Gemini
Stephanie reckoned the woman was in her late forties. The interview was taking place in an institutional room: cream gloss walls, a smooth concrete floor with a single table at its centre. She was talking to another woman whose back was to camera. Stephanie paused the footage and checked the directory; the interview had been conducted in a Bologna police cell. When the action resumed, so did the clock in the bottom left-hand corner: 14.14 on 11 April 1997.
‘They asked me what I did. I said I was a teacher. The one with no teeth told me to show him where the school was. He said they would need a place to keep us for the night because we would not go to Foca until the next day. I got up from the ground to take him to the school. That was the last time I saw my husband alive. Four other men came with us. It was a small building with one large classroom and two small utility rooms. The man with no teeth told me to take off my clothes. I refused and one of the others hit me across the cheek with the butt of his rifle. Then they stripped me and raped me.’
The other woman asked a question that Stephanie couldn’t hear. The first woman shook her head defiantly and continued, her voice a sobering monotone.
‘No, it was all of them. The man with no teeth went first. When he was finished, the others followed. I tried not to make a sound because I knew they would hear me outside. Later some of the men went out, then others came in. Sometimes it was one of them, sometimes two or three. They brought in other women. Some of the women were older than me, some were just girls.
‘They brought in the doctor’s wife late in the afternoon. After four or five men had raped her, they brought in her husband. They made him watch as more men raped her. Then they slit his throat in front of her. Like me, she survived the massacre the next day. I know that because she made it to Athens where she had some family. But she’s dead now. She killed herself.
‘During the night they were drinking. We heard screams and shouts in the square. We didn’t know what they were doing until the morning when we saw the bodies. They’d knifed some of the old men and hung some of the boys. One of them was six. By the end I don’t think I felt a thing. I don’t know how many of them raped me, or how many times. It doesn’t matter.
‘When they left they shot some of those who were still in the square. But not all of them. It was the same in the school-house. They murdered a few and let the rest live. To tell others what had happened, to spread the fear. I can’t forgive any of them for anything. But in particular, I can’t forgive them for not shooting me. For letting me live. I don’t care what any of the other survivors say, that was the worst thing they did to me. I think about suicide every day, but I can’t do it. It’s a sin. I want to die, though. As soon as possible so I won’t have to remember.’
She was staring, unblinking. Not at the woman opposite her, but at the camera. At Stephanie.
Another box on the right-hand screen, another face, this one a man’s, an Albanian from Kosovo. The interview was recorded in a community centre in Hamburg on 13 June 2001. There were other immigrants in the frame. The man spoke slow, clear English.
‘They kicked us out of our houses, robbed us, then beat us up. They separated the men of fighting age from the rest and told us they would be taken to a secure camp. They said they would be well treated, but we didn’t believe them. We already knew they were butchers. There was panic, women clinging to their husbands. The terrorists – that is what they were, not soldiers – beat the women back. But there was no controlling them. There was one woman, she was on her knees clinging to her husband’s legs with one arm and her little boy with the other. The leader of the terrorists, a big man with a shaved head, tried to pull her off her husband. I could see how angry this monster was. His eyes were dead. He grabbed her by the hair and pulled but she would not let go. Instead she spat at him. And so he shot her husband. Just like that. As though he was taking the top off a bottle.
‘Before the woman had time to react, he grabbed the little boy, his face splattered with his father’s blood. The savage held him tight, put a gun to his head and threatened to shoot unless there was order. Nobody said anything. Nobody protested any more. The men who had been singled out got on the bus and were driven away. Those of us who were left – the sick, the old, the women and children – we watched, some crying, some too terrified to cry.
