LIFE IMITATES ART IMITATES LIFE 197The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became I should
give the “Balkan war crimes lottery” a whirl. I understood better than most
the nature of the crimes against humanity committed by Bosnia’s top two
war criminals, I still had solid in-country contacts, and I wanted nothing
more than to help put those two sadistic bastards behind bars for the rest of
their miserable lives, assuming they weren’t killed in the process, which was
of course another acceptable outcome. Either way, justice would be served.
My share of the five million dollars in reward money would be icing on the
cake. With it I could afford to slow the pace of my career and finish writing
“Balkan Justice,” although in that case I’d be pitching a nonfiction book
instead of a novel.By late 2003, I was winding down my private intelligence work to focus on
my nascent and potentially more rewarding Iraqi venture, but I still couldn’t
let go of my desire to take care of unfinished Bosnia business. I quietly dis-
cussed my idea to track down Mladić and/or Karadžić with “Jovan,” a
trusted source in the former Yugoslavia, whom I frequently hired to inves-
tigate counterfeit tobacco and other illicit activity in the Balkans on behalf
of my Fortune 500 corporate clientele. Since the Serb organized crime
groups who ran the counterfeit trade were closely linked to Serb war crimi-
nals like Željko “Arkan” Ražnatović, we came up with a game plan to track
down priority target Radovan Karadžić, using Jovan’s existing network. As
the Serbs would say about the difference between the war criminals and
the organized crime groups, “Isto sranje, drugo pakovanje.” (“Same shit, dif-
ferent packaging.”) Always trying to one-up their Serb rivals, the Croats
would have characterized the differences as follows: “Isti drek, druga frizura.”
(“Same shit, different hairdo.”)
I had assessed, developed, and recruited Jovan after resigning from the
CIA and forming my own firm. I always thought of jovial, mustachioed
Jovan as a Slavic Barney Miller. Built like a fire plug, he was a serious pro-
fessional, with an impressive stable of vetted police, intelligence, and orga-
nized crime sources, in all regions of the former Yugoslavia. He worked
equally well with Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Albanians, Macedonians, and
Bosnians. Jovan had grown up under Tito as a true Yugoslav, and he