Diane hung up the phone. “She’s on her way.”

Kevin went upstairs to get out of his suit and into some comfortable clothes. Defend the Honor of Serbia, he thought. How am I supposed to do that?

When Detective Weber arrived, she read the notes. “Is this one your daughter’s handwriting?”

“Yes,” Diane replied. “I know how she makes the capital “E” in Ellen. It’s her writing all right.”

“We’ll have these fingerprinted and analyzed. It’s good news. Ellen’s alive and the kidnappers may have given us some clues.”

“This ‘Honor of Serbia’ business,” Kevin said. “It’s the same thing that Zoran Vacinovic was trying to get me to do. He argued with me when I told him the court doesn’t allow the defense that the other side committed war crimes first. He said that the world was watching the trial and I needed to defend the honor of the Serbian people, not just Draga.”

Detective Weber nodded her head. “We have been looking at Vacinovic. He’s apparently highly placed in the Serbian secret police and well connected to the allies of former President Milosevic. He’s assigned to The Hague to monitor the war crimes trials for the government.”

“Do you think he’s involved?” Diane asked.

“I don’t know. We’ve been following him yesterday and today, but he’s just gone to the embassy and worked.”

“Can I go talk to him?” Kevin asked.

“Let’s wait on that and give our surveillance a little longer.”

“What should we do?” Diane asked. “What can we do?”

“You’re doing everything you can. Going to court with your husband was a good gesture. It shows the kidnappers that you are willing to do everything to get your daughter back. Maybe that will give them more reason to think their demands will be met.”

“Should we try to show that we are defending the honor of Serbia?” Kevin asked.

“Sure. The more they see you taking their demands seriously, the more likely we’ll hear from them again.”

Detective Weber took out some plastic bags and tweezers and began putting the letters and envelopes inside. “I’ll send these to the Forensic Department. They’ll look for fingerprints.”

“I just want to look at Ellen’s note one more time,” Diane said. “It’s the only part of her I have left.”

Diane and Kevin looked at the note again.

“Not a word misspelled,” Diane said.

“It’s odd that she capitalized some words in the middle of a sentence, though,” Kevin replied. “See, she’s capitalized Fine, Are, Return and Mommy.”

Kevin suddenly realized what Ellen had done. “I think she might be sending us a message. Those letters she’s capitalized spell FARM. She’s on a farm!”

Diane and Detective Weber looked at the note again.

“You’re right,” Diane said. “She likes those acrostic things. She wouldn’t have capitalized those words for any other reason.”

“That’s quite a girl,” Detective Weber said. “She slipped that past her captors.”

“She almost slipped it past us,” Kevin said. “Way to go Ellen!”

“What can you do if you know she’s on a farm?” Diane asked the detective. “There are lots of farms in Holland, and we don’t even know if she’s still in the country.”

“Well, we can concentrate on rural areas in Holland when distributing her picture. We can also interview feed-store owners and other businesses to see if anyone new has moved into a farm recently. I’m sure there are other things we’ll think of.”

As Kevin and Diane walked Detective Weber to the door, Kevin was feeling upbeat because Ellen was alive, and feeding them clues.

He wondered what it was like for her on the farm.

CHAPTER 25

At that very moment, Ellen was eating dinner with Hans, Jan, and Anna.

“My mom doesn’t make me eat green beans,” Ellen said. “I don’t like them.”

“You should learn to like them,” Anna replied.

Ellen grumbled and began picking at the beans. She ate a few green beans along with the pasta that Anna had cooked.

“Can I put in a few requests next time somebody goes shopping?” she asked.

“Like what?” Anna asked.

“Some Oreo cookies, fruit roll-ups, Pringle potato chips, that kind of stuff.”

“Forget it!” Anna said. “You get fresh fruit, green vegetables, and granola.”

Ellen groaned. “This is child abuse!”

Anna cleared the table while Ellen went out to the schoolroom.

“We’re not getting any good treats,” she said to Johanna as she bent down to play with the puppy. “I’ll get you some good stuff when we get to my house.”

Ellen wondered if her parents had received her letter. She hoped they had gotten her clue. Tomorrow, she would try to find out more about where they were so she could send another clue home.

If that didn’t work, she’d have to look into a way to escape.

The next morning, Diane and Kevin were in Courtroom 1 waiting for the judges to enter. They had decided to try to convince the court to allow evidence of the atrocities committed against the Serbs. At least they could show the kidnappers that they were trying to “defend the honor of Serbia.” A stack of six law books sat on the desk next to Diane, who would write the brief.

The prosecution’s next witness entered the courtroom a few minutes later. He had grown up in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, and was working as a waiter in a restaurant there when the Serbs started shelling and shooting down from the hills with sniper fire.

According to the witness, he and his friend, Dimitri Bojanovic, had been driving near the airport one night after having a few drinks at a bar when two Black Dragons with rifles stopped them. The men ordered them out of the car and took them into a warehouse, where they were interrogated about the location of the Muslim positions and the kind of arms the Muslim Army had. Both men claimed they were only waiters and did not fight for the Muslim forces. The warehouse was some kind of command center for the Black Dragons. Dozens of men in black uniforms and black berets were coming and going from the warehouse.

After the initial questioning, the witness and Bojanovic were taken to another office. Draga was behind the desk. The witness recognized him from television. Draga was wearing the Black Dragon uniform. He stood up and towered over the men. “You have one last chance,” he demanded. “Tell me the truth.”

The witness said he and his friend, Bojanovic, steadfastly insisted that they had nothing to do with the Muslim Army. “We are just waiters. We work all the time, we don’t have time to fight.” Draga stared at them intently as they begged him to believe them. When they had finished, he sat back down. “Very well, you have had your chance. I will take you at your word. If we see you in a Muslim uniform, you are dead.”

Draga told the two men they were free to leave. They scurried out of the warehouse and back into the witness’ car. They couldn’t believe that they had survived an encounter with the Black Dragons.

While they were driving home, according to the witness, Bojanovic wanted to tell a Muslim Army commander whom he knew about the location of the warehouse. He convinced the witness to drive up in the lower part of the hills so he could give the Muslims the location of the Black Dragons’ command center. Bojanovic directed the witness to an area where the Muslim army apparently was hiding.

When the witness stopped the car, Bojanovic got out and began running towards the trench. Suddenly, a shot rang out. Bojanovic fell to the ground. The witness looked back towards where the shot came from. He had a clear view of Draga, just lowering his rifle. Draga and his men then stormed the trench where the Muslim Army was hiding.

The witness was yanked from the car and thrown to the ground. He stayed there for about an hour while the Dragons launched grenades into the Muslim position. He heard screams from inside the bunker as explosions ripped it apart. When all was quiet, the Dragons stormed into the trench. All the Muslim soldiers were apparently dead.