Bird of the Gods

Chapter Six

Light rain droplets knocked on Fiona's shoulders, greeting her like a tap from a tender, cautious forefinger of an old friend she hadn't seen in a long time as she emerged from the Belgrade airport Arrivals lounge.

She spun around, squinted, and strained her tired eyes, making an honest-to-god effort to comprehend the massive chubby silvery letters:

AERODROM NIKOLA TESLA

Fair enough, being in a country whose language differed so much from her own supposed that there was going to be a lot of fun deciphering going on. Her stomach did a mini somersault at the thought. Solving puzzles was her middle name.

"Aerodrom" must have meant "airport."

It took a bit of time for the engine of her sluggish brain to start up and recall Nikola Tesla was a world famous engineer and physicist. He had made dozens of breakthroughs in the production, transmission and application of electric power. Basically, it was thanks to this scientist that we had electricity and wifi — two pillars of modern humanity.

Okay, no wonder the Serbs had named their capital city airport after the man.

The flight from London to Belgrade had actually been quite nice. When one did not know what to expect, pleasant surprises were the best kind of surprises. It lasted a mere two and a half hours and they landed on time — ten a.m. sharp. Fiona had reveled in the view of the clear blue skies above and the puffy clouds underneath her, thinking herself so lucky to snatch a spot next to the window in the everlasting seat-assigning lottery.

On top of it all, a kind, smiling flight assistant had served her a hot cup of strong-brewed black coffee and a yummy omelet with dry-cured ham and cheddar cheese. The pony-tailed woman had sported a uniform that consisted of a crisp skirt suit in navy blue, a matching headpiece and an Air Serbia statement foulard. Fiona found the stewardess' look quite retro, especially paired up with a strong red lipstick, but she kind of dug it, too.

"Taksi! Treba li taksi? Ajmo taksi!" A gauntlet of sly-faced taxi drivers ambushed her from behind, all of them cawing at once.

"I wouldn't do that, if I were ye," a sweet female voice enunciated in perfect English, with just a tiny hint of Eastern European inflection. If anything, she sounded more Irish than Serbian.

"Oh?" Fiona spun around to face a lanky crimson-haired girl clothed in a red Geographical Norway jacket, who was now eyeing the squawking drivers' group with an ill-concealed distaste.

"I'm tellin' ye, it's a total rip-off. They'll rob ye of forty euros for a mere fifteen kilometers ride, just to get you to the city center. A disgrace."

"Wow! That does sound pricey."

"Aye. Taxi drivers here at Serbian airports jus' do what they can to make ends meet. And, when they see a foreigner, they get even more insistent, and charge them thrice. Ugh." The girl furrowed her thick brows in displeasure.

Fiona glanced at her cell phone screen. Another hour or so until the bus for Zlatibor departed from the Belgrade main bus station. Her grandfather's instructions were clear: after arriving in Belgrade, she was to get on the bus to the mountain Zlatibor and pose as a Zimbabwean tourist enamored with Serbian folkways. The hotel had already been paid for.

Would she have time to get there? Granted, a taxi might make her life easier, but forty euros sounded a tad overboard. Heck, that was the exact same price of her low cost London-Belgrade flight ticket, for the distance of two thousand five hundred kilometers.

"There's this mini bus A1, Aerodrom Nikola Tesla - Trg Slavija. It'll take ye to the city center," the red-haired girl offered. "Tis only two hundred and fifty dinars."