Heart of Danger

by Gerald Seymour

  She lay on her side. Some of the night he had been awake, but he was sleeping now. She lay on her side, her head held up by her crooked arm, and she watched over the peace of his sleep, and her fingers moved gently over the bared ribcage that showed the colouring of bruises. It was her impulse .. . Her mother's marriage had been impulse. Few would have looked at the harrowed man, her father, mourning the death of a loved one in the bombing of Magdeburg, and inconsolable, a teacher without a school. Her mother's impulse had brought long love, long happiness .. . She would tell her mother about Penn when she next flew to Munich for the weekend. She could see the two faces in the photograph frame on the bedside table, the young woman with thin lips and the baby without hair. But it was her impulse to protect the man who had walked alone into Sector North .. . not love, because she did not know love. Love was beyond her experience ... It was attraction and it was interest and it was fascination. She wanted to protect him, lie close to him, and in the loneliness of her life his sleeping body seemed to bring a comfort to her. And by protecting him, she thought she might show him her gratitude. He deserved her gratitude. He had done what she craved to do and was not able to, he had confronted the bastards of the uniforms and the guns, a tiny gesture, maybe, but few others did it. What she wanted, what she could not have, was to make happiness for him, to take him from the bed and march him into the old city and hear the music throb and take him in her arms and dance, dance wildly, dance till the dawn came. What she wanted was to dance with him and laugh with him and wear a flower that he had given her .. . but he slept and she protected him .. . And the morning would come too soon, and the aircraft would scream from the runway, and Penn would be gone back with his cuts and bruises to the young woman with the thin lips and the baby without hair.

  He had walked into Sector North just to write a report, and the report was gone .. . And she had never met another man in her life who would have walked into Sector North just to establish the truth that was necessary for a report.

  When he had woken, when he had sobered up, when he had gone on the plane, then she would return to the daily and nightly misery of the Transit Centre .. .

  She sat in her car and watched the milk float judder down the street. She was parked up outside the terraced house. It was a neat street, decorated and smartened with bright window boxes of pansies and hanging ivy. When the milkman had passed, she left her car and went to the front door, and rang the bell. It was four minutes past six in the morning. She shivered. She waited. She stretched because she had been sat in her car for three and a half hours before the milk float had turned into the street. She heard slow feet coming clumsily down the stairs behind the door. She had been to his wedding, Charles was a friend of his parents. She flexed her hands, felt her nerves rasping. The door opened. Blinking eyes in the half-light, a loose dressing gown, bare feet, tousled hair.

  "Good God, Mrs. Braddock .. . what on earth .. . ?"

  He was half her age, Charles said he was very clever. Charles had said that if her Dorrie hadn't been such a bloody messer then Jasper Williamson would have been the right sort of man.

  "Please, I do apologize, I need advice."

  Eyes narrowing. "What sort of advice?"

  She stood on the step. He was the only one she could have come to, she could not have come to any of the fat cat lawyers who were Charles's friends.

  She said in meekness, "International law, I suppose that's what it's called."

  Eyes concentrating. "What sort of international law?"

  She blurted, "Prosecution of war criminals."

  Somehow, he understood straight away. "Because of Dorrie .. . ? You'd better come in, Mrs. Braddock .. . "Fraid it's a bit of a tip. Had people in last night. I was sorry to hear about Dorrie ... I can only tell you the basics."

  He led her into the long living area, and he seemed not to know where to start with the filled ashtrays and the dirtied glasses and the emptied bottles, and she told him that he shouldn't bother. She took the two sheets of fax paper from her handbag and gave them to him, and he'd groped for the mantelpiece and his spectacles. She thought that he'd probably have reckoned Dorrie to be quite awful, like everyone had, like she had .. . He sank down onto the sofa and he started to read, and she began to collect up the glasses and the ashtrays and took them through to the kitchen. Didn't know much, did she? Knew how to bloody tidy up. Didn't know much about mothering, did she? Knew how to bloody wash up ... He was reading slowly, and he'd found a pad of paper, and he'd started to take notes. When she had all the glasses and all the ashtrays and all the bottles away into the kitchen, when she had run the hot water into the sink, Mary came and stood behind him. She could read over his shoulder, what he read .. .

  MILAN STANKOViC: (See MS above.) Commander of para militaries in Salika village. Formerly clerk to agricultural produce co-operative. Aged early to middle thirties. Tall (approx 5'll/6'1), athletic build, no facial distinguishing scars etc, beard and full hair dark brown, eyes grey-blue. Well dressed, suit for social evening, quite obviously the undisputed leader of the community.

