Heart of Danger

by Gerald Seymour

  The First Secretary said, "That's a good boy."

  Ham told when he was to be beside the Kupa river to pick up Penn and the German woman and the eyewitness, and the prisoner.

  The First Secretary said relieved, "That's a sensible boy."

  "Will you, please, close your mouth."

  But she didn't. He thought it was excitement, adrenaline, whatever unnamed chemicals were screwing about in her bloodstream, that made her need to talk. He supposed she was a town person and had to communicate, and he knew that he was a country person able to subsist on his own company. He didn't bloody well need to talk, she did .. . They had been on the move for ten hours before he had signalled the long halt. They had gone slow through the darkness and faster in the dawn light, and quickest when the sun had started to stream down through the thickening foliage above them. The sun was up now, throwing down gold shards, picking out and spotlighting the mulch floor of the forest.

  "If we don't talk then you don't know why. It should be important to you, why. You must wish to know why I have come .. ."

  "What I know is that sound carries in the forest. You think you are quiet, you are like a rhino .. ."

  "What is a rhino?"

  "God, a rhino moves like a double-decker .. ."

  "What is a double-decker?"

  "A rhinoceros is a very big, very fat, noisy animal. A double-decker is a two-floor, very big, very heavy, noisy bus .. ."

  "I know what is a rhinoceros and what is a bus. How can you say I am like a rhinoceros and a bus?"

  "God, Ulrike .. . will you say what you have to say, and then, please, be quiet."

  "Don't you need to know why?"

  They were off the track. He thought they might be an hour going fast, probably more than an hour, from the place where there were the bones and the cases and the bags. He felt so tired. He lay on his back and his head was crooked up against the backpack and she sat cross-legged beside him. His eyes were opening, closing, opening again, and he could see the excitement in her face, the adrenaline and the chemicals, and he thought that if he slept and she stayed awake then he would have lost control of her. He was frightened to lose control of her in case a dog came, in case a patrol came, in case a group of loggers came, in case .. . He had not told her about the skeletons of the refugees and their bags and their cases, and he did not know if he could bypass the place so that she would not see them. "It is not required for me to know why. I have told you that I am grateful that you have come. It does not help me to know. But you insist .. . So, tell me why, then be quiet." So serious: "You have to know why." Tell me." "It is about a future." Brutal, he said, "Not our future. We have no future." She hissed, peeved, "There is more than our future. There is the future of the principle." His eyes closed again, he forced them open. "I know nothing of principles." "Rubbish. You are not here without principles. You are a man of principle .. ." "Principles get people killed. That's not for me." "Silly, stupid man. Without principle you would have been on the aircraft, you would have been at your home. You sell yourself too cheap. You have principle, and you have anger .. ." "The anger is because you won't shut your mouth." "You have anger and principle, and they ride together, that is why I came." "Brilliant, thank you, good night. Lights out and silence, please .. ." And he could not push open his eyes. Eyes closed and the tiredness clinging in him. Typical of a bloody woman that there must be a bloody discussion .. . Just like at Five, just like the women graduates in General Intelligence Group. Why must the mountain be climbed? Analysis and thought and team discussion as to why the mountain must be climbed. Best to have a paper written on Aims and Objects for Climbing the Mountain, then have a subcommittee report on the paper to the full team. Penn was climbing the mountain because the bloody mountain was there. Penn was going up the bloody mountain because Mrs. Mary bloody Braddock was holding a bayonet, sharp as hell, against his backside for him to impale himself on if he should bloody well stop climbing the bloody mountain. Penn was crawling up the bloody scree slope of the mountain because she was there, Dorrie was at the top with the wind in her hair and the rain on her face and the mist about her, bloody laughing and mocking him .. . Ulrike was close to him. He sensed her bent over him. There was a garlic taste on her breath. Her fingers were smoothing the hair from his forehead .. . Because the bloody mountain was there, with Dorrie astride it. She said into his ear, "I understand that there is no future, and the future for us is not important, but the future of the principle is everything. If nobody speaks, if nobody calls out, if there is only silence, then there is a new dark age of barbarity .. ." He murmured, "Principles are not important. What is important, if we take Milan Stankovic, when we run with Milan Stankovic, then the wasps' nest is well stirred. It's shit-frightened running then, and when you're running it's not bloody principles that'll help you along. And if we try to take the eyewitness, she's old, slow, needing to be carried .. ." Maybe it was just the movement of her lips speaking into his ear, maybe she kissed his ear, but they had no future. The future was Jane, was Tom. It was not important whether he wanted it, or what he wanted. There was no future with Ulrike. "It is the difference between us and them, we have principle and they have only barbarism .. ." "Christ, Ulrike, principles don't stop bullets, can't blunt knives." Tenn '...?" "Yes." So tired, and slipping, and her lips breathing the words to his ear. Tenn, if you had him, if you have taken him, but you are blocked, and you cannot bring him out, would you kill him?" "I don't know." "You have to make an answer. Would you kill him as justice? Would you kill him as revenge, for what he did to the wounded?" "I don't know." "Kill him for what he did to Dorrie?" "I don't know." "You will remember what I told you .. . if he is begging you for his life, you will have to be cruel. Do you have it inside you, good and ordinary and decent man, to be cruel .. . ?"

