‘Yessir.’
They stepped into a back room and emerged a few seconds later struggling under the weight of a dark green body bag.
At the sight of it, Alex felt a moment’s queasiness, knowing the messy remains that lay inside.
‘Good strong bag this, sir. Keeps the pong in,’ the dark-haired soldier remarked.
Josip had the Bedford’s tailboard down and was standing on it protectively.
‘We’ll need two of us at each end to get ’im up there,’ said the ginger corporal.
Alex hoisted himself onto the tailboard and with Josip took hold of the foot of the bag, leaving the soldiers to bear most of the load. They heaved it into the centre of the cargo platform and set it down between two sets of attachment rings.
‘Got enough straps and that, to tie it down?’ asked Ginger.
‘Yes. We’re okay.’
‘Then, we’ll leave him with you, sir.’
‘Fine. Thanks for your help.’
He set to work with string, tying the handles of the bag to the rings on the floor. Josip crawled forward to the hide and whispered words of reassurance to Vildana.
‘I tell her it is some equipment,’ he explained.
‘Good. She okay?’
Josip nodded.
Poor kid, Alex mused. She’d got a hellish day ahead of her. He stood back and checked his work. All secure.
Both men jumped to the ground and re-secured the tailboard and tarpaulin. While Josip climbed back into the cab, Alex sprinted to the cookhouse to pick up ration packs for the journey. Then he drove the truck out of the camp to where the rest of the white vehicle convoy was lining up, and the crews were donning their body armour.
It was ten minutes to eight.
The convoy snaked up Route Triangle, one Warrior at the front and another at the rear, the Land Cruiser and the Bedford tucked in amongst the empty container trucks that had shuttled supplies up from the coast to keep the British contingent of UNPROFOR fed and watered.
He’d had no opportunity to talk to Lorna alone that morning. No chance to find out if she’d accepted what he’d said about Belfast. No occasion to discover if she was for him or against him.
They crossed from one militia’s territory to another and back again, with sentries watching their progress from makeshift bunkers, sheltering from the rain which pummelled the roofs of the vehicles. The massive bulk of the Warrior at the front deterred any thoughts they might have of stopping the convoy to check it.
‘You’ve worked many times with Lorna?’ Alex asked, casually, deciding he’d try to get to know the translator better if they were to spend the next eight hours together.
‘Three times before in Bosnia. Always they pay me to fly to Frankfurt to meet her. Then we drive to Split.’
‘Frankfurt? Why Frankfurt?’
‘I think because CareNet medicines come from America on Air Force planes. They have big military base at Frankfurt.’
‘Really? Didn’t know the US Air Force was involved.’ Maybe Lorna was planning to get Vildana to America by Air Force jet.
‘And you?’ Josip said. ‘You are old friend with Lorna, she tell me.’
‘That’s right. Known her most of my life, on and off.’
‘You are perhaps like soul mates?’
Odd words to come from Josip, Alex pondered. More like Lorna’s words. How much had she told him?
‘I don’t know about that . . .’
The convoy slowed for a hairpin bend in the midst of a village. Children streamed from the houses, defying the rain in the hope the drivers would throw sweets to them. Blonde eight-year-olds ran perilously close to the wheels of the Bedford.
Minutes later the convoy slowed to a halt on the crest of a wooded ridge. The Warriors that had brought them this far were handing over to another pair that had come up to meet them from the next base at Gorni Vakuf.
Ahead, the unmade road dropped into the canyon where three days before Alex’s mission had so nearly come to a premature end. He shuddered at the recollection of that squat automatic pressed against his face.
‘Hullo again!’
A breezy, female voice at the window of the cab. Alex looked down. It was the same lieutenant who’d escorted them on the way up, rain dripping from the rim of her blue helmet.
‘Well, hello! Fancy seeing you,’ he said. ‘Not going to leave us in the lurch again I hope.’
She gurgled with laughter.
‘No fear! You’re on my orders this time. Got to keep a close eye on you.’ She smiled toothily. ‘Sorry you had a bit of trouble on the way up. But you were just hangers-on then. Different today. I say, I’m terribly sorry about your companion . . .’
