Night's Reckoning Read online

  It was simple. Ethnic cleansing was not just about exterminating the opposition. Grozny and his men were good at this, and it was simple enough.

  But once the Bosniaks had been wiped out, who would replace them? There would need to be more Serbs. More than there were presently—more being born to fill that gap.

  And what of racial mixes? Over hundreds of years, hundreds of generations, this had been inevitable. Grozny believed that something had to be done to remedy this, and when time was tight then it would have to be an enforced solution. To balance the genetics was a simple matter of getting more Serb genetics into the mixes that existed, starting them on the road that would, over a matter of a few generations, see that balance restored to how it should be.

  Impregnate the women. The Nazis had the right idea—they had encouraged procreation among the right genetic groups, even to the point of organizing homes where strong Aryan men could meet and impregnate strong Aryan women to create that required purity.

  This, however, was a battlefield. In peacetime, there could be the right environment created. In war, you had to improvise.

  Grozny was not the only one to do this, but he was certainly one of the most enthusiastic proponents of the ideal. He would refer to them in private as breeding grounds, but they would later be known as rape camps.

  Grozny’s men were of good Serbian stock. The women they had captured along the way and brought with them were not Serbs, but were Croats or Bosniaks of a mixed background—admittedly selected on the less than scientific basis of looking a bit Serb—whose descendants could have their genetic mixes restored to order, starting in the here and present.

  Xiao looked upon this barbaric practice with an attitude that was both amused and bemused. It was a hit-and-miss, less-than-scientific method. But then again, he knew that in his country they took donated blood and mixed it all together, diluting with saline to make it stretch further: he was hardly in a position to sneer.

  If his superiors had backed the wrong candidate, then Grozny would stand trial. If they backed the right one, then who would ever know? History, after all, is nothing more than the winner’s story.

  Nonetheless, as Xiao stood outside the block that had been selected, watching Grozny’s men use their time off duty to go and impregnate the unwilling and shackled women within, he could not help but feel distaste. He did not relish any association with this attaching itself to him.

  The native Bosniaks tended to the occupying force and turned blind ears and eyes to what went on in the village that was no longer theirs, thankful that they were still alive and were not under torture. Fellow feeling plays second to survival at such times.

  Ignoring the screams and cries of pain, shame and pleading that came from the block, Xiao ground his cigarette under his heel and walked away.

  * * *

  FOR MORE THAN two months it continued. By day some of the men would devote themselves to the task at hand, while others were detailed to patrol the region around the village. Grozny had chosen it well—it was isolated and high in the mountainous hillside, which made it easy to survey the land around and also difficult for any forces to consider attack. To relieve the boredom of his men he would occasionally send details back toward Srebrenica, where the battle still raged on. The object was to obtain supplies, as the village was hard pressed to sustain its natives, let alone the new tenants. But in truth, it was so that the men would have an excuse to fight, to keep themselves sharp and to feel that they were still in the game.

  Grozny—with a little prompting from Xiao—was smart enough to know that his men were easily bored. Unlimited and easy sex should have been enough to keep them in place, but the warlord and his doctors imposed a little more order on it than the men would have wished, and in truth it had become more of a chore than a pleasure to them. No one thought about the women, of course: they were there for the sole purpose of cleansing genetics.

  The Chinese had another motive—the more Grozny’s

  men swept in from the hills, made lightning raids and then withdrew before they could be followed or put to the sword, the more they would build a reputation for themselves and for their chief. In the long run, the boosting of Grozny’s profile would increase his chances of success.

  To look at it in this way prevented Xiao from having to think too closely—and thus feeling nauseous—about the day-to-day activity in which he had become involved.

  He preferred it this way. However, it was not destined to stay at arm’s length for long.

  * * *

  “COME, TODAY WE see if our little experiments have been having any effect,” Grozny said over his morning coffee, slapping the Chinese man on the shoulder. When Xiao looked blankly at him, Grozny grinned. “It’s that time of the month—or not...”

  Suppressing the distaste and bile that rose simultaneously in his throat, the Chinese man left his tea untouched and followed Grozny across to the building housing the women.

  It was the first time he had been inside, and the first thing that hit him was the stench. The women had been confined in too small a space for too long, and despite the best efforts of the two medics to keep some kind of hygiene, the disinfectant and bland odor of medication did nothing to mask the sweat and ordure that had inevitably gathered. Blood, too, though Xiao preferred not to ponder on the ways in which it may have been spilled.

  Grozny appeared not to notice. His black eyes sparkling, cigar clamped between stained teeth and his black curls and beard glistening, he asked the medics in a hearty manner what results they had so far achieved.

  Xiao noticed that even as they were led up and down the “ward”—for want of a better name—Grozny was focused on the medics and not on the women who lay blank eyed and moaning on the beds and mattresses. Come to that, even the medics preferred to keep their eyes on the warlord as they spoke, or on the charts that they consulted.

  “All the women have now passed at least one menstrual cycle since arrival, so we know that none of them had been impregnated before capture and arrival,” one of the medics intoned.

