Heart of Danger

by Gerald Seymour

  Heart of Danger by Gerald Seymour

  By the same author

  HARRY'S GAME

  THE GLORY BOYS

  KINGFISHER

  RED FOX THE CONTRACT

  ARCHANGEL IN HONOUR BOUND

  FIELD OF BLOOD

  A SONG IN THE MORNING

  AT CLOSE QUARTERS

  HOME RUN

  CONDITION BLACK

  THE JOURNEYMAN TAILOR

  THE FIGHTING MAN

  GERALD SEYMOUR

  THE HEART OF DANGER

  HarperCollinsPublishers HarperCollins Publishers 77-85 Fulham Palace Road,

  Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

  Published by HarperCollins Publishers 1995 135798642

  Copyright Gerald Seymour 1995

  The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 0 00 225009 8

  Photoset in Linotron Plantin by Rowland Phototypesetting Ltd

  Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by HarperCollinsManufacturing Glasgow

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  To Gillian, Nicholas and James

  PROLOGUE.

  "Back again?" Yes, he was back again. Back again in Library. A smile for the supervisor that was not returned, as it had not been returned on either of the two days that he had been in Library the previous month, nor the two days of the month before that. Henry Carter's smile was brief, just enough to be polite. He looked for a table that was free. "Train was late, I'm afraid," he said mildly. He wiped the rain from his scalp. "It's a dreadful service." He was the interloper, really, an unwanted male in a feminine world, and he supposed that he inhibited conversation on men, cystitis, brassieres, mortgage rates, curtain hanging, school meals, Gilts versus Equities, tampons, whatever women talked about these days. The table that was free was placed furthest from the small supply of natural light permitted to filter through to the half basement floor of Library. Pretty poor light anyway because the windows were of blast-proof glass that distorted and were copper-tinted to block the electromagnetic signals from the computers being monitored by any electronic surveillance from across Vauxhall Bridge. Different from his day. Seemed to have managed without lead-lined rooms and copper-tinted windows and computers in silicon casings and fingerprint recognition locks on interior doors, managed pretty well, and kept a few secrets .. . He should not complain. He found space on the coat stand for his overcoat. His pension, even index-linked, was inadequate. He stood his umbrella, dripping, against the wall. The two days a month back in the Library were welcome, well, damned necessary. At the free table, watched by the girls and the women and their day shift supervisor, he unlocked his briefcase. The old one, of course, the one that he had carried day in and day out for twenty-three years from Waterloo Station and along the pavement beside the river and into the concrete tower of Century House, with the EIIR gold print faded from the flap. The morning newspaper, crossword started on the train, was first out. Then his sandwiches, cheddar and pickle and made by himself. Then his thermos (milk and sugar and sufficient for four measures). Then the magazine of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, a pleasure to be saved for the hour's statutory lunch break. If the RSPB had been prepared to have him for more than a single day a week, working on their membership register, then he would not have needed to grovel in gratitude for two days a month in Library .. . The supervisor stood over his table. She had the file in its cardboard folder clasped to her shallow bosom. She apologized, without sincerity, "It's a bit of a mess." Well, there were so many files these days that were a bit of a mess. Old files needed tidying and editing before being fed to the computer disks. Henry Carter was good at tidying and editing which was why he was called back those two days a month and sat at a table away from the natural light. He supposed that the women regarded the part-time labour as a threat to their own work security, because there was never a greeting, never any friendship. "I expect we can sort it out .. . Interesting one, is it?" "I wouldn't know." The file was dropped on the table. She turned and walked away from him, clattering her heels on the composite flooring. There had been carpeting in Library at Century House. Carpet had been good enough for the old building, not for the Babylon on Thames that was the new monstrosity at Vauxhall Cross. Too vulgar, too flash, for a headquarters building for the Secret Intelligence Service, inappropriate .. . He peeled the elastic band from the file's folder. Words, typed and handwritten and printed, were leaping at him. He looked up at the ceiling, at the battery of recessed lights. A little indulgence, but Henry Carter lived with nostalgia. Somewhere close by, perhaps in the annexe, perhaps already transferred to disk, would be the files of operations that had involved him from the start, when he had not just been the road sweeper, hired at 5.47 an hour for sixteen hours a month, to clear the litter of others. A little tremor, as there always was when he indulged himself. No need for a retired has-been, some never-was, to be called in to sift the files of Henry Carter's operations .. . He recalled the days when he had controlled a man sent across the inner German border to Magdeburg. He remembered the night long interrogation when he had reduced a desk head, one of their own, to a weeping and shamed creature. Decent files he had left behind him. He .. . They were watching from behind their silly screens. It would have been a good day to have been up on the former railway line at Tregaron, mid-Wales, because it was just the right time of year for the rare red kites, Milvus milvus, to be feeding. Glorious birds .. He dropped his head. He began to read. The file was, indeed, a mess, no order and no shape. He turned the pages fast. Fifteen typed sheets, four faxes, nine Foreign and Commonwealth Office signals, thirteen foolscap sheets covered by three different sets of handwriting, and a buff envelope of photographs. The old desk warrior gutted the pages, his training taking over. Henry Carter would have said if he was asked, and he never was, that there was a narcotic addiction from a file that was fresh to him. He was hooked, caught. Almost without looking up he called to the supervisor. "I'd like a map, please." "Of what?" Because of what he had read, because of the images already in his mind, a scratch of irritation clawed him. It was not a joke, nor was it mischief. "Hardly the sea front at Bognor Regis, no thank you .. . Large scale, 1:1000, if that's possible. Former Yugoslavia, what they call Croatia. The area that the United Nations Protection Force designates as Sector North .. ." He turned back the sheets of paper spread now haphazardly across the table. He was reaching for his thermos flask and Henry Carter's elbow, the leather patch on his sports jacket, caught the envelope that held the photographs. The envelope fell from the table. The photographs spilled. He looked down at them. He looked down onto the grotesque image of the young face. Worse than those of the old man shot to death on the ploughed strip beside that revolting German fence. Worse than those of the hanged Iranian woman suspended from a hideous construction crane in Tabriz. He shuddered. He barely heard the shrill voice. "A map like that, you'll have to wait until tomorrow for it. Can't get it before tomorrow. You know, Mr. Carter, it's not our job to .. ."

