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Now For Then 11 of 25

NOW FOR THEN Chapter 11

Bosnians, Croatians, Serbians, Albanians, neighbor against neighbor, brother against brother, and somewhere in there was NATO. Olivia never could understand why there was so much war, hatred, and ethnic division in that region. Christians fought against Muslims, and the other way around, century after century, crusades after crusades. Didn’t they all believe in the same god? Weren’t they all from the same blood? When it started all over again in the 90’s, she was too busy with the academy, her rookie collars, promotions, transfer and all the other stuff to keep track. Right now, looking at Goran Petrovic’s I-589 filed in 1993, she honestly couldn’t say she wished she had.

According to the asylum application and notes from the interview, Petrovic was a third year university student in Bucharest when civil war broke out. He rushed home in time to watch his maternal grandmother murdered by their former neighbors, her own people. They did it because she had married his grandfather, a Serb. These people also raped and murdered his mother because she was a half-caste, and that she too married a Serb. By some miracle, he was able to rescue his twin sister and fled. Along the way, a group of Croats captured them. The men gang-raped his sister for ethnic or religious cleansing purposes. They sodomized him, beat him up, and left him. Days later, a group of doctors working with Médecins Sans Frontières came upon his broken body. They also found his sister, dead from a self-inflicted wound. All of this happened in 1992, just after his twenty-first birthday.

Two of the MSF doctors who found Goran were American. During that time, they took care of him and sort of adopted him. In 1993, they brought him back to the US, and at the port of entry, he asked for asylum. After an extensive security check, the Asylum Officer decided because of his mixed ethnic and religious background, it would be unsafe for him to go home, and that he met refugee status.

The next item was his I-485 application for permanent residence filed in 1994. The FBI conducted another security check, and his petition was approved that same year. Meanwhile, the doctors had opened their home to him, and sent him to the University of Chicago to complete his Bachelor degree. Afterwards, he interned with Amnesty International for six months, then spent another six working for the Chicago Public Library system.

In 1999, he applied for his citizenship. His application raised a flag because he requested to waive the bear arm provision of the Oath based on religious grounds. From the accompanying narrative, Olivia could tell he was a very articulate, very intelligent person who seemed passionate about his beliefs in not taking lives. Yet another security check on him came up clean, and he was naturalized. The same year, he received his MSW degree from UC Berkeley, and started working for the Social Welfare Agency for the State of California.

Based on various agencies’ investigations, Petrovic participated in several small protests on the UC campus against NATO and US involvement in Kosovo. However, the government’s inquiry on him did not begin until Fall of 2001, after 9-11. His name had turned up during one of the many counter-terrorism efforts, when intelligence discovered a possible list of people given new identities by a terrorist organization. This particular group had strong ties to Serbian fundamentalists, and provided financial and logistical support to paramilitary in Bosnia and Herzegovina. They were staunch supporters of Slobodan Milosevic and believed that all the wars were waged in ‘defense of Serbs and Serbia proper.’

To Olivia’s surprise, none of the information was labeled classified. They had given her access to everything the government had on Goran Petrovic. At least it seemed that way.

The final investigative report stated that he had boarded an American Airlines flight 1804 / 810 from San Francisco to White Plains, NY, connecting through Chicago in April of 2001. It was just after Milosevic’s arrest. The flight was grounded for two hours for maintenance where all the passengers had to deplane. The airline had no record of him getting back on the airplane to White Plains. It was before all the heightened security and they simply did not keep track.

Destiny’s transcript came up with the search result, along with interviews and background checks of Drs. Kimberly Jorde and Mitch Rosenbaum, the surgeons who brought Petrovic to the US. These three were the only people the FBI deposed.