  The other added, “This is good, as it means that we can be sure that any pregnancy now is the result of our program—”

  “I understand this,” Grozny snapped impatiently. “You think I do not understand the human reproductive system?”

  “I—I’m sorry,” the medic replied nervously. “I say this merely to point out that any missed menses from this point on can be attributed to our men, and so we can begin to measure the success of the program from a baseline of zero.”

  “Very well, I accept your apology,” Grozny said with magnanimity. “So what is the measure of our success so far?”

  The first medic, who had been assiduously scanning his paperwork, spoke again. “Of forty-eight women we shipped in here, three died from wounds and injuries acquired during or before transit. Of the remaining forty-five, so far only eighteen have missed a period, with only two of those at the stage where we can safely say they have missed two. So we have a less than forty percent rate of success at present.”

  “What is wrong with my men? Their little swimmers don’t swim? They can’t get it up?”

  There was a moment’s silence, both medics exchanging glances as they considered how best to answer this without angering their warlord. Finally, the first medic, shuffling his papers as he spoke, said, “Our men have taken to their task with no little abandon. As for their own ability to father the next generation, I can only say that we have not had the opportunity to examine them in the kind of detail that we have the women. Certainly, for them we can vouch that there is no obvious reason why any of them should not conceive.”

  “Yet they don’t...” Grozny looked around, as if seeing the women for the first time; which, in one sense, he was. “I suppose the conditions do not help,” he mused softly. “But this is war, and we have no option but to make t
he best of our circumstances. We must continue, redouble the efforts. I suppose we cannot tell which man has fathered those so far pregnant?”

  “We—er—have found it hard to keep records at times,” the second medic stammered hesitantly.

  Grozny nodded sagely. “Of course... A pity, as it would have helped. No matter. Time is something we don’t have. Carry on.”

  Grozny turned on his heel and marched out of the building, Xiao was only too glad to follow at his heels. He was saying something, but the Chinese man was not listening. He took one look back at the interior of the building as he wavered on the threshold.

  He had seen some terrible things during his service with the bureau. He would probably see more. But there was something obscene about this that went beyond war. He had an awful feeling that it would haunt his nightmares for however long he may live.

  * * *

  SREBRENICA WAS FALLING apart at the seams, the city decimated by the fighting that continued. But as this happened, so word of the prowess of Vijas Grozny and his men began to spread. They were fearless fighters who came into the city, took no prisoners and were ruthless to the point of cruelty. Torture to get what they wanted was commonplace. They needed supplies, ran the legend, because of the camp they had in the hills and what they were trying to do there.

  It made him a hero to some, but a target to others. And as the war ground to an inexorable close, and the United Nations Peacekeeping Forces began to make headway, so it became inevitable that Grozny would become a target. For everyone had their own reasons for wanting to claim him as their prize.

  When the end came, it was swift. The Croats had come for him first, tackling the hills and finding that the entrenched positions of his men gave them the greater advantage. They were slaughtered on the mountainside. But they were not the last to come.

  The United Nations came next, and they had the advantage of being fresher to the conflict. They also had tacticians who had worked out routes that stretched the manpower Grozny had at his disposal to the limit. They also had planes that strafed the village. But not bombed—the intelligence reports of women prisoners and villagers who were hostages, and the eyes of the world, put paid to this even though it would have been the preferred plan of those on the ground. Grozny was one of many warlords who would either be captured and stand costly trial, or else would be put to death in battle as an example—a cheap example, at that.

  His men fought hard and bravely on their terms, but those who lived through the initial onslaught were driven farther and farther back toward the village. There was only a mile between the oncoming forces and the rearguard action surrounding the village when Grozny decided that he must pull the plug.

  The sound of battle was distant but encroaching on Xiao’s thoughts as he watched the warlord marshal his men in the village. The villagers, who had of their own accord returned to their old homes, unable to break through the ring of firefighting made by the clashing forces, waited nervously. Grozny’s men in the village gathered what arms and supplies they had, dividing them up into packs that they could carry. Striding through the confusion as though he still had full command of the situation, the warlord waved an arm and at his command the trucks were set ablaze. It sent a clear signal to his men—and perhaps to those opposing them—that this was to be a scorched-earth policy.

  Xiao knew that this was inevitable, given what he knew of the man, yet he still felt the bile rise in his throat at what was to come.

  The villagers, cowed and subdued by six months of Grozny’s rule, huddled in the center of the village. Grozny took two men, each carrying a BXP-10, MAC-10 knockoff SMG and led them over to the villagers.

  “You said we would go free,” one of the women said in an accusatory tone.

  “You didn’t seriously believe me,” Grozny answered simply, taking an SMG off one of his men and tapping a continuous burst that raked the crowd even as they tried in vain to scatter. No one can be quicker than a bullet, and as the man who still held his BXP opened fire on the scattering villagers, it was inevitable that it took a matter of seconds to mow them down.

  “Come with me,” Grozny snapped at his men and Xiao, turning away without a second glance at the corpses on the ground. He strode toward the block where the women were housed, gathering two more men to him as he went.

  Xiao felt that familiar taste in his mouth again, but swallowed—this was not the time.

  “You, you, out now,” Grozny yelled at his medics.

