The Old Bridge Read online

  Johnson said, “She said she’s going to send me a copy of her journal or something, where she wrote it all down. She said it would be easier to explain it all that way,” Johnson said.

  “Do you think she will?”

  Johnson put a cigarette in his mouth. “Highly unlikely. I’m probably going to have to go back and see her again.”

  “Okay,” Jayne said. “How are you feeling? Any better?”

  “Still feeling bruised, and the forehead is still a mess, but the walk made me feel better—I’m in Central Park.”

  Jayne told him that she had been in touch with one of her old SIS colleagues in London who had ideas about how to track down Hasanović, but it would probably take her a couple of days at least.

  “Hmm. All right, I’m not going to stay here long,” Johnson said. “Hopefully I can get on the plane back tonight, in which case I’ll be back there on Monday. Have you heard from Filip?”

  “Only a text to say he’s still in Split with his father.”

  “Okay. Let me know if there’s any more developments. Talk soon.” Johnson hung up and kicked the pavement in front of him.

  He leaned back on the bench and finished his cigarette, then took his phone out again and checked his emails. He had been wrong. There was something from Aisha.

  Johnson sat up and tapped on the email. The pain from his bruises seemed suddenly to recede. She had written a short note.

  Thanks for visiting. As I said, I think Franjo is most likely to be dead. But I agree that if you think otherwise you should try and track him down and make sure justice is done. He got away with more than you’ll ever know about. Therefore, I’m sending you a few journal pages, as promised. They tell a story. I think it is best that I do this—I would just cry if I tried to sit down and say it. There’s not much, but maybe there’s information in here that could help you.

  She also included her cell phone number.

  A PDF document and a photograph were attached in Aisha’s email. Johnson clicked on the PDF first.

  As it opened up, Johnson could see it contained a black-and-white scanned copy of a handwritten journal entry, scribbled in untidy handwriting in a spiral-bound notebook. He flicked through it and realized she hadn’t sent the entire journal, just selected entries from various days.

  With occasional assistance from the online translation app on his smartphone, he slowly began to read the Croatian text.

  Sunday, April 30, 1989. Strange but beautiful to think that Franjo and I will be married in another three months. He came around for lunch today. It’s one of those weekends when my father is here at home, not working in Sarajevo. My mother treats Franjo like a son now. They don’t mention the Muslim-Catholic thing, at least not to me. Funny that he still tries to call them Mr. and Mrs. Delić. “You’ll be part of the family soon, so just call us Erol and Mirela,” my father says with a smile. It’s become a game. Zeinab thinks it’s hilarious. She’ll have her turn when she comes home with a fiancé. I’m learning English. My lessons are going well, and I’m becoming more and more fluent. My father’s idea—he says he did the same thing when he was my age, and it was the best thing he ever did. I guess it paid off because he has an interesting government job where his English is so useful. Maybe I can do likewise in television one day!

  Friday, July 27, 1990. Beautiful day today in Pobrežje. It’s difficult to believe it’s only 15km from Dubrovnik. It’s a different world, so rural and peaceful, such wonderful views across the hills to the sea. We are going down to the beach tomorrow to swim and have a picnic. I’m spending today making two dresses, so relaxing. Franjo’s stepmother used to be a dressmaker and has all the equipment here—a big sewing machine, even proper mannequins. He is so lucky to have a family holiday house here to escape to, and I’m so lucky to be married to him. Little passing traffic, just a few farmers driving tractors and trucks, that’s all.

  Thursday, April 15, 1993. I don’t know where this is all going to end. Mostar is divided now and our marriage feels divided too. The Croats are in control of the western side of the river, and we still have the eastern side. Several Muslims going out to buy food were killed last week by snipers up on Hum Hill. I used to be at school with one girl who was hit. Franjo says we can’t carry on, and he’s going to leave. He’s sure he’ll get killed by Muslim mobs. It’s impossible to talk to him now. He just speaks over me and looks at me with eyes that don’t see and ears that don’t listen. I can’t even trust Franjo any more. My father’s certain he stole important documents from his study, and Franjo can’t look me in the eye and tell me he didn’t do it.

