The Woman Who Lost Her Soul Hardcover (81 page)

Don’t get lost, dude.

Bill, you okay with that?

Sure, said Bill. What do I need to know?

Cockblock, said Scarecrow. Some pest.

We should be okay, said Burnette.

Then they were ascending the hill and Chambers perked up, kissed the rosary’s crucifix
and tucked it back into his pocket and returned to the nostalgia of here and now.
These walls, he said, shaking his horny index finger at the ancient crumbling fortifications
outside the windows on Eville’s side, these walls were constructed to protect the
cathedral when the Ottomans invaded at the end of the fifteenth century. You get my
point. I walked here many times with my mother.

At the top of the hill they inched along as the limousines ahead of them dropped off
passengers at the plaza beneath the cathedral’s soaring Gothic spires, the crowd split
in the middle by a wide channel of metal barricades like bike racks, lined with heavily
armed police facing the people and two parallel rows of soldiers facing one other,
standing at attention in their dress uniforms with shouldered rifles, and the towering
cathedral rising like a sheer solitary Alp at the far end of this temporary avenue,
its entrance somehow forbidding and ominous, an open black mouth. The undersecretary
told a story about the former archbishop buried now under the cathedral’s flagstones.
Stepinac, he said, my father’s cousin. Burnette half-listened, readying himself for
their infil, Tilly’s voice in his ear saying, You’re scoped, Burn. The story was something
about a tea biscuit, something about refugees.

Then the doors were open and they were out in the moist bone-aching air and organized
into the procession behind the president and his cabinet and generals, the undersecretary
flanked by Crow and Bill, Burnette a few steps behind, his head on a swivel, scanning
the ranks of Zagreb’s citizenry, Tex and Tex’s detail and the special envoy behind
him and behind them the ambassador and the rest of the American delegation and behind
them a divided world.

From within the mass of bodies Burnette heard muted applause and lamentation, an occasional
outburst of bellicose emotion, patriotic slogans or cursing—he couldn’t tell. His
vision swept past a grandmother weeping, small rose-cheeked children riding their
fathers’ shoulders, grizzled old veterans in partisan garb, young bucks in black leather
jackets, decommissioned paramilitaries in camo, chic young women not inclined toward
despondence. About twenty meters from the entrance Tilly was in his ear again, saying
your guy’s on the left, five meters up, and Burnette spotted Tom Harrington and radioed
back to say once he had the undersecretary inside he was turning around. Which is
what he did, turning and just walking straight back to where the unsuspecting Harrington
stood in the media pack behind the cordon next to a woman with a clipboard speaking
to a cameraman and he walked past them a ways to a cop and flashed his ID and cracked
open enough space between two sections of barricades to squeeze through and with as
much politeness as he could manage muscled his way through and tapped him on the shoulder
saying, Tom.

Tom, can I speak to you for a minute?

Yeah, what is it? said Harrington, his upper body twisting around until he could see
who was talking and what he saw drained the color from his face although it was apparent
to Burnette that Tom did not recognize him, a stranger behind the beard and sunglasses
and dressed up like some bad-ass prince. What’s this about? asked Harrington, his
face wary, struggling for an answer that seemed just out of reach, behind a veil.

Funny thing. Going to a funeral carrying a briefcase.

What business is that of yours?

Will you come with me for a minute?

Why would I do that?

I don’t know, said Burnette, pushing up the Oakleys to rest on his brow, squinting.
For old time’s sake, maybe.

Holy shit, said Tom.

Holy shit, Tom. Long time no see. I take it you’re a friend of the deceased?

Did I see this right? Was that you bringing in Chambers? I mean, it’s hard to distinguish
one heavy from another. But what else would you be doing here?

Let’s get out of this crowd for a minute.

Hell yes, Top. There’s some questions I’ve wanted to ask you, man.

Me first, said Eville, but when they found themselves at the rear of the crowd and
stopped in a newborn patch of sunlight, Harrington beat him to the draw.

All right, Ev, goddamn it, you tell me something.

Wait a minute.

I want to know who’s buried out there in the Mirogoj cemetery.

What?

Right next to the grave for the bastard they’re putting in the ground today.

I’m not following this, said Burnette.

The marker says Dorothy Kovacevic. It’s right between this new hole for Starevica
and a marker that reads Marija Kovacevic. That’s Chambers’s mother. He excavated her
coffin from a churchyard in Pittsburgh and buried her here in 1995, after Operation
Storm. Ever heard of that? The final assault? Ethnic cleansing? Have you talked about
that with the undersecretary’s buddies? The generals inside the cathedral.

