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Nikola Kavaja lives in a drab, Communist-era high-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.
Our conversation took place over the course of three 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
No thanks. I’m fine with water.
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
It’s a hello. You drink some schnapps with me. We 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 Peć to 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
I hated him. Around that time, I became a member of a top-secret anti-Communist group. That’s where my life really started. My commander, 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 gave me another task. This time I was to fly to the Austrian and Hungarian borders and drop thousands of papers that had messages typed on them. What the fuck? I took the messages and smuggled them into my plane on the night shift. The messages said things like “People stand up! Fight for your freedom. Tito double-crossed the Yugoslavian people. Villagers, workers, take back what is yours.”
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 and from there to Cerklje na Gorenjskem in Slovenia. It was November when Abramović was arrested. Somehow, they connected things to him. 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’s mother and brother, and because of that connection, he said he wouldn’t tell the police where Sveto and I were.
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
Because he was my friend. He was guilty by association. Tito didn’t like loose ends.
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.
We knew this border as pilots, but we’d never been there on foot. To get there, we walked only at night. We were exhausted, but we had to keep going. It wasn’t easy terrain. There were mountains and canyons and lots of snow. We slept in the woods. Sveto got so tired he couldn’t walk. So I carried him. It wasn’t easy. He was about my size. 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.
INTERVIEWER
Nobody saw you?
KAVAJA
Just before we got to the border, there was a canyon. If you made one wrong step you’d fall to your death. The darkness was deep and I couldn’t see much. I heard footsteps. I turned and saw a shadow moving along the mountain road. We were too tired to run away. I aimed my machine gun in the shadow’s direction. It came nearer and I saw that it was a woman. Bless you, she said. She had a hood on, and I pulled back her hood and asked who she was. I’m a teacher, she said. She was scared. I thought about taking her with us, but I could hardly manage Sveto. I said, Where are you from? She said a town down the road. I asked for her documents. She was telling the truth, so I let her go. I should have killed her because I knew she was going to report us. I don’t know why I didn’t.
We had trouble at the border. Someone shouted stop. Then there were shots in our direction. We were in open space. Behind us were woods. We got down and fired back. The fight went on for ten minutes. I went through two of three clips and threw my three hand grenades. I couldn’t see how many of them there were. But we managed to get back into the woods and retreat to our border. I fired all but seven bullets. Sveto had a couple of bullets left in his Russian pistol.
Sveto wanted to go back to Bosnia. I was against that. I said that we should change our course. We walked for an hour or so, then tried the border again. That time was worse. We got ambushed from three different directions. It was the Yugoslav People’s Army, my own fucking army. They surrounded us, three of them with machine guns. Quietly, I told Sveto to be ready. The commander approached and asked where we were going. Sveto didn’t say a word. I reached into my leather jacket. At the same time I said, We were just visiting Svetko Laković. The commander said, There’s no one here with that name. Where are your arms? I said, We don’t have any. I just have gloves. When I took out the gloves, I drew my pistol, put it to his forehead, and pulled the trigger.
INTERVIEWER
What about the other two guys with guns?
KAVAJA
I had seven bullets left. I could have taken them all. But my gun didn’t fire. It jammed. From behind, I was hit with a machine gun and I lost consciousness. Sveto just stood there. When I came to, there were twenty or so soldiers around. We were moved to a jail on the border. After a few hours a soldier appeared, asking, Which one of you is Nikola Kavaja? I said, I am. He said, We’ve been waiting for you.
The head of military intelligence arrived and took me to a prison in Maribor and then they moved us back to the base where everything started. I was in solitary confinement. There was no heat. Snow came through the bars in the window. One morning, I looked down and my drinking water was frozen. I just sat in one place for a month on a concrete slab. When the doctor came and cut off my boots, all my toenails fell off. To this day, I have problems with my toenails.
