Gerald Seymour - Heart of Danger

Ham had learned Shape, Silhouette, Shine, Smell, and Sound at the Aldershot depot, and none of the others, the dozy buggers, cared… They needed it, too fucking right they needed Shape and Silhouette and Shine and Smell and Sound, where they were going… the others were from 2nd Bn, 110 (Karlovac) Brigade, and they had been pissed up since morning and Ham was stone sober and his hands shook and his gut was tight. They were dumb bastards to be spending the night with, across the Kupa river, behind the lines. On down his checklist… ammunition magazines for the Kalashnikov, knife, gloves, the radio that thank Christ he wouldn't be bent under, cold rations, the balaclava, the water bottle that wasn't full of bloody brandy or the usual slivovitz piss, map and compass, field dressings… The big fear, what tightened Ham's gut, shook his hands, was of being wounded, of being left. It was better in the old days, better when there were Internationals on the ground like flies on meat, because then there was the promise that the Internationals, the 'meres', would look after their own if one was wounded. You wouldn't know with this lot, wouldn't know if they'd fuck off and get the hell out in a stampede back towards the river from behind the lines. They were chuckling at him, the others, and it was because they laughed at his care and his thoroughness that Ham felt the fear.

They were dumb bastards to be with, but there was no one else who would have Sidney Ernest Hamilton, late of 3 Para, late of east London, late of the Internationals attached to the Croatian army. His fingers found the twin dog tags hanging from the dulled chain at his neck. The tags were bound in sellotape to keep them quiet. The tags gave his number from 3 Para, his name, and his blood group, and his number and name and blood group from the Croatian army. He knew it would be bad bloody news for any of them if they were wounded, captured, across the river, and double bad bloody news for a mercenary.

Ham didn't eat any of the bread that was offered him, and he turned down the alcohol, and he thought the Croatians must have known that he was shit stiff scared.

It would be late evening when they moved off down towards the Kupa river where the inflatable was hidden.

Under the new scene, the new mood, there were little chores for a senior executive officer.

