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seaside town of Scheveningen, less than a mile from the North Sea, but Hadzic had never seen any of it. His room didn't come with a view. None of the cells did. To Srecko, this was far from any Hilton Hotel he had visited and an ungodly affront to his nature.
    His tenth cigarette of the morning smoldering between his stubby, yellow-stained fingers, he glanced up at the clear Dutch sky and swallowed his pride for the hundredth time since he was rudely awoken by the guards this morning. A surge of rage always followed, but by midday, he would start to feel slightly level as the strong emotions abated. This would last until something seemingly innocuous would vomit all of the rage and indignity right back up in his lap, and he'd have to start over trying to come to terms with his situation.
    He'd been slowly rotting in the United Nations Detention Center for seven years, watching one former Serbian colleague after another leave for various reasons. Some were indicted and sentenced to lengthy prison sentences. He didn't envy their fate. They were rumored to have been transferred to Germany for imprisonment. Others had been released pending further trial proceedings, a feat not even Srecko's lawyers could accomplish, which only served to fuel his daily rage.
    Above all, nothing stoked his anger like the luckiest of his former Serbian "friends," who were suddenly freed from custody when the chief prosecutor for the war crimes tribunal, Carla Del Ponte, simply excluded them from the draft indictments of "criminal enterprise" leveled against Milosevic's regime. Her indictment focused on Slobodan Milosevic, essentially ignoring several other key members of the regime, who Srecko knew had ordered many of the crimes that held him firmly entrenched in his own cell.
    Not one of them looked back or offered their support to him as they scurried to freedom like cowardly pigs. Now, the number of true Serbs in the detention unit was dwindling, and his trial had been postponed for another year, forcing him to mingle with the disgustingly impure Croatian and Kosovar dogs roaming the floors here. There was no shortage of war criminals in the detention center, from all sides of the war, and he had to sit around on a daily basis and make small talk with the very people he had tried to ruthlessly stomp out, on behalf of the traitors who had turned their backs on him. He had little to look forward to, but the visit today from one of his most trusted and cherished allies might give him a renewed sense of purpose. The chance to taste the sweetest nectar of life. Revenge.
    The nondescript, gray metal door leading out of the courtyard opened, and Josif Hadzic stepped through the solitary breach in the courtyard’s walls. Josif had changed significantly since Srecko's imprisonment, transformed from the young, scrawny, awkward nephew into a muscularly lean, handsome, young Serbian man. His thick black hair, prominent brow, and deep-set brown eyes proclaimed to the world that he was of pure Serbian stock. A true testament to the cause Srecko had spent his entire life fighting for…and for which he had been summarily discarded by the so called "patriots" that now lived in luxury.
    Despite Josif's soft, almost serene composure upon entering the courtyard, Srecko harbored Josif's secret. He was a dedicated ultra-nationalist, like his uncle, after having seen the direct impact of the NATO-imposed restrictions on their just campaign to carve out a little space for the true Serbia. His family had lost everything due to their allegiance with Milosevic's army, but fortunately, none of them had been imprisoned. Josif's father, Andrija, Srecko's younger brother by three years, had wisely kept his nose out of the seductively lucrative spoils of Srecko's enterprises.
    He had taken care of his brother, but always from a distance. He respected Andrija's choice, and his brother had served loyally in the regular Yugoslavian Army for several years, fighting for the cause