A Rough Guide To The Dark Side by Simpson Daniel

Author:Simpson, Daniel [Simpson, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780993089
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing

HERESY

If life’s what happens while you’re making other plans, then the way to stay sane is to take it as it comes. But some things aren’t so easy to endure. The New York Times had demanded front-page news. And despite never having got near this hallowed space, I didn’t want to. We were trying to attract tourists to Serbia, not scare them away with murders in broad daylight. The facts were undeniable regardless. The prime minister had been killed outside his office. And his suspected assassins were gangsters from Zemun. So there were far more urgent things to do than write about it.

But the Times still technically owned me for a fortnight, and they owed me $20,000 in back expenses. I couldn’t afford to write that money off, so I’d have to give the paper what it wanted. This began with an urgent story for the website, then another for the International Herald Tribune, a global edition aimed at travellers, and 1,700 words for the Times itself, to be honed in exchanges with editors till the small hours.

I was used to cranking out coverage for Reuters, and I knew I could ‘cheat and steal’ from all the agencies. Another newswire adage would be useful: ‘take it off TV’. Although Djindjic had been shot around the corner, I saw little point leaving my flat to inspect the crime scene. It was already swarming with paratroopers. So I installed my translator in front of the local news, flipped a second screen between CNN and the BBC, and smoked a few joints. It would be a long night. My partner paced distraught around the office.

‘This is very bad,’ he kept repeating, as if there were doubts. ‘You will see now here is total necrophilia, everyone praising Djindjic as martyr. Death is best lover in this country, man. Tomorrow if I die, there will be more people on my funeral than I can meet today in the street and say hello. Seriously, that’s how it is. I can barely meet three people in the city who will shake the hand and talk, but if I die then there will probably be fifty.’

I had more immediate concerns. I copied a story from Reuters and changed a few words: ‘Mr Djindjic, who was 50 and had many political enemies, was shot in the back.’ Police said the bullet shredded his stomach. He was pronounced dead on arrival at hospital. He’d been hobbling through the car park on crutches, having hurt himself playing football with policemen. He’d quipped at the time that they’d injured him on purpose. A few weeks beforehand, a truck had tried to ram his motorcade. Both this and the fatal attack were now being blamed on the same gang of rogues.

The most wanted man was the warlord known as Legija, who’d commanded a ‘Special Operations Unit’, combining two infamous groups of Serbian paramilitaries: Arkan’s Tigers and the Red Berets. A year before, they’d blocked a motorway with Hummers, warning the government not to demobilize their regiment.

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