THE HEART OF DANGER (2 page)

instructions that were muffled through his face mask. Each time he

looked up he saw that the rain cloud crept further down the wooded

slope of the hill, and he saw that the lights burned brighter in the

houses on the far side of the valley beyond the stream. If it had

been

possible to have erected a tent cover over the grave, if they could

have worked at a slower speed, then they could have used the scalpels

and the narrow brushes. The rain fell in the pit, destroyed his hopes

of minute care. The policemen had learned from him, watched him and

copied, and they scraped the clinging clay mud from the bodies with

small trowels, the sort of trowels that his wife used in the garden

back home in north Los Angeles. When they had taken as much mud from

each body as was possible with the trowels, then they wiped the faces

of the dead with the sodden cloths that he had brought. When he was

satisfied that each face had been cleaned to the best of their

ability,

then the policemen would stand back and he would photograph the body

in

wide shot and then operate the automatic zoom on his pocket Nikon

and

photograph the face in close-up. There were nine bodies

photographed

in wide shot, nine faces captured in close-up, nine body bags zipped

and lying close together beyond the earth wall around his white marker

6

tape. The Professor used a clipboard of note paper that was covered

by

a clear plastic bag. He had made a small sketch map of the grave

site,

and had detailed each corpse before it was lifted to the body bag

SSK9

wore around his throat a gold chain to which was attached a thin gold

cross and an inscribed medallion. The left foot of SSK9 was gone,

taken off at the ankle. The forehead of SSK9 showed the bullet hole,

central. A single boot protruded from the mud layer alongside the

indentation, now filling fast from the rain, from which they had taken

SSK9. "OK, guys, should be the last one .. ." The Professor's voice was a growl. He kept his words brief and his voice low because that

way he reckoned he was better able to prevent the bile spilling up

from

his throat. It was the smell that made him want to vomit. The face mask was a token against the smell of putrefaction. He had been told

that the bodies were reckoned to have been buried in the month of

December in the year of 1991, but the clay of the earth had been dense

enough to keep out foxes and dogs from the grave and had slowed the

process of decomposition. The Professor stood for a moment and tried

to stretch his back to arch out the stiffness. Back from the pit and

the tape and the low earth wall, back from the white painted jeeps

of

the United Nations Civilian Police, a small crowd watched. He had

seen

them gather during the course of the day. They watched and they made

no

sign. He had seen them come from the tight cluster of houses around

the church on the far side of the stream. There were women in the

crowd, the old in black and the young in bright coats; there were

children with ravaged mature faces, holding an unnatural quiet; there

were men in the crowd, some wearing the drab clothes of farm work,

some

in poor-fitting damp uniforms, some armed with shotguns and automatic

rifles. He wondered what they thought, the crowd that had come

across

the stream to watch the excavation of the grave. His eyes wandered.

He looked from the field and on down the lane where the grass had

grown

across the old tractor ruts and on towards the ruin of the village

and

on to the church tower where the upper stonework that would have

housed

the bell had been taken away by tank or artillery fire. He wondered

what they thought. He turned to stare back at the crowd .. . The

7

Canadian murmured, "Don't make eye contact with them, Professor.

Always smile at them, keep the smile glued." The Kenyan muttered,

"We

want to get it wrapped and we want to get the shit out. Don't expect

to be loved .. ." He thought them fine young men. He was in his

seventieth year. He had taken two months of unpaid leave from the

hospital in north Los Angeles where he headed the Department of

Pathology. Back home, those who had been his contemporaries through

medical school had long retired to the beach houses of Santa Monica

and

Santa Barbara. He thought them fools. Dear to his heart was the

charity Physicians for Human Rights. And dearer to him than the

charity was the knowledge that his Abigail, in the forty-fifth year

of

their marriage, held a pride in her husband for taking himself off

to

Croatia for two months. He'd tell her about the Canadian and the

Frenchman and the Portuguese and the Kenyan, great young guys who

could

chide, gently, a vague old man who let his eyes wander. He had the

one

day at the grave, and the day was nearly done. "Sorry, guys." The Kenyan was out of the pit and had gone to where the mine detector

lay

in shelter alongside the wheel of a jeep. He jumped back into the

pit

and ran the machine over the last part of the earth, beyond the

protruding leg. It was the fourth time that the mine detector had

been

used to sweep the site. They were all in the pit again. The crowd

who

watched from the edge of the field would only have seen their

shoulders

and their buttocks, and the trowels of dripping mud that were tossed

from the pit to the earth wall. It would be the last body. The

growing gloom brought a new pace to their work. An army boot, a leg

in

disintegrating camouflage fatigues, a hand that wore a cheap and

dulled

ring, a wrist-watch, an arm that was bent crazily because the central

bone had been broken. The Professor was scraping for the skull. The

Portuguese policeman tapped at his shoulder, asked for his attention.

He turned. He saw the small trainer shoe revealed alongside the

second

boot. His wife, Abigail, liked to tell him that he was a tough old

goat of a man, that his humour when dealing with the dead was black

8

as

night, gas chamber mirth. He gagged. He felt the emotion swell in

him

because he had not expected to find a woman's body in the grave.

