Chapter 6: Midnight talks
The bus to Pristina rattled and coughed, a tired metal beast filled with the smell of diesel, cheap tobacco, and wet wool. Vanja sat by a grimy window, her forehead pressed against the cool glass, watching the bleak winter landscape slide past—barren fields, skeletal trees, the occasional farmhouse with a tendril of smoke fighting the grey sky. Checkpoints came and went; a bored policeman would board, glance at identity cards, his eyes lingering a fraction too long on the foreign woman before moving on. Each time, her heart performed the same tight, familiar squeeze. She presented her Swiss passport and her vaguely worded press accreditation from a Bern newspaper that wouldn’t exist for another decade. It always worked. The illusion held.
The city unfolded like a bruise. Pristina was a study in dissonance: brutalist socialist blocks shoulder-to-shoulder with Ottoman-era mosques, grand Yugoslav monuments stained with graffiti, streets bustling with a tense, purposeful energy. She got off near the university, the cold air a slap. For hours, she just walked. She bought a bitter coffee from a kiosk, sipping it as she wandered through the Çarshia e Madhe, the old bazaar, where the scent of roasting corn and grilled meat fought with the odor of wet stone and drains. She watched old men playing dominoes in cafes, their faces etched with stories she could only guess at. She saw the posters—some torn, some fresh—advertising Serbian cultural events, and others, more clandestine, with the black eagle of Albania sprayed hastily on alley walls. The city was a whispered argument.
Her feet took her to the library almost of their own volition. The modern, angular building from the ’80s stood as a fortress of knowledge, its concrete facade stark. Inside, the vast central atrium soared, but the grandeur was frayed. The air was still, thick with the scent of aging paper and neglect. A few students hunched over texts, their concentration a palpable force. She found a carrel in a secluded corner of the history section, surrounded by volumes on Balkan ethnography. She pulled out her notebook, but the words wouldn’t come. She was tracing the embossed title of a book on medieval Serbian kingdoms when a shadow fell across the page.
“The De Administrando Imperio? Light reading.”
She looked up. Bahri stood there, a worn leather satchel slung over one shoulder. He wore a dark wool coat, open over a simple sweater. His hair was tousled, as if he’d been running his hands through it. His eyes, that impossible shade of intense blue, held a warmth that seemed to physically push back the library’s chill.
“Just getting a feel for the local… narratives,” she said, a small smile touching her lips.
He nodded toward the empty chair opposite her. “May I?”
“It’s a free country.” The words hung between them, heavy with irony. He sat.
He didn’t ask her why she was here, or what she was really doing. Instead, he leaned forward, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial library murmur. “I saw you. Walking near the bazaar. You looked… lost in thought.”
“Just observing.”
“A dangerous pastime.”
“So I’m learning.”
Silence settled, but it was easy. Comfortable. He pulled a book from his bag—a German-language engineering textbook. She raised an eyebrow.
“My father’s insistence,” he said, following her gaze. “A practical trade for a practical future. In Germany.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
He shrugged, a fluid, expressive motion. “The future here seems to require other skills.” He closed the book. “Do you follow football?”
The non-sequitur made her blink, then laugh softly. “Football?”
“It’s a universal language. Safer than history.”
She leaned back, crossing her arms. “Manchester United.”
His face lit up with genuine surprise and delight. “Really? Cantona? The king?”
“And Scholes. And Giggs.” She felt a grin spreading, real and unforced. “You?”
she smiled not telling him
she likes Bayern Munich too.
“Bayern München. A German childhood has its influences.” He mimed taking a powerful shot. “Klinsmann. Effenberg.”
They talked. It was absurd. They spoke of stadium atmospheres, terrible refereeing decisions, the virtues of a 4-4-2 formation. He described watching matches in a Munich beer hall with his father, the roar of the crowd. She spoke of traveling to Basel’s St. Jakob-Park with her brothers, the smell of fried dough and grass. The conversation flowed, a bright, clear stream cutting through the murk of their reality. It shifted to cities. The orderly, clean efficiency of Basel versus the chaotic, vibrant mess of Munich. He knew her city, had visited the Kunstmuseum, had walked along the Rhine.
