“You are right,” Goran said. “The Croats of Herzegovina have done very well for themselves.” Neither spoke for a minute. The car rattled and made a continuous throaty sound. “The Virgin Mary visits them every day, that’s how loved they are.”
“In Medjugorje,” Mark said. He’d read about the claims of visitations there.
“Mary wants peace. Medjugorje was getting rich on all the pilgrims, but the war stopped that. The main Spanish HQ is there, because they have so many comfortable new buildings, all completely undamaged. A miracle!”
The car came to a rise where the road turned to the right so as to ascend the slope laterally. They went around one switchback, and as they approached a second Goran slowed the car and steered it into an area of beaten dirt on the outside of the curve. Stopping by some low bushes, he switched the engine off. He turned to look at Mark with eyes that seemed strangely deep and bright. “This is where it happened.”
Mark looked around. “Where are we, exactly?”
“Ten kilometers from Medjugorje. We’re just about to get to a village called Sretnice.”
Mark wrote down, “Sretnice.” Then got out of the car. It was midafternoon, hot and dazzling. There was a light breeze, a smell of stone dust. Also of the pungent oils that vegetation produces in dry climates to impede respiration and provide a chemical shield against thirsty insects. Also, a sweetish carob-like smell that was some sort of feces, maybe goat. Mark turned slowly to take in more of the view in all directions.
“Don’t step off the road,” Goran said. “Mines are unlikely here, but you never know.”
Unlikely, because this was the land that Mary loved, where Croats had done very well for themselves. “The sniper was probably a Croat, right?” Mark said.
Goran shrugged. “Probably. But it could have been a Muslim, trying to make the Croats look bad. The car had clear UN markings.”
“The bullet came from where?”
Goran pointed away from the hairpin, up the hill. Bushes and boulders lined what appeared to be a distinct upper edge, but was probably just where the slope curved away from the sight line. “He was lying on the ground somewhere up there.”
Mark turned to look back down the road. “Cars coming up the hill would slow down before entering the hairpin,” he said. “He would have a good shot through the windshield.”
“Yes,” Goran said.
“You were driving?”
“Yes.”
“And Susan was sitting next to you.”
“Yes.”
“And someone else was in the car, right? Some official?”
“There was a guy from the UN who’d been in Mostar looking for places to house some refugees. People were fleeing central Bosnia, the fighting hadn’t started here yet. He didn’t speak Spanish very well, and of course no Bosnian, so your sister was going around with him. He needed to go to Spanish HQ in Medjugorje and she came along to help. I was driving because I knew the route. Also, I had permission to drive the UN-leased vehicles.”
“Where was he sitting?”
“In the back.”
“You two were chauffeuring him.”
“He might have preferred to sit in the front, but your sister had some things she wanted to talk to me about during the drive.”
What? Mark wanted to know, but didn’t ask. Perhaps it was private. Susan had always valued her privacy. “What kind of car was it?”
“You mean . . . ?”
“What make?”
“I don’t remember for sure. A Fiat, maybe. You know, one of the boxy ones. It looked a lot like this car.” Goran pointed at the Zastava.
“A Fiat 128.”
“Maybe.”
Mark returned to sit in the passenger seat and spoke to Goran through the open window. “Show me where the bullet hit the windshield.”
“I don’t know exactly, the whole windshield fractured.”
“You didn’t notice an impact hole afterward?”
“Well . . . I guess it was just about in the center of the right side.”
“Point to the spot.”
“Look, I don’t really know—”
“Just point to the spot you think is most likely.”
Goran did so. Mark sat in the seat and looked past Goran’s finger toward the slope rising beyond the hairpin. The angle would be roughly the same back on the road. According to the autopsy, Susan had been hit on her right side just below the seventh rib. The bullet had gone through her liver and out her lower back. If the sniper was hidden approximately where the curving slope seemed to present a vantage point, then the trajectory Mark was looking at seemed conceivable.
He climbed out of the car and starting walking back down the road. Goran followed. “Could you show me the exact location of the car when it was hit?”
“I’ll try.” They continued down the slope for another ten meters, then Goran turned around and walked slowly back up, glancing left and right. “About here.”
Mark joined him at the spot and examined the pavement for a number of yards in every direction. Nothing. Of course, it had happened fifteen months ago. “I need to picture it. Tell me exactly what happened.”
“I was approaching the turn. There was a bang. The windshield went white, with all those little lines. I thought at first it was a rock.”
“Just one shot?”
“I think so. Since it seemed to have hit the right side, I turned left. Whatever it was, rock or whatever, I was afraid of another, so I drove the car off the road and down into the bushes. Over here.”
Mark followed him to the road edge and looked down the slope. There was a four-foot-wide band of gravel, then the ubiquitous cover of waist-high plants with gnarled branches and leathery leaves—he wondered if they called it “maquis” here, too. A few meters farther up the verge he could see a place where some of the bushes looked shorter. “Maybe there,” he said.
“Maybe.”
Mark climbed down, mines be damned, and looked closer. He could see scarring on some of the branches. Two bushes looked as though they’d been nearly uprooted. He sifted through the stones for a
