186 AMERICAN SPYI was able to negotiate favorable terms. Actually, the only special treatment
I requested was permission to travel first to Europe. I wanted to stop by
one of our stations there to drop off my shoebox full of irreplaceable home
videos of my young daughters, to ensure their safekeeping, and for onward
shipment to Stacy in the United States, in the event anything happened to
me in Croatia. After depositing my treasured videotapes with the station, I
spent the night in the amazing capital city.
The next day, October 8, 1991, I reentered Yugoslavia by train. I was
the only person left on my train car as it crossed the international border
into Slovenia; all other passengers had gotten off beforehand. It was an
eerie feeling. On that date in Yugoslavia’s history, newly independent
Slovenia issued its new currency, the tolar, and Croatia officially cut all
remaining ties with Yugoslavia. I believed that these were good omens and
that once again I found myself in the right place at the right time.
I spent a night in Slovenia along with a small team of American “essen-
tial personnel” who would soon enter Zagreb to reestablish an official pres-
ence in the Croatian capital. All American government employees and their
dependents had previously been evacuated from Croatia, due to fears that
the Serb-dominated Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) would attack and overrun
Zagreb. As the only CIA officer in the group, I drove alone from Slovenia
to Zagreb, Croatia, in a colleague’s borrowed VW Jetta. (I loved the car so
much that I later bought one for my daughter when she learned to drive; her
sister learned to drive in the same reliable car. I had correctly assessed that if
a Jetta could survive Croatia during the war, it could survive my daughters.
Their younger sister required an even more durable 2011 Ford Ranger.)
The drive from newly liberated Slovenia to Zagreb was scenic and
uneventful, since most of the fighting in Croatia was taking place in other
parts of the country. I had traveled to and through Croatia several times
before, but that was before civil war had broken out. Having toured civilized
Europe several times, it was jarring to see bullet-riddled and pockmarked
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Austro-Hungarian buildings and store-
fronts in the normally peaceful and charming Croatian capital. I found it
equally unsettling to be viewed with suspicion when I spoke the language of
the enemy—Serbian—instead of the similar but distinct Croatian language.
I once went into a small bakery and requested some bread, and out of habit
I used the Serbian word (hleb) instead of the Croatian word (kruh). Everyone