“The food there is… polite,” he said, grinning.
“And here?” she challenged.
“Here, food has feeling. Gjiro that burns your soul. Flija that takes all day to make, layer by layer.” His eyes grew distant, soft. “My grandmother’s flija… the smell of it cooking over the fire. It’s the smell of home.”
“I haven’t had good flija since I arrived,” she admitted, the confession feeling more intimate than it should.
He looked at her, his gaze direct. “Next time I see you, I’ll bring you some. Hers.”
She laughed, the sound too loud for the library. She hushed herself, leaning in. “Will you just carry it with you everywhere? In your pocket?”
“Why not?” He mirrored her posture, their heads close together over the wooden table. “What’s the worst that could happen? I get hungry, I snack on it.”
The image was so silly, so wonderfully normal, that her laughter bubbled up again. She saw his own smile, wide and unguarded, and something in her chest loosened, a knot she hadn’t fully acknowledged. She knew, with the sharp, rational part of her mind, that this was likely a dance. He was UÇK, or close to it. This easiness, this charm, was a tool. He was gathering intelligence, assessing a Swiss woman with strange access. She was doing the same, in her way. But in this moment, nestled in the quiet canyon of books, the calculus fell away. She felt like herself. Not the performer for Pendic, not the target for Marko, not the anxious time-displaced ghost. Just Vanja. Smart, witty, capable of laughing about pastry with a handsome man.
She saw the same unburdening in him. The fierce intensity in his eyes had softened, replaced by a light, playful warmth. He looked younger. He was watching her laugh, and his expression held a kind of grateful wonder, as if she were a fascinating, unexpected phenomenon.
The daylight through the high windows began to fade, staining the marble floors a deep orange. The students packed up. The library’s silence grew deeper, more profound.
“It’s getting late,” he said, reluctantly. “The buses become less reliable. I can drive you back to Podujevo.”
The offer hung in the air, dangerous and enticing. “Is that wise?”
“It’s a car ride. In the dark.” He stood, slinging his satchel over his shoulder. “Come on. Before you resort to eating Byzantine military histories for dinner.”
His car was a black Audi 80, clean and solid, parked on a side street. It felt like a spacecraft compared to Marko’s Lada. The interior smelled of leather and clean male scent. The engine purred to life, a subdued, powerful sound. He drove with competent ease, his hands relaxed on the wheel.
As the city lights receded and the dark, wooded road to Podujevo enveloped them, the intimacy of the enclosed space became a third presence. The easy banter faded, replaced by a charged quiet. She watched his profile, illuminated by the green glow of the dashboard.
“How can you be sure no one will see us?” she asked, her voice quiet in the cocoon of the car.
He chuckled, a low, rich sound. “I can’t.”
“That’s reassuring.”
“But the Snake is not in his nest tonight,” Bahri said, his tone shifting, losing its lightness. “He and his men are occupied. A warehouse raid in Mitrovica. Alleged smuggling. Let’s just say Serbian police has better things to do tonight than track you.”
Her breath froze in her chest. The casual use of the moniker. The specific knowledge of Marko’s movements. It was a statement, a reveal, and a warning, all in one. He was telling her he knew exactly who Marko was to her, and what he was doing. And he was telling her he had sources, he had intelligence. The game was back on, the board visible between them in the dark.
He didn’t elaborate. He just drove.
He pulled up a block from her building, the car idling smoothly. Not at her door. A professional courtesy.
“Thank you,” she said, her hand on the door handle. “For the ride. And the… conversation.”
He nodded once, a sharp, clean acknowledgment. His eyes met hers in the dim light. No smile. No goodbye. Just that intense, all-consuming look that stripped away the pretense of football and pastry. Then he looked back at the road, waiting for her to leave.
She went out of his Audi and closed the door with a soft, solid thud. She didn’t look back. She walked toward her building, feeling the weight of his gaze until she heard the soft rumble as he pulled away. She allowed herself one glance at the taillights disappearing around the corner.
