Heart of Danger

by Gerald Seymour

  The Headmaster crawled to the doorway of the school hall. He saw no movement in the road. The lamplight from the houses came indistinctly to his eyes. All gone, the sheep. All barricaded in their homes, afraid. It was difficult for him to lock the door of the hall. He felt no fear, he felt only a loathing of the man who had been a clerk .. . He, alone in the village, held the secret.

  He could not be certain, but it was his training to know when a tail was on him. The late afternoon and the early evening were spent in his hotel room making sense of the note form of the interviews, and then supper and a beer in the old town. It was when he had stepped off the pavement to give room to a whore negotiating her rate with a client that he had thought he was followed. He had swung, amused, to see better the face of the whore, and her dressed like a housewife, a cardigan and a floral skirt, and there was a shadow moving behind the whore, and the shadow froze when Penn turned full face.

  Seven.

  "I saw her, when the Partizans came into the village .. ." The smells were close to Perm's childhood. Eight years old, twelve years old, at harvest time, when the men were in the fields taking in the barley, wheat, maize, and going to the hedgerow and squatting down and wiping between their cheeks with yesterday's newspaper, and the sun settling with the flies on their mess, and the smell. Six years old, ten years old, and the milking cattle in the parlour and the shit running out below their lifted tails, and splattering, and the shut-in heat trapped inside the walls and the low asbestos-sheeted roof. Penn, the boy brought up on the farm, was close to the smells of the Transit Centre. "It was only chance that I was in the village. You see, I am Bosnian. I am a Muslim of Bosnia. I was trying to take the bus from Banja Luka to Zagreb. I have the cataracts in my eyes. The doctor in Banja Luka said I should go to the hospital in Zagreb. I thought it was possible for a Muslim to travel through the lines of the Serbs and the Croats, stupid of me. The bus was stopped on the Glina to Vrginmost road. The Serbs were very hard on me. I went where I thought I was safe, to the village of Rosenovici. There was a madness around there, but I did not think the madness could last. I thought I would stay in safety in Rosenovici until the madness passed. When it became too dangerous to stay many of the village left, at night, to go through the woods and the hills. Because of my sight I could not go. No one was prepared to delay their flight to help a woman who could not see, it was necessary for me to stay. Men, women, lose charity when they are in flight for their lives. I was there through the fighting for the village, and I was there when it fell .. ." Penn thought he had started to understand the village where Dorrie Mowat had died. The village life and the farm life had gone away from him and he had taken the exams at the comprehensive school in Cirencester, and the exams had turned his back on his parents and on the farm and on the fields and hedgerows and woods, and on the smells. But he was learning, and the farm life and the village life seeped back to him. "It was on the third day after the attack had started that the village fell. I think it was the Thursday. It was the second week in December. The village had been preparing for Christmas, their festival. The people had no presents for their children but they had cut branches of green leaves from the holly trees. They had tried to make a joy of their festival .. ." Penn prompted gently. What had she seen, of Dorrie, when the village fell? Jovic translated. "I had been in the church. It was the first time I had been in the church of Catholics. They called the place the crypt, and the walls there were thick, of heavy-cut stone. The girl came on the night before the village fell. She came to ask the women who were in the church if they could tear up some of their clothes, their clothes that were most clean, for bandages. I could not see her well, because of the cataracts in my eyes, but there were other women afterwards who said that she was beautiful. She took the clothes that had been torn and cut into strips and she went back to where the wounded men were hidden. She had to cross the front of the church and then go across the lane and then she had to go through the garden of a farmhouse. It was all open, and when she went back there was much shooting, as if they had seen her, the Partizans, and tried to kill her. I know she had a great courage, and she was not afraid when she had the bandages and was about to go back into the open. I could not see her, but I heard her laugh. It was a sweet and happy laugh. You know why she laughed? Some of the women in the church, they had put on all the underpants they possessed and the cleanest were the third or fourth pair from their skin, and she was going to make dressings for the wounded from the third pairs or fourth pairs of the underpants, and some of the women were shy to take off their underpants. She laughed ... I did not see her again until it was over .. ." Remembering Mary's story. The story told in the comfort of the kitchen with warm coffee. Mary speaking without hatred, but from the depths of pain. The dinner party in the Manor House, black tie. The celebration of the elevation of a neighbour to the lofty eminence of Master of Foxhounds, North Sussex Hunt. Banter, silly but cheerful, spilling round the room that was panelled with old oak. Dorrie coming into the dining room, bitter face and holed jeans and a