尼古拉Kavaja住在一个单调,高——共产主义时代rise in Belgrade, Serbia’s crumbling capital. His two-room apartment is sparsely furnished: a single mattress and dresser in one room and a scratched-up wooden desk, a couch, and a bench press in the other. The white walls are cluttered with pictures of the people who figure most strongly in his personal iconography: General Ratko Mladić, Saint Sava, Hitler, Jimmy Carter, and a young pinup who is his current girlfriend. Guns and old military gear provide further ornamentation. A blue thermal blanket covers the street window.

Kavaja is seventy-three, but he looks no older than sixty. A strict weight-training routine gets him up every weekday before the sun. He is squarely built and muscular, with white hair cut to a military trim-line and a fighter’s mashed-up nose. Except for a fine white thread of mustache, he is clean-shaven. He usually wears black pants, black shirts, and black combat boots.

我们的谈话发生在用力推ee mornings, with classical music playing softly in the background. Kavaja spoke slowly and quietly in Serbian, with an air of determined precision. An interpreter translated—except when Kavaja grew impatient with the process and resorted in brief bursts to English. At times he paused to place his hand on his forehead in search of a long-forgotten detail and stared off in the distance at nothing at all, or else looked down at his booted feet.

INTERVIEWER

You were a World War II prisoner, a Communist soldier, a CIA hit man, a hijacker, and now you’re a fugitive on the run. Where to begin?

NIKOLA KAVAJA

Write down my name.N-i-k-o-l-a K-a-v-a-j-a. You can call me Nik. Do you want some schnapps?

INTERVIEWER

不用了，谢谢。我很好的水。

KAVAJA

Water’s for pussies.

INTERVIEWER

Most of the time I’d agree. But ten-thirty in the morning is a little early for me to be drinking shots of schnapps.

KAVAJA

这是一个你好。你跟我喝杜松子酒。我们drink together.

INTERVIEWER

OK.

KAVAJA

That’s better.Salud. So—I was born in Montenegro in 1933. I don’t want to name all of the places I lived as a kid because there were a lot of places. In 1941, when Hitler attacked Yugoslavia, I was living in Peć. I remember that year as the destruction of Yugoslavia. It was a hard time. My father and mother and I were all transferred to separate prison camps in Albania. My brothers went to the war. I was on my own in a work camp until October 1944. That’s when Russian troops reached Yugoslavia and forced the Germans to withdraw from the Balkans.

I went back to Pećto find my mother. But she wasn’t there. No one was there. I had to fight for myself. The first time I killed someone was that year—a German soldier in Peć. He was wounded and leaning over the top of a well, getting water. I walked up to him, took him by the legs, and tossed him in like garbage.

INTERVIEWER

You weren’t afraid?

KAVAJA

My dick, was I ever afraid. I hated them. I couldn’t find my family anywhere. I searched for months. Eventually, I found my mother in Vojvodina. I learned that two of my brothers were killed in the war. After I finished school, I joined the air force academy and graduated seventh in my class of a hundred and seventy-seven pilots in Mostar. They made me a war pilot. Around that time, another brother of mine was thrown in jail for being anti-Communist. He wasn’t. But Tito was a suspicious man. Tens of thousands of military officers finished their careers in prison. They all fought for Tito and then they were thrown in jail for bullshit reasons. What kind of leader does that?

INTERVIEWER

You never liked Tito?

KAVAJA

我讨厌他。大约是那个时候，我成为一个顶级反共产主义小组的成员。这就是我的生活真的开始的地方。我的指挥官，Milutin Abramović, was in the air force with me in Sombor. He knew about my brothers who were imprisoned and killed. I had cousins who went to jail too. That’s why he started giving me top-secret missions. Because my hatred was so personal.

INTERVIEWER

What was the first job?

KAVAJA

He had me paint on the walls of the military barracks: LONG LIVE THE SOVIET UNION. DOWN WITH TITO. DOWN WITH THE COMMUNIST PARTY. It was a test, I think. But I did it. And for me, it was funny—a what-the-fuck kind of thing, you know.

INTERVIEWER

How did Tito like your sense of humor?