The couple met in 1971 when they were Peace Corps volunteers in Tonga. Jorde was a faculty physician on sabbatical from Northwestern Memorial Hospital when she decided to join the MSF efforts in war-torn Yugoslavia. Her husband, a trauma surgeon at Cook County Hospital, went with her. Both doctors spoke very highly of their quasi-adoptive son. They insisted Goran could not have been involved in any terrorist activities. The last time they heard from him was when he was at O’Hare waiting for his plane to depart for New York. They knew Destiny had broken up with him, and that he was distraught. So when he told them he was going away for a while to find himself, they didn’t ask any further.

The last thing Olivia looked at was the Immigration Court’s decision stating that Petrovic was removable because he was ‘likely to engage in terrorist activity.’ As far as the government was concerned, he had disappeared without a trace, and he was forgotten until General Thomas’s presumed abduction.

For the next twenty or so minutes, she sat at the desk, with her head in her hands. She tried to simply summarize the information, and hold her ground against that slippery slope to hell. The Chicago association she could rack up to pure chance. That Alex was working with asylees must be a coincidence as well. There were no other explanations for them, at least none that she could think of. However, just how many Westchester connections there could reasonably be, she didn’t know.

**There’s got to be some other explanation,** she justified. **Maybe the government is wrong about Petrovic. A name on a list really doesn’t mean a thing, right?**

Just then, her email alert sounded. To her relief, it was from Elliot. Judging by the ‘Today’s your lucky day!’ subject line, he had indeed pulled through. **Thank god.** She thought, and clicked on it…

“Hey, Liv,

Guess what? I have your boy. You wouldn’t believe how I found him – I called my priest who knew someone who knew someone… you get the picture.

Anyway! Apparently, everybody knew he was adopted. And everybody mourned when he died in 1987 saving some kids, when he was volunteering for some summer camp. Last year at Yale, too. A shame.

I’ve attached the obits and related news article I found. His name was Frederick Kenneth Locke. He was adopted by Randolph and Martha Locke of Hyde Park. (Say, isn’t you-know-who from that part of the woods, too? Ooops, I forgot, I wasn’t supposed to ask any questions, I-Spy.)

Oh, I even found a couple of things about his parents. Dad owns Locke Bailey Trane and Assoc., some investment firm. He’s been ruffling feathers. The feds checked him out. The mom’s better known by her maiden name (!!!!!) Iverson Clark. She’s some old money real estate heiress. Freaky liberal. Anyway, just go read for yourself.

You owe me, and you owe me big. Heh.

Stable-r.”

**Glad one of us is stable,** she mocked, resting her forehead against the cold glass of the monitor. Resisting the urge to bang her head against it was not easy. It was even harder to not get up, pack her stuff and say ‘screw it’.

Her mind traveled back to last year, when she met Frederick Kenneth Locke’s adoptive parents, at the Destin Christmas party. Randolph Locke was the first person who went up to her and shook her hand. He presented himself as Alex’s Uncle Randy, and Martha Clark’s husband, and let her call him Mr. Clark half the night. Martha Clark, Aunt Marty, as she insisted, was the Chairman of the Board of the Foundation. She teased Olivia about having to be super nice to her because she had introduced Alexander Cabot to Celine, and that there would not have been Alex but for her hard work. All Olivia could think then was how really, truly nice these people were.

**Unlike Jonathan-what’s-his-face’s family.** He was her beau in college. They were getting serious, too -- serious enough for him to take her to his little sister’s debutante ball. That was when she found out he was an heir to something, that his relatives and friends all thought he was slumming it with her. “Argh!” It made her cranky just thinking about it.

**Even Vicky wasn’t as obnoxious… She was just pathetic…** Victoria Anagapoulos, Vicky as Alex called her just to be antagonizing, first pretended Olivia didn’t exist. Then, when they were introduced, she whispered to Alex, just loud enough for Olivia to hear, “If I had that between my legs, I’d smile, too.” She so wanted to grant the woman’s wish and make her a new one, to show her she wasn’t some prized mare or stud or whatever. Except she couldn’t. Bobby Anagapoulos, Rob as his wife would like him called, sat on the Destin board and was one of Celine’s best friends. Like the rest of the people there that night, he was as charming as could be.