T-shirt too dirty to have been used as a rag for cleaning a floor. "It was the irregulars, their militia, that came into the church. We knew that a white flag had been raised at the store, and we knew that most of the fighters, those who were not hurt, had already gone. We were taken out into the afternoon light. I remember that it was afternoon because the sun was low above the hills and it was into my eyes. We were made to form a line. "We were standing in front of the church and they took anything that was of value from the women, and from me. We had nothing that was special, only sentimental, but they took it. I heard her voice. She is only a small girl, but she had so big a voice and she was shouting from inside the farmhouse that was across the lane from the church. They had their guns, and she was shouting as if she had no fear of them .. ." Hearing the story, Mary's pain. Dorrie coming into the dining room and holding the jar of tomato puree. The quiet falling on the dining room and the cheerful joking killed. Dorrie marching to the Master of Foxhounds and shaking the jar and unfastening the lid. Dorrie pouring the rich red of the jar onto the head of the Master of Foxhounds. The tomato puree dripping from the bald scarred scalp and down to the white of his tuxedo jacket. "She was brought out of the farmhouse. All the time she was shouting at the Partizans. And she had her arm around the waist of one of the wounded fighters, and she had the arm of another of the fighters around her shoulder to give him support. It was near enough for me to see. Not easily, but I saw ... I saw her hit. He was a big man, and he had a beard, long, dark. I saw that man hit her and she could not protect herself because she had the wounded fighters to help .. ." There was the noise of the Transit Centre around Penn. Crying voices and the clattering of metal pots, the beating of hammers, and the wail of radios. The name of the woman was Alija. Her eyes watered, but he had the feeling it was from medical drops and not tears. He thought she was a flotsam of war, that she would be far down any list of patients requiring a cataract operation. She held a ragged handkerchief in her hands and pulled and tugged at the edges. He heard the hoarseness of his voice, as if his throat was blocked. "What happened to her, what happened to Dorrie Mowat?" She shrugged. She looked away. She murmured. She shrugged again. Jovic said, "She has told you all she knows. The women who had been in the church, they were taken away. She does not know anything more." Penn stood. It was a reflex, done without thinking. He bent forward and he took the head of the woman in his hands and he kissed her forehead. The hands that had held the handkerchief were dug now into the material of his blazer. She was gabbling at him. There was the foulness of her breath close to his nose, and the smell of her clothes. He thought he might vomit and he dragged her fingers clear. "The women who were with me, they said she was so brave. The women said she was an angel ... It was what they said .. ." He was away from his chair. He reeled, as if drunk, from the room with the damp peeled plaster. He was out in the corridor. He leaned against the wall of the corridor. There was the grin, sardonic, cold, from Jovic. It had been Jovic's style to hir
e a car and have him drive, without explanation, down the wide road from Zagreb to Karlovac, and to direct him to the Transit Centre where the Muslim refugees waited for onward passage to the safe havens and the new lives in 'civilized' Europe. Jovic, he thought, played him like a marionette. Jovic said, "Good stuff, yes? Good stuff for your report, yes?" Penn snarled, "Just shut your bloody mouth." Doubt crawled in Penn. He thought himself so insignificant. Once, two and a half years back, maybe three, he had been shuffled for a morning to a ministry to do a positive vetting on an architect who would be working on R.A.F station bunkers, and the architect had been in a wheelchair and so damned cheerful. The architect had said that the best thing about spending time in Stoke Mandeville spinal unit was getting to know that however bad his situation was there was always someone, in the next bed, who had it worse .. . Penn was the little bureaucrat, the little man whining about a job and a mortgage and a marriage. He thought of the scale where his problems stacked against those of the woman, Alija .. . Penn thought of what Dorrie had done, and how she had achieved love. The feeling of insignificance, it hurt. The German woman was in the doorway of the room. She smiled, friendly, at him. She was slightly built and her face was washed clean and there were sharp lines of tiredness at her eyes. The German woman had led him and Jovic to the room where they had found Alija. "Right, Mr. Penn, now I will show you around the Transit Centre He was like all the others who came from abroad. He was like the men from the national delegations of the Red Cross and like the television crews. She was sure the place frightened him, the place that was her kingdom. They were all the same, the ignorant, they wanted to be gone before it was decent to leave. There was a wedding ring on his finger. He would have a wife at home, probably a child. He would live in a home that was small, safe, protected, just as were the homes in Munich. She did not think it right to make it easy for them. '.. . Show you round the Transit Centre so that you can see our work here." "So sorry, but I don't think I've the time." "Always best to find time, Mr. Penn. Too easy to ignore if we don't find the time."