‘The man said we had to pay for the trouble we had caused. Fifteen thousand deutschmarks for the boy. I was one of those detailed to collect the cash. He gave us half an hour to find the money. What could we do? They had already robbed us. But they knew we would find cash that was hidden. We went from house to house, collecting what we could. When we returned we had just over ten thousand deutschmarks, much more than I expected. I was the one who handed the money to him. He counted it and said, “Ten thousand is not enough. I said fifteen.” Somebody else said there was no more, that it was all we had. He shrugged and said, “Okay. I’m a fair man. A deal is a deal. You give me two thirds of the money, I give you two thirds of the boy.” He decapitated the child in front of us. When they left they took their third away – the head – and left his little body on the ground next to his father.’
The windows are open. I can hear the distant murmur of traffic on the Gloucester Road, a phone ringing, the dull drum-roll of a helicopter passing overhead. Mark looms over me, enters me and kisses me. I can taste myself on his tongue.
Already flushed, I break into a sweat, our skins soon slippery, the sheets beneath us crushed and damp. I push my fingers through his dark hair and they come away wet. At first I’m content to let his weight pin me to the bed; I snake my arms around his neck and pull him down onto me. Later we roll over and I’m in charge, swiping away his hands from my hips so that I decide how hard we go, how deep, how fast. Which is when I seize up. Suddenly I’m no longer in his bedroom and I have no idea how it’s happened.
I try to escape his grasp but he doesn’t get it. He hardens his grip so I grab the fingers of his right hand and twist violently. I lurch forward and we separate. Still clutching his fingers with a force that amazes both of us, I wrench again, clamping my other hand over his, straining the tendons in his wrist.
‘Jesus … Stephanie …’
He rolls with the pain. He has to, otherwise the wrist would snap. I know that for certain. It’s a move I’ve used often. I let go just in time, but he’s hurt. And in shock. For a second or two neither of us does or says anything. Then I stumble off the bed and scramble to the bathroom, where I lock the door.
I’m trembling but I’m not sure whether it’s anger, sorrow or surprise. I lash out at the shelf above the basin, scattering two plastic mugs, a can of shaving foam and a half-used bottle of Listerine.
I don’t know what to think. Or what I can say to him. Because whatever I do, I can’t tell him the truth. I can’t share my day’s work with him. I can’t say what I’ve learnt after ten hours, or excuse my behaviour by telling him that all I could see was a Bosnian school-teacher being gang-raped by a Serb paramilitary unit. Or a little boy lying in the dirt next to his father, his head severed.
There’s a knock on the door. My breathing is slowing but my skin still gleams with sweat. He murmurs my name. I stare into my reflected eyes – my most potent weapon – and take control again.
Then I turn round and open the door.
Mark had pulled on a pair of cotton trousers. Stephanie was still naked. Her voice was barely a whisper. ‘Do you want me to go?’
‘I want you to talk.’
‘It would be easier to go.’
‘I’m sure it would.’
He offered her an old shirt of his. She pulled it around her damp body. When she said she was sorry, she couldn’t bring herself to look him in the eye. He asked if she needed a drink. She did but she declined. Then she sat on the edge of the bed, her back to him.
‘You know that feeling, when you’re almost asleep but not quite? And you’re not actually sure whether you’re awake or not. And then you picture yourself tripping or falling, and even though it’s your imagination your whole body lurches … that’s what it was like.’
‘I know the feeling. But I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I can’t. I’m sorry.’
Mark said it was okay. When it clearly wasn’t. Or, at least, shouldn’t have been. He should have asked questions. Or shouted. Something. Anything. But he didn’t because he didn’t have to. He understood without the details.
From the very start there had been a condition, laid down in her bed in the hotel in the Dolomites. Don’t imagine you’ll ever get too close to me, Mark. No matter what happens to us, there are whole areas of my life that I will never be able to share with anyone. He’d said he didn’t care.
Now, despite what she’d said, he had got close. Far closer than she could have anticipated. But not to her past. The condition remained intact.
He opened a bottle of wine to soothe the tension. Later, he cooked for them and they relaxed a little, a second bottle helping.
They went to bed just before midnight. With the curtains open, a street-lamp washed the ceiling dirty orange. They lay tangled together, her head on his chest, his fingers in her hair.
