Then, she went to the en-suite bathroom, tore the page into small pieces and flushed them down the pan, as he would have wanted her to.
Through the hotel's big ground-floor windows, Joey saw the arc-lights that burned down on the Secretary of State. The wire services and the satellite news programmes would carry his words: 'Society here has to rid itself of corrosive corruption. Citizens of Bosnia Herzegovina, you must resist the extremists and the criminals, you have to turn your backs on the past.'
An American officer would interrupt the great man, cut him short in mid-stride, and would say into the microphone: 'I'm afraid, ladies and gentlemen, we've run out of time if we're to make our flight window.'
Joey watched the stampede of the circus around the great man as they went out with him through the swing doors. The Secretary of State was hemmed in by bodyguards, military liaison officers, advisers, stenographers and his own travelling media, and all were hurrying to the long line of station-wagons, governed by their pecking order of importance. They couldn't get shot of the place fast enough, couldn't race to the airport and climb onto the 747 too soon.
Troops waved them away, sirens escorted them down Zmaja od Bosne, which had been Snipers' Alley.
A stillness seemed to settle on the yellow and chocolate hotel building, as if all inside it now caught their breath, sighed, sagged
… Joey saw the white UNHCR truck pull up in the space where the station-wagon convoy had been. She slipped out of the vehicle. He recognized her.
She was only half-way to the swing doors when Mister came through them. They were like kids meeting in a park. No kisses, but their handshake was more about touching and holding than formal greeting. He couldn't hear their laughter, but watched the mute pleasure on their faces.
When they drove away, Joey followed in the van.
She had the wheel, Mister was beside her.
They went past the new American headquarters camp on the far side of the airport, and along the road were stretched little wooden shacks, closed and locked.
She said, 'It's a little part ol the black market. Later in the day they will be opened. They sell every CD and video you ever heard of, all illegally recorded.
They've paid no duty on them, no copyright. Other than the market of servicing foreigners, the only industry is black. It is worse on the Tuzla road. There are not CDs and videos in the huts on the way to Tuzla, it is women, young women, some from Bosnia but most from outside – Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine.
When they have been 'trained' here, they are sent on to brothels in western Europe – it is a disgusting, exploitative trade. Always, Mister, it is the criminals who win here… I am sorry, it is gloomy – but that is the reality.'
They climbed on hairpin bends and came to the village of Tvorno. There was lustreless snow beside the road, but the ice on it glistened prettily in the early sunshine. Rows of houses on the approach were gutted, roofless and burned, sandwiched between the road and a tumbling river. Beyond the river were rolling forested hills, then mountains that were snow-swept, formidable and magnificent. He was looking at the wreckage.
She said, 'We call them cabriolet houses. Do you understand? It is houses without roofs… I am sorry, perhaps you do not think that funny. I promise you, Mister, it is sometimes necessary to have a dark humour if you work here. If you are too serious then you would weep. It is very beautiful, yes?'
The road came down from the high ground into a wide agricultural valley, leaving the snow and ice behind them. She pulled off the road, produced battered, well-used Thermos and poured coffee for them. They stood beside her vehicle and looked down at the valley and the big river running through it, and at a town beyond the river where there were close-set houses and the chimneys of industrial plants. He looked for damage. All he saw was the collapsed bridge that had spanned the river and had linked the town to the main road. The water now flowed over the bridge.
She said, 'It is Foca. I don't go there. It is a place of evil. I should go there. I could go with troops from the SFOR, but I do not wish to. There is suffering there, the same as everywhere, but I am not perfect. Do you think it wrong to care less for the suffering of some than I do for others? I could not argue if you thought that, Mister. Do you see men fishing? They have no work and they fish for food to eat. The factories have stopped, the chemicals leak into the river – it is the Drina river. I would not eat the fish but they are desperate… I do not go to Foca because it is a place where war criminals walk. Everyone knows their names, who the beasts are. You could meet them on the street in Foca just as in Sarajevo you could meet Ismet Mujic. In six years only once have the SFOR dared to try to capture one of them – Janko Janjic, the mass rapist and mass cleanser. He had an eagle tattooed on his stomach and the words 'Slaughter Me' on his neck. Every minute of every day he had a hand-grenade hanging from his throat, and he pulled the pin when German troops came to take him. The rapist and the murderer, in Foca, was a hero. Many thousands went to his funeral. Myself – and a good man like you, Mister we do not know how to speak with such creatures.'
He kissed her at that moment, first her cheeks, then her forehead, then her eyes, then her lips.
'How long will you he here?'
'Just a couple more days.'
'But you will come back?'
I will bring, more lorries but that won't be as important as coming, back to see you.' Mister held her close, hugged her. It was not the way he embraced his Princess. He clung to her as if he had been infected by the misery she spoke of. I will come back, not send people who could do it instead of me, I'll come back because you're here…I don't talk a lot – Monika, you are the best human being I've ever met.' He saw the openness of her face and the trust. He had thought of her at first as a contact, a tool to be used, an opportunity lo be exploited. 'They were alone beside the road and his arms were tight round her. She was looking down. The way he held her she could see his left hand She was looking at his hand and the heavy gold ring on his third finger, the ring the Princess had given him.
'Come on, Mister Charity Man, let's hit Gorazde.'
She disentangled herself. Her face was flushed. It was eighteen years since he had married his Princess and in that time he had not touched another woman.
They drove alongside the Drina river, passed the wreckage ol the front line, and went on through the flattened emptiness of no man's land.
Goraz. de was a finger town pressed down between the hills.
Mister never reached across her and looked into the mirror, never saw that he was tracked. He would sleep with her. After the meeting he would sleep whole night with her before going to the airport and taking the plane home. Because he would sleep with her, afterwards, he knew, was certain of it, he would be supreme at the meeting.
A methodical man, with a long training of counter-intelligence operations behind him, Sandor Dizo was a survivor. Eighteen years of his professional life had been in the service of the 111/111 State Protection Directorate, but in 1990 he had effortlessly changed allegiance – not desk, chair or working hours – and had become an executive of the Office of National Security. He had the same view of the roofs of Budapest, from the same room, as he'd had before the collapse of socialism. Then he had worked to stifle internal dissent, now he turned the same standards of intellect to combating the rise in newly democratic Hungary of the influence of organized crime. He had unlearned the practices taught him by the KGB instructors, and had learned those of the Drug Enforcement Administration of the United States and the Security Service of the United Kingdom. He was today's man.
The work of that day, and many others past and many to come, was his surveillance of the movements of Russians who were active in the vory v'zakone crime group. If Sandor Dizo had had available to him today the powers of coercion he had enjoyed prior to 1990, the opportunities of the old days, there would have been no Russian criminals on Hungarian territory, but those powers had been withdrawn. He was now a creature of government by computer, provided by the Americans, and fieldcraft, taught by the British. Instead of broken noses and broken necks, he followed the new rules and provided the printouts listing the coming and going of the Russians and filled the files with their photographs. It was not a surprise to Sandor Dizo that the Russians now flourished in Budapest. They ran prostitution, controlled the clubs, moved and sold narcotics, laundered money through the recently opened hanks, directed the country's oil-distribution Mafia; they were behind every rip-off fraud of public and private enterprises, they trafficked weapons, and they killed. Being an exact man, Sandor Dizo could list each of the one hundred and sixty killings and attempted murders and bomb explosions on his capital city's streets since he