  "Please, don't talk, please."

  "I want to know what he is like. I want to see his face, hear his speech, watch him move. I want to know how he is different. He is married, he has a child, he is a leader of his people. I understand all of those things. I do not understand how he could have beaten the wounded and knifed them and shot them. I do not understand how he could have looked into the face of your Dorrie and beaten her and knifed her and shot her. I have to believe that I will find something of him that is different. If he is not different then we are all lost. I see only victims. I do not know those who make the victims. I see the results of their violence but I am not able to see the source of the violence. Penn, surely you don't believe that I came here only because I was afraid for you. Penn, I despise sentiment .. . There are 2,400 souls in the Transit Centre, and they do not even own hope, and their number is minimal in comparison with the greater number who have suffered. They deserve some, however small, act of retribution .. . Half a century ago it was my own country that bred the evil, and the evil was made by men and women that you would have passed in the street and thought no different from yourself. The evil must be isolated, stopped .. . If he is a good and ordinary and decent man then there is no hope for any of us, none, then it is indeed the beginning of that dark age. I have to pray that he is different .. ."

  Penn slept.

  "You will give me the wit to believe that you are not joking with me?"

  "No, sir, I am most serious; would that it were a joke."

  It was a part of the First Secretary's upbringing that he would address a more senior man with respect. And a lesson of his teenage years at Marlborough School, well learned, that evasion of a problem came back to haunt. He sat stiffly in the chair while the Director of Civilian Affairs paced, heaving on his cigar.

  "He got himself out, and now he has gone back in?"

  "That's what I am saying."

  The smoke of the cigar spat from the Director's mouth. "You appreciate the implications of what you tell me?"

  "It is because I appreciate them that I have come to you."

  "I am not a highly educated man, just a fucking Paddy, I have a bad degree out of Dublin, Business Management cr
ap, maybe I don't have the intellect for this job. Maybe a man with a greater intellect could do this job without having to spend fifteen, seventeen, hours a day stuck at this desk or sitting in on meetings with the most God-awful people Christ ever invented, maybe. I spend those hours every day trying to stamp out the nastiest brush fire Europe has seen in half a century. I hate this place, I hate its bestiality and its barbarity, its love of slitting the throats of old friends and former neighbours .. ."

  "I understand, sir."

  "What I am trying to do, with my piss-poor intellect, is create some sort of cease-fire so that the killing stops. Are you following me?"

  "Very clearly."

  "I have these war crimes groupies fucking about in my backyard. At the moment they are little more than a nuisance, but each day they're here, each day they dig their hole deeper, so their power of sabotage increases .. ."

  "I appreciate that, sir."

  "Let me tell you something, in confidence. Right now, this week, there is a meeting in Budapest between Croat bureaucrats and Serb bureaucrats. There is a meeting scheduled tomorrow in Detroit, out of the limelight, between a Croatian constitutional lawyer and a Serb with the same education. Two days ago, in Athens, there wound up a session involving Bosnian Muslims and Serbs .. . Thank Christ, those bloody journalists down in Sarajevo and Belgrade and Zagreb are too preoccupied with getting hero medals on the front lines, they don't know the half of what's being worked .. ."

  The First Secretary knew of all three meetings, and disguised his knowledge. "Small mercies."