Sure,

he could handle female cadavers when he was out with the Police

Department homicide unit, but he had not expected a woman's body,

not

here .. . They were entwined, the camouflage trousers and the blue

jeans. They were locked together, the camouflage tunic arms and the

grey windcheater arms. They were against each other, the skull of

a

young man and the skull of a young woman. The Canadian crouched above

them and held a flashlight with the beam directed down ... He would

have liked to have stood his full height and shouted to the crowd

to

come close, the women and the children and the men with their guns,

he

would have liked to have invited them to see the bodies of the young

man and woman who were entwined, and he wondered how many of them

who

waited in the rain would have known what would be found. The chest

of

the young man was wrapped in stained bandages. The Professor

understood. All of the bodies of the men showed the marks of combat

wounds, bullet holes, shrapnel gouges, field amputations. They had

been the wounded. It had been a shit little war in a shit little

corner of Europe and the wounded had gotten themselves left behind

when

the fit guys had run out on them. He looked down into the swollen

and

decayed face of the young woman. His own daughter was forty-one years

old, his own granddaughter was nineteen years old. His own daughter

had said he was an idiot to involve himself in a shit little war,

and

his own granddaughter had asked him, the night before he had flown,

to

tell her why this shit little war was worth caring about. He could

go

cold. It was useful to go cold when he was looking into a young

woman's face where the putrefaction had started, but not gone so far

as

to hide the killing wounds. There was a bullet entry wound in what

remained of the fair hair above the right ear. There was a knife

wound

at the throat that had cut deep through muscles. There was a bludgeon

9

wound across the bridge of the nose and the lower part of the forehead.

They were all killing wounds. "Sorry to hurry you, Professor .. ."

the Canadian pleaded. "We ought to get the hell out .. ." He realized

then that all the light he had been working to had been from the torch

held by the Canadian. The Kenyan brought two body bags forward. He took his photographs, and made the necessary notes, and nodded his

head

to tell them that he was satisfied. They prised the stinking corpse

of

the young man apart from the stinking corpse of the young woman. It

was when they lifted the body of the young woman out of the pit that

the Professor felt the bulk of the money bag. The bag was under her

windcheater, sweater and T-shirt. He delayed them while his

rubber-gloved fingers struggled with the bag's clip fastening that

was

against the small of her back. He put the bag into the pocket pouch

on

the leg of his overalls. Bent under the weight of them, they loaded

the eleven body-bags through the tail doors of the two Cherokee jeeps.

They drove away. When they turned to reach the lane, as the rain

pattered on the windscreen, beaten away by the wipers, the Professor

saw that the crowd had broken and now meandered away towards the

houses

and the lights across the stream. Off the lane, in the ruined

village,

the Cherokee swerved to avoid a rusted and burned-out car, and then

again to go past a collapsed farm cart; it was only when they were

on

the metal led road, going towards Glina and the Sisak crossing point

through the front line, that the Professor asked the Canadian for

the

loan of the light. He opened the money bag. He took out an empty

purse and a single sodden traveller's cheque to the value of twenty

US

dollars, and the passport. He squinted tired eyes at the passport,

at

the nationality and the name. He took his handkerchief and wiped

the

discoloured photograph. He wondered what she had been doing there,

caught in a shit little war in a shit little corner of Europe. The

engines were cut. There was a moment of quiet, before the scuffled

stampede as the passengers surged for the cabin door. She sat three

rows from the far end of the cabin. She stayed in her seat as it

had

been suggested to her that she should. She was tall, did not fit

10

easily into the tourist accommodation but the senior purser on the

flight had, in kindness, arranged that neither of the seats beside

her

should be taken. She had the look and the elegance of a woman who

was

used to being noticed, as she had been by the other passengers, dark

hair well cut and short, careful cosmetics, a string of pearls at

her

throat that were real, and confident dress. She wore a

titian-coloured

blouse and a deep-green skirt that had the length to cover her bent

knees and its hem was over the upper part of her well-shined boots.

Several of the salesmen on the flight, those who had been away from

home the longest, had looked at her, wondered what her business had

been in that dismal city they were so relieved to be gone from. The

cabin was clearing, the canned music was now supreme, but she seemed

not to hear the forced cheerfulness of the Viennese waltz that drove

her fellow passengers towards the immigration desks and the baggage

carousel and the Customs quiz. She ignored the movement around her,

she leafed the pages of Vogue magazine. A small man, one of the last

to go, bulged his stomach near to the diamond stud in her ear as he

reached to lift down a shopping bag from the compartment above her

head, and when he breathed an apology she seemed not to hear him.

She

gave the appearance of being quite engrossed in the colour

advertisements that her eyes flitted over. She was a sham. The

purser

thought she was just brave. She was still turning the pages of the

magazine when the hostess came up the empty aisle of the cabin. The

cleaners were following, whistling and laughing and grabbing paper

debris from the floor and from the backs of the vacated seats. She

smiled up at the hostess and began to collect her possessions that

were

discarded over the empty seats beside her. A handbag, an overnight

grip, a raincoat, a packet of cigarettes and a slim gold lighter,

a

spectacle case, and a patterned headscarf, and a single red rose of