42
Jalena Orasac, aka Helen Moore had
flown to Belfast where her brother Berislav aka Chris
Moore, lives. Dennis confirmed that a
Helen Moore had rented a car at Belfast from one of the big companies. He
booked me one from the same place.
Her circuitous route and the mid-journey
identity swap each gave credence to the idea that Jalena wished to avoid
detection. If I could track her as easily as I did whoever was behind the other
killings could too. It made me squirm in my coach seat somewhere over the deep
dark North Atlantic that even if I found her I might be too late. Or, worse, I surmised: perhaps the reason she
is running incognito is not she was a potential victim, but because she is
something else. I could not ignore the possibility that Jalena Orasac had blood
on her hands. There was certainly enough
to go around.
What the hell was I doing?
With whom the hell was I doing it?
“Excuse me, might I read that if
you’re done?”
A woman with lucent skin, freshly
painted nails and silken legs crossed in my direction was smiling wide-eyed and
pointing at the Time Magazine open over my thigh. Her hair was snared tight in a long thick
braid she had pulled forward over the right shoulder of her silk blouse. The
knot at its end rose and fell gently over her breast. She did not look or smell
as if she belonged in coach.
“Sure.” I closed the magazine and
handed it to her. “Come here often?”
Her laugh had a startled edge to it
as she took the magazine from me. I wondered if I looked as goofy as I felt.
“All the time,” she said. “Much more
often than I would prefer.”
Although her brow was still
furrowed, her smile was unthreatened and unthreatening.
“You?” she asked.
I pointed down through the window.
“I’ve been on it and in it thousands of times, but this is my first time over
it.” Yeow, a good response, that.
“I see.” She opened the magazine.
“There’s an article in this issue about the truth and reconciliation commission
in the Balkans.”
“I read it waiting to board. Sad
stuff.”
“It is… but hopeful. I have friends
from the UN who are involved.”
“From the UN? Really? How?”
“They were part of the team doing
the forensic work that supports how we know who did what to whom, and how.”
“And knowing those two things usually
answers the why questions, too,” I said.
“To be truthful, we mostly already
know why when we start.”
“Right. How do you know those UN people?”
“Colleagues. That’s what I do, too. I
was working in Rwanda or I’d have been there with them.”
“No shortage of work for people in
your field is there these days?” I had read General Romeo Dellaire’s book on
Rwanda.
“Nope. No shortage.”
“May I ask you a question?”
There was a moment of silence. “Oh,
you want me to answer that? Most times people don’t, you know? They just go
ahead and… sure, go ahead. Ask.”
“How does someone who does what you do
come down from it?”
“Do you mean the satisfaction when the
puzzle pieces begin to go together or do you mean the nature of…the constant
presence of the dead?”
“I guess I was thinking the former,
but the latter is likely a better question.”
“Well, in this case for both I go to
Ireland. There’s a dig in County Armagh run by a former professor of mine. I am
dropping in on them.”
“Sounds like fun…”
“Oh, it will be. It’s Ireland after all.”
Yeah, well, if the ancient Irish dead
from…when?”
She moved her braid to her left
shoulder so she could face me. “Appears to be seventh century.”
“Seventh century…if the dead are as
chatty as the living you should learn a lot.”
“Right.” Her smile was unaffected.
“Are you on vacation?”
I told Cynthia Washington, she had
handed me her card while she was speaking, why I was en route. It took about ten minutes to outline the
tale. She wrote down the Croatian names spelling them all correctly.
“All that in Boston and New York?
Wow.”
“And Portland, Maine. Why did you
write down those names?”
“I’ll ask my colleagues who were there
among the Croats and the Serbs if any of these names mean anything to
them. You said that there was a
connection to someone in the diplomatic corps, didn’t you?”
“I did.” I gave her my card. “Would
you contact me if it seems there is?”
“As repayment for the loan of your
magazine?”
“As good a reason as any.”
