Dražeta was a former security officer with the JNA, the Yugoslav People’s Army, who had fought the Croats at Vukovar in 1991, where fewer than two thousand Croatian national guardsmen, supported by civilians, were besieged by more than thirty-five thousand heavily armed Serb paramilitaries and JNA soldiers. The Croats held out for nearly three months before the city finally fell. Dražeta was among those who had supervised the executions and ethnic cleansing that followed, including the massacre of two hundred prisoners at Ovčara farm. It was said that it was he who had come up with the concept of ‘running the gauntlet’, whereby the prisoners at Ovčara, civilians and wounded among them, were forced to clear two rows of Serbs armed with chains, bats, and blades before being dispatched. Among those who had aided him in this endeavor was the late and largely unlamented Andrej Buha, aka Timmerman.

Dražeta technically remained a person of interest to war crimes investigators, and had long been under indictment by the ICTY, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, before it ceased operation in 2017. He had avoided apprehension because his German papers were flawless, thanks to the efforts of Radovan Vuksan. It was the least Radovan could have done for his old partner, for it was Dražeta who had arranged the safe transportation of looted art out of the ruins of Vukovar, and Radovan who had organized its sale. Now Dražeta lived a dull but comfortable pseudonymous existence among dull but comfortable Germans, in a dull but comfortable house with a dull but comfortable wife.

‘Are you sure he can be trusted?’ Spiridon asked his brother, as their convoy pulled up in Dražeta’s yard.

Spiridon had never been convinced of the wisdom of aiding Dražeta’s retirement to Germany, not with the indictment hanging over him. It would have been better had he remained in Serbia, where he was less at risk of extradition. Here in Germany Dražeta had undoubtedly grown lazy and soft, and soft, lazy men were vulnerable to pressure when the authorities came calling.

‘If he was going to betray us,’ said Radovan, ‘he could have done so a long time ago.’

‘The morals of men can change,’ said Spiridon.

‘Not those of men like him.’

Dražeta seemed pleased to see his old comrades again. There were hugs and kisses, and the hint of manly tears. He fed them venison washed down with Samtrot wine, and played them the songs of Lepi Mića on an ancient turntable. They kept the conversation neutral, avoiding all references to the Vuksans’ current troubles, although Aleksej Marković and Luca Bilbija said nothing at all. They were not sociable men, or not beyond the confines of campfires, bars, and gambling dens.