THE HEART OF DANGER (61 page)

coal sacks with a thermos and a plate of sandwiches and a bucket.

"I

don't understand ..." "Never was your strong point, Freefall, understanding." Ham was given into the custody of the military

policemen and they looked at him with a savagery that stripped off

his

face the first trace of the cheeky smile. He was handcuffed to the

younger of them. He was handed the envelope of travel documents and

checked them awkwardly, one-handed. "Why did you help me, why didn't you leave me with the bastards?" "Now, don't dally, not in Budapest, 362

not in Sofia, not in Istanbul. Just get yourself straight through

to

Yerevan. Frankly, if you survive that train journey then you'll come

through any war intact, even Nagorny Karabakh's little scrap .. .

of the code, Freefall. I don't like to leave colleagues dangling,

not

in mid-stream." The announcement was made over the loudspeakers and the passengers surged to the train's doors. The cases were being

passed up, and the knotted bundles, and the cardboard boxes

reinforced

with string. The older military policeman elbowed a way through,

and

Ham was pulled forward and the First Secretary trailed him. "You

think

I let him down, Penn, you think I caved too bloody easy?" "I'm having you met off the train at Istanbul, you'll be given the ticket for

Yerevan. Armenia is the side to be on, Freefall. Keep your nose

clean

and your bottom wiped, and you can be quite a useful asset to us there.

It would be very sad if you were silly, could have dangerous

consequences for you ... Of course you let him down, of course you

caved too quickly. You're a coward, Freefall, but not an idiot, that

pleasant lady would have killed you if you hadn't been a coward, and

she would not have lost five minutes of sleep over it." He was taken up the steep steps and the handcuff ring cut at the flesh of his wrist.

He looked down onto the First Secretary, and the man was peering at

his watch as though already bored. "Where is he?" "Somewhere behind

that bloody line, stumbling forward .. . yes, with his prisoner ..

.

stumbling forward towards your promised rendezvous .. . Enjoy Nagorny

Karabakh." The door slammed behind him. The handcuff jerked him

towards the corridor of the carriage. He stood his ground, sod the

buggers. There was the whistle's blast and the first shudder of the

train lurching away. Ham shouted, "Tell him it wasn't my fault.

Tell

him I wasn't to blame." A faint reply, through the filthy window

of

the door. "Goodbye, Freefall ... If I see him, I'll tell him." The train ground out of Zagreb station. Three passengers, Bosnian

refugees, with all that they owned around them, were cleared from

their

seats by the military policemen. They would be with him until the

Slovenian border, then the military policemen would free him, leave

him. From Ljubljana he would go on alone into Austria, and at Vienna

363

he would start the long journey, via Budapest and Sofia and Istanbul

and Yerevan, to the war in Nagorny Karabakh, wherever the fuck that

was. Of course it was not his fault, of course he was not to blame.

Nothing in his life had ever been the fault of Sidney Ernest Hamilton.

In the dropping light the train cleared the concrete outer suburbs

of

Zagreb. He was without blame. He reached with his free hand into

his

pocket for the carton of Marlboro cigarettes, and for his playing

cards

.. . She said it softly. '.. . He says that you have seen his wife.

His wife is a fine woman. He says that you have seen his boy, and

that

I hurt his boy. His boy is a good son .. . Everything that he knows

is

in the village of Salika, and everything that he loves is there. He

asks you, begs you, pleads with you .. ." He looked away from the

wreckage of the man. He remembered the power of the man and the glory

of him in the hall of the village's school, and his boots and fists.

He could not make the link. She said it quietly. '.. . He says that his wife should have a husband, and his son should have a father ...

He

says that he will swear to you, promise to you, on his mother's life,

that he will never hold a gun again, will never fight again. He says

that you are a man of honour, a person of courage, and that you will

understand his weakness ... He begs you to let him go back to his

wife,

he pleads with you to let him return to his son .. ." Her voice

dripped in his ear. He stared again into the face of the broken man.

The eyes of Milan Stankovic ran wet and his mouth dribbled saliva

against the folded material of the gag. The man was pitiful. He

could

not make the link between the man who was laden with conceit and the

man who grovelled for his freedom. The birds clattered in the

branches

above him and there was the panting of Ulrike's breath spurts and

the

moaning in Milan Stankovic's throat. "I told you." Her face and her

eyes and her short bob-cut hair were close to him.

"You told me to be cruel."

"And it is hard for you to be cruel."

"It is hard."

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"Because you do not see the evil in him."

"I cannot make the link between what he was, what he did, and what

he

is now, pathetic."

She was so strong. He could see that she did not waver, and that

she

had no doubt.

Ulrike said, "It is what they are all like, it was the same long ago, and it is the same now ... It was the same long ago in my country,

when

the men and women who had committed acts of evil were stripped of

that

power and put in the cells to await trial, and left in the cells to

await execution, and when they were taken to the scaffold some had

dignity and some were pitiful.. . they could not be recognized for

what they had been, what they had done .. ."

Penn hissed, "Don't worry, don't bloody worry your pretty head,

because

I will try to be cruel."

