Testimony Read online

  “First off, mate,” Goos said, “we’ll want a squizz at that grave Ferko dug for Boldo and his family. See if there’s forensics to be done on the remains.”

  Given Goos’s name, and the bit I’d learned in advance about his background, I’d expected a Flemish accent when we met. Instead, Goos spoke Aussie English. He said he’d been raised in ‘Oz,’ where his father managed Australian operations for a Belgian coffee importer. In Sydney, he’d been known as Gus until he moved back to Belgium for university at the age of nineteen.

  “What about exhuming the Cave?” I asked.

  Goos visibly ricocheted off the idea.

  “That’s heavy equipment, mate, and bunches of blokes to sort through the rubble. Registrar would spit the dummy if we proposed spending tens of thousands of Euros straightaway. Have to be absolutely sure of Ferko first.”

  We made notes about several other investigative ideas, and I asked Goos what he knew about the incident with Kajevic in April 2004, since Goos had been visiting Bosnia regularly during that period.

  “Big news at the time,” he said. “Bunch of Americans shot up. Four dead, as I recall. Everyone in NATO was cranky. But never heard a word about Roma.”

  After we’d finished our first beer, Goos asked my impressions of The Hague and the Court.

  “So far, so good,” I said, “except my hotel room, which could double as a coffin.” Goos had stayed in the same place when we arrived and grimaced at the memory, as if it had been a dental extraction. I asked how The Hague had worn on him over a much longer period.

  “Like it most of the time.” He hunkered down and lowered his voice. “Suppose I don’t need to tell you about the Dutch.”

  Americans were often mystified or impressed by ‘Ten Boom.’ These days, most guessed that I was Native American. (I’d never had the guts to ask if the senator was under the same misimpression when he chose me as US Attorney.) But ‘Ten Boom,’ like many European last names, simply designated a place. It meant ‘at tree’ in Dutch, like Atwater or Stonehouse in English.

  “My parents were both born here,” I told Goos, “but they were thoroughly Americanized. They never spoke Dutch, never returned. They didn’t even seem to like windmills.”

  Goos laughed heartily. I was pleased he had a sense of humor.

  “Dutch are nice enough,” he said. “Let everyone be. You can see that with the pot bars and the molls putting themselves on display in the shop windows. But they’re to themselves and keep very tight with their own ways.” He made a fist. “Look up at the windows as you go walking. No curtains. That’s because a person should have nothing to hide. Don’t conceal their thoughts either. If I run across some neighbor I haven’t seen in a while, I want to go the other way on sight, because the bloke’ll say something to me like, ‘Oh my, your beard is getting so gray!’ As if I might not own a mirror. Baise-moi l’ail!” said Goos. French was another of the languages of Belgium. The derelict remnants of my high school education allowed me to puzzle out the phrase: ‘Kiss my garlic bulb.’ I guffawed once I understood.

  “But all told,” said Goos, “it’s come good for me here. Nice salary. Comfy little flat. And less time for the wife and me to growl at each other at home. She stayed back in Brussels.” He glanced up from his beer glass. The alcohol had summoned color to his face, accentuating the contrast with the fair hair standing straight up on his head. His expression was impenetrable, almost as if he himself didn’t know how he felt about the living situation with his wife.

  I was starting to like Goos. His strengths as a drinking companion were clear, although I still hadn’t seen much focus from him as an investigator. As I would have guessed, he wasn’t ready to depart when I slid off my barstool and grabbed my briefcase. I thanked him for the drink and left by myself.

  The next afternoon, I called Esma with the news of the order. She had come to mind somewhat unwillingly over the weekend, and picking up the phone yesterday I had felt an odd lurch of feeling that had actually made me delay. With very little contact, we had already arrived on a strange footing.

