Avenger

Three days later, a file arrived in a stout envelope at a Korean fruit shop in Brooklyn. It was collected by the addressee, Mr. Armitage. It contained a photocopy of the entire report from the Tracker, that of 1995 and of that same spring of 2001, including the confession of Milan Rajak. None of the files on Zoran Zilic in the archives of the various United States intelligence agencies had ever been shown to the Canadian, so his knowledge of Zilic was sketchy. Worst of all, there was no picture.

Dexter went back to his media archives. Unlike the publicity-hungry Zeljko "Arkan" Raznatovic, Zilic had an abhorrence of being photographed. He clearly went out of his way to avoid publicity of any kind. In this he resembled some of the Palestinian terrorists like Sabri al-Ba

Dexter came up with one major *Newsweek* feature going back to the Bosnian war. It was about all the Serbian so-called warlords, but within it Zilic had only a few passing mentions, probably for lack of material.

There was one photograph of a man at a cocktail party of some sort, clearly cropped and blown up, which made it slightly hazy. The other was of a teenager; it came from the Belgrade police files, and clearly went back to the days of the street gangs of Zemun. Either man could walk straight past him in the street, and he would not recognise the Serbian.

The Englishman, the Tracker, mentioned a private investigation agency in Belgrade. It was now postwar, post-Milosevic. The Yugoslav capital, where Zilic had been born and raised, and from which he had vanished, seemed the place to start. Dexter flew New York to Vie

A taxi brought him to the agency called Chandler, still run by Dragan Stojic, the Philip Marlowe wa

"Everyone knew him. Married a pop singer, glamorous girl. So what do you want from me?"

"The fact is, I have just about all I need for this piece," said Dexter, whose American passport revealed him as Alfred Barnes. "But there is a sort of afterthought I should give mention to. A one-time contemporary of Arkan in the Belgrade underworld. Name of Zoran Zilic."

Stojic let out a long puff of air.

"Now that was a nasty piece of work," he said. "He never liked being written about, photographed, or even talked about. People who upset him in that area wereÉvisited. There's not much on file about him."

"I accept that. So what is Belgrade 's premier clippings agency for written material?"

"Not a problem, there's really only one. It's called VIP. It's got an office in Vracar, and the editor-in-chief is Slavko Markovic."

Dexter rose.

"That's it?" asked the Balkan Marlowe. "Hardly worth an invoice."

The American took a hundred-dollar bill and laid it on the desk. "All information has a price, Mr. Stojic. Even a name and address."

Another cab took him to the VIP clippings agency. Mr. Markovic was at lunch so Dexter found a cafŽ and toyed with a light lunch and a glass of local red wine until he came back.

Markovic was as pessimistic as the private eye. But he punched up his inhouse database to see what he had.

"One piece," he said, "and it happens to be in English."

It was the *Newsweek* piece from the Bosnian war.

"That's it?" queried Dexter. "This man was powerful, important, prominent. Surely there must be some trace of him?"

"That's the point," said Markovic, "he was all those things. And violent. Under Milosevic there was no argument. He seems to have cleaned out every record of himself before he quit. Police and court records, state TV, media, the lot. Family, school contemporaries, former colleagues, no one wants to talk about him. Warned off. Mr. No-face, that's him."

"Do you recall when the last attempt was made to write anything about him?"

Markovic thought for a while.

"Now you mention t, I heard a rumour that someone tried. But it came to nothing. After Milosevic fell, and with Zilic vanished, someone tried to do a piece. I think it was cancelled."

"Who was it?"

"My talking canary said it was a magazine here in Belgrade called *Ogledalo*. That means '*The Mirror*.'"

*The Mirror* still existed, and its editor was still Vuk Kobac. Even though it was print day, he agreed to give the American a few minutes of his time. He lost his enthusiasm when he heard the enquiry.

"That bloody man," he said. "I wish I had never heard of him."

"What happened?"

"It was a young freelancer. Nice kid. Keen, eager. Wanted a staff job. I hadn't got one vacant, but he pleaded for a chance. So I gave him a commission. Name of Petrovic, Srechko Petrovic. Only twenty-two, poor kid."

"What happened to him?"

"He got run over, that's what happened to him. Parked his car opposite the apartment block where he lived with his mother, went to cross the road. A Mercedes came round the corner and ran him over."

"Very careless. Managed to run him over twice. Then drove off."

"And permanent. Even in exile, he can still order and pay for a 'hit' to be done in Belgrade."

"Any address for the mother?"

"Hold on. We sent a wreath. Must have sent it to the flat."

He found it and bade his visitor good-bye.

"One last question," said Dexter. "When was this?"

"Six months ago. Just after New Year. A word of advice, Mr. Barnes. Stick to writing about Arkan. He's safely dead. Leave Zilic alone. He'll kill you. Must rush, it's print day."

The address said Block 23, Novi Beograd. He recognised Novi Beograd, or New Belgrade, from the city map he had bought in the hotel bookshop. It was the rather bleak district in which the hotel itself stood, on a peninsula flanked by the rivers Sava and Dunav, the Danube itself, which was emphatically not blue. It stood across both rivers from downtown Belgrade.

In the Communist years, the taste had been for huge, high-rise apartment blocks for the workers. They had gone up on vacant lots in Novi Beograd, great poured concrete beehives, each cavity a tiny flat with its door opening to a long, open-sided passage, lashed by the elements.

Some had survived better than others. It depended on the level of prosperity of the inhabitants, and thus the level of maintenance. Block 23 was a roach-infested horror. Mrs. Petrovic lived on the ninth floor, and the elevator was out of order. Dexter could take them at a run, but he wondered how senior citizens coped, the more so as they all seemed to be chain smokers.

There was not much point in going up to see her alone. There was no chance she would speak English, and he did not know Serbo-Croat. It was one of the pretty and bright girls behind the reception desk at the Hyatt who accepted his offer to help him out. She was saving to get married, and two hundred dollars for an hour's extra work at the end of her shift was quite acceptable.

They arrived at seven and just in time. Mrs. Petrovic was an office cleaner and left each evening at eight to work through the night in the offices across the river.

She was one of those who have quite simply been defeated by life, and the lined and exhausted face told its own story. She was probably in her midforties going on seventy, her husband killed in an industrial accident with almost no compensation, her son murdered beneath her own window. As always with the very poor approached by the apparently rich, her first reaction was suspicion.

He had brought a large bunch of flowers. It had been a long, long time since she had had flowers. A