buds in her ears, eyes closed. A curtain of brown hair hid the terrible scar on her face. Joe flashed back to last week, Anna telling him in the dark of his car how Petrović had burned her with a cigarette lighter, men holding her down as he raped her.
Then and now, Joe felt enraged. It was all he could do to sit still in his seat. He thought about Anna and the hundreds of other women who had lived and died in that “hotel.”
He drummed his fingers on his knees and turned his eyes to the FBI seal hanging on the wall opposite the sofa. The medallion was round, blue and gold, with the words Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation encircling the outer rim, enclosing a circle of stars. At the center of the seal was a shield made up of red and white stripes and the scales of justice.
Beneath the scales were the words Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity.
Another way of spelling FBI. These were the values he’d built his life around since joining the Bureau.
He was startled out of his thoughts as he heard his name.
Supervisor Craig Steinmetz came through the doorway and asked him to come in. “Joe. Just you.”
Joe followed Steinmetz down the hallway to the corner office and took the chair across from his desk. Like his own office, this one was uncluttered, had a flag in the corner, and featured the seal on one wall, a couple of framed certificates and pictures with past presidents on another. In the picture with President George W. Bush, a younger Captain Steinmetz wore his USMC uniform with rows of ribbons over his left breast.
Joe knew Steinmetz’s history.
After his last tour in Afghanistan, Steinmetz had joined the FBI to head up an antiterrorism division for a dozen years at Quantico, where Joe had met him. Then he’d led the San Francisco branch for the last five years.
Steinmetz was unlikely to cut Joe a break for old times’ sake, and Joe had prepared himself for the possibility that he could get jammed up for conducting an unauthorized surveillance, which he’d done. Without an open case or a preliminary inquiry, he’d probably get time on the beach without pay.
Putting that possibility aside, Joe looked across at his supervisor and laid his weak cards on the table, knowing the conversation had to be recorded.
“A nationalized American, Anna Sotovina, originally from Bosnia, was riding her bike on Fell Street last Wednesday afternoon and sees a war criminal, Slobodan Petrović, coming down the steps of his house and getting into his car. She’s sure it’s him, and she follows him. On her bike. Several blocks later she gets sideswiped by a car. Walks the bike a couple of miles to us.
“I saw her sitting outside the building. She was banged up, and her bike …” Joe threw up his hands and then continued. “She wanted to make a report, but our security turned her away. She was hysterical, looked like she’d been in a fight or was living rough, and maybe she seemed irrational. Anyway, I asked her name and what was wrong. She told me she’d seen this war criminal from her past life. I drove her home, and while in the car, she told me that she had lived in Djoba and survived Petrović’s massacre.”
Steinmetz said, “Can you hang on a minute?”
He stepped outside his office, asked his assistant to postpone his next meeting, then returned to his desk.
He said, “I know what happened in Djoba. I’m listening.”
CHAPTER 40
Joe picked up where he’d left off.
“Anna is sure the man she saw that morning was Petrović. She seemed credible, but I couldn’t know. Was she right? Or having flashbacks because of a man who resembled Petrović? I decided to vet her story and see if we should look into it.”
Steinmetz looked at his watch, then told Joe to keep going.
Joe said, “Almost done. Day after running into Sotovina, I met with her near the place where she’d seen this man. He appeared, coming down his front steps. I took his photo, but it was in profile, and his hand and phone obscured much of his face. He looked like the pictures I’ve seen of Petrović, but I couldn’t be sure.
“I reached out to Nguyen in Virginia to make the shot usable, and then I got a match. The man Sotovina saw is, in fact, Slobodan Petrović, now using the name Antonije Branko.”
Steinmetz’s eyes widened. Joe guessed he was alarmed