And the small man, the man who was crouched down on the floor with his rifle, shook his head like he heard something that he could not believe, and he said, "That, squire, is the biggest piece of fucking madness that I have heard. Just 'cause the cow winds you up, doesn't mean you fucking have to."
The woman was dialling a number.
She looked at the scars and bruises and cuts. "I didn't know."
He said simply, "We loved her, all who were touched by her came to love her. Your problem, Mrs. Braddock, is you knew nothing about that love."
His hand was laid on Evica's hand. Just for the moment she allowed his hand on her hand. She took her hand from under his. Milan's hand lay on the kitchen table. He drummed his fingers, he looked into her face. She did not criticize him with her eyes because the log bin beside the stove was not filled. She did not criticize him because he had sat at the table rereading old newspapers through the whole of the morning while she had been with Marko at the school. She did not criticize him because he had not risen from their bed before she had gone with Marko to the school, had not been to the store in the village to see if there was fresh bread, had not swept the floor of the kitchen. Evica pushed the last logs of the bin onto the fading fire of the stove. She did not criticize him because she had to go out into the shed behind the kitchen door to get potatoes and beetroot, and she was wearing her washed and ironed blouse and her neat skirt that were appropriate for the acting headmistress of Salika's village school, and she took the emptied log bin with her. Her face, when he had laid his hand on hers, was without expression. He could not know from looking at her face whether she was ashamed of him, whether she was frightened for him, whether she loathed him. The body of the dog was pressed against the kitchen door as if waiting for the mistress to come, as if the master were no longer of importance. They had been married more than a dozen years ago, when he was the basketball star of the Glina Municipality and she the prettiest girl in Salika village, and he did not know her. The boy, his Marko, came to him, sat on his lap, sturdy weight on his upper thighs, and he thought that perhaps the boy had been crying as his mother had walked him home from morning school, and there were the scars of fighting on the boy's face. She came back into the kitchen. She was carrying the log bin, filled, and a cardboard box of potatoes and beetroot, and he could see the stain of dried mud on her blouse, and the strain of her arm muscles because the logs were damp and still heavy. And he could see, near to the broadest of the smears of dried mud, the place on the waist of her blouse where she had stitched a short L-shaped rent in the material. She did not criticize him because it was impossible now to buy new clothes. She did not criticize him because she could no longer go to the shops in Karlovac and Sisak. She did not criticize him as if he were responsible, as if it were personal to him, for the war. She had dumped the bin. He held tight to his son. She was tipping potatoes and beetroot into the bowl in her sink for washing and peeling and cutting. She knew of the death of the Headmaster, and she would know of the killing of Katica Dubelj, she had translated the accusation of the stranger who had come to their village .. . and he did not know what she thought. It had rained hard in the night. Through the window he could see the cloud on the hill above the village across the river. Her back was to him. She worked methodically over the sink.
Milan said, "Because the stream is in spate it cannot be today, and I do not think it can be tomorrow, but when the pace of the stream is settled then I will take Marko to fish. Far up the stream, up past where they graze the sheep, where they plough, there is a good pool. I saw trout there. We will dig some worms, we will bring you back a trout .. ."
He laughed out loud and he cuddled the boy who was heavy on his upper thighs, and the weight of Marko tautened the belt at his waist and dragged the bulk of the holster into the flesh of his hip and he would always wear the holster now, and she did not turn to face him, and he did not know what she thought.
He was waiting for them at the entrance to the barracks.
Marty signed them in, and the Swedish sentries issued, lazily, visitor's permits for Ulrike and the Englishman and for the mercenary and for the tall woman with them who was elegant and beautiful.
He showed Ulrike where she could park the car.
Marty walked them from the parking lot to the freight container.
He took them inside the freight container, and he apologized for the wet mud on the vinyl flooring, and he shut down his screen and he tidied away the papers on his desk, and he said he would make coffee for them. If she had given him more warning with her telephone call requesting a meeting, then he would have gone out of the Ilka barracks and bought flowers for Ulrike Schmidt. He was filling the kettle, finding the mugs, getting the milk carton from the small fridge, looking in his cupboard for sugar.
The elegant woman, the Englishwoman, came right at him. "Mr. Jones, you are a war crimes investigator .. . ?"
And Marty hadn't even gotten round to establishing who had milk and who had sugar.
"That's correct, ma'am."
"You are here to prepare cases against war criminals with a view to eventual prosecution?"
"Correct again, ma'am."
"What progress are you making, Mr. Jones?"
"Precious little, ma'am."
"Why are you making precious little progress?"
He grimaced. "Do you have all day .. . ?"
"Please, Mr. Jones, just explain."
"It depends, ma'am, on why you want to know it."