‘Yup . . .’ Alex pointed over his shoulder to the back of the truck.
‘I know . . .’ she said. ‘Look, we’re just going to bat on down the road. There shouldn’t be any hold-ups – there’s no fighting anywhere, so they tell me. Could be a delay on the mountain road, of course. Can’t predict that. But the only time we do stop officially is at the border with Croatia. Have to, legally. They usually wave us on p.d.q., but it’s possible they’ll want to look inside. Just so you’re prepared for that.’
‘Okay. Thanks for the warning.’
‘Oh, and watch the road. It’ll be a mud slide up the top.’
She gave a loose salute and strode back to her Land Rover at the front of the convoy.
They set off down the canyon track, windscreen wipers struggling against the brown spray kicked up by the trucks in front, every pothole a tureen of mud.
Gorni Vakuf looked more desolate than ever in the foul weather, its streets deserted, apart from an old man picking through the rubble.
Beyond the town the escorting Warriors waved the convoy past. They’d cleared the conflict zone. It was Bosnian Croat territory all the way to the border.
Josip glanced through the rear window.
‘D’you think she’s all right?’ Alex asked. He thought of Vildana clinging on as the truck bounced and jolted.
‘I hope. It is pity we cannot speak with her.’
There was a gap between the rear of the cab and the cargo space. No way of even tapping messages through.
‘Perhaps I should have sat with her in the back,’ Josip wondered.
‘There’s no seat. You’d have been knocked all over the place,’ Alex assured him. ‘We’ll try and stop somewhere and check she’s okay.’
Lorna shifted into third gear as the convoy weaved through the HVO checkpoint on the Makjlen Ridge, dodging the land mines that reminded her of upturned dinner plates. The Bedford was a few metres in front.
Every sighting of the Croat militia made her shiver. She knew they suspected convoys like this one secretly ferried men and arms to their Muslim-led enemies. Two vehicles without UN logos, hers and the Bedford, would not go unnoticed.
Supposing one checkpoint got awkward? Supposing they searched and found Vildana? Would the girl lieutenant and her three soldiers protect them? No way. Have to pray for the ‘slivovitz factor’; that the men on the checkpoints were too boozed-up to care.
The back of the Bedford jolted and swayed. Poor kid, she thought. Hope to God she’s not been sick.
She pictured Alex wrestling with the wheel. Last night she’d lain awake thinking about what he’d told her, smarting that he had lied about still working for the intelligence services. Eventually she had cooled on that, however, convinced he had been honest in the end.
By the time she’d dropped off to sleep in the small hours, Alex’s rationale for sabotaging the breakout from Long Kesh in 1973 had begun to seem more acceptable. Her own support for the Provisionals, unquestioning then, had been undermined not long after by their Boston backers’ uncharitable wish to end her life.
What she could not yet accept or forgive was Alex’s duplicity over Catherine. For twenty years, deep down, she had longed to make things good with him again, a longing she had never admitted to, even to her sister Annie. But that
desire had been balanced by an even stronger yearning – that he should suffer for what he’d done – suffer like she had.
Eventually they would be reunited, she was certain of that. The dream she’d had when they’d first met had been too vivid to be anything other than a premonition. The dream of her own face in an open coffin and Alex weeping by the grave.
The long, steep hill wound down into Prozor, an evil place from where the Muslims had long since been ethnically cleansed. An HVO garrison town, from where camouflaged buses packed with soldiers shuttled to and from the trenches up on the ridge.
The UN convoy slowed to a snail’s pace to negotiate the narrow street. Then they were through, climbing past a string of villages towards the Ljubuša mountains. The tarmac ended by a lake, its chalky waters grey and choppy. The vehicles in front pulled in to the right.
‘We’re taking a break, by the look of it,’ Alex remarked. ‘Gives us a chance to see how Vildana is. And for a pee.’
‘I think, I go look in the back,’ Josip agreed.
‘Don’t let anyone see her.’
The translator looked at him coldly. He didn’t need to be told that.
