Heart of Danger

by Gerald Seymour

  Marty thought of the photographs on the walls of the freight container, pictures of the weak and the outnumbered and the defenceless who had been caught behind the lines.

  He parked among the new black BMWs in their sleek rows, the wheels of the fat cat bastards who were doing fine.

  He went up to her room.

  Marty Jones told Mary Braddock that Penn was coming with his prisoner towards the river ... he looked for her excitement .. . that Penn had taken Milan Stankovic away from the village of Salika ... he watched for her triumph .. . that a huge manhunt was in progress in Sector North between the village of Salika and the Kupa river ... he expected to see her flinch .. . that the whole of the goddamn place beyond the cease-fire line was alive, roused ... he expected to see her wilt.

  "I want to look into his face. I want him to know that he murdered my daughter. I want to be there when he's brought across."

  "That's positive thinking, ma'am, and positive thinking is always good. Could just be premature thinking. Do you have any appreciation of the odds against .. . ?"

  "Penn'll bring him across the river, I don't doubt it."

  He felt almost an anger. She was sitting in an armchair and her legs, narrow and fine, were crossed in elegance, and Ulrike Schmidt, the best woman he'd known, was hacking through a bucket of hell with Penn and the prisoner, and the jaws of the goddamn trap were closing tight, as they had closed on those who were photographed on the walls of his converted freight container. One thing to goddamn talk about it, one thing to make the great goddamn plan, quite another to ... "Ma'am, it's not a picnic."

  "He didn't have to go ... He never met my daughter, of course not, but he talked some unpleasant rubbish about loving her. I find that repulsive. I don't need lectures in motherhood. But I have the right to demand the punishment of my daughter's killer ... He took our money."

  It was like a dismissal. He said he would go ring the mercenary down in Karlovac.

  It was a recklessness that pushed Penn forward. Thought through, well considered, he would have made the decision to lie up through that long day, and then after the fall of dusk complete the last charge for the river bank. He did not ask her for her opinion, and she did not challenge his decision. He was drawn towards the river bank, goaded towards it. So tired, and wanting only to be there, where he could gaze out across the slow depth of the water, he was driven towards it, towards the danger of the last barrier .. . The sun was up above them and slanted down diffused by the upper branches .. . The danger would be at the last obstacle and that was where they would set their men, where they would run their tripwires, where they would make their ambushes ... He had now used the gag cloth, wedged it between Milan Stankovic's teeth and knotted the ends tight against the shaggy long-grown hair at the back of his neck. Milan Stankovic accepted the gag, and at the last stop of two minutes Penn had thought he had seen the first slipping of his arrogance, the first breaking of the conceit, as if fear had begun to gnaw at the man, and Penn heard the breaking of a branch behind him. They were away from the path. They were far into the cover of the trees, and Ulrike had heard what he had heard and swung on her hips to look into his face. They were frozen. The movement of the forest woodland was around them, and both were straining to hear the sound again of the breaking of a branch, and Penn held the knife hard against Milan Stankovic's throat. She broke the moment of stillness. She moved on. He went after her, pushing the man forward, and he did not know if they were followed ... He would not tell her that it was all ahead of them, that the worst was in front of them. The day supervisor scowled down at him. "Oh, you're so kind, thank you so much .. . and another thing, I'd be very grateful if you could get me a few guidebooks, former Yugoslavia .. ." God, what a miserable woman. '.. . Yes, I'm very nearly through .. . Those books that get to the second-hand shops, full of photographs, I'd appreciate it so much." Henry Carter smiled his sweetest. She walked stiffly away, and he regretted that he had insufficient courage to call after her and request a beaker of coffee .. . If she brought him coffee she would probably accompany the visit with a further dose of that obnoxious sickly air freshener .. . As a major favour, she had brought him a set of photocopied newspaper clippings. He was, indeed, nearly through. Perhaps he was nit-picking, perhaps he was far beyond his brief, but he did not care. A job worth doing, that sort of thing. He was sifting the clippings, believing they had a place in the file even though they were dated months after the events that consumed him. The Secretary General of the United Nations, should know what he was talking about, guaranteeing his organization's support for the international war crimes tribunal: We will put on trial those who have contributed to civilian suffering and it will not be forgiven .. . will deal not only with the people accused of committing the crimes, but also those who inspired the human rights violations .. . We have to denounce it ... civilians are being bombed, starved and mistreated and children are targeted by killers in the shadows. Good solid stuff, and a pity that no one had bothered to tell the bureaucrats in their offices above Library, and not told the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and not told UNPROFOR. Worth entering in the file because Penn, that ordinary and decent man, and maybe a bit of a clairvoyant and most certainly blessed with common sense, would not have believed a word of it. He grasped at another clipping and wrote a brief summary to go into the file with the clipping, and hoped quite fervently that, one fine day, the file would be examined by a mandarin or an apparatchik with enough honesty to feel humility .. . some chance. FRITS KALSHOVEN: Dutch academic, had been appointed to job of Chief Prosecutor, but resigned. Cited 'refusal of Great Britain and France and Germany and Italy to co-operate'. Noted positive attitude of United States of America, Canada and Norway. Also blamed 'obstruction' of sister UN agencies.

