Chapter 2: The Watcher's Report
The report arrived in a plain manila envelope, hand-delivered to the house in Königstein by a cousin who worked for Lufthansa. Besim Halimi took it into his study just after dinner, closing the heavy oak door against the sound of his wife watching television in the den. The room was his sanctuary, lined with books he had read and books he displayed for effect. A map of the Balkans, faded and framed, hung behind the desk. Another, newer, showed his shipping routes across the Mediterranean.
He settled into the leather armchair, the material sighing under his weight. He slit the envelope with an ivory letter opener. The report was typed, dense, in Serbian. His man in Priština, a retired police inspector with a gambling debt Besim quietly covered, was thorough.
Subject: Vanja Halimi (using Albijanić)
Besim’s eyes narrowed at the parentheses. She was using her mother’s name. A deliberate choice. He read on.
Her movements were mundane, academic. The library. The café called Dielli. The new apartment. He noted the purchase of the desk, the rug. The titles of some books: economic histories, sociopolitical analyses of Yugoslavia. Serious reading. His little girl, who had once preferred fashion magazines and pop music. He felt a flicker of pride, immediately smothered by unease.
Then his finger stopped halfway down the page.
Subject has shown specific interest in the Jashari family of Prekaz. Made inquiries at the university archives regarding land registries in Drenica municipality, with focus on the Jashari compound. On October 12, subject engaged in a public confrontation with Luan Jashari (son of Adem) at the Kafana Zori in Podujevo. Interaction was verbal, tense. Jashari appeared agitated. Subject remained calm. Owner Rasim Bekteshi (Albanian) known to subject; interaction suggested prior familiarity.
The words seemed to pulse on the page. Confrontation. Luan Jashari. Agitated.
Besim leaned back, the chair creaking. He looked at a photograph on his desk: Vanja at sixteen, laughing on a beach in Durrës, sun-bleached and carefree. The young woman in this report was a stranger. A confrontation with a Jashari? In a public café? It wasn’t recklessness. It was a maneuver. But toward what end?
He poured a finger of whiskey from the decanter, the amber liquid catching the lamplight. He did not hate Serbs. He did business with them. He understood them as a force of nature, like a flood or a drought—something to be channeled, survived, or exploited. The Jasharis were a different matter. They were a spark in a dry forest. Amateurs with guns and a death wish, who would bring the whole fire down on everyone. His daughter had walked directly into that spark and stared it down.
Why?
The report continued, noting the watcher in the blue Zastava was made, that she had waved from her balcony. A small, grim smile touched Besim’s lips. She was Halimi, after all. She had his eyes.
He picked up the phone, the heavy rotary dial feeling solid in his hand. He called the apartment in Priština. It rang six times before she answered.
“Da?” Her voice was slightly breathless, as if she’d been moving.
“Vanja, it’s your father.” He spoke in Albanian, the language of their home.
A pause. “Babi. Is everything okay?”
“Everything is fine. Your mother misses you.” He swirled the whiskey. “I miss you. The house is too quiet.”
She gave a soft laugh. “It’s only been a week.”
“A long week. Come home for a few days. Eat your mother’s cooking. Let me see you.”
Another pause, longer this time. He could hear the hum of the Priština line, the faint sound of a siren in the distance from her end. “I’m settling in, babi. My studies…”
“Your studies can wait a weekend.” He kept his tone light, warm. The benevolent patriarch. “I have some people coming from Zagreb. Businessmen. It would be good for you to meet them.”
He heard the flick of a lighter, the long exhale of a cigarette. She’d started smoking again. He stored the information away.
“I’m not really interested in meeting businessmen from Zagreb,” she said, her tone teasing but edged with steel.
“You should be. The world is built by businessmen.” He took a sip. “Vanja, listen to me. Priština… it’s a small town. People talk. You’re drawing attention.”
The line went very quiet. The siren had faded.
“What kind of attention?” Her voice was flat, all pretense of lightness gone.
“The kind a beautiful young woman living alone does not need.” He chose his words like stepping stones. “You speak beautifully, but sometimes you speak to the wrong people. In the wrong places. Not all attention is good.”
He waited. He could picture her in that bare apartment, standing by the wall where the phone was mounted, her free arm wrapped around herself, those strange, knowing eyes fixed on some point in the middle distance.
“I’m just having coffee, babi. Reading books.”
