Kosovo Syndrome

They leaned against each other as the sound of approaching gunfire could be heard. In the distance, they could see red laser sights and shafts of torchlight cutting through the darkness of the woods and making their way towards them.

It was time.

"Do try to look traumatized. It would help my street cred if you looked more like someone who has been held hostage by a rebel army for a whole year."

* *

EPILOGUE

ONE YEAR LATER

Heather sat up in bed. The latest object of her affections and the cause for the sheen of sweat plastered on her skin lay curled up in her sheets. She had known for some time that it was the day and she had resisted the urge to turn on her news. As if not seeing it on screen would change it.

She vacillated for a few more minutes before turning on her flatscreen and switching to CNN. The always effervescent Kelly Chavez popped up on screen. After a few minutes of working through the rest of the news from around the world, she finally got to it.

"The dreaded terrorist leader Marija Kovačević, leader of the rebel group the Serbian Liberation Army, was sentenced to death today by a special war crimes tribunal in International Criminal Court. She has exhausted all her appeals and will be executed by lethal injection soon. She had been responsible for over twenty bombings and political assassinations all over Europe. Marija was the daughter of the former President who had been deposed in a coup. She and the remainder of her loyalists were holed up in a rebel stronghold in the Dinaric Alps for almost two years before a joint operation from the Serbian Army and NATO troops finally captured her."

Heather grimaced. She had mentally prepared herself for the news, but it had done little to soften the blow. Kelly went on.

"She had taken celebrity lawyer, Heather Franklin, hostage and kept her for a year before she was rescued. All through the trial, Ms Franklin has refused to testify and remained unavailable for comment."

On cue, Heather saw her face come up on screen beside that of Marija. She immediately felt a lump in her throat and reached out to touch the face of the woman she loved.

Her fingertip was inches from the screen when Marija's face was replaced by a grossly overweight man as Kelly smoothly segued into the actual headline of the news cycle; about a washed up, broke former child star of a wildly popular 90's sitcom who had been found naked and dead in a motel room with a speedball in his lap, a needle in his arm and two barely legal Slovakian hookers who lay equally dead by his side. His signature catch-phrase from the show was tattooed on each of his butt cheeks.

Heather recoiled in disgust and changed the channel hoping for another shot of Marija.

No luck.

Fox could not stop gushing about Salinger Energy's record profits for the quarter and how they had beaten every Wall Street estimate. MSNBC was on the topic of a localized outbreak of bat-borne coronavirus in the city of Wuhan in the Hubei province of China. The local authorities had assured everyone that the disease was under control and had been contained. CBS was hosting a talk show with Energy Secretary, Roger Costello, asking him to confirm the persistent rumours that he was sizing up a Presidential run next cycle.

She flipped through the channels in vain before turning off the TV.

"Penny for your thoughts?"

Heather turned around to see the lady on her bed awake and looking at her curiously.

"It's nothing, Flo. Nothing at all."

"Your lips say nothing and your eyes say everything," Flo said. "I'm here if you want to talk. We authors do make good listeners."

"I don't really."

"Oh come on, babe. We've known each other for six months and you haven't told me anything about your time with that psychotic monster."

The last two words rankled Heather. Her hackles rose as she stared daggers at the other woman.

"Florence," she said quietly. "Just because I you're in my bed now does not give you the right to talk that way about her. I like your company, but if you do it again, you will no longer be welcome in my bed. Do we understand each other?"

Flo nodded and smiled. She understood way more than Heather wanted her to.

"I'm sorry, Heather. I didn't know," she said. "Come back to bed."

* *

It was late at night when Heather made her way to the rooftop of her Upper East Side apartment building. She had a blanket in one hand and a bottle of Screaming Eagle Cabernet in the other. It was the obscenely expensive 92 vintage, a gift from Crispin Salinger for a job well done.

She lay out the blanket and poured herself a glass. It was velvety and sweet. She checked her phone. There was yet another offer by a publisher for a tell-all memoir about her year in captivity. Hachette had joined the long queue of those who wanted the exclusive rights to her story, not to mention every single media house who had bombarded her with interview requests. A more savvy individual would have done the whole talk show circuit, had a Netflix special in the works and would already be on the phone with a major publisher. Not her. She politely declined every time. What her NDA allowed her to say, she wouldn't, and what she really wanted to say, no one would understand.

She put the glass by her side and lay down. The ambient lights of Manhattan meant the stars were barely visible, but she imagined them scattered all over the sky. She willed herself to look higher, even higher until she was past the lights, past the sky and behind the stars.

In a cosmic garden somewhere her eyes could not see, she hoped there was a French restaurant where Anja served a sumptuous meal to her father and Uncle Savic. Marija would join them soon. There was joy and laughter at the table.

