Gerald Seymour - Heart of Danger

The darting bright eyes had narrowed, focused. The new beers were in front of them.

"Smartarse, eh?"

"Straight question, shouldn't be too difficult to manufacture a straight answer," Penn said.

But a diverted answer. "Just heard a word, the word triggered. You know how it is, squire? You hear a word said and you get to listen. It's not a crime…"

"What was the word?"

"Rosenovici, the Croat village in Sector North, you were talking to that hag about Rosenovici…" "You know Rosenovici?" Penn tried to stay casual, didn't know whether he succeeded. The confidence was flowing again. "I know Rosenovici, hell of a battle there, big fight. Warrior of Principle, squire, that's me. Bad fire fight there…" "You were in Rosenovici?" "The village was cut off. They'd brought tanks up, T-54s, wicked bloody things. They'd got the old Stalin's organ, that's the multiple rocket launcher…" "Were you in the village?" "They had artillery up there, howitzers. There was right shit going in there…" "You were there?" "Well, I wasn't actually

…" "Where were you?" The eyes darted away. "I wasn't actually there, would have been minced if I was there. We were close up. We'd been sent in to make contact with our guys who'd legged it into the woods. We had a corridor open for them to get out through. We had it on the radio. We had it on the radio when they signed off, put the flag up. I was near there…" "Not actually there?" "Near there, last week…" "Walked into Sector North?" "Didn't take the bloody Central line. "Course I bloody walked. Recce job. It's bad shit in there. We lost two guys… These fuckers, they've no bottle. We had two guys wounded but the other fuckers wouldn't stop for them, bottled out. No lie, I saw them killed. Their throats were slit. They used knives on them. I couldn't do anything because the other fuckers had bottled out…" "You can walk into Sector North?" The man was drinking faster, and flicking his fingers for the barman, and shovelling the banknotes onto the bar. "If you know what you're at, which I do. Know where to cross the Kupa river, know where the mines are, which I do, and the strong points… He's a bad bastard in there, he's the commander of the militia. He's at the village across the stream from Rosenovici. He's Milan Stankovic. He did it himself, used the knife. I could have dropped him, if the other fuckers hadn't bottled out…" Penn felt the pinch in his stomach. He swayed, slightly, on his stool. He held tight to his glass. '… Say, squire, you know where Nagorno Karabakh is? Where the hell is that fucking place?" Penn said, "It's a bit left of here. You know those little globes that kiddies have, where you put a pencil in the top to sharpen it, well on one of those it's about a half-inch to the left." "You pissing on me, squire…?" "It's the other side of Turkey." "I heard there was a good little war there. I heard they wanted good men. Could be South Africa, security, but there's all those niggers. This is just fucked up here…" "Why did you follow me, Ham?" "Who said I bloody Penn cut him. "An answer to my question, Ham why did you follow me?" Like a ball being punctured. The bombast of the man went flat. He was standing, off the stool, and he was pulling a thin wallet from his hip. The photograph in the pouch of the wallet was of a skinny little woman, brunette, and the woman was holding a child in a party frock. "It's Karen, and that's Dawn, my little one." "Why me?" "You're a bloody gumshoe, you're a dick. That's what you are, a private detective." Then the story rolled. An old photograph, yes. She'd done a runner, yes. She'd taken the kiddie, yes. No contact and letters sent back "Not Known at this Address', yes. And he was far from home and when the bullshit was turned off then he wanted the love of his woman and his kiddie, yes. A lonely boring little man, yes. He wanted them found, his Karen and his Dawn, yes… Penn would not have known the answers before he had gone to work at Alpha Security. He had had his share already, bombastic men coming up the stairs to the office above the launderette, showing a photograph of a woman and a kiddie, and wanting them found… Basil had told him that looking for a woman who had quit with a child was a "Go Careful Area'. Basil had said it was necessary to go carefully or the woman might end up in the casualty section… He looked into the woman's face, knotted, and the child's face, strained. He took an address, a police station in Karlovac, he wrote down a telephone number. He was told to ask for 2nd Bn, 110 (Karlovac) Brigade, then for "Ham', everybody would know Ham. He looked a last time at the photograph, then gave it back. "You didn't tell me your name, squire…" Penn eased off his stool. "I'll be in touch, maybe."

