Gerald Seymour - Heart of Danger

She speeded her car.

A silent little prayer played at her lips that the letter from her mother would be waiting at her apartment.

Sitting upright, uncomfortable, Jovic was waiting. Penn had learned to use the staircase rather than wait for the interminable lift. He paused at the angle of the stairs, and saw the young man immediately. The hotel lobby was filled for the gathering, before the first session, of the Congress (International) of Croatian Physicians. A blend of accents and languages filtered up to him, but he saw the young man immediately. What he had imagined, somehow, was a retired schoolteacher. What he saw was a student-aged young man with a gaunt and pale face and blond hair cropped short and a pair of jeans that were ragged at the ankles and a heavy leather jacket. The doctors, surgeons, anaesthetists flowed around the young man, who seemed not to notice them but sat rigid. It had been an abrupt exchange on the telephone. Yes, he was an interpreter. Yes, he was available. Yes, he would be at the hotel in the morning. There was an aggression about the young man, Jovic, that Penn noted… it was not possible for him to be without an interpreter. Sharp introductions, an exchange of names. Penn had the ability to look a man in the face. Because he had looked into the eyes, the face of Jovic, because they had not shaken hands, it was a moment before he realized that the right arm of Jovic was taken off at the elbow. The right sleeve of the leather jacket, from below the elbow, hung loose and useless. The circle closed. An amputation accounted for the gaunt and fleshless face, and for the ravaged pallor of the cheeks, and for the blunt aggression. There were reunion greetings around them, the accents of America and Australia, the languages of Swedish and German and Swiss French. Jovic looked back into Penn's face. "Patronizing bastards…" 8? His accent was schoolroom English. '… coming here to parade their success for the mother country to see, and to write cheques, and wring their hands and play their ego, and get the hell out in the morning." His voice was snarled. Would he like coffee? The young man, Jovic, looked around him and there was contempt at his mouth. He led the way out of the hotel lobby, and he shouldered his way past the uniformed day porter and the bellboy, and Penn followed him out across the street. They walked in the sunshine towards the square with the open cafes. Jovic took a table and he shouted in his own language for a waiter and he ordered espressos without asking Penn if that was what he wanted, and he sat in silence until they were brought, and then he pushed the bill slip towards Penn for paying. He could lay his right elbow on the table, awkwardly, and he could flick a cigarette from the packet and strike a match, laboriously. "How did it happen?" "Have you been in a war, Mr. Penn? No? Then you would not understand how it happened." "Where did it happen?" "Do you know Sisak, Mr. Penn? No? Then you would not know where it happened." "When did it happen?" "When you were safe in your own country, Mr. Penn. Eighteen months ago, Mr. Penn, did you care about the freedom struggle of Croatian independence? No? That was when it happened." Penn went on, "Right, young man… OK, Jovic… If you don't want the job, so be it. I don't have to take shit from anybody. I suggest you go back to whatever corner you came out of, and moan on your own." A big smile that cracked the pale edges of Jovic's mouth. Penn glowered at him. He said that he was an artist. He said that he studied at the School of Art. He said that he had learned of Constable and Turner, but that most he admired Hockney. He said, in a new mood and shy, that he was learning to paint with his left hand. He said, more boldly, that his rate was eighty US dollars a day. He pushed his left hand, twisted, towards Penn for the handshake and there was oil paint on his fingers and grime dirt under the nails… it was Charles Braddock's money… A powered grip crushed Penn's fist. He added, quickly, while their hands were still together that if a car was needed then he could get one, and that his rate with the car would be one hundred and twenty US dollars a day. Penn seemed to see the arm, bleeding and hanging loose, and he seemed to see the stampede from a front line position and the bumped ride to a casualty clearing station, and he seemed to see the fresh bandaged stump, and he seemed to see the first tentative strokes of the brush that was guided by a left hand. He nodded, the money was no problem. "Thank you, Mr. Penn, so what is your work in Croatia?" It was why he had hoped that he would not have to trail around with an interpreter, and he started, hesitantly, to talk through what he knew of Dorrie Mowat. Without an interpreter he might as well sit in his hotel room, but it was the sharing that was difficult. The story was personal. It was the story of a woman sitting at a fresh grave with her dogs and with the scent of newly cut flowers. Jovic did not interrupt. He leaned back and he swirled the coffee dregs in the cup, and his mouth had curled, as if the story was a bad joke. Perhaps he tried to impress the young man, perhaps he thought that the young man would be better able to do his work if he knew it all. He was reciting the crimes of Dorrie Mowat, and he felt a sense of shame as he pushed through the litany, and as he talked he looked into the hard eyes that flickered, dulled, back at him. He was dead without an interpreter, and he had tried three times the day before to ring the number given him at the embassy and taken back the gabble of local language and not been understood. Penn wondered what it would be like to try to paint with a left hand. He felt that he had betrayed a trust in the telling to a stranger. He pushed across the table the telephone number given him at the embassy. '… She wants to know. I've been hired to write a report. Her mother wants to know how her daughter died. It's why I've come." He watched Jovic's back. Jovic was at the telephone on the bar. When he came back to the table his face was a mask. He picked up his cigarettes and gestured, coolly, for Penn to follow. Penn felt himself an innocent.

"Choked me, but nothing we could do. I took responsibility, I said we had to leave them. I'll remember that bastard, that Stan-kovic, if I ever get him in my sights. But Special Forces can't hang about… It really choked me to leave them."

Ham was rested, and it was good patter. The patter had been laced with what 3 Para would have done, and he gave the cocktail body by telling the major and the captain in the first-floor room of the old police station that not even the RLI, nor the SADF's Recce Commandos nor their 44 Para Brigade, would have done it different. He had learned the patter when he had been with the Internationals and there had been jokers from the Rhodesian Light Infantry and guys who had fought with the South African Defence Force. There had been jokers and guys then who had done the rounds, done time as Warriors of Principle and Soldiers of Conscience, and Ham had learned enough from them to give good patter.

Ham said, "We couldn't have moved better. The "Black Hawks" wouldn't have done it different. I don't know how they got to jump us. Never saw anything before we were jumped. Goddamn shame, because we weren't that far from the position, but once they'd jumped us then it was like the place was heaving with them. If we'd tried to shoot it out then we were all stiffed. We did what we could, and you can't ask more than that."

That was great patter to have thrown in the Black Hawks, because they were 'claimed' as the elite of the Croat army, and he had seen the major take a note with his pencil. Ham thought they would all get called in, the survivors from Sector North, but he was happy to have been called in the first. It had been a crazy dumb idea to send six jerks pushing across the Kupa river and beyond the lines into Sector North of occupied territory, and it was good that the major and the captain should understand that, too right.