FROM WAR VIRGIN TO WAR WEARY 189tionship with the new Croatian government security service. My primary
contact was the head of the service, the quiet and bookish general Ivan,
whom you met in chapter 2. Admitting to a foreign government that I was
a CIA officer was a new, unnatural, and unnerving experience for me. For
years I had gone to great lengths and practiced sound tradecraft to ensure
that no one, particularly a foreign government, learned that I was a CIA
officer. That fundamental modus operandi was thrown out the window
when I came out of the shadows to kick off this important relationship with
the newly formed and independent Croatian government.
By this time, the war was raging in many parts of Croatia, and armed
conflict had also begun to heat up in Bosnia, just as the CIA had predicted.
The situation in Zagreb remained relatively stable, although it was still a
tense and dangerous wartime capital. I was able to stay in the Interconti-
nental Hotel (now the Westin Zagreb), which made my TDY quite comfort-
able, at least when I was in Zagreb. The hotel “disappeared” at night, since
all of the windows were covered with blackout curtains to make it invisible to
JNA aircraft. The large, high-rise hotel in the center of the city was ground
zero for journalists, spies, and mercenaries who needed a safe and conve-
nient base of operations during the war. Every night the hotel’s eclectic cast
of characters would congregate in the hotel’s raucous underground bar and
restaurant for drinks and dinner, and to watch the day’s events on Sky News.
Cheers would break out whenever one of the hotel’s journalist or mercenary
guests appeared on the TV screen. I looked forward to the nightly revelry,
which was reminiscent of similar scenes from The Year of Living Dangerously.
For those interested in more risqué entertainment, the upscale but
smaller Esplanade Hotel was a short walk away. There, Ukrainian bar girls
danced “ballet” every night, in the Esplanade’s smoky basement nightclub,
for an inebriated but appreciative audience of Croatian Army soldiers, as
well as foreign fighters and reporters. I was not opposed to taking in an
evening of culture at the Ukrainian cabaret, but my tastes ran more toward
music. One night I paid a steep cover charge to get into a large Zagreb
nightclub to hear Oliver Dragojević, a wonderful Croatian balladeer whom
I used to refer to as “the Balkan Jimmy Buffett.” Unfortunately, I never got
to hear him perform “Vjeruj u ljubav” (“Believe in Love”) or any other of
his many hits live. Before the show even began, noxious Balkan cigarette
smoke inside the club had become so thick that I literally could not see the