by GlasOwl

V

"If I tell you who owns this apartment, I'll have to kill you," Jeri said.

It wasn't much of a joke, but Kelly smiled anyway. She was willing to just enjoy the gift of the small Zagreb flat without giving too much thought to the real owner.

"I suppose you're off to get a Yugo.  You pick those things up like other people get cokes."

Jeri was lounging in a worn, thickly upholstered chair.  "Tomorrow. Don't worry.  You may not believe this but the CIA's been paying for the Yugos."

"You're kidding!  How?  Wait, don't tell me."

"Back when the country was happily Communist and the world was nicely paired into Democracy and the Evil Empire, the folks I know here were a kind of loose-knit opposition. Actually, they were coffee-drinking, I'll-speak-my-mind-because -I'm -really-a-poet student types, but some smart noodle in Washington thought they'd look good on paper. One thing led to
another and the folks here got on the CIA cash roll and nobody has ever thought to take them off. Hence, one consequence is that we get very cheap Yugos."

Kelly glanced around the small room. She really was nervous. She mimed being listened to by some bug, but Jeri just laughed.

"I honestly doubt it," she said. "Not with everything else that's going on these days. Besides, the CIA gets real good prices on Yugos because Lawrence Eagleburger used to be on the board or something before he went to the State Department as an expert on this region. Hell, he might still be on the Yugo board for all I know."

"What are you talking about?  Who has a name like that?"

"Eagleburger? It's just your old-fashioned military-industrial complex at work. It gets even cuter when you remember that Yugo manufactures arms too.  Unfortunately, they now manufacture arms for Serbia."

"I can't remember it because I never knew it. You're the spy expert." Kelly thought a moment, trying to arrange all the information and then gave up. "I won't worry about conspiracies as long as I get a really good bath."

Jeri stretched and slid even lower into the comfort of the chair. She looked as if she might forget about moving for days.  "You take your bath and I'll see if I can call Alenka."

Kelly stared at Jeri. The possibility of using a phone had never occurred to her. Parts of the last hundred years seemed to have dropped out of her awareness, leaving her with a sense of reality like a puzzle with missing pieces. Of course there were still telephones. She looked around the room and, for the first time, the television set registered in her awareness as a piece of technology, a household appliance, and more than a piece of furniture with a doily and a knickknack on top. Gingerly, as if she were from another age, one that might consider such things the work of demons or gods, she approached the set and touched -- without turning -- the knob. She glanced back to see Jeri watching her with a fond and amused smile.

"Yes, Virginia, this is still the age of television."

Kelly pulled her hand back. "I think I'll wait until after my bath. Unless you want."

It was a real shower with real hot water.

Kelly stood beneath the rush, her eyes closed, wishing the moment could last forever. They had left Mrs. Susik in a coast town, with other refugees, with her own people. The older woman had taken over care of the child.  Kelly had feared Mrs. Susik would fall back into the shock that had gripped her when she and Jeri first saw her on the hillside, but instead, Mrs. Susik had struggled to be a comfort to the youngster who was as alone as the old woman among the other refugees, every one of them with a heart-wrenching tale of loss.

Maybe they would adopt each other. Kelly recognized the thought for the pretty wish that it was, a hope that she and Jeri had accomplished something of lasting value, that their entry into Mrs. Susik's life had brought some good. But like all pretty thoughts, the events of the last few days showed it for a lie. If you needed time to give value to actions, you were likely to be gravely disappointed. Today could tear the soul out of every last one of yesterday's hopes. She and Jeri had only arrived to witness one station in Mrs. Susik's journey of suffering and accompany her to the next.

Maybe that was about all you ever got to do.

A long time later, long enough to have washed away all the dust of Dalmatia if not the memories, Kelly emerged from the bathroom in a borrowed robe with tan stripes. She found Jeri staring bemused into some space in the middle of the room.

"She called me Auntie Stella," Jeri said in answer to Kelly's inquiring look.  "Alenka called me Auntie Stella and said she'd been expecting me to call. She doesn't want to leave home.  She has a boyfriend.  I told her we'd discuss it when we get there."

Kelly stared at Jeri a moment; she was almost used to the yo-yo ride between the bizarre and the banal that characterized life in Croatia. Fully aware of all the irony and incongruity involved, she drawled, "Honey, I don't feel like going out; let's just stay in and watch TV tonight."