In February they took us out and put us against a wall outside the barracks. I thought they were going to shoot us. My hands and my legs were in chains. The commander of the division marched out all of the troops—all five thousand of them—and gave a speech. He said, From our Communist hands, no one will escape. These men were organizing against our nation. We will spit on these traitors. After that, all of them lined up and spit on us, one at a time. One of my cousins came around four times. I couldn’t believe it! Five thousand people spit on me. It was a psychological thing, a show to boost morale.
INTERVIEWER
Pour me some schnapps.
KAVAJA
I don’t want to talk about the trial, about being beaten up every day and every night. I was sentenced to eighteen and a half years. In 1954 I was sent to a prison in Maribor that was shaped like a red star and held something like two thousand prisoners. Tito was in the same prison from 1931 to 1933. I worked in the rock yard. There were fifty tons of rocks. We’d move the rocks from one side of the yard to the other, with machine guns pointed at us the whole time. After four years I escaped.
I was being transferred to another prison. The night before, a military officer gave me enough food for three or four days—water and a piece of bread. I didn’t know where I was going. You never knew. We were dressed up in our uniforms and handcuffed two by two—heavy iron handcuffs from World War I. They drove us to the train station and put us in a cattle car. The man I was attached to was a small guy. On the bus to the train station I had told him that I couldn’t stay in prison for eighteen and a half years. He said he would escape with me. It was raining. On each car there were four guards with Russian machine guns. We were packed in there, thirty or forty prisoners in one car.
INTERVIEWER
Did you have your escape planned out?
KAVAJA
Not really. You didn’t have time for that. Be ready, I said to my comrade. I told the guard I needed to go to the toilet. He said, You had that bacon, eh? He unlocked my comrade but kept me in the handcuffs. He didn’t allow me to close the door. On the way back, I walked unsteadily, like I was sick. When I got back to my comrade, I swung around and punched the guard as hard as I could in the head and he fell down. I jumped and hit the window with my arm and crashed through it like a torpedo. It was raining heavily. I rolled down a hill. It was Slovenia, with hills all over. I heard the noise of the train above. I stood up and started to run. I heard machine guns, ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch. But the train didn’t stop.
My comrade showed up minutes later. We spent the night in a cave. Seven days later we crossed the border into Austria and were picked up and shipped first to Vienna, then to Munich, and then to a United States Army base in Stuttgart. They thought I was working for the KGB, but after months of interviews three intelligence officers introduced themselves and offered me political asylum.
INTERVIEWER
Is that how you started working for the CIA? How did they ask you to join them?
KAVAJA
They asked me, my dick. They didn’t ask. They checked me out for seven months. They thought I was KGB. I had to prove myself. I did some jobs for them.
INTERVIEWER
What jobs?
KAVAJA
That year? I bombed some Communist buses—buses carrying Communist operatives—in Vienna. It was their way of testing my loyalty.
INTERVIEWER
You did that and you were in?
KAVAJA
It doesn’t work like other jobs, where there is a start and finish. It’s very gray. They liked me because of my history. I was young and fearless and hated Communism. So I started to work dirty jobs against Yugoslavia, against Russia—sabotage, spying, exposing double agents, assassinations. I did some very bad things, but I accepted my destiny. It was for U.S. policy, and I wanted to help kill Communism and to protect democracy. For me it wasn’t just business, it was personal. I had no mercy for Communists. I hated them. They destroyed me, my family, and my country.
INTERVIEWER
When did you go to the United States?
KAVAJA
I went for the first time in 1959. I went to Fort Dix in New Jersey, where I was trained for a few months in explosives and methods of sabotage. There was a lot of psychological training there too. They were getting us ready to be operatives. The idea was that I’d operate in places that were Communist or associated with Communists. South America was a big target at the time because there were a lot of states loyal to Communism. And Tito played a very important role there. He was a representative of the third world. Tito, Nasser, and Qaddafi.
INTERVIEWER
Where did you go after Fort Dix?
