The Wolf of Sarajevo by Matthew Palmer Page A

head and laughed. “Even asking that question makes me feel like a character from
Law & Order
.”
    â€œNot here.”
    They were standing in the embassy’s expansive atrium, a corner of which had been given over to a coffee bar. Eric had just gotten his usual morning fix, a double espresso straight up, when Sarah had arrived looking like she had already had several shots.
    It had been four days since Eric had agreed to help her. Sincethen, Sarah had passed through the embassy on several occasions, but she never stayed for long. Eric expected that she was there just to use the commo facilities and read the traffic.
    â€œMy office?” he suggested.
    â€œNot there either.”
    â€œMy office isn’t secure enough?”
    It looked to Eric as though there was something Sarah wanted to say in response but that she had changed her mind.
    â€œMaybe I just feel like some fresh air,” she said instead. “It’s a beautiful day out. Let’s go for a ride.”
    â€œI have a meeting at two.”
    â€œCancel it.”
    â€œWhere are we going?”
    â€œI’ll tell you in the car.”
    Sarah was like that. She had always been like that: secretive and demanding, maddening and passionate, selfish and generous. Eric had loved her for her dualities even as they had made him crazy. Part of him wanted to refuse on principle, but he knew that he could not.
    Twenty minutes later, they were in Sarah’s car, a rented Peugeot 308, headed north on the major road leading to the RS.
    It was unseasonably warm, with clear blue skies and just enough of a breeze to keep the diesel fumes from settling over the city like a shroud.
    â€œOkay, what’s the big lead?” Eric asked. “Was it Colonel Mustard in the billiard room with the candlestick? I never trust a guy with a mustache big enough to do double duty as a comb-over.”
    â€œNothing so dramatic, I’m afraid. But I’ve been working my oldnetwork in Srpska along with some of our more recent acquisitions. It can be a slow process. A mentor of mine once told me that operational intel work is like being a spider on a web trying to read the vibrations of the various threads. If you can feel them, the vibrations will tell you that you’ve got prey trapped, how big it is, and where it is on the web. But you have to keep a light touch. If you grab the threads too hard, you can’t read the vibrations.
    â€œIn any event, one of my old assets got word to me that he had something on Mali that he was willing to share. There’ll be a price, of course. This guy was pretty mercenary back in the day. But he worked cheap, and I think I can cover his fee out of what I can dig out of the station’s couch cushions.”
    â€œSo where are we going?”
    â€œZvornik.”
    Zvornik was a depressed postindustrial town on the banks of the Drina River. Although right across the river from its sister city in Serbia, Mali Zvornik, or “little Zvornik,” Zvornik had been 60 percent Bosniak before the war. The paramilitaries had zeroed in on Zvornik early in the conflict. Arkan’s Tigers and the Scorpions had been the most aggressive, running concentration camps, blowing up mosques, and stealing everything that was not nailed down. Decades after the fighting, Zvornik was still a hotbed of ethnic nationalism.
    â€œDo you have security of some kind for this little exercise?”
    â€œWell, I’m traveling with a big strong man,” Sarah said flirtatiously.
    â€œWhere is he? In the trunk? Maybe you should let him out. Give him some air.”
    â€œYou’re still funny, Eric. I always liked that about you.”
    Eric was somewhat chagrined at the way Sarah’s simplecompliment delivered a strong shot of dopamine to the pleasure center of his brain. It was clear to him that his feelings for her had not entirely faded.
No good can come of this,
he warned himself.
    â€œWho’s the