Wait a minute, said Ev, flustered. Hold on.

One day these guys are going to end up at The Hague. You know that, don’t you?

We’ll discuss that in a second. What’s this you’re saying about Dorothy Kovacevic?

You tell me, Top. When I first came here last August—the fifteenth? sixteenth?—I was
told by my minders, oh, too bad, you just missed Kovacevic, he came to bury his daughter
in Mirogoj but now he’s gone.

What? said Burnette. Wait a minute. Slow down.

So look, come clean with me. Who’s in that grave? I’m thinking nobody. I’m thinking
someone besides me was poking around and came too close and suddenly there was a necessity
for a gravesite. Somebody like Jack Parmentier.

I don’t know anything about this, said Burnette.

I hope whatever she was doing for the government was worth the cost of hooking up
with a scumbag like Parmentier.

Tom. Look.

And who do you work for these days, man?

I can’t talk about that.

Okay, said Tom. Let’s talk about Jackie. Let’s talk about Renee. Let’s talk about
Dottie, Dorothy. She’s alive, right?

I can’t confirm that.

Harrington mentioned discrepancies and Burnette mentioned due diligence and they stared
at one another until Tom shook his head, visibly saddened.

You’re in Croatia with her goddamn father. What do you think we’re talking about here?
I’m talking about a human being, a woman, someone I knew, okay. And I’m talking about
Haiti, someone’s life. I’m not asking for the Agency’s jewels. I really don’t give
a flying fuck what the game was.

All right, look, said Burnette. She’s not.

Not what?

Alive.

I don’t believe you, said Harrington.

Okay, all right. Have it your way.

Eville, we were friends. And Gerard was my friend. How did you get Gerard to lie to
me?

I didn’t, Tom. Maybe she did.

You know what I do. You know I’m an investigator. You know I was brought in on the
case.

No, I didn’t know that.

How about we dispense with bullshit, Top. Then one day I think I see the priest, St.
Jean, in Miami, Little Haiti, and I’m right, it’s him, because it takes me a while
but I finally track him down, and guess what he tells me, some wild fucking story
about voodoo hijinks and Jackie faking her death.

Whatever you say.

Here’s what I say, Ev. I want you to do the right thing. I want you to sign an affidavit
attesting to the fact she’s alive.

I can’t do that.

Top, there’s an innocent kid in a prison in Haiti indicted for her murder. He’ll rot
away if we don’t do anything about it.

I didn’t put him there, said Burnette with cold fury. You did.

Tom slumped and bowed his head in remorse and looked up with plaintive eyes. You’re
right, he said. I did. What the fuck, Ev. I don’t know what this is all about but
help me out here.

Burnette said he had to get back and Tom said he had something to pass along to the
undersecretary and Burnette snapped out of his numb drift toward wherever this news
about Dottie’s grave was taking him, remembering his purpose here, the original deflection,
was to confront Tom. Tom began to unlock the clasps on his briefcase and Eville asked
him to stop and told him why.

What are you talking about? said Harrington, his lips tightening into a smile and
when Burnette finished explaining his understanding of the situation, Harrington released
an involuntary snort of laughter for which he quickly apologized, calling the notion
of entrapping Steven Chambers a judicial fantasy. The tribunal doesn’t have the authority
to subpoena an American diplomat, said Harrington. Man, I’d love to depose Chambers,
the guy was like an enabler, a facilitator, the empire’s designated winker. He knows
every bloody thing that happened here, he was a witness to the decision-making process
responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law. In other words,
war crimes. He can talk with us if he wants, but I don’t see that happening, do you?
Anyway, Top, Harrington said as he opened the briefcase and removed a manila envelope,
will you pass this along to Chambers, Kovacevic, whatever name he uses. I imagine
he’ll appreciate it.

He attempted to hand the envelope to Burnette, who wouldn’t accept it so readily.
What’s in it? Burnette said.

Something of Jackie’s. Here, take it, come on. Look inside if you don’t trust me,
he said shrewdly while Burnette’s suspicious fingers worked to unseal the flap. If
you would give that to her father. Or, you know, return it to Jackie if you happen
to bump into her.