  Despite my promise to reciprocate for dinner, we did not get together after the hearing. On the way to court that morning, I had mentioned to Akemi, the deputy prosecutor, that Esma had briefed me the prior evening at her hotel. A tiny middle-aged woman with witchy stiff black hair shot with gray, Akemi was a person of few words, but she passed me a black look, which I took as reproof. Reflecting, I understood her point. Even though my initial meeting with Esma had been planned solely for business, future defendants would feel free to question my objectivity if I made a habit of private dinners with the prime advocate for the victims. Rather than explain my reservations to Esma when she approached me in the robing room after the hearing, I had relied on the lame excuse of having forgotten other plans.

  ‘Another time then,’ she answered cheerfully. She gave me a fleet Continental buss on each cheek before departing.

  Now I offered to send a hard copy of the order to her chambers in London, but she said an e-mail would suffice. She asked about next moves in the investigation.

  “He won’t like it,” Esma answered, when I explained that we’d want Ferko to show us Boldo’s grave in Barupra. “I told him that once he gave evidence, it would be the last he’d hear of this for quite some time. Returning to Barupra will be traumatic for him.”

  “His testimony isn’t worth much, Esma, if we can’t corroborate it.”

  “I shall have to persuade him,” she answered. “Please stay in touch about the schedule.” She was about to hang up, when she added lightly, “And when will the winds blow you to London or New York, Bill? I have not forgotten that you owe me dinner.”

  With that, she rung off, leaving me staring at the handset. Having been single for going on five years, I was no longer completely blind to the signals if a woman was available and interested. But I was still reluctant to believe it of Esma. With her exotic looks and high style, she was well outside my range, more the kind of glamorous companion customarily seen on the arm of a billionaire or a senator, men of standing who had enough self-respect to pass on thirty-year-olds. The truth was that with her imposing self-assurance, Esma somehow seemed like too much for me. Cradling the receiver, I was actually a bit sheepish, because when I recalled the professional issues that were a barrier between us, I realized I felt relief.

  5.

  Settling In—March 11–April 8

  I spent the next couple of days reading about the raid nearly eleven years earlier, on April 10, 2004, in which US forces under NATO command had failed to capture Laza Kajevic. By early 2004, the American troops were in their last days in Bosnia, because President Bush needed more boots in Iraq. In fact, the NATO Supreme Allied Commander, General Layton Merriwell, who had gone on to become a figure of some note, if not for reasons he would have chosen, had already been appointed to lead the coalition forces in Baghdad and was on the verge of departure from Europe.

  As for Kajevic, he was universally regarded these days as the motive force of the Bosnian carnage. In line with his epic self-conception, he presented a somewhat majestic figure, large and imposing, with a virtual monument of black hair, distinguished by a wide skunk stripe that might have been the work of a hairdresser. The coiffure swept across his forehead down to eye level, in the fashion of an old-time rock ’n’ roller, and was the subject of frequent comment since it remained utterly undisturbed no matter how vehemently he delivered his race-baiting speeches.

  In 1992, Kajevic had stood before the Bosnian parliament and basically threatened genocide of Bosnian Muslims if Bosnia voted for independence from Yugoslavia, as it ultimately did. For the next three years, Kajevic did his utmost to make good on his dark promise. The Yugoslav National Army and the Serb paramilitaries, allied with roving gangs of thugs, shelled and shot, raped and burned, and laid mines in all areas not populated by Serbs. Ultimately, in Srebrenica, eight thousand captured Muslim men and boys were summarily executed on Kajevic’s orders. After Da
yton, in 1996, he was charged at the Yugoslav Tribunal. He’d been on the run ever since, becoming the most wanted man in Europe.

  In late March 2004, US Army Intelligence received word that Kajevic and his band of two dozen bodyguards had taken refuge in a shattered portion of Doboj, which by virtue of ethnic cleansing had become a Serb enclave near Tuzla. He was more or less hiding under the Americans’ noses.

  According to the accounts I read, Kajevic was supported by a secret network throughout Serbia and Bosnia that operated like the Ku Klux Klan in the US decades ago. He was guarded by ex–Arkan Tigers, the most reviled and feared of the Chetnik paramilitaries. In order to provide for Kajevic, the Tigers had evolved into a crime gang that smuggled gasoline and drugs and sex slaves, and also, reputedly, carried out paid assassinations for Russian mobsters.