The little chores were adequate to remind Arnold Browne that he was outside the mainframe of Service operations. Once a week, a little chore, he met with a senior executive officer from Six, and they talked platitudes, nothings, for an hour before going to lunch on expenses. A little chore because it was unthinkable that the Service would offer valuable information to Six, and inconceivable that Six would volunteer worthy information to the Security Service, Valuable information, worthy information, was power and would not be squandered on the sister organization… So, Arnold Browne who was old guard and old time would parry and probe for a straight sixty minutes with a man who was also without a future, and then go take a damn good lunch. The probing and parrying that morning had involved the tedious matter of Ukrainian nuclear warheads and he had extracted nothing that was worthy or valuable. It was ludicrous, of course, that Six should not share their information from the Ukraine so that Five could follow and monitor the Kiev government's attempts to get the hardware of the former Soviet Union operational, bloody pathetic but, then, Arnold Browne was not sharing with Six what Five had learned of PIRA arms acquisition on the Continent. He did not apportion blame. It was the way of the sisters to squabble, bicker, hold their cards close. But lunch was good, and at a personal level he enjoyed the company of Georgie Simpson. A bowl of pasta, a bottle from the Friuli region, a plate of liver and spinach, a second bottle called for, and the talk twisting to Croatia. Safe ground because Georgie Simpson never set foot outside inner London, and would have no secrets to guard. A belch from Arnold's lunch guest. '… I'm like the rest of the great British herd, I'm bored out of my mind with the place. Victoria won't even have it on the television now, switches it straight off. She did the jumble bit last year, getting parcels together, then she read that the stuff she collected was all sitting in a warehouse; she does parcels for Somalia now. I mean, they're just animals, aren't they? They're animals, all of them, not a peck of difference between the lot of them. What gets up my nose is that people here, in their ignorance, seem surprised by the bestiality of the place. I've had the place drilled into me from birth, by my father. Back in the war, he was on gunboat escorts that ran weapons down to the Dalmatian coast for the partisans, Tito's crowd. Two or three times my father went ashore and had to go up into the mountains to meet the Serbs, and he saw a bit of what was done to them by the Croats… small wonder they're all A grade for cruelty. Don't want to put you off your food, Arnold, but the Croats, the fascists in their Ustase movement, used to gouge the eyes out of their Serb friends' faces, sack them up and send them back to their hero leader in Zagreb… My father says the Ustase could make the SS blush. I mean, it wasn't just genocide, it was good fun thrown in. My father said that it wasn't just a matter of killing people, they enjoyed it, most of all they enjoyed causing pain. Incredible people, barbarians. Should leave the blighters to it…" It might have been the wine, could have been the company, but Arnold offered a confidence. He spoke quietly, without restraint, of his neighbour and his neighbour's second wife, and his neighbour's stepdaughter. '… who must have been a right bloody fool to have let herself get caught up in that lot. What I'd call a self-inflicted wound." "And a wound for everyone else," Arnold said. He waved to the waiter for more coffee, and the bill. "And, she, the mother, wants to know what happened? If you want my opinion, she should let it rest. It's like scratching a bite, yes? You end up with blood and pain. It's different values there, their values and ours don't mix…" "Not the sort of woman to let it rest. Sad, really, but she won't let it go until she's got the full picture… Actually, I put her in touch with a private detective…" "What on earth for?" Arnold was brought the bill. He paid cash, and it would be a month before the money was reimbursed by Accounts. "I thought that if she had something on paper, some evidence, then she might just be able to detach herself, disengage, rejoin the living." "Where did it happen?" Accounts would not wear gratuities. Arnold scooped the change from the saucer. "The daughter was killed near Glina, the territory is now occupied by the Serbs. I believe it's called Sector North…" Georgie Simpson laughed out loud, a real good belly laugh. "It'll be a pretty thin volume then, this joker's report… Nice meal, thanks, puts me on my mettle, where to go next week… That would be a pretty bloody place to be sniffing." "It's only a bromide job, of course; it's not sharp-end work…" They had their coats on, they were out on the pavement, their voices drifted. "Come on, Arnold, what would you have ever known about sharp-end work…?" Arnold Browne sniggered. "Same as you, Georgie, damn all of nothing…" It was the late afternoon, and a thin sun was through the cloud, and the garden grass was drying. The child played between the apple trees that spread above the vegetable patch. Marko had the plastic pistol. It had not been out of his sight since his father had brought it to him, taken to school, laid on the pillow of his bed. He weaved among the old tree trunks and saw the old Ustase enemy, and fired on them and killed them. It was the game he played every day, with a wooden stick that made the shape of a rifle before his father had brought him the plastic pistol from Belgrade, killing the Ustase enemy. He played alone. In the village there was the scream of a car horn, sounded like an alarm, and Marko heard the shouts of men. He played alone, because his friend, the one friend of his life, was gone. It was as if he no longer trusted that he could find a good friend again. He was six years old, and his birthday would be the next week, and although it was many months since his friend had gone he could still remember, so clearly, the knowledge that his friend had betrayed him, his friend had been a part of the Ustase enemy. Where Marko played, ducking, running, throwing himself down onto the grass to find shooting cover beside the apple trees, he could see across the field, and across the narrow stream, and across more fields, to the village where his friend had lived. He could see the house in the village across the stream, and there was no roof on the house, and where the side wall of the house had collapsed he could see the bright cream and red of the wallpaper of the room that had been his friend's. Most days in summer he had waded the ford in the stream or his friend had come the same way to him, and most days in winter when the stream was high he had gone across the plank bridge or his friend had come that way to him. And now he knew that his friend was an Ustase enemy, and he knew that the parents of his friend and all in the village across the stream had planned to slit the throats of their Serb neighbours… He knew it because he had been told it by his father. He had wondered, often, if his friend would have come in the night with all the other Ustase enemies, and carried a knife, and cut his throat. It was too much of a betrayal for him to care to find another friend. Marko's game died. A car screamed down the lane towards their house. The car braked and scattered mud in front of the house, and his father was jumping from the car while it still moved and was running towards the big door. The dog was barking and running after his father and into the house. Marko came from the orchard, hurrying. He whistled for the dog to come to him. The dog had no name now, but it came to the whistle. There were five men in the car and they were crashing magazines into their weapons. The dog was his. He had saved the life of his dog. The dog had belonged to the family of his friend who was now an Ustase enemy. It had been before the battle for the village across the stream that his friend had gone with his family, all packed with cases and bedding into the Yugo car. He had watched it from behind the apple trees. He had been behind the apple trees because for a week the snipers had fired across the narrow stream, and his mother would have beaten him if she had known he was at the back of the house. They had left the dog. He had seen how the dog had run after the weighed-down Yugo car, and he had heard his friend's father curse the dog for running beside the wheels, and the dog had run after the car until they were gone from his sight. It had been a week after the battle that he had heard the dog barking in the night from beside his friend's house, and his father had said that he would go shoot the dog in the morning, and he had cried for the dog in a way that he had not cried for his friend… His father had crossed the stream and brought the dog home, and his father had said that there was no point in giving the dog a new name because it would not respond, and they could not use the old name of the dog because it was an Ustase name. He had hold of the dog's collar when his father exploded from the big door of the house. His father carried his army pack and a small radio and his rifle. There was the roar of the car leaving. Marko ran to the gate onto the lane. Up the lane, in the square of the village, he saw more cars gathered, and he heard more shouting. His mother had hold of his shoulder. He should be inside the house. He should not be out of the house. His mother told him that his father had gone to lead the search for Ustase spies, who had crossed over the Kupa river, who were in the forest and the hills above Rosenovici village. All the rest of the afternoon Marko stood at the window of his bedroom and he gazed across the narrow stream into the curtain of trees that covered the hillside. She paid the taxi off fast, thrust the note at the driver and did not wait for the change. The drizzle was back, and the wet clung to Charles's shoulder. Typical of him to wait on the pavement for her. She reeled off her excuses, the weather, late train, no taxis… She saw his expression, set hard and annoyed. "Sorry, sorry…" He marched up the wide office steps. "I saw your Mister Penn. I told him his figures were ludicrous