  "I should be away .. ." She thought that he looked a decent man. She said briskly, "Won't take all day, Mr. Penn. There are 2,400 people here, Mr. Penn, and they have nothing, not even hope. It is important that I take visitors around the Transit Centre so that they are seen. Every visitor who is seen tells the people here that someone from outside has bothered to make the journey to visit them. It is a very little thing for you, Mr. Penn, an hour of your time, but it shows these people that you have an interest in them. If you lived here, Mr. Penn, you would be pleased to know that people from abroad showed an interest."

  "Thank you, yes, I'd like to."

  She thought he was a decent man because she thought he was ashamed that he had tried to run away ... It was her regular tour, the same as for the delegations and the television crews. She showed him what she was proud of, the kindergarten for the small children, the little hairdresser's room, the scrubbed clean kitchens. She told him what it had been when she had started up the Transit Centre. She could not be sure what his level of interest was. She told him that in the last winter, when they had no fuel, no glass in the windows, it had been body heat that had sustained them. She told him of the drinking and the smoking and the drug abuse, and of the women whose menstrual cycle was blocked by stress, and of the children who ran wild, and of the men who had lost the reason to live. She thought she held his interest when he asked her how it was possible for her to cope, and she answered, as she always answered, that she could cope with the aloneness, but that the loneliness still hurt her.

  It was at the end of the hour. She opened the door. The American was playing back a tape on the video.

  "Not finished, Mr. Jones?"

  He flushed. Never could help himself when she spoke to him. It was the warmth and the boldness in her voice that brought the blood flush to his face.

  "Just another two or three, someone's gone to find them," Marty said.

  There was a man behind Ulrike. He saw the man in the blazer and the white shirt and the tie, and he saw the creases in the man's slacks. Never could know whether she laughed at him and there was always the tinkling brightness in her voice. He was told the name and the business of the man, and he grimaced as if he was indifferent. "What I'm dealing with here is mass crime. I'm not talking about little incidents. Anywhere you hit a golf ball round here it'll get to land on a clandestine grave. I'm talking about major league. If I got sidetracked into graves where there were a dozen people, I'd just be wasting everyone's time. No offence, Mr. Penn." It was instinctive, his dislike of the Englishman with Ulrike. He stood too close to her, and it was like he had her confidence. He had put down the Englishman and Marty thought he saw, just for the moment, impatience flash in her eyes, at her mouth. Just for the moment, and Ulrike was telling him that the Englishman had been interviewing a Muslim woman, and named her. He knew of the woman, hadn't bothered to get round to interviewing her, finding whether she had a 'snapshot' of an atrocity. "Was she raped?" The Englishman, Penn, seemed to frown. "I didn't ask her." "You always ask a woman here if she was raped. A statement on rape, sexual violation, a statement with audio or video, and the perpetrator's name, that can be evidence .. ." "I didn't ask her." The frown deepened. "Wouldn't have thought so, seemed old .. ." "Common mistake, mistake people make when they're not familiar with the ground here. They don't rape for sexual gratification, they rape to demean their enemy. Stick around and you'll get to know .. ." The Englishman said, "It's not relevant for me to know." He could have told him to go jerk himself. If Ulrike had not been there, he would have. His father, back in Anchorage and writing most months and working in the Brother Francis shelter for destitutes, didn't think Marty's work, far from home, relevant. And the grizzled old prospector, his friend Rudi, gold hunting seven hours' drive down the Pacific coast from Anchorage who wrote some months, he didn't understand what was relevant. And his tutor from the Law Faculty, University of California at Santa Barbara, in his last letter, hadn't connected as to how a favourite former student found it relevant to ferret for mass crime. Marty had told them all in his return letters that in a new world order it was critical for the international rule of law to be established. Had written them all in his return letters that ends didn't matter, catching and trying and hanging didn't matter, but means mattered, the process of law mattered. "Don't let me keep you," Marty said. "If you can turn your back, and you can feel good, then you're a lucky guy." He thought the Englishman soft shit and if Ulrike had not been there, in the doorway, he would have told him. "I've just a report to write, then I'm gone. Nice to have met you, Mr. Jones." He was late coming to his school because of the difficulty in shaving his bruised face. It was a slow walk to the school because the road from his house to the school was rutted, and the young men of Salika were too busy in their uniforms and with their guns to use their muscles to repair the road. A slow walk because he had no spectacles. His body hurt. Each place that he had been kicked and punched meant pain when he walked to the school. His wife had told him that he should not go. His wife had said their life in the village was finished. The village was his home, he had refused her. He had taken a new text that morning when he had started the walk from his home to his school. A Croat text, but that was not important to the Headmaster. The text, mouthed as he walked, was the command given, 326 years earlier, to Nikolica Bunic by the rulers of Dubrovnik when the man, the martyr, was sent to treat with the Pasha of Bosnia. He knew, by heart, the text. "To violence you will reply by renunciation and sacrifice. Promise nothing, offer nothing, suffer everything. There you will meet a glorious death, here the land will be free. In case of difficulty, delay. Be united, reply that we are free men, that this tyranny and God will judge them." Just to whisper the text to himself was hardship. The carpenter, Milo, watched him walk from the door of his home. The postman, Branko, watched him past the militia camp. The gravedigger, Stevo, leaned on his spade at the back of the church and could see him as he passed. Milan Stankovic we
nt by him in his car, forced him to stumble to the side of the road where the weeds grew. The Headmaster went to his school.

