Every evening he had gone to the bar around 7:30 for a predinner beer. About half an hour later a small group of Serbs in camouflage had entered. He did not think they were Yugoslav army because they did not have unit flashes on their shoulders.

They seemed very full of themselves and ordered drinks all around, slivovitz with beer chasers, a lethal combination. Several rounds of drinks later, the major was about to adjourn to the dining room because the noise was becoming deafening when another Serb arrived. He seemed to be the commander because the rest subsided.

He spoke to them in Serbian, and he must have ordered them to come with him. The men began to swig their beers and put their packs of cigarettes and lighters back in their uniform pockets. Then one of them offered to pay.

The commander went berserk. He started screaming at the subordinate. The rest went deathly quiet. So did the other customers and the barman. The tirade went on, accompanied by two slaps to the face. Still no one protested. Finally the leader stormed out. Crestfallen and subdued, the others followed. No one else offered to pay for the drinks.

"Did the commander rage at anyone else?" asked the Tracker.

"No, just at the one who had tried to pay," said the voice from Denmark.

"Why him alone, Major? There is no mention in your report as to any possible reason."

"Ah. Didn't I put that in? Sorry. I think it was because the man tried to pay with a hundred-dollar bill."

7 The Volunteer

The Tracker packed his gear and drove north from Travnik. He was passing from Bosnian (Muslim) territory into Serb-held country. But a British Union Jack fluttered from a pennant above the Lada and with luck that ought to deter long-range potshots. If stopped, he intended to rely on his passport, proof that he was just writing about relief aid, and generous presents of Virginia-made cigarettes bought from the Vitez barracks shop. If all that failed, his pistol was fully loaded, close to hand, and he knew how to use it.

He was stopped twice, once by a Bosnian militia patrol as he left Bosniacontrolled country and once by a Yugoslav army patrol south of Banja Luka. Each time his explanation, documents, and presents worked. He rolled into Banja Luka five hours later.

The Bosna Hotel was certainly never going to put the Ritz out of business, but it was about all the town had. He checked in. There was plenty of room. Apart from a French TV crew, he judged he was the only foreigner staying there. At 7:00 that evening he entered the bar. There were three other drinkers-all Serbs, and all seated at tables-and one barman. He straddled the stool at the bar.

"Hallo. You must be Dusko."

He was open, friendly, charming. The barman shook the proffered hand. "You been here before?"

"No, first time. Nice bar. Friendly bar."

"How you know my name?"

"Friend of mine was posted here recently. Danish fellow. Lasse Bjaerregaard. He asked me to say hi if I was passing through."

The barman relaxed considerably. There was no threat here.

"You Danish?"

"No, British."

"Army?"

"Heavens no. Journalist. Doing a series of articles about aid agencies. You'll take a drink with me?"

Dusko helped himself to his own best brandy. "I would like to be a journalist one day. Travel. See the world."

"Why not? Get some experience on the local paper, then go to the big city. That's what I did."

The barman shrugged in resignation. "Here? Banja Luka? No paper."

"So try Sarajevo. Even Belgrade. You're a Serb. You can get out of here. The war won't last forever."

"To get out of here costs money. No job, no money. No money, no travel, no job."

"Ah yes, money, always a problem. Or maybe not."

The Englishman produced a wad of U. S. dollars, all hundreds, and counted them onto the counter.

"I am old-fashioned," he said. "I believe people should help each other. It makes life easier, more pleasant. Will you help me, Dusko?"

The barman was staring at the thousand dollars a few inches from his fingertips. He could not take his eyes off the money. He dropped his voice to a whisper. "What you want? What do you do here? You not reporter."

"Well, I am in a way. I ask questions. But I am a rich asker of questions. Do you want to be rich like me, Dusko?"

"What you want?" repeated the barman. He flicked a glance toward the other drinkers, who were staring at the pair of them.

"You've seen a hundred-dollar bill before. Last May. The fifteenth, wasn't it? A young soldier tried to settle the bar bill with it. Started one hell of a row. My friend Lasse was here. He told me. Explain to me exactly what happened and why."

"Not here. Not now," hissed the frightened Serb. One of the men from the tables was up and walking toward the bar. A wiping cloth flicked expertly down over the money. "Bar close at ten. You come back."

At half-past ten, with the bar closed and locked, the two men sat in a booth in half darkness and talked.

"They were not the Yugoslav army, not soldiers," said the barman. "Paramilitary people. Bad people. They stay three days. Best rooms, best food, much drink. They leave but not pay."

"One of them tried to pay you."

"True. Only one. He was good kid. Different from others. I don't know what he was doing with them. He had education. The rest were gangstersÉgutter people."

"You didn't object to them not paying for three days' stay?"

"Object? Object? What I say? These animals have guns. They kill, even fellow Serbs. They all killers."

"So when the nice kid tried to pay you, who was the one who slapped him around?"

He could feel the Serb go rigid in the gloom.

"No idea. He was boss man, group leader. But no name. They just call him 'Chief.'"

"All these paramilitaries have names, Dusko. Arkan and his Tigers. Frankie's Boys. They like to be famous. They boast of their names."

"Not this one. I swear."

The Tracker knew it was a lie. Whoever he was, the freelance killer inspired a sweat-clammy measure of fear among his fellow Serbs.

"But the nice kidÉhe had a name?"

"I never heard it."

"We are talking about a lot of money here, Dusko. You never see him again, you never see me again, you have enough to start up in Sarajevo after the war. The kid's name."

"He paid the day he left. Like he was ashamed of the people he was with. He came back and paid by check."

"It bounced? Came back? You have it?"

"No, it was honoured. Yugoslav dinars. From Belgrade. Settlement in full."

"So, no check?"

"It will be in the Belgrade bank. Somewhere, but probably destroyed by now. But I wrote down his ID card number in case it bounced."

"Where? Where did you write it?"

"On the back of an order pad. In ballpoint."

The Tracker traced it. The pad, for taking long and complicated drink orders that could not be memorised, only had two sheets left. Another day and it would have been thrown away. In ballpoint, on the cardboard back, was a seven-figure number and two capital letters. Eight weeks old, still legible.

The Tracker donated a thousand of Mr. Edmond's dollars and left. The shortest way out of there was north into Croatia and a plane from Zagreb airport.

The old six-province Yugoslavia Federation had been disintegrating in blood, chaos, and cruelty for five years. In the north, Slovenia was the first to go, luckily without bloodshed. In the south, Macedonia had escaped into separate independence. But at the centre, the Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic was trying to use every brutality in the book to cling to Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Montenegro, and his own native Serbia. He had still lost Croatia, but his appetite for power and war remained undiminished.

The Belgrade into which the Tracker had arrived in 1995 was still untouched. Its desolation would be provoked in the Kosovo war yet to come.