  He bent to pick up the photographs. He gazed into the face. He wondered if she had been pretty before the decay of burial had swollen the features. His fingers were scrabbling for the photographs and were unresponsive, and he felt the cold sweat streaming to the small of his back. His body weight swayed in the chair. He gulped deep air. He lifted the photographs onto the table and then he gripped the edge of the table that he might restore his balance. Too d
amned old for it .. .

  The voice beat at him. "Are you all right, Mr. Carter?"

  The woman at the computer desk nearest him giggled out loud. It was the giggle that probably saved him from fainting. It made his anger surge. It was rare for him to let his temper show. The woman was feeding her face with squares of milk chocolate. He took the photograph that was second from the top of the pile and walked the five strides, briskly, to the woman's desk and he laid the photograph on her keyboard. A photograph of a young face with a head wound and a throat wound and a close-quarters bullet wound. The woman belched chocolate over her blouse.

  Henry Carter went back to his table.

  He called across the silence, "I'm fine, thank you. Tomorrow would be grand for the map."

  He settled. For a moment he drummed his fingers on the table surface, then he reached again for his thermos and poured himself a half-measure into the plastic cup. He drank. He took from his briefcase a bag of sharpened pencils and biro pens in three colours. The moment had passed, it was as if the photographs had ambushed him. He began to search the sheets of paper for date stamps and he laid them out over the width of the table and then began to number them in red from the first date. Wouldn't take him long to knock the file into shape. If the map came he would most certainly be finished by tomorrow lunch time. That would be excellent. It would give him time to be out of London before the afternoon rush for home, and on the road comfortably for the Powys mountains, and the railway line from which the red kites, Milvus milvus, could be seen.

  The date stamp on the first sheet of paper was 3 April 1993. For a moment, idly, he tried to remember what he would have been doing that day twenty-three months before, and failed. The paper was letter-headed "Physicians for Human Rights' .. . It was easy for him to picture it.