  Ah, getting better .. . Gratifying to read it. Another clipping, another digest. Henry Carter squirmed, but it was necessary for the full picture to be drawn if it were ever to be understood why Penn had made that desperate and poorly considered expedition behind the lines, into the heart of danger. Leave it to those bastards to sort out and a man may as well wait for his Bath chair .. . More brave talk.

  A new PROSECUTOR named: Ramon Escovar-Salom (Venezuelan attorney-general). Total budget of $30 million. Eleven judges appointed (nice work if you can get it!), at salary of $150,000 per annum, payable regardless of whether charges are brought.

  The voice was cold behind him.

  "I have your guidebooks, Mr. Carter. I have also to tell you that I will be complaining, most forcibly, to In-House Management about the demands you have placed upon us, and your quite disgusting lack of personal hygiene."

  Henry Carter breezed, "Not much longer, nearly finished."

  Nineteen.

  The man was snivelling. Penn reckoned Milan Stankovic to be in bad shape and there were low grunting sounds in his throat that were muffled by the gag. Maybe it was exhaustion, or maybe it was the tightness of the fine rope binding his wrists. They were going slower. They were close now to the inner line of the forward zone. He reckoned the forward zone would be five miles, a mile either way, deep, and in the forward zone would be the maximum concentration of strong points and minefields and tripwires and patrols, and the forward zone could not be avoided, could not be skirted. He had shown her the way they should move: weigh each footfall, stop and listen and go, and he thought she had learned well. He had the knife so hard against Milan Stankovic's beard that the man no longer seemed to doubt him, and took as great a care with each stride as they did. She would go forward, she would stop, she would listen, she would flick her fingers for him to come with the prisoner. They would both listen for a moment, and then she would move forward again. It was when the tears were coming faster on Milan Stankovic's cheeks that she began, again, to interpret what the man said through the gag. "He is telling you about his grandparents. His grandparents were taken out of Salika village .. . There was a cordon round the village, made at first light by the Germans and by the Ustase fascists .. . Before the Ger
man troops and the fascists moved into the village his grandparents were able to hide his father in the barn where they kept two cows and their cart. His father was eleven years old .. ." Going forward again, stopping, listening. "When the German troops and the fascists came into the village they took all the men and women they could find, and then the German troops stood back .. . Many of the Ustase fascists were from Rosenovici village, and the German troops allowed them to take charge of the villagers from Salika. They were walked, his grandparents and many others, to Glina town. It was said to them when they reached Glina, without food or water, that the Serb villages provided help and support for the Partizans who were hidden in the Petrova Gora forest which is near .. . They were put into the church at Glina, his grandparents and the other people from the village and from other villages .. . He says that many of the Ustase fascists were from Rosenovici, and many would have known his grandparents and the other people .. . The church was set on fire by the Ustase fascists .. ." Going forward, stopping again, listening. "He says the German troops were from a regiment of Wurtem-berg, and they were country boys and they would have no part of it.. He says the fascists, and there were many from Rosenovici, had blocked the doors of the burning church and they fired their rifles at the windows so that there was no escape from the fire ... He says it is the first story that his father told him .. ." Going forward, stopping, listening again. "He says the story of what the Ustase fascists did to his grandparents, what the people from Rosenovici did to their neighbours, burning them with fire, is in his bones and his blood and his mind, and has been since he was a small child .. . He says that you do not understand, and that you cannot understand .. . He says that you have no quarrel with him, and that he has no quarrel with you ... He says now that you should try to understand ... He begs you to permit him to return to his people, to his wife and to his son .. ." Going forward, stopping, listening. He felt the cold in him. Even when they crossed the small clearings where old trees had rotted and fallen, where the sun caught him, he felt cold. She spoke to the man, the whisper of the local language, and again she killed the words, and the pleading. "What did you say to him?" "I asked him, could he describe the face of Dorrie Mowat when he hit her, knifed her and shot her .. ." The man was broken. He took the lead. He did not know how she could find the cruelty. He let Ulrike have charge of moving Milan Stankovic forward. He handed her the knife and she held it against the man's throat, as he had done. She would use the knife, of that he was certain. Ahead were the strong points and the minefields