  "Under the fucking carpet, we are working night and day for a cease-fire, and talk of war crimes tribunals is an obstruction. Shit, the Serbs have monsters in their ranks, but so do the Croats,

  so do the Bosnian Muslims. Everybody in this mess is guilty. If an alleged war criminal is kidnapped and brought out of Sector North then I can kiss goodbye to a cease-fire, most especially if they also bring out an eyewitness. Got me? For six months now I have oiled these bastards towards talking with each other .. . You know what, you should see them. Get a Croat and a Serb together in a quiet hotel with a bar, and you sure as hell wouldn't know they've been beating double shades of shit out of each other. They want a deal. They laugh together, drink together, probably go looking for tail together. They want out .. ."

  "I wouldn't wish you to think that my government in any way condones the action of this freelancer, quite the opposite .. ."

  "And who will believe you?"

  There might have been a microphone in the room. Best to assume there were microphones recording the conversation. The First Secretary spoke softly. "Which is why I brought you the information, which is why we will do our damnedest to make certain no alleged war criminal is brought out from Sector North. I think we are running on the same rails. It won't happen .. ."

  The face of the Director lightened, as if he were now amused. "But it was your Prime Minister who called for tribunals .. ."

  "Should never pay too much attention to political ramblings."

  "And this Penn, interfering fucking nobody, he's your man .. ."

  The First Secretary was smiling. "Pity that he didn't stay home. I met him. Not very impressive, but he's been caught up in the emotion of the place. Capable in a technical sense, but not very bright. Capable enough, perhaps, to make it back to the Kupa river, but not bright enough to see the implications of his actions. If he takes his man then we'll hear about it ... As you know better than me, the dust sheets will be coming off the artillery pieces and the cladding will be off the ground-to-ground missiles that can reach southern Zagreb. They might even get to loading up ... I don't think they'd fire unless this wretched clerk from Salika village is actually out of their territory. Penn will not be allowed to cross the river with his prisoner, I thought you should know."

  He saw the spreading astonishment crack the Director's face. "You'd see him go to the wall, your man?"

  The First Secretary had served one tour, two years, in Dublin as a junior Six person covered by diplomatic status. He thought he knew the southern Irish. He thought they reckoned that the British were always totally devious, quite ruthless. Well .. .

  "He's not our man."

  Everything of note, everything sensitive to his work, Marty had locked away in the floor safe. He was checking his shopping list and beside him as he stood was the howl of the mains-powered electric drill. They were cheerful young guys, the two Swedish soldiers with the drill, perhaps carpenters or engine mechanics back home before their turn in the armed forces. When they had made the deep screw sockets in the floor they would fix down the metal ring that he had demanded. They did not ask him why he wanted a metal ring fastened to the floor of the converted freight container, and he would not have told them the reason for it. He checked his list, carefully typed out.

  1 Bed (collapsible).

  1 Sleeping bag, plus blanket.

  Food: Bread, margarine, jam, sliced ham, sausage, milk

  (3 lit res 1 Hotel room reservation (KD eyewitness).

  1 Chain (4 metres).

  2 Padlocks (2 keys each).

  1 pair Handcuffs (2 keys).

  He told the Swedish soldiers that they should close the door when they had finished fastening the ring in the floor. The ring would hold a padlock, the padlock would hold a chain, the chain would hold a second padlock, the second padlock would hold a pair of handcuffs, the pair of handcuffs would hold a war criminal. Marty Jones had told anyone who would listen since he had come to Zagreb that it was the means that were important, not the end. He reckoned himself entitled to change his mind. He said to the Swedes that he would be out for the rest of the afternoon, gone shopping.

  The sun was lowering behind the trees, edging for the summit crest of the hillside. The woodland that blanketed the long valley steamed from the heat of the day, and now there was the first freshness from the coming of the evening.

  They were past the skeletons, un cared for and untouched since he had last seen them, and he had watched the control settle on Ulrike's face as if the refugees shot down were not a part of her business. The way she had gone by the skeletons told him of her strength ... So small, so fragile, so bloody strong ... He had pointed down to the swaddled bodies of the babies and Ulrike had not flinched, and he had felt the tears welling in his eyes.

  He no longer held her hand. He felt his trust for her. Down from the trees, below in the width of the valley, he could hear the drive of two tractor engines, but the tractors and the fields were still masked from them by the thickness of the trees' foliage.

