Gerald Seymour - Heart of Danger

…" "There was a battle in December of 1991 for the village of Rosenovici, in the Municipality of Glina." Penn battered on. "The material I gather will go to the United Nations Commission for the Prosecution of War Criminals…" "You are a busy man, I am a busy man…" Penn saw that Jovic queried him and his eyebrow was lifted in trifled amusement. '… I am not interested in war crimes. I am not concerned with the prosecution, or freedom, of war criminals. I want to know what happened in Rosenovici in December of 1991 when Miss Dorothy Mowat was murdered. I apologize, but that is all I am interested in." He saw the annoyance furrow the head of the man. "The greatest human rights abuse in Europe for fifty years, you are not concerned?" "I want to know what happened in Rosenovici in December in 1991 when Miss Dorothy Mowat died. Point…" He saw the sneer creep over the man's mouth. "You cross the great continent of Europe, You visit our poor and humble country. You arrive late after the war in which my poor and humble country has fought for its very survival. You come when the finest of our young people have made the ultimate sacrifice of their lives, after our old men have been tortured, disembowelled, after our old women have been beaten, raped, after our children have been slaughtered… But you want only to know how a young Englishwoman was killed… You are not concerned with law and justice, but with making a report…" Penn said evenly, "I have been paid to make a report on the circumstances of Miss Dorothy Mowat's death." The sneer played wide. "And she was precious, and the thousands who have died were without value? To make her so precious, was she a queen?" There was the scrape of Jovic's chair beside him. It was the end of the interview. Penn stood. He felt so damned tired. It had been time wasted, as time had been wasted at the embassy. Penn said, "From what I heard, what I was told, she was a pig of a woman."

"There's no goddamn hot water…" Marty stood in the door and shouted in frustration. The towel was loose at his waist. '… I want goddamn hot water."

"There is no hot water."

"Heh, smart man, I am not a fool. I know there is no hot water. I want my shower, I want hot water. I pay for hot water…"

"There is no hot water. There will be hot water for your shower in the morning."

The doctor sat at the bare wood table and his study books were in front of him. The evening had come and the light was poor in the room, but the doctor had not switched on the electricity nor had he switched on the immersion that heated water for the shower.

The American yelled, "Damn it, I pay for hot water. It's part of the rental that I can go take a shower, and not in the morning. I want …"

And Marty let it go. He let it go for his own survival. If he did not let it go, if he kept shouting about the need for hot water for his shower then he would get the big story, again. The big story was Vukovar. Not that Marty Jones did not think the story should be told, just that he knew the story of each day, each night, each hour, of Vukovar, because the doctor had told him it. The doctor had been in the hospital through the siege of Vukovar. Marty paid $175 a week, $700 each calendar month, for his room and for the shared use of the sitting room and the kitchen and the bathroom, and the rental was supposed to include hot water, each evening, for a shower. He let it go… and the doctor should not have been studying close print without the electricity, and he let that go. The doctor was paying his way through the college for surgeons and he was keeping his mother, widowed in Vukovar, and his nephews, orphaned in Vukovar, and he was keeping the family of his close friend, killed in the hospital at Vukovar when the 250kg cluster bombs fell. He knew it all because he had been told it. It was not easy for an American, employed out of Geneva by the United Nations Human Rights Committee, to find good accommodation in Zagreb. It was damn near impossible, on the allowances paid him, to find anything that was a personal apartment with its own front door. He lodged with the doctor, it was the best he could get. And if Marty Jones complained that, again, there was no hot water for his shower then he would get the story of the amputations carried out with a firewood saw, and the casualty wounds cleaned with boiled rainwater, and the surgery patients kept warm by a woman's hair dryer, and the fatals stacked in the yard because it was too dangerous to go bury them and there were no coffins and the pigs and dogs running wild and going for them… He didn't need the stories, not when he was scratchy and hot and at the end of his day. "Right, no shower. No shower and no problem…" He went back to the bathroom. He turned the water tap and sponged soap under his armpits. The doctor called to him, "Marty, did you have a good day…?" He shuddered under the cold water. It was hard to have a good day in the converted freight container that had been dumped on the corner of the parade square of the barracks on Ilica, his work place. It would be a good day tomorrow when he drove the jeep down to Karlovac and got to talk with the new arrivals from some village in the Prijedor Municipality. But the best days for Marty Jones were indeed when he sat in the converted freight container, where the sun cooked the interior, where he had his computer. The best days were when he scanned the memory of the computer through what he called his 'snapshots'. These were his interviews with refugees, now from Bosnia, earlier from Croatia. The pick of the best days was when he scanned the memory with the trace, when he hacked through to a recurring name. The name might be that of an officer in the former JNA, or it might be the name of a local policeman, or a mayor's name, or the name of a man who had come through from civilian life to take a position of command in the militia, or the name of a warlord like Arkan or Seselj. The interviews in the memory were always recorded either by audio or video tape, and because he was a lawyer by training, Marty knew what was necessary as evidence. The best days were when he found the traces, when a name recurred, when a name gathered evidence. It was what he was paid to do, to prepare cases and accumulate evidence. The close friend of the doctor had been butchered after the fall of Vukovar when the wounded had been given by the regular army to the militia, when the grave had been dug at Ovcara, when the wounded had been shot. There was a named man, there were good traces, there was evidence of the order being given for a war crime.

"Getting there, not too bad a day…"

He tore the message pages into many pieces.

Two message pages, telephoned from England, from Mrs. Mary Braddock, requiring him to call back.

He tore them up, dropped them into the rubbish bin in the bathroom, and let himself out of the hotel room.

No way that he was going to jump to her, no bloody way that he was going to be on the end of her string. She would wait until he was ready to report, and she could sweat, fret, whatever, until he was ready… And he had little to report. He could have reported a failed meeting with a First Secretary at the embassy, and a failed meeting with an official from an out-of-reality office believing that the cavalry would come, one sweet day, and take the bad guys off to the thorn bush tree where the rope hung… Jovic had said that he would fix something for the morning. What would he fix for the morning? It was not often that Penn felt loneliness, but he felt it here after two wasted days, which was why he had snatched the offer of a few drinks with some friends of the interpreter.

Jovic was waiting outside, as if the hotel was dross. They walked in the darkness away from the hotel.

"I don't know yet, but something, I have to make some more calls. You worry too much, and there will be something…"