She sighed, her forehead still pressed against the monitor, remembering how her lover took her by the hand and led her away from the gathering…

Outside the door, Alex explained that Vicky had always been jealous because she was insecure. The woman felt Alex should have been Mrs. Anagapoulos, unbelieving that her husband was just Uncle Bobby, and nothing more. Less than ten minutes later, they were in the cloak room. Alex leaned against the back wall, the hem of her red silk gown around her waist, her matching satin thong pushed to the side. She pulled Olivia close, and with a wicked glint in her eyes, whispered, “Wanna show her just how much you make me smile?”

When they came back, Vicky just scowled, while Alex looked positively radiant and Olivia as if she owned the universe. The embarrassment of getting caught by Edith did nothing to dampen that moment…

The delicious memory failed to distract the detective like it normally would. Instead of feeling warm and gooey, she just wanted to ram her head through the cold glass.

**There you were, offering yourself to me, so whole-heartedly. Reassuring me of my worth, my place in your world, even when you were unsure of your place in mine…

**What if I’m wrong and Vaughn’s right? What then? I promise, no matter what, I’ll always be there for you… I just hope that’ll be enough…**

Sitting up, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, and held it. While counting slowly to five, she tried to clear her mind, then release the unproductive thoughts along with the air. After several sets, and bracing for the sky to fall, she hit ‘view’.

The first attached file was an editorial from the Duchess County Gazette. The accompanying photograph told Olivia Kenneth Locke was indeed Alex’s date. She read the article from start to finish, twice. It covered his heroism, the event surrounding his death and his various achievements. **So he was perfect… And he knew the General… Wonder why she gave him up…**

She clicked on the next attachment. It was from the Wall Street Journal. In protest of the United States’ involvement in Iraq, the owners of Locke, Bailey, Trane & Associates announced that they would suspend business and trading for a day. The partners encouraged their employees and clients to join them by wearing black armbands to mourn the American soldiers who had sacrificed their lives needlessly for a commodity.

There was an Inc. magazine interview of Randolph Locke and his partner, Turner Bailey. They talked about the success of their company, and how their clients reacted to their anti-war stance. From the article, Olivia found out that both Mr. and Mrs. Locke were politically and socially liberal, and very vocal in their opinions and sentiments. They often participated in ecological and political protests, and contributed heavily with time and financial donation to groups such as Green Peace, Amnesty International, the ACLU, and the Rainbow Coalition. It was common knowledge that he and his wife met during a protest back in the 60’s, when they shared the same jail cell.

A society gossip column complained about how some people thought they could get away with mixing politics and business, people like Randolph Locke. According to the writer, he was an upstart, an ‘interloper’ into the ‘old society’ with no sense of family history. His father was a design engineer and his mother an interior decorator. Even though Locke had attended Harvard and Wharton School of Business, and had made his fortune with shrewd investments, the writer insinuated he could not have made it without his wife’s help.

The last bit questioned the Lockes’ patriotism as they had recently been under investigation by the Attorney General and the Department of Homeland Security for possible connection to Al Qaeda. Apparently, the couple had been active sponsors of several charities giving aid to Afghani women refugees and their children, helping them establish residency, obtain housing, financial aid, and vocational training. It was rumored but never proven that during their hippie days, they supported Jane, the Chicago Seven and the Black Panthers.

Elliot had included Martha Clark’s biographical information from one of the charities on whose board she sat. Martha Iverson Clark was well known as a society Grande Dame and philanthropist. A former ambassador to UNICEF, she took tremendous pride in her work as director for various charitable organizations. She also graduated from Wellesley the same year General Thomas did.

Olivia leaned back in the chair and took a deep breath. **Just what kind of tangled web am I dealing with?

**Is Vaughn really from DSS? Or is he from a different can of alphabet soup altogether? CIA?**

She reached for the telephone, and dialed.

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