“Coffee can be misconstrued. Books can be misunderstood.” He let a sliver of real warning into his voice. “The Jashari boy. That was not wise.”
“He started it.” The response was so childlike, so unexpectedly petty, that he almost laughed.
“He is a lit fuse,” Besim said, all humor gone. “You do not play with lit fuses. You step away. You let them burn out in a field, away from anything valuable.”
“And if the whole field is valuable?” she shot back, her voice low and intense. “What then? Do you just watch it burn?”
The question hung between them, stretching across the miles of wire. It was not a question his twenty-year-old daughter would ask. It was the question of a general, or a revolutionary. It chilled him.
“You come home,” he said, his final word. It was not a request. “This weekend. We will talk. You will see your brother Dren. Your mother will cook tavë kosi. No arguments.”
He heard her take another drag of the cigarette. “Fine,” she said, the fight draining out, replaced by a hollow resignation. “I’ll come Friday.”
“Good. I’ll send someone to the airport.”
“Don’t bother. I’ll take a taxi.”
“As you wish.” He softened his tone. “I worry for you, zemra. That is my job.”
“I know,” she said. The words were weary. “I’ll see you Friday.”
He placed the receiver back in its cradle. The study felt suddenly too warm, the smell of leather and paper cloying. He looked at the report again, at the lines about Luan Jashari. He thought of his daughter’s question. What if the whole field is valuable?
He finished the whiskey in one burning gulp. She was planning something. She was in over her head. And she was no longer someone he could simply instruct. She was someone he would have to outmaneuver.
In Priština, Vanja hung up the phone. She stood in the dim kitchen, the glow from the streetlamp outside casting long shadows. The net was indeed tightening. Her father’s watchmen. His smooth, inescapable authority. The call was a reminder that her first battlefield was not the streets of Podujevo or the hills of Drenica, but her own family.
She stubbed out her cigarette in a saucer. Tavë kosi and businessmen from Zagreb. A pantomime of normalcy. She would go. She would smile. She would let her mother fuss.
But as she looked at the map on her wall, the red lines converging on Prekaz, she knew the clock in her head was ticking faster than any clock in Germany. The confrontation with Luan had been a probe, a first touch. It had worked. It had rattled him enough that his name had landed on her father’s desk. Now she had to turn that rattled attention into something useful.
She went to the balcony. The street was quiet. The blue Zastava was gone, replaced by a dark green Ford. Same driver, probably. She didn’t wave this time. She leaned on the railing, the cool metal biting into her forearms, and let the vast, sleeping darkness of the city fill her vision.
She would go to Germany. And while she was there, she would make a call. She needed a different kind of report, one her father’s man would never think to compile. She needed to know where Luan Jashari was right now, not where he had been. And for that, she needed someone who moved in darker, more desperate circles than a retired police inspector.
She had a name. A cousin of a cousin. A man in Frankfurt who could find things, for a price. Her father’s money, diverted for her own purposes. The irony was not lost on her.
The field was valuable. And she had no intention of watching it burn.
And she had no intention of watching it burn.
The weekend in Germany was a cage of good china and careful conversation. She ate the tavë kosi, smiled at the men from Zagreb, and let her mother brush her hair like she was a child again. Her father watched her, his eyes soft and calculating by turns. She gave him nothing but the expected daughter, a little tired from studying, bored by politics. She saw the doubt in his gaze, a man who trusted only what he could control, confronted by a variable he could not quite measure.
She made the call to Frankfurt from a payphone near the train station, a bland concrete box that smelled of urine and damp concrete. The cousin of a cousin listened, asked for a number, and promised nothing. She returned to Priština on Sunday evening, the plane dipping through banks of bruised autumn cloud.
Her watcher was back, parked under a skeletal linden tree across from her building. She saw the glow of his cigarette from her balcony. The game was tedious now, a waste of time she didn’t have. The report from Frankfurt arrived two days later, slipped under her door while she was out. It was a single line, a location scrawled on a receipt from a bar in Munich: Kafana Rinia, Wed. nights. He drinks espresso, talks to the waiter.
Tonight was Wednesday. The rain started at dusk, a cold, needling drizzle that iced the cobblestones. Vanja dressed with a deliberate, irritated speed. The dress was black, synthetic, bought from a dubious shop near the bus station. It was short, tight, and plunged in a way that felt less like fashion and more like tactical armor. She applied dark lipstick, smudged her eyeliner, and studied the result. She looked like someone going to a club, or to meet a lover.
