Heart of Danger

by Gerald Seymour

  "I have to be .. ."

  "And he has the child with him .. . Are you strong enough?"

  She had walked the city all of the afternoon, not shopping and not window gazing, but a restless striding, as if walking the streets was an escape from the isolation of her hotel room.

  Dog-tired, her feet killing, Mary Braddock found a cafe on the Trg Bana Jelacica, a table to herself. A cappuccino was brought to her.

  It was, none of it, fair.

  Not fair of Charles to shout down the telephone at her, "God, Mary, do you understand what you've done .. ."

  Not fair of the earnest young American investigator to challenge her, "As long as you know, ma'am, what you're asking that man to do .. ."

  Not fair of Penn to tell her simply, "I doubt you ever listened to your daughter .. ."

  Nothing was fair. It was what any mother would have done .. . Suddenly they came around her. They were noisy, bouncing with humour. They didn't ask her if they could take the rest of the table. She sat huddled amongst the young students. They ignored her. They were squashed close to her and they had their study books on the table and one tried to read what she thought was poetry and there was happy mocking from her friends. She drank the dregs of her coffee. And amongst them there was a pale and gaunt-faced young man with cropped blond hair, and the young man was struggling to lift an unmounted canvas from a wide bag. She saw that he struggled because he used his left hand only, and she saw the way that the right sleeve of his jacket hung empty. The work on the canvas, violent and bold and crude, showed a young woman crucified, and the cross had fallen in filth. And their laughter was around her, and she was not a part of them, and their babble at the merit of the work ... It was not fair, because she craved to be included .. .

  They were her Dome's people, damn her.

  It was a warm spring evening. A long valley, and the trees from the woodland threw broad bold shadows on the grassland. It was an idyllic setting. A father inserted a fishing hook into a writhing worm and cast the line into the hidden darkness of a slow pool, and handed the rod to his child son. It was a place of calm, of peace. They had worked the plan through when they had still been in the tree line of the wood, how they would shatter the evening, break the idyll, crack the calm and the peace. They had talked it through coldly, and Penn had said what he would do, and Ulrike had agreed the plan. He took off his trousers, and she unzipped her jeans and kicked them off over her boots, and there was no shyness between them, nor any humour. It was a small part of the plan that it would be better for them when they crossed the stream to keep their trousers dry. It was part of the plan, methodical and point by point, that it would be better for them when they fled with the prisoner to have dry trousers. They heard the excited squeal of the child and saw him arc his rod up, but there was no fish. It was a good moment for Penn to go. He saw the father bent over the grass and the man, Milan Stankovic, the man who was the killer of Dorrie Mowat, would be searching in a tin or a jar for a fresh worm to thread onto the hook. Penn had such confidence in her, he did not feel the need to look back at her for reassurance. He left the tree line, and as he ran across the weeded and untended grassland of the field towards the stream, he could see the hunched low-set shoulders of the man and the child. He took a line towards a mess of fallen willows that were up the valley from the deep pool where they fished. He was running blind, because all of his attention was on the lowered shoulders of the man and the child, and the skin of his shins and thighs was nicked by the old thistles of the field that had not been worked since the fall of Rosenovici, since the death of Dorrie Mowat ... He saw the man straighten, and the child was pointing to where the fish had taken the worm and was trying to wrestle the rod back from his father so that he might cast again more quickly. Penn had dived to the ground, fallen among nettles that pricked at the bared skin of his legs. He was crawling towards the bushes of willow.

  The worm was in the water. They were both of them watching the line.

  Penn hesitated when he reached the willows' cover.

  There was a high bank to the stream, cut deep by the winter's flow, where the willow branches fell into the water. Penn looked up into the closing dusk and he saw far away that the tractors were retreating towards the dulled blossom of the orchards and the climbing smoke of the village. It was so quiet ... He slid down the bank. He dropped into the pressure power of the current. It was shallow water above the pool, going quickly. They were both of them, man and child, rapt and staring into the dark water in front of them. It was the chance that he must take. His body was bent so that the water broke against his chest as he took chopped strides on the smoothed big stones of the stream's bed. He made the crossing. He came to the far bank and grabbed at a root and dribbled the stream's water from his mouth.