and the tripwires and the patrols. As his defence, he had only the skills he had learned as a child, going to the badger sett or the vixen's den, stalking the fallow hind. He remembered about the INLA man, and what the detective sergeant of the Anti-terrorist Branch had told him weeks after the arrest, meeting in a pub to hand over surveillance evidence notes, that the arrogance and conceit had been stripped off the man with his clothes, that the man had sat in his cell wearing his paper overall suit and wept .. . There was nothing definite that he could tell her. It was just his instinct. Each time they stopped and listened, his instinct told him they were being followed, but he saw nothing behind and heard nothing. And it was all ahead of them, the worst. "I don't know how we'll pick up the pieces again .. ." It was the usual way of their sessions. They were in the kitchen. The bulk of Charles Braddock's body was slumped on the table and he spoke muffled through his hands. "I've always made the decisions for her. I've always said what'll happen. Damn it, she's always been here, waiting, available .. ." Arnold Browne leaned against the sink. Pretty rare for him to be invited inside the Manor House and not outside to the 'snug' shed at the bottom of the garden, but it was usual that he should play the punch bag for his neighbour's monologue. He supposed that he was attracted by the power of the man, but he found the whined self-pity quite unpleasant. '.. . Lost her to that damned child. I mean, it's hardly as if she can just walk back through the door, and we carry on like nothing ever .. . Humiliated me in my own house, at my own table, with my own friends ... I mean, it's not even for the child living, it's for the child that's bloody dead. Not what I want, not at all. I've done everything that Mary could have wished for, needed, asked for ... Arnold, she' scrapped on me, bloody ungrateful woman .. ." He went to the kitchen door. It was not Arnold Browne's way to tell his neighbour that he thought him the most opinionated bully he had ever met. Or to inform his neighbour that he thought his wife to be the most selfish woman he had ever known. It was not his way to tell his neighbour that a young man had been exploited when vulnerable .. . And it was not his way to reveal that, in his own mind, he was tormented by guilt for his part in the matter. He let himself out. "Yes, Penn. He's Bill Penn .. . Might be under William Penn .. ." She stiffened. Mary Braddock could endure no longer the isolation of her room. She sat in a low chair in the lobby. She waited for the telephone call from the earnest young American. She straightened, taut. "He was here, this is where he was staying, Bill Penn .. ." The reception clerk, bored and superior, was shaking his head, reluctantly leafing through the guest list. "This is where he was booked in .. ." A nasal English voice. She saw a small man, overweight and bald. He was leaning over the desk trying to read the lists as the reception clerk's pencil moved languidly over the names. He wore dirty jeans that were smeared in engine grease and an open shirt with a pullover that was ragged at the cuffs. "Ah, yes .. . Here, but gone .. . Gone two days ago, two days ago he checked out.. . Yes, I remember, Mr. Penn, I think he had had an accident .. . but gone." She saw his disappointment. He looked Jewish. She saw him mouth a curse, and he turned away. She was up fast out of the low chair and she intercepted him by the glass swing doors. "Excuse me ... you were asking for Mr. Penn." "Right." "It's impertinent, but in what connection?" "Depends who needs to know." "Well, if it doesn't seem ridiculous, I suppose I could say I'm his employer." "The girl's mother? Dorrie Mowat's mother? I'm Benny Stein, I met Bill Penn." '"BENJAMIN (BENNY) STEIN: Crown Agent lorry driver, Brit aid convoy, rescued me (life threatened situation) from Sector North at considerable risk to himself, his colleagues, and the future shipment of aid through Serb-occupied territory." She had recited it, as if it were learned by heart. '.. . You were in his report." "We were geared up to go back today, down to Knin, but there's some flap over there, crossing points closed. We got put on hold. Seems I missed him, just wanted to put alcohol down his throat. Good guy, but you know that, lucky guy. So, he's gone home .. ." "Not home, Mr. Stein, back inside Sector North. I asked him to return there, and that's what he did. I asked him to bring out my daughter's murderer, that's what he's doing." She stared him straight in the eyes. She saw him shudder. She thought that for a moment his mind was working like a slow mechanism, but when they came his words had the deliberation of a quite total dislike. "Do you know Oscar Wilde, Mrs. Braddock? Maybe you don't .. . "Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious." What is obvious to me but not obvious to you is that over there, inside Sector North, is a bloody awful corner of hell. So, you "asked" him to go back inside .. . When I got to meet him, he was kicked half to death, they were taking him out to shoot him. You know what he said? He said that you told the worst stories about your daughter .. . "a story