There wasn't much on. One channel showed a line of women with candles and rosaries marching for peace around the headquarters of the Yugoslavian Federal Army headquarters somewhere in Zagreb. Another had a music video that showed soldiers running in slow motion, like a stylish modern dance, to the Dire Straits' song, "Brothers in Arms."
 

The sweet scent of lilacs and linden trees was fading like the grace of heaven from the streets of Zagreb as Jeri and Kelly went walking the next morning. Dubrovnik had been a gem, cut and polished, but Zagreb was old stone, a working city, a fitting choice for the capital of the new country.  The baroque buildings were all Central European, an echo of Old Vienna.  Green parks punctuated impressive boulevards. It was also a city preparing for war. Sandbags had been heaped in front of shop windows to protect them from aerial bombing. Helicopters buzzed ominously overhead like angry wasps from a disturbed nest while, on the ground, people hurried about their business with a range of disbelieving expressions.

The television had informed them that, in accord with some pressure from the European Community, Croatia and Slovenia were going to wait before going ahead with their plans for independence. This was supposed to stop any further conflict but it appeared most people believed the accord was just so many words -- even those who hadn't spent the last few days hiking through the Krajina where war was not some rumor about the future.

Jeri was a little too preoccupied to play the tour guide.  Despite her experience with Europe's more violent struggles, the road from Dubrovnik had not left her untouched. Still, she managed a comment here and there.

"They used to say that Belgrade was the heart of Yugoslavia, and Zagreb was its brain, but don't let that fool you, it's a working city even if it does have a great university.  And did you know the two capitals are connected by the Highway of Brotherhood and Unity."

"Doesn't the irony ever end here?"

"Honey, you ain't seen nothing yet. I've got a surprise for you."

The two women emerged from a side street into a large open market. War and rumors of war hadn't stopped the country folk from bringing in their fruit and vegetables. Vendors had the intense expressions inspired everywhere by the exercise of commerce, and once again Kelly was reminded of Ohio. The faces around her looked like any she might have seen gathering for early Mass on Sunday mornings. A helicopter whined overhead and Kelly looked up to see it disappear behind the massive spires of a cathedral.

"St. Stepan's," Jeri said, seeing the direction of her gaze.

As they wound their way among tables of tomatoes and cherries, Kelly became aware that Jeri's preoccupation might have a specific basis.

"Are you worried someone's following us?" she asked, stopping to idly look over a collection of sun glasses.

"A little," Jeri said, putting on a pair and using the chance to glance around.  "I had an odd feeling when I picked up the apartment keys yesterday.  But I was careful getting there. I just want to make sure. What do you think?"

"I think these look better.  But to be honest, I haven't seen anything yet that didn't look great on you."

"You wouldn't just be a little biased?"

"Now you're fishing."  Kelly crinkled in a broad grin.  "You know you're stunning."

"Thanks; you're not half bad yourself."

"That's all I get? 'Not half bad'?"

They moved off through the market to the accompaniment of more banter. Jeri appeared to drift, but their steps were bringing them closer and closer to the edge of the sellers. At a stall featuring melons, Jeri took hold of Kelly's arm and guided her quickly between two tables. In seconds they were out of the crowded square. Jeri led the way through a twisting series of
alleyways and emerged into another large square in front of a massive building.

"The Presidential Palace," she said in a low voice as she directed Kelly to a place opposite the impressive structure.  "It's not an unusual place for people to gather -- you're about to see why -- and I want to check out a couple things. If I give the word, we're going to leave by that alley to your right."

Kelly glanced over to the alley indicated and saw a gray cat idly licking a paw until it seemed to feel her gaze. Forgetting that it still had its tongue hanging out, a look that would be ridiculous on any lesser animal, the cat stared back at Kelly.

"Watch this," Jeri said as she nudged Kelly and nodded toward the large building. "It's the changing of the Presidential Guard, dreamed up by some lunatic choreographer at the National Theater."

A squad of drums and trumpets suddenly emerged, tooting and thumping and looking dignified only by contrast with the tin soldiers who followed. It was all so absurd, so utterly disconnected with the events of the Krajina, that Kelly stared, gape-mouthed. The musicians were followed by a guard in black pants, red tunics with gold frogging, and white gloves. They stomped and wheeled, directed by officers in cream tunics with black capes.