Inside her cold apartment, she leaned against the locked door. Vanja felt crazy, but knew she was not. The attraction was a live wire, different from the brutal pull she felt with Marko. This was cleaner, sharper, based on a recognition of mind, on a shared, unspoken understanding of the gilded cage they were both in. She liked him. It was stupid, it was potentially suicidal, but he was handsome and he was smart, and for a few hours in a dusty library, he had made her forget the year, the war, the snake coiled in her life.
She prepared for bed, the routine motions grounding. As she lay in the dark, the memories of the day replayed—his laugh, the focused way he listened, the confidence in his driving, the deliberate drop of Marko’s alias. The two men existed in her mind now as opposing forces: one of crushing possession, the other of tantalizing, dangerous possibility. Sleep came slowly, not as an escape, but as a deep, quiet pool where those two shadows circled each other in the silence.
Sleep came slowly, not as an escape, but as a deep, quiet pool where those two shadows circled each other in the silence. She swam in that murky water for hours, half-dreaming of library carrels and the smooth purr of a German engine. Then, a sound—not dreamt. A key scraped metal. Her lock turned with a definitive clunk.
Her eyes flew open. The digital clock glowed 03:17. The apartment door swung inward, a wedge of hallway light framing a massive silhouette. Marko stepped inside, closed the door, and locked it again. The room filled with the smell of him—sweat, stale tobacco, cheap slivovitz, and something else, ferric and sharp.
He didn’t turn on the light. He just stood there, breathing heavily. She pushed herself up on her elbows, the sheets pooling at her waist. “Marko?”
He crossed the room in three strides. His knees hit the mattress, and his weight dipped the bed. His hands, cold and rough, cradled her face. He kissed her. It was a desperate, hungry thing, all lips and teeth and the hot, alcoholic slide of his tongue. The taste of him was brutal, a complex burn of plum brandy and violence.
When he pulled back an inch, the scant light from the window caught the front of his shirt. A dark, wet smear stained the grey fabric from collar to sternum, blotting out the pattern. It wasn’t mud. It had that unmistakable blackish-red hue in the low light, sticky-looking. Her stomach dropped.
“Are you okay?” she whispered, her hands coming up to clutch his wrists. “Is that… are you hurt?”
He shook his head, a quick, jarring movement. “Not mine.” His voice was a gravelly ruin. He kissed her again, deeper, as if to drink the question from her mouth. His fingers left her face to fumble with the buttons of his shirt. He gave up, grabbing the collar and yanking it apart. Buttons pinged across the wooden floor. He shrugged the ruined garment off, letting it fall. His skin was hot, the hard plane of his chest heaving.
He was on her then, his body a crushing, welcome weight. He shoved the sheets aside, his big hands groping her bare thighs, pushing them apart. He was still in his trousers, the coarse fabric abrasive against her skin, the rigid line of his erection pressing insistently against her through the wool. “Need you,” he grunted into her neck, his breath scalding. “Now. Fucking need to be inside you.”
She didn’t hesitate. She reached between them, unsnapping his trousers, shoving them down his hips just enough. He sprang free, thick and demanding. She was ready, had been achingly awake since the key turned, a slick heat gathering between her legs that had nothing to do with tenderness. She guided him to her entrance, her fingers wrapping his shaft. He hissed, a sharp intake of breath.
He pushed in with one relentless, unforgiving thrust. She cried out, her back arching off the bed, her nails digging into the sweaty skin of his shoulders. He was impossibly full, stretching her, claiming the empty space Bahri’s conversation had left. He didn’t wait for her to adjust. He set a punishing rhythm immediately, each snap of his hips driving the breath from her lungs. The bed slammed against the wall in a steady, drumming protest.
“That’s it,” he snarled, his face buried in her hair. “Take it. Fucking take all of it.” His hands slid under her ass, lifting her, angling her so he could plunge deeper. Each impact was a jolt of pure, mindless sensation. The raw, carnal smell of sex and blood and sweat filled the dark room. She wrapped her legs around his waist, locking her ankles, meeting every drive with a upward grind of her own.
It was hard. It was great. It was a frantic, physical erasure of whatever hell he’d just walked out of. She could feel the tension pouring out of him, the coiled-spring violence of his evening translating into this primal, fucking rhythm. She came first, a sharp, surprising climax ripped from her by the sheer force of his possession, her internal muscles clamping around him in fierce, fluttering waves.