about her for every year of her life, the stories seemed to queue up to foul-mouth her ..." And for your peace of mind, you "asked" him to go back into that place .. . Well done, Mrs. Braddock, for missing the obvious." He pushed past her, hammered into the swing doors. She thought that Benny Stein, if he had not pushed past her and run across the pavement, would have hit her. They played it as a game, and the Director watched. The tip of the wand moved high on the wall map of the operations room, and the Canadian officer described the moves. But there was no passion to the commentary. "Initially there was a search mounted out of Salika village, that search did not make a trace and was wound down this morning. The activity of the search is now in their prime militarized zone fronting onto the Kupa river. They've cancelled leave, beefed up the duty rosters.
They believe they have sealed the militarized zone it's out of the hands now of the rabble because their main force military have taken charge. We have no idea of the location of their target, whether he is pressing on, whether he has decided to go to ground while the heat's hot. From our monitoring of their radio it is clear that they do not, as of this moment, know his position, nor his approximate position. They seem, however, confident of blocking him in their militarized zone. That's about where it stands .. . You'll excuse me for asking you, sir, but do you have that information, where he's coming to?" They waited on him. The Argentine captain held the sheaf of papers that carried the monitored radio messages. They watched him. The Jordanian major lowered the pointer from the map. They searched him for truth. The Canadian colonel smiled, dryly. The Director said, in sadness more than anger, "I bloody well don't. We're only the United Nations, you see, only the world body, only the one international authority that every clown politician pays lip service to. We are good enough to be derided, humiliated, insulted, kicked from one fucking end of this place to the other, good enough to shuffle aid round without being thanked. Not good enough to be trusted. It's what I've made a career at, advancement without trust .. . Thank you, gentlemen." He went back with heavy steps, up the flight to his office. His secretary greeted him at the outer door, messages in hand and with a gesture towards the three men sitting uncomfortably in the outer office and waiting for their delayed meeting. He waved her away. The Director closed the door hard behind him. He sat long at his desk and he smoked his cigar and loathed himself for the habit. There were many telephones on his desk. Big decision of the day ... He reached for the white telephone, and he dialled hard, belting the buttons. '.. . Your guarantee? He does not cross with his prisoner, I want that as a promise. I have that as an unequivocal promise? I accept your guarantee." He had the promise from the First Secretary of the British mission that the man who was disowned would not be permitted to cross the river that night with his prisoner. He must place his trust in the guarantee. She did not know how much longer she could keep up the pace. The dog could hold the pace, whining for food in its hunger when she stopped to rest, sometimes veering away from the scent to lap at a pool of old rainwater, but the dog kept strength while she faded. Sometimes she had a kaleidoscope of lights in her mind, hallucinations at her eyes .. . She knew this part of the forest, not well, but she had been there as a teenager with the Pioneers of the Party, when the young people had gone on long hiking marches with their tents and cooking gear, when they were brought to the place of the massacre. Where the dog led her was within a half-hour's walk of the place of the massacre. At the place the teenagers had been lined up by the officials, the rain dripping on them, and the Croat children and the Serb children had listened to the officials tell of the shooting in cold blood by the Ustase men of the group of women who were taking food to the Partizans, and after the speeches the teenagers, Croat and Serb, had murmured their factional insults at each other. It was why she knew this part of the forest .. . She had thought, all through the length of the day, that she would find soldiers, and that the soldiers would go with her as the dog led them on the scent. She had found no soldiers, and now the light amongst the trees was fading. She had only the bayonet. Evica Stankovic had seen them first an hour before. When darkness came they would be close to the river. She had seen them for a moment, where the haphazard growth of the trees made a clean corridor for her vision. When darkness came again, when they were near the river, she would lose them. She went on and all the time her eyes, sometimes blinded in tiredness, sometimes seared by the leaping lights, searched for the shape of them. Evica Stankovic had seen, in that moment an hour before, the man leading, and the woman, and her husband who was called a murderer was dragged between them. The two military policemen were waiting on the platform of the station. They were tall men and their heads were above the mass of passengers, friends, relations, who