He said, ‘You’re the strangest person I’ve ever met.’
‘I’m not half as strange as you.’
‘I don’t think I’m strange.’
She looked up at him. ‘Do you really think I am?’
‘One moment you’re one person, the next moment you’re somebody completely different. That seems to me to be strange. Then again, it is who you are.’
‘Trust me, Mark. You have no idea.’
3
The first week of September brought the first storm since mid-July. Volleys of rain lashed the carriage windows as the District Line train wheezed to a halt at Olympia. As the doors parted, Stephanie turned up her collar. Maclise Road was just a minute away but she was dripping by the time she kicked her front door shut. She shed her raincoat and draped it over a chair, leaving her in grey sweatpants with a green stripe, a chunky black V-neck over a purple long-sleeved T-shirt and yesterday’s underwear. In other words, the clothes that had been closest to her side of the bed.
She switched on the Sony Vaio in the living room and sent a brief message to a Hotmail address. I’m back from my travels. I’ve got a couple of questions for you. Let’s get in touch.
In the kitchen she made herself coffee and turned on the radio. The news bulletin was finishing with an item of gossip about some soap star she didn’t know. It was five past seven. Mark had been asleep when she’d left him. By contrast, she’d been awake since three. Worrying, wondering.
It had taken several days to absorb Alexander’s deal fully. At first she’d only seen the carrot and that had blinded her to everything else. As intended, she supposed. It took longer to analyse the detail, the reality, the potential consequences. The more she considered it, the more anxious she’d become. Above all, there was one thing she knew: Alexander was not a man who liked to give.
There would be a subtext. There always was. Offering her a future free of Magenta House was not credible by itself. Alexander had prohibited her from seeing Komarov after New York out of nothing more than spite. Why would he let her go now? There was no obvious answer.
And what of the contract itself? It wasn’t what she was trained for. Despite Mostovoi and Marrakech, there were others who’d be better suited to the task. Was it a demotion? Did Alexander feel she no longer had the cutting edge to survive in S7? She’d never heard of anyone being demoted at Magenta House. Those who left did so without fanfare and never returned.
The deal and the contract itself, neither was right.
She checked three Hotmail addresses of her own, as well as her five AOL addresses. Over the years she’d developed a system for e-mail management. The Hotmail addresses were permanent and belonged to Petra. Consequently very few people ever used them, and she couldn’t think of anyone who knew more than one of them. Nearly all her Hotmail traffic was spam: tacky offers for cheap loans, penis or breast enhancement and off-the-shelf diplomas. The AOL addresses were spread across five of her established identities, Stephanie Schneider among them. Finally there were those addresses that were set up for one contract only. Or even one message.
Stephanie Schneider had mail. Steffi – it’s ready for collection, Ali.
At nine she left the flat. After an hour of Pilates with a private instructor at a studio in Earls Court. She found Pilates useful for maintaining core strength and flexibility. Her instructor, an Australian from Adelaide who was also called Stephanie, had become a close friend and they often had lunch together after class.
On her return there was a message waiting. I’ve heard such exciting stories about you. You must tell me everything. Shall we meet at the usual place? I’ll be there for three hours, starting now.
Stern. More than Rosie ever could, Stern belonged to the Ether Division. Or should have. Because that was where he – or she – existed: in the ether. A virtual being, Stern had provided Petra with more concrete information than Magenta House ever had. The ‘usual place’ was a virtual café in the stratosphere. Stephanie checked the time of transmission: two hours and thirty-five minutes ago.
Hello, Oscar.
Stephanie had always used the name Oscar. It personalized Stern, and he’d never objected.
Well, well, all that blood in Marrakech and Mostovoi is still alive. I think I can guess why we’re talking.
I doubt it. What does the name Milan Savic mean to you?
The Serbian paramilitary warlord?
Yes.
I think you’ll find he’s dead.
That’s a popular assumption. What if he wasn’t?
What basis do you have for suspecting otherwise?
Humour me. Call it rumour and conjecture.