He followed seconds later. With a choked, guttural roar that was almost pained, he buried himself to the root and held there, shuddering. She felt the hot, liquid pulse of his release flooding her core. He collapsed on top of her, a dead weight of muscle and exhaustion, his breath sawing in her ear. Within minutes, it evened out. Deepened. He was asleep.
She lay pinned beneath him, his spent cock still softening inside her, his weight a concrete reality. The coppery scent of blood from his discarded shirt mixed with the musky smell of their sex. She stared at the ceiling, listening to his sleep, her body humming, her mind a static blank. Eventually, she drifted off.
The sound of the shower running pulled her from sleep. Grey morning light filtered through the thin curtains. The other side of the bed was empty, but the imprint of his body remained, a crater in the mattress. She heard the water shut off. The bathroom door opened, steam curling into the room.
He emerged, a white towel slung low around his hips. Water droplets glistened on the sculpted ridges of his abdomen and the powerful V of his torso. His chest was broad and muscular, pale skin marred by a few old, silvery scars. And on the left side, covering much of his pectoral and curling over his shoulder, was a tattoo. It wasn’t military. It was an intricate, old-school design of a coiled serpent woven with roses and dagger, the ink a deep, smoky black against his skin. It was beautiful, and it looked violently tender.
He caught her looking. A faint, tired smirk touched his lips, and he winked. Heat flooded her cheeks. She looked away, pulling the sheet up.
“Hard night?” she asked, her voice morning-rough.
“Yes.” He walked to the pile of his clothes, picking up the bloodstained shirt with distaste. He pulled on his trousers, then a fresh, clean undershirt from his go-bag, which hid the tattoo. He dressed with efficient, impersonal movements. “I need to go. I’ll have lots of work.”
He sat on the edge of the bed to pull on his boots. She reached out, her hand resting on his back. The muscles there were tense as steel cable. “Be careful. Please.”
He turned his head, looked at her over his shoulder. His eyes were clear now, the ice-blue sharpness returned, but something softer lingered in them, just for a second. He nodded. Then he leaned over and kissed her, a brief, firm press of his lips against hers. It wasn’t the desperate kiss from the night. It was an acknowledgment. A punctuation mark.
He stood, gathered his things, and left. The door clicked shut behind him.
Vanja lay back, the silence of the apartment rushing in to fill the space he’d occupied. Her heart skipped a single, hard beat against her ribs. His first instinct, it seemed, had been to come to her. Not to the barracks. Not to some other woman. Here. To the fox in his cage. The realization was terrifying. It was a thread of something real, something perilous, woven into the brutal fabric of everything else. She pressed her thighs together, still feeling the delicious, bruised ache he’d left behind, and stared at the empty doorway.
She pressed her thighs together, still feeling the delicious, bruised ache he’d left behind, and stared at the empty doorway.
The week that followed was a study in suspended animation. Vanja moved through her days with a heightened, prickling awareness. She wrote bland dispatches about municipal infrastructure. She drank coffee with Pendic, nodding as he boasted about declining crime statistics. She avoided the police station. Every sighting of a black Audi, every footstep that seemed to pause outside her door, made her breath catch. But Bahri didn’t reappear. Marko was a distant storm, his presence limited to a single phone call—terse, official, asking if she needed anything. She said no.
The silence from both fronts was somehow worse than the confrontation.
On Thursday, driven by a need for something real, she went to the open-air market. It was a cacophony of life, a defiant splash of color against the grey. Farmers sold wrinkled apples and root vegetables. Butchers displayed skinned lambs, the flesh a bright, shocking red. Old women in headscarves presided over mounds of spices—paprika, flija seasoning, vibrant yellow.
She bought a bag of walnuts, just to have something to do with her hands.
She went to the park but then as dusk started to settle, something felt off.