KAVAJA
I was sent to Algeria to work with the French Foreign Legion. The civil war was going on and they used me for sabotage work. In 1959, I uncovered a gang of Yugoslavians smuggling arms to Algeria. These smugglers would come in dressed up like priests and missionaries and humanitarian aid workers. I tracked them down and killed them. There were never any reports about the people who disappeared. They might as well have never lived.
INTERVIEWER
So you were like God, deciding who would and wouldn’t die?
KAVAJA
I found out who these people were, but I didn’t make the final decisions. My superiors did that. Of course, I killed. One person is on my conscience. She was a double agent from East Germany. I received an order from military intelligence to kill this woman. When I got her, she didn’t know what I was going to do. She was probably twenty-three years old. I asked her for her family name and where she lived. There would be no official report—she would just disappear—and I wanted to send a message to her family and say where they could find her.
INTERVIEWER
Why her? Did you treat other people you assassinated like that?
KAVAJA
There was something about her. I just wanted to do her a favor. Even when I was in prison in the United States I dreamed about her. She was not the first one or the last one. I just felt sorry for her. She was so young. But she was a proud girl. She spit on me.
INTERVIEWER
And you shot her?
KAVAJA
What do you think? I didn’t rape her. I told her to walk ahead of me. And I shot her in the back.
INTERVIEWER
Did you think she deserved that?
KAVAJA
I never worried about killing an innocent person. I wasn’t trained to kill innocent people. I killed people on my level—soldier to soldier, agent to agent. It is not my job to think about innocence or guilt. She didn’t ask for mercy or try to explain herself. She was probably guilty. That’s what I believe. But she stays with me. No one else does.
INTERVIEWER
How long were you in Africa?
KAVAJA
Algeria gained independence in 1962, and I left and went to Corsica. Then to Munich, London, Toronto, and finally back to Paterson, New Jersey. That’s where my wife lived. But I lived in many different places—Chicago, California, Washington, D.C. I moved a lot.
INTERVIEWER
How were you paid?
KAVAJA
By the job. For the bigger jobs, like assassinating Tito, I would have been paid fifteen thousand dollars. For most jobs, the payment was around ten thousand. They dropped the money off at my house.
INTERVIEWER
You didn’t assassinate Tito—but you tried?
KAVAJA
Killing Tito was a big mission. For almost a decade, I hunted him. I was never a traitor—I wanted to save my country. That’s why I was good for this mission. I was ready to give my life for it. If I died one second after I killed Tito I wouldn’t care. He killed my three brothers. He destroyed my country. I went to jail. I lost everything.
In 1963 I got information that Tito was coming to North and South America for a tour. Our intelligence said it would be easier to kill him in South America because the security would be much thinner down there. Tito always traveled with his own agents, about a hundred and twenty-five Yugoslav State Security Service men. These men went a few months in advance to clean up all the political dissidents. When I say clean up, I mean jail or kill. They had files on these people. Of course, they had a big file on me too. The government wanted me dead. The State Security Service sent people to try to assassinate me. When I returned to Serbia in the 1990s, a Montenegrin man came and said to me, I was supposed to kill you in 1976 in the States, but I couldn’t find you. We laughed about it.
Anyway, to kill Tito, I worked with a man named Dragiša Kašiković and a third Serbian guy whom I won’t identify because he is still undercover. We weren’t maniacs. We didn’t just decide, Hey, we’re going to go kill Tito. We got our orders from the CIA and planned it out carefully.
Rio de Janeiro was our first shot. Dragiša went first. He got fake documents and traveled as a Mexican journalist with a sombrero and a video camera. I took a Colt .45 and a .357 Magnum and disguised myself as a Catholic priest—with a long black robe and a black hat. We had informants in town that provided us with information. We knew Tito liked to go out on the town, eat, and see chicks. I waited for word that he was out on the town and then I would shoot him. That was the plan. Tito’s security people were all over. You could tell who they were. They were stupid that way. All of them were dressed in blue suits with a Yugoslav flag on their lapel. I’d walk by them dressed up as a priest. It was great. They never recognized me, the man who was going to kill Tito.
