Even at the airport, he was suspicious. While the rest of the company, all wearing tight red checkered T-shirts with the number 10 and the words "Modric" on the back, laughed uproariously at A Pe's successful joke about customs control, Njonjo looked around nervously. He clearly saw that guy behind the pillar a while ago, he was obviously waiting for him at the airport, and now Njonjo has lost sight of him. Protectively holding his minor son from behind, he cautiously exited the building into the warm Zagreb night, looking sometimes behind him, sometimes towards the column of black Audis. Finally, he saw a stout man with a large white card on which was written "President of the Parliament of the Republic of Croatia, graduate engineer and graduate political scientist Gordan Jandroković".
– Mr. Gordan! – at that moment a man called out and Njonjo cautiously looked back and hurried towards the car. He looked once more towards the airport building, then pushed his son into the limousine, sat next to him and slammed the door.
- Drive! – he exclaimed.
- We are going home? – asked the driver.
- No! - screamed Njonjo, scaring his son, then stroked his head. - Actually yes, but around.
- How around?
- They are following us.
- Who is following you, sir?
- Pesos, who else? - answered Njonjo nervously. - Damn pesos.
- I'm a motherfucker! - said to the driver. - I apologize, sir.
- Just drive.
After two hours of driving around Zagreb, the Speaker of the Parliament told the driver to stop, then got out and called Uber. He changed two more Ubers before he and his son got out of Ružičnjak and finally entered the house.
- So where are you so far? The game ended at eight! – shouted Sonja.
- I know, but... - tried Njonjo.
- Six o'clock! Six! You could do the same with Ryanair! If you had gone by official car, you would have arrived from Berlin a long time ago!
- Sonja, my love - he tried again.
- But no, the gentleman has a better idea, "we're going with A Pe, A Pe will pick us up by the government plane, we'll be here by midnight at the latest"! - she didn't stop.
- Sonia! - exclaimed Njonjo at the end. - We were followed by pesos.
- Pesos! – she screamed. - What do you mean pesos? Are you sure it was them?
- Oh yes, it was them. They know everything.
– I knew, I knew exactly! My God, what are we going to do now, have you told A Pe, what A Pe says? - she started to lower the blinds, then suddenly remembered. – I know what we're going to do, we're going to sell the house! We're going to sell the house and run away to Uruguay!
- Sonia! - Njonjo firmly grabbed her by the shoulders. - Sonja, those are pesos. No one ever ran away with pesos.
- Dad, what are pesos? – then the little one asked, and Njonjo and Sonja hugged each other and slid to the floor, sobbing.
That's how it happened on the night from Saturday to Sunday in the Jandroković home on Zagreb's Ružičnjak, God forbid. For ten years, ever since he entered the Parliament and transferred management rights in his company to the old man, Njonjo has been walking on the edge, and finally it came to be paid. All those years, and when he employed A Pe's godfather as the head of diplomacy at the embassy in London, and when he intervened for Gajski in the State Real Estate, and when he falsified a garden in the property card of Beća, Njonjo knew that he would not be able to do so forever, but there on the edge he felt alive again, like he used to, when he threw himself into the blue abyss from a meter high mule in Malinska in front of the young and handsome Sonja. Until he became an adrenaline addict, who could no longer know or want otherwise.
You only live once, he told his friends who advised him to slow down a bit, at the same time comforting Sonja that he has everything under control, for God's sake he is the president of the Parliament, after all, even A Pe wouldn't let anything happen to them.
And then, last Saturday, he took his son to Berlin on the government jet to the match between Croatia and Spain - the older one was in Qatar and now it was the younger one's turn - and on the way back to Zagreb at the airport, he clearly saw a guy following him hidden behind a pillar. He knew immediately that it was them and that it was over. Ten years, he knows it's stupid, but that's what he thought first, ten years actually lasted well. When he draws the line, Sonja and he had a beautiful - perhaps dangerous, but beautiful - ten years.
During that long sleepless night, in the locked apartment with the blinds down, he thought that Sonja's idea was not so silly: in the morning, he would ask Frka if Uruguay had a parliament, maybe they too needed an experienced parliament speaker. And the very next day, disguised as Luka Modrić with his wife and two children, the Jandrokovićs will travel to Montevideo.
- What do you mean "how"? - Njonjo will be confused. - And Pe arranged for us to travel by government plane.
- And the pesos? – Sonja will remind him.
- I have Uruguayan pesos - he will point to the swollen Vuitton bag. – Vujke arranged an excellent course for me.
- Pesos, Njonjo. Pesos.
- Yes, my mother-in-law - Njonjo will slap her forehead. – The commission for deciding on the conflict of interest!
Yes, gentlemen, the Commission for deciding on conflicts of interest, the PZOOSI, the infamous "pesos", the fear and trembling of the HDZ, the long arm of law and justice, the last line of defense of the Croatian Republic and the nightmare of the Speaker of the Parliament, who, well, the PZOOSI are highly trained 's agents caught him taking his son to a match in Berlin on the official plane of the Government of the Republic of Croatia. After which Njonjo wakes up every morning in a cold sweat, waiting for him to be draconianly cut a few hundred euros in fines for violating Article 6, Paragraph 3 of the Law on Prevention of Conflict of Interest, and Article 50 of the same Law.
Or that according to Article 49 - Njonjo is afraid to even think about it - they will give him a warning.
Warning.
The most terrible word that a living Hadese will hear in his lifetime. The President of the Parliament would rather serve a life sentence in Lepoglava than spend the rest of his miserable and ruined life with the stigma of a reprimand from the Commission for deciding on a conflict of interest: with that reprimand, Njonjo would at least be an emperor and a legend in prison, all tattooed murderers, war criminals, rapists and ministers in the prison canteen they would look in awe at that self-deprecating muscular guy and say under their breath, "that's the one with the PZOOSI warning".
"Señores, por favor!", soon, to make a long story short, El Ñoño will shout, "señoras y señores, ¡levantaré la sesión!", the strict el presidente de la Asamblea General de Uruguay will bring order, until in the hall of parliament in One day, Montevideo is not suddenly attacked by a group of five men and women: are they the Tupamaros of Héctor Amodio Pérez, the astonished representatives will ask, is it the Federación Anarquista Uruguaya or the military junta of General Álvarez? No, of course it is the infamous la Comisión Croata para decidir sobre conflictos de intereses!
"Don't you!", the President of the Uruguayan Parliament, Ñoña Jandrokovic, will say, "I did not expect the Croatian Commission for deciding on the conflict of interest!", and the president of the Commission, Aleksandra Jozić-Ileković, will only say: "No one expects the Croatian Commission for deciding on conflict of interest!”
- No, señor, no one here expects the Croatian Commission for deciding on the conflict of interest! - then Sonja will repeat even louder, cursing the journalist of El Observador and slamming the telephone receiver angrily, and Njonjo will wake up on the couch bathed in cold sweat.
And so every morning.
Bonus video:
