Page 18 of Tom Clancy Line of Sight

“Yes, but not here, thank God. Almost no Serbs lived here, so Miloševic couldn’t claim to be protecting anybody from our ‘aggression’ like he did in Bosnia.”

“Why were the Yugoslavian wars so vicious? I read stories of lifelong neighbors killing neighbors, friends killing friends.”

“It’s strange, isn’t it? The only good explanation I’ve ever heard was that for many years, everybody was a Yugoslavian and there was peace. But once people started saying, ‘I’m a Serb,’ or ‘I’m a Muslim,’ all of a sudden people started seeing their neighbors as ‘others,’ and all of their problems were because of ‘them.’ Democracy and identity politics don’t work so well together.”

“Is it really that simple?”

“Probably not. What’s really crazy is that most families were mixed. I have a Bosniak friend—a Bosnian Muslim—whose grandfather was a Catholic Croat and his grandmother was an Orthodox Serb. Nobody cared about all of that until Miloševic and the Serbs started causing trouble.”

“So everything was caused by the Serbians?”

Struna shook his head. “Maybe they were the cause of the most recent troubles, but believe me, there are five hundred years of grievances in this part of the world. Nobody is innocent.

“The amazing thing is, someone did a genetic study a few years ago. Apparently, Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks are genetically closer to each other than any other groups in the region.We’re just one big, happy Slavic family that keeps murdering each other. And that’s just recent history. I won’t bore you with the sixteenth-century Islamic Ottoman invasion.”

“So today there is the Catholic country of Croatia, but many Croats still live in Bosnia. And there is the Orthodox country of Serbia, but many Serbs live in Bosnia, too. Is that about right?”

“Exactly, and the Muslims are the majority in Bosnia. Nice people, great food. You should visit Sarajevo sometime.”

“I plan to, actually, when I’m done here.”

“Business or pleasure?”

“Pleasure, sort of.”

“Good. You’ll love it. It’s a beautiful country and the people are kind. More Americans should visit there, but a lot of them think the war is still going on even though it ended twenty-three years ago.”

Struna hit his turn signal and eased into the right lane. “Your hotel is at the next exit.”

“If you don’t mind, let’s go straight to the office. There’s a lot to do and not enough time to do it.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to rest up first?”

“My grandmother used to say, ‘There’s no rest for the wicked, and the righteous don’t need any,’ and I learned a long time ago to never argue with her.”

“She sounds Slovenian.”

“German-Irish, but close.”

Struna killed his blinker just as the sky opened up again. This time it poured.

Jack sighed. It was going to be a long, wet week stuck in an office.

TRIESTE, ITALY

Elena Iliescu loved her work, and she was good at it. She took particular joy in her profession, devoting laser focus and creative energy to each endeavor. Phone calls and other distractions simply had no place. But there was one ringtone the busty, girl-next-door blonde always answered.

Always.

She stabbed out her cigarette on the wall of rough-hewn stone, nude beneath her badly stained coveralls.

“Yes?”

“I need you.” A man’s voice. The Czech.

“When?”

“Yesterday.”