  Monday, November 8, 1993. The worst day. The shelling of the Stari Most started today. I could hear it from our house: the whining, crashing, banging. It went on for hours and only stopped a short while ago, at 9pm. If this goes on much longer, the bridge will go down. I know it’s Franjo’s tank down on Stotina Hill that is bombarding the bridge that we all love. How can he do it? That was where we kissed for the first time, only five years ago.

  What has happened to him? The man I loved became a military robot, acting without thinking or feeling, like so many other people around here. All of them fighting a senseless, illogical war that will achieve nothing.

  Once we were married: lovers, friends—a Croat Catholic man and a Bosnian Muslim woman. Now he’s gone and we’re enemies. What nonsense.

  This city is destroyed, a wreck. Not much food or water. People are scared to go out in the streets in case they get hit by Croat shells or snipers from the west, on Hum Hill.

  There are only 25,000 people left here in East Mostar. We are all under siege now. I guess if the bridge falls, the fight that is left in the people here will disappear. It is the only link we have to the front line.

  Many of the boys I grew up with are now soldiers with the Bosnian army. They trained as dentists and accountants. Now they shoot to kill Croats. And me? Three times now I’ve done things I never thought I’d do and will never talk about. Never. We all have.

  We will have to keep fighting here, because if we don’t, we will die. There is only one choice. We fight to survive.

  Johnson suddenly felt thankful that he hadn’t grown up amid such turmoil and carnage. He tried to imagine what it would have been like but struggled.

  He lit another cigarette and then flicked through the other pages. The next two entries were for a few weeks later.

  Wednesday, December 1, 1993. I still can’t write about how I feel. I’ve talked with my friends, some of whom have also lost their families. We get angry together, we get drunk together, then we grieve together and cry together.

  Monday, December 20, 1993. Yesterday I left Mostar, maybe for the last time. I don’t think I will go back. I have left my old life behind. The loss of my father, my sister, and now my mother has been too much to bear. I can hardly write about it. I feel guilty about leaving so many of my friends and neighbors in the hellhole that Mostar has become, but I feel I have no choice.

  So, I’m alone now with my guilt.

  The journey out was a difficult one. We first traveled on foot at night through a gap in the Croatian front line, and then after a long trek across the mountains in freezing weather, we got a lift on an aid truck.

  I am fearful of writing down on paper exactly how I got out, in case this is read by somebody in the Croatian army. Others will follow me, I know, tomorrow and in the next few days, probably until the Croats realize what is going on and fill the gap.

  I am now across the Croatian border near Imotski, and tomorrow I hope to get to Split. Then after that, who knows? I will definitely seek refugee status somewhere, maybe in America or Britain.

  Thank God. Thank God. It seemed like a miracle that I got through the front line without being killed, raped, or robbed. Really a miracle.

  That was it, six journal entries. Six snapshots of a life, spanning the gulf between happiness and tragedy, Johnson thought.

  He clicked on the photograph. It was a picture of a youn
g man, tanned, with dark curly hair and brown eyes, but with a distinctive thin black line running down across his iris from his pupil. So that was the coloboma that Petar had mentioned.

  Johnson pocketed his phone and leaned back on the bench. An old man carrying a takeout sandwich shuffled past.

  What to do next? Johnson sat and gazed across Central Park.

  Come on, think it through.

  What was Aisha trying to tell him from the select diary entries she had sent?

  There was her bitterness toward Franjo over the way the war had torn them apart, plus her tremendous sadness at the loss of her family. Johnson wondered what had happened to them.

  But she had also done, or had to do, things she was ashamed of. In that situation, it didn’t take much to imagine what, Johnson thought, but she didn’t seem the sort to take someone’s life. Or perhaps she had. Maybe she didn’t have a choice.

