THE HEART OF DANGER

by

Gerald Seymour

To Gillian, Nicholas and James

PROLOGUE.

"Back again?" Yes, he was back again. Back again in Library. A smile

for the supervisor that was not returned, as it had not been returned

on either of the two days that he had been in Library the previous

month, nor the two days of the month before that. Henry Carter's

smile

was brief, just enough to be polite. He looked for a table that was

free. "Train was late, I'm afraid," he said mildly. He wiped the rain

from his scalp. "It's a dreadful service." He was the interloper, really, an unwanted male in a feminine world, and he supposed that

he

inhibited conversation on men, cystitis, brassieres, mortgage rates,

curtain hanging, school meals, Gilts versus Equities, tampons,

whatever

women talked about these days. The table that was free was placed

furthest from the small supply of natural light permitted to filter

through to the half basement floor of Library. Pretty poor light

anyway because the windows were of blast-proof glass that distorted

and

were copper-tinted to block the electromagnetic signals from the

computers being monitored by any electronic surveillance from across

Vauxhall Bridge. Different from his day. Seemed to have managed

without lead-lined rooms and copper-tinted windows and computers in

silicon casings and fingerprint recognition locks on interior doors,

managed pretty well, and kept a few secrets .. . He should not

complain. He found space on the coat stand for his overcoat. His

pension, even index-linked, was inadequate. He stood his umbrella,

dripping, against the wall. The two days a month back in the Library

were welcome, well, damned necessary. At the free table, watched

by

the girls and the women and their day shift supervisor, he unlocked

his

briefcase. The old one, of course, the one that he had carried day

in

1

and day out for twenty-three years from Waterloo Station and along

the

pavement beside the river and into the concrete tower of Century

House,

with the EIIR gold print faded from the flap. The morning newspaper,

crossword started on the train, was first out. Then his sandwiches,

cheddar and pickle and made by himself. Then his thermos (milk and

sugar and sufficient for four measures). Then the magazine of the

Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, a pleasure to be saved

for

the hour's statutory lunch break. If the RSPB had been prepared to

have him for more than a single day a week, working on their membership

register, then he would not have needed to grovel in gratitude for

two

days a month in Library .. . The supervisor stood over his table.

She

had the file in its cardboard folder clasped to her shallow bosom.

She

apologized, without sincerity, "It's a bit of a mess." Well, there were so many files these days that were a bit of a mess. Old files

needed tidying and editing before being fed to the computer disks.

Henry Carter was good at tidying and editing which was why he was

called back those two days a month and sat at a table away from the

natural light. He supposed that the women regarded the part-time

labour

as a threat to their own work security, because there was never a

greeting, never any friendship. "I expect we can sort it out .. .

Interesting one, is it?" "I wouldn't know." The file was dropped on

the table. She turned and walked away from him, clattering her heels

on the composite flooring. There had been carpeting in Library at

Century House. Carpet had been good enough for the old building,

not

for the Babylon on Thames that was the new monstrosity at Vauxhall

Cross. Too vulgar, too flash, for a headquarters building for the

Secret Intelligence Service, inappropriate .. . He peeled the elastic

band from the file's folder. Words, typed and handwritten and

printed,

were leaping at him. He looked up at the ceiling, at the battery

of

recessed lights. A little indulgence, but Henry Carter lived with

nostalgia. Somewhere close by, perhaps in the annexe, perhaps

already

transferred to disk, would be the files of operations that had

involved

him from the start, when he had not just been the road sweeper, hired

2

at 5.47 an hour for sixteen hours a month, to clear the litter of

others. A little tremor, as there always was when he indulged

himself.

No need for a retired has-been, some never-was, to be called in to

sift the files of Henry Carter's operations .. . He recalled the days

when he had controlled a man sent across the inner German border to

Magdeburg. He remembered the night long interrogation when he had

reduced a desk head, one of their own, to a weeping and shamed

creature. Decent files he had left behind him. He .. . They were

watching from behind their silly screens. It would have been a good

day to have been up on the former railway line at Tregaron, mid-Wales,

because it was just the right time of year for the rare red kites,

Milvus milvus, to be feeding. Glorious birds .. He dropped his head.

He began to read. The file was, indeed, a mess, no order and no shape.

He turned the pages fast. Fifteen typed sheets, four faxes, nine

Foreign and Commonwealth Office signals, thirteen foolscap sheets

covered by three different sets of handwriting, and a buff envelope

of

photographs. The old desk warrior gutted the pages, his training

taking over. Henry Carter would have said if he was asked, and he

never was, that there was a narcotic addiction from a file that was

fresh to him. He was hooked, caught. Almost without looking up he

called to the supervisor. "I'd like a map, please." "Of what?"