But Brazil was not our time. Tito stayed in the capital house. He didn’t move from the building for two days. We didn’t see him come and we didn’t see him go. One day he was there and then he was gone. Like a ghost.
INTERVIEWER
Was that a major letdown for you?
KAVAJA
I didn’t panic. You had to be focused. I knew he would be in this part of the world for close to two months. So the idea was to wait for the best chance.
From Brazil, I followed him to Santiago, Chile. Again, he didn’t leave the capital buildings. Then we got to Mexico City just ahead of him. I was hoping to get him coming from the airport in his car. We waited for hours. But he never came. Then I got a message to come to Washington, D.C., immediately, because Tito was on his way. That was the most dangerous place for us as a group. The FBI was searching for us. They were working with the Yugoslav State Security Service.
INTERVIEWER
I thought you worked with the CIA.
KAVAJA
But the CIA and the FBI didn’t share informants. They were rival organizations. There were rewards for our capture from the FBI. Dragiša and I arrived in D.C. a week or so before Tito. We hid out in some rooms above an Eastern European restaurant. One night, Dragiša came to my room. The press was saying that Tito was ill. Another paper was saying that Tito had died. This was all propaganda. Our intelligence said that he was going to Williamsburg, Virginia, instead of the capital. That wasn’t in the press. So at around one in the morning we drove to Williamsburg. When we arrived, we stopped in a park. I was very tired. I needed a shave, so I got out and shaved in the river. I stood there in the cold and dipped my razor in the water and went at my face. But then something happened. I saw a shadow and jumped. I thought we were finished. When I looked behind me, it was a big statue of the English captain John Smith. Fucking John Smith! You ever seen that statue? It’s a big statue. It was the first shock of the day.
INTERVIEWER
Did you know where Tito was going to be?
KAVAJA
No, our first task was to find him. There were guys in blue suits all over the city—but now they weren’t wearing their flag pins! Dragiša went around posing as a journalist, talking to people and taking pictures. He found out that Tito would be going to the city hall because there was a Yugoslav flag there alongside the U.S. flag.
It was our last chance. But Tito flew in on a helicopter to city hall. A fucking helicopter! Not a car! The devil, or God, protected Tito. I couldn’t believe it. All I had was a Colt .45 and a .357 Magnum. I wasn’t ready to shoot a helicopter. You need a missile for that.
INTERVIEWER
Did you even see Tito that day?
KAVAJA
He landed out of sight! And then he left the same way he came. Fuck it. After that Tito went to Washington to visit President Kennedy at the White House, and then to New York City. I remember him going to a restaurant on Fifth Avenue. I was waiting on the street, dressed as a priest with glasses. There were thousands of demonstrators from Communist countries. These protestors saved his life. When he came out of the restaurant, he got into his car, a Cadillac, and the protestors swarmed around him. Those fucking people! I couldn’t get a shot off. I got blocked out.
INTERVIEWER
No luck.
KAVAJA
No! The last attempt was in 1971 at Camp David in Maryland. He was going there to visit Richard Nixon. No one can carry a gun around Camp David, but I went alone, dressed as a Maryland State Trooper. I couldn’t get on the actual property, but I got up into a tree—there are a lot of woods—where I could see the chopper with binoculars. I had my sniper rifle with me. My thought was that at some point Tito would take a walk into the woods. He liked to take walks. It was beautiful, I thought. Who wouldn’t take a walk? I waited all day and night.
INTERVIEWER
In the tree? You didn’t sleep?
KAVAJA
No. I couldn’t kill him if I was asleep. You don’t know anything about this kind of thing! Sleep? What a fucking joker.
INTERVIEWER
Did Tito ever go for a walk?
KAVAJA
Never. After two days, he left. And that was it. Nothing. So I didn’t get him. But I did a lot of damage to his regime and to Communism.
INTERVIEWER
Yes—you had a Serbian terrorist organization, didn’t you?
