THE HEART OF DANGER (22 page)

his

face. "Stop."

The children turned to him. He saw her defiance. She dared him to

step forward. He saw his children despised him. He saw the children

of the carpenter and the gravedigger and the postman. He saw the

grandchildren of the Priest. He saw the child of Milan Stankovic.

He

saw the freshness of the faces and their contempt. He turned in the

doorway. He heard the shout behind him, forty children's voices,

unbroken, in unison. "It is better to die honest than to live in

disgrace." The Headmaster began the slow walk home. He had only

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his

secret to sustain him, the knowledge of Katica Dubelj existing as

an

animal in the ruins of Rosenovici ... He knew no longer how to use

it.

It had been done easily and smoothly, and Penn had recognized it.

"So,

what are your future plans, Mr. Penn?" Jovic had introduced the

officer as liaison. Jovic had said that he was a captain and liaised

between the Croatian army, 2nd Bn, 110 (Karlovac) Brigade, and the

UNPROFOR troops across in Sector North. Jovic claimed him as a

friend.

"Just to pick up what help I can, captain, and to write a report,"

Penn

said. Jovic had said that the captain was his friend and had been

with

him at Sisak, when he had lost his arm. Only a report into the death

of Miss Dorothy Mowat? "Only her death, yes." Not the specific situation in that part of Sector North where she died? "How it

happened, when it happened, pretty bland." Why was the death of Miss Dorothy Mowat, when so many had died, so important? "Rich mother,

reckons she can buy anything." A sensitive area, a sensitive

situation, did he not know that? "Just a report, just to let her

mother sleep the better at night." And who else would read his

report?

"Shouldn't think anyone will, just her mother." It was the gentle probing of an intelligence officer. Penn recognized it. He hoped

his

answers were ignorant, facile. He reckoned the Intelligence Officer

was poorly trained. He would have done it differently himself, bored

harder. He knew about digging into the recesses of a man's life

because he had worked in the positive vetting team that cleared

personnel for work at the Atomic Weapons Establishment, Aldermaston.

Trust no one, believe in no one, that was any intelligence officer's

maxim, and he guessed that Jovic would have telephoned ahead and

engineered the meeting so that Penn, enigma, would be checked over.

And his report would not be used as a start point for a war crime

investigation? "Good God, no .. ."

The gentle probing of the Intelligence Officer, Liaison, was done

during the tour of the cease-fire line. The village of Turanj was

across the Korana river near to where it joined with the Kupa river

east of Karlovac. Not a house undamaged, every building hit by

multiple machine-gun bullets and by tank fire, and artillery shells.

The officer said, for the benefit of his visitor, that it was where

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the

Serbs had been held, where their advance had been stopped. He was

told

of the battle, close-quarters fighting. He listened and looked

around

him. An old woman was picking at burned roof timbers in the yard

behind what had been her home. They were past the defensive

machine-gun nests. They walked in the village of Turanj as if it

were

a museum, but the old woman searching in her yard told him of present

reality. The front wall was off the food shop. The roof was off

the

scorched interior of the repair garage. Flowers grew in overgrown

front gardens, and the blossom was on the magnolia and the apple

trees.

He was shown the co-operative building, and he was told not to go

past

it because he would then be in the field of vision of the snipers,

and

the cease-fire was variable. A cold place and quiet.

The officer said, "In war itself there is an excitement, in combat

there is an elation. Most men, you ask them, and if they give their

secret answer, tell you that war, combat, should not be missed ..

. But

the war goes by. I know nothing more degrading than a former

battlefield where there are no bodies, where there is no noise. The

war passes by and the excitement is quickly forgotten. Only the

vandalism of the war is left. It is the worst place you can be, Mr.

Penn, an old fighting ground, with just the ghosts."

A cat saw him, was bent low and scurrying, but took the time to turn

and spit at him. The poles that had carried the telephone wires were

down. "Would it be the same in Rosenovici?" "Why do you ask?"

"Just

trying to get the picture .. ." "It would not be the same," the officer said. "Here the buildings are destroyed by war. In

Rosenovici

a few buildings would have been destroyed by war, the rest would have

been destroyed by placed explosives. Here there is a chance to

rebuild, one day. In Rosenovici there would be no chance to rebuild

because nothing is left. In Rosenovici, villages like it, they went

as

far as bulldozing the graveyard. Here, there is still feeble life.

In

Rosenovici there is only the memory of death .. ." Penn thought he 124

was

being tested. He looked away. He stared up and beyond the jagged

and

broken roofs of Turanj and he could see the first line of trees. The

officer anticipated him. '.. . It is where their guns are. They

will

be following you, through telescopic sights, maybe if they are bored

they will shoot at you." "I am just here to make a report." He played

ignorant. Penn walked back down the road, like getting his head shot

off was no part of making a report. They drove away in the officer's

car. They went back past the machine-gun positions and the soldiers

waved to them, they went across the bridge over the Korana river and

Penn saw, moored at the bank, two grey-coloured inflatables. He

didn't

like to look hard because frequently the officer slung a fast glance

at

him to see whether it was a trained eye or a rubber necker eye that

examined the front line. There were tank obstacle teeth beside the

road into Karlovac, and more defence positions, and there was the

emptiness. They drove on, past the officer's headquarters in a new

building where all the windows were taped against artillery blast.