  Penn came up the bank.

  He lay in the grass and he felt for the soaked fine rope that was a part of the plan, and for the torn cloth strip from the tail of his shirt.

  He was forty yards, perhaps fifty, along the bank of the stream from the man and the child.

  There was a shout.

  The happiness of the child gave a moment of opportunity to Penn.

  He was behind them, going cat quick, closing on them.

  The rod was arched above them. They were both clinging to the rod, and the child was yelling and the father was trying to calm him.

  He had the opportunity.

  Penn came on them. When he was close, when he was a stride away from them, the father turned. When his hand was raised for the blow, Milan Stankovic saw him. When he had the heel of his hand high, the killer of Dorrie Mowat gazed at him in bewilderment. Penn hit him. Penn hit the neck of Milan Stankovic, defenceless because his hands were still clasping the rod, above the shoulder and below the ear. It was not a blow that would have felled a readied man, but Milan Stankovic was in bewilderment, and his hands came off the rod and he went down. So fast .. . The man on the grass of the field, and Penn rolling him onto his stomach and driving his knee down into the man's back, and snatching clear the pistol at his waist, and dragging up his right arm as if to break the socket at the shoulder. The child held the curved and quivering rod, and for that moment did not understand. He saw Ulrike break the cover of the trees and she was running, whitened legs pumping, to the far bank of the stream. He had the noose on the wet rope around Milan Stankovic's right wrist, and then he was pulling the left arm back to meet the right wrist, and binding the wrists together. It was about advantage .. . and the advantage of surprise diminished. Milan Stankovic shouted in his fear, and he heaved with his hips, his buttocks, to throw off Penn. With the fear was recognition ... It was the struggle of the animal that senses, in fear, the open doorway of the abattoir. She was coming dripping along the stream's bank, hurrying to him, and the child had thrown down the rod. They came together at Penn, Ulrike and the child.

  He pulled Milan Stankovic upright.

  The child clung to his father's legs.

  He hit Milan Stankovic hard across the back of the skull with the barrel of the pistol, to hurt and to stun.

  The child beat at Penn with small clenched fists.

  Penn had one hand on the roped wrists of Milan Stankovic, and the other hand held the pistol under the chin of the man who had killed Dorrie Mowat, and he was trying to propel Milan Stankovic away and back towards the fast spate waters above the pool, and he could not move him because the child held at his father's legs and punched and kicked at his father's attacker. Ulrike was there. Penn saw the cold in her eyes. Ulrike had said that he would have to be cruel. She caught the child, she broke the child's grip. She threw the child down, viciously, onto the grass of the field.

  Penn and Ulrike ran on the bank to the upper end of the pool, and they had the weight of Milan Stankovic between them. They scrambled him down the bank, and into the flow of the stream. He slumped once between them, his feet slipping, and he was doused over his head and was spluttering water when they pulled him up. Just before they reached the tr
ee line Penn swung to look behind him. He saw the rod sliding away into the pool. Ulrike, amongst the trees, retrieved the backpack. He saw the child running, demented, across the empty fields and back towards the village and the smoke and the blossom dull in the dusk. Evica shook him, shook her Marko. She shook him hard to kill the hysteria in her son, and then she held him against her until the panted sobbing subsided, until he could tell her.

  Eighteen.

  She ran fast down the lane of the village, punishing herself, carrying the weight of her son.

  She had pulled her coat from the hook on the door, she had left the dog in the kitchen, she had swept the food cooking in the pots off the stove. Fleetingly, she saw the Priest sitting bowed at his window table with the oil lamp lit and the chessboard laid out. She saw the wife of the Headmaster sitting hunched near to the barred window.