The Englishwoman took from her handbag two sheets of faxed paper, and she passed them to Marty. He began to read. The kettle was starting to blow, but Ulrike made that her job. He read the synopsis of a killing. Ulrike spooned the coffee into the five mugs and they talked among themselves about milk and about portions of sugar. He was reading the brief text of eyewitnesses and the Englishwoman's eyes never left him as he read. He was reading the material that crossed his desk each day, that was recorded on his camcorder, that was held on his audio tapes. There were photographs pinned to the interior walls of the freight container, bad atrocity photographs, and the Englishman stared at them coldly and Ulrike ignored them, and once the mercenary made a joke of them, but the Englishwoman seemed not to see them. She watched him as he shifted from the first sheet to the second, as he weighed the names, as he drank it in. He thought of telling the Englishwoman, telling her how many thousands of civilians had died in former Yugoslavia, how many of the ethnic minorities had been cleansed, how many 'concentration camps' existed, how many homes had been burned, how many acts of criminality had been perpetrated against the defenceless. When he finished his reading he could have told her that in the catalogue of bestiality the 'incident' at the village of Rosenovici was minimal. Those that trusted him, those who were the eyewitnesses and who provided his 'snapshot' experiences were hungry and tired and traumatized, they no longer possessed the spark of action. She was smartly dressed, like a big oil man wife. She had fine skin, like a woman who was cared for with money. He supposed she believed it her right to jump to the head of any queue he made for the priorities of his catalogue of bestiality. He handed her back the two sheets of paper.
"I make little progress, ma'am, because my work is perceived to be an obstacle to eventual peace ..."
"Please, plain language."
"The worst bastards, excuse me, run the show. The thinking in New York, the thinking in Geneva, the thinking at UNPROFOR across the parade ground from my kennel, is that the worst bastards have to be kept sweet so as they'll put their illiterate scrawl on whatever appeasement document ends this crap session. Plain language, I'm a goddamn leper here. Plain language, I am obstructed, short-funded, blocked. Plain language, I'm pissing into the wind .. ."
"And that's good enough for you?"
But he wasn't angry. He didn't flare. She did not seem to be insulting him. "I do what I can, ma'am."
"Did the killing of the wounded from Rosenovici, and the murder of my daughter, constitute a war crime?"
> "Yes."
"Does the material here in abbreviated form, provided by Mr. Penn, constitute evidence of a war crime?"
"Yes, but .. ."
"But what?"
"It's good to meet you, good to make you coffee, it's good to learn about your daughter, but .. ."
"But what, Mr. Jones?"
"But it's hollow talk, it's academic, it's wasting your time and my time because the accused is not within jurisdiction. Put simply, the guy's the other side of the line."
"And if .. ."
"It's where it stops, the line. I'm sorry."
Suddenly feeling tired, tired because it was a dream. A dream was a man in handcuffs, a man who was confronted with evidence. The dream was a man who flinched when confronted with the cold paper of testimony. The dream was always with him.
"Mr. Penn is going over that line. I've his promise. He's going to take him and bring him back, across that line. So in the plainest language, have you the balls to handle it .. . ?"
"You bring him, I'll screw him down. My word to you, I'll give it my best. My word, I'll not back off."
And Marty knew that he had lost her, lost the German woman. He knew that he had lost her to Penn. He was crushed. If he had gone more often to the Transit Centre, if he had gone more often and taken flowers, if he had pushed and shoved and heaved, if ... He thought that he had lost what he cared for the most. He searched again for confirmation.
Marty looked into Penn's face, at the bruises and the scars.
"As long as you know, ma'am, what you're asking that man to do .. ."
First he had watched the outer door of the concourse. He had sat where he could see the door, taken a magazine and relaxed.
Later he had gone to stand near to the queue waiting to have their tickets and baggage processed, and when the queue had thinned he had gone to the desk and asked, in decent local language, for a fast look at the passenger list.
Now he used a telephone from which he could still see the check-in, while the announcement of the flight's closing beat in his ears, and he rang the hotel in central Zagreb and spoke to an idiot, and the idiot confirmed that Penn, William, had checked out, paid up and gone.
The First Secretary hurried from the concourse and outside he heard the distant rumble of a jet airliner gathering speed on the runway. It was a talent of his that he could control his fury, but he trembled in the knowledge of a failure that must be reported, immediately, to London.
"I'll go because I've said I'll go."
Ham said, "I told you, it's just fucking dumb."
"I'll do it because I've said I'll do it."
"You never go back, not when you've been bounced. On your own, no chance, not second time at it."
"It's what I've said I'll do."
The German woman was driving. She was very quiet. She had her eyes on the road and her hands tight on the wheel. Ham was sitting beside her and he had the rifle down between his legs and he was twisted awkwardly so that he could face Penn who was stretched across the width of the back seat. He knew where it was going. It was "Freefall' Hamilton's lifetime skill that he could deflect the big decision, and he thought this time round that deflection was fucking out the window. He squirmed because the bullshit stakes were finished.
