THE HEART OF DANGER (65 page)

that you find weakness in the great Mother that is the Kupa river,

then

you fool yourself. The river plays the game of tricking you, there

is

no weakness. The river brings you on, away from the safety of the

bank, then tricks you .. ." He sat in his chair of stained oak beside the window and the oil lamp threw a feeble light across the room.

He

spoke gently, but with respect, as if he had a fear of giving offence

to the great Mother. "I could see them all of the time. Good speed 386

at

first, but that is the way of the great Mother because from the south

bank, from their bank, the river bed is more shallow and the current

is

less strong. When you come further into the flow of the river then

you

will find the true strength of the great Mother .. . Of course it

is

possible to cross if you have a good boat, if you have oars and you

have been God-given good muscles, of course it is easy if you have

the

engine for the boat.. . but the river watches for your weakness,

and

if you are weak then the river will punish you .. ." The woman sat bowed on the bare boards. She was in front of the stove, with the

pistol close to her feet. She wore a faded old dressing gown tight

around her, borrowed from the farmer's wife, who had bought it in

the

market at Karlovac thirty-one years before, and draped over the

dressing gown was the farmer's greatcoat. She did not speak. Her

clothes, sodden from the river, were across a chair beside her.

"The strength of the great Mother, where she finds your weakness,

is

when you come to the centre where the current is most powerful. At

the

centre, coming from the far side, is where the drag pulls at you.

When

they were coming, the year before the last year, the Partizan

bastards,

there were deer that ran ahead of their gunfire. I saw a deer come

into the water, running in fear, a big stag, a good head on it, and

it

could swim until it reached the centre of the river ... I can only

say

what I saw. It was at the centre that he pushed the woman away. I

heard his voice, but I do not know what he said because it was foreign

and because the river makes its own sound, the voice of the great

Mother is never silenced. I think that he pushed her away so that

she

could swim free. She was so lucky .. . perhaps the attention of the

great Mother was on him and his friend, perhaps the great Mother

ignored the woman, swimming free. I could see it from my window,

the

man and his friend taken down the river .. ."

387

They listened. They were crowded into the room. The mud fell onto

the

board floor from the boots of the Intelligence Officer, from the shoes

of the First Secretary and Marty Jones and Mary Braddock .. . She

did

not understand a word that was said by the old farmer, but there was

a

grim sadness on his face and she felt a release. They were all

touched

by Dorrie, her daughter. She felt her freedom.

"They were taken down the river, the great Mother held them. They

could not go from the hold of the current at the centre of the river.

The raft thing was lower in the water. He tried to kick a last time,

but the strength was gone from him. Was his friend wounded? I think his friend was wounded because his friend had no use of his arms.

They

lost the raft thing. I saw him hold his friend up in the water, as

if

he supported him. He would not be able to save his friend, I could

see

that. If he had loosed his friend, given his friend to the great

Mother, then perhaps, perhaps ... I do not know ... all the time he

tried to help his friend. They went under. I saw them again and

they

were held in the current, and I knew it would not be long. Just their heads, for one moment I saw just their heads, and still he tried to

protect him, his friend. I did not see them another time. Who was

his

friend that he would not leave? They were so small, they were against

such power. I did not see them another time .. ."

They took the woman with them, and the old farmer was told that his

wife's dressing gown and his greatcoat would be returned in the

morning.

Later, the Intelligence Officer would use the field telephone to

communicate a satisfactory situation to his enemy. Later, the First

Secretary would send a three-line encoded message to the dishes on

the

roof of Vauxhall Cross. Later, Marty Jones would return to his

converted freight container to dismantle a camp bed and unfasten a

chain linked to a pair of handcuffs, and to arrange for ballistic

tests

to be made on a Makharov pistol.

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Later, Mary Braddock would take her small suitcase to the airport.

Later, the shells would be taken from the artillery pieces that faced

Karlovac and Sisak, and technicians would stand down the

ground-to-ground missiles that could reach the southern suburbs of

Zagreb.

Later, the troops of the Ustase bastards and the Partizan bastards

would search the reed beds on their side of the Kupa river, and find

nothing.

They went out into the bright moonlight and walked away from Dome's

place, turned their backs on Dome's war.

He had tried three times to dial the number, and each time the

telephone had given him an unobtainable tone. Henry Carter pushed

himself up. He stretched. His hands were behind his neck and he

arched his back and let out a short squeaked cry. He went to the

desk

nearest his own. No, she was not eating chocolate that morning.

Yes,

she wore a prim new blouse. She looked up at him, away from her

screen, nervously. He smiled. He apologized. He said it had been disgraceful of him to have shocked her with that quite revolting

photograph the morning before, and he was reaching into his wallet.