‘Hi. How’re you doing?’ The lieutenant had stopped by the cab.
‘Fine. How long are we stopping for?’
‘Could be ten minutes. There’s a Canadian convoy coming down off the mountain. No point in moving until that’s out of the way.’
‘Good. Time for a leak, then.’
‘Huh! All right for you boys! I just have to keep my legs crossed.’
She moved on to talk to Lorna in the Toyota. Alex climbed down and scuttled off to the right, where a line of drivers were already relieving themselves against a rock face.
When he’d finished, he found the tailboard down and Josip already up on the cargo platform. Lorna got out of the Land Cruiser and came across.
‘How is she?’ she asked, looking round to see no one was close enough to hear.
Alex lifted the tarpaulin flap. The body bag was still secure. Beyond it Josip crouched by the camouflaged hide, talking and listening.
‘Seems all right,’ Alex replied.
Josip loped back to the tailboard.
‘She say she feel sick,’ he announced. ‘I tell her to eat some bread.’
‘Poor kid. Has she thrown up?’ Lorna asked.
‘No. Just feels sick. She okay, I think.’ He jumped down and re-secured the tarpaulin.
Alex strolled with Lorna towards the lake.
‘Are you all right?’ An all-purpose question that could cover as much or as little as she wanted.
‘Sure. I like driving.’
Giving nothing away, a hand’s breadth shorter than Alex, Lorna cocked her head on one side, looking at him pensively.
Extraordinary, she thought. The man had been such a part of her life, yet she had only spent a few weeks with him in the flesh. Never had the chance to find out who he really was . . .
‘What I was saying yesterday,’ Alex began, fumblingly, ‘Belfast and all that . . .’
‘I heard what you said . . .’ Her tone was flat and she turned back towards the convoy, showing this wasn’t the time to pursue the issue.
‘The lieutenant said they may search the trucks at the border,’ Alex went on, sticking to safer ground.
‘Oh? I’d hoped that with the UN we’d drive straight through,’ she said, alarmed.
‘Maybe we’ll be lucky. Anyway, what’s your plan once we’re in Split? I have to get Moray’s body to the airport.’
‘Let’s stop somewhere when we’re safely across the border and there’s nobody about. We’ll get Vildana out of the truck and into the Land Cruiser. We’re going to stay at the Hotel Split tonight.’
He looked at her, wondering for a moment if it was an invitation.
‘I’ll see you there then,’ he smiled. The words slipped out.
Her eyes chilled. ‘Don’t get any ideas, Alex.’
She took a pace back from him.
‘It’s not the same this time,’ she warned, walking away, a touch of pink suffusing her concave cheeks.
Alex smarted at the rebuff. He’d make a fool of himself if he didn’t watch out.
Down the hill towards them came a long line of huge, articulated trucks. The Canadian UN convoy was on its way through. The drivers of the British vehicles climbed back into their cabs and Alex hurried to the Bedford.
With puffs of blue smoke, the diesels revved and the convoy bounced back onto the rutted track. There’d be a good three hours of this. Three hours to cover fifty kilometres of one of the worst truck highways in the world.
It was only ten-thirty, yet it felt like lunchtime. He reached into his ration bag and pulled out a sandwich wrapped in cling film.
‘Undo this for me, would you, Josip?’
‘Sure.’
He peeled off the film and passed it back. Alex bit into it hungrily.
‘Where’s home, Josip?’ he asked.
The translator wobbled his head.
‘Many place. My father live Zagreb, my mother in Split. I have lived Sweden, Germany, Paris, Belgrade, Zagreb.’
‘You don’t have an apartment somewhere? Not married?’
‘I have many girlfriend. I stay in their apartment.’
Alex nodded. He didn’t believe him, but it wasn’t worth pressing.
‘Fine.’
‘You? You’re married?’ Josip asked.
Hard to answer. He didn’t know any more.
‘Yes. Married, but not, if you know what I mean.’
The answer seemed to set Josip thinking. He sat in silence for a minute or two.
‘You fuck with Lorna?’ he asked suddenly.
Alex coughed. Stupid conversation. His fault for starting it.