What Burnette intended as a cursory glance into the envelope’s mouth became a hopeless
stare at the triple strands of Dottie’s Turkish bracelet, its blue-eyed insistence
against evil, and he stood riveted and speechless, finally nudging his sunglasses
down over his eyes to leave only the quiver of his jaw exposed, his emotions contorted
by knife-stabs of gratitude penetrating a sense of powerlessness and defeat, the
fresh tearing away of the unexpected chance with Dottie, the entire affair the most
provisional, unreliable arrangement but the chance had been there nevertheless, tangible
and true and lost, and telling himself he had been wrong to want it hadn’t gotten
him very far. Here was her bracelet; for him, that was its message.

God, I’m sorry, Ev, but—Tom said, unable to complete the thought. She’s really dead,
isn’t she?

He paused to collect himself in the narthex, cajole and kick himself into the psychic
transition away from the sudden great weariness he felt, leaning back against a wall
and closing his eyes for a moment, walking down the storm-swept beach hand in hand
with Dottie, his hands about their own quick business here in Zagreb, transferring
the bracelet to his trouser pocket, holding it as his palm turned sweaty around its
glass beads, tossing the envelope into a waste basket. He heard the voice, faraway
but amplified, of eulogy. Then the ear voice of Crow saying Burn, where are you? Steve-o
on the move. Where’s he going? Burnette asked. Where are you? The whatchacallit, the
pulpit, said Crow. It’s like halftime. Looks like he’s going to speak. Roger that,
said Burnette. Where are you? and Scarecrow told him he was in the aisle on the right
side of the altar and Eville said he was coming.

Vasich’s security men fixed him with hard looks as he stepped into the pillared cavern
of the nave. He removed his sunglasses while his clearance was double-checked and
he noticed the woman from behind the press cordon who had stood with her clipboard
between Tom and the cameraman, arguing in hushed tones with one of Vasich’s people.
He couldn’t see the undersecretary but his voice began to echo from within the slanted
light at the far end of the nave, and he went over and requisitioned the woman, whispering
to the guard, She’s with me. Why? she whispered back, recoiling nervously. He asked
her if she spoke English and she said yes. Croatian? Yes. She looked at him more closely,
with suspicion, and said, Where is Tom? and he told her Tom was outside, Tom was fine,
and he asked her to do him a favor. Will you translate for me? Translate what? The
man who’s speaking. Kovacevic? she said. Please, said Burnette, I want to know what
he’s saying. Ah, said the woman, I see. Yes, I will help you if you will help me.
I’ll try, said Burnette. That’s all I can promise.

They moved quietly to the right, to the top of the side aisle, slowly making their
way toward the front of the hall, the woman whispering in his ear,
He is talking about when he was a child, meeting Starevica when he was a boy, how
Starevica was a second father. He says his own father was killed in the world war.
Burnette’s eyes wandered over the congregation packed into the rows of pews, his
vision floating upward into the cold vastness of sacred space, feeling an uneasy awe.
Now Kovacevic is talking about our war. He says our divine struggle, on heaven’s behalf.
He is saying some good things about our army and our leaders and about Starevica.
Patriotic things.
The thin scent of frankincense began to mix with the pungency of garlic on the woman’s
breath and the stony breath of the cathedral, itself a source of an unfathomable oppression
bearing down on him, an intersection of vanities and ingenuity and aspirations meant,
he understood this, to signify mankind’s relationship with the cosmos, but the cathedral’s
power was immodest, its inspiration a wash between faith and fear, more fissure than
connection, more arrogance than humility, or so he felt. Halfway down the aisle, she
paused, her brow wrinkling as she listened, and he waited for her to proceed and she
was whispering again as they tiptoed ahead.
Now he is saying strong things. Kovacevic says history will never forgive us if we
stop now. God Almighty will never forgive us.
He had stood on glacial moraines before, staring at ice fields cracking with a deep
interior fracturing sound, hearing the stress of the planet, and he had staggered
to the top of inhospitable wind-blasted summits only to experience this same sense
of human insignificance.
He is making recrimination against the Muslims. We must not allow the Turks to pass
through this door, a door, of atrocity that has been thrown open by Satan. Like you,
Kovacevic says, I want peace in the world and I will fight for it and for Christ.
He had not lived the type of life that offered a familiarity with cathedrals, the
soaring majesty that was not barrenness but the abstract made amazingly concrete and
the sacred made sarcophagal, a bell jar containing a millennium’s worth of anguished
spirits.
He is making provocations. He says when the
mujos
tell us they will drink our blood we will sew their mouths closed with barbed wire.
Burnette thought maybe it was his upbringing, a boy from a ranch in Montana unaccustomed
to the monumental grandeur of mankind’s achievements, his unworldliness never a liability
on any mission but here he felt it as a flaw, a complication to his sense of reverence.