THE HEART OF DANGER (44 page)

sorry .. ." "It was because you talked a good story. Get lost."

Benny Stein's hand, fleshy, reached and caught at Penn's collar, and

he

was dragged through the gap between the seats, and shoved out of the

open door. He lay in the road beside the ribboned front tyre. The

door above him was scraped. The fender in front of him was dented

deep. "Thank you," Penn called back up at the slammed door of the cab.

He crawled to the side of the road, to the heaped rubble of a collapsed

house. Benny had jumped down from the cab and was striding towards

the

broken pole of the United Nations block, and the wrecked sandbags

of

the Serb block. So tired, and all the pain was back with him. He

looked past the soldiers, and the woman was running with flapping

legs,

towards him. She came across the road from where she had been

standing

beside a car. He saw in the lights of the crossing point her concern,

and Ham had broken clear of the group of soldiers and was ambling

towards him. There was shouting back up the hill, and he heard

Benny's

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voice, loud. They all danced for Dorrie .. . He danced for her, and

Ulrike Schmidt who gazed into his face, and Ham who walked towards

him

with a wide smile, and Benny Stein who was yelling hard about the

failure of his brakes .. . She had touched them and they danced for

her. "You're a fucking mess, squire. How was it?" And if Ulrike had

not had hold of his arm, and if Ham had not taken him under the armpit,

he would have gone down. Evica said, "So, he could be this side of the

line, or he could have gone .. . ?" Milan lay fully dressed, still in

his suit, on the top blanket of the bed. Evica pressed, '.. . So,

he

could have been in the lorry that crashed the checkpoint?" The dirt of

his suit, and his shoes, would be on the top blanket. Milan said,

empty, "I don't know." Evica held his hand, and on the hand was the mud of Petar's garden and Dragon's garden. "What will happen to us, if

he went through the line?" All that he had, all that he leaned on, was

the wife beside him and the child sleeping in the next room. Milan

said, "What I was told was that one day they will come for me ...

In a

month, in a year, when I am old, one day. Perhaps their children

will

come for our child, one day .. . We have to wait, for the day they

come." "Because we cannot run .. . ?" "Cannot run anywhere. Because of what has happened, of course I have known there will be revenge

one

day. But it was vague, just in my head. But it was said to me direct, at the liaison meeting, and you know his wife, and he said that one

day, direct, if it were not him that came for me then it would be

his

son that would come for our Marko. It would go on for ever, as long

as

the memory lives of what was done. Like a curse on us, and on Marko.

Maybe I did not believe him, and then the Englishman came, and I was

named. It had been a safe world before the Englishman came. We on

our

side of the line, they on theirs. They could not come across the

line

and reach us. They could sit in Karlovac town, they could say what

the

shit they wanted, but they could not touch me, and then the Englishman

258

came to us, to me ... I believe him, the Liaison. I believe now that

they will come for me one day, or that his son will come for our Marko.

If I had known I would not have .. ." "Not have killed her, but then you thought you were safe." "Not have killed the girl." Evica said,

"He made me remember her. Two afternoons and I remember them, when she

came to our shop for food because their own shop had nothing. It

was

three weeks before the fight ... It was after the children had gone

home .. ." "You told me." '.. . And she sat in my room at the school, and we talked in English. I told her there would be no

fighting between our village and her village, I told her there was

no

quarrel between us. She spoke of her home, and her mother, what her

home was like and what her mother did .. ." "We cannot run and we cannot hide." Through the gap of the curtains, Evica saw the first

light of the new day. She said, sad, "We have to live. We have to wait, as she waited in the field, but we have to live .. ." Soft,

gentle fingers moving on the wounds ... A woman's fingers, and tender

... He was in the cellar, and there was only the light of a small

tallow candle ... He was the wounded, and the face of the young woman

was above him, and her fingers dabbed, sweet, at the wounds with sharp

iodine and salted water .. . She touched him and she had no fear ..

.

He loved her, the young woman who cared for the wounded in the cellar

.. . Penn stirred, his eyes flickered. The fingers with the cotton

wool were close to his eyes .. . God, and his face hurt. It was a

woman's room, bright and alive, and the candle in the cellar was gone,

and there were flowers on a table across the room from the bed. Ham

sat on the floor, his back against a neat chest, and he held the

long-barrelled rifle across his knees. Ulrike flashed her smile,

nervous and short, embarrassed, and she was pushing up from beside

the

bed, as if she had been kneeling close to him as she had cleaned his

face wounds and sterilized them. Ham said, "You cut it fine, squire

..

. You got through before they'd organized. Their communications are

piss-awful, you wouldn't have got through half an hour later .. .

That

driver did you well, there's not another fucker other than me and

the

lady knows you were up aboard .. . How much did you drop the driver,

squire?" Penn said, "I told him why I'd gone." He said that he wanted

to go back to Zagreb, make his report, and buy the biggest bottle

of

259

Scotch in the city, and they said that they'd share it. It was

morning. They helped him to dress, Ulrike carefully and Ham roughly,

and the pain of the kicks and the punches had stiffened to each corner

of his body. He thought he would always remember, long after he had

written the report and drunk the Scotch, the image of a cellar and

wounded men, and a young woman without fear. He went hunting trouble

first thing. Marty had talked it through with the doctor from

Vukovar,

his landlord, and the doctor had steeled him to it. He had talked

it

through because the long-distance telephone call had woken them both

in

the apartment, and half the night they had sat over coffee, and the

doctor had toughened him to it. It was raining soft, like it did

in

the spring in Anchorage when the snow melted, as Marty strode across

the central grass towards the steps and doors of A block. He had gone

hunting trouble before opening up the converted freight container.

