Leonora Tesla, by her passion to rid the world of sorrow, a passion that made the otherwise-common woman beautiful;

And the elder, Harold Middleton, a stranger to passion and driven by . . . well, even he couldn’t say what. The intelligence officer who never seemed to be able to process the HUMINT on himself.

Unarmed—at least as far as the ICTY and local law enforcement knew—they managed to track down several of Rugova’s henchmen and, through them, finally the man himself, who was living in a shockingly opulent townhouse in Nice, France, under a false identity. The arrangement was that, for ethical reasons, the Volunteers’ job was solely to provide the tribunal with intelligence and contacts; the SFOR, the UN’s Stabilization Force—the military operation in charge of apprehending former Yugoslav war criminals—and local police, to the extent they were cooperative, would be the arresting agents.

In 2002, working on pristine data provided by Middleton and his crew, UN and French troops raided the townhouse and arrested Rugova.

Tribunal trials are interminable, but three years later he was convicted for crimes that occurred at St. Sophia. He was appealing his conviction while living in what was, in Middleton’s opinion, a far-too-pleasant detention center in The Hague.

Middleton could still picture the swarthy man at trial, ruggedly handsome, confident and indignant, swearing that he’d never committed genocide or ethnic cleansing. He admitted he was a soldier but said that what happened at St. Sophia was merely an “isolated incident” in an unfortunate war. Middleton told this to the inspector.

“Isolated incident,” Padlo whispered.

“It makes the horror far worse, don’t you think? Phrasing it so antiseptically.”

“I do, yes.” Another draw on the cigarette.

Middleton wished that he had a candy bar, his secret passion.

Padlo then asked, “I’m curious about one thing—was Rugova acting on anyone else’s orders, do you think? Was there someone he reported to?”

Middleton’s attention coalesced instantly at this question. “Why do you ask that?” he asked sharply.

“Was he?”

The American debated and decided to continue to cooperate. For the moment. “When we were hunting for him we heard rumors that he was backed by someone. It made sense. His KLA outfit had the best weapons of any unit in the country, even better than some of the regular Serbian troops. They were the best trained, and they could hire pilots for helicopter extractions. That was unheard of in Kosovo. There were rumors of large amounts of cash. And he didn’t seem to take orders from any of the known KLA senior commanders. But we had only one clue that there was somebody behind him. A message had been left for him about a bank deposit. It was hidden in a copy of Goethe’s Faust we found in an apartment in Eze.”

“Any leads?”

“We thought possibly British or American. Maybe Canadian. Some of the phrasing in the note suggested it.”