  After capture I was taken to Salika school hall. Punched by MS. Interrogated by MS through interpreter. Gave my name, confirmed my nationality to MS, told him purpose of my journey to Sector North. Told MS that he had been identified to me as the killer of DM.

  My impression, MS deeply shaken by being named, through interpreter, in front of his village peers. From my kit he had seen photographs I carried of DM after exhumation, my impression was that he recognized DM's facial features. Evasive and unsettled when confronted with my accusation of guilt. After villagers beat me, he gave the order for me to be taken away, don't know intended destination, don't know whether I was to be executed immediately or later. Managed to break free in confused situation. I am not trained in Escape and Evasion I believe my life was saved by intervention of BS (see above). I have no doubt that DM was murdered by the direct actions, stabbing and beating and shooting, of Milan Stankovic of Salika village, in Glina Municipality. Faithfully, William Penn, Alpha Security Ltd. "Right, Mrs. Braddock, what do you want to know?" "I want to know how I can nail that bastard to the floor." "Give me a few minutes." She went back into the kitchen. She filled the kettle for coffee, and she started to rinse through the glasses. She saw that he was reading the two faxed sheets a second time. She wondered if he still thought Dorrie to be quite awful, like everyone had, like she had. A young woman came down the stairs, naked, so pretty, so different from the young woman in virginal wedding white, and didn't seem to notice that an intruder had usurped her sink and was making free with her coffee. The young woman picked up a packet of cigarettes and wafted away back up the stairs. Clever young Jasper, who would have been right for Dorrie if she hadn't been 'such a bloody messer', was pulling thick books off the shelves, and he took the coffee mug without comment. Mary dried the glasses. She cleaned the ashtrays. She stacked the empty bottles outside the back door. She wiped the wood surfaces down. She found the vacuum cleaner in the cupboard and ran it over the carpet. His head was down in the books and he had torn strips of paper as markers, and his pencil writing was filling the pages of the notepad. The young woman came down the stairs, white blouse and executive blazer and discreet navy skirt, with a briefcase, and kissed clever young Jasper, and was gone out onto the street. He didn't seem to notice her. He hadn't touched the coffee she'd made him. He put the books back onto the shelves. He stapled the handwritten sheets together, with the two faxed pages. "It's all there, Mrs. Braddock. It's a bit complicated, but if you take it slowly ... I'm in court in an hour ... Of course it's possible to prosecute, but what it needs is the determination. Without that determination then the world just rolls on. The notes are Halsbury's Laws, it's Volume 2 ... You'll have to excuse me, Mrs. Braddock, but I've got to move .. . You see it's not important whether Dorothy is now the English rose or whether she was an awkward little bitch, a crime is a crime is a crime. The British jurisdiction would be pretty complicated, what with Yugoslavia not
being a country any more, and it being a civil war, but the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners sews it up. There's a procedure in place now for dealing with war crimes in former Yugoslavia. It can happen, if there's the determination .. . I've got to go and dress, Mrs. Braddock .. . Whether that determination exists, well, you'll find that out, it's not for me to say. Whether you can "nail that bastard to the floor", I just don't know."

  "Thank you." She took his notes from what he called Halsbury's Laws, Volume 2, put them in her handbag. "I want to hear him scream."

  "Only one problem, but it's cardinal. It's one thing to find the determination of the great and the glorious to prosecute, something else to have the accused man in custody .. ."

  "Where are you going?"

  "To walk, to be alone .. ."

  "I have to open the school."

  "To be alone .. ."

  He didn't think his wife had slept, and he had heard most chimes of the church clock.

  They were in the kitchen, and Marko was still at the table and hanging back on his breakfast because there was crisis between his mother and his father. It was what Milan would have expected from Evica. She had to open the school, she had to make the pretence of normality. It was her strength, that life must be lived. She was chiding Marko for not eating, and she was clearing the table in the kitchen, and she was routing for the books she would need for the day in school. She had the strength and he did not. He had not told her of Katica Dubelj in the cave in the woods. He was not strong enough. She would hear it at the school in the morning, she would know it when she brought Marko home for their lunch .. .

  He wanted to be alone. He fastened the clasp of the heavy belt over his jeans, and the weight of the holster carrying the Makharov pistol dragged at his hip.

  He went out into the morning.

  He had not kissed his Marko, and he had not hugged his Evica, and it was not normal for him to wear the holster with the Makharov pistol when he was about the village.