  He was late for the start of the day at his school. The children were gathered in the hall. He heard the singing, he knew the song. The children sang of the decision of Prince Lazar to commit the Serb army against the Turk, and fight at Kosovo .. .

  There flew a falcon a grey bird, From the holy city, from Jerusalem And carried in its beak a swallow. 28 June 1389, and the lie of Serbian nobility. The anthem would not have been sung at school assembly if he had been present. The day, 28 June 1389, was captured by the extremists, the barbarians of the new order, by the killers and the murderers. The day, the nobility of defeat, was taken by the new order in Belgrade as an excuse for cruelty, for violence. There was glass in the upper part of the swing doors into the hall of his school. He could see her. She stood where he should have stood. He felt the betrayal .. .

  But that was not a grey falcon, That was the holy man, Elijah: And he does not carry a swallow, He saw that Evica Stankovic stood in his place. Her arms were raised, swung to lead the heaven of his children's voices.

  But a letter from the Mother of God .. .

  "Stop."

  The Headmaster stood in the open doorway, sticking plaster across his face. "Stop."

  The children turned to him. He saw her defiance. She dared him to step forward. He saw his children despised him. He saw the children of the carpenter and the gravedigger and the postman. He saw the grandchildren of the Priest. He saw the child of Milan Stankovic. He saw the freshness of the faces and their contempt. He turned in the doorway. He heard the shout behind him, forty children's voices, unbroken, in unison. "It is better to die honest than to live in disgrace." The Headmaster began the slow walk home. He had only his secret to sustain him, the knowledge of Katica Dubelj existing as an animal in the ruins of Rosenovici ... He knew no longer how to use it. It had been done easily and smoothly, and Penn had recognized it. "So, what are your future plans, Mr. Penn?" Jovic had introduced the officer as liaison. Jovic had said that he was a captain and liaised between the Croatian army, 2nd Bn, 110 (Karlovac) Brigade, and the UNPROFOR troops across in Sector North. Jovic claimed him as a friend. "Just to pick up what help I can, captain, and to write a report," Penn said. Jovic had said that the captain was his friend and had been with him at Sisak, when he had lost his arm. Only a report into the death of Miss Dorothy Mowat? "Only her death, yes." Not the specific situation in that part of Sector North where she died? "How it happened, when it happened, pretty bland." Why was the death of Miss Dorothy Mowat, when so many had died, so important? "Rich mother, reckons she can buy anything." A sensitive area, a sensitive situation, did he not know that? "Just a report, just to let her mother sleep the better at night." And who else would read his report? "Shouldn't think anyone will, just her mother." It was the gentle probing of an intelligence officer. Penn recognized it. He hoped his answers were ignorant, facile. He reckoned the Intelligence Officer was poorly trained. He would have done it differently himself, bored harder. He knew about digging into the recesses of a man's life because he had worked in the positive vetting team that cleared personnel for work at the Atomic Weapons Establishment, Aldermaston. Trust no one, believe in no one, that was any intelligence officer's maxim, and he guessed that Jovic would have telephoned ahead and engineered the meeting so that Penn, enigma, would be checked over.