KAVAJA
It was a freedom group. I called it Freedom for the Serbian Fatherland—SOPO. There were hundreds of us, and we got money from anti-Communist agents and the CIA. We organized bombings all over the world on Yugoslav properties. Just after Saint Sava’s Day, on January 29, 1967, my group did its biggest job. We bombed the Yugoslav embassies in Washington and Ottawa and the consulates in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Toronto.
Bin Laden stole our strategies. I don’t know how many people were killed. But after that day the State Department got a lot of pressure from Tito to track us down and extradite us. It was a big mess. I moved around a lot.
INTERVIEWER
Did they catch up with you?
KAVAJA
Not until November 21, 1978. I was in New York on my way to a friend’s house and more than twenty agents with guns ambushed me on Third Avenue at Forty-ninth Street. They arrested over a hundred of us from SOPO. My friends thought we would get out because there was little evidence against us and we worked for the CIA. I didn’t agree.
On May 24, 1979, a judge in Chicago found us guilty but delayed the sentencing until June 21. I got out on two hundred and fifty thousand dollars bail. The judge released everyone except for Stojilko Kajević. He went by the name Priest. He helped me lead SOPO. The FBI thought he was the most dangerous. That was a mistake. After the trial I told Priest that I was ready to do a hijacking I’d been talking about. My plan was to land in Chicago, pick Priest up, and then fly to Belgrade and crash into the Communist Central Committee building.
INTERVIEWER
So that’s what you did when you got out on bail—hijacked a plane?
KAVAJA
First I returned to Paterson to see my family. The FBI was there, watching me around the clock, and I was obliged to call in to them daily. It was very hard on me and on my family. It destroyed us, really. Then I got a call from Priest. He said, Send me the memorandum. I said, For whom? President Carter, he said. That was the password to hijack the plane and come get him. I asked him, Are we sure this is the best time? He said, It’s the best. I said, Priest, you got it. On June 19, my lawyer called me. He said, Nik, don’t forget your sentencing on Thursday. I said, I know. I’ll be there.
That night I went into my basement, where I made bombs. I built two of them into two beer bottles. I used a plastic trigger instead of metal so it wouldn’t set off alarms. When I was building the bombs, the telephone rang—this is funny—it was an FBI agent from Chicago, Al King. He said, Hi Nik, how are you doing? I said, I’m making a bomb for tomorrow. He thought I was joking. It was a big scandal in the trial later on. You can check the court files. It’s all there.
After I finished, I went upstairs. I took some socks from my daughter’s room and stuffed the bottles in my legs. I put on my pants and looked in the mirror and you couldn’t see that anything was in there. I was ready. I went to sleep at around one A.M.
INTERVIEWER
How could you sleep?
KAVAJA
I had done a hundred more difficult operations. I never feared that I would make a mistake. I woke up at five, just like any other day. My wife woke up with me. She cooked me a steak for breakfast. That’s all I eat—steaks. It was sunny.
INTERVIEWER
Did you say a final goodbye to your family? I mean, you were heading to your death in a hijacked plane.
KAVAJA
I didn’t tell them anything. What could I say? I said goodbye like any other morning. I had the bombs strapped to my leg and dynamite in a leather suitcase. A cab picked me up and took me to the airport. I ordered a brandy at the airport bar and relaxed. I checked in and waited by security for the right moment to pass through. I knew that if a police officer stopped me, I would have to kill him. I was going to get on that plane. That’s all that was on my mind. Then I saw an albino couple with a lot of camping equipment passing through security. So I went with them. They set the alarm off. The police stopped them, but not me. I was dressed up in a suit and had a leather briefcase, looking professional. So they let me through.
I got on the plane to Chicago. It was an American Airlines 727. There were three seats on both sides of the plane. My seat was number twenty-three on the left side of the plane. The course for the plane was Chicago, Oklahoma City, Dallas. Because I’d been a pilot I knew a lot of details about flying. Next to me was a woman from Poland who had never been to the United States. Imagine that. She has to get on my plane! She was visiting her aunt in Chicago. We drank a brandy together. We talked. Fifteen minutes before we landed, I said goodbye to the Polish woman and went to the bathroom.