crowded and waited for the instruction that they should board the train. "What I don't understand .. ." "Wrap it up, Freefall." The First Secretary threaded through the crush, going towards the military policemen. Ham had spent the day, imprisoned without ceremony in the basement cellar of the First Secretary's villa on the high northern outskirts of Zagreb, among the firewood and the coal sacks with a thermos and a plate of sandwiches and a bucket. "I don't understand ..." "Never was your strong point, Freefall, understanding." Ham was given into the custody of the military policemen and they looked at him with a savagery that stripped off his face the first trace of the cheeky smile. He was handcuffed to the younger of them. He was handed the envelope of travel documents and checked them awkwardly, one-handed. "Why did you help me, why didn't you leave me with the bastards?" "Now, don't dally, not in Budapest, not in Sofia, not in Istanbul. Just get yourself straight through to Yerevan. Frankly, if you survive that train journey then you'll come through any war intact, even Nagorny Karabakh's little scrap .. . Part of the code, Freefall. I don't like to leave colleagues dangling, not in mid-stream." The announcement was made over the loudspeakers and the passengers surged to the train's doors. The cases were being passed up, and the knotted bundles, and the cardboard boxes reinforced with string. The older military policeman elbowed a way through, and Ham was pulled forward and the First Secretary trailed him. "You think I let him down, Penn, you think I caved too bloody easy?" "I'm having you met off the train at Istanbul, you'll be given the ticket for Yerevan. Armenia is the side to be on, Freefall. Keep your nose clean and your bottom wiped, and you can be quite a useful asset to us there. It would be very sad if you were silly, could have dangerous consequences for you ... Of course you let him down, of course you caved too quickly. You're a coward, Freefall, but not an idiot, that pleasant lady would have killed you if you hadn't been a coward, and she would not have lost five minutes of sleep over it." He was taken up the steep steps and the handcuff ring cut at the flesh of his wrist. He looked down onto the First Secretary, and the man was peering at his watch as though already bored. "Where is he?" "Somewhere behind that bloody line, stumbling forward .. . yes, with his prisoner .. . stumbling forward towards your promised rendezvous .. . Enjoy Nagorny Karabakh." The door slammed behind him. The handcuff jerked him towards the corridor of the carriage. He stood his ground, sod the buggers. There was the whistle's blast and the first shudder of the train lurching away. Ham shouted, "Tell him it wasn't my fault. Tell him I wasn't to blame." A faint reply, through the filthy window of the door. "Goodbye, Freefall ... If I see him, I'll tell him." The train ground out of Zagreb station. Three passengers, Bosnian refugees, with all that they owned around them, were cleared from their seats by the military policemen. They would be with him until the Slovenian border, then the military policemen would free him, leave him. From Ljubljana he would go on alone into Austria, and at Vienna he would start the long journey, via Budapest and Sofia and Istanbul and Yerevan, to the war in Nagorny Karabakh, wherever the fuck that was. Of course it was not his fault, of course he was not to blame. Nothing in his life had ever been the fault of Sidney Ernest Hamilton. In the dropping light the train cleared the concrete outer suburbs of Zagreb. He was without blame. He reached with his free hand into his pocket for the carton of Marlboro cigarettes, and for his playing cards .. . She said it softly. '.. . He says that you have seen his wife. His wife is a fine woman. He says that you have seen his boy, and that I hurt his boy. His boy is a good son .. . Everything that he knows is in the village of Salika, and everything that he loves is there. He asks you, begs you, pleads with you .. ." He looked away from the wreckage of the man. He remembered the power of the man and the glory of him in the hall of the village's school, and his boots and fists. He could not make the link. She said it quietly. '.. . He says that his wife should have a husband, and his son should have a father ... He says that he will swear to you, promise to you, on his mother's life, that he will never hold a gun again, will never fight again. He says that you are a man of honour, a person of courage, and that you will understand his weakness ... He
begs you to let him go back to his wife, he pleads with you to let him return to his son .. ." Her voice dripped in his ear. He stared again into the face of the broken man. The eyes of Milan Stankovic ran wet and his mouth dribbled saliva against the folded material of the gag. The man was pitiful. He could not make the link between the man who was laden with conceit and the man who grovelled for his freedom. The birds clattered in the branches above him and there was the panting of Ulrike's breath spurts and the moaning in Milan Stankovic's throat. "I told you." Her face and her eyes and her short bob-cut hair were close to him.