Ah, the names of my two most valuable employees. Give me an hour.
It was still raining. Stephanie took a carton of Tropicana from the fridge, then put on a CD, the third. untitled album by Icelandic band Sigur Ros. None of the eight tracks had titles either but she fast-forwarded to the fourth, her favourite. From her wet window she gazed at the rear gates of the Olympia exhibition centre.
She looked at a photocopy of the names on the list that David Pearson had recovered. Goran Simic, Milorad Barkic, Robert Pancevic, Fabrice Blanc, Vojislav Brankovic, Dejan Zivokvic, Milutin Nikolic, Ante Pasic, Lance Singleton. There had been a tenth, but the tear in the paper had rendered the name illegible. And if there was a tenth, why not an eleventh? Why not a hundred? Who could say how many there were?
Alexander had given her his word but she still didn’t trust him. Rather than break his word, which he considered his bond, Alexander was the type of man who redefined the terms of the deal so that he didn’t have to. Which was why Stephanie had maintained Stern. She needed independence. She needed insurance.
Forty-five minutes later Stern was back. Quid pro quo, Petra.
What do you suggest?
No need for cash, a name for a name. And you go first.
Stephanie offered a name provided by Magenta House, an alias that Savic was rumoured to use.
Martin Dassler.
Hong Kong?
Correct.
Carleen Attwater.
Never heard of her. Also Hong Kong?
No. London.
Six thirty in the evening. The persistent rain had rinsed away most of the people who usually clogged Leicester Square. The pub was packed, after-work drinkers unwinding with tourists and the pre-cinema crowd. It had less atmosphere than deep space: bright overhead lights, Linkin Park on the sound system competing with a chorus of cheesy mobile ring-tones and a football match on the screen at the far end.
Ali Metin was at the bar, nursing a pint of lager. ‘Steffi … looking foxy, as usual.’
‘Ali … looking shiny, as usual.’
Metin was proud to be bald by design and ran a hand over his mercury-smooth scalp. Beneath a long leather coat he wore a shimmering silk shirt and pleated trousers with a suspiciously high waist-band, both black. From his coat pocket he produced a silver mobile phone and handed it to her. It was a Siemens.
‘Talk me through it.’
‘It’s a beauty. Two things you got to remember. None of the calls you make can be traced. There are no records in the phone or on the SIM card. Anybody tries to return your call, they get blocked. If they got the facility to bypass, they won’t get the real number. They get a different number. You can use the memory but it won’t show right. The first time you put in the number you want to save, the phone will show you another number. It’s up to you to remember that. There’s no other way of knowing without ringing.’
She took an envelope out of her bag. Metin opened it and fanned through the dirty twenties inside. ‘Fancy a drink? I reckon I could stand it.’
Three days later Carleen Attwater says, ‘So, you’re one of Stern’s …’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve never met one before.’
‘Is that why you agreed to see me? Out of curiosity?’
‘Aren’t journalists supposed to be curious? Or even ex-journalists …’
‘You’re retired?’
Her smile is as enigmatic as her reply. ‘At the moment.’
‘How come?’
‘Burn-out. Too much jet-lag, too much alcohol, too much CNN.’
‘I thought those were part of the deal for war correspondents.’
‘Then too much Balkans.’
‘The straw that broke the camel’s back?’
‘Exactly. Besides, I was never a war correspondent. I was a journalist who just ended up in a lot of wars. Take Croatia. I went to cover a human interest story about murals in a monastery and 1 stayed until the end of Kosovo. The best part of a decade. Or, should 1 say, the worst part?’
We’re standing on the roof terrace of Attwater’s top-floor flat in Poplar Place, off Bayswater Road. She’s watering her plants, which occupy two thirds of the available space.
She’s in pastel blue three-quarter-length linen trousers, a large buttercup T-shirt that falls to the thighs and a wide-brimmed hat. Not quite the flak-jacket she used to wear in Beirut or Baghdad. Or the Balkans. Now in her fifties, her career is etched into her skin but she still exudes an earthy sex-appeal. According to Stern, that was an asset she used to use freely.