I got the bombs ready and then went to the cockpit. The stewardess asked me what I needed. I said, Give me the key to the cabin. She was paralyzed. I put my hand in her pocket, took the key, and opened the cabin. There were four pilots. They didn’t hear me open the door. When one of them tried to stand up, I forced him down. I showed them the explosives and said, This is my plane now, I am responsible for your lives. If you make a mistake, we will all go to God. He was silent. I told one of the copilots to stand up and give me his pilot coat and hat. I put them on because I was expecting big trouble in Chicago when we landed.
After a few minutes, the captain, whose name was Mitchell, asked me what I wanted—money or what? I told him to get me in touch with the FBI. Al King got on the line, the FBI guy who I’d talked to the night before. He was absolutely crazy! He said, Nik, you’re late for court. All of these tapes were later played at my trial. He lost his job for this. I said, Listen, in five minutes I’m going to fly over the courthouse. I told you last night that I was making bombs. He said, Why do you make jokes? I said, You’ll see me in five minutes.
I flew over the courthouse three or four times. An hour passed. The passengers didn’t know at first. We flew around and the stewardess brought me brandy. I told her not to be afraid, I wasn’t going to injure her.
Eventually we landed and I parked the plane at the far end of the airport. I started showing up on the news. There were a hundred twenty-eight passengers and eight crew members. Hundreds of police surrounded the plane on the runway. The FBI asked me what I wanted. I said, I want Priest.
Priest’s lawyer, Mike Monaco, got on the line. He asked me what was going on. I told him that I hijacked a plane and I wanted Priest released. He said, Priest is in court but we’ll get him. The FBI sent my lawyer out to the plane to talk. Passengers kept asking for things. One woman said she was going to give birth and I said, What the fuck is going on? I’m not a doctor, I’m a terrorist.
INTERVIEWER
I’m surprised the FBI didn’t give your lawyer a gun to disable you. Did you search him?
KAVAJA
That would have been the first time in the history of the United States that a lawyer assassinated his client. Fuck! When he came on he tried to talk me out of it, but I said it was too late. Then he begged me to release the passengers.
That was the riskiest moment for me. I worried that the FBI would attack. But I had the bomb trigger in hand and I told them not to mess around because I could blow the plane up in a second. The briefcase of dynamite was at my chest. I gave the passengers five minutes to get off. You should have seen these fat negroes! It was hilarious. Looking at them you wouldn’t expect them to be so fast. But they were off in seconds.
At the end there were four people left: the pilot Mitchell, a copilot, my lawyer, and a flight attendant. Walter Cronkite said on the news that night that this guy is giving the FBI a lot of problems. I was in all the newspapers the next day—The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times.
INTERVIEWER
What about Priest?
KAVAJA
Priest finally called me. But it wasn’t good. He said, Brother Nikola, I’m not coming with you. That was the most difficult moment for me. I’d sacrificed everything for this, my wife, my kids, my life. We had a deal. We were going to take the plane to Yugoslavia. It was his job to show me the building we were going to hit. I hadn’t been back to Yugoslavia for decades. The Communist Central Committee building was built in 1964. I didn’t know the land. I didn’t know what to do at that point. But he got off the phone and it was over.
INTERVIEWER
But you still had the plane.
KAVAJA
I had to make a decision. I told them to refuel the plane and then I told Mitchell that we were leaving. There were forty or fifty cars following the plane as we drove down the runway. Mitchell asked me what the plan was and I said, New York. On the way I demanded a 707, a much bigger plane, and a new crew to meet me at JFK. No one knew what I was going to do. When we landed, the 707 was there. We pulled up to it. I took Mitchell and the copilot and tied them to me. They were taller than me. I wanted to make sure I didn’t get killed on the way across and also that the new pilots were not imposters. There were hundreds of police snipers. But I had this living wall around me.
