The Heart of Hell (15 page)

He’d never been a particularly good soldier. And he’d probably been the worst Yugoslav commando junior officer in its history. But some of the training had stuck.

He threw another pebble, a little farther away from the man with the luminous watch. This time the man swung sharply and turned on his flashlight, pointing the beam away from della Torre and towards the water. Della Torre momentarily saw the tender to Miranda’s little boat, upside down under the pine tree, as it had been earlier in the day.

The distance between him and the man was less than ten metres, too far to launch a surprise attack. But as the man swept the beam of his flashlight across the undergrowth, della Torre continued to creep forward. Each step he took sounded to him like a mountain cascade.

He was within five metres when the man turned abruptly, swinging the light towards della Torre.

In one motion della Torre flipped on his own torch and shone it straight into the man’s eyes, simultaneously working the slide back on the Beretta.

“Don’t move,” he said in English. “I can’t miss from here.”

The man froze — the same man who’d followed him in Korčula the previous day, though looking less smug now.

“Switch off your flashlight,” della Torre said.

The man did as he was told. “I just stopped to take a piss,” he said, his tone assured but conciliatory. “On my way back to town.”

“An American tourist out for a midnight walk?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, Mr. Tourist, drop the flashlight and get on your knees.”

“You can have everything in my wallet,” the man said. “It’s just here.” He reached towards his back pocket.

“Don’t —”

The man pulled a gun from a holster in the small of his back. He fired in della Torre’s general direction, but the bullet missed, slicing wildly into the trees. Della Torre threw himself sideways. As he did, he squeezed the trigger on the Beretta.

“Oh fuck,” the man grunted, scrambling into the undergrowth.

Della Torre switched off the torch and crouched by the side of the path. He heard the other man move noisily away.

And then came the high whine of a car engine turning into the track with a quick downshift. The headlights swung down and della Torre shaded his eyes with his forearm.

Small stones scattered as the car braked sharply. The sentry’s sprint was caught by the light, but then he disappeared into the darkness again.

“What —” Miranda started to say as della Torre stepped out of the beams.

“Ms. Walker, we need to get going. Right now,” he said.

“Why have you got a gun, Mr. della Torre?”

“Because I thought I saw a pheasant.”

“The season hasn’t started yet.”

“I was poaching.”

“Mr. della Torre, if you expect my cooperation —”

“Ms. Walker, you have a thousand Deutschmarks to get me to Dubrovnik. You start now and get me there, I’ll throw in another five hundred. Not including any passengers we take out.”

“And if I don’t like that deal, you’ve got a gun to make it sound more appealing.”

“You know as well as I do that I can’t force you to take me the whole way there by threatening you with a gun.”

“Okay, Mr. della Torre, I suppose if I’m in for a penny, I’m in for a pound. Can you take the things out of the car and bring them down to the beach while I get the tender ready? The jerry cans and the water jugs and the various bags.”

He did as he was told, wary lest the Americans return, while she launched the boat, all done under the illumination of the Fiat’s headlights.

He was sure he’d wounded the other man, though not badly enough to fell him. The man didn’t seem to present any immediate danger, but his colleagues would, once they came looking for him.

Laden, the little rowing boat sat low in the water, but Miranda assured della Torre that it wouldn’t sink. He went back, switched off the car’s lights, and locked it. Then he removed his boots, rolled up his trousers, and stepped gingerly through the cool, shallow water, rocks sharp underfoot, into the tender. It rocked wildly, and for a moment he thought it would overturn as he settled onto the bench in the stern. In the darkness, Miranda rowed with the ease of a practised sculler, making for the sailboat, which della Torre picked out with the flashlight.

They tied up the dinghy at the mooring buoy and got all their things aboard.

“There are some waterproofs hanging below that ought to fit you. They’ll help keep the chill of the night air off,” she said.

She’d lit a kerosene lamp down below and was pulling on plastic bib overalls and a rain slicker as he stepped down. The cabin berthed two and had a tiny galley that consisted of a gimballed stove and burner.

“It’s a bigger boat than I thought,” he said.

“Twenty feet at the waterline. She doesn’t really have a keel, just a couple of fins to keep her stable, but it means she can travel in very shallow water. She draws only about a foot and a half unless she’s laden, and I can take her out of the water when need be. She gets around, which is why she’s called
Gypsy
.”

“How soon can we get going?”

“Daybreak.”

He climbed into the little cockpit at the back of the boat. “We’ll need to move before then,” he said, watching the beams of car headlights breaking through the trees that lined the main road, a modulated Morse code that took no deciphering.

The lights stopped for a time. Della Torre figured they were collecting the wounded man. Soon after that, he watched the car turn down the little path towards their cove.

