THE HEART OF DANGER (26 page)

black expanse of the field. It was through the gate that they had

taken them, and then the bulldozer had followed, and the bulldozer

had

clipped the gate post, collapsed the gate. Short of the field, where

the lane bent, was the small house which had not been destroyed. It

might have been the postman, Branko, or it might have been the

gravedigger, Stevo, but both had claimed to have shot the old bastard

Ustase. He could remember it, seeing the flash of her face at the

window, the old bitch Ustase, as he cursed them to go faster, and

he

could remember the face of the girl. It was only a hovel. The

carpenter reckoned he would not have put pigs in the house of the

old

bastard and the old bitch, but the hovel had been there since the

time

he was born and the timber would be good, seasoned. In his mind,

they

were both together, the face of the old bitch at her window, and the

face of the girl .. . The door groaned as he pushed it. The hurricane lamp threw its light inside the one room. He smelled the damp of

the

room. It was close and small and he saw the sacking in the corner,

as

if it was used for a couch bed. Not a place for a pig, not for cattle.

He had to work quickly because the oil was poor quality in the

hurricane lamp and burned faster than good oil, but good oil was no

longer available. He began to rip the wide panel strips from the

wall,

the best wood and seasoned. He used the jemmy, and then the lump

hammer to hack away at the last holding nails. The noise was around

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him and the dust of the plaster lathe. He often thought of the girl.

It need not have happened to the girl. She could have gone, with

the

other women. The postman, Branko, had tried to pull her away from

the

two wounded men, tried to save her, and she had fought the postman,

had

hurt him. The dust clogged at his nose. And when the wide panel

strips were free, he reached up and belted with the lump hammer at

the

ceiling plaster that cascaded on him. The beams were good. He

wanted

two lengths of beam, each his own height, for the legs of the table

he

would present to Milan. Making room with the jemmy and the lump

hammer

for his bow saw .. . The blow caught him. He was turning in the grey

white of the dust storm. The shrivelled figure, black, and the

hurricane lamp guttering, and the stick raised as a club. His eyes

watering from the blow, his vision hazed. He clung to the stick,

the

club, wrestled it away. Claws in his face. Feeling the drag of the nails, razor lines of pain, on his face. Clutching at thin wrists,

seeing the bony fingers reaching for his eyes. The shrivelled

figure,

black, gone in the mist of grey white, gone into the darkness of the

door. He staggered to the door. He had his pistol out from the

holster. There was only silence around the carpenter. He fired the pistol up the lane and down the lane and the crash of the shots

burgeoned at his ears. He had no target. He did not know where to

fire. He emptied the magazine of the pistol, and he ran. He left

behind him his bow saw and the jemmy and his lump hammer, and the

failing light of the hurricane lamp. He ran down the lane, he

splattered the potholes of rainwater, and he ran through the square.

He

was panting hard when he reached the bridge and he shouted out his

name

that the guards should not shoot him. He found them scared,

cringing,

hiding down behind the sandbags, and they had their own light which

they shone in his face. He wiped his cheeks. He did not know what

he

could tell the young men who guarded the bridge across the stream.

His

own blood stained the palm of his hand. Finished, or not begun.

Penn

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sat on a bench in the park, the darkness around him. Penn thought

he

had made the decision. To go to the end, that was his father's code.

Doing it properly, that was his mother's code. On a bench in Zagreb,

with noisy basketball played open air under floodlights beyond the

darkness, he thought of them. His father, looking at him direct,

pipe

clamped in his teeth, would have said that he had taken the money

and

that if he hadn't wanted shit in his face then he should not, first,

have taken the money. His mother, averted head and pursed lips and

wiping her hands, would have told him that he was under obligation,

but

that he should go carefully. When he had swotted for the exams that

had lifted him from the countryside, prompted by his history master

who

had helped with the forms, he had sent off an application for work

as a

clerk in government. He was going back into the rock of previous

years, now, chiselling for guidance. Taken on at the Home Office.

He

wondered how they would have reacted, at the Home Office, to his query

as to whether he had finished or whether he had not begun. Working

with paper, pushing paper, annotating paper, moving paper,

discarding

paper, for the Prison Service department of the Home Office. They

would have said, the ones who had worked with him in the clerks' pool,

who were still there working in the clerks' pool, that he had

finished.

Five o'clock, old chummy, time to be gone, always finished at five

o'clock, old chummy. One late night and there was a panic meeting

between the Home Office and Security Service and an assistant under

secretary stamping empty corridors, searching for a file fetcher,

finding Bill Penn, clerk. He had run half the night down to the

basement and back up to the third floor with the files they had needed.

He had brought the coffee. He had gone out for sandwiches. He had

kept the files coming, and the coffee and the sandwiches, when their

heads were on their bloody knees in tiredness, and a week later the

job

offer had come through, clerk grade in Library at Curzon Street, then

at Gower Street. In Five's Library they would have said he had

finished. Into F Branch, pushing paper on 'subversives'. Into A

Branch, working with the 'watchers'. The guys in F Branch and the

guys

in A Branch, they would have said, too damned right, he had finished.

The guys in F Branch and A Branch would have been quoting training

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courses, evaluating back-up, querying days in lieu for extra days

worked. But there was no training, there would be no back-up ...

It

was Penn's decision. He had the obligation, and he would go

carefully.

