Free The Heart of Hell by Alen Mattich Page B

vortex of state security, only to emerge years later. If ever.
    Della Torre began to register that this tramp was somehow different from the usual drunk peasant. He didn’t smell. His teeth were straight and fine.
    And then della Torre saw the young couple approach. Maybe they were coming to offer help, to mediate. By the time he realized they weren’t, the rear door of a parked Mercedes saloon had opened directly in front of him and the young couple were pushing him into the rear seat.
    A man sat by the far door. The young man edged della Torre over and shoved in beside him. The woman got into the front seat. The tramp remained on the pavement, looking both ways, speaking into the lapel of his jacket.
    The instant the doors shut, the driver pulled into the road.
    “Please be calm and sit still, Mr. della Torre,” the man to his left said in American-accented English.
    Della Torre leaned back and looked up at the car’s fabric-lined roof. He didn’t need to ask who they were or what they wanted. All he wondered was how they would get him out of the country.
    They could be in Austria in little more than two hours. In Slovenia in less than one. Or at the airport and on a private plane in twenty minutes.
    Would he be subject to a military tribunal? A secret trial? Would there be any formal legal process at all? It didn’t matter.
    It made him sick to his stomach how for more than six months, ever since the Pilgrim affair had emerged into his life, he’d been blown from one place to another like a leaf in autumn. He’d achieved nothing out of his own volition. He’d been little more than an automaton.
    How did Strumbić manage to dance through the clockwork mechanism, riding a wheel and then jumping off an escapement, choosing which direction to take, which part of the machine to explore? Irena too. She was in Vukovar by choice, fighting the fates.
    Della Torre knew that from this moment his life would be determined by the American authorities, from breakfast to lights out. Where he would walk when he took exercise. How long he’d have to brush his teeth. Every word he read would be scrutinized, subversion excised. He would be living a wakeful coma for the rest of his life.
    They drove through the imperial Hapsburg lower town, passing the pale mustard-coloured buildings with their crumbling art deco detailing and the rows of horse chestnuts along elegant boulevards reminiscent of Vienna.
    They paused at the intersection under the railway line separating the old city from post war, socialist New Zagreb to the south. From there, they passed tower blocks separated by weed-filled lawns that some functionary had once imagined would become parks for the proletariat, but now merely served to isolate residents in concrete islands. They drove through settlements of bare concrete and red cinder-block houses that were finished only just enough to be habitable but would never be beautiful.
    The white-on-blue road sign pointed them towards the airport. Perhaps the Americans had a private airplane. Even so, surely they would need to go through passport control. Della Torre didn’t doubt that they had black diplomatic passports, rendering their holders immune to any civil authority in Croatia. But how would they get him through? Had they bribed people already?
    Could this operation have been carried out without Horvat’s blessing? The new republic needed friends, and it needed to be recognized. How much American goodwill would be bought by sacrificing della Torre?
    The car slowed into congestion, though it wasn’t rush hour. It wasn’t unusual to find a farmer driving his horse and hay wagon along the highway, but as traffic came to a standstill, della Torre wondered if there had been an accident farther ahead. Yugoslav roads and Yugoslav drivers were a lethal mix.
    They sat for a long time. No one spoke. The men on either side of him were young, athletic, clean-cut; they smelled of soap and deodorant. All they needed were suits