The Small Boat of Great Sorrows Read Online Free PDF Page A

recall the buzz of putting together an investigation, peeling away the wrappings until you found the prize at the center or, sometimes, found nothing at all. Guessing and arguing with colleagues as you went, like scientists waiting for the smoke to clear in a beaker. That sort of business seemed a long way from here, another distant land with its own hills and valleys, and he’d pretty much given up hope of returning.
    He sighed, already sensing the weight of a decision. If his life was about to pivot, he hoped he had the energy for it, the resolve, and he recalled his sense of premonition from earlier in the day, down in the bunker. Walk through a door into 1945 and this is where you came out—into a room where a tall American arrived bearing gifts, offering to usher you back through another door you hadn’t entered in years.
    â€œMaybe you had better tell me about this assignment.”
    Pine looked awkwardly around the room. “I’m afraid your wife will have to leave first. Some of this isn’t supposed to go beyond you and me. Not for now, anyway.”
    â€œIt’s all right,” Jasmina said briskly, striding past with a tight smile. “I’ll go read to Sonja.”
    They waited until they heard the door of the girl’s room snick shut. Sonja, who’d been eavesdropping from the hallway, complained noisily at the injustice of it all. Vlado and Pine looked back at each other, leaning forward with forearms propped on knees, a hint of conspiracy in the air.
    â€œThere’s a suspect we want to bring in,” Pine said, almost in a whisper. “Have wanted to for some time. A Serb general, Andric. Heard of him?”
    â€œYes. From the massacre at Srebrenica. His name comes up around here now and then. All their names do, if you talk to the widows. And going after him would only make more widows. He’s protected. It would be suicide.”
    â€œWhich is why we’re letting the French army do it. He’s in their sector and they’ve promised to take care of it. He’ll be their first arrest, but at least they’ll be starting off with a bang. After two years of letting him drink coffee right under their noses, of course.”
    â€œThat’s a pretty big deal if you get Andric.”
    â€œIt won’t be easy. Especially when the French like to think Belgrade still has a soft spot for them. The timing’s tricky, too. Bad time to go stirring up Serbs, with Kosovo ready to blow sky-high next-door. But that’s where we come in. We provide the consolation prize. A suspect from the other side—a Croat from the American sector— to help balance the scales a little. Unofficially, of course. That way the Serbs don’t feel so singled out, which helps keep the French happy, diplomatically speaking. And if the French stay happy, maybe they’ll go after more suspects for us, further down the road. But our part of the deal looks a whole lot easier than theirs, ’cause our man’s been out of action for fifty-five years.”
    Vlado knew right away where that kind of math led. “A suspect from the Second World War?”
    â€œYes. From Jasenovac. Heard of it?”
    â€œI should think so.”
    It was like asking a German if he’d heard of Auschwitz. In the Balkans, Jasenovac was the darkest stain of the Second World War, perhaps of any war. It was a concentration camp where, depending on whose history you were reading, anywhere from 20,000 to 600,000 people had died—Jews, Gypsies, and Muslims, for starters, plus a few thousand political dissidents and assorted others from Hitler’s roster of “undesirables.” But the great majority of the victims had been Serbs, killed not by the Germans but by their local collaborators, the ultranationalist Ustasha, a faction of Croatians ruled by puppet dictator Ante Pavelic. All of which explained why the death toll was still a matter of debate. In that war the