  Looking at it in detail, she and Franjo had seemed happy in the beginning. It was clear she was close with the family she’d lost. The couple had tried to live a normal married life; Franjo’s family had kept a holiday house near Dubrovnik where they’d had good times. He might want to check out that house; it was definitely a fresh trail to pursue.

  Then there had been more affirmations that Franjo had destroyed the bridge. Then more tragedy, overwhelming loss, and finally, escape.

  The hope in her final pages hinted at why she refused to risk the exposure of the documents’ contents. She felt it threatened the life she’d built after the tragedy of war.

  And yet, the excerpts from her journal raised almost as many questions as they answered.

  Johnson found himself revisiting Aisha’s words from the previous day. He took out his phone and flicked to the recording of their conversation, then pressed the play button.

  “Honestly, my father should not have had them. In fact, he took them, stole them, from Izetbegović’s office. They were foreign ministry documents that Izetbegović told him to destroy, but he didn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “He realized their significance.”

  And then . . .

  “ . . . half the White House from that time, from the president downward, would be hit by flying shit . . . ”

  Dynamite, indeed, Johnson thought. Assuming it’s true.

  He knew he had to find the documents. But how?

  Saturday, July 14, 2012

  Astoria

  It had taken Joe Johnson multiple text messages and two phone calls—for which he took the precaution of using the relatively secure Skype service, given the CIA’s interest—but finally he had persuaded Aisha to meet him for coffee that afternoon at the Ćevabdżinica Sarajevo café.

  “Is this as close as it gets to home, this café?” Johnson asked.

  “I guess so. There’s quite a few Bosnians who live in this area, and we do meet here. That’s why I rent that house just down the road. It’s convenient. We go to mosque together, eat together, socialize.”

  Aisha stirred sugar into her coffee. “In fact, it’s been fine here, at least until that Republican clown Spencer started stirring things up. He needs to keep his mouth shut; he’s giving Muslims a bad name, causing a lot of bad feelings toward us. Perhaps there’s been a tiny minority, who we wouldn’t even acknowledge as Muslim, that uses the Koran to try and justify their violent ways. But if Spencer carries on like this, he’s going to generate so much hatred and resentment among a much wider group of Muslims, you know . . .” She left the sentence unfinished and shook her head.

  Johnson cocked his head. “Do you find that people in the mosques here, even in New York, attempt to radicalize you?”

  She pursed her lips. “Seldom, but I’d be lying if I said that never happens. There are groups and certain individuals who act as enablers, or leaders and do that. Very much in the tiny minority.”

  “So has anyone tried to radicalize you?” Johnson asked.

  Aisha sipped her coffee. “Not really.”

  She checked her phone for messages.

  Johnson took advantage of her distraction to turn on his phone voice recorder and then got to the point. “I’m planning to fly back to Dubrovnik tonight. I would like to resolve this issue regarding Franjo and the documents—”

  “Tell me why you’re so determined? I told you, I think he’s dead. If he’s not, he’s likely impossible to find. And all of this was twenty years ago, and it didn’t happen to you, so why do you care?”

  Her abrupt inquisition interrupted Johnson’s flow and took him by surprise. “It’s my job to track down those who have committed war crimes and bring them to justice, for one thing. Especially where there’s been crimes against large numbers of people, such as human rights abuses, or genocide. Far too many people across this planet have done awful things and are still running around free when they shouldn’t be.”

  “Yes, it’s your job. But why do you care?” She was insistent.

  “It’s a long story. One of my biggest influences stemmed from my mother’s experiences when she was in a Nazi concentration camp during the Second World War. She suffered a lot at the hands of SS commanders and guards, and that inspired me to do something. It was one reason I joined the Office of Special Investigations in DC, but it was also partly just because of the way I am, the way I think. These charismatic national leaders—like Hitler in Germany, or maybe Slobodan Milošević and Radovan Karadžić in Serbia and Bosnia—who somehow seize the moment, they create a movement against a minority in their own country. Frankly they’ve done things they should pay for. But it’s also the hundreds, thousands of others who blindly follow them.”