  For General Layton Merriwell, the capture of Kajevic would have been the ultimate emblem of the success of NATO’s peacemaking efforts in Bosnia. The operation was planned carefully, and the remaining Special Forces troops in country—who had spearheaded the apprehension of many fugitives—were summoned.

  On April 10, a perimeter force surrounded the abandoned tenement where Kajevic was said to be hiding, while two squads entered the ground floor from different doors. They were inside for no more than a few seconds when at least two rocket-propelled grenades, fired from above, lit up the building. Snipers waiting on adjoining rooftops fired on the Special Forces soldiers as they fled.

  The Serbian ambush left four American troops dead and eight others wounded. Never actually sighted, Kajevic and his Arkan bodyguards were presumed to have escaped in one of two stolen US Army trucks seen speeding from the scene.

  These deaths, the only US combat fatalities in more than eight years in Bosnia, made a sour end to Merriwell’s time there, and front-page news at home. In perhaps the most famous quote about the episode, an American NCO snarled into a network camera, “We didn’t come here to die for these [bleep]ing people.”

  After three days, I’d read every article and blog post I could find online concerning Kajevic’s escape, and I’d also enlisted the aid of the Court’s research librarians. There was no mention of ‘Roma’ or ‘Gypsies’ or ‘Barupra’ in anything written about the firefight.

  On Tuesday the following week, Goos came into my office with a piece of paper. I had taken over Olivier’s space a few days before, although I was still getting accustomed to its barren feel. The furnishing was spare—a round-nose pedestal computer console of blond wood adhered to a bank of white laminate cabinetry. The Dutch, as it turned out, frowned on personal displays in public space, and the off-white walls held nothing but a colored map of Sierra Leone that Olivier had taped up by its corners, and which I left, as a low-rent rebellion against monotony. It was a far cry from the Wall of Respect I had at DeWitt Royster, with the photos of three different presidents shaking my hand, the courtroom sketches of my most famous trials, and various important documents—diplomas, bar admissions, and my US Attorney’s Letters Patent—in expensive leather frames.

  “A sheila I know over at the Yugoslav,” Goos said, meaning a woman, “defense lawyer, says she and her husband might have a room to let for a couple of months.” In idle hours, I’d been looking at apartments online, but most required a multiyear lease. A short-term rental would let me escape the monk’s cell I was confined in while I got a feel for The Hague, before making a longer commitment.

  After work, Goos accompanied me on the Sprinter back to the center of town. Following a short walk, we found the building, its entry jammed with bikes locked to the radiator.

  The two-story flat was tidy and dustless, sparely furnished with older modern pieces that looked as if they might have been inherited. My potential landlady was named Narawanda Logan, Indonesian by heritage but a resident of The Hague most of her life. She was tiny and narrow as a bird, with raven bangs and large eyeglasses, round black frames that seemed to cover half of her face. Based on the dates when she said she’d done a graduate law degree at NYU, I figured her for her late thirties, although she had the kind of dainty looks that could lead her to be mistaken for someone much younger.

  Her husband, Lew, was an American whom she’d met in grad school. Recently, the international aid organization he worked for had posted him to Manhattan for temporary duties promised to last no more than six months. But the dizzy rents in New York were stretching the Logans’ finances and they’d decided to let an empty bedroom. The room was upstairs and small by US standards, albeit spacious compared to my hotel. It had the large windows that are typical of the Dutch in their quest for light, and its own tiny powder room, which had been carved out of a closet years ago as an accommodation for an elderly relative.

  Mrs. Logan said she woke early and returned late, and that use of the kitchen would be largely mine because she never cooked. The relative privacy of the entire arrangement was instantly appealing. Beyond all that, the location was choice, only a couple blocks off Frederikstraat, ‘the Fred,’ with its fancy shops and nice cafés. Knowing myself, I realized that if I couldn’t just stumble out the door to find diversion, I’d never leave the apartment.

  Goos had told me the rent—€550 a month—was a bargain—and I said yes at once and moved in the next evening.

