THE HEART OF DANGER (14 page)

session,

of the Congress (International) of Croatian Physicians. A blend of

accents and languages filtered up to him, but he saw the young man

immediately. What he had imagined, somehow, was a retired

schoolteacher. What he saw was a student-aged young man with a gaunt

and pale face and blond hair cropped short and a pair of jeans that

were ragged at the ankles and a heavy leather jacket. The doctors,

surgeons, anaesthetists flowed around the young man, who seemed not

to

notice them but sat rigid. It had been an abrupt exchange on the

telephone. Yes, he was an interpreter. Yes, he was available.

Yes,

he would be at the hotel in the morning. There was an aggression

about

the young man, Jovic, that Penn noted ... it was not possible for

him

to be without an interpreter. Sharp introductions, an exchange of

names. Penn had the ability to look a man in the face. Because he

75

had

looked into the eyes, the face of Jovic, because they had not shaken

hands, it was a moment before he realized that the right arm of Jovic

was taken off at the elbow. The right sleeve of the leather jacket,

from below the elbow, hung loose and useless. The circle closed.

An

amputation accounted for the gaunt and fleshless face, and for the

ravaged pallor of the cheeks, and for the blunt aggression. There

were

reunion greetings around them, the accents of America and Australia,

the languages of Swedish and German and Swiss French. Jovic looked

back into Penn's face. "Patronizing bastards .. ." 8? His accent was

schoolroom English. '.. . coming here to parade their success for

the

mother country to see, and to write cheques, and wring their hands

and

play their ego, and get the hell out in the morning." His voice was snarled. Would he like coffee? The young man, Jovic, looked around him and there was contempt at his mouth. He led the way out of the

hotel lobby, and he shouldered his way past the uniformed day porter

and the bellboy, and Penn followed him out across the street. They

walked in the sunshine towards the square with the open cafes. Jovic

took a table and he shouted in his own language for a waiter and he

ordered espressos without asking Penn if that was what he wanted,

and

he sat in silence until they were brought, and then he pushed the

bill

slip towards Penn for paying. He could lay his right elbow on the

table, awkwardly, and he could flick a cigarette from the packet and

strike a match, laboriously. "How did it happen?" "Have you been in a

war, Mr. Penn? No? Then you would not understand how it happened."

"Where did it happen?" "Do you know Sisak, Mr. Penn? No? Then you

would not know where it happened." "When did it happen?" "When you were safe in your own country, Mr. Penn. Eighteen months ago, Mr.

Penn, did you care about the freedom struggle of Croatian

independence?

No? That was when it happened." Penn went on, "Right, young man

.. .

OK, Jovic ... If you don't want the job, so be it. I don't have to

take shit from anybody. I suggest you go back to whatever corner

you

came out of, and moan on your own." A big smile that cracked the

pale

76

edges of Jovic's mouth. Penn glowered at him. He said that he was

an

artist. He said that he studied at the School of Art. He said that

he

had learned of Constable and Turner, but that most he admired Hockney.

He said, in a new mood and shy, that he was learning to paint with

his

left hand. He said, more boldly, that his rate was eighty US dollars

a

day. He pushed his left hand, twisted, towards Penn for the

handshake

and there was oil paint on his fingers and grime dirt under the nails

... it was Charles Braddock's money ... A powered grip crushed Penn's

fist. He added, quickly, while their hands were still together that

if

a car was needed then he could get one, and that his rate with the

car

would be one hundred and twenty US dollars a day. Penn seemed to

see

the arm, bleeding and hanging loose, and he seemed to see the stampede

from a front line position and the bumped ride to a casualty clearing

station, and he seemed to see the fresh bandaged stump, and he seemed

to see the first tentative strokes of the brush that was guided by

a

left hand. He nodded, the money was no problem. "Thank you, Mr.

Penn, so what is your work in Croatia?" It was why he had hoped that he would not have to trail around with an interpreter, and he started,

hesitantly, to talk through what he knew of Dorrie Mowat. Without

an

interpreter he might as well sit in his hotel room, but it was the

sharing that was difficult. The story was personal. It was the

story

of a woman sitting at a fresh grave with her dogs and with the scent

of

newly cut flowers. Jovic did not interrupt. He leaned back and he

swirled the coffee dregs in the cup, and his mouth had curled, as

if

the story was a bad joke. Perhaps he tried to impress the young man,

perhaps he thought that the young man would be better able to do his

work if he knew it all. He was reciting the crimes of Dorrie Mowat,

and he felt a sense of shame as he pushed through the litany, and

as he

talked he looked into the hard eyes that flickered, dulled, back at

him. He was dead without an interpreter, and he had tried three times

the day before to ring the number given him at the embassy and taken

back the gabble of local language and not been understood. Penn

77

wondered what it would be like to try to paint with a left hand. He

felt that he had betrayed a trust in the telling to a stranger. He

pushed across the table the telephone number given him at the embassy.

'.. . She wants to know. I've been hired to write a report. Her

mother wants to know how her daughter died. It's why I've come."

He

watched Jovic's back. Jovic was at the telephone on the bar. When

he

came back to the table his face was a mask. He picked up his

cigarettes and gestured, coolly, for Penn to follow. Penn felt

himself

an innocent.

