War Baby

by Colin Falconer

  ‘Fascists, of course. But in a war you cannot choose your comrades.’

  ‘What will happen to him?’

  ‘Two of my armija caught him and now my officers want to shoot him. I told them they have to hand him over to his own commander for justice. It’s not good for morale to go shooting your allies. You agree?’ He poured himself some of the plum brandy and raised his glass. ‘Jivili. To life.’

  ‘Jivili,’ Webb agreed. The sjlivovica had a kick like a horse.

  ‘What can I do for you, Mister IPA?’

  ‘Your English is very good,’ Webb said.

  ‘Before this war I was an English student in Zagreb. I wanted to be travel guide, you know? But this year Thomas Cook does not want to go to Jajce.’

  ‘I do.’

  He looked weary, as if he had feared this all along. ‘Why do you want to go there? It is just people living in holes and dying in their own shit. Even if I can get you in, maybe I cannot get you out.’

  ‘I’m a journalist. I get paid to take risks.’

  ‘How much do they pay you for your life? One million US? Two million?’

  ‘If I told you, you’d get depressed.’

  He lit a cigarette. ‘So what will you do if I can get you inside Jajce?’

  ‘I want to take photographs, write about it. It is important the world knows what is happening here.’

  ‘The world? The world sees what is happening inside Sarajevo, yes? And what does the world do about it? The world does not care about us, Mister IPA.’

  ‘Someone has to listen.’

  Musiç leaned forward. ‘Then you tell them what we need is not their sympathy, we want more boom-boom. The Chetniks have plenty of boom-boom. They have arms factories, they have the Russians and Greeks to help them, they have the old Yugoslav army that our taxes helped pay for. If it is not for the HVO - that bunch of fascists pigs - we will all be dead long ago. Who does this arms embargo hurt? Only Bosnia. We have no one to help, we have no coast to smuggle in what we need. Tell them in your newspaper we do not want the world and Mister Bush to cry for us. We just want them to untie our hands so we can defend ourselves.’ He lit another cigarette from the remains of his first. ‘Every night I send ambulances and lorries to Jajce with medicines and supplies. The last two nights they have had to turn back. But we will try again tonight. If you want to go, you can go. With the other crazy journalist.’

  Webb swallowed hard. ‘The other journalist?’

  ‘Some girl. Very young, very beautiful. Maybe Russian, maybe Chinese, but she has this American accent. She is crazy too. She should be home making babies.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘She has a room in the barracks on the other side of the courtyard. Go and talk to her if you want.’ As Webb got up to leave, Musiç shouted after him: ‘You can talk to her about how you will both die in Jajce.’

  * * *

  Jenny stopped to fill her water bottle from the Ottoman freshwater tap in the main street. They said Suleiman the Magnificent had once passed this way. How many other armies had travelled over this ground? she wondered. The Serbs, Croats and Moslems had been fighting over this land for centuries. As in Palestine, its savage tribes would always find a new season in which to fertilise its soil with blood.

  When she looked up he was standing on the other side of the square.

  Less of a surprise than it might have been; she had received a fax from him two weeks ago at the Intercon in Zagreb, telling her he had taken the contract with IPA. He was wearing the old Vietnam utility she had seen in his drawer at home, camou pants, and a new UN flak jacket. He looked ill at ease in it; he had been away from the action for too long.

  She was still not sure how she felt about seeing him again. Bitterness had become a redundant emotion in her life, she had harbored too much of it and the taste of it had turned rank. Now the sight of him touched her in some way. She remembered that he had always been there for her and now here he was again, her guardian angel, in the shape of the old veteran in a young man’s game.

  ‘Hello uncle,’ she said and smiled.

  * * *

  Refugee children played in the glow of the bonfires. Looted cars and armija patrols were silhouetted by the flames.

  Webb and Jenny sat around a campfire in the courtyard, drinking coffee. Webb thought she looked thinner, tired, and much older. Her long black hair had been lopped to shoulder length and was kept out of her eyes with a red bandanna. She wore loose fatigues under a Kevlar jacket, and had a blue NATO helmet hooked on to her belt. Her fingernails, which at home were always polished and carefully manicured, were broken and dirty.