“We need to get going,” he said. “Now.”

She didn’t question him but instead flipped up a control panel behind the tiller, tinkered with the dials, and then started the engine. From there she went up front and undid the mooring rope.

She’d only just returned to the cockpit when
Gypsy
was lit up from the shore. Della Torre ducked low into the cockpit, turning to face the lights.

“Mrs. Walker. Mrs. Walker, we would like to speak to you.” Grimston’s voice carried over the water. “Please don’t make the mistake of setting sail.”

Miranda ignored him, throttling up and nudging the tiller so that
Gypsy
slipped past its mooring buoy.

“Mrs. Walker, as you sail away tonight, keep an eye on the hillside. Your house is up there, your car is down here. How much are you being paid for this trip? Will you make enough to cover what you lose?”

They heard the sound of glass breaking. And then there was a glow from among the trees, bright and orange-yellow at first, like a campfire, flickering, fading, and then suddenly billowing out in a fireball that silhouetted the big Mediterranean pine by the water in frozen agony.

“The trees will catch,” Miranda said.

And then came bright rosettes from the side of the burning car, followed by the
crack
,
crack
of pistol shots. But
Gypsy
had moved steadily away from shore, and the torchlight on them weakened and faded. There were no sounds of the gunfire hitting its target.

“I’m sorry,” della Torre said at long last.

“I’ve thought for a while that the war would come to me eventually,” she said, her voice quiet, thoughtful. “It will touch everyone here. I don’t know why I should be spared.”

“But this isn’t the war,” della Torre said.

“Isn’t it?”

He thought for a while and realized he didn’t know. “Maybe it is.”

“I don’t know what’s going on, Mr. della Torre . . .”

“Marko.”

“Marko. Please call me Miranda.”

“Miranda.”

“I suppose I was getting too comfortable.”

“Your art, your possessions . . .”

“My art was stale,” she said. “I don’t own anything else up there. Nothing that can’t be replaced for a few hundred Deutschmarks.”

Della Torre shook his head in the darkness. Small waves slapped the boat’s bows. The engine muttered like an old man in the corner of a pub, unceasing but joyless and mortal.

“We’d better get as far as we can,” she said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they found a fishing boat to follow us in the morning. They won’t do it now without lights — anything with lights attracts the Yugoslav navy’s attention. I won’t be able to put up the sails until daybreak, though. There are too many islands around to risk sailing blind.”

“Thank you,” della Torre said. And then, after he’d listened for a while to the small waves tapping a rhythm against the wooden hull, the engine muttering: “You can’t be doing this just for the money.”

“I wonder.”

THEY’D BEEN ON
the water for an hour when della Torre saw the light on the Kor
č
ula hillside. It was a single point at first, and then two, three, four. The fire, at first an indistinct smudge, spread into a broad, flickering palette of citrus colours.

Miranda looked up and he heard her gasp: “Oh.” Then, in the faint green light of the boat’s binnacle compass, she turned away, facing the direction
Gypsy
was taking them, towards the mainland, towards the war. Della Torre turned to face the same way, and he saw other, similar glows in the distance, some solitary, others clustered in small groups. Fires were burning again that night, as they burned every night, like stars fallen to earth.

The chill in the air was made colder by the adrenaline seeping out of him.

“Can you sit here and hold the tiller while I brew us some coffee below,” Miranda said. “Keep your eyes on the compass. The course we’re on now will be safe until dawn.” He took her place at the back of the boat while she descended the four steep steps into the dim cabin.

She brought up the hot, bitter drink in plastic mugs and sat next to della Torre. “People talk about Sir Fitzroy,” she said. “He was heroic, but so was Lady Maclean. Her first husband died. He was a naval officer, killed in a cave in Crete during the war. She had two small children. After the war, Sir Fitzroy became a spy in Turkey, as he’d been in Russia before, though it’s not commonly known. But she was there with him. By that time she had four children. Even so, she put her neck on the line.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Well, now you do. Some of us don’t scare easily, even if we spent our youth learning which way to pass the port or how to address a bishop.”

“You sound like a Victorian adventurer,” he said. “You were born a hundred years too late.”

“Only if I were a man. But I’m not, so the present suits me just fine,” she answered. “I learned to drive in an ancient Austin 7 built in 1928, top speed of thirty miles an hour. That was before I’d turned ten. It was my grandfather’s car from when he was young. I used to drive it around the grounds. There was a narrow paved terrace between the house and its moat, no railing. It’s tricky, double-declutching when you’re barely tall enough to see the end of the car.”

“They let you do that?” della Torre asked, incredulous.