He

offered her a five-pound note and said it was for the dry-cleaning

of

her blouse, and if there was anything left over, then she should

purchase some little trifle .. . God, what sort of little trifles

did

young women buy with the change from the dry-cleaning of a

chocolate-stained blouse? .. . And he needed her help. The senior

dragon was not in sight. Please, he needed to dial an out-of-London

number, and couldn't seem to manage it. Of course the telephones

could

only be used for in-London calls, but there had to be a way. She

knew

the way. She put the five-pound banknote into her purse, and

blushed,

and told him what digits he should dial to obtain it, and he made

a

little joke about a nephew in Australia. She was gazing up at him,

and

389

his fingers rubbed, embarrassed, across his cheek stubble, and he

should have taken the time to find that hidden razor, and should have

brushed his teeth, and should have changed his socks .. . In her face,

he thought he saw simple kindness. "Has it been awful, Mr. Carter?

It must have been a pretty awful file to have kept you here, all

yesterday, all through the night. Is it something really sad .. .

?

Sorry, shouldn't have asked that, should I, I'm not need-to-know."

He said quietly, "Do you know, my dear, there was only one thing that I

ever did well when I worked here. I was good at standing in safety

on

the right side of some of life's most hideous barricades, waiting

for

some poor devil to come back from the wrong side. I wish so much

that

I had been there, waiting, not able to intervene, but sharing .. .

So

kind of you to help me with the telephone."

He sat on his desk. He dialled again.

He heard the clip of her voice.

He kept his silence.

Who was there? What did they have to say?

He heard the annoyance of her voice.

Would they, whoever they were, not waste her time? Who was it?

He put down the telephone, cut from his ear the growing anger of Mary

Braddock, mother of Miss Dorothy Mowat. So tired now .. . It had

all

been such a long time ago. He had cut from his ear the authority,

annoyance, confidence and anger of her voice.

A little while ago, only a few minutes, it had seemed important to

speak to her, to tell her that an old desk warrior had bludgeoned

a

file into shape, made it ready for burial on a disk. He gathered

up

the papers of the file, the photographs and the maps, and his own

crude

390

plan of the two villages separated by the stream.

He walked across the open-plan space of Library to the day

supervisor's

position.

"Finished then, Mr. Carter?"

She was leafing through the material that would be transferred to

the

disk. She turned the typewritten pages, and the photographs of the

grave site and the cadaver and of Bill Penn, and the maps, and his

sketch plan, and there was that curl at her lip to indicate that in

her

opinion the material had not warranted the smelling socks and the

stubble on his cheeks and the demands made of her staff. She came

to

the last page in the order he had assembled the material. He had

written a heading in his own copperplate writing.

She read.

"They may be able to run but they can't hide."

(L. Eagleburger, SOfS, USA)

Geneva/ Brussels airborne brief. 16.12.1992.

Eagleburger announces programme to prosecute war criminals in former

Yugoslavia.

List below of those prosecuted by UN-sponsored tribunal:

But the sheet was blank.

She flushed. She wondered if he ridiculed her.

He intervened in her confusion, best dress smile, the one that he

kept

for Christmas and family.

"Assuming that somebody, some day, for some reason, should actually read the file, I thought they might be interested to know what was

achieved in the two years after Mr. Eagleburger's brave words ..

. If

only our masters would abstain from saying things they don't mean

391

then

life would be so much more bearable, don't you agree .. . ? Thank

you

for the kindness of your staff. Whistling for the stars, ami ...

Good

day."

He cleared his desk, packed away his empty thermos in his briefcase,

and shrugged into his coat.

Quite chill that morning.

It was behind him, all of it. It was as if it had never happened,

as

if by conspiracy brave words became hollow and empty.

Quite a brisk wind off the old Thames catching him as he strode towards

the station. All of it was behind a sentimental old desk warrior.

His

step was lively. Ahead of him was the short train journey, the quick

change of clothes and socks, and the brushing of his teeth, a good

shave with a new blade, then the drive to mid-Wales and the railway

line at Tregaron, and the sight of the soaring freedom of the kites.

Henry Carter thought that, after where he had been, he needed to find

a

place of freedom.

GERALD SEYMOUR is the author of fourteen previous best selling

novels.

His first novel was Harry's Game. Eric Ambler wrote of it '.. .

one

of those rare pleasures, a considerable novel that is also a superb

thriller'. It was made into a television film, and its screenplay

won

Gerald Seymour the Pye Television Award. When his second novel, The

Glory Boys, was published, the Los Angeles Times said: "Not since

Le

Carre has the emergence of an international suspense writer been as

stunning as that of Gerald Seymour." Each succeeding novel has

touched

the raw nerve of a contemporary issue.

Once a reporter for Independent Television News, Gerald Seymour now

lives with his family in the West Country.

GERALD SEYMOUR

392

THE FIGHTING

MAN

Also available from HarperCollins paperbacks: Gerald Seymour's most

recent bestseller, The Fighting Man, 4.99

"He just gets better and better' Today

ISBN 0 00 225009 8

Jacket illustration by David Scutt

393