He was not supposed to show emotion. He was not allowed to shout and curse. He stood to attention beside the grave, above the new spectacles. He turned smartly, his heel squelching the mud. He was supposed to smile, to celebrate little victories, he was allowed to smile. He fixed his smile at Milan Stankovic, then walked away from him, went to his jeep. He had made the bastard come from wherever, come running and panting, for a fucking smile. "Good God .. ." The supercilious grin played at the mouth of the First Secretary. '.. . So the Warrior of Principle is pimping .. . The Soldier of Conscience is providing some home comforts .. ." He stood in the doorway, holding the passkey that the floor maid had given him, paid for with a packet of cigarettes. The curtains were still drawn and he saw the shape of the man on the bed, bare-chested, asleep, and there was a woman crouched over him who stared back like a cat cornered with a rabbit. '.. . And fancy finding you here, my little friend, fancy finding your little snout in the trough." But Hamilton, the loathsome Sidney Ernest Hamilton, code-named "Freefall' on the file header, was between the First Secretary and the bed, and "Freefall' Hamilton had a damned ugly rifle across his knees. Before he'd seen the rifle, his intention had been to get across the room, shake the sleep off the bloody man, and kick him smartest out into the corridor, down the stairs, to reception for account settling, and a sharp drive to the airport .. . that was his intention, before he saw the rifle. He saw the empty bottles close to Hamilton, and he recalled the file in the safe of his room at the embassy with six pages on an incident in a bunker at Osijek, a drunken shooting. The First Secretary held back. The growling hungover voice, "What do you want?" "I want him on the plane. I'm going to put him on the first plane." "He's going this afternoon." "First plane, my little friend .. . and I don't have time for a debate." Which was truth. The First Secretary had little time. He had a meeting with the monitoring officers, and he was late for it, and they had access to useful areas of raw intelligence. And he had a session, which had taken him seven weeks to fix, with the brigadier commanding Croatian military intelligence who was a bad old bastard from Tito times and who knew his trade. But he was wary of a rifle in the hands of a man who was hungover drunk. "So, a bit of action, please."
"You should let him sleep."
Hamilton, horrible little "Freefall', crabbed his way to the window and the rifle was dragged with him. Horrible little "Free-fall' caught the curtains and pulled them apart, letting light into the hotel room. The woman, the cat cornered with a rabbit and threatened, hovered over the sleeping man.
"Christ .. . who did that to him?"
The First Secretary saw the wounds and the discoloured bruises and the scars. He felt sickness in his throat. Penn's breathing was regular and his face was at peace. The First Secretary knew enough of what happened in sunny former Yugoslavia to an enemy. He gagged the vomit back. He remembered Penn, coming to his office.
The First Secretary said, "You will bring him to the airport, the 1500 hours flight. I'll see him onto the plane. You get him there .. ."
The curtains were pulled shut again.
'.. . He'll be there, Hamilton, or I'll break you."
The aircraft banked.
She was reading the bones of '(2) Ambit of Criminal Jurisdiction, Paragraph 62I/Extra Territorial Jurisdiction', and slipping on to "Paragraph 622/Sources and Rationale of Territorial Jurisdiction'.
The aircraft levelled out, west from Zagreb.
She was reading for the last time the pencilled written notes under the heading of '3. Offences Against the Person, (1) Genocide, Paragraph 424', and her eyes slid across the pages to "H. Offences Committed Abroad', and 'sub-section 4, sub-paragraph 1 Murder (see para 431 and sec post)'.
The aircraft was losing height.
She was reading quickly, reminding herself of '(3) Geneva Red Cross Conventions, 1864'. Turning through "The Geneva Conventions, (3) The Convention Relative to the Treatment of
Prisoners of War'. Riffling through '(4) The Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilians in Time of War'.
The aircraft wallowed over the end of the runway.