KAVAJA

I wrote that on a Saturday evening. By Sunday morning, military intelligence officers were searching for who did it. There was a huge alarm. None of us could leave the barracks. After two or three days of investigations, they started to lock people up. They arrested a major who was in charge of security that evening, and he got seven years in prison. Two of my friends were also arrested and sentenced to jail. But not me. So Abramović给了我另一个任务。这次我要飞往奥地利和匈牙利的边界，并下降了数千篇关于他们的消息。他妈的是什么？我拿到了消息，在夜班搬进了我的飞机。消息称“人们站起来！为你的自由而战。铁托双交叉南斯拉夫人民。村民，工人，收回你的是什么。“

INTERVIEWER

You weren’t afraid you’d get caught?

KAVAJA

Who would have known? I was into football and girls. It made me laugh. I did it, and again there was a big alarm the next morning, and more people were arrested.

The big assignment came next. It was June 1953. The order was to burn the gas tanks at the airport in Sombor. I knew all of those bases like I know my room. My commander gave me some time bombs and I set them up near the tanks, which had a million gallons of gas. A million gallons. I did it at night; I placed the bombs around the tanks and walked away. When the bombs went off, there was a massive explosion. It was incredible. I was far away but I could see huge yellow flames in the sky. When I saw that, I realized it wasn’t a joke anymore. I was in big shit. Police and investigators swarmed to the base and all the towns nearby. They arrested hundreds. I knew seven of them. One was a major hero. He got the death penalty. For nothing! The others died in prison.

INTERVIEWER

You didn’t feel guilty about this?

KAVAJA

Guilt? My dick. You don’t know about guilt. Schnapps?

INTERVIEWER

I’m still working on this one, thanks.

KAVAJA

Winter came. I was transferred to Nikšić从那里到斯洛文尼亚的Cerklje Na Gorenjskem。这是阿布拉莫维省的11月ć被捕了。不知何故,他们联系你好m. It was Saturday, I remember precisely. There was a dance party at one of the bases in a small town outside Cerklje, which is close to the Italian and Austrian border. I went with Sveto, a friend of mine, and we left later with two Slovenian schoolteachers. It was late. There were no lights on the street. We met a cadet on our way to the girls’ house. His name was Mile Šuković. He came over and asked to have a word with me. He didn’t want the girls to hear our conversation. He said that a lot of officers were arrested at the airport, and they had also asked about me and my friend Sveto. At the time, we didn’t know about my commander getting caught. But I knew this cadet Šuković母亲和兄弟，因为那个联系，他说他不会告诉警察在那里sveto和我。

I sent the girls back to the party. Sveto said, Let’s go back to the base to see what they want. It was around four A.M. I told him, I’m not going back to the base because we’re going to be locked up.

INTERVIEWER

Why was Sveto also in trouble?

KAVAJA

因为他是我的朋友。他被协会内疚。铁托不喜欢松散的目的。

I went back to my building. There was an old Slovenian grandma there. Every evening she left a small glass of yogurt in front of my apartment door. The yogurt was still there that night, which meant the military hadn’t searched my place. I took my machine gun, a pistol, three grenades, a compass, binoculars, and a bag of clothes, and I became a deserter of the Yugoslavian air force. That’s a very serious thing, punishable by death. I knew they would chase us. Sveto and I discussed what to do. My suggestion was to cross the border illegally into Austria.

我们将这个边界视为飞行员，但我们从来没有徒步过那里。到达那里，我们只是在晚上走了。我们筋疲力尽，但我们必须继续前进。它不是容易的地形。有山脉和峡谷和大量的雪。我们睡在树林里。Sveto真的很累，他无法走路。所以我带他了。这并不容易。他是关于我的大小。 I put him on my back. Then we came to a mountain covered in heavy snow, up to my waist in places. The temperature was below zero. It would have taken days to go over. But there was a rail tunnel through the mountain. I decided to take a risk and go through the tunnel. I put Sveto down and he followed. The tunnel was a kilometer long. Sveto kept falling, but I pretended not to see him because I couldn’t carry him anymore. Somehow we got through. It was nearly midnight. Sveto said, Nik, leave me here, I cannot move anymore. But I wouldn’t leave him. By then we were in a military zone, basically a buffer zone between Austria and Slovenia. Only people with a special yellow paper were allowed in that area. Every citizen was armed with a gun. If they found people trying to escape, they could kill you and get a reward.