might have been his enemies; he even wondered if any of them had ever manned antiaircraft guns. But today they nodded to him politely enough. Maybe they’d gotten word he and Cunningham were friends of Dragan.
Through a window, Parson could see Dragan and Cunningham working outside, making the rounds of the checkpoints and the machine-gun pit. To give them any news from the Rivet Joint, Parson had only to change frequencies. But so far he had nothing to report. Dragan walked with his Vintorez rifle at the ready. Traffic had backed up behind the nearest checkpoint, which was positioned to keep uncleared vehicles well away from the Patriarchate. Officers patrolled the line of cars. A few of the men held the leashes of bomb dogs; Parson recognized a Labrador, a Belgian Malinois, and two German shepherds. The drizzle dampened the Labrador’s fur enough that the animal stopped, shook itself, then resumed sniffing fenders and wheel wells.
Bishops and priests gathered at the Patriarchate’s entrance. To Parson, they all looked like ancient men of wisdom with their black vestments and long beards. He wondered if any of them had been wise enough to speak out against ethnic cleansing back during the war. That would have required both wisdom and guts.
At the checkpoint, Dragan and Cunningham conferred about something. Dragan pointed to one of the dog handlers and appeared to give some kind of order. Parson switched to their frequency.
“Anything the matter?” Parson asked.
“I noticed a car in line that’s riding low like an overloaded boat,” Cunningham said. “Maybe just bad shocks, but—”
Cunningham stopped talking. He turned around as if he sensed something wrong.
At the machine-gun pit, the gunner’s face exploded in a spray of red.