When I’m
not writing mystery novels, I write other things that people pay me to do.
Right now one of those is a family history, and in connection with that, I
recently had an interesting research experience.
One of the
family members in the story is a fellow who escaped from Yugoslavia when it was
under Communist rule in the 1950s. The escape was something straight out of a
spy movie: He and two friends got into a 13-foot boat and left the country
under cover of darkness, headed across the Adriatic to Italy.
I was
fortunate to have a fairly detailed account of the escape that his grand-nephew
in what is now Croatia had compiled from family lore. It gave a really good
outline of how the man had escaped and made his way to America, and there was
considerable valuable detail in the story. There were also a few holes in it,
too, and that’s where the Internet came to the rescue.
A Quick Answer and No Answer
One aspect
of the story was that when our hero had made good his escape and was in Italy
and Germany as a refugee, he feared, according to the account I had, a
Yugoslavian secret police organization called UDBA, which was believed to
operate throughout Europe, assassinating and abducting people who had fled the
country.
I’d never
heard of UDBA and didn’t know if I could trust my source, so I Googled it and
was able in a few minutes to confirm its existence and reputation. That was
sufficient to verify the reported fear, which was all I needed.
Another
seemingly simple question, though, proved difficult to nail down online. When
our three escapees fled, the motor on their boat broke down a few miles from
shore and they had to get out the oars and start paddling for Italy. The
obvious question was how far that would be.
Wikipedia
told me only that the widest point of the Adriatic was 120 miles across, but
what I needed was the distance at the point they were crossing. Google searches
revolving around Adriatic distances turned up no solid information, though I
did find a ferry that covers approximately the same route the escapees would
have tried to travel. No mileage was given, but the ferry time was 7.5 hours.
At an average speed of around 15 mph, that would put the distance at 100-120
miles — close enough for government work, but not a historian.
The Old-School Ruler Rules
Finally I
got so frustrated that I decided to go offline and take an old-school approach
that I knew would work. Grabbing a ruler from my desk, I threw it into my car
and drove a mile and a half to the Aptos Public Library. After a brief wait at
the reception desk, I was directed to the National Geographic atlas of the
world, which looked as if it hadn’t been used in a while.
Opening it
to the Europe section, I flipped through the maps until I came to one that
showed the Adriatic Sea and the countries on both sides of it. I set one end of
the ruler down on Cavtat, the fishing port from which the men left, and pointed
the other end at the closest outcropping of land on the Italian side. After
measuring that distance, I set the ruler down on the map’s mileage scale. The
distance I got was about 100 miles. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it —
in the family history and everything else.