  On Monday, March 23, word came that the Bosnians had reaffirmed the referral of the investigation to the ICC. After eleven years, less one month, a criminal inquiry into the massacre at Barupra could begin.

  I was not surprised that Roger, who knew all, called me late in the day.

  “So I read you won your hearing.”

  “It’s a little hard to claim victory, Rog, where there’s no one on the other side.”

  “Whatever. Now that you’re investigating, how would you like to come to DC to have a conversation with Layton Merriwell?”

  “General Merriwell?”

  “He’s willing to talk to you one-on-one.”

  “About the case?”

  “No, about raising dwarf ponies. Of course about your case. He’s also been reading about it.” The Court’s order had produced the first publicity in the US about Barupra, a small article in the back pages of the New York Times. The paper had mentioned that the massacre had occurred in an area under US Army control. I could understand why that would have caught the attention of the NATO supreme commander at the time. “The general wants you to hear his point of view,” Rog said. “Tell you what he knows. Which is next to nothing.”

  I nearly asked Roger what was in this for General Merriwell, but that was peering straight into the mouth of the gift horse. Instead, after hanging up, I sat at my desk trying to answer the question on my own. I didn’t doubt that Roger was my friend—he had flown fourteen hours to get to the funeral of my mother, who had cooked him countless meals during law school, and he was far more attentive to me than almost anyone else had been after I decided to leave Ellen. Yet he subscribed, like many guys, probably including me, to a view of friendship that barred no holds in competition. On the squash court, Roger had virtually maimed me through the years, running me over, driving the squash ball into my ass at 80 mph, and—usually when he was behind—swinging wide enough to strike me with his racket. All in the game, he’d say.

  So I tried to fathom the game now. Roger was a public servant of the United States. Accordingly, whatever Layton Merriwell had to say was going to serve American interests, which, naturally, were in absolving US military forces.

  I walked down the hall to Goos.

  “Fair suck of the sav,” said Goos, which I took it meant he was as surprised as I about Merriwell. Goos’s English had basically been preserved in amber and was spoken as if he were still nineteen, the age when he left Australia.

  The ICC’s protocols called for the prosecution of leaders rather than grunts who would claim they were just following orders. Therefore, if several hundred Roma had been massacred by American troops, General Merriwell would be our top target. Accordingly, his offer to speak to me con
tradicted what any good criminal lawyer—including me—would have told him, namely, Keep your mouth shut. The penitentiaries were full of guys who’d boosted their proclaimed innocence with lies that led them to the slammer.

  “We can’t say no,” said Goos. In an investigation in which US law barred any cooperation from the American military, it would be impossible to refuse even one self-serving interview. “But,” he added, “this is going to make the old man very, very nervous.”

  He was referring to Badu. The prosecutor, as well as the president of the Court—a judge who served as the chief executive—were chosen by the member countries, which meant Badu was best off avoiding controversies that might inflame any faction. The Pre-Trial Chamber’s order in my “Situation” had authorized the investigation to proceed only within the “territorial scope” of the OTP application, which naturally made no mention of the US. In fact, given the Service-Members’ Act, conducting an ICC investigation on US soil was probably illegal.

  I called back Roger to make these points, but within twenty-four hours he had proposed that Merriwell and I meet in a conference room in the BiH Embassy in DC, which under international law was sovereign Bosnian territory. The Bosnians, like many others, revered Merriwell and would never deny him so simple a request.

  With that, I scheduled a meeting with Badu and Akemi in hopes of gaining their approval. We sat in Badu’s corner office at a white conference table beside a wall of floor-length windows. Badu was at the head, while Akemi placed herself in the corner, with a legal pad. With her dark face always seemingly engraved by worry, Akemi was at the Court, with her door open, no matter how early I arrived or how late I left, usually scribbling like mad on the stacks of documents in front of her. Although she was my supervisor, my conversations with her were rare, since she was frugal with words and difficult to understand anyway. She spoke that Japanese version of English, cultivated at their universities, which is largely a dialect unto itself. Although Akemi’s office was only two doors down, I had taken to e-mailing her about virtually everything.