“My grandfather encouraged me. My cousin once rode a motorcycle into the moat. They just fished him out. The Austin didn’t have a roof, and I could swim. They figured they’d do the same with me if they needed to. Anyway, it wasn’t nearly as dangerous as some of what Grandfather had us do. He used to send us climbing the beams of the barn, a good thirty feet up, to chase away the bats. The bats annoyed him but they’re a protected species, and he couldn’t shoot them or smoke them out. He used to say that if we were sensible, we wouldn’t break our necks. And if we weren’t, we deserved to. I suppose I’m trying to tell you I understand risk. I’ve taken risks all my life, one way or another. So don’t feel too sorry for me, or that somehow you’re the agent of my circumstances.”

The coffee was hot and strong, and the night was still and deep. Now and again Miranda would alter their course as if steering by some other sense, like the smell or the feel of the breeze and damp air. Even with the caffeine, della Torre felt himself fading.

“I’m fine to stay at the helm until the morning. I always go to bed at dusk — saves on paraffin. So I had a decent sleep before you showed up,” she said. “Why don’t you go down and get a couple of hours’ rest? I imagine you haven’t slept at all night.”

He was grateful, and did as she suggested. The sound of water flowing past, the odd syncopation of waves slapping the thin boards that separated him from the Adriatic, the boat’s slight roll, the bow’s dip in and up, his tiredness — all combined to create the odd sensation that he was floating inches above himself.

He woke with a start not long after daybreak, pale light spilling into the cabin. He climbed the four steps into the cockpit. The sails were up and the engine was off, and they were a couple of hundred metres off a rocky shore.

“Did you sleep well?” Miranda asked.

“Yes, thanks,” della Torre said. “Where are we?”

“Off the Pelješac. The current was pushing us back towards Korčula last night, but I didn’t want to run the engine any harder, so we haven’t gone as far as you might expect. But we’ll make four or five knots now that it’s light. It’s a decent breeze, southwesterly. Have you done any sailing?”

“Once.”

“Do you know what a jib sheet is?”

“No.”

“It’s that red rope. It controls the front sail. Sit on the windward side of the boat and let out the jib sheet opposite you a little until I tell you to stop.”

He did as he was told.

The little boat slipped neatly through the water, bouncing on the waves. They were moving at the pace of a leisurely bicycle ride, but for della Torre the speed was somehow exhilarating. Clouds scudded over the steep, high rocky ridge that crested the peninsula. The dinghy took the waves at a canter but the air felt deceptively still, as if there were no wind at all. In the anemic light, he could see warships — a corvette out to sea and a pair of gunboats in the waters towards Dubrovnik — but none seemed to pay them any attention.

They turned slightly towards the southeast. Miranda had him pull in the jib, and she did the same for the mainsail. It was hard to believe heavy guns were firing no more than fifty kilometres away. The wind now came over the starboard gunwales, and della Torre could feel it whipping through his hair, spray coming over the bows as the little boat bounced across the waves, making him glad of his waterproofs.

A couple of fishing boats were on the water. They were Orebić-based and didn’t matter to them, Miranda said. She kept an eye out for any vessels appearing from the direction of Korčula. Skeins of smoke rose above the mainland mountains, washed out and drab, until they faded into the gloomy skies.

“We’ve got a head start on anybody following us,” she said. “The fishing boats wouldn’t have come out at night without lights. They’ll have a couple of knots on us, but we’ve got around twenty kilometres on them. And they’ll be reluctant to travel beyond Šipan Island. The mainland side is vulnerable to artillery fire; the Serb gunners in the hills have been getting better at hitting moving targets. On the seaward side the patrol boats have taken to running vessels up against cliffs. It seems to be a game for them. Anyway, that’s the limit of the blockade.”

“What are we going to do, then?”

“You’ll see,” she said. “We’ll need some breakfast first, though.”

They sailed until they reached a small fishing village, little more than a couple of rows of red-tiled white stone houses set behind a breakwater under the steep, raw white hills. Miranda took
Gypsy
in under sail. The wind, as long as it didn’t swing, would guide them back out of the harbour.

There was a shuttered restaurant on the waterfront, set back from the road under the shade of bushy palms. But the village’s little grocery store was open. The girl behind the counter made them sandwiches from local ham and freshly baked spongy white bread, and a couple of strong coffees that she served in heavy china cups that at one time must have belonged to a hotel. They ate sitting with their legs hanging over the edge of the harbour wall, della Torre feeling a vestigial rocking sensation from being in the boat.

He wondered whether he had been right to abandon Anzulović, knowing there was no way the older man could have made the rooftop crossing but feeling half guilty for having left without saying a word. Had he made an escape? Or was Grimston driving him? Was della Torre the rabbit chosen to flush out the ultimate game?