Because of what he had read, because of the images already in his

mind,

a scratch of irritation clawed him. It was not a joke, nor was it

mischief. "Hardly the sea front at Bognor Regis, no thank you ..

.

Large scale, 1:1000, if that's possible. Former Yugoslavia, what

they

call Croatia. The area that the United Nations Protection Force

designates as Sector North .. ." He turned back the sheets of paper spread now haphazardly across the table. He was reaching for his

thermos flask and Henry Carter's elbow, the leather patch on his

sports

jacket, caught the envelope that held the photographs. The envelope

fell from the table. The photographs spilled. He looked down at

them.

He looked down onto the grotesque image of the young face. Worse

than

those of the old man shot to death on the ploughed strip beside that

revolting German fence. Worse than those of the hanged Iranian woman

suspended from a hideous construction crane in Tabriz. He

shuddered.

He barely heard the shrill voice. "A map like that, you'll have to wait until tomorrow for it. Can't get it before tomorrow. You know,

3

Mr. Carter, it's not our job to .. ."

He bent to pick up the photographs. He gazed into the face. He

wondered if she had been pretty before the decay of burial had swollen

the features. His fingers were scrabbling for the photographs and

were

unresponsive, and he felt the cold sweat streaming to the small of

his

back. His body weight swayed in the chair. He gulped deep air. He lifted the photographs onto the table and then he gripped the edge

of

the table that he might restore his balance. Too damned old for it

..

.

The voice beat at him. "Are you all right, Mr. Carter?"

The woman at the computer desk nearest him giggled out loud. It was

the giggle that probably saved him from fainting. It made his anger

surge. It was rare for him to let his temper show. The woman was

feeding her face with squares of milk chocolate. He took the

photograph that was second from the top of the pile and walked the

five

strides, briskly, to the woman's desk and he laid the photograph on

her

keyboard. A photograph of a young face with a head wound and a throat

wound and a close-quarters bullet wound. The woman belched

chocolate

over her blouse.

Henry Carter went back to his table.

He called across the silence, "I'm fine, thank you. Tomorrow would be

grand for the map."

He settled. For a moment he drummed his fingers on the table surface,

then he reached again for his thermos and poured himself a

half-measure

into the plastic cup. He drank. He took from his briefcase a bag

of

sharpened pencils and biro pens in three colours. The moment had

passed, it was as if the photographs had ambushed him. He began to

search the sheets of paper for date stamps and he laid them out over

the width of the table and then began to number them in red from the

first date. Wouldn't take him long to knock the file into shape.

4

If

the map came he would most certainly be finished by tomorrow lunch

time. That would be excellent. It would give him time to be out

of

London before the afternoon rush for home, and on the road comfortably

for the Powys mountains, and the railway line from which the red

kites,

Milvus milvus, could be seen.

The date stamp on the first sheet of paper was 3 April 1993. For

a

moment, idly, he tried to remember what he would have been doing that

day twenty-three months before, and failed. The paper was

letter-headed "Physicians for Human Rights' .. . It was easy for him to

picture it.

There was a milage and a lane and foul mud, and a grave. '

ii

One.

The area for the digging was outlined by a rude rectangle of white

tape. The rectangle was approximately ten metres by four metres,

as

measured out by the Professor's full strides. It had been easy to

recognize the rectangle where they had dug because only weeds had

grown

in that disturbed corner of the field. Around the edge of the

rectangle, heaped on the grass beyond the white tape, was the new

boundary marker of piled muddy earth. Four policemen had done the

digging at the Professor's direction. The long-handled spades with

the

wide blades were now tossed onto the low mud wall. The four policemen

and the Professor knelt in the pit they had made. When they had

started, their overalls had been pure white, they were now smeared

in

the grey-black mud of the field. There was no talking amongst the

policemen and they responded only to the curt instructions of the

Professor. Each could recognize that the light was starting to fall

and would go quickly because the rain cloud was already below the

level

of the summit of the wooded hill that rose above the farmhouse. They

had the one chance to excavate and exhume, and the chance would not

come again, and they had brought no portable generator and no lights.

5

It must be finished that afternoon. The rain spat on them, beat at

their shoulders and their buttocks and at the backs of their knees.

The

rain made muddied pools in the pit around the bodies that were already

retrieved. If the Professor had been working at home, if he had been

called out by the Police Department's homicide team, then he would

have

been protected by a tent of stout tarpaulin. If the Professor had

been

working at home, crouched over the cadaver of a murder victim, then

he

would have had his own team with him, all expert, and there would

have

been no pressure of time. There was a way of doing things, there

was a

pattern of procedure, and he abided by the procedure because that

was

the bible to which he worked. He thought they were fine men, the

four

policemen with whom he uncovered the corpses, the tall young Canadian

and the cheerful Frenchman and the droll balding Portuguese and the

slim-wasted Kenyan, and they worked in silence to his abrupt