She was reading the last page of the young barrister's notes, learning them so they were ingrained, Treatment of the Wounded etc, Paragraph 1869/General Protection ... At all times, and particularly after an engagement, parties to a conflict must take measures to search for and collect the wounded, sick and shipwrecked, protect them from pillage and ensure their adequate care; and the dead must be searched for and their spoliation prevented ... At all times the wounded, sick and shipwrecked must be treated humanely without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth, wealth or any similar criteria."
The aircraft's wheels touched down.
She was reading, "Paragraph 1866/Conflicts not of an International Character .. . Treat humanely persons who take no active part in the hostilities, including members of the armed forces who have laid down their arms or are rendered unable to take part by reason of wounds .. . violence to life and persons including murder .. . the passing of sentences and carrying out of executions without a proper trial upon non-combatants are prohibited. The wounded and sick must be cared .. ."
The music played cheerfully over the loudspeakers as Mary Braddock put away in her bag the notes and the two sheets of the faxed report.
Sixteen.
The pain beat against the bone behind his temples, and there were needle pricks behind his eyeballs, and there was a battering throb behind his ears. It had been a hell of a long time since Penn had been this hungover. The others were still asleep. He was padding, half-naked, round the room, moving without order, stumbling round the bed where Ulrike slept, hiking his feet over Ham's outstretched body. He should have been working to a system, should have cleared the bathroom first, then been to the wardrobe and had his shoes off the floor and his shirts and underwear and socks out of the drawers and his jackets and slacks off the hangers, and then he should have been gathering up everything that belonged to him from the shelf below the mirror including the two typed sheets that had gone for the fax transmission. But there was no system, the pain dictated that there was no order in his packing. Penn blundered around, collecting, forgetting, carrying, cursing the aftermath of the alcohol. He couldn't hold his bloody concentration, not at all. He had the case on the bed, and now he was emptying the case because the shoes and the plastic bag for his toothpaste and his shaving cream and razors were out of place, should always be shoes at the bottom and washing gear, and then the dirty clothes and then the clean clothes and then the folded trousers and then the jackets, and the whole bloody lot were out of order .. . Ulrike slept hard as he skirted the bed, and Ham slept deep as he stepped over his legs and that horrible bloody rifle, because both would have been awake through the night, watching for him. They were a holiday friendship, he knew, and they would be gone, belted out, when the big bird lifted off the tarmac at Zagreb airport. Ships that pass in the night, that sort of crap. They slept now because they had stayed awake through the night and watched his own sleep, and the thought of it, through the pain and the confusion of packing out of order, made Penn feel humility. He wouldn't see her again, nor would he chase after Ham's woman who had done a runner with her kiddie. But they had watched over him while he slept, a lonely woman and a small scumbag frightened because he hadn't a friend. He might tell Mary Braddock about them, because they were each in their way a part of his finding Dorrie's truth. Or then he might not get to see Mary Braddock. When he hadn't the pain in his head he could work it through whether he would see Mary Braddock, or whether it would just be the fuller report in a week's time and the full invoice of his charges, sent in the post by Recorded Delivery .. .
He had never been drunk incapable when he was a teenager living at home in the tied cottage, because that was the example of his mother and father, his mother taking only a sherry at Christmas and his father talking of it like it was a devil. He had been drunk incapable once when a clerk at the Home Office, and taken out to a
party in the Catford flat of another clerk, and thinking afterwards that it might just have been because he was so bloody boring that they had spiked the drinks and had good sport out of him reeling and crashing and throwing up in the street; and ashamed. He had been drunk incapable once when with Five, and they had worked seven weeks on a surveillance before showing out on a shift change into the derelict van with the flat tyre that was parked up opposite the safe house, and the Irish target gone and lost, and the guys going down to the pub when the operation had been called off with heavy recrimination and an assistant deputy director general level inquest, and sleeping on the floor of the taxi home; and ashamed.
Now, he had no sense of achievement. There was no elation. It was just a report that he had written, as he had written previous reports that cut into the lives of the dead and the vanished and the criminal, as he would write further reports. He wanted out and he wanted home, and he wanted to sleep out of his system too much goddamn Scotch, and he wanted the bastard place behind him, and the fear, the shit, the pain. It was only a report .. . And the one chance was gone.