Billy would have been delighted. Kelly could almost hear his queenly quips delivered in an acquired arrogance that was always at odds with the young-boy look he cultivated. She hadn't really appreciated his ability to read the world's absurdity until he came to help her care for George. Then she understood that what she had taken for lack of seriousness was how he could
stay engaged with a world that had become appalling. He would have so loved this march of the tin soldiers.

"See their neckties?"  Jeri asked.

"The cravats?"  It seemed just one more piece of sartorial flourish begging for an Oscar Wilde comment.

"Exactly," Jeri said. "Cravat, because Croats invented it."

As the Guard wheeled about and lined up to present their old-fashioned rifles -- though considering the state of Croatian armaments the guns might be about as good as it got -- Jeri let her attention wander over the small crowd. She didn't recognize anyone, but she knew that the conflict was drawing news reporters, politicos overt and covert, violence junkies and all the other scavengers who smelled blood on the wind in this newest Balkan version of the Serengeti.

"Come on, Kell. Let's get out of here."

"Is something wrong?"  Kelly asked as they slipped down the alley.  The cat had disappeared.

"No. Sorry. It just didn't seem funny anymore."

"Don't worry.  It still beats watching a Dire Straits ballet."

They wound their way through a series of narrow streets and alleys until they came to a small cafe with a handful of tables outside along the street.

Kelly sighed.  "You're going to leave me here again, aren't you?  Oh well, try to get a good color this time, okay?"

Kelly sipped the coffee brought by the waiter and opened Black Lamb Grey Falcon, looking for a section about Zagreb. She found one. "Zagreb," she read, "was full of those vast toast-coloured buildings, barracks and law courts and municipal offices, which are an invariable sign of past occupancy by the Austro-Hungarian Empire...  Zagreb makes from its featureless  handsomeness something that pleases like a Schubert song, a delight that begins quietly and never definitely ends."  Pleased to find a description of the market where she and Jeri had just been, Kelly noted that the styles worn by the 'peasants' -- West's word -- had certainly changed since the English writer had visited.

Mrs. Susik had looked old fashioned and country but Vojna had been a child of the Nineties. Kelly saw her eager face, the smile as she offered Kelly the cherries.

"Lady."

Kelly came out of memories to see a tow-headed youngster standing near the table.

"Lady, tall-lady say you come."

Kelly frowned. She looked around. A few people walked along the street.  One nearby table had an elderly gentleman reading a paper, another had several young men and women gathered around it, intent on some conversation that was doubtlessly political. No one appeared to be paying her any attention.

"Tall-lady say you come."

"Where?"

The child shook his head. He didn't seem to understand her or have anything more to say.  The phrase might be his only English.

Kelly didn't believe him.  Jeri would have sent a different message, she was sure. She looked over at the table full of young people but no one was looking her way. She glanced toward the cafe entrance, but the waiter was nowhere to be seen.

"No," she said to the youngster. "I don't understand."

"Tall-lady say you come."

"I don't understand."

He didn't seem that disappointed.  He stared a few more seconds and then trotted off up the street. Kelly watched him, but his direction gave her no information.  Kelly's mind was working furiously. Somebody had sent the boy; somebody was watching her. She slipped the book into her backpack.  She thought she knew the way back to the apartment, but that seemed like the last place she should go.

Clutching her backpack, she walked decisively toward the table with the student types.  "Excuse me, do any of you speak English?"

Several faces turned toward her, one or two with welcoming if quizzical smiles.

Someone fell into her, knocking her off balance and then grabbing her to keep her from falling.  Kelly felt hands like iron vises gripping both arms just above her elbows even as she heard the apology in English that was completely at odds with how she was being held.  On instinct, she let her backpack fall into the lap nearest her.

"Sorry.  Steady there.  Are you okay?"  The words were reassuring and friendly but just above a whisper Kelly heard the hiss of the real message.  "Make any kind of a fuss and you're a dead woman, right here and right now."

