His father was less comforting, claiming he was a hardworking man who needed his sleep. By the autumn of 1995, Milan Rajak had his first session with a trained psychotherapist.

He attended twice a week at the grey-rendered, five-story psychiatric hospital on Palmoticeva Street, the best in Belgrade. But the experts at the Laza Lazarevic could not help either because he dared not confess.

Relief, he was told, comes with purging; but catharsis requires confession. Milosevic was still in power, but far more frightening were the feral eyes of Zoran Zilic that morning in Banja Luka when he said he wanted to quit and go home to Belgrade. Much more terrifying were the whispered words of mutilation and death if he ever opened his mouth.

His father was a dedicated atheist, raised under the Communist regime of Tito and a lifelong loyal servant of the Party. But his mother had kept her faith in the Serbian Orthodox Church, part of the Eastern communion with the Greek and Russian churches. Mocked by her husband and son, she had gone to her morning service down the years. By the end of 1995, Milan started to accompany her.

He began to find some comfort amid the ritual and the litany, the chants and the incense. The horror seemed to ebb in the church, just three blocks from where they lived and where his mother always went.

In 1996, he flunked his law exams to the outrage and despair of his father, who raged up and down the house for two days. If the news from the academy was not to his taste, what his son had to say took his breath away.

"I do not want to be a lawyer, Father. I want to enter the church."

It took time, but Rajak Senior calmed down and tried to come to terms with his changed son. At least the priesthood was a profession of sorts. Not given to wealth, but respectable. A man could still hold his head up and say, "My son is in the church, you know."

The priesthood itself, he discovered, would take years of study to achieve, most of that time in a seminary, but the son had other ideas. He wanted to live in seclusion and without delay. He wanted to become a monk, repudiating everything material in favour of the simple life.

Ten miles southeast of Belgrade he found what he wanted: the small monastery of Saint Stephen in the hamlet of Slanci. It contained no more than a dozen brothers under the authority of the abbot or *iguman*. The monks worked in the fields and barns of their own farm, grew their own food, accepted donations from a few tourists and pilgrims, meditated, and prayed. There was a waiting list to join and no chance of jumping it.

Fate intervened in the meeting with the *iguman*, Abbot Vasilije. He and Rajak Senior stared at each other in amazement. Despite the full black beard, flecked with grey, Rajak recognised the same Goran Tomic who had been at school with him forty years before. The abbot agreed to meet his son and discuss with him a possible career in the church.

The abbot's shrewd intelligence divined that his former schoolmate's son was a young man torn by some inner turmoil that could not find peace in the outer world. He had seen it before. He could not create a vacancy for an instant monk, he Pointed out, but men from the city occasionally joined the monks for the purpose of a religious "retreat."

In the summer of 1996, with the Bosnian war over, Milan Rajak went to Slanci on an extended retreat to grow tomatoes and cucumbers, to meditate, and to pray. The dream ebbed away.

After a month Abbot Vasilije gently suggested that he confess, and he did. In whispered tones, by the light of a candle by the altar, under the gaze of the man from Nazareth, he told the abbot what he had done.

The abbot crossed himself fervently and prayed-for the soul of the boy in the cesspit and for the penitent beside him. He urged Milan to go to the authorities and report those responsible.

But the grip of Milosevic was absolute, and the terror inspired by Zoran Zilic no less so. That the "authorities" would have lifted a finger against Zilic was inconceivable. And the killer's promised vengeance would, when carried out, raise not a ripple on the water. So the silence went on.

The pain began in the winter of 2000. He noticed that it intensified with each bodily motion. After two months he consulted his father, who presumed it was some passing "bug." Nevertheless, he arranged for tests at the Belgrade General Hospital, the Klinicki Centar.

Belgrade has always boasted medical standards among the highest in Europe, and the Belgrade General Hospital was up there among the best. There were three series of tests, and Milan was seen by specialists in proctology, urology, and oncology. It was the professor heading the third department who finally asked Milan Rajak to visit his suite of rooms at the clinic.

"I believe you are a trainee monk?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Then you believe in God?"

"Yes."

"I sometimes wish I could also. Alas, I cannot. But you must now test your faith. The news is not good."

"Tell me, please."

"It is what we call colorectal cancer."

"Operable?"

"I regret. No."

"Reversible? Chemotherapy."

"Too late. I am sorry, deeply sorry."

The young man stared out of the window. He had been sentenced to death. "How long, Professor?"

"That is always asked, and it's always impossible to answer. With precautions, care, a special diet, some radiotherapyÉa year. Possibly less, possibly more. Not much more."

It was March 2001. Milan Rajak went back to Slanci and told the abbot. The older man wept for the one who was now like the son he had never had.

On April 1st, the Belgrade police arrested Slobodan Milosevic. Zoran Zilic had disappeared. Milan 's father had used his contacts high in the police force to confirm that Yugoslavia 's most successful and powerful gangster had simply disappeared more than a year earlier and was now living somewhere abroad, location unknown. His influence had disappeared with him.

On April 2, 2001, Milan Rajak looked among his papers for an old business card. He took a sheet of paper and, writing in English, addressed a letter to London. The burden of the letter was in the first sentence.

"I have changed my mind. I am prepared to testify."

Within twenty-four hours of receiving the letter three days later, and after a quick call to Stephen Edmond in Windsor, Ontario, the Tracker came back to Belgrade.

The statement was taken in English, in the presence of a certified interpreter and notary public. It was signed and witnessed.

*Back then in 1995, young Serbian men were accustomed to believe what they were told, and I was no exception. It may be plain today what terrible things were done in Croatia and Bosnia, and later in Kosovo, but we were told the victims were isolated communities of Serbs in these former provinces, and I believed this. The idea that our own armed forces were carrying out the mass murder of old people, women, and children was inconceivable. Only Croats and Bosnians did this sort of thing, we were told. Serbian forces were only concerned to protect and rescue Serbian minority communities.*

*When in April 1995, a fellow law student told me that his brother and others were going to Bosnia to protect the Serbs up there and needed a radio operator, I suspected nothing.*

*I had done my military service as a radio operator, but miles from any fighting I agreed to give up my spring vacation to help my fellow Serbs in Bosnia.*

*When I joined the other twelve, I realised they were rough types, but I put this down to their being hardened combat soldiers and blamed myself for being too spoiled and soft.*

*The column of four off-roads contained twelve men, including the leader, who joined us at the last minute. Only then did I learn he was Zoran Zilic, of whom I had vaguely heard but who had a fearsome and shadowy reputation. We drove for two days, north through Republika Serbska and into central Bosnia. We arrived at Banja Luka and that became our base, notably the Bosna Hotel where we took rooms and ate and drank.*