  He was shocked at her appearance, but not surprised. He knew the physical cost of endless months in the front line.

  He had missed her so much, had worried about her endlessly. And now she was here and he couldn’t find the words to say any of the things he had wanted to tell her.

  He did not know how to start to repair the damage.

  She had learned to make coffee in the Bosnian manner; double-boiled in a dzezva, and so thick it slithered into the cup like oozing mud. Tradition then required that you dip a sugar cube into the brew and suck on it slowly before drinking the coffee black and bitter.

  They talked about the war, and she told him about some of the battlefields she had seen: Osijek, Vinkovci, Sarajevo, Srebenica, Gorazde. She was as delighted as a child to hear that he had seen and read some of her features in major newspapers, proudest of all of the photograph she had taken of a Bosnian Serb pressing the barrel of his Kalashnikov into the neck of an old Moslem as he lay cowering on the ground in Mostar. That had appeared as a full-page color photograph in Time.

  As she talked she glossed over the dangers and the close calls; Webb remembered how he had always done that, too. You didn’t want to think about it, and talking about it just made it worse next time.

  But there was still this formality between them. The convoy that would be leaving in an hour for Jajce, and there was so much he wanted to say to her. Instead their conversation drifted into long silences; they desultorily picked up threads of conversation from a few minutes before, then turned their attention back to the convoy’s preparations going on around them.

  Finally Jenny said, ‘You haven’t asked me about Ryan.’

  ‘Haven’t I?’

  ‘Don’t you want to know?’

  He shrugged. ‘Are you going to tell me?’

  ‘He got into Jajce a week ago. No one’s heard from him since.’

  Webb nodded but said nothing.

  ‘He helped me a lot the first few weeks.’ She stirred the embers of the fire with a stick. ‘He quit the network.’

  ‘I heard.’

  ‘He’s back working for Time.’

  Another long and uncomfortable silence.

  ‘Did you tell him?’ His voice sounded hoarse, not his own.

  She nodded.

  They both waited for the other to speak.

  ‘I wanted to kill him,’ she said, at last.

  ‘I guess I can understand that.’

  ‘And if you’d been standing next to him...’

  He took a deep breath. ‘I never forgave him for what he did to you. I decided not to tell you because I thought it would only hurt you. I was right, wasn’t I?’

  She shook her head. ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I saw my mother a few days after I got here,’ Jenny said. Webb felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle, hearing Odile’s name invoked on this other faraway battlefield.

  ‘Just my imagination, of course,’ she said. ‘Like I often imagined her when I was in Lincoln Cove. I’d ask her what she thought of the house, this boyfriend, that new date. And when you told me about Ryan I imagined she still hated him. But then I realized it was me, not her. She never did get around to hating him, did she?’

  Webb shook his head.

  ‘Ryan’s talked to me a lot about her, told me all the things I never knew. I think I
can let her rest now. Make up my own mind about things.’

  ‘That’s good, Jenny.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That is good, isn’t it?’

  Chapter 77

  Musiç was there to see them off when the convoy left for Jajce, a cigarette between his fingers. ‘Once you’re in,’ he said, ‘stay in the command post and don’t try and move around.’

  Webb looked at Jenny. They had not come all this way to sit in a bunker.

  He led the way to an ancient Citroen at the rear of the convoy. Webb volunteered to sit in the back; they both knew that was the most dangerous place to be because you couldn’t get out as fast if you were fired on.

  ‘We’ll try and get you out again,’ Musiç said. ‘But I can guarantee nothing.’

  ‘We’ll take our chances,’ Webb said.

  ‘Of course.’

  They climbed in. Their driver started the engine, then touched the prayer beads that hung from the rear-vision mirror, for luck.

  ‘Stay alive,’ Musiç shouted as they drove off.

  ‘Insh’allah,’ Webb whispered under his breath.

