326 The Presidential Years
were based on ideological premises, but also on concrete interests. At issue was
the fear that the central bureaucracy and the secret services (largely made up of
Serbs and Montenegrins) would lose control of the country. Ran ković, consid-
ered the guardian of the Bolshevik tradition, became the catalyst of this appre-
hension. As a result he was increasingly isolated among those at the top of the
party, and often quarreled with Tito. Ranković was aware of this and became
edgy: his trembling hands, his furtive snatched glances, and his drinking habits
betrayed him. When Vladimir Dedijer dropped by after seven years of absence
to ask what was new, Ranković answered laughing: “Vlado, I will end up as a
scribe at Vrška Čupa” (in the mountains on the border with Bulgaria, which
meant the end of the world).^320
Meanwhile, Tito lived in paranoid fear of his “comrades,” who he believed
intercepted his conversations, robbed him, and plotted attempts on his life.
“Suspicion of everybody was in his nature. Innervated his character,” Ranković
later wrote. In the first part of the sixties Tito was at loggerheads with three
chiefs from his cabinet, and even with Milan Žeželj, his bodyguard, who was
faithful as a dog but hostile to Jovanka and her growing despotism at the court.
On the basis of the groundless suspicion that she zealously nurtured, Tito
required Ranković to arrest these people, interrogate them, put them on trial,
and condemn them. “Leka” tried to calm him in vain, instead drawing his
anger.^321 In 1964 something worse happened: Slobodan Penezić (Krcun), presi-
dent of the Serb government, fell into disgrace. One of Ranković’s minions,
known for having arrested Draža Mihailović in 1946, Penezić was often too
outspoken, for example when he declared that the stability of Yugoslavia
depended on an agreement between Serbs and Croats: “We control the federal
police, they the army, and everything is O.K.”^322 But on another occasion he
went too far. During a railway journey to Zagreb, already tipsy, he said to the
marshal: “Old One, you should not be worried as long as we Serbs are loyal to
you. But if you lose us, your Croats and Slovenes will not save you.”^323 Tito did
not ignore these threatening words, even more so since Jovanka had been try-
ing to convince him that the Serbs had constituted a danger to him for some
time. He asked Ranković to open a party investigation about “Krcun,” at the
beginning of November 1964. In December, Penezić, who used to say about
himself that he had “arms bloodied to the shoulders,” had a fatal road accident.
He was forty-six.^324 According to one version, a mys terious liquid corroded the
front tire of his car. According to another, the axle broke, while according to a
third the driver lost control of the vehicle, crashing into a tree.^325 Although
Penezić had saved his life during the Battle of Sutjeska, Tito did not attend the
funeral, preferring to receive a Hollywood star at Brdo.^326