When we got to the other plane, I saw three guys sitting there like mummies. I slapped one of them on the shoulder and he stood up. He was my age. He said, I am a colonel in the United States Air Force, I have been married twenty-five years, and I came here to take you wherever you want. But please don’t hurt anyone. I said goodbye to Mitchell and the other pilot.
We left New York. Finally I told my lawyer the plan. You should have seen his eyes. He was a baby. We flew for hours. But then I had second thoughts. I was ready to die. But I didn’t know where the Central Communist building was in Belgrade. I didn’t want to kill regular civilians. That was never my job. I wanted to kill Tito and the biggest symbol of the Communist Party—not go down as the guy who killed innocent people. My friend betrayed me and I lost the target.
INTERVIEWER
So you’re up there with a stolen 707, a bunch of hostages, and nowhere to go.
KAVAJA
I didn’t want to lose my life for nothing. That was the point. But you don’t have time to think. My lawyer said that Ireland didn’t have an extradition agreement with the United States. He said I’d get political asylum, I’d be safe. So we landed there. I gave up the explosives and let everyone go. Then the negotiations started between the authorities of Ireland, my lawyer, and the States. Of course, they all betrayed me. Ireland sent me back to the United States. That was it. This time it was over for real.
At the trial in Chicago one of the copilots of the 707 testified. It was funny. I didn’t think there were any agents on the plane. Over the Atlantic, this guy had asked me if I wanted some steak. I said, How the fuck do you know I like steak? For a second I thought he was a police officer. But I searched him and found nothing. At the trial he admitted that he was an agent. When the judge asked where he had his weapon, he said it was with the steak. When
the judge asked him why he didn’t kill me, he said, Because I’m not a hero.
The trial was over a few weeks before Christmas in 1979. I got forty years for terrorism, transporting explosives, hijacking, conspiracy, and attempting to kill Tito.
INTERVIEWER
That’s a long time.
KAVAJA
I was in jail from 1979 to 1997. First I went to Marion prison in Illinois. Solitary confinement. Noriega was there at the same time. There were eighteen cells on the first floor. Every other cell was empty so you couldn’t talk through the walls. I sat in that cell, which was as hot and damp as summer all year long. You don’t count days. You don’t count weeks or months. You only count years. I never left my cell. I had three shirts, three pairs of pants, three towels, and two blankets from, like, World War I. I had a mouse friend who visited me at night. There was no regular toilet—it was in the floor and you had to be a good pilot to get everything in there. When you wanted to flush you had to yell to the guard. But that was bullshit. He’d yell back, Fuck your mother. So it never flushed. It just piled up and smelled. I didn’t eat much. When I ate, I ate bologna sandwiches and fish from World War I.
I did push-ups—thousands of them a day—and thought about my wife and kids, and I thought about Tito.
Then I was transferred from Marion to Lompoc in California. That’s when the CIA started to visit me again.
INTERVIEWER
What did they want?
KAVAJA
The civil war in Yugoslavia had started in 1991 and they asked me to go back to where we’d left off. They knew that the men fighting were my comrades. I told them, Go fuck yourselves, you destroyed my family, you betrayed me. But they kept coming and asking me to work for them. The last time they came was right before I got let out. I had been moved to Oakdale in Louisiana at that point, another maximum-security prison. Four or five of them came. One of them tried to shake hands. I didn’t shake his hand.
INTERVIEWER
After twenty years, they let you out?
KAVAJA
Yeah. It was a long time. And I’m on parole until 2019.
INTERVIEWER
So how did you get back to Serbia?
KAVAJA
I’m supposed to be in the States. But I left. I didn’t ask anybody. Now I can’t go back or they’d send me to prison. I can’t see my wife or kids. I went to Mexico and then Brazil and then South Africa. From there, I went to Athens, then Serbia. When I was in prison, I had written to General Ratko Mladić and given him instructions. I sent the letters through my lawyer—he didn’t know what was in them. I told Mladić how to fight Muslims. I also told him to get close to the peacekeepers. In 1995 I said that he should snatch those peacekeepers and hang them all from the streetlights. It was around the time that NATO was threatening to bomb. My dick. If Mladić had listened, NATO would never have bombed Yugoslavia.