She left her apartment, clicking the lock loudly. She didn’t look toward the green Ford. She walked with purpose, her heels echoing in the wet street, heading not towards the university district but towards the brighter, noisier grid of bars near the hotel. She felt the car crawl into motion a block behind her.
She turned a corner, then another, her pace quickening. She ducked into a narrow alley between two boarded-up shops, her breath fogging in the cold air. The green Ford would have to circle the block. She waited, pressed against the wet brick, listening for the engine. She heard it pass the alley’s mouth, slow, then accelerate away.
She moved, her heels slipping on the slick pavement. She needed to get off the street. A recessed doorway offered shallow shelter, dominated by a huge, bedraggled potted fir tree some optimistic merchant had left to die. She slid behind it, the prickly branches scraping her bare arms and snagging her dress. The rain pattered on the leaves above her.
“It’s you again.”
The voice came from her left, low and amused. She startled, whipping her head around. Luan Jashari stood under a small overhang from the next building, half-hidden in shadow. He was wearing a leather jacket, his hands shoved in his pockets, watching her with an expression of pure bewilderment.
“Shut up, Jashari,” she hissed, peering back towards the alley entrance.
“What are you doing hiding behind that huge plant?” he asked, genuinely confused.
“I’m being followed.”
He laughed, a short, disbelieving puff of air. “By whom? An imaginary friend?”
“No,” she snapped, her eyes still on the street. “A man.”
“Are you ok?” The question left him without thinking, the amusement gone from his voice.
“Yes,” she said, finally looking at him. The green-gold of her eyes was almost black in the low light. “He does not wish me harm. But he is writing reports, and I can’t have him see me like this.”
“Like what?” he asked, and then his gaze properly took her in.
She was wearing a dress, if it could be called a dress. It was short and tight. The plunging cleavage was a stark, pale line against the black fabric. His brain short-circuited for a second, his political suspicions colliding with a much more immediate, primal recognition. “Oh,” was all he could muster.
Vanja rolled her eyes, a gesture of profound exasperation. “Can you drive me to my apartment?” she asked in a half-whisper.
He nodded, a quick, tight motion. He stepped out from his cover, took her hand, and pulled her with him. His grip was warm and calloused. He led her quickly down a back lane to where a car was parked. It was a Mercedes, new, its dark paint glossy under the streetlamps.
“Nice ride,” she commented sarcastically as he unlocked the passenger door. “Life of crime and rebellion pays off?”
He stilled, his hand on the door handle. In the confined space of the wet alley, the words hung, ugly and raw. She made a face.
“Sorry. Sorry. That was stupid.”
He said nothing, just opened the door for her. He got in the driver’s side, started the engine, and pulled smoothly onto the empty street. The interior smelled of new leather and cigarette smoke. The windscreen wipers beat a steady rhythm.
“Where?” he asked, his voice tight.
She gave him the address. They drove in silence for five minutes, the only sound the swish of tires on wet asphalt and the low purr of the engine. He stopped in front of her building, the car idling. The park across the street was a dark, shapeless void.
“Thank you,” she said, her hand on the door latch. She hesitated, then looked at him. The dashboard lights lit the strong planes of his face, the stubborn set of his mouth. “Do you want to come up? For a coffee. Since I owe you one.”
He stared straight ahead, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. “If this is a trap,” he said, the words barely audible.
“A trap?” She laughed, but it wasn’t a cruel sound. It was tired. “Come on. You’re not that hot, and I’m not that desperate.” She pushed the door open. “The offer’s there. Five minutes. Then you can go back to judging me from a distance.”
She got out and walked towards the building entrance, not looking back. She heard the car’s engine cut. She heard his door open and close. His footsteps followed hers, swift and definite on the wet pavement. She led him up the three flights of stairs in the dim, echoing stairwell, fumbled with her key, and pushed the door open into the warmth of her apartment.
He paused on the threshold, his eyes scanning the room—the books, the map, the single photograph. It was the space of a thinker, not a party girl. The dissonance of the woman in the doorway and the room behind her was absolute.
“Espresso?” she asked, kicking off her heels and padding toward the small kitchenette.
He stepped inside, closing the door softly behind him. The lock clicked with a sound like a final decision. He leaned against the wall, watching her move in the kitchenette, the stark contrast between the vulnerable black dress and the mundane chore of filling a pot with water holding him in a kind of suspension.