They

climbed a winding road. They were above the town. On the summit

of

the hill was a fortress tower. They left the car. They walked along a

path and in the grass beside the path were teenagers, cuddling and

messing about and smoking. They looked out. The town was in front

of

them.

Beyond the town were the rivers, winding to their meeting point.

Beyond the meeting point of the Korana and the Kupa rivers was the

green carpet of the forest.

Beyond the forest was the blue haze line of the high ground.

The officer said, "The high ground is the Petrova Gora, dense

woodland,

rock cliffs, sheer valleys. It is special to the Serb people because

it was in the Petrova Gora that Tito had a field hospital for his

Partizans, in the war with the Germans. The German army made many

incursions into the Petrova Gora but they were never able to find

the

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hospital. The failure was a source of frustration, that is why the

Germans killed many of the people in the villages at the edge of the

Petrova Gora. If you were to be there, Mr. Penn, which is

impossible,

then they would lie and tell you that it was Croatian people, fascists

fighting alongside the Germans, who were responsible for the

killings.

Through the lies they justify what they have done, now, to villages

such as Rosenovici .. ."

Penn had his hand across his forehead. He shaded his eyes. He

thought

he could see twenty miles, maybe more. Such peace. It was where

Dorrie had been, Dome's place. It was like the place of his

childhood,

where he had been before the exams and the application forms, and

work

in London. Peace and beauty. He strained to see better.

The officer said, "I am correct, you see nothing that threatens? The front line between here and Sisak is the Kupa river. It is seventy

kilometres in length. Across there, on their side, where you see

nothing, are minefields and strong points and defended villages.

Across there, they have 300 guns that can flatten Karlo-vac and Sisak

in a day. Across there, aimed at Zagreb are medium-range missile

launchers. One day, I hope, we can take our territory back, but not

today and not tomorrow. You see, Mr. Penn, it is important to us

that, today and tomorrow, we do not anger them, across there. It

is of

strategic importance for the future of Croatia, military and

economic,

that the bastards, across there, are not antagonized .. ."

"Who did it?"

"Did what?"

"Who killed Dorrie Mowat?"

"It is important?"

"For my report, yes."

The officer smiled. Jovic was behind them, silent. Penn and the

officer stood together and stared out across the Kupa river and the

forest and towards the high ground. The sun beat at Penn.

126

"They do not scatter evidence, they do not leave eyewitnesses. I

do

not know."

"Who would have given the order?"

"Probably the commander of the militia. Perhaps the commander of

the

militia in the village close to Rosenovici .. ."

"What is his name?"

"I used to know him, not as a friend, but I knew him. My wife is

a

teacher and knew his wife. Why do you need the name?"

"For my report?"

"You can make up a name, take a telephone directory. Just for a

report, for a mother who lost a daughter, you can invent a name. Why

not?"

He had been led, subtly, to the trap. He had underestimated the

quality of the Intelligence Officer. Perhaps a graduate would not

have

sprung the trap, not one of the young bloody graduates of the General

Intelligence Group. He stumbled.

"Pick a name out of the air, why not?"

A light murmur of laughter from the officer. "He is Milan Stankovic.

I

see him at my liaison meetings, I used to play basketball against

him.

The militia in the attack on Rosenovici was commanded by Milan

Stankovic."

"What will happen to him?"

"I saw him last month, at the liaison meeting. We talked about the electricity supply. They have our territory but they do not have

power. We have lost our territory but we have power. Last month,

he

did not seem like a man afraid, but then the liaison meeting is always

behind their lines. Today, tomorrow, nothing will happen to Milan

127

Stankovic."

Penn said, "I will put that in my report."

On that night of the week it would have been usual for the Priest

to

have gone to the Headmaster's house and, by candlelight, played

chess.

He had not made apologies, he had not given notice of his absence

to

the Headmaster, he had gone instead to the home of Milan Stankovic.

He was a quiet man and through the adult part of his seventy-four

years

he had seldom offered an opinion that he had not first known would

fall

on approving ears. Capable of intrigue but incapable of

confrontation,

he lived out the last years of his life in the intellectual backwater

that was the village of Salika. He knew every man and every woman

and

every child in the village of Salika, but his only friend was the

Headmaster with whom on that night he should have played chess and

taken a glass of brandy weakened with water that would have lasted

him

through the game .. . and he had gone instead to the home of Milan

Stankovic.

He could justify his abandoning of the game of chess.

They were coming in the village to the day when the population of

Salika travelled to the church at Glina where so many had died. It

was

an important anniversary, the fiftieth. All of the village would

travel to the site where the people had been herded by the Ustase

fascists, where the fire had been lit, where a thousand had died.

If

the Priest had not been young, not been fit enough to survive,

emaciated, in the Petrova Gora, if he had been inside the cordon,

then

he could believe that he would have been taken to the church and burned

alive. But, to go to the church at Glina, it was necessary for the

people of Salika to take two buses. The buses were in a barn near

to

the school. To take the buses there must be diesel fuel. To get

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diesel fuel he must have the help of Milan Stankovic. The gaining

of

diesel fuel was his justification for abandoning his appointment with