Page 48 of Tom Clancy Line of Sight
“Dom? It’s Gerry. I have an assignment for you. Might make a nice little vacation for you and Adara—and Midas, too, come to think of it. I’ll set up a conference call from my end and fill in the details.”
Gerry hung up and turned to Gavin. “Nice work, Gav. I’ll keep you in the loop. In the meantime, keep digging around for whatever you can find on this Iron Syndicate.”
“If the syndicate knows she failed her hit, you know they’ll send somebody else for Jack.”
“I told Jack that, but he says he’s got something to finish before he can come back where we can keep an eye on him.”
Gavin frowned with worry. “The fact we’ve never heard of these Iron Syndicate people makes me extremely nervous.”
“I’m worried, too. That’s why we’ve got to find out what’s really going on and who’s behind it.”
25
SARAJEVO, BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
Jack met the apartment owners briefly, a charming young Bosniak couple, both high school teachers, who showed him around the spotless two-bedroom apartment decked out in IKEA furniture and local art. They left him a set of keys and a couple maps, along with a small pot full of dark, rich ground beans and instructions on how to brew a cup of Bosnian coffee.
This was his first Airbnb rental, and he was extremely pleased. Half the price of a hotel, and twice as nice. The only bummer was that the building’s garbage chute was located on the third-floor landing across from his front door. Fortunately, the smell didn’t reach inside the apartment.
Jack changed into shorts and a linen flannel shirt and headed out, pulling on a pair of Oakleys against the bright sun. He was famished, but fortunately, his first “Aida” target worked at arestaurant with great TripAdvisor reviews in the Turkish part of the Old Town. It was about a ten-minute walk from his place. He was looking forward to stretching his legs and seeing Sarajevo up close and personal, and the part of town where he was headed was a pedestrian zone.
A few blocks from his apartment, he crossed the Latin Bridge heading north, stopping at the traffic light just as a battered trolley car came screeching to a halt. He glanced across the street and saw the sign on the building and it suddenly hit him. This was the street corner where Archduke Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated in 1914.
It was a dope slap, for sure.
Jack had studied World War I in high school. He’d watched the grainy film footage of soldiers swarming out of their trenches through barbed wire and mortar fire and into no-man’s-land only to be machine-gunned down by the thousands, or gassed, or blown apart by concentrated artillery fire. Millions of soldiers and civilians were butchered in a war that served no purpose other than to lay the foundations for the next one, an even bloodier affair. All of that carnage that laid waste to an entire generation, all triggered by the pistol shots of a Bosnian Serb nationalist fired here.
Right here.
The assassination was one of the most historically significant events in the past two hundred years: the Russian Revolution, the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, the rise of the United States as a world power, the beginning of the end of the British Empire. Those fatal gunshots also gave rise to Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, Franco, Hitler. The whole world crumbled in the earthquake that was theGreat War, and this place was the epicenter, where it all originated.
It was practically hallowed ground, wasn’t it?
But as Jack glanced around, all he saw were locals marching off to work with cell phones stuck in their ears, frustrated car drivers, a couple old-timers shuffling aimlessly along, teenagers lugging book bags. Their faces were heavy with frustration or fear, or numbed with boredom and fatigue. Just everyday people, trudging through history as casually as they would through a shabby shopping mall.
The light turned green and Jack crossed with a woman who tossed her smoldering cigarette onto the street, maybe right at the place where nineteen-year-old Gavrilo Princip stood and pulled the trigger. To these people, it was all so ordinary and familiar. How could that be?
Jack stepped onto the curb and stood in front of the museum commemorating the terrible event. It was just a single room, occupying the bottom floor of a three-story building standing on the corner. He found a plain, simple inscription in Bosanski and English on an unremarkable stone slab on the museum’s outer wall:
FROM THIS PLACE ON 28 JUNE 1914 GAVRILO PRINCIP ASSASSINATED THE HEIR TO THE AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN THRONE FRANZ FERDINAND AND HIS WIFE SOFIA.
That was it?
Unbelievable,Jack thought. He’d seen Chevrolet ads with more emotion. It seemed as if the city was hardly trying to remember this tragedy. Or they were trying to ignore it. Maybe they didn’t want to be blamed for all the inconsolable suffering and death that followed.
Jack was suddenly as depressed as he was confused.
He was tempted to check out the museum, but his gurgling stomach told him to wait until some other time. Jack turned and walked north. With any luck, he’d find the girl and a good meal all at the same time.
—
A few blocks up and Jack was formally in the Old Town, his Merrell Moab Ventilators clopping on limestone pavement stones smoothed by three hundred years of foot traffic.
Suddenly the grime of the working-class city behind him was transformed into a Turkish bazaar, the wide streets lined with shops of every kind selling jewelry, clothes, artwork, books, and food.
Lots of food.
And the streets were suddenly crowded, too, mostly tourists. Europeans, certainly, and Asians. But he also saw his first Muslim woman in Sarajevo covered from head to toe, her eyes alone exposed beneath herniqab, walking alongside a bearded Muslim man in Western slacks and a shirt. Were they locals? Tourists? He wasn’t sure.