He had the shoes back at the bottom of the case, and the washing gear with them, and the underpants and the socks into the space between the shoes and the washing bag, and the dirtied clothes and the ones that he hadn't used. He was starting to fold the slacks and the jackets. The fatigues that he had worn into Sector North were on the floor near to where Ham lay stretched out, holding the bloody rifle like it was a baby's toy, and the fatigues weren't going with him, nor the boots that were under them, and he heard a brisk knock at the door.
Penn went round the bed and he stepped over Ham's legs.
The knock was repeated, impatiently. He opened the door of the hotel room.
Penn rocked.
She peered into the gloom. Late morning, closing on midday, and the curtains of the room were not drawn back. Mary peered past the shadow-dark figure that rocked in front of her. Yes, she had expected surprise, but the man could hardly stand, and the light from behind her in the corridor seemed to dazzle his eyes and he could not focus on her. She came into the room and with her heel she nudged the door back shut behind her. Only the light now from the bathroom, and the shadow-dark figure was backing away from her, away from the narrow strip of light from the bathroom. She came past the door and into the room. The smell in the room was foul, quite defeating the eau de toilette scent that she had sprayed at her throat and wrists in the taxi from the airport. On the plane and in the taxi from the airport, she had rehearsed what she would say to him, how she would be cool but goading, and what she had rehearsed was thrown from her mind. If she had wanted to she could not have controlled it, the sharp spasm of her anger.
"Good morning, Mr. Penn .. ."
No reply from him, and he was stumbling back further from the bathroom light as if to hide in the grey gloom of the room.
'.. . How are we, Mr. Penn?"
Just a growl of a response.
She was going forward into the centre of the room, coming closer to the bed that he skirted when she saw his case on the bed and the shape of the woman on the bed. The blouse of the woman was unbuttoned halfway down to her navel and she could see the sexless strength of the woman's brassiere and the white skin. "A little end-of-term party, Mr. Penn? Got demob happy, did we, Mr. Penn? Hit the bottle, did we, Mr. Penn .. . ? The bottle and a bit of skirt, Mr. Penn?" "It's not what .. ." "What I think? You wouldn't have the faintest idea what I think, Mr. Penn. If you had had an idea then you would not have ignored my telephone calls to this hotel. You would not have bloody well abandoned me." "You wouldn't know .. ." "What it was like? Just a silly woman, Mr. Penn? A silly woman incapable of understanding? A woman to be fobbed off with a two-page fax?" The growl spluttered in his throat. She saw the gleam of his teeth and his words came haltingly. "She wasn't my daughter." "What the hell does that mean?" "She wasn't my daughter, and if she had been my daughter then she would not have been bad-mouthed to every stranger I could get my claws on." She laughed, shrill. "We make judgements now, do we, Mr. Penn? We know more than a mother does about her daughter, do we, Mr. Penn? Exactly what I need, wonderful .. ." And she was following him through the grey gloom of the room, and the woman on the bed stirred. He said to her, and the life had gone from his voice, and there was only a tiredness, "If it was just anger then you wouldn't have come, if it had just been anger then you would have stayed away. You came because of the guilt .. ." "Don't lecture me." "Because of the guilt, because of the shame, because she was your daughter and you didn't know her .. ." She was following him. She was drawn to him. Suddenly there was a startled grunt in the darkness ahead of her and she saw the heaped clothes that stank and the sudden movement of the body in front of her, and the rifle was coming up and the muzzle caught against her stocking at the knee.
'.. . It's fine, Ham, it's Dome's mother. It's Dorrie's mother who's come."
Perhaps it was the calm that had come to the voice now, perhaps it was the gentleness that tinged the voice. Perhaps it was the smell of the bodies and the damp of the clothes on the floor, perhaps it was the rifle and the emptied bottles. Perhaps it was the woman scowling from the bed and the man crouched down hostile on the floor, perhaps it was the suitcase that was packed. Perhaps it was the guilt. She spat it out.
