Gerald Seymour: The Dealer and the Dead

‘Get it into your head! They’re not coming. We’ve been here too long already, should have been gone a quarter of an hour ago. Mother of God, you want to stay, Zoran, you stay, but I’m off.’

Until then he had been the undisputed leader of the village and its defence. Now his authority was stripped from him. He attempted to reason with them one last time: ‘A few more minutes. He shook my hand. He took as payment what I brought him. Without them, we’re defeated and dead-’

A clear whistle pierced his skull – the sound of an incoming tank 125mm shell, an artillery 152mm shell and an 82mm mortar. They were all rooted to the spot. A flare lit them. The whistle became a symphony because three or four shells were in the air when the illumination flare burst. The dawn had trapped them. A machine-gunner fired. In the moment before the first shell came down, the machine-gunner laced the corn with bullets. The flare hung, poured white light on them. Zoran saw that Tomislav’s son and Andrija’s cousin had crumpled. Their faces showed shock, surprise, and then the blandness of death.

The first mortar detonated. Zoran dropped and felt the mud ooze against his face. Since the fight for the town and its satellite villages had started nearly three months before, he had seen several men die: on the front line in the slit trenches that were reinforced with felled tree-trunks, two had been speared by timber splinters; in the command bunker, where there was an area for the wounded, men had slipped away with neither fuss nor rancour. A Cetnik with an unkempt beard had thrown down a jammed rifle as he sprinted towards a strongpoint and had collapsed at the single shot to his chest.

Zoran was on the ground and his breath came hard. Petar’s boy – who had been slow to learn arithmetic, quick to read and a star at football – towered over him. ‘You fucking obstinate old fool. You’ve killed us.’

It would have been the shards from the fourth mortar bomb that cut him down. Zoran was trying to assemble an answer that had dignity and logic when the metal shards hit him.

The flare had died but it was getting light. Rain dribbled on his face, on the blood from his chest, stomach and hip. The pain, in spasms, was coming. He wished then that he was dead. That night he had carried neither a grenade nor a loaded pistol and could not end his life. He saw movements in the corn and, between his gasps, heard stems bent and broken.

Four men. They were not regular soldiers but Arkan’s people, whom the Serbs called the Tigers and the Croats called the scum. The blades of their knives caught the light. It was bright enough for them to see that he was alive, so he would be kept until last. He heard chuckles from the four, their knives cutting into flesh and ripping of clothing. The Tigers always mutilated the dead… and the living. He heard them cut out the eyeballs, then tear trousers to expose the genitalia of the two sons and the cousin. Then came the castration, the forcing open of mouths and the placing of bloodied gristle down the throats. He remembered what the young man he had met in Zagreb had said: ‘You have nothing to worry about, and that’s a promise.’ A young face and a fresh smile had won his confidence.

The hands had found him, and his ears were filled with the Tigers’ oaths. Without the weapons he had believed he had bought, the village would not survive. When its defences fell, the Cornfield Road would be cut and all links to the town in the west broken.

He screamed. The knife went into his eye. A promise had been broken. He prayed, a few silent, jumbled words, for the release of death. At the last he called his wife’s name and his second eye was taken out. The cold and the rain were on his lower stomach and groin, and he had no more cries for his God, only her name, then a ratcheting scream, and a curse on a man who had broken a trust.

The rain fell hard on the wasted corn crop, as the mutilated bodies were dragged towards the river, and washed away the blood. The wheelbarrows, the pram chassis and the handcart were pulled from the path as spoils of war.

A new day broke, and the stranglehold on the town and villages had tightened. It choked the defenders and condemned them.

‘Have a good day, Mr Gillot.’ The girl at the check-in desk handed him his ticket and boarding card.

‘Thank you,’ he answered, and smiled.

‘And I hope you’ve enjoyed your visit.’

The queue snaked back, and the flight was about to be called, but his smile caused her to ignore the men and women behind him, coughing irritably. Its understated charm usually made people forget what they were supposed to be doing. She was quite a pretty girl so he smiled again. Everyone who knew him said it was bankable. ‘I’ve had an excellent two days in your lovely city, and I hope to be back.’

She pushed his passport towards him and made certain that her fingertips brushed his as he took it. He liked that, and her wide-eyed, penetrating gaze, which was characteristic of the city’s girls. He left the counter and immediately forgot her.

Harvey Gillot walked across the marble surface, newly laid, of the concourse where the general waited for him. There would be time for coffee and a biscuit, and then he would shake the older man’s cancer-scarred hand, perhaps hug him at the gate, maybe even kiss his cheeks, and then be on his way. None of that would indicate any fondness for the man, whose last command had been to oversee the country’s storage depots and hold the inventory of the stocks kept by the Bulgarian military. The parting gestures would suggest that the last forty-eight hours had not been wasted but were of financial benefit to both men.

He reached the general and smiled. A hand slipped to his elbow and he was taken to an exclusive lounge. There a hand slapped his back. Gillot’s smile was important to him, far more so than presence. Twenty-five years ago, Solly Lieberman had identified it: ‘Young man, your smile makes me, old Solly Lieberman who’s been everywhere, seen everything and met everyone, want to trust you. It’s priceless. Trust, young man, is the greatest weapon in a broker’s arsenal, and your smile tells me to trust you. I’m suspicious, wary, a sceptic and cautious, but I’m disposed to trust you.’ Solly Lieberman, long gone, had shaped Harvey Gillot, had taught him that trust was paramount and that his smile clinched the deals that mattered, the ones that paid big.

He wasn’t a broker of second-hand cars. He didn’t buy and sell holidays or property. He had no interest in Bulgaria’s agricultural products, its burgeoning wine industry or prostituting its girls. Instead Harvey Gillot trafficked small arms and ammunition, machine-guns, mortars, artillery pieces and the many types of man-portable missiles that could be used against buildings, armoured vehicles or low-flying fixed-wing aircraft or helicopters. He bought and sold secure and encrypted communications equipment, main battle tanks, the lighter reconnaissance types and personnel carriers. He was a broker of weapons and the materiel of war. Not too many people knew of his trade. His profile was low and he practised anonymity as an art form.

The general spoke a little English and fluent Russian. Gillot used some English and a smattering of technical Russian, but had no Bulgarian. For the more detailed negotiations of the previous evening, at the Mirage Hotel, the general’s nephew had interpreted. It was, still, a treasure trove. Before the dinner, the general had taken Gillot, in a cream Mercedes saloon, to a depot seventy-five kilometres north-west of the coastal city of Burgas. During his years in the service of his country he had once governed it. Many of the men and women now posted to the depot had seemed unaware that he was no longer on Bulgaria’s payroll – instead was flogging off the country’s tanks, howitzers, missiles, small arms, shells and ammunition.