On The Banks of the Deep Blue Sea

Svetislav, the doorman in the Federation Palace, had a strange feeling of unease early that morning; the usually smiling staff who always greeted him warmly with "Hi, Sveta" seemed worried and overcast. "Perhaps everything is fine, maybe I'm just imagining it," Svetislav consoled himself, not allowing his concern to show on his face. Sometime around nine that morning, when a feeble Belgrade sun finally broke through the hostile clouds surrounding the capital, Svetislav remembered that he hadn't seen Zoran Lilic that morning. A seed of doubt blossomed into his awareness & images came to Svetislav of small, almost insignificant details which had become tradition since Zoran had become president of the FRY.

"Zoran has never been late," Svetislav remembered & a shadow of worry covered his rain & wind weathered face. Somewhere in the alter ego of his cerebral core a warning sounded: "Something happened to him".

Svetislav rose up off his chair, sat down again, took his cap off & immediately replaced it; what should he do, who should he tell, how should he get the investigation going: the questions rose up of themselves.

The telephone seemed a practical solution: "I'll call Radoje, he's the federal prime minister and holds all the threads of our federation in his hands", Svetislav thought suddenly, happy to have found a solution.

With quick, decisive movements of his little finger Svetislav dialed the three digit extension; just 15 seconds later the recognizable tenor (with Montenegrin dialect) sounded.

"Kontic here, who's this," the prime minister thundered.

"Svetislav, the doorman," a frightened croak escaped his throat.

"What d'you want?"

"Mr., Radoje sir, I'm sorry to disturb you but I haven't seen comrade president Lilic this morning and I was worried and wanted to..."

"You wanted what," Radoje said angrily, obviously nervous.

"Maybe something happened to him," Svetislav asked, trying not to let his concern get to his voice.

"Um hum, they probably snatched him," Radoje tried a little irony. "Leave me alone man!"

For a full three minutes, Svetislav continued holding the phone to his ear while the dialing sound echoed. He refused to accept that the federal prime minister is not interested in the fate of the comrade president; he refused to accept the fact that comrade president Lilic had been written off so soon.

A strange light shone in the eyes of Svetislav the doorman; as a long term part-time associate of the state security service his heart and soul filled with an overpowering need to compose an official note on his talk with prime minister Kontic. Radoje's statement "they probably snatched him" pulsated through his thoughts like an infernal machine. He tore a piece of lined paper from his notebook, and in a hand that was the result of four years in the 4th Kraljevo Battalion elementary school, Svetislav wrote a semi-coded message: "During my talk with prime minister R. I was suspicious when he said about comrade president L. (quote): "They probably snatched him". I am calling the comrades who are subjects of the system of social self protection to bear this statement in mind.".

Having reread what he had written, Svetislav stopped, crossed out the word probably & replaced it with certainly. Suddenly he was very satisfied with himself and started humming the theme from Battle on the Neretva. Life can sometimes be a bitch he thought and put the envelope with the semi-coded message into the upper left pocket of his uniform.

****

Zoran Lilic noticed right away that the Fica was stopping; he recognized the sound of garage doors, a sound that convinced him that the kidnappers had arrived at their destination. The black plastic bag was choking him but he refused to complain. During the ride and later in the garage none of the kidnappers spoke a word; Zoran felt himself being carried out, he felt the Scotch tape the bandits tied him with, he felt a masculine smell which reminded him of Hay Eau de Cologne & against his will took him back to his childhood, to the days when he ran carefree across fields with a ball, believing that justice was all powerful & that there were no evil people in the world. In the darkness of the black bag Zoran closed his eyes & clenched his teeth; he knew the worst was yet to come.

****

The masked kidnappers sat a wooden round table & kept quiet; a heavy silence fell on the room which was empty except for the table & chairs; one of the masked men leafed through yesterday's Borba & suddenly, in shock, dropped the newspaper; as if by command, the seven heads in dark woolen stockings gathered around the small report on the bottom of page 17: "In an unprecedented fire, last night in the village of Rvasi near Podgorica, the family house of former Yugoslav state presidency vice-president Branko Kostic burned down. The cause of the fire is still unknown. An investigation is underway."

"Perfect," said the masked man who had been reading Borba.

"We'll claim responsibility for Branko's fire," another said coldly.