  Their driver’s name was Hajruhdin Hosiç. He conformed to the dress code of all non-observant Moslems: blue jeans, denim jacket, white socks and loafers. His hair was long on top and cut short at the sides. He might have looked like any fashion-conscious Levantine Arab except for the blood-soaked wound dressing on his forehead.

  They followed the convoy of ambulances and trucks as they set off in the darkness down the road towards Jajce. Webb and Jenny put on their flak jackets and blue UN helmets.

  As they passed the last checkpoint a Bosnian soldier waved to them. ‘Stay alive!’

  ‘That’s wearing a bit thin,’ Jenny said.

  Webb shrugged. ‘I think they mean well.’

  Hosiç turned off the headlights and the pace of the convoy slowed to a crawl.

  ‘This help just a little,’ he said. ‘Sniper has night sight, yes? Also they hear us on road, they send mortar and rocket. Boom-boom!’

  Webb saw the silhouettes of wrecked and burned-out vehicles by the side of the road.

  They drove on in morose silence, waiting for the cataclysm.

  * * *

  Time contains its own paradox; even Einstein knew about it and as far as Webb knew, Einstein had never been in a war zone. But he had decided that if someone wanted to live longer, they should spend their whole life in a war zone. He had known minutes of terror that seemed to last hours; while back in the tranquility of Lincoln Cove a weekend could pass in a few minutes.

  The tension inside the car was palpable. On an impulse he reached forward and took Jenny’s hand. He felt the answering pressure.

  There, that was it.

  Redemption.

  There was no way of knowing where they were. It was black outside and there was no moon. Sometimes Jenny had to put her head out of the passenger window to tell Hosiç how far they were from the edge of the road.

  ‘How much further?’ he said.

  ‘Nema problema,’ Hosic said.

  No problem.

  * * *

  Problem.

  A mortar round hit the truck directly in front of them. There was an orange rush of flame as the petrol tank exploded, flaring briefly in the darkness, and the dull thud of an explosion. Hosiç yelled out in alarm, braked hard. The fireball illuminated a dirt track through the trees. He gunned the engine and drove straight for it. The Citroen’s motor screamed in protest.

  Stones and shrapnel metal pinged against the thin metal skin of the car. Webb twisted around and looked out of the back window. The truck was still in flames; he could see silhouettes in the darkness as the survivors scrambled clear.

  There was another fireball further along the road. The Serbians had found the range.

  The Citroen bounced over the track. Webb was thrown onto the floor, jarring his spine, and he yelled in pain. Jenny spun around, thinking he was shot. She shouted something at him, but he could not hear her over the scream of the car’s engine.

  Hosiç changed down into first gear and pushed his foot flat to the floor. ‘Nema problema,' he shouted.

  Right. No problem.

  * * *

  Ten minutes by Webb’s watch, ten long minutes of jarring pain in his spine, waiting for sniper fire or mortar fragments to blast through the windows, braced against every jolt and roll of the Citroen. Tree branches cracked against the windows as they careered along the track. Suddenly they were out of the forest and on to a tarmac road. Webb groaned with relief.

  The black shells of bombed-out houses loomed from the darkness. No lights, no sign of life at all.

  ‘Jajce,’ Hosiç said.

  They rattled across a bridge and Hosiç made two more hard turns. Then he slammed on the brakes and immediately jumped out of the car and threw open the doors.

  ‘Hurry, please hurry,’ he said.

  ‘Nema problema,’ Jenny said. Webb, if his back had not been causing him so much pain, would have laughed at that. He admired her nerve; it took a special kind of cool to make jokes under pressure. It reminded him of Sean Ryan.

  Hosiç grabbed Jenny’s arm, dragged her into the shadows. Webb hobbled after them.

  Jajce’s Command HQ was in the basement of a pizzeria, or what was left of it. The old shop above had been completely destroyed by shellfire. It was cold and dank and crowded with refugees who were all huddled together, shivering in their wet clothes. Soldiers were propped against the walls, glassy-eyed with fatigue. They smoked cigarettes, rifles cradled in their arms, staring listlessly at the walls.