"Choked me, but nothing we could do. I took responsibility, I said we

had to leave them. I'll remember that bastard, that Stan-kovic, if

I

ever get him in my sights. But Special Forces can't hang about ...

It

really choked me to leave them."

Ham was rested, and it was good patter. The patter had been laced

with

what 3 Para would have done, and he gave the cocktail body by telling

the major and the captain in the first-floor room of the old police

station that not even the RLI, nor the SADF's Recce Commandos nor

their

44 Para Brigade, would have done it different. He had learned the

patter when he had been with the Internationals and there had been

jokers from the Rhodesian Light Infantry and guys who had fought with

the South African Defence Force. There had been jokers and guys then

who had done the rounds, done time as Warriors of Principle and

Soldiers of Conscience, and Ham had learned enough from them to give

good patter.

Ham said, "We couldn't have moved better. The "Black Hawks" wouldn't have done it different. I don't know how they got to jump us. Never saw anything before we were jumped. Goddamn shame, because we

weren't

that far from the position, but once they'd jumped us then it was

like

the place was heaving with them. If we'd tried to shoot it out then

we

were all stiffed. We did what we could, and you can't ask more than

that."

78

That was great patter to have thrown in the Black Hawks, because they

were 'claimed' as the elite of the Croat army, and he had seen the

major take a note with his pencil. Ham thought they would all get

called in, the survivors from Sector North, but he was happy to have

been called in the first. It had been a crazy dumb idea to send six

jerks pushing across the Kupa river and beyond the lines into Sector

North of occupied territory, and it was good that the major and the

captain should understand that, too right.

"I wouldn't want you to think, major, that it was wasted effort. I'll have it for you tonight, my appraisal of the route in and the route

out, total detail of minefield location, what strong points we saw,

general movement of TDF, location of hull-down armour .. . You'll

have

it on your desk tonight, major .. . Major, what I'd like to say, it's

rough over there. We'd done really well to get as far as we had got.

No, I don't know how we got jumped, but they were heavy on the ground

.. . Major, that's a bad place." He thought he had the patter right.

Wouldn't be good to show fear, would be good to show thoroughness.

All

officers shunned fear and adulated keenness. The major was a

bureaucrat, seconded at the start of the war from the Finance

Ministry,

and knew sweet nothing. The major was nodding. The major would get a

paper of the route they had taken and the location of the minefields,

and of the tanks and the strong points and the major would take it

to

his colonel. He was useful with bullshit patter. Ham said, in

sincere

tones, "I'm really sorry we couldn't do more for those brave lads,

I'm

really cut up about that. If the objective's important enough then

of

course we should go back you won't mind me saying it, but if I have

to

go back I'd request more experienced troops alongside me .. ." He

had

rehearsed that line. The last was said looking straight into the

major's eyes, good sincerity stuff. They hadn't more experienced

troops in 2nd Bn, 110 (Karlovac) Brigade. If the major reported that

to the colonel, if the advice was taken, then the Black Hawks would

be

tasked for the next recce of the artillery guns and the munitions

stores, and no way that the super shit Black Hawks would take along

a

79

bloody mercenary. If it had just been the major to debrief him then

Ham would have reckoned he had done well, but the captain, cold

bastard, had said nothing. The captain stared him out, never took

a

note, looked at him like he was shit. The captain was an intelligence

officer, fronting as liaison. "In conclusion, sir, I'd like to say that I feel privileged to have served with those young men who didn't

make it back .. ." Ham saluted. Best salute. It was the salute

he

would have given his company commander at the training camp on the

Brecons or the operational base at Crossmaglen in South Armagh or

at

Palace Barracks east of Belfast centre. Bullshit salute. He hoped,

dear God, he would never be sent again across that bloody river, into

that bloody hell.

Later, when it was evening, when he could slip away and the evening

darkness came to the Karlovac streets, he would go to the bar where

the

telephone was in shadow and behind the screen.

The major said, "Thank you, Hamilton, thank you for good and

resourceful work."

"For nothing, sir .. ."

He had woken foul-mouthed and bad-tempered.

Her man had sworn at her while she had dressed, and when little Marko

had come into their room to play in the bed he had cursed the child.

For Evica, her husband was a new man.

She had made breakfast, given them bread she had baked the evening

before and jam she had bottled in the autumn, and she had tried to

accept that her husband was a new man. She had dressed her Marko

and

they had gone to the school where she taught the third year, and where

Marko sat in the second-year class. She had come back to her home

at

the end of the lane, at lunch time, to make a small light meal for

the

middle of the day, and she had found Milan still foul-mouthed and

bad-tempered. He sat at the table in the kitchen and he had papers

spread around him and he made no effort to clear them. She had little

time in the middle of the day when she took the hour from the school,

80

little time to waste in clearing the table, and she must waste that

little time .. . There was never a point in arguing with him but the

moods, black and foul-mouthed and bad-tempered, were more frequent.

Marko sat at the table close to his father, and held the plastic pistol

that had been brought from Belgrade, and was old enough, sensible

enough, to stay silent. Her former man, the clerk in the

co-operative

at Turanj, had never been home in the middle of the day and expecting

to be fed; it was the new way of the new man .. . Because she loved

him, had loved him since she was a child in the village, the new man

that was her husband hurt her. Only the beard changed him,

outwardly.