He went on. Penn led. It came to him again, the instinct ... He

thought they might be a mile from the farm with the outbuildings where

the troops were billeted. Twice he looked behind him, long and hard,

and his eyes that were drifting with tiredness saw only the swaying

trunks of the trees and the spreading shadows. He thought that the

worst would begin after the farmhouse where the troops were billeted,

and the worst would be all the way to the Kupa river and he still

could

not escape the instinct that they were followed in their flight.

There was no minute taken of the meeting, no stenographer present,

no

tape recorder in use. The room allocated for the meeting was on the

third floor of the Ministry of Defence building with windows that

looked down onto the central courtyard where the lights now burned

bright. The room was the office of a senior civil servant, young

and

Harvard-trained.

"It will be done with discretion. There will be Special Forces, of the

365

Black Hawk unit, under the direct command of the Intelligence Officer

of 2nd Bn, 110 (Karlovac) Brigade. They are to be given no help,

the

German woman and the Englishman, in crossing the Kupa river. They

are

in charge of their own destiny. Under no circumstances, none, will

they be permitted to bring Milan Stankovic across the river. From

what

I hear, if Stankovic crosses then Karlovac and Sisak will be shelled,

Zagreb will be attacked by missiles. There can be no

misunderstandings

in this matter." The First Secretary leaned forward, elbows on the table. "No misunderstandings .. . because if Stankovic comes across and into your jurisdiction then international opinion would demand

your

own dark corners be examined, your own psychopaths be arraigned, and

that would never do." Parked in the courtyard below was the Mercedes of UN PRO-FOR's Director of Civilian Affairs. "The meetings that

we

are brokering, from what I hear from my sources on the other side,

will

be immediately curtailed if a Serbian is kidnapped and brought before

a

war crimes tribunal. Gestures are unimportant. It cannot be

allowed

to happen. Gestures are trivial and cost lives. A substantial

window

for peace would have been closed." The First Secretary swung back

in

his chair. "And we must not block the path to the appeasement of

violence, good God, no. Peace in our time, peace at any price. Why not .. . ? And you should know, what I now realize, she was a very

fine young woman, Miss Dorothy Mowat, and such a shame that her

murderer, by our hand, should walk free ... If you'll excuse me ....

It's my job to be on that bloody river bank tonight." He had made

four

telephone calls and all had been deflected. Four separate times he

had

dialled the number of the old police station, the number of the 2nd

Bn,

110 (Karlovac) Brigade. He had asked, in turn of the duty officer

and

the commanding officer and the liaison officer and the adjutant, if

he

could be hooked through to Hamilton, Sidney Ernest, on a matter of

importance. Four times asked to wait no problem four times asked

366

the

business of the call personal four times asked his name mumbled and

unintelligible four times told that Hamilton was not available to

come

to the telephone and asked again for the nature of the business and

the

repetition of his name.

Marty Jones was not easily unsettled, less often now that he had been

in Croatia and Bosnia for close to a year. But now apprehension

crawled in him. Dusk was coming to the parade ground beyond his

converted freight container .. . Hell, he was not going to take

goddamn

crap from them .. . After the fourth deflection, Marty telephoned

Mary

Braddock, told her he was coming soonest to collect her, that she

should have warm clothes.

He did not know the place of the rendezvous on the bank of the Kupa

river, and Ham should have rung him. He felt a bad night was taking

shape.

Before he locked the door of the freight container behind him, he

looked a last time, longingly and almost lovingly, at the camp bed

with

the sleeping bag and the blanket primly folded, at the brightness

of

the handcuffs, at the length of the chain and the strength of the

ring

set in the floor.

The last of the sun, rich gold, came from the trees on the far side

of

the river and made sweet lines on the moving water, and bathed the

worn

face of Zoran Pelnak and hurled his shadow back against the old

timbers

and the weathered brick of his home.

Too much of his time, he liked to joke with the soldiers who came

from

their tent camp for his well water, was spent gazing at the great

Mother, the force, that was the Kupa river. He could spend more hours

than the day gave him just watching the movement and the flow of the

river. Each day, each hour, he could find something that was new

in

367

the movement and power of the river .. . And the river was something

to

respect, as worthy of respect as had been his own mother, because

the

river was strength. They did not comprehend, the soldiers who came

with the scrubbed old milk churns for their water from his well, the

force of the great Mother. Zoran Pelnak did .. . His respect, his

awe,

of the river had been with him since he was a child, since the evening

that the sunken log had come without warning to beat against the bow

of

his small boat and trip it. He had lost his footing, fallen,

scrabbled, slid into the dark cold of the water. What he could

remember was the helplessness that he had felt, long ago as a child,

thrashing against that force, and his father had pulled him clear.

The

force would never be forgotten by Zoran Pelnak, never trifled with.

He

had not swum in the river that bordered his fields since that day

when

he had struggled in panic against the cold darkness of the current.

He

knew the force of the great Mother .. . And there was always something

new to see.

He paused at the door of his home, and he scratched the debris from

the

animals' fodder off the sleeves of his greatcoat.

There was a place in the first line of the trees opposite, where the

herons made their nest. He could not look into the low sun at the

nest, but he could see the male bird erect in the shallow water by

the

reeds poised and waiting, perhaps for a frog.

He considered the male heron to be the most beautiful of the river's

birds.

And when he was inside, warm from the fire, his meal taken, then he

would sit by the window and light his lamp and wait for the moon to