Jeri saw that Kelly was missing before she reached the cafe. She drove past and turned a corner and then proceeded back on foot. She saw nothing out of the ordinary, just an elderly gentleman at one table reading his newspaper and a group of students at another. The street was clear in either direction. There was nothing at the table where she'd left Kelly to indicate anyone had ever been there, not even an empty coffee cup.

She glanced back toward the students and her stomach lurched: sitting on the table in front of one of them was Kelly's backpack.

Clever boy.  He'd set it there for a signal.  Jeri sauntered up the street and glanced toward the group. The dark-haired, narrow-faced youth caught her eye. Jeri nodded slightly and kept going. The boy followed and, a few doors up the street, Jeri waited for him.

"I saw you together earlier," he said, handing her the pack.

"What happened?"

He described the little he'd seen.  "It was a tall man who bumped her and grabbed hold of her. Then another, shorter, joined them and they took her to this SUV -- a blue Jeep -- which is not all that common here in Zagreb. I'm sorry I couldn't help. This used to happen when I was very young and it was better then not to interfere."

Jeri swore. In Serbo-Croatian.  The youth looked alarmed and impressed.  "You did okay," Jeri reassured him.  "You might have both got hurt.  At least now I know what happened."  But her mind was frantic: Not half-bad. Oh, Kelly, I'm sorry. What was I thinking?

Ten minutes later she was making a call.  "Jovan? Shamrock. Who could do a body grab in daylight, using a Yankee Jeep? ...I thought so. ...Do you know where they'd go? ...Well, then, do you know if they'd leave the country?  ...At least that's good news. Look, here's what I need: find out who's the head spook on the ground here for the Brits."
 

The heavy cloth hood they had slipped over her head made it difficult for Kelly to breathe. So did the awkward position of being forced to lay on the floor between the back and front seats while the vehicle bounced and swerved.  She was too uncomfortable to feel anything more than that.  She tried to keep track of direction, to hear some sort of indication of where they were, but she had too little to go on. Once or twice there was a shift in gravity and in gears to indicate going up a hill and then down but that was all. And after about an hour, Kelly wasn't too sure that she might not have passed out from lack of oxygen.

The vehicle stopped. With the minimum of fuss, she was pushed and pulled from the car, but the hood was left on. She bent her head forward so she could see down. Not much. A bit of cobblestone. Air though; she could breathe easier. A scent from a linden tree? No sounds. A shift in the ground from cobblestones to flagstones. The sound of a door, a heavy door.
Inside it was cool, not air-conditioned cool -- large-roomed old-building cool. Pushed down a corridor of dark, much-scuffed wood, then down steps, through another door. Someone put a metal hand-cuff on one wrist and attached the other wrist behind her back. Then she heard the door slam and a lock.

Assholes. They'd left the hood on for spite. They knew she could get out of it, but they'd just left it on. She managed to shake it off. There wasn't much light even without the hood. What light there was filtered through a boarded up window about five feet long that was situated ten feet above a grimy concrete floor. The room was rather large, about fifteen by twenty feet, and it had the unmistakable, musty smell of a basement. Plaster walls, crumbling here and there. Cobwebby corners. A pillar about two feet square with the same crumbly plaster stood dead center in the gloomy space, and just beside it was a wooden chair, the only other thing besides her in the room.

Perhaps it was two, possibly three hours later before anyone came to the room. Any light making it through the boards had disappeared. Kelly heard a key, then the door opened and she was blinded by a huge, hand-held light.

"Sit in the chair. From now on, whenever you hear someone at the door, make sure you're sitting in that chair. If you're asleep, you get up and go to the chair."  A woman's voice. Angry, stern.

Rules. They were the boss. They were going to make the rules. Two of them still. One held the light, one put the hood back on. Then they took her out and down a hall. They were deliberately rough, shoving her off balance and then grabbing the cuffs before she fell. Into another room and then directed to a chair. The cuffs were released only to be relocked in front of her.
Small favors. The hood was removed.

She was sitting in a normally lit room, a room with featureless white walls.  About five feet in front of her, at a desk, was a large, middle-aged man with peppery, steel-gray hair, tending toward overweight. She twisted around on her chair. The people who had brought her had withdrawn to the back of the room to either side of the door. One was the man who had bumped into her at the cafe. He was brawny as a football player. She recognized the other one.  Liz. The Aussie who hadn't gone running with her. The stony face Liz presented gave no sign of recognizing her. Kelly turned back to the man behind the desk.