He felt the chill air slip down past the top of his shirt and over the back of his neck, reminding him it was late in the season. Not many people lived in the village year-round, and many of those who did had left when the Serbs got a foothold on the peninsula, less than thirty kilometres down the road. But a few came down to inspect these strange out-of-season tourists who seemed oblivious to the war. No one was forward enough to ask them what they were doing.

The wind blew steadily from the southwest.

“Looks like rain,” Miranda said. “We’re going to get wet.”

They pushed the boat off the harbour wall. The onshore wind made
Gypsy
heel hard as they went out, both of them throwing their weight onto the seaward gunwale to keep the boat as flat as possible. Spray flicked at them, salty and cold. The clouds had boiled up, filling the sky, and della Torre saw that Miranda was right about the change of weather.

They sailed along a hostile shoreline. Small waves broke against white rocks overhung by low, broad pines. The rain was a steady blowing drizzle that filled the air so that they breathed water.

The mountains’ scalloped skirts at the water’s fringes made a string of coves. For a margin of safety from shallow rocks, Miranda took
Gypsy
farther out.

Della Torre shivered. He’d pulled on his waterproof hat only after his hair had already been drenched, and now he felt the chill.

The wind became a squall, rain driven in bands across the water, while the waves picked up. Miranda strained at the tiller and sails, keeping the boat on course in conditions that had become difficult.

Della Torre worked the ropes controlling the forward sail, shifting his weight in the cockpit according to the orders Miranda called out. He saw a steeliness in her; she seemed practised at escaping, though maybe not under these circumstances.

“It’s miserable sailing in these conditions,” della Torre said.

“It keeps us out of sight.”

They sailed like that, hour after hour, until della Torre saw in the distance the long green shadow of Mljet Island.

“All around the island there are these green forests and hills, and the lake is as blue as a crayon,” Miranda said. “Then there are these tall stone walls and red roofs — a fairy-tale friary.”

“Do you get friars in fairy tales?”

“I don’t know. Castles and ogres, yes, but I don’t know about friars.”

When the wind gusted, rain swept into them, making
Gypsy
heel right over, leaving della Torre scrambling up the side and over the edge. His misery grew the colder he got, and he hungered for nicotine.

Miranda seemed immune to the weather, pressing on, holding firmly on the tiller and the main sheet, making small adjustments, and smiling against the wind and rain.

The morning drew into the afternoon and still they sailed.

“Šipan.” She pointed ahead to the island’s green-grey humps rising out of the water.

“How long will it take us to get there?”

“We’ll get there,” she said.

And then, over her shoulder in a break in the rain, he thought he saw something. At first he couldn’t be sure, but over the next hour he saw it again, once, twice more. As time went on, it developed into a motor cruiser, a fast luxury boat.

“That’s not a fishing boat,” della Torre said.

“No, it’s not. Go down into the cabin and get my binoculars. They’ll be in the shelf opposite the galley.”

When he brought them up, she had him take the tiller while she trained the binoculars on the boat.

“Hard to tell, but she looks like something called
Dim
 — ‘smoke’ in Serbo-Croat, not ‘stupid’ in English,” Miranda said. “If it is, Korčula’s her home port. I don’t know how they got hold of her. Maybe they bribed someone at the marina, because there’s zero chance the owner would have let them have her. I know him. He’s a bigwig in Belgrade. Most pompous man in the country, and it’s not like there isn’t plenty of competition.”

“How long before they catch up with us?”

“She makes around thirty knots. But they won’t want to travel that fast. Fishing boats go at twelve to fifteen knots. Anything moving much faster will have the patrol boats onto them in double-quick time, thinking they’re blockade runners. We make six. The horizon’s about two miles back. We’re about half an hour away from where we want to be. It’ll be close.”

They crossed a narrow channel by a squat, square lighthouse. The small islands they passed looked uninhabited. There were no safe landing places, just rocky shores. It was early afternoon, but the light was difficult, the distant mainland disappearing into the general gloom as they slipped into a deep, long inlet between two hilly promontories.

Here the wind fluked, making the little boat dance, but it also blew less strongly. By the time they got to the harbour wall, della Torre could see the motor cruiser distinctly, towards the mouth of the bay.

Miranda moved with extraordinary speed, uncleating the main and jib halyards so that the sodden, heavy sails spilled into the boat as she went back to the tiller to steer into the landing in one deft move. She had della Torre grab the mooring line and guide it to a rust-worn ring on the harbour wall, where he tied it up.

“Wait here,” she said. “They’ll either come in slowly or launch a dinghy.
Dim
has a pretty deep draft, and the bay shallows quickly, but they can get in on sonar. If we’re lucky they might just decide to blockade us until the weather clears. But we ought to hurry anyway.”