For the modest outlay of 28 Yugoslav dinars ($2.80), NATO could have saved itself a lot of trouble.
That was the price of a 1998 Belgrade map, bought at a tourist information bureau in the city yesterday, which gave the address of the Chinese embassy and clearly marked the street in which it stands, or what remains of it.
Using what US authorities admitted was an outdated 1992 map provided by the CIA, NATO hit the Chinese embassy in Belgrade with three missiles on Friday, killing three people, sparking mass demonstrations in Beijing and threatening to derail a possible Kosovo peace deal.
"The tragic and embarrassing truth is that our maps simply did not show the Chinese embassy anywhere in that vicinity," NATO told the Washington Post.
The chairman of the US Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Richard Shelby, said after a briefing from intelligence officials on Monday: "The mistake here was the original database. It was outdated. I believe it was a 1992 map when it should have been an up-to-date map."
The ultra-modern purpose-built Chinese embassy was not built until 1995.
But the latest city map has the address of the embassy clearly listed as "3, Tresnjincvet" (Cherry Blossom Street), a relatively short street close to the Danube in New Belgrade.
Mr Shelby blamed the outdated database on the reduction in funding for US intelligence operations.
"When you're stretched thin . . . When it's dated and it's not checked for the latest mapping of the grid of Belgrade, mistakes are going to happen," he said.
But if cost was a problem, a free tourist map in Belgrade also gives the address and shows a flag, denoting an embassy, in the spot where the Chinese mission stands.
In Rome, the Italian daily La Repubblica said the embassy bombing was the latest blunder by the CIA.
Last year, Italy's then prime minister and the new European Commission president, Mr Romano Prodi - angered by the killing of 20 skiers by a US marine jet in the Italian Alps - pointedly suggested to the US that it should update its maps.
While Washington was apologising to Beijing, a court martial in North Carolina was sentencing a pilot to six months' jail in connection with the tragedy in Italy.
On February 3rd, 1998, a US EA-6B Prowler surveillance aircraft on a training flight out of the US airbase in Aviano flew low over an Italian ski resort and snagged lift cables carrying a ski gondola. The gondola crashed into the mountain, killing 20 skiers. US reports said the pilots were using US military maps which did not show the cablecar.