  There was a milage and a lane and foul mud, and a grave. '

  ii

  One.

  The area for the digging was outlined by a rude rectangle of white tape. The rectangle was approximately ten metres by four metres, as measured out by the Professor's full strides. It had been easy to recognize the rectangle where they had dug because only weeds had grown in that disturbed corner of the field. Around the edge of the rectangle, heaped on the grass beyond the white tape, was the new boundary marker of piled muddy earth. Four policemen had done the digging at the Professor's direction. The long-handled spades with the wide blades were now tossed onto the low mud wall. The four policemen and the Professor knelt in the pit they had made. When they had started, their overalls had been pure white, they were now smeared in the grey-black mud of the field. There was no talking amongst the policemen and they responded only to the curt instructions of the Professor. Each could recognize that the light was starting to fall and would go quickly because the rain cloud was already below the level of the summit of the wooded hill that rose above the farmhouse. They had the one chance to excavate and exhume, and the chance would not come again, and they had brought no portable generator and no lights. It must be finished that afternoon. The rain spat on them, beat at their shoulders and their buttocks and at the backs of their knees. The rain made muddied pools in the pit around the bodies that were already retrieved. If the Professor had been working at home, if he had been called out by the Police Department's homicide team, then he would have been protected by a tent of stout tarpaulin. If the Professor had been working at home, crouched over the cadaver of a murder victim, then he would have had his own team with him, all expert, and there would have been no pressure of time. There was a way of doing things, there was a pattern of procedure, and he abided by the procedure because that was the bible to which he worked. He thought they were fine men, the four policemen with whom he uncovered the corpses, the tall young Canadian and the cheerful Frenchman and the droll balding Portuguese and the slim-wasted Kenyan, and they worked in silence to his abrupt instructions that were muffled through his face mask. Each time he looked up he saw that the rain cloud crept further down the wooded slope of the hill, and he saw that the lights burned brighter in the houses on the far side of the valley beyond the stream. If it had been possible to have erected a tent cover over the grave, if they could have worked at a slower speed, then they could have used the scalpels and the narrow brushes. The rain fell in the pit, destroyed his hopes of minute care. The policemen had learned from him, watched him and copied, and they scraped the clinging clay mud from the bodies with small trowels, the sort of trowels that his wife used in the garden back home in north Los Angeles. When they had taken as much mud from each body as was possible with the trowels, then they wiped the faces of the dead with the sodden cloths that he had brought. When he was satisfied that each face had been cleaned to the best of their ability, then the policemen would stand back and he would photograph the body in wide shot and then operate the automatic zoom on his pocket Nikon and photograph the face in close-up. There were nine bodies photographed in wide shot, nine faces captured in close-up, nine body bags zipped and lying close together beyond the earth wall around his white marker tape. The Professor used a clipboard of note paper that was covered by a clear plastic bag. He had made a small sketch map of the grave site, and had detailed each corpse before it was lifted to the body bag SSK9 wore around his throat a gold chain to which was attached a thin gold cross and an inscribed medallion. The left foot of SSK9 was gone, taken off at the ankle. The forehead of SSK9 showed the bullet hole, central. A single boot protruded from the mud layer alongside the indentation, now filling fast from the rain, from which they had taken SSK9. "OK, guys, should be the last one .. ." The Professor's voice was a growl. He kept his words brief and his voice low because that way he reckoned he was better able to prevent the bile spilling up from his throat. It was the smell that made him want to vomit. The face mask was a token against the smell of putrefaction. He had been told that the bodies were reckoned to have been buried in the month of December in the year of 1991, but the clay of the earth had been dense enough to keep out foxes and dogs from the grave and had slowed the process of decomposition. The Professor stood for a moment and tried to stretch his back to arch out the stiffness. Back from the pit and the tape and the low earth wall, back from the white painted jeeps of the United Nations Civilian Police, a small crowd watched. He had seen them gather during the course of the day. They watched and they made no sign. He had seen them come from