  She ran through the stillness of the village, in the greying light, past the garage where gasoline used to be sold before the war and the sanctions, past the shop where food could be bought before the war and the sanctions. She ran through the silence of the village, her feet clattering the quiet.

  She ran until she no longer had the strength to carry her son, and then she dragged him, his stumbling feet slipping in the potholes of the lane. She came to the building, used now by the Territorial Defence Force of Salika village, that had been filled with agricultural stores before the war and the sanctions. She went across the yard and past the barns where the big agricultural plant was kept, idle because it was impossible to obtain spare machinery parts and tyres and fuel. She burst into the office area. She saw the guns of the killers, and the playing cards, and the bottles heaped on the table of the office area. She was the acting headmistress of the school, and she was the woman who had been to university in Belgrade, and she saw the dislike of her in the faces of the killers.

  They stared up at her from the chairs around the table that was heaped with their guns and their playing cards and their bottles.

  Evica said in not more than a whisper, "Milan .. . Milan has been taken .. . Milan is captured .. ."

  She looked into each of their faces, Branko's, Stevo's, Milo's, and she had never hidden that she despised each of them equally.

  Evica did not plead. "You have to search for him .. . you have to find him .. . you have to bring him back to me .. ."

  There was the stink of their bodies, and the smoke of their cigarettes, and the stench of the alcohol. She held Marko tight against her. And there had been first their amusement at the superior bitch fighting for breath, then the fuddled confusion of the drink, then they were listening.

  Evica would not beg. "Search, because he had gone fishing .. . find him, gone fishing with Marko .. . taken across the river .. ."

  From the postman, "By whom .. . ?"

  "I can't know."

  From the gravedigger, "Who took him .. . ?"

  "I was not there."

  From the carpenter, "Why .. . ?"

  "I do not know .. . you have to find him .. . Marko was there .. ."

  The hand of the chief of the irregulars snaked out. A rough and calloused and large hand. The hand snatched at the shoulder of her son's anorak, and the boy was pulled from her. For a moment, she tried to hold the boy. She saw fear in the face of her son, and she could not protect him. The boy was dragged to the table, her grip on him was broken. And the time was rushing, and the darkness was closing.

  Rough and guttural questions, small and frightened answers .. . They had gone fishing. They were fishing the big pool up the valley. There was no one near to them while they were fishing ... She watched, and she realized the patience of the chief of the irregulars, that he let her son regain his confidence through the story of their fishing .. . The big fish, the good trout, had taken the worm, stripped it from the hook. They had bent to put another worm on the hook. They had cast again into the pool.

  The fish had taken the worm, taken the hook. A big fish, pulling at the rod, and his father helping him to hold the rod up ... But the time was running and the darkness was gathering.

  "Hurry, Marko, what you saw .. ."

  And she was cut to silence by the slashed wave of the chief of the irregulars.

  He stood amongst them, her son, and he told his story .. . The man had come from behind them as they held the rod together to fight the fish. His father had loosed the rod. He had looked round. His father was on the ground, on the grass of the field. The man was without trousers. The man knelt on his father and was binding his arms. The man had pulled his father up and hit him. He fought the man, he tried to kick the man's legs. A woman had come. He tried to stop them from taking his father. The woman had thrown him down, the woman had hurt him .. .

  "What was he like, the man?"

  Some of them already knew. She trembled. She remembered. She heard the voice that she had translated: "I have the evidence for my report that Dorrie Mowat was killed by, was murdered by, Milan Stankovic." She saw the face of the man, beaten and scarred and cut. They shared the guilt.

  Pandemonium breaking out of the office area of the TDF headquarters. Shouts, cries in the night, and the gathering up of weapons, and the howling of awakened dogs. And who was the leader now .. . ? The one from the irregulars, but he did not know the terrain of the valley? The postman? The grave-digger? The carpenter? And was there a working telephone line out of the village? And where was the man to link the radio to Glina military? And where should the search begin, in the woodland across the stream, in darkness? At the deep pool where her Milan had been captured? She heard the babble of argument, and time was running.