  Milan Stankovic was no longer the king of Salika. The throne was taken from him. He walked away down the lane, away from the village now ruled by the irregulars who followed Arkan. He did not wish to be seen, by his own people, as subordinate to the gaol scum from Belgrade.

  He walked past the last houses of the lane, towards the open fields beside the stream.

  He did not want to go back towards the village because his office in the headquarters was now the command centre for the irregulars, and they were without respect for him. His office would now be filled with their bottles and their guns and their sleeping bags, and their crude cold laughter. If he had walked back through the village, if he saw the people to whom he had been king, then he would have seen the fear in their eyes that the presence of the irregulars had brought. He walked away from the village. There were magnolia flowers in the gardens of the last houses of the lane, and tulips were open and the blossom was heavy on the fruit trees. It was so clear in his mind, the memory of how they had carried him on their shoulders when they had elected him as commander of the Territorial Defence Force, just as they had carried him on their shoulders when the team had come back with the cup won from Karlovac Municipality. And so clear in his mind how the men had begged him, pleaded with him, for weapons to use in the attack on the village of the Ustase bastards across the stream. Not a man in the village who had not slapped his back in congratulation when he had walked back over the bridge from Rosenovici with the mud of the pit on his body. He had been the leader, he had issued the guns, he had brought the bulldozer to the field, he was responsible.

  He walked in the watered sunlight beside the gardens of flowers.

  It was like a closeness at his throat, because he was responsible .. . The weight of the pistol chafed against his hip. There were no tractors out that morning, and the animals were still in the barns, and the village boys who were too old for school had not shepherded out the sheep. And he was responsible for the silence and emptiness of the fields, because he had brought this fear to the village, and what was done could not be undone .. . His eyes searched the tree line. He was wondering whether they would come again, some day, in a month or a year or in his old age, and he was wondering whether his son would carry the Makharov pistol on his hip and search the same tree line for their approach. He walked beside the stream. It was his home, it was a place of beauty, and the tree line hemmed him in. The sunlight played patterns on the slow movement of the deep pool, and he saw the ripples of the trout's rise .. . A shout carried to him. He saw, distant, back at the edge of the village, the waving arms of Branko, calling him. He left behind him the stream's deep pool and the gathering spread of the ripples from the trout's rise. The Canadian policeman watched him come. There were no flowers on the grave. The grave was a mound of earth and at the end of it was a single stake. There was not even a cross for the grave. He stood beside the grave and he held the spectacles in his hand. In five months he would be back in his beloved Ontario, back in the brick house in Kingston that Melanie's father had built for them, and he did not know what he could tell Melanie and her father about the place he had been posted to ... Couldn't tell Melanie and her father about the cruelty, nor about the bulldozed graveyards, nor about the poisoned wells, nor about the rape of grandmothers and the disembowelling of grandfathers and the bludgeoning of grandchildren, couldn't tell them that the smile which was adhesive to his face hurt far down in the pit of his soul. The wet mud of the new grave cloyed at his boots .. . Nor would he tell Melanie and her father about the Headmaster of a village school who had had his spectacles broken.

  A small crowd confronted him. There were the faces that he always saw when he came to Salika, weathered faces, and amongst them, scattered with them, were the cold bearded men of the Arkanovici ... If he had not made his report, if the Professor of Pathology had not been available for one day's digging, if he had not taken the window of opportunity, then, and it hurt the Canadian, the Headmaster might, probably would, have been alive .. . Nor would he talk to Melanie and her father about the hideous price paid by those who had gotten themselves involved .. . He'd told them to go fetch Milan Stankovic.

  When Milan Stankovic was close to him, the Canadian turned and laid the new pair of spectacles on the grave's mound. It was something he had been really most proud of, getting the new spectacles made in Zagreb from the prescription, passed to him by the Political Officer, in just twenty-four hours. He had radioed the prescription through from Petrinja to the Ilica barracks in Zagreb and he had begged for urgency and in twenty-four hours the new spectacles had been brought to the crossing point on the road north of Petrinja. The sun burnished the lenses on the grave where there were no flowers .. .

  His commissioner, the big guy from Alberta, back in the Ilica barracks liked to tell a story to the new guys coming to serve with UNCIVPOL. The commissioner had been down to Sector South, a one-night stand, and on the first day had found three old Croat women whose home was wrecked and whose well was polluted and who were starving. The commissioner had given them the bread and cheese that was the next day's lunch for his team. The commissioner's gift was witnessed. Four nights later, in the story the commissioner thought worth telling the new guys, the three old Croat women were shot to death ... It was a story about trying to help and a story about screwing up.