He seemed an ill-tempered person, someone who was missing a meal and quite ready to blame her. He stared at her, a little disgusted, like an interviewer who's quite sure the person he's seeing is under-qualified for the job his firm is offering.

"I wish we could put these preliminaries behind us, Miss Corcoran. You're going to deny that's who you are, I am going to insist you are who you are, we're going to go round in circles and it's all going to be a big waste of my time."  His accent was vaguely British; like so much about him, the accent seemed one more thing he could scarcely bear to trouble himself with.

"I have no idea what you're talking about. This is all some weird kind of mistake.  "Kelly bet herself that he'd yawn.

He didn't. Instead he sighed.   "Take her back to the room. I have real work to do."

"Liz, you remember me, don't you? What's going on?"  But the woman might have been a robot. She simply took turns with Ernie pushing her down the hall. Kellie wasn't sure why she wanted to call the brawny man Ernie. It just seemed to fit: Liz and Ernie.

When the door to her room was opened, Kelly saw that a pail had been placed beside the chair. They left her hands cuffed in front, but when they closed the door, there was no light at all. She tried to twist so that she could get the Himalayan crystal from her pocket, and she might have reached it, but she was suddenly afraid that she might lose it, or her action be seen and the talisman taken from her.
 

Alfred Toland was a gray man; wisps of gray hair stuck out every which way from a round head with pudgy gray cheeks. He wore baggy gray slacks and trudged along the narrow walk, past sandbagged windows, an utterly nondescript person. Jeri followed on foot.  If this was Britain's senior spy in Croatia it made a kind of backward sense: he must be a spy because he
didn't look like one. Her contact had sworn that the several days -- long days in which Jeri had fought from rage to panic and back again -- it had taken him to find out about Toland meant that he was sure of his information about the man.

"I'm sick to death of this stupidity, Miss Corcoran."

The interrogator spat the words out with such venom that even Kelly's name in his mouth was like a slap in the face. She had little defense against his attacks. She felt filthy from using the pail for a toilet with her hands cuffed, and from sleeping on the hard, gritty, cement floor. Kelly's sense of time was completely gone, thrown off by the haphazard patterns of waking and sleeping that her captors allowed her. She was tired, terribly tired.  Sometimes they brought her to this room and she'd sit for an hour or so staring at an empty desk. Other times, the man would speak to her in a reasonable, friendly tone, only to suddenly fly into a rage, berating and belittling her.

"Why are you here? Looking for guns? This woman you insist on defending is a murderer. Is this how you were brought up, to consort with terrorists?  With people who have no regard for anyone's life? You're making your family suffer, you know. They have no idea what happened to you or where you are.  You could be dead somewhere for all they know. What kind of daughter are you? Think of how they feel, wondering if you're dead or alive. Of course you don't care, any more than your murdering girl friend cared about all the people she hurt when she bombed a building full of innocent human beings."

She had to keep her eyes open. They kicked the chair if she closed her eyes.  Kelly tried to shut out the words. She remembered Jeri inching across the minefield, risking her life for the child stranded out there amid lethal explosives. In a way, she was engaging in an argument with the man by remembering, by trying to counter what he said. That was a mistake. She'd
never quite realized how words worked before, how maybe people were hardwired to believe what they heard and how it took an act of will to derail that process of accepting meaning. Maybe that's why lying was counted as a sin -- because words could be arranged to say anything, truth or nonsense, and the mind would try to make meaning out of them.

They took her back to the room. They made her sit in the chair until they left. It had to be some part of daytime because there was a dim gray light that let her see where they'd put her food and water: by the pail that no one had emptied.

Oh, Jeri, she thought. Come get me. Please find me.

It had to do with guns. That was all Kelly could figure out. They were interested in guns.

What would Jeri do?  She wouldn't have been caught in the first place.  Kelly imagined Jeri twisting free of the iron grip of her captor at the cafe. But then they wouldn't have come after Jeri in the same way. The light was gone from the window. Kelly stared into the darkness, and misery threatened to overwhelm her. Deliberately she set about recalling Jeri, remembering her
face, hearing her voice. She called her to come through love and memory.