  She shouted above their voices, "Cowards .. . you all share the guilt. It was not just him that did it ... Idiots, if Milan is taken, your leader, it is all of you who are threatened. Murderers .. ."

  In confusion, in disordered chaos, the village was armed, the link was made and interrupted and made again and interrupted again with Glina military, and the search party moved out into the lane in front of the old agricultural store, and the debate of tactics began.

  They had no leader.

  She remembered the man, what he had said and what he had seemed to be. '.. . Tell Dorrie's mother the name of the man who killed her daughter .. ." Dignified, brave, remote from the law of the bastard village that was her home, not intimidated by the violence threatening him. If that man had her Milan .. . Evica reckoned that the man and the woman who had taken her husband had a start on them of near to an hour.

  At the first halt, an hour gone since they had moved into the haven of the tree line on the west side of the valley, he had given Milan Stankovic's pistol to Ulrike and he had shone the torch full into the face of Milan Stankovic and he had held the small-bladed knife against the bearded throat of the man.

  She knew their language, she interpreted.

  Into the wide grey-blue eyes he had said that, if they were trapped, if they were intercepted, if they could go no further, he would slit that throat. And at the rest stop, two minutes on his watch, he and Ulrike had taken their turn in watching him close and they had slipped on again their dry trousers. He had whisper growled the threat to slit Milan Stankovic's throat, and he did not think he was then believed.

  He attempted to be cruel because it was what Ulrike had ordered of him.

  And as the second hand of his watch was slipping for the end of the two minutes, he had summoned what he hoped was ferocity and he had told Milan Stankovic that if he shouted, screamed, howled, he would cut his throat.

  Penn dragged him forward. Ulrike led with the torch cupped in the palm of her hand so that it made a short cone of light ahead of her feet. Penn had the knife close to Milan Stankovic's neck so that when they pitched or stumbled then the tip of the blade would waver against the fullness of the man's beard. It was not important to him that the man had spat contempt at him.