Ham blurted, "Don't think I'm going with you .. ."
"Hadn't asked you, wasn't going to ask you."
"Don't think I'm going in there with you, don't think I'll be there watching your arse. I'm not going in there with you, and that means you can't fucking go .. ."
"I was never asking you."
"You go back in there and you're dead meat. Just say, just suppose, that you make it in there .. . Just say that you find the bastard, just suppose you take him ... Do you think, when the balloon goes up, and sure as hell it will, that one man can take that fucking bastard out. Hot pursuit, going fast crosscountry, going covert with a prisoner. You've no chance .. . For Christ's sake, you know you've no fucking chance. Believe me, Penn, no chance .. ."
"It's not your worry."
"Are you just thick .. . ?"
"It's not your worry because I am not asking you."
She was driving in the falling light on the wide road back down to Karlovac. She seemed to stiffen. Her lips moved, pale and thin lips without make-up, as if she tested something she would say out loud. She glanced across at him, away from the road.
"You don't have to be ashamed, Ham, because you are frightened. We are all frightened here, all of the time, not only you. You should just make available the weapons, the food, the method of crossing the river, the rendezvous on the way back .. ." "Don't fucking tell me .. ." The headlights of the Volkswagen flared over the empty road ahead. "You speak the truth, Ham, he has no chance if he is alone." He knew his place in the great organization of Six. He knew his place, influence, authority, because his wife cared to remind him of it most weeks. There were occasional good days, when Georgie Simpson would let himself into his mock-Tudor semi-detached home in Carshalton, and pocket the latchkey, and sing out the news of his arrival, and be anxious to tell her of some minimal triumph achieved that day in the great organization of Six. His wife, on those evenings, would be sitting in front of the television, and she would recognize his minor elation, and diminish him. She could put him down when he was up, and she seldom bothered to try to lift him up when he was down. He replaced the secure telephone on its cradle. The central heating, blown along ducts from a main boiler unit, was still functioning, would be for another month. Most of those around him had discarded their cardigans or jackets, and Georgie Simpson shivered. Only little tasks were given him. If he carried out, flawlessly, those little tasks, then he could expect to hide in the corner and remain unobserved by those bloody people who now trawled through the building for dead wood that could be hacked from the body of Six. If he were to be forcibly retired, sent packing because he could not even be relied upon to fulfill the little tasks ... He shivered. He felt the sweat cold on his body. He unlocked the drawer of his desk, took out the notebook where his sacred telephone numbers were written. Georgie Simpson thought of going home that evening to his wife, sitting in front of the television, and if he told her of a disaster, his disaster, then she would laugh back in his face. He dialled. "Arnold, it's Georgie here .. . No, be a good chap .. . Past's past, let it go, please. Arnold, I beg you, please, listen .. . I've just had our field station, Zagreb, on ... We have a problem, a huge problem .. ." The memorandum was in front of him. He cast his eye over it, slowly shook his head. Henry Carter had never thought greatly of Georgie Simpson. The memorandum of Simpson (Six) concerning his telephone conversation with Browne (Five). He thought it a pathetic little document, and all the self-serving was there of a panic-laden man who was attempting to pass on the parcel. No, Henry Carter did not think 'panic' too strong a word. He knew the way the place worked. He understood the culture of Six. It would not have changed in the years since he had left his own full-time employment in the old Century House. There was a child's grin on his face. Yes, Henry Carter could picture panic running a limited course, early on a spring afternoon some twenty-three months before, through the corridors above him. A man who should have been tied down, fastened tight, was free and going loose behind the lines. A man, who was a freelancer and an amateur, was behind the lines and beyond recall. A child's grin and a quiet chuckle, because panic would have been scampering down those 'corridors of inaction' above him, kicking down the doors into the 'offices of inactivity' above him. Clever men, the men who drew up clever plans, would have been cursing, swearing, twisting pencil stems, and passing on that parcel of responsibility. There was a new cup of coffee in front of him, the last that the night duty supervisor would bring him before the day shift came on in an hour's time. He knew his socks smelled, and he could feel the rude stubble on his chin. He thought that somewhere in the vast recesses of Babylon on Thames there would be a plastic razor that he could beg, but he did not know where he would ask for replacement socks. His chuckle was be
