Chapter 1

The rubber soles under Annie’s feet scraped grudgingly along the deck of Brankov bridge. Trying to ignore the smog of dilapidated buses and shabby Skalas passing by on her left, she gazed off to the right instead—toward the peaceful, green expanse of Priyatelstva park.

Belgrade was like that, she thought: islands of order and civility, set amidst a swirling sea of ugliness and chaos.

Tom had an important meeting at the Ministry of the Interior this morning. Before coming here, Annie wouldn’t have dreamed that the Interior Ministry would be interested in her husband’s commercial dealings. It hardly seemed logical. But Serbia hadn’t turned out to be a logical place. To launch a new company, you needed permission from a dozen or more state agencies—Interior among them.

Months in Belgrade had tutored Annie in the fine art of cynicism; so that all this bureaucratic red tape, which once seemed absurd, now made a kind of sense to her. Her mistake had been to think they were dealing with a ‘system’—whereas really, it was just a bunch of petty fiefdoms, each scrabbling for a piece of the pie.

Still, it put Tom in a real bind. At the beginning, he’d outlined the task ahead in optimistic terms: “I just need to work both ends—getting the government permits on the one hand, and securing the backers on the other. When we meet in the middle, we’re in business.” That had sounded simple enough. And in a way, neither of them wanted it to be too easy. After all, bringing the various parties together was how Tom was supposed to add value. It was how they justified the millions of dollars they hoped their Balkan venture would earn.

In practice, though, Annie was beginning to doubt whether this chicken-and-egg puzzle could ever be solved. Funders wanted to see the project approvals in place before forking over a dime; whereas flocks of state officials each wanted a touch of the money before relinquishing any leverage. That left Tom all alone in the middle, with no one eager to be the first to join him.

As she rounded a corner and came within sight of the Hyatt, Annie gave her ponytail a flip, hoping to put herself in a more upbeat mood. Tom was trying hard; she knew that. And anything was possible. Maybe today’s meeting had done the trick—maybe he’d unstuck that bureaucratic logjam at last.

Snaking her way through the lobby, she gave the hostess at the Metropolitan Grill a familiar nod. The food was decent; but still, it was a bit mortifying how often the two of them ended up eating here. Going to hotel restaurants had certainly not been part of the plan when they’d moved to Serbia. Back then, she’d been excited at the prospect of immersing herself in a new and foreign culture.

The Met, however, loomed large in the life of the ragtag expat community. Sooner or later, newcomers always seemed to gravitate there, hungry for commiseration and a touch of normalcy amidst the bleak otherness of Belgrade. Tom and Annie had proved no exception.

She got a table for two. Waiting for Tom, sipping at her glass of warm, chlorinated water, Annie read and re-read the menu. Same as yesterday; same as everyday.

Eventually, her husband straggled in. The scowl on his face and the slump of his shoulders suggested that the logjam hadn’t budged. Annie resolved to be sympathetic. “How’d it go, babe? Rough meeting?”

Tom was curt. “No progress today. Those bloodsuckers are going to need a taste before they’ll sign off.” Then, realizing how that sounded, he raised a weak smile. “But, you know, it’s just how they do things here. It has to go step by step.”

Ok—she wanted to say—but what if every step goes backwards or sideways, and never forward?

Instead, she bit her lip. Soon the waiter came over, and they both took the path of least resistance, ordering hamburgers and fries. Anything, Annie thought, so long as it wasn’t the all-pervading sausages the Serbs ate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Service at the Met Grill was reliably prompt, but Tom’s eyes were accustomed to roaming the dining room. Before their plates could arrive, he’d already spotted someone ‘significant’ across the way. “I’ll be damned, I could swear that’s Ricardo. I’d better say hi.” He bounded up and away without waiting for reply, wading between the tables with long strides.

Peering along his angle of motion, Annie thought he was right. It was extremely odd though. Ricardo had been Tom’s old boss back in Philly, before they’d moved to Serbia. She couldn’t imagine what he’d be doing here.

The food appeared, and she chewed a few bites of lackluster burger in silence. Before long, her husband returned, trailing Ricardo, along with another guy she didn’t know. “Hon, look who’s here. Small world, eh?”

Ricardo moved with the same boastful swagger she remembered, his booming baritone expressing a lavish self-regard. “Annie Parker, as I live and breathe. God, you’re even more gorgeous than I remembered! Small world my ass, though. It was only when I heard you two were here, that I knew I should come check the place out. Sweetheart—between Tom’s business savvy and your lights-out bod? I figured something good was bound to come of it.”

Annie blushed, then hated herself for blushing. Ricardo was neither terribly tall nor terribly handsome, and inarguably crass. Yet, there was an attractive animal magnetism about him even so. He was strapping and barrel-chested, with warm caramel skin-tones. The full shock of glossy black hair on his head, together with the dense thatch visible at the V of his polo shirt, seemed to testify to a boundless energy, a natural vitality, that permeated any room he was in.

Ricardo made much of his Cuban extraction (though he hailed from Miami). And despite being married and thoroughly Americanized, he leaned hard into the macho stereotype of the Casanova. Back in Philly, he’d hit on every woman who crossed his path—Annie very much included—and supposedly bedded a good fraction of them.

Tom laughed it off, saying it was just the man’s Latin roots; but Annie found the whole act smarmy and unprofessional. She knew she really ought to call him out for it. This was the ‘90s, not the ‘50s—men weren’t supposed to act that way anymore. But in the end, she always backed down, ignoring his vulgarity as best she could without remark. Today, for Tom’s sake, she even went one better, mustering up a grudging smile. “Hi Ricardo. What a nice surprise to see you here.”

“And guess what else,” her husband put in, a thirsty undertone to his voice, “Ricardo left Anders-Beaumont. He signed on with a big venture-fund that’s branching into Eastern Europe.”

Ricardo confirmed the news with a regal nod of condescension (she half expected him to hold out his ring for Tom to kiss). “As I always say, you gotta spend money to make money. So—I’ve come here with money to spend. And fucking-A, baby, there is some serious money to be made. I can feel it!”

Then he glanced down at his watch. “Shit, I got a meeting. Miloz, I’ll see you tomorrow,” nodding to his companion. “And Tom, gimme a call, we’ll get together later. I’m at the Inter-Continental. Room 712.” That last bit was delivered with a wink and a leer in Annie’s direction.

Turning away, he tossed them a back-handed wave and bounced out the door.

All this time, the fourth person, the stranger, had stood slightly apart, watching the awkward reunion with interest. Now he leaned in to offer his hand to Annie, his blank face lighting up in a friendly smile. “I’m Miloz Katić,” he said. “Happy to make your acquaintance.” As their fingers touched, the intensity and focus of his ice-blue eyes seemed to pin her down there for a moment, spellbound.