The feeling began as a soft itch between her shoulder blades, a primitive alert. She was being watched. Not the usual casual, male appreciation. This was focused. Surgical. She pretended to examine a bolt of embroidered cloth, her fingers tracing the pattern. In the tarnished mirror of a merchant’s cart, she saw a reflection. A man, tall, wearing a brown leather jacket, stood thirty meters back, apparently engrossed in a bin of rusty engine parts. He was too well-built to be a mechanic, his posture too still. He hadn’t been there a minute ago.
Her pulse, which had been a steady drum, switched to a frantic, staccato rhythm. She moved, slipping between two stalls selling identical buckets. She ducked behind a hanging curtain of carpets, the wool smelling of lanolin and dust. Peeking through a gap, she saw him. He’d moved. He was closer now, his head turning slowly, methodically scanning the crowd. His profile was unmistakable. Bahri.
This wasn’t a coincidence. This wasn’t a man hoping to bump into her with a parcel of filija. This was surveillance. Cold, professional, and skilled. The man from the library, who spoke of football and his grandmother’s cooking, was tracking her through a crowded market with the detached precision of a predator. The realization was a bucket of ice water dumped directly into her gut.
She turned and walked, not too fast, heading for the maze of narrow alleys behind the main square. Her apartment was ten minutes away. She didn’t dare lead him there. She heard the echo of her own boots on the cobbles, then, a half-beat later, the echo of another, heavier pair. He wasn’t even trying to hide it now. The game was up.
She broke into a run. The alley twisted, strung with laundry, cluttered with broken furniture. She dashed right, then left, her breath sawing in her lungs. She burst out onto a quieter residential street, nearly colliding with an old man pulling a cart. “Sorry!” she gasped in Albanian, not stopping.
A hand closed around her upper arm from behind, spinning her around. The grip was iron-firm, not brutal, but utterly inescapable. She found herself pressed against the cold stucco wall of a building, Bahri’s body caging her in. His face was close, his breath warm on her cheek. He smelled of leather and the cold outdoors. His intense eyes held no warmth now, only a fierce, burning calculation.
“Why are you running from me, Vanja?” His voice was low, urgent. “What are you afraid I’ll see?”
“Get the fuck off me,” she spat, trying to wrench her arm free. It was like trying to move stone.
“You meet with the Snake in the dark. He comes to your apartment smelling of other men’s blood. And you walk through my city’s markets taking notes with your Swiss hands.” He leaned in, his lips almost touching her ear. “Who do you work for?”
“I’m a journalist,” she hissed, her heart hammering against her ribs. “You know that.”
“I know nothing,” he said, his other hand coming up to grip her jaw, forcing her to look at him. “Except that you are a beautiful lie. And lies are dangerous here. They get people killed.” His thumb stroked her cheekbone, a terrifying parody of a caress. “Tell me the truth. Now.”
In that moment, pinned and exposed, the only weapon she had was the one he’d already shown a weakness for. Her truth was a secret she could never tell. So she used the other one. She stopped struggling. She let her body go pliant against the wall. She met his searing gaze, and she let her own fill with a different, more visceral kind of fear—the kind that blurred the line with arousal.
“Is this how you ask?” she whispered, her voice trembling. “By pinning women in alleys?”
Something flickered in his eyes—confusion, then a dawning, dark understanding. He saw the shift. He felt it. His grip on her jaw softened, just a fraction. His gaze dropped to her mouth.
“It’s how I get answers,” he murmured, but the conviction was leaking from his voice.
“You want an answer?” She lifted her chin, a challenge. “Then ask a better question.”
He stared at her for a long, fraught second. The street was silent around them. Then, a sound escaped him—a low, frustrated groan. His mouth crashed down on hers.
This kiss was nothing like the library, nothing like Marko’s desperate claim. This was pure, unadulterated fury and wanting. It was hard and searching and devastatingly skilled. His tongue swept into her mouth, and she kissed him back with equal fervor, a surrender and an attack all at once. Her hands, trapped between their bodies, fists into the soft leather of his jacket. He released her arm to snake his hand around her waist, yanking her hips flush against his. She could feel his erection, rigid and massive, even through their layers of clothing. He ground against her, a slow, deliberate rotation that made her whimper into his mouth.
He broke the kiss, breathing ragged. “You are a trap.”
“You followed me,” she gasped.