cause he saw the clever men with their clever plans cursing and scampering in panic .. . He thought of the man running loose behind the lines, beyond recall. Lunatic, of course, but predictable. Too lethal and emotional a cocktail for a decent fellow to have rejected .. . It was usually the decent ones who could be inveigled to go behind the lines, beyond recall. He knew the scenario, of course he did, he had himself twisted the screw, manipulated young and decent men, and he was not proud of what he had done, and he hoped, quite fervently, as the dawn came up over the Thames, that Mrs. Mary Braddock was not proud. The night supervisor was locking away the small microwave in which the bacon for the sandwiches had been cooked, and a young woman from the shift was spraying that end of Library with an air cleanser, and the music was already gone. Another damn morning was coming. She was unpacking in her room. It was a better hotel than the one she had used on her two previous visits to Zagreb. She was on a floor above the room from which she had hunted out Penn, and there was a good vista from the window that went away past the hospital with the big red cross painted on the white background over the tiles, and over the wide street that was laced with tram tracks, on towards the formidable floodlit public buildings of the Viennese style of a century before. When the telephone rang she was ferrying her clothes from her opened case to the wardrobe. She went to the telephone with the framed photograph of her Dorrie beside it. Her husband's voice hacked anger at her. '.. . Do you know what you are doing? You are interfering, you are interfering and meddling. I have had Arnold bloody Browne into my house, as if I were some sort of criminal, as if I were responsible for you. You are interfering with policy, you are meddling in matters, damn it, matters beyond your pitiful understanding .. . And don't you think you owe me some sort of bloody apology? Do you know what you did to me, and my guests? You made a bloody fool of me ... Did you stop and think what you were doing to me, humiliating me ... You sent that man back, that's what Arnold bloody Browne is saying, always have to get your own bloody way, don't you? That man was close to getting himself killed first time around, his luck and a deal of guts from other people saved his life. But you couldn't let it go, had to send him back again .. . God, Mary, do you understand what you've done .. . ?" She put the telephone down on him. She sat in the chair. She stared at the photograph of her Dorrie, such an old photograph because the child was laughing. He sat on his son's bed. He was cold from the night air. There was no heating in the house outside the kitchen, and no electricity that evening. The oil lamp threw a feeble yellow light into his son's room from the timbered landing. Milan told his Marko that the night was clear with no sign of rain. He did not tell his son that he had walked out into the village that evening, after the darkness had come. Did not tell him that he had walked as far as the headquarters building of the TDF, and that he had gone inside and into the room that had been his office since his election by acclamation as leader. He did not tell his son that Branko was in his chair and sitting at his desk and working through a new duty roster for the sentries on the bridge to Rosenovici and on the roadblock to Vrginmost, and it was the leader who made the roster for the sentries. He did not tell his son that Stevo was deep in negotiation with the chief of the irregulars and handing over money for the supply of diesel, and it was the leader who controlled the fuel resource for the village. He did not tell his son that Milo was talking with others of the irregulars for the acquisition of more of the heavy .50-calibre machine guns and more grenades for the RPG-7s that were stored in the concrete-lined armoury, and it was the leader who had charge of the armoury. He did not tell his son that he had been ignored by the irregulars, and by the gravedigger and the postman and the carpenter. Milan held the boy's hand. "If there is no more rain, if the stream has gone down, then tomorrow afternoon may be good for fishing." Ham took them across. She could see nothing around her beyond the white swirl of the water where he dipped the paddle. Penn was in front of her, settled across the forward angle of the inflatable, not speaking, and Ham was behind her and grunting at the exertion of propelling the craft into the strong current of the river. Ulrike thought that she understood what was ahead .. . she should have known. The refugees who came by bus to the Turanj crossing point had been through what was ahead. What was ahead was enough to traumatize and crush and terrorize. The inflatable staggered against the current's power. Her father was in her mind. She had been twelve years old when he had first talked of it to her, opened the chapter of his life that was closed away before. Her father was a pacifist teacher and had stayed silent for self-preservation, and the tears had run thick on her father's face as he had explained the call of survival, for he had known who was taken to the cells and who was interrogated and who was eliminated, he had known the evil and stayed silent. It had been with her all through her life, from the age of twelve, that if a man or woman stayed silent then the time would come in later age when the tears would roll helplessly on the face, witness to shame. Her father would have understood why she rode the inflatable against the current into the width of the Kupa river. She did not wish to cry when she was old. And her father had told her, her twelve years old, and him sitting beside her and holding her and weeping, that after the surrender he had found work as an interpreter for the British Control Commission. It had been part of his work to translate in the courts that arraigned and sentenced the war criminals. The night before the execution of a sentence, by hanging, her father had been taken to the condemned cell of the deputy commander of a camp in the Neuengamme Ring, and it had been her father's job that night to interpret for the British gaolers the last letter written by the deputy commander to his wife, and the wife would receive the letter several hours after the hanging. And her father had said to her, through his tears, that it was a sweet and literate letter, not the ravings of a beast, but a letter searching for dignity from a man who was frightened. She leaned forward. Her hands groped past the backpack given by Ham. Her hands found Penn's. She held tight to his hands. She whispered, "There is something you must know. Perhaps you already know it. Something that is important .. ."
Heart of Danger Page 32