the tight cluster of houses around the church on the far side of the stream. There were women in the crowd, the old in black and the young in bright coats; there were children with ravaged mature faces, holding an unnatural quiet; there were men in the crowd, some wearing the drab clothes of farm work, some in poor-fitting damp uniforms, some armed with shotguns and automatic rifles. He wondered what they thought, the crowd that had come across the stream to watch the excavation of the grave. His eyes wandered. He looked from the field and on down the lane where the grass had grown across the old tractor ruts and on towards the ruin of the village and on to the church tower where the upper stonework that would have housed the bell had been taken away by tank or artillery fire. He wondered what they thought. He turned to stare back at the crowd .. . The Canadian murmured, "Don't make eye contact with them, Professor. Always smile at them, keep the smile glued." The Kenyan muttered, "We want to get it wrapped and we want to get the shit out. Don't expect to be loved .. ." He thought them fine young men. He was in his seventieth year. He had taken two months of unpaid leave from the hospital in north Los Angeles where he headed the Department of Pathology. Back home, those who had been his contemporaries through medical school had long retired to the beach houses of Santa Monica and Santa Barbara. He thought them fools. Dear to his heart was the charity Physicians for Human Rights. And dearer to him than the charity was the knowledge that his Abigail, in the forty-fifth year of their marriage, held a pride in her husband for taking himself off to Croatia for two months. He'd tell her about the Canadian and the Frenchman and the Portuguese and the Kenyan, great young guys who could chide, gently, a vague old man who
let his eyes wander. He had the one day at the grave, and the day was nearly done. "Sorry, guys." The Kenyan was out of the pit and had gone to where the mine detector lay in shelter alongside the wheel of a jeep. He jumped back into the pit and ran the machine over the last part of the earth, beyond the protruding leg. It was the fourth time that the mine detector had been used to sweep the site. They were all in the pit again. The crowd who watched from the edge of the field would only have seen their shoulders and their buttocks, and the trowels of dripping mud that were tossed from the pit to the earth wall. It would be the last body. The growing gloom brought a new pace to their work. An army boot, a leg in disintegrating camouflage fatigues, a hand that wore a cheap and dulled ring, a wrist-watch, an arm that was bent crazily because the central bone had been broken. The Professor was scraping for the skull. The Portuguese policeman tapped at his shoulder, asked for his attention. He turned. He saw the small trainer shoe revealed alongside the second boot. His wife, Abigail, liked to tell him that he was a tough old goat of a man, that his humour when dealing with the dead was black as night, gas chamber mirth. He gagged. He felt the emotion swell in him because he had not expected to find a woman's body in the grave. Sure, he could handle female cadavers when he was out with the Police Department homicide unit, but he had not expected a woman's body, not here .. . They were entwined, the camouflage trousers and the blue jeans. They were locked together, the camouflage tunic arms and the grey windcheater arms. They were against each other, the skull of a young man and the skull of a young woman. The Canadian crouched above them and held a flashlight with the beam directed down ... He would have liked to have stood his full height and shouted to the crowd to come close, the women and the children and the men with their guns, he would have liked to have invited them to see the bodies of the young man and woman who were entwined, and he wondered how many of them who waited in the rain would have known what would be found. The chest of the young man was wrapped in stained bandages. The Professor understood. All of the bodies of the men showed the marks of combat wounds, bullet holes, shrapnel gouges, field amputations. They had been the wounded. It had been a shit little war in a shit little corner of Europe and the wounded had gotten themselves left behind when the fit guys had run out on them. He looked down into the swollen and decayed face of the young woman. His own daughter was forty-one years old, his own granddaughter was nineteen years old. His own daughter had said he was an idiot to involve himself in a shit little war, and his own granddaughter had asked him, the night before he had flown, to tell her why this shit little war was worth caring about. He could go cold. It was useful to go cold when he was looking into a young woman's face where the putrefaction had started, but not gone so far as to hide the killing wounds. There was a bullet entry wound in what remained of the fair hair above the right ear. There was a knife wound at the throat that had cut deep