Mission Impossible

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Tuesday, 1:08 p.m., the U.S. embassy in Skopje. Holbrooke and Hill meet with Rugova. It's 90[degrees]F., but the Kosovar novelist and literature professor arrives wearing a sweater, coat and red silk ascot. As the men sit down, Holbrooke asks Rugova if he wants to remove his jacket. "No," Rugova responds. "I'm an Albanian snake."

Rugova is also uncompromising. "We have a right to be a new independent state," he says to TIME before the meeting. He tells Holbrooke that a NATO force, including U.S. soldiers, should deploy in Kosovo to establish an "international protectorate." Washington wants no part of such talk: it prefers that Kosovo remain within Yugoslavia as a fully autonomous republic but without the right to secede. Of more immediate concern is how much support Rugova commands among the increasingly bellicose and fragmented rebels. Holbrooke presses Rugova, who insists that he can speak for the K.L.A. in negotiations with Milosevic. Holbrooke is far from convinced. After the meeting, he taps out a FOR YOUR EYES ONLY message to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on his progress: no good news to report.

Tuesday, 6:10 p.m., Belgrade. Fresh from a chat with Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister--in town to make sure Milosevic sticks to a promise he gave Boris Yeltsin to resume talks with Rugova--Holbrooke arrives at Milosevic's presidential palace. The two tuck into a four-hour dinner of steak, lamb and fish, while Holbrooke warns the Serb leader that NATO air strikes are inevitable if his army continues its clampdown. "What's left of your country will implode," Holbrooke says.

Milosevic remains evasive, knowing NATO is very reluctant to intervene. The Serbian strongman has only himself to blame for stoking ethnic Albanian resentment. As a Kosovar leader warns, "If Milosevic continues his current policy of negotiating and killing at the same time, there will be no solution other than for everyone to go and join the K.L.A." All too aware of this grim possibility, Holbrooke leaves the dinner with little more than a case of indigestion.

Wednesday, 12:15 p.m., Kosovo. An armored van carrying Holbrooke stops along a one-lane dirt road just south of the hamlet of Istinic. Rusted farm implements obstruct traffic, one of many barricades K.L.A. insurgents have set up. U.S. security agents scan the surrounding forest, fearing that the halted convoy may become a target for stray gunfire. Holbrooke orders the vehicles to head back to the town of Decane, which Serb forces burned last month. Coming through the town earlier, the convoy passed deserted buildings, but in the town's center, two dozen people sat at an open-air cafe sipping coffee and sodas. As Holbrooke drives back through the center, the cafe is empty: Serb security agents had staged a Potemkin-like show of normality. Holbrooke instructs a staff member to cable Washington, "We have just seen The Truman Show in Decane."