  The commander’s name was Gerovic. He looked up in amazement as they entered. He and Hosiç had a hurried and whispered conversation and then he turned back to Webb and Jenny.

  ‘Presna? You must be crazy.’

  ‘Hugh Webb, IPA. This is Jenny Ngai, she’s a freelancer.’

  ‘Crazy,’ he repeated. ‘Why would you want to come here?’

  ‘We want to tell the world your story,’ Jenny said.

  ‘Our story? Our story is easy. We are dying.’ He shook his head, reached for the cigarettes on the desktop and lit one. ‘You were lucky to get through. Two of the trucks and an ambulance were destroyed. But now you are here please make yourself welcome.’ He made a sardonic gesture that embraced the huddled and miserable humans crouched in the basement. ‘Enjoy our hospitality.’

  The muscles in Webb’s back went into spasm. He winced and eased himself down on to the cold floor.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ Gerovic asked.

  ‘Jarred my back,’ Webb said. ‘I’ll be okay.’

  Gerovic laughed, a short, humorless bark. ‘How can you be okay,’ he said, ‘when you have just fought your way into hell?’

  * * *

  Webb lay in the darkness, listening to the shelling. They had thrown their sleeping bags onto the cold cement floor and were curled up inside them, trying to stay warm. A few feet away, the Moslem commander pored over ancient maps of the city by candlelight, occasionally shouting orders into a telephone. After his initial chilly greeting he completely ignored them. He had too many other problems to worry about a couple of crazy journalists.

  Webb felt Jenny curl her body against him, for warmth. ‘How’s Mickey?’ she whispered.

  ‘She’s fine.’

  ‘Are you still seeing each other?’

  ‘I’m too young to settle down.’

  ‘She’d be good for you.’

  He didn’t answer her. She was quiet for a long time and he thought she had gone to sleep. But then she whispered: ‘Have you been worried about me?’

  ‘An understatement.’

  ‘Is that why you’re here?’

  ‘No. Yes. Partly.’

  ‘Well, that’s clear.’

  ‘Let’s say I’m mixing business with ... worry.’

  She patted his shoulder. Infuriating girl. And yet, he was proud of her, prouder than he would ever care to admit. If there was one thing he had really g
ot right in his life, she was it.

  A massive explosion, very close, and the whole cellar seemed to lurch to the side. Women screamed. Dust and plaster fell from the ceiling. Then one of the soldiers said something, and his companions laughed. It had been close, but not too close. They were still alive.

  ‘I never ever thanked you, did I?’ she said.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For everything. For the last ten years.’

  It was the last thing he had expected to hear from her. He didn’t know what to say. Before she left the States, the old Jenny would never have dreamed of saying that.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he mumbled.

  ‘You’ve been a good father, Uncle.’

  A while later she was asleep. There was a time when he too was able to sleep with the sound of shells exploding nearby, but not anymore.

  * * *

  But he did fall asleep eventually, waking with a start just before dawn. Something was wrong. It took him a few moments to realize what it was: the shelling had stopped.

  He sat up, painfully. His back had stiffened during the night. He shook Jenny’s shoulder. Her eyes blinked open and she was instantly awake. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s stopped. Come on.’

  They climbed out of their sleeping bags. Gerovic had his head on the table, asleep. The candle had burned down and the wax had leaked across one of the maps. They picked their way over the sleeping bodies of the soldiers and refugees. Only one of them was awake, an old man in a dressing gown and slippers, listening to Bach on a Walkman.

  Chapter 78

  Webb and Jenny crouched behind a wall, straining their ears to the icy silence. There was hardly a sound because almost everyone was living underground.

  Light seeped into the eastern sky, and the mountains and the ancient castle loomed, forbidding, through the grey autumn haze.

  Jajce was an ancient fortress town at the confluence of the Urbas and Pliva rivers. The ruins of an old castle loomed over shingle roofs and the white and green stucco dome of a mosque. It would have been a pretty town once. But before the war, they told him, the smog from the nearby factories had left a creeping chlorine haze over the town, obscuring the rose gardens and the whitewashed houses.