INTERVIEWER
You wanted to lynch the peacekeepers?
KAVAJA
To show our strength. To warn them not to come near us. In my head I saw the bombing of Belgrade. The strongest air force in the world is going to bomb you. You can expect that. You can fight them on their territory, but never on yours. I wrote that to them. But Mladić didn’t listen to me, and then NATO bombed.
INTERVIEWER
How were you treated when you returned to Serbia?
KAVAJA
I had a reception at a military bunker in the mountains. It was early 1999 when Kosovo was going on. They were cooking mushrooms. That shit’s not for me. I only eat steak. It makes you strong. I cooked myself a big one that night. And I told them, We need to fight on their territory. Let’s go to Albania and Macedonia and fight the Albanians that way. That’s the only way we are going to win. They didn’t listen.
INTERVIEWER
Do you still have enemies?
KAVAJA
I have lots of enemies—ex-Communists, State Security Service from Tito’s day—but I’m not afraid. I have protection. And I can take care of myself. If someone wanted to assassinate me, I know how they’d do it because I was an assassin myself. I can shoot them, or I can throw them off the rail outside my apartment. My windows are barred like in Marion and I’m up high in my building. My doors are metal. See this? This is my best friend in all my life. It’s a German gun from before World War II, made in 1938. A Luger 9 millimeter. Very good gun.
INTERVIEWER
Is it loaded?
KAVAJA
Not right now.
INTERVIEWER
What’s the point of having a gun under your table if it’s not loaded?
KAVAJA
You know nothing about guns! There are bullets in it, but they aren’t engaged. I can engage it in a second. Then it’s a loaded gun. I got this gun when I finished my education in Serbia. My parents gave it to me.
INTERVIEWER
Did you ever use that gun?
KAVAJA
Of course! Why else would I have it? What a question!
INTERVIEWER
To kill?
KAVAJA
My dick. You’re a silly man!
INTERVIEWER
So you’re still ready to fight?
KAVAJA
I’m still strong. I work out every day except Saturday and Sunday. My hands are scarred from explosives, but I can still get down on the floor and do push-ups. I do two hundred push-ups, squats, like this, off the side of the bed. At one time, I could do three thousand. I use this bench press too. This place is a fortress. If they come to take me, I will kill them.
INTERVIEWER
How many people have you killed so far?
KAVAJA
There are so many things that I can’t even tell you. How many I killed is not important. I count to seventeen and then stop counting. It’s just a number. My first kill was when I was fourteen and my last was, I don’t know, maybe in 1976. But I’m not going to talk about that. I probably shouldn’t have said a lot of the things I said. I still have my wife and kids in the United States.
INTERVIEWER
What does it feel like to assassinate someone?
KAVAJA
What the fuck?
INTERVIEWER
After such an extreme life, it must be hard to settle down and call it quits.
KAVAJA
It’s not over. I still fuck good. I’ve got a couple of young girls. You see this one here? Her tits! Her hair! I also have other jobs to do, but we won’t talk about that. I have money and girls and that’s a good life for me. I’ve got a house in Montenegro, a big apartment in Novi Sad. I got this apartment in Belgrade. I’m set up.
INTERVIEWER
I see pictures on your wall of Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini. Are they idols?
KAVAJA
These are big men.
INTERVIEWER
And big murderers.
KAVAJA
American presidents killed too.
INTERVIEWER
And that picture?
KAVAJA
That’s Dragiša and his eight-year-old daughter. They were killed by the Yugoslav State Security Service in 1977. He was a great man. I miss him. I miss those times.
INTERVIEWER
How do you think you’ll be remembered?
KAVAJA
Evil.
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