CHAPTER 17
DENIED AREA OPERATIONS
Q
uietly ascending the mossy, eighteenth-century stone steps in total
darkness before slipping through the broken iron gate to the Habsburg-
era cemetery, I sensed heavy male footfalls trailing me about twenty meters
back. At 10:59 p.m. on a foggy, late November night, wooded Zemun
Cemetery was eerily quiet and empty. Walled-in and situated on Gardoš
Hill, overlooking the murky Danube River, Zemunsko Groblje was the
final resting place for thousands of Yugoslavia’s Orthodox, Catholic, and
Jewish faithful. It was also the perfect place for a late-night clandestine
agent meeting.
Or was it?
After a three-hour SDR through the grimy, dimly lit streets of Bel-
grade and Zemun, I confirmed my black status and was making my final
approach to the meeting site Govnar, a dilapidated park bench tucked
away on a narrow cemetery footpath. After months of preparation for this
meeting, I was motivated and on high alert, dressed to blend in on the
streets of Belgrade. To a casual observer I was just another bundled-up
Serb on the street in blue jeans, leather jacket, and wool cap, on his way
home.
Several months had passed since my last late-night “brief encounter”
(BREN) on the back streets of Belgrade with my asset 00HITCH, a senior
officer in the Yugoslav security service (SDB). I was under pressure from
CIA headquarters to make this meeting, since HITCH was expected to
provide another treasure trove of top secret SDB documents. We urgently
needed these documents, for accurate insights into the Yugoslav govern-
ment’s plans and intentions as the country moved rapidly toward inevi-
table, bloody dissolution. HITCH’s gym bag full of Cyrillic-alphabet
classified documents would also clarify some critical CI concerns: what167