"In the demands for Zoran's ransom, the fire could be a strong political argument," a third smiled.

"Why do we want money, let's liquidate him right now," a fourth protested.

"Let's pull his mustache off for a start," a fifth suggested happily.

"Stop comrades," the sixth tried to calm them down. "Our people have a proverb: measure twice, cut once."

"Enough discussion!" the seventh masked man interrupted in a voice the suggested absolute authority. "We're starting stage two of the abduction: a letter demanding Lilic's ransom as we agreed will be sent to Borisav Jovic. We'll wait 48 hours and then..."

The smell of Hay on the face of the seventh abductor flooded over the others who returned to their deathly silence whose autistic limits were broken only by the creaking of the wooden pencil. The Arrow had been released...

****

Ulcinj & the surrounding area had not seen that kind of hellish night in 50 years; a crazed southern wind blew tearing at everything in its path: roofs, benches, hamburger kiosks. Rain poured down in torrents for hours creating a screen of water, spontaneously linking the clouds to the gigantic waves which tore up the famous Ulcinj beach & left huge craters in sand, similar to the ones after the bombing of Dresden in 1945. The storm claimed another victim sometime around midnight: the last of the power lines were torn down & the last remaining light in Ulcinj went out, slowly turning the town into a black hole on the nonexistent horizon.

In its unstoppable anger, one of the waves (framed in white froth) reared up out of the sea & stuck the shore with all its might, throwing up everything that swam or floated in the water. Branko KOstic's body ended up in one of the sand craters; his pale, almost white, face was covered in a variety of seaweed as was his body which was also covered in numerous bruises.

The rain that stepped up its lethal tempo by the minute drenched the deeply unconscious figure & buried it deeper into the sand whose particles glued themselves to the seaweed into an unknown chemical structure...

****

Radovan Karadzic couldn't sleep again that night. The storm that Serbian weathermen confirmed had started in Ulcinj immediately spread to all centuries old Serb territories; large pellets of rain the size of a small watermelon struck the window panes; that strange, thundery sound reminded Karadzic of heavy artillery. In part of a millisecond, Radovan remembered a CNN report alleging that Zagreb had been bombed & just as suddenly forgot the current topic in his micro-recollections of a new Serb-Croat conflict.

The pleasant light of a pocket torch which Karadzic held in his hand suddenly confused the darkness which drew back to make way for the ray of light: in the boredom of the night, the president took today's Borba & began leafing through without interest, skipping several pages in a state of nervous anxiety caused by insomnia. Towards the end of the newspaper, he didn't know why, a small almost hidden report caught his attention at the bottom of page 17. The column was titled Unusual Occurrences at Home and the report was titled Ambulance Drops in Sitnica River: "The fact that life writes exciting stories was proved several days ago at the village of Rvasi on the old Cetinje-Podgorica road. Namely, while an ambulance was carrying Branko Kostic, whose house was swallowed by a fire, a strange accident occurred. Because of the speed & slippery road, the ambulance first skidded on the bridge across the Sitnica then rotated around itself several times then crashed into the walls at full speed & dropped into the turbulent Sitnica which flows into the wild Moraca 1 kilometers downstream. the search for survivors is underway."

Radovan threw the newspaper on the floor, turned the light off & threw himself on the bed, crushed. An unease mixed with primitive fear started overcoming him: he imagined himself in the cold water of the Moraca & at one moment began trembling with fear.

****

Beljuli Zehriju liked the sea; he felt that sea also liked him. As a fishermen of forty years, Beljuli knew every watery foot of Ulcinj & the surroundings like the back of his hand and he could describe every stone in his native village of Zogane where he had formed into a member of the Albanian national minority which has lived for centuries in multi-confessional & multi-cultural Montenegro.

Just a few minutes after the unprecedented storm passed, leaving rubble in its wake along with uprooted palms & roof tiles crumbled to bits, Beljuli felt the call of the sea & on foot along goat trails, he started towards it. From a distance it seemed to him that the beach was not as compact a sandy entity as it was before the storm; a white object which reminded him of a small whale stuck out of the traditional tourist image of carefree vacations.

When he approached the object to a safe 36 meters, Beljuli was sure that the object was in fact a man or what was left of a man. Beljuli ran as fast as his legs would carry him, praying to himself that life was stronger than death...

(to be continued)