through muscles. There was a bludgeon wound across the bridge of the nose and the lower part of the forehead. They were all killing wounds. "Sorry to hurry you, Professor .. ." the Canadian pleaded. "We ought to get the hell out .. ." He realized then that all the light he had been working to had been from the torch held by the Canadian. The Kenyan brought two body bags forward. He took his photographs, and made the necessary notes, and nodded his head to tell them that he was satisfied. They prised the stinking corpse of the young man apart from the stinking corpse of the young woman. It was when they lifted the body of the young woman out of the pit that the Professor felt the bulk of the money bag. The bag was under her windcheater, sweater and T-shirt. He delayed them while his rubber-gloved fingers struggled with the bag's clip fastening that was against the small of her back. He put the bag into the pocket pouch on the leg of his overalls. Bent under the weight of them, they loaded the eleven body-bags through the tail doors of the two Cherokee jeeps. They drove away. When they turned to reach the lane, as the rain pattered on the windscreen, beaten away by the wipers, the Professor saw that the crowd had broken and now meandered away towards the houses and the lights across the stream. Off the lane, in the ruined village, the Cherokee swerved to avoid a rusted and burned-out car, and then again to go past a collapsed farm cart; it was only when they were on the metal led road, going towards Glina and the Sisak crossing point through the front line, that the Professor asked the Canadian for the loan of the light. He opened the money bag. He took out an empty purse and a single sodden traveller's cheque to the value of twenty US dollars, and the passport. He squinted tired eyes at the passport, at the nationality and the name. He took his handkerchief and wiped the discoloured photograph. He wondered what she had been doing there, caught in a shit little war in a shit little corner of Europe. The engines were cut. There was a moment of quiet, before the scuffled stampede as the passengers surged for the cabin door. She sat three rows from the far end of the cabin. She stayed in her seat as it had been suggested to her that she should. She was tall, did not fit easily into the tourist accommodation but the senior purser on the flight had, in kindness, arranged that neither of the seats beside her should be taken. She had the look and the elegance of a woman who was used to being noticed, as she had been by the other passengers, dark hair well cut and short, careful cosmetics, a string of pearls at her throat that were real, and confident dress. She wore a titian-coloured blouse and a deep-green skirt that had the length to cover her bent knees and its hem was over the upper part of her well-shined boots. Several of the salesmen on the flight, those who had been away from home the longest, had looked at her, wondered what her business had been in that dismal city they were so relieved to be gone from. The cabin was clearing, the canned music was now supreme, but she seemed not to hear the forced cheerfulness of the Viennese waltz that drove her fellow passengers towards the immigration desks and the baggage carousel and the Customs quiz. She ignored the movement around her, she leafed the pages of Vogue magazine. A small man, one of the last to go, bulged his stomach near to the diamond stud in her ear as he reached to lift down a shopping bag from the compartment above her head, and when he breathed an apology she seemed not to hear him. She gave the appearance of being quite engrossed in the colour advertisements that her eyes flitted over. She was a sham. The purser thought she was just brave. She was still turning the pages of the magazine when the hostess came up the empty aisle of the cabin. The cleaners were following, whistling and laughing and grabbing paper debris from the floor and from the backs of the vacated seats. She smiled up at the hostess and began to collect her possessions that were discarded over the empty seats beside her. A handbag, an overnight grip, a raincoat, a packet of cigarettes and a slim gold lighter, a spectacle case, and a patterned headscarf, and a single red rose of which the bloom was not quite opened and the stem was wrapped in tinfoil. She craned forward and looked through the porthole window and saw the low grey cloud and the puddles on the tarmac and made a small joke about the weather. The hostess offered a hand in help and her eyes showed her sympathy. Again the smile, as if the concern of the hostess were quite unnecessary, out of place and not required, and she stood and shrugged into her raincoat. She looked behind her, once and briefly, to make sure she had left nothing. She laid the scarf over her head, then loosely knotted it under her chin. She had the rose. It was a small gesture, but she laid her hand quickly on the hostess's sun-coloured arm, to show her gratitude. She could cope, no problem, but the concern was appreciated.