Kelly liked remembering Jeri as she stood listening, attentive, letting the spirits of a place flow into her. She remembered seeing Jeri stride through the hills in the Krajina and following her had seemed right, appropriate, just as it had seemed appropriate to follow her through the high, thin mountain air of Nepal and Tibet. Jeri had been so much in her element that the white-hot core of her was visible: she was a warrior, with a warrior's soul.

The word itself was stirring and substantial. Sure, war was part of it, but so was guardian, the one who warded off danger. To be a soldier, a fighter, that was different, contingent on circumstance. To be a warrior was a calling, a vocation. Jeri had the fierce soul and courageous heart of a warrior in a time that was unsure how to value warriors. She was born to be a weapon at the service of those who needed protection from harm. This was an age that had forgotten how once there were those few who were all who stood between a species and annihilation. Once, when people huddled in the dark, when they'd been one of the smaller prey on the great savannahs, it was the warrior who stood between them and the beasts of the plains, the warrior who learned the secrets needed to make a ring of safety in the night and hold through to dawn.

Once, Kelly had believed in a perfectible world. Not perfect, but perfectible -- you kept a vision of what was better if not best, and you kept trying to get closer to that vision. But she'd lost her faith when George died. Then Jeri brought a new kind of faith, one more muted, a sense that faith isn't given to a vision but to another person. This had all been so clear in Tibet where spirit had felt so much closer.

If Jeri was the warrior, who was she?

Then, suddenly the answer came: she was the one through whom balance was renewed, the way of beauty restored. All the elder peoples had understood that violence damaged balance even when necessary, and a ceremony of restoration, of reconciliation was required. Love was the ceremony. This was why they needed each other, why together they could achieve unity and wholeness. For an instant Kelly understood completely, she was flooded with understanding, and meaning was not something within mind alone, but belonging to everything she was and knew. She understood so well that she did not even
try to hold on as it slipped away, like sand through fingers, like sand through time's hourglass. It was sufficient to have the memory that once one had understood.
 

"Albert Toland?  Please do exactly as I say. I have a gun aimed at you, and there's very little reason not to shoot you because I can deal with your replacement just as easily. Walk slowly up the street and turn right. Good man."

If grabbing people was the name of the game, Jeri could play it too.

"Pay Attention!!!! Why won't you listen to me? I'm only trying to show you what's good for you. You queers think you know what's best but all you care about is yourself -- if it feels good, do it, right?. Self centered and self indulgent, that's the lot of you. What do you think is important to a kid who will never see his father because your girl friend and the other Republican scum, cowards, every last one of them, ambushed those poor innocents -- killed them before they could defend themselves? Do you think that kid or his mother cares if your girlfriend shoves her hand between your legs?"

He began describing Jeri and Kelly together. Pornographic, ugly words in lewd phrases, evoking whole scenes in repetitive details spoken in a voice dripping with disgust. It was quite possibly worse than rape because he was taking her memories and twisting them, giving them back to her in a muddied and fouled form. He took what she loved and made it grotesque, as if he had slipped into her mind with a sledgehammer and was bent on mangling all she held dear. Like a hypnotist, he repeated himself, even letting her drift off toward sleep, knowing that he was directing the images formed by her raddled mind.  Then he would scream for her to wake up and the words would start again.

"You might as well tell me what I want to know. You think somehow you're going to get away from here but even if you do, you'll never be able to be with her again without hearing my voice. It's over, Miss Corcoran.  Finished."

Kelly felt the tears well up and slide down her face. She was so tired. So very, very tired. She didn't know that you could be so sleepy it made you sick to your stomach.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said.

They took her back to the room and shoved her through the door. A tin plate of beans with a square of cut bread, along with a tin cup of water, had been placed on her chair. The pail had been emptied while she was out, but Kelly went to the farthest corner. Her hands hurt and she was too tired to eat.  It had been hard, so hard to get through these hours -- days? -- but always she had felt there must surely be a way out, an end. For the first time the probability that maybe Jeri would never find her, maybe they would never be together again, slithered into her awareness. Warriors and visions of meaning were simply elaborate webs of self deception. She couldn't find Jeri in her mind.

"I want you to tell me where you hide the people you kidnap, Mr. Toland."