‘No,’ he answered. ‘What on earth makes you think that?’
The road wound higher and higher, hugging the red sandstone of the mountain. On one of the tighter bends a trailer truck lay in the trees below, a victim of the winter ice. After an hour the surface began to improve, where the British army engineers had widened and strengthened it. Every few kilometres huge earth-movers shovelled hard core into the potholes.
They passed checkpoints manned by HVO but attracted little interest. Away from the front line, tension had eased. On right-hand bends Alex checked in the door mirror to see that Lorna was still behind.
At the highest point, snow lingered on the branches, but on the roadway it had melted into a slush that clogged the wipers.
Eventually, after long pauses to let convoys pass in the opposite direction, the road dipped steeply down through the trees towards the plains of Hercegovina.
‘I fear we’ve got a very sick child in the back by now,’ Alex remarked.
Josip grunted agreement.
They rattled and bounced a few more kilometres, then the tyres hummed on tarmac.
‘Thank God for a proper surface,’ Alex breathed, stretching one arm at a time to shake the fatigue from his shoulders.
They cut through the outskirts of Tomislavgrad, then picked up the main road for Split.
‘How far to the border, Josip?’
‘Maybe forty minutes, I think.’
As they sped on down the road, Alex’s eyelids began to droop. All that driving after a night of little sleep had taken its toll. He kept shaking his head to keep awake.
Suddenly there was a roadside sign. The border was just five hundred metres ahead. Alex tensed up. He had no idea what to do if the Croat guards found Vildana. Have to bluff their way through.
‘Fingers crossed, Josip.’
The road border between Bosnia-Hercegovina and Croatia amounted to a string of prefab huts manned by a handful of officials in dark blue uniforms.
The convoy halted and the lieutenant strode to an office clutching the passports of the UN personnel. The rain had stopped and a chill wind broke up the cloud layer.
‘I guess we just sit tight,’ Alex muttered.
The b
order guards idly scanned the line of trucks. Then a couple wandered wearily towards them. One was a woman with curly hair and red lipstick. They made first for the Toyota.
In the door mirror Alex watched Lorna hand out her passport and UNPROFOR card. The woman took them to the office. The male officer walked round the Land Cruiser, looking through the windows.
Suddenly he turned to the Bedford, and stared at the back, low down where the number plate was.
He strolled round the side and appeared at the window, eyes full of suspicion.
‘Pasoš!’ he said gruffly.
‘He want passport,’ Josip translated, unnecessarily. He passed his own across too. Seeing he was Croatian, the official fired questions at him.
‘He says we do not have UN plates on this truck. He asks who we are.’
‘Well, tell him. Say we’re a British aid agency called Bosnia Emergency.’
Josip translated.
The official’s dark eyes were deeply suspicious. He jerked a thumb towards the back of the truck.
‘He wants to see inside,’ Josip gulped.
Alex climbed down from the cab and walked calmly back, Josip shadowing him on the other side.
‘Explain to the officer that we have a body in the back, Josip. Tell him it’s of an Englishman who was shot dead by accident.’
As Josip translated, he could see the official believed none of it.
Alex unpinned the hasps and lowered the board on its chains. He lifted a corner of the tarpaulin flap to reveal the body-bag. The official peered in and then turned on them, shouting.
‘He say where are papers for the dead man.’
Papers? McFee’s passport? Hadn’t thought of that.
‘Tell him I’ll get them.’
Alex pulled himself up onto the tailboard. McFee’s suitcase was strapped to the floor next to the boxes that concealed Vildana’s hide. He clicked open the bag and searched through the dead man’s clothing with his fingers.
A vile smell pervaded this end of the truck. A smell of vomit. Suddenly he heard laboured breathing and a stifled whimper.
Not now, Vildana! Just a few more minutes, for God’s sake!
His fingers touched and he plucked the passport from the case.
‘Here it is,’ he called, thumping his feet on the steel floor. Noise, that’s what they needed. Lots of it to drown any sounds Vildana might make. He crouched on the tailboard, clearing his throat as loudly as he could.
Scorpion Trail Page 20