“So,” he said, his voice echoing slightly in the sparse room. “Who was following you?”
She glanced over her shoulder, the espresso pot clinking in her hands. “Does it matter?”
“It might.” He pushed off the wall and walked slowly to her bookshelf, his fingers brushing the spines. The titles were a blunt taxonomy of collapse. He stopped at a slender, worn volume with no title on its spine. He pulled it out. The cover was pale blue, the Albanian title "Këngë Dashurie" handwritten in faded ink. Below it, in a younger, messier script, was the name Dren.
“Why do you have a book of Albanian love poetry?” he asked, turning it over in his hands.
“I’m learning,” she said, placing the pot on the stove. The gas hissed to life.
“Is it even yours?” He held it up, pointing to the name.
She turned, leaning back against the counter, crossing her arms. The gesture pulled the fabric of the dress tighter. “It belongs to someone I know.”
He made a face, a mix of skepticism and disbelief. He put the book back on the shelf with deliberate care, as if it were evidence. “Are you a student? Really?”
“I’m doing my Masters,” she said, meeting his gaze evenly. “Sociology. At the university.”
“You can’t be older than twenty,” he said, his eyes tracing the lines of her face, searching for a crack in the story.
She grinned then, a sudden, bright flash that transformed her. “Is that a problem? And no, I’m not. I’m just really smart.”
The grin disarmed him. It was a teenager’s boast, utterly at odds with the woman who had stared him down in Podujevo. “So why read Albanian love poems?” he pressed, circling back, unwilling to let the thread go. “For your Masters in sociology?”
“It’s for a project,” she said, turning back to the coffee. Her tone was light, dismissive. “On oral traditions and modern identity. The meter is different than in Serbian.” She looked at him again, her head tilted. “Can you help translate one? I’m practicing my pronunciation.”
He shook his head, a quick, sharp motion of refusal. “No.”
“Suit yourself.” She shrugged, taking two small cups from a cupboard. The rich, bitter smell of coffee began to permeate the room. “I’ll just ask someone else.”
He watched her pour the dark liquid, the steam curling in the lamplight. The normalcy of the act was somehow the most suspicious thing of all. He thought of the report his own people were probably compiling on her right now, the one that would land on his father’s table. Subject invited Luan Jashari to her apartment. They drank coffee. She asked about poetry. It sounded insane.
“I need to go now,” he said abruptly. He stood up from where he’d been leaning against the bookshelf.
“Oh.” She didn’t seem surprised, just faintly disappointed. She handed him the cup anyway. “You didn’t even try it. Rasim would be ashamed.”
He took the cup, swallowed the hot, strong coffee in two scalding gulses, and placed it empty on the desk. “Thank you for the ride,” she said, following him to the door. “I owe you one.”
“Take care, Albijanić,” he said, his hand on the doorknob.
“It’s Vanja,” she said, her voice firm but not sharp. “My name is Vanja.”
He nodded, a single downward tilt of his chin that conceded nothing and everything. Then he opened the door and was gone, his footsteps retreating quickly down the stairwell.
Vanja stood in the sudden silence, the echo of the closing door lingering in her bones. She walked to the window, pulling the curtain aside just enough to see the dark Mercedes glide away from the curb and vanish into the rain-smeared night. The green Ford was nowhere to be seen.
She let the curtain fall. The adrenaline that had been a wire in her blood since the alley snapped. She walked to her bed, sat on the edge, and then fell backwards. She grabbed her pillow, buried her face in it, and let out a muffled, guttural sound that was half-scream, half-laugh. Her body thrummed with a chaotic, electric static—the dizzying, foolish flutter of proximity to someone who mattered, layered over the cold, grinding dread of the calendar in her mind. February 1998. March 1998. The names of villages. The numbers of the dead.
She had touched the lit fuse. He had sat in her room. And now he would carry the scent of her coffee and the mystery of her poetry back into the shadows, where it would work on him. It was a start. It was also a terrifying new vector of everything that could go wrong.
She rolled onto her side, staring at the map on the wall. The red lines seemed to pulse in the low light. Vanja, she thought. He’d used the name. It was a small, stolen victory. She’d have to build an entire war from a million such fragile, stolen things. The weight of it pressed the air from her lungs. She closed her eyes, listening to the rain and the distant, familiar sound of a car engine idling somewhere down the block, patiently waiting for her next move. The fact he was most likely the most handsome man in Kosovo didn’t help.