"Yes, I saw her…" It was Jovic's success. The tram ride out to the west of Zagreb, through the old quarter, then out amongst the apartment blocks of the capital's new suburbs. Jovic's success had brought them to the end of the tram route, to where the track ended. Jovic had said that the wood huts used by the construction workers of the last block to be built were now a refugee camp. To Penn it was a desperate place. There had been rain in the night and the puddles glistened in the first sunlight of the morning. The road to the camp would have been gouged out by heavy plant equipment. He stepped carefully, but the mud gathered at the caps of his cleaned shoes. There were children here, but too beaten to play with a football, there were men standing listless and watching their coming. The place had its own aggression. He had seen small gardens carved out of the rubble at the edge of the camp, and thin thorn bushes had been planted round the plots, pitiful little efforts to make a home in a refugee camp. The huts were for communal living. They walked inside, carried more rainwater and mud inside, as others had done before, then into the gloom of a corridor. A line of men waited to use the basins of the wash house, a queue of women waited to use the lavatories. Jovic had given a name, waited, and they had been led by a sullen guide to a bleak and small room. "I had taken food to the cellar in Franjo and Ivana's farmhouse, in the early morning. There had been a halt in the shelling and I was able to go with food. We had only bread to give to the wounded, and the bread was old. It was when I was there, in the cellar, that the firing started again, and I could not leave. I was in the cellar when the village fell, when the Partizans came…" Her name was Sylvia. She shared her wood-walled room with her husband, and he lay on the bed with dead eyes, and Sylvia said he was now diabetic. There were two boys, who she said were aged ten years and seven years, and the older boy twitched all the time and the younger sat across his mother's lap and would not be separated from her. Penn judged her close to nervous collapse, and he wondered whether it was worse now, or had been worse when the village was fought for. She chain-smoked cigarettes. "She had come with the boy from Australia, and she would not leave him. Everyone told her that it was not safe to stay in Rosenovici, and she ignored everyone. Perhaps I understood her, because my eldest son was with the fighters, and I would not leave the village. I cannot say whether she realized properly the extent of the danger but she refused to go. It was early on the Thursday morning that I reached the cellar with the bread. My son was in the cellar.. ." Quietly, Jovic told him what she said. Penn wrote the words fast in his notebook. He was humbled. She had lost her home, and she had lost her future, and her mind was turned, and she dragged hard on the filters of the cigarettes and threw half-smoked ends into an old tin. She said that she had been the secretary to the director of the railway station at Karlovac. "She had come, herself, the previous evening, when there was still shooting, to the church where we were hiding and she had taken clothes that had been torn up for bandages and for dressings, and we had told her then that it was dangerous for her to be with the wounded. She never listened, in the month that I knew her, that she was in the village, it was never her way to listen. When I came into the cellar she was bandaging the wound of my son. I can see it. It is never away from me. I see it each night, and it is near to a year and a half ago. I will never forget it. My son had hold of her wrist. She was trying to bandage the wound at his stomach, but he could not be still because of his pain and it was difficult for her to make the bandage stay. I can see it because there was a pi all candle lighting the cellar. My son held her wrist as she tried to make the bandage and I saw his love for her. They all watched her, where they lay, they all watched her and they all loved her…" He thought of what Mary had told him, stories and pain. "I knew the village could not fight on for much longer, and there was too much firing for me to go back again to the church. I thought that I would be useful if I stayed in the cellar, and I thought I could help the Partizan soldiers to move the wounded after the village fell. I thought they would want help to move the wounded boys to the ambulances to take them to the hospital in Glina. It was in the afternoon on the Thursday that they came into the cellar, but it was not soldiers. The men who came were from Salika, that is the Serb village across the stream from Rosenovici. I knew all of them. The first who came in was the postman from Salika, and quickly after him was the gravedigger, and there was a carpenter who had made the chairs for our kitchen. They were fierce with us. Most of the wounded were kicked. They were shouting at them to stand up, and none of them could stand and they were kicked because they could not stand. She shouted back at them, I do not think they understood her language, but I saw her punch the postman when he kicked one of the fighters. I thought they had a fear of her, I thought they did not know what to do with her. We were taken up the steps from the cellar and she made the postman, Branko, and the carpenter, Milo, and the gravedigger, Stevo, help to lift the fighters up the steps. He was in the garden of Franjo and Ivana's farmhouse.. ." Tasting the coffee, feeling the warmth of Mary's kitchen, hearing the pain stories. He shut them out… "I have shame because I did not have the strength that she. had. They threatened me with a gun, they told me I could not help. I was the last out of the cellar. He was in the garden. They did not know what to do, it was for him to decide what to do. Some of our fighters were kneeling and some were on the grass in the garden, and she held two of them upright, and all the time she shouted at him, and he went to her and he hit her with the end of the barrel of his rifle and she was still shouting at him. I would not say he was a friend, but I knew him well enough, and there were days when I used to accept a ride from him as far as Turanj where he worked and then I would take a bus into Karlovac. She was not shouting at him, pleading, she was shouting at him in anger. I should have called to her, told her not to shout at him, but she would not have listened… They made a line of them. There were some who could walk, just, and there were some who were carried, and she helped two of them. They took them along the little road in the village to the square where there was the cafe and the store and the school. They took them past the school and away along the lane that goes to the fields. He gave the instructions, they took them away down the lane because that is what was ordered by Milan Stankovic…"