  When they came to the minefield, to the needle lengths of wire rising up through the leaf carpet, he broke the rule that he had made for himself. He spoke. He told her of the cat, and he swayed his hips to show the way that the cat had eased itself against the antennae of the mines, just for a moment of lightness, almost of clowning. Then he caught a grip on himself .. . This was no bloody place to go clowning. But if they didn't laugh they would cry, and if they cried they would be broken .. . They pushed on.

  She went easily. She could have been on a forest ramble. Ulrike would know the reality because she took in the refugees. She would know they were moving into the eye of the storm.

  The stream was silver and black between the trees.

  They stopped still. They stood against a wide oak's trunk and they could see beyond the stream to the orchard blossoms and the smoke wreath above the chimneys of Salika. Gold light fell on the valley. They saw two old tractors moving in the fields across the stream. The one spread manure and the other ploughed. And across the stream they saw a man and a child walking away from the village and Penn shuddered. He did not need to tell her .. . Milan Stankovic held the child's hand and he carried on his shoulder two fishing rods and a landing net.

  Milan and the child were coming away from the village and were walking on the far bank of the stream past the silver spate water towards a dark slow pool.

  They had a plan.

  The plan di
ctated that, first, they should find the eyewitness.

  He estimated the village was a mile from the pool and the tractors were half a mile from Milan Stankovic and his boy.

  Ulrike understood the dilemma. She said, "You must have the eyewitness first. You must."

  "It is our opportunity."

  "The eyewitness is evidence. Evidence is necessary.

  "We get the eyewitness ..." As if she were speaking to a juvenile. "They have not even begun .. . They will be there when we want them to be there .. . Penn, you have to be cruel."

  He was looking at the child who skipped along beside his father and he could faintly hear the excited squeals of the child who held his father's hand.

  They went back into the depth of the trees, where the trunks were set closer. He looked twice into her face to see if the sight of the target man had changed her, if the sight of the child with the target man disturbed her, and he saw nothing but a chilled and steadfast determination. They pushed on. They moved now in short rushes. He would select a big tree ahead, and he would go fast to it and hug against it, and she would come to him, and they would wait, would listen, and he would choose the next tree. He recognized that he made more noise than she did, that his feet were heavier and his footfall clumsier. He could see the jagged rooftops of Rosenovici .. .

  Back to Dome's place, back again into Dorrie's war ... He could see through the trees the broken tower of the church, and he could see the lane that led to Katica Dubelj's hovel home. He caught at Ulrike's arm when she came light-stepped to him, and his hand was across his mouth to demand her silence and he pointed to the grey-black smear of the earth among the weeds in the corner of the field .. . and he seemed to hear again the horrid young woman, laughing at him, mocking him. It was a madness, and it was for her, and her laughter clamoured in his mind.

  They came to the path that climbed the hill slope behind the village that had died. He could have turned then, when he came to the path. He saw the worn mess of the path, mud stamped by boots. He remembered how the path had been, covered in fallen and undisturbed leaves. At that point he could have gone back into the wood. He went at the side of the path. He came to the mouth of the cave where the grass was broken, where the boots had gathered. He took the small torch from the backpack side pouch. Ulrike's hand was on his arm, holding tight to him, as if to give him courage. He stood in the entrance of the cave. He shone the torch beam forward and from the dark recess twin lights, amber, blazed back at him. The beam found the cat, wide-eyed, crouched on the rag bundle, snarling at the light. He saw the parchment skin of the face of Katica Dubelj and he saw the darkened slashes of the knives' work. He saw the cat was across her stomach and past the cat's tail were the spindle-thin legs of Katica Dubelj and the long black material of her dress was forced up to her waist and he saw the white death of the skin of her thighs. He swung the light away, away from the cat who guarded her. He reeled out of the cave. Ulrike held him. "It is what they always do. They violate old women. They rape old women. Perhaps you are responsible, Penn." "Don't .. ." "Every time, for the rest of your life, that you take a woman to your bed .. . Perhaps it was you that led them to her, Penn." "Don't say that .. ." "Every time you take a woman to your bed, for warmth and for love, you will remember her ... It is what you have to live with here, Penn, your responsibility." "Don't let me hear you say that .. ." "Because you are not man enough to hear it? It's not boys' games ... It is about survival ... It is about the code of living that you believe in ... You do not have an eyewitness, so you have to take him and you have to make him convict himself. Are you strong enough to make him convict himself?