  The man did not shout, but instead talked softly. He was not gagged because Penn had thought that if he were gagged with the torn strip off the tail o
f his shirt then his breathing would be impaired and he would not be able to go as fast as was required of him. A low and calm voice. He could hear the murmur of the voice and the staccato bursts of Ulrike's side-of-mouth interpretation. '.. . You think you can succeed, then you are a lunatic .. . The whole village will be coming, man and boy, guns .. . You are the stranger here, don't know the ways in the forest, they know them .. . You only took me because I had the boy with me, because I was distracted with the boy, if I had not had the boy you would not have taken me ... You are shit, shit when you came the first time, shit now .. . They will be coming after you, coming close to you ... It is our forest, not yours, why you have no possibility .. . You say you will kill me, you would not dare .. ." There was a change in Ulrike's voice. There was no longer an automaton translation, but something said softly in the man's language, and the man's words dried. Penn asked, "What did you tell him?" Ulrike said, not looking back, "You might not kill him, but I would. That's what I told him, that I would kill him. He may not believe you, he should believe me .. . and I asked him if he felt guilt." She was so strong ... He wondered if she had ever felt weakness. And everything of her was denied him. He wondered where she had been five years before, when he had waited on the railway station for the delayed train and chatted to the stranger, Jane, and taken the taxi down to Raynes Park where Jane lived. He wondered if Ulrike Schmidt, who allowed no sentiment, would have looked at him then, admired him or wanted to share with him. His best friend, Dougal Gray, would have understood. Penn had heard that Dougal Gray, in Belfast, now lived with the separated wife of a policeman. In the heart of danger men and women were thrown together and thought they found love when they squirmed only for comfort. In a year, when Dougal Gray finished his extended tour, and was posted back to Gower Street there would be no chance that the separated wife of a policeman would up sticks to travel with him .. . There was no future. He had a hold of the wrists of Milan Stankovic that were knotted with the fine rope at the pit of his back. Each time that they had gone a hundred metres, each moment that they stopped, he strained for the sounds of pursuit, and Milan Stankovic was listening too, each time he bent his neck that he would hear better the first signs of the chasing pack. They went on into the depth of the woodland, climbing from the valley. There were some who said they should take cars and the jeep, and go up the road beyond Bovic towards the Pokupsko bridge where the Kupa river was the cease-fire line. There were others who said they should drive up the Vrginmost road and then take the turning towards the artillery position and fan out into the woods from there. And there was delay while the cars were filled with gasoline from the pump in the yard of the old agricultural store, and there were some who said they should go on foot into the woodland from the Rosenovici side of the stream, and others said they should go first to where the boy had told them his father had been taken. More delay for the argument. Some said they should wait for the army to come from Glina military, some said they should do the work for themselves. She listened. She wept. They decided. They had filled the cars with gasoline, but they would not use them. They would go on foot. They would go across the bridge and through the village of Rosenovici, and they would make a beating line through the woodland. She wept because she saw the wild excitement in torch-lit faces, as if they were away and off to drive a boar from thicket scrub, to rouse a deer for shooting. She watched the column of bouncing lights, raucously tailing away towards the bridge. Evica Stankovic realized how greatly she loathed them, all of them. And she wiped the tears off her face, and she led Marko away. She went to the house of the Priest. The Priest should have been her friend, as the Headmaster should have been her friend. She gave her son into the care of the Priest and his wife. She despised the man, as she despised herself. The Priest and the Headmaster and herself were the only three souls of the village with education, but amongst them only the Headmaster had stood up for what he believed. She told the Priest that Milan had been taken as a war criminal, and she saw the shallow sneer on the Priest's face, and she knew him to be an ambivalent bastard. He told a story in his low singing voice. It was the story of a Croat, the story of Matija Gubec, the leader of a revolt in the year of 1573 against the tyrant Franjo Tahi. He said it was the story of a little man who had risen to great power. '.. He wanted, Gubec, to be a big man amongst the peasants, and he made an organization of revolt. The sign of recognition with his people was a sprig of evergreen. The simple people followed him, but they were tricked by the superior intellect of the tyrant: they were told that while they went with the peasant rabble so the Turks were gathering to pillage their homes and they deserted Gubec. He was taken. He was brought to Zagreb. He was led to St. Mark's Square for a coronation. But the crown was iron, and the crown was heated by fire until the iron was white hot. He was crowned, and then he was dismembered. It is a story of long ago, before we were civilized, the story of a man who reached too far." He would have known that she was desperate for speed, and he had held her with the mincing words of the story, and with the tail of the story he had kicked her. So many times the Priest had walked to her house and wheedled for favours from her Milan and patted the head of her Marko. The chess, set was laid out on the table of rough stained oak .. . The Priest, the bastard, had not had the courage to stand beside his friend. When the Headmaster faced death then the Priest, the bastard, had stayed quiet. That the Priest dared taunt her was absolute proof of how alone she was. They blamed her, the Priest and his wife, for the humbling and the killing of a friend. She left her son there, whimpering, with the thin-boned fingers of the ambivalent bastard resting on the boy's shoulder. She went back to her home and she put on heavy boots and took the rusted bayonet down from the high wall hook, and she called for the dog to come with her. She knew the name of the dog, the name given it by the Ustase Croat people, and she took the big flashlight. With the dog at her heel she went away across the fields on the east side of the river. She could see their torches going through Rosenovici village, and she could hear them. She went alone with the dog, and she called it with its Ustase name to be close to her. She knew how it would be ... They would search a small area, the area around the villages, their own area. They were tribal. They would not move beyond the boundary of their own area. She could recall when some of the young men of the village had been volunteered for duty, last year, outside Petrinja, in the trenches facing Sisak, and they had drifted home within twelve days because it was not their own war, beyond their own area.