There would need to have been a GI provost on the door of the suite

of

the Director of Civilian Affairs to have stopped him. The goddamn

phone call, in the bad half of the night, hadn't been from Geneva,

but

goddamn New York. Marty went past the secretaries to the door and

didn't knock, he went on in. They were round the Director's desk.

Marty saw on the sleeves of their uniforms the insignia of Canada

and

Jordan and Argentina. They had a big map over the desk, and the

Director was with them and looking at the map's detail through a

magnifying glass, and a cigarette hung from his lips. And they

turned,

the soldiers and the Director, in annoyed surprise. He hammered,

"I

just wanted to say that I am not prepared to be treated like crap

any

more. And I just wanted to say that I find it incredible that one

United Nations agency is active in blocking the work of another United

Nations programme. I find it shameful that you have gone behind my

back to sabotage my work .. ." "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"I am talking about getting pitched out of my cot in the goddamn middle of the night by New York, to tell me that my work is causing offence,

my work is a nuisance. I will not tolerate that goddamn crap ...

I

will not tolerate you crawling behind my back to get New York to order

me to cool it. Are you with me?" "If you go now you can go down the

260

stairs on your feet .. . If you wait one minute, you'll go down the

stairs on your face." "Because I am inconvenient .. . ?" "Because

..

. listen to me, you silly young man, listen hard .. . There were

refugees supposed to be coming through Turanj crossing point today,

but

the crossing point is closed. There was an aid convoy supposed to

be

going through Turanj today, but its passage has been cancelled ..

."

"That's not my problem. My work is to prepare war crimes .. ."

"Listen ... I'll tell you my problem. They have a maximum alert along their line, they are leaping about like they've pokers up their arses.

Our movement is quite restricted. Why .. . ? There is some garbled story about a war crimes investigator, captured and escaped .. ."

"I know nothing .. ."

"Too fucking right ... I doubt you know the length of your dick. My job is to" keep our access into Sector North. And all this is after I

suggested to New York that I could do without a wet-behind-the-ears

puppy giving me shit from the high moral ground."

"Where?"

"Glina Municipality .. ."

Marty looked at the map, where the magnifying glass rested. "Where?"

"The rumour is he was picked up in Rosenovici .. ."

He swayed. He felt the cold on him. He remembered what he had seen, the man in the Transit Centre, the man with Ulrike. He remembered

the

lecture he had given, goddamn patronizing, and the answer, "I've just a

report to write, then I'm gone." He remembered the Bosnian Muslim

woman that the man had talked to, and she had been in Rosenovici.

He

rocked.

"It's just a rumour .. . I am a busy man. Do you wish to leave on

your

feet or on your face?"

261

Marty had no more anger. He let himself out, quietly.

It was the irregulars, from Glina town, who interrogated the

Headmaster.

They were the men of Arkan, who was Zeljko Raznjatovic, and they

called

themselves the Tigers, and they were men freed from gaol cells in

Belgrade. They had come at first light from Glina, and they had taken

control of the headquarters building in Salika. They had come to

the

village because he was known to them, because Milan had once posed

for

a photograph in front of the War Memorial with their leader, Arkan

...

it was as if his only function that morning was to make them coffee.

They had taken his room and his radio and his desk, and they stubbed

out their cigarettes against the bared stomach of the Headmaster.

The

screaming rang in Milan's ears. It was the agonized screaming of

the

man who had taught him at school, of the man who had been Evica's

friend. With the cigarettes, crushed and stubbed out,

Milan heard of the Englishman's journey of discovery, and of Katica

Dubelj who was the journey's guide. After the screaming and the

telling, the irregulars of Arkan took the Headmaster from the cell

of

the headquarters and out into the road that cut the village. They

wore

plain belted one-piece uniforms of grey-green, and when they came

out

into the road they had put black hoods over their faces so that only

their mouths and their eyes were visible. Out in the road they did

not

need Milan to bring them coffee, so they sent him from house to house

in the village to get the people to come and watch, and he did as

he

was ordered, until there was a small crowd in front of the

Headmaster's

home. He could not face his own people, nor could he face the

Headmaster who was made to stand in front of the door of his home,

nor

could he face the weeping wife of the Headmaster who was held back

by

the irregulars. They shot him first in the legs, and then in the

262

stomach, so that death would be slow.

When the Headmaster died, the men of the village and Milan, led by

the

irregulars, were climbing the track in the woods, going where the

Headmaster had told them they should go.

Ulrike drove the car, and Ham talked all the way. Ham talked his

bullshit, of battles and fire fights, and Ulrike drove and said

nothing, and Penn lay across the back seat of the car.

He was leaving behind him Dorrie's place. He was quitting Dorrie's

war.

The boot print was sharp in the mud of the track, and the man had

worn

military boots when he had been brought to the school. They had the

clear tread of the boot to tell them that the Headmaster had not lied

when the cigarettes had been stubbed out against his stomach, and