It would be for her, Dorrie .. . Not for Mary Braddock in the Manor

House, not for Basil and the creeps at Alpha Security, not for Arnold

bloody Browne who had not lifted a finger when he'd needed help, not

for his Jane and his Tom and the paying of the mortgage for the roof

over their heads, but for the love of Dorrie ... He had the photographs

of her. The photographs were in the inside pocket of his blazer,

dry,

safe, close to him. He thought that what he wanted, wanted most in

the

world, was to share in the love of Dorrie. He saw the face that was

loved, the face of mischief, sparkle, hatred, bloody-mindedness,

courage, the face that was putrefied and drawn from the ground and

wounded with cuts and blows and a pistol shot .. .

And all the rest was shit .. .

It was as if she called. It was as if he should follow. He knew

that

he wanted her love, certainty, more than anything he had wanted in

his

life. He craved the freedom that had been hers. As if he heard her loud laughter, daring him.

Not finished, because it was not begun.

Ham saw him come through the door. Then he was looking round,

checking

the tables, searching for a face.

"Hello, squire, funny seeing you in this shit heap .. ."

Most evenings Ham ate alone. Couldn't abide the crap they served

up in

the old police station. Most evenings he asked the guys if they'd

come

down the town and join him, and most evenings they had a reason not

to,

fuck them. He ate alone in the cafe on Krizaniceva inside the walls

of

the old city. He pushed out the chair opposite him.

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'.. . So what brings you down the sharp end, what brings you to sunny Karlovac?"

"You wanted a bit of tracing done. You wanted to know where your

wife

was, and your kiddie. I'll do that."

Ham said quickly, "Can't pay a fancy fee .. ."

"No fee, no charge."

Ham said, suddenly doubtful, "Not for fucking charity. What's the

game, squire?"

"For a favour."

"You tell me, what's the favour?"

"You said you'd walked into Sector North. I want a route. I want

to

know where to go, where not to go. That's my fee for the trace."

Wide-eyed, Ham said, "That's fucking dumb talk .. ."

"No charge for the trace, but you give me a route so as I can walk

to

Rosenovici."

Ham said, "You don't get me to go .. ."

"I want a route, to go on my own."

Nine.

There was the same message on each of the boxes, different languages.

The boxes were stacked high to the ceiling cross struts. Baby Food

(Nutritional) Gift of the People of Germany. Pasta (Shapes various)

Gift of the People of Italy. Medicines Antenatal/ Postnatal Gift

of

the People of Holland. Rice -Gift of the People of the United States

of America. Tents (with blankets) Gift of the People of the United

Kingdom. The biggest section of boxes was labelled as a mobile

operating theatre Gift of the People of Sweden and there were

cigarettes in boxes, and alcohol, and soya, and hospital drugs. Penn

was walked down the corridor between the boxes that filled the shed.

He

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read each label. He thought of the advertisements he saw in the

papers

back home, and those on the commercial radio stations. He thought

of

the kids standing in the High Street where he lived and rattling

collection tins, and he thought of the women who knitted warm clothes

for refugees, and he thought the business was dirty. He had not been

brought to the shed for food, medicines, drugs, nor for cigarettes

nor

alcohol. The mercenary had brought him to the shed because that was

where he could buy a gun. Anything could be bought, that was what

Penn

had been told. Anything he had the money to pay for he could buy

in

the shed. Ham had brought him out from the old quarter of Karlovac,

out through the modern city, and he had seen the scar marks of the

shelling, and they had crossed over the Kupa river and headed into

the

industrial estate. It was a dead city. No smoke from the chimneys, no

lorries carrying away finished products. The city had died because

the

city sat astride the front line. There had been two 5-series BMWs

parked outside the shed, and an Alfa. A giant man had come quickly

through the door of the shed and his gaze had been hostile,

intimidating, before he had seen Ham. There was an office space at

the

far end of the corridor between the cardboard and wooden crates. Ham

had said he should take a gun. Ham had said that walking into Sector

North without a gun was about the same as going in bare-arsed. Ham

had

said that he should pack a gun before he packed his toothpaste. Three

men were in the partitioned office at the end of the shed. They

lolled

back in easy chairs and there was a haze of cigar smoke, and one

listened at a telephone and one was talking local language into a

mobile, and each wore designer jeans and a loose-fitting designer

leather jacket as if for uniform. They were all under thirty years

of

age. Penn stood distant in the doorway and each casually shook Ham's

hand, but the enthusiasm was the mercenary's, and they seemed to Penn

to regard Ham as dog shit on the pavement. What sort of gun did he

want? Penn shrugged, like they should tell him what was on offer,

and

there was a big peal of laughter from the heavy man who was not

listening on the telephone. Good English spoken. He could have a

152

T-54

tank (Soviet), he could have a 120mm howitzer (American), he could

have

an RPG-7 rocket launcher (Soviet), he could have a Stinger

ground-to-air (American), if he could pay .. . The mocking laughter

subsided .. . He could have a Heckler & Koch machine pistol, or an

Uzi

high-fire-rate sub-machine gun, if he could pay .. . The eyes were

locked on him .. . Ham had said to him, where he was going, every

male

understood the workings of firearms, their culture, cradle-to-grave

stuff. Penn felt like stale piss. He knew how to strip down and

clean

and reassemble a .410 shotgun because that was what he had used around