She hoped for it, even if she wasn't a part of it.

For Heather Franklin didn't belong there. She could not bear the thought of joy and laughter. Wherever she went, heartache and death followed.

As she stared up at the stars, her vision blurred and her tongue tasted something salty.

* *

EPILOGUE II

(You weren't expecting that now, were you?)

The Hague, Netherlands

"Why can't this charade come to an end?" thought Marija. Despite the sentencing, she kept having to come back to the same court and listen to the same judges regurgitate the same lies. She was being asked to allocute to her crimes in public, something about the victims of her attacks wanting closure.

Sadly, there was no such closure demanded for the innocent Serbians who had died in the war. Or for her sister.

A fresh pang of sorrow went through Marija as she thought about her sister. Anja should not have been anywhere near a war zone. Vivid images of her violated corpse floated in front of Marija's eyes, indelibly seared into her memory. She craved the needle as soon as possible if it would help expedite her fate.

Death promised nothingness. A freedom from the lies and the pain.

She sat in the court room in her usual stony-faced silence. The so-called victims sat opposite and eyed her curiously. Perhaps they expected her to have horns or a spiked tail. The devil could not possibly look like her.

The trio of judges waited patiently until it was clear that no allocution was forthcoming. Sighing, they asked her to be sent back to prison and would schedule another hearing.

Evidently the puppet-master sitting thousands of miles away wanted a show and she was being a spoilsport by refusing to give it to them.

The bailiffs grabbed her by the arms and escorted her out. The press had long lost interest in the trial. From thronging the courtroom and spilling over into gallery at the start of the trial to a few disinterested scribes clearly too busy on their phones now.

The men handed her over to the waiting van for transport back to the prison. Even the security presence around her had receded to the bare minimum. No one was interested in guarding a deflated prisoner with no interest in escaping. The judges may have passed the sentence, but she had spent the whole year as a dead woman walking.

The guard looked new, not that Marija really cared. She had been on auto-pilot for over a year and was just going through the motions at that point. To her, it was another face in a sea of faces.

He opened the back of her armoured transport van and let her climb in.

"For the ashes of his fathers and the temples of his Gods."

Marija's head snapped up at the man who had now climbed in with her. He smiled at her and undid her handcuffs. He knocked on the driver partition and it slid aside, revealing the copper curls of Wren Salinger.

"We have to hurry. They'll figure it out soon. Our fake IDs are good, but they will eventually know, especially when you don't show up at your prison. Our best option is to switch cars. We have another car in an underground parking lot nearby."

Wren shoved a phone through the opening to Marija. Still bewildered, she flipped open the burner and found one number saved in the Contacts. An American number. The truck rumbled into motion while she pressed the call button.

"We made vows to each other that night, Marija with a J. Did you really think I would let you off the hook that easy?"

"Heather, oh God!" Marija's voice choked and tears burst through her eyes. "It's really you."

"Of course it is. Now listen, I had to pay someone a lot of money for these two phones. The line is encrypted, but let's not stay on it for long."

"Got it."

"Wren contacted me last week. The men you will meet know what happens next. They've been planning it for over a year. Apparently, you have way more friends than you realised, you silly martyr."

"It's so good to hear your voice again."

"We'll save that for later. For now, I have to be careful. Once news of your escape breaks, Salinger's teams will be going over all the ways it could have happened and who could have helped. Given that I spent a year with you and got out unscathed means that I am definitely going to be under a microscope. It would be best if you were to go dark. This will be the last time we speak in a long time."

"I don't even know how to thank you."

"Thank me by getting rid of that sorry look I saw on TV. I don't need the defeated Marija. I need your rage. I need you to inspire as many people as you can and then I need your help to get to Salinger."

"He dies. There's no other way it ends."

"Careful now," Heather chuckled. "He's eighty, so he may die of natural causes before you get to him."

"He doesn't get to die of natural causes," she said with quiet conviction. "I am going to get into the same room as him and I will make what he did to my father and sister look pleasant in comparison."

Heather smiled. She had missed this steel in Marija's voice.

"Stay off the grid. Go underground. Grow your army. Make plans. Know that when the time comes and you need me to play my part, I will be here waiting."

There was silence on the call for a few minutes before Heather spoke up again.

"Be careful, babe. You are going up against someone with unlimited resources."

"Do you know who is far more dangerous than someone with unlimited resources?" asked Marija. "It's someone with nothing to lose."

* *

"These violent delights have violent ends."

― William Shakespeare

If you liked this story and would like to read more about Heather Franklin, you can try the below stories about her listed chronologically

How To Catch A Falling Star

The Day The Music Died

Moira

Edge Of Reason

Brutal Comfort