"You were going home?"
"I was hired to write a report."
"Worth two pages, was she? Two pages and that's time to come home?"
"I have written a preliminary report, I will write a fuller report when I am home."
"And that is your idea of the end of it?"
"It's what I was hired to do, what I have done to the best of my ability."
"Enough, is it, just to write a report .. . ?"
"It's what I was asked to do, hired to do."
She could not see into his face. The worst for Mary was the calmness in his voice. And with the calmness was the gentleness. She could remember her tears because of what Dorrie had done to her. She could remember when she had thrown things, saucepans, books, clothes, hurled them because of what Dorrie had done to her. She could remember Charles's accusations because of what Dorrie had done to her, and how she had gone sobbing up the stairs to beat her fists on the locked door because of what Dorrie had done to her. And the guilt roved in her .. .
Her voice rose. "So you walk out, you walk away?"
"I don't know what else I can do."
"It was just empty words?"
"It was to write the report you requested."
"What the politicians said, what that American said, just empty .. . ? Fine words or empty words?"
"You wanted a report, you have a report."
She stood her height. "Was it just empty words? Didn't they talk about a second Nuremberg, didn't they talk about war crimes'? Didn't they talk about a new world order where the guilty would be punished, where they'd be locked up and the key thrown away? Didn't they talk .. . ?" The voice calm and gentle. Not the businesslike voice from the graveyard in the village. Not the brusque voice from the kitchen of the Manor House. "It's the sort of thing people say, politicians. It's not to be taken seriously." "You saw the man who killed her .. ." "I saw him." "You found the evidence of an eyewitness .. ." "I found the eyewitness." "You know where to go .. ." "I know where he is, and I know where to go for the eyewitness." She could not see into his face. She saw the grey shadow and the dark sockets of the eyes. "Do you think I am just a woman to be humoured? Do you think I am just a silly woman who is obsessional?" "I wrote my report." She said, hard, "If there is a will then there can be a prosecution .. . "Sources and Rationale of Territorial Jurisdiction" and "Offences Against the Person, Geneva Conventions" and "Treatment of the Wounded" and "Conflicts not of an International Character". If there is determination then there can be a prosecution .. ." "What do you want?" She said, brutally, "I want those empty words thrown back down their bloody throats. I want them to choke on those empty words. I want that man before a court, I want to hear your evidence
against him .. ." "What can I do?" She looked into his eyes, pitilessly. "Go back. Take him. Bring him. Bring him to where they cannot hide behind their empty words. Go ... take .. . bring ... Or are you going to walk out on me?" He turned away from her. He was at the window. His hands reached up to the curtains. And her voice died. The silence held the grey gloom of the room. Quite suddenly, the daylight was flooding the room, and the curtains were heaved back. It was the bruises on his face and the cuts and the scarring that she saw first. She gazed at him, and she felt shame. There was a weal on his throat, and on his chest deeper bruises and wider cuts and abrasions.
"I didn't know .. ."
"I will go back behind the lines and take him and bring him out. Will you please listen to me, Mrs. Braddock, will you please not interrupt me ... I will bring him out, but not for you. You, Mrs. Braddock, are owed nothing ... I don't think listening comes easily to you, I doubt you ever listened to your daughter, but then I am sure you are a busy woman and capable and resourceful, with many demands on your time. Does life always revolve around you? For Dome's sake I will bring him out, and for myself.. . Don't drop your head, Mrs. Braddock, and please don't offer me more money .. . And don't think the United Nations in their glory will stand and cheer, nor our embassy, nor the government here .. . I will bring him out because knowing and loving your daughter has been my privilege. I will bring him out."
The woman came off the bed, and she was tucking her blouse into the waist of her trousers, and then she was buttoning her blouse, and she seemed to look at Penn as if to satisfy herself that he had made up his mind. She did not question him, just checked him, and she was slipping from the bed and going for the telephone on the shelf beneath the mirror.
Heart of Danger Page 31