  “But the work—”

  “Is over. We failed, okay? Never enough time in war, and I should know that by now,” he said bitterly.

  The medics needed no second bidding and were already out of the block by the time the women—some of them presently heavily pregnant—realized what was to happen. They started to move, to yell, some screamed hysterically—but it was too little and too late.

  Grozny opened the firing, his men joining in, spraying the room with SMG fire. The women did not have the chance to move far, and were easy targets. In the sudden silence within the block as firing ceased, there were no screams or whimpers: only the smell of cordite, blood and ordure, with the distant sound of battle getting closer by the second.

  “We have fuel from the trucks, yes? Then torch this place. Nothing must be left,” the warlord ordered.

  He strode away from the block, Xiao at his heels, to where two of his men were waiting with prepared packs similar to the ones they already carried. Xiao looked back to see the first flames flicker in the block in an attempt to obliterate the obscenity within.

  “Fuck it, man—that was the third time I’ve had to do that,” Grozny said in an almost offhand manner. “If I’d had the time...”

  Xiao watched him take the pack and load it on his back before taking the one that was offered to him.

  “Every man for himself,” Grozny said, raising a rueful grin. “Maybe I’ll see you again sometime.”

  He turned and started for the hills without looking back. Xiao watched him, for a moment not thinking about his own escape.

  The plan would no longer work. The warlord would be a criminal rather than a heroic leader. That was war.

  Xiao hoped he would never have to see Vijas Grozny

  again.

  Chapter 1

  “You have seen this?”

  The newspaper was Dutch, and the middle-aged diplomat’s grasp of the language was shaky. He spoke seven languages fluently, and had a smattering of eight others, mostly acquired in service of his country over a twenty-year period. He was presently in his late forties, with his receding hair cropped short and flecked with gray. He needed spectacles to read the small print. He was also surprised that the junior ambassador had brought the paper to him himself, rather than send a lackey. Come to that, he was not aware that the local press was particularly allowed on any premises belonging to the People’s Republic. He spoke as he fumbled with his spectacles.

  “My Dutch is not strong, but if you would tell me what I am supposed to be looking for, then—”

  He was cut short not by any of the words that still swam blurrily on the page before him, but rather by the photograph that took up one-eighth of the broadsheet space. It was not a good study, being snatched as the subject was hustled out of a secure unit on his way to court. But it was recognizable as him, even after the best part of two decades.

  The hair had grown long, the curls straightened by the weight of the gray-and-white curtain it formed. The beard was bushy rather than curled, where it had grown over the years. But the eyes...even in a blurred newspaper photograph they glittered and burned darkly. The lean face—more lined, and perhaps even leaner than it had been back then—was set as hard as the one he had known so well.

  “Vijas Grozny. He has changed. We all have. But it is him. Unmistakable.”

  The junior ambassador curtly nodded a
ssent.

  “Then you realize why you are here.”

  * * *

  “HE DOESN’T LOOK like some kind of warlord, does he?”

  Simeon Boer was a young man, not long qualified, and this was to be his first assist in a major trial. He wasn’t supposed to enter the secure area and look at the accused the evening before the trial was to begin, but it would never be his debut again. That was how he reasoned it to himself, and how he had persuaded Ronald Koemans to allow him access to the secure zone.

  “What do warlords look like?” Koemans questioned. He was only a year or two senior to Boer but had been a guard for five years. He had seen a lot of warlords, and knew that they looked like the middle-aged guy who served him pizza every evening when his shift ended: like anyone.

  “I don’t know,” Boer murmured. “I guess I expected something a bit more...a bit more military, or even badass, I guess.”

  Koemans’s mouth quirked. “They were badass and military nearly twenty years ago. But that’s a long time ago.”

  “I guess. It’s just that he looks like Santa Claus gone to the dark side.” Boer shrugged.

  Koemans snorted. “Then that is one Bad-Mutha Santa, that’s all I can say.”

  Boer was silent for a while, studying his man. Finally, all he could say was, “Yeah, I guess so...”

  While they had been talking, Grozny had been sitting at his desk, reading and making notes—presumably for his defense counsel on the morrow—but presently he looked up and stared straight into the lens of the CCTV camera. Even from the monitor, his eyes seemed to bore into the two men as they stood in the monitor room, watching him as he seemed to watch them.

  Boer turned away, while Koemans, unnerved in a way that was unusual for him, switched off the monitor. It was poor practice, but he figured a few moments wouldn’t hurt, and when he turned it on again, Grozny would have returned to his notes.

  The two men stood in the CCTV suite of the Penitentiary Institution Haaglanden, about two miles from the Hague courthouse used for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The facility housed its inmates in a relative luxury that had seen the building referred to with no little bitterness as the “Hague Hilton.” Grozny had the same facilities as all inmates—granted so that the accused had the emphasis of innocent until proven guilty, as proscribed by the first judge of the tribunal. It was certainly a greater luxury than they would—or indeed had—granted those who had been under their governance. But then their own attitudes had changed: former bitter enemies who would have once taken great delight in the death of each other mixed and played backgammon and chess like old comrades within the confines of the prison.