  “Like Spencer, you mean?” Aisha said, cupping her chin in her hand and looking obliquely at Johnson.

  “Spencer? Well, I don’t think he’s killed anyone or sent armies to drive people out of their own country, has he?”

  Aisha shrugged. “Probably only a matter of time.”

  “Let’s hope not. The real point is the people I’ve mentioned had people further down the chain who did the dirty work through choice, usually for their own gain, and who also need to be held accountable—like Franjo, if he’s as guilty as you say.”

  “Yep, he is.”

  Johnson paused, debating how to get the conversation back on track. “There was a lot in your diary, and in what you said yesterday, that might help. I’d like to go take a look at this holiday house of his near Dubrovnik. How do I find it?”

  Aisha took a paper menu from a holder, flipped it over, and took out a pen. She drew a rough map of a road heading inland from the sea. Then she drew a small square right on a hairpin bend.

  “Ah, I see. You think he might be there? I really can’t imagine so, but that’s it. Pobrežje. A tiny place. The house is right on a sharp bend like that. I don’t think you’ll miss it. There were five big pine trees in front of it, so unless they’ve cut them down, that’s your landmark. It was a rough old road up to the village, though: single track with passing places. You’ll need to go slowly. Mind you, that was twenty years ago.”

  “Okay, thanks,” Johnson said. “So the house was Franjo’s family holiday house? They all used it?”

  “Yes, various family members. When I was there, Franjo said his stepsister Natasha had been visiting the previous week, before we came, with her little boy. I’ve forgotten his name.”

  “A stepsister? Really? Did you meet her?” Johnson asked.

  “No, I never met her, but Franjo talked about them often. I remember he showed me photographs of her and the boy once; he resembled Franjo a lot. Natasha used to live in Dubrovnik. She was the secretary to the harbormaster in the port there. But she was a single mother, no father around, Franjo said. A difficult life, I guess. I’ve no idea what happened to them.”

  “Franjo’s parents, both dead?”

  “Yes, Goran, his father, and Mira, his stepmother, both died during the war. His brother, Šimun, and his sister Elena both died too.”

  “Hmm. Interesting. How
did they die?”

  “I don’t know,” Aisha said.

  “I was sorry to read about your parents and sister. Can you talk about them? What happened?”

  Aisha’s eyes moistened again. She wiped them with the back of her hand and shook her head. “What’s the point? Too painful. Lots of people lost their families.”

  Johnson nodded. “Also, I don’t like to ask, but the things you did that you wrote about, that you can’t talk about, were they—”

  “No. They were not war crimes. It was wartime, Joe. Everyone did things they don’t want to talk about. People who were ordinary—fathers, mothers, children—went from their normal everyday lives to killing people to defend themselves and their communities, their friends, their families. After the war, they reverted back again, or tried to. That’s war, what it does to people. I might be angry and bitter about things, but I’m not a hypocrite—I’ll admit I did things, like we all did, to survive, but I’m not stupid. I know the difference between that and war crimes. I’m not a person of interest in the cases you’re building.”

  Johnson felt stunned by her candour. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Then what did you mean?”

  “I was going to ask if you’ve ever . . . talked about it with anyone. It’s a burden to carry on your own.”

  She glared at him. “That’s my business.”

  “Okay. I won’t mention it again. And was it in character for Franjo to have just taken the documents from your father’s study?”

  “Sadly yes,” Aisha said. “He was an opportunist and dishonest.”

  “And now you really think he’s dead? And you’ve no idea where the documents could be?”

  “I’ve no idea where they are. And yes, he’s got to be dead. There’s been no trace of him anywhere. I did a lot of searching online, a few years ago. There was nothing.”