After a month Abbot Vasilije gently suggested that he confess, and he did. In whispered tones, by the light of a candle by the altar, under the gaze of the man from Nazareth, he told the abbot what he had done.
The abbot crossed himself fervently and prayed: for the soul of the boy in the cesspit and for the penitent beside him. He urged Milan to go to the authorities and report against those responsible.
But the grip of Milosevic was absolute and the terror inspired by Zoran Zilic no less so. That the ‘authorities’ would have lifted a finger against Zilic was inconceivable. But the killer’s promised vengeance would, when carried out, raise not a ripple on the water. So the silence went on.
The pain began in the winter of 2000. He noticed that it intensified with each body motion. After two months he consulted his father who presumed some passing ‘bug’. Nevertheless, he arranged for tests at the Belgrade General Hospital, the Klinicki Centre.
Belgrade has always boasted medical standards among the highest in Europe and the Belgrade General was up there with the best. There were three series of tests, and they were seen by specialists in proctology, urology and oncology. It was the professor heading the third department who finally asked Milan Rajak to visit his suite of rooms at the clinic.
‘I believe you are a trainee monk?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Then you believe in God?’
‘Yes.’
‘I sometimes wish I could are Alas, I cannot. But you must now test your faith. The news is not good.’
‘Tell me, please.’
‘It is what we call colorectal cancer.’
‘Operable?’
‘I regret. No.’
‘Reversible? Chemotherapy?’
‘T
oo late. I am sorry, deeply sorry.’
The young man stared out of the window. He had been sentenced to death.
‘How long, professor?’
‘That is always asked, and always impossible to answer. With precautions, care, a special diet, some radiotherapy . . . a year. Possibly less, possibly more. Not much more.’
It was March 2001. Milan Rajak went back to Slanci and told the abbot. The older man wept for the one who was now like the son he had never had.
On 1 April the Belgrade police arrested Slobodan Milosevic. Zoran Zilic had disappeared; at his son’s request, Milan’s puzzled father had used his contacts high in the police force to confirm that Yugoslavia’s most successful and powerful gangster had simply disappeared more than a year earlier and was now living somewhere abroad, location unknown. His influence had disappeared with him.
On 2 April 2001, Milan Rajak sought out from his papers an old card. He took a sheet of paper and, writing in English, addressed a letter to London. The burden of the letter was in the first line.
‘I have changed my mind. I am prepared to testify.’
Within twenty-four hours of receiving the letter three days later, and after a quick call to Stephen Edmond in Windsor, Ontario, the Tracker came back to Belgrade.
The statement was taken in English, in the presence of a certified interpreter and notary public. It was signed and witnessed:
Back then in 1995, young Serbian men were accustomed to believe what they were told, and I was no exception. It may be plain today what terrible things were done in Croatia and Bosnia, and later in Kosovo, but we were told the victims were isolated communities of Serbs in these former provinces, and I believed this. The idea that our own armed forces were carrying out mass murder of old people, women and children, was inconceivable. Only Croats and Bosnians did this sort of thing, we were told. Serbian forces were only concerned to protect and rescue Serbian minority communities.
When in April 1995 a fellow law student told me his brother and others were going to Bosnia to protect the Serbs up there, and needed a radio operator, I suspected nothing.
I had done my military service as a radio operator, but miles from any fighting. I agreed to give up my spring vacation to help my fellow Serbs in Bosnia.
When I joined the other twelve, I realized they were rough types, but I put this down to their being hardened combat soldiers, and blamed myself for being too spoiled and soft.