‘Who were you working for?’
‘Nominally, I was freelance. But the New Yorker was good to me. So was Vanity Fair, when they could find it in their hearts to squeeze some serious stuff between puff pieces for Hollywood’s latest airheads. Drink?’
‘Thanks, yes.’
‘I hate London when it’s hot. Amman, fine. Damascus, fine. Here it’s horrible. Jim used to feel the same.’
‘Your husband?’
‘Like my career, my ex …’
‘Sorry.’
‘Lord, don’t be. We aren’t. We get on much better now we’re divorced. Of course, it helps that he’s back in New York.’
Her laugh is a sultry smoker’s laugh. Her ex-husband is James Barrie, a foreign correspondent for Time for more than twenty years. They surfed the world’s troubles together.
We go down the iron fire-escape and enter Attwater’s kitchen. She pours me fresh lemonade from a glass jug that has chilled in the fridge.
‘You met Savic?’ I ask her.
‘Many times. Especially during Bosnia.’
‘He trusted you?’
‘I think so.’
‘Why?’
Attwater sighs. ‘Because I don’t think he saw me as an American. In fact, I don’t think he saw me as a journalist. I don’t believe he felt I’d taken a side.’
‘And had you?’
‘By the end, no. With most of the others who were there, I think it was the other way round. They tried to be impartial, then crumbled.’
‘Why was it different for you?’
‘I don’t know. After a while you begin to lose your sense of perspective. Sides don’t seem to matter that much. Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Who cares? You just go from day to day, village to village, carcass to carcass.’
‘Surrendering responsibility?’
‘Give me a break. Nobody takes responsibility for their actions any more. It’s outdated, like good manners, or the slide-rule.’
‘That’s a rather cynical view.’
‘Talking about responsibility in relation to what occurred in the Balkans is the worst sort of window-dressing.’
‘Are you excusing what Savic did?’
‘Not at all. I’m just saying that to judge it against the standards you and I take for granted is absurd. War is a different form of existence. It’s heightened living. Survive or die, hour to hour. I apologize if I’m making it sound glamorous in some way. It isn’t. It’s dirty and disgusting. But every time I tried to leave, something held me back. By the end of Croatia I was already dead. And still I stayed, through Bosnia, through Kosovo. I hated being there. But when I wasn’t there I hated wherever I was even more. It was a kind of addictive madness. Heroin for the soul …’
Heroin for the soul. There’s a phrase that has resonance for me.
‘What about the ones he was supposed to have helped?’
She nods vigorously. ‘The project was called Gemini. It was well organized. Milan was impressed by the Homeland Calling fund run by the KLA. Gemini was financed along similar lines. It had a proper command structure, too.’
I point out that most people dismissed the rumour as a conspiracy theory. She counters by pointing out that none of them were there.
We move into the coolness of her sitting room; heavy plum curtains, dark green damask wallpaper, photographs in silver frames on a piano.
‘How did Savic rise so quickly? One minute he’s a street-thug in Belgrade, the next he’s in with the SDB and Frenki and Badza.’
‘A street-thug? Who told you that?’
‘I thought it was common knowledge.’
Attwater shrugs. ‘He started on the street, but he outgrew it. Quickly, too. Milan was a rich man by the time Croatia started. He had a good business brain.’
‘What was he into? Drugs? Guns? Girls?’
‘Televisions.’
As she has clearly anticipated, that stops me in my tracks. ‘Televisions …’
‘Cheap ones, Chinese made, imported from Hong Kong.’
‘Hong Kong?’
‘In the early eighties he made a contact out there. I don’t know who. But they started with TVs, then moved into other electronic goods: stereos, computers, cell phones. Some legitimate, some fake, all of them cheap enough to find a market in Yugoslavia. That was how Milan made his first fortune. But it wasn’t just financial. It was political, too.’