I have no idea what you're talking about, Miss," said the gray man. "I can't imagine who on earth we'd want in Zagreb."

Jeri described the two people who'd taken Kelly and saw Toland's eyes shift slightly. He knew the men.

"I've got something to trade," Jeri said. "Remember the mission that got lost on the way to Chechnya in '88? I know how that happened. I know who told the Russians your guys were coming."

His eyes narrowed. "I'm more impressed that you even know there was a mission. I'll trade. Yes, and if I believe you, I'll even throw in the fact that whoever got taken is a freelance job. We're not running anything like that here."

Bit by bit, Jeri began trading the information that the Americans had a Russian mole in their midst. Not the name, she didn't have the name.  But she could prove he existed and that was currency London could use with Washington. It was currency that she'd been saving and she considered it well spent.
 

Wake up. Go to your chair." Ernie the football player.

Kelly lifted herself off the floor and stumbled over to the chair.  So what if it was compliance, the creation of habit.  She was too tired to resist.

She fell asleep. She slumped, woke and realized the bright light was gone.  It was a game and they'd just won another round.

"Get up. Go to your chair."

Kelly got up.  This time they had really come for her; Liz and Ernie.  They pushed her and shoved her down the hall toward the interrogation room.

"How did you get into the country, Miss Corcoran?  How did you get to Yugoslavia?"

There was some slight commotion behind her but Kelly had grown profoundly disinterested in the events of this room.  Until she saw the surprised look on the interrogator's face.  He started to stand up.

"Sit down or give me half a reason to shoot you. I don't care which."

Kelly recognized the voice. She knew she ought to feel glad, but oddly, she felt embarrassed.

"Sit on the floor. There beside Mr. Big Shot."  The voice delivering the orders had an unmistakable menace.

Liz and Ernie came forward and eased themselves to the floor. Kelly watched with some curiosity. There had been so little variety to notice lately.  Jeri had the long-barreled pistol that she'd carried through the Krajina in one hand. The other hand was holding one of the guns that had just belonged to Kelly's captors, while the second guard's gun was firmly tucked into the
waistband of her jeans.

"Who has the key to the cuffs?"

No one moved or spoke. The interrogator was staring at her as if she were some annoying interruption who must soon go away.

"Oh, good," Jeri said. "I was so hoping for this. Do you know Serbo-Croatian?"  No response. "There's a word that I've never encountered before: kundaciti. With no other warning, Jeri slammed the butt of the guard's gun into the interrogator's jaw and the sound was a horrid mix of outcry, breaking bone and splitting flesh.

"It means to bludgeon with a rifle butt, isn't that a good word? Want to hear it again? Now where's the fucking key because I'd really like to hit you some more."

The man mumbled.

"What?"  Jeri drew back her hand just as the man spat out blood and the word, "key," at the same time Kelly said, "Connie, don't!"

Jeri stared at Kelly with a look Kelly was sure she'd remember until she died. "Oh, god," she breathed, barely a whisper. "Baby, it wasn't necessary."

She turned back toward the football player who was reaching into a pocket.  There was such murder in her look that he needed no warning. Slowly, carefully, he brought out the handcuff key. At Jeri's gesture he tossed it onto the floor near her feet.

When Kelly's hands were free, Jeri said quietly. "Go on outside. Up the stairs and take the hall to the door. It's easy. Can you do it? Turn right on the street and you'll find our car. Go ahead. It's safe. I won't kill anyone -- though, by god, I want to. I do want to."

Kelly nodded and left. The building was old and it was like walking through a school after everyone has left. The hall seemed longer than Kelly remembered. She recognized the heavy door to the outside from the long ago time when she entered past it. It was evening. The air smelled so clean.

Kelly stood at the door of the Yugo and waited until she saw Jeri approaching. The tall woman walked with more determination than hurry.  Kelly couldn't think what to say to her so she just got in the car. Jeri got in the other side. She gave Kelly a worried look but only started driving, a task to which she gave her full attention.

"I must smell really bad." Kelly stared straight ahead through the window.

"That's nothing that can't be fixed."

"It was necessary."

"Why?"

"They wanted our souls and they couldn't get them as long as I kept our names a secret."

"Then you did good, baby, you did real good. Now you go to sleep and I'll take care of things for a while."

 Continued in part VI