Gerald Seymour - Heart of Danger

And all the rest was shit…

It was as if she called. It was as if he should follow. He knew that he wanted her love, certainty, more than anything he had wanted in his life. He craved the freedom that had been hers. As if he heard her loud laughter, daring him.

Not finished, because it was not begun.

Ham saw him come through the door. Then he was looking round, checking the tables, searching for a face.

"Hello, squire, funny seeing you in this shit heap…"

Most evenings Ham ate alone. Couldn't abide the crap they served up in the old police station. Most evenings he asked the guys if they'd come down the town and join him, and most evenings they had a reason not to, fuck them. He ate alone in the cafe on Krizaniceva inside the walls of the old city. He pushed out the chair opposite him.

'… So what brings you down the sharp end, what brings you to sunny Karlovac?"

"You wanted a bit of tracing done. You wanted to know where your wife was, and your kiddie. I'll do that."

Ham said quickly, "Can't pay a fancy fee…"

"No fee, no charge."

Ham said, suddenly doubtful, "Not for fucking charity. What's the game, squire?"

"For a favour."

"You tell me, what's the favour?"

"You said you'd walked into Sector North. I want a route. I want to know where to go, where not to go. That's my fee for the trace."

Wide-eyed, Ham said, "That's fucking dumb talk…"

"No charge for the trace, but you give me a route so as I can walk to Rosenovici."

Ham said, "You don't get me to go…"

"I want a route, to go on my own."

There was the same message on each of the boxes, different languages. The boxes were stacked high to the ceiling cross struts. Baby Food (Nutritional) Gift of the People of Germany. Pasta (Shapes various) Gift of the People of Italy. Medicines Antenatal/ Postnatal Gift of the People of Holland. Rice -Gift of the People of the United States of America. Tents (with blankets) Gift of the People of the United Kingdom. The biggest section of boxes was labelled as a mobile operating theatre Gift of the People of Sweden and there were cigarettes in boxes, and alcohol, and soya, and hospital drugs. Penn was walked down the corridor between the boxes that filled the shed. He read each label. He thought of the advertisements he saw in the papers back home, and those on the commercial radio stations. He thought of the kids standing in the High Street where he lived and rattling collection tins, and he thought of the women who knitted warm clothes for refugees, and he thought the business was dirty. He had not been brought to the shed for food, medicines, drugs, nor for cigarettes nor alcohol. The mercenary had brought him to the shed because that was where he could buy a gun. Anything could be bought, that was what Penn had been told. Anything he had the money to pay for he could buy in the shed. Ham had brought him out from the old quarter of Karlovac, out through the modern city, and he had seen the scar marks of the shelling, and they had crossed over the Kupa river and headed into the industrial estate. It was a dead city. No smoke from the chimneys, no lorries carrying away finished products. The city had died because the city sat astride the front line. There had been two 5-series BMWs parked outside the shed, and an Alfa. A giant man had come quickly through the door of the shed and his gaze had been hostile, intimidating, before he had seen Ham. There was an office space at the far end of the corridor between the cardboard and wooden crates. Ham had said he should take a gun. Ham had said that walking into Sector North without a gun was about the same as going in bare-arsed. Ham had said that he should pack a gun before he packed his toothpaste. Three men were in the partitioned office at the end of the shed. They lolled back in easy chairs and there was a haze of cigar smoke, and one listened at a telephone and one was talking local language into a mobile, and each wore designer jeans and a loose-fitting designer leather jacket as if for uniform. They were all under thirty years of age. Penn stood distant in the doorway and each casually shook Ham's hand, but the enthusiasm was the mercenary's, and they seemed to Penn to regard Ham as dog shit on the pavement. What sort of gun did he want? Penn shrugged, like they should tell him what was on offer, and there was a big peal of laughter from the heavy man who was not listening on the telephone. Good English spoken. He could have a T-54 tank (Soviet), he could have a 120mm howitzer (American), he could have an RPG-7 rocket launcher (Soviet), he could have a Stinger ground-to-air (American), if he could pay… The mocking laughter subsided… He could have a Heckler amp; Koch machine pistol, or an Uzi high-fire-rate sub-machine gun, if he could pay… The eyes were locked on him… Ham had said to him, where he was going, every male understood the workings of firearms, their culture, cradle-to-grave stuff. Penn felt like stale piss. He knew how to strip down and clean and reassemble a. 410 shotgun because that was what he had used around the hedges and fields and woods of the farm where his father drove a tractor. Now he felt inadequate. Penn knew how to strip and clean and reassemble a Browning 9mm automatic pistol because that was what he had been shown on the two-day firearms course organized for newcomers into A Branch. It was fourteen years since he had downed a pigeon with the shotgun, and it was seven years since the two-day firearms course. He asked if they had a Browning 9mm automatic pistol. The heavy man swivelled his chair. The telephone was down and the mobile was switched off. They seemed to strip him with their eyes. The heavy man dragged the keys from his pocket that were held to his waist belt by a thin chain, reached forward and unlocked the tall wall safe. He was spilling handguns onto the desk, pistols and revolvers, short-barrelled and long-barrelled, with or without silencer attachment, old and new. When it came, Penn recognized the Browning 9mm automatic pistol, no silencer. It was pushed towards him, like a toy. He lifted it from the table, held it. It felt strange in his hand, unfamiliar, and he tried to hide that. How many rounds of ammunition? He had fired four magazines on the two-day course. He said that he would like to take fifty rounds. Again the mocking. Two hundred US dollars for the Browning 9mm automatic pistol, one hundred US dollars for the magazines and the ammunition. And twenty-five US dollars each for four RG-42 fragmentation grenades that Ham said he should have. And fifteen US dollars for the olive-green backpack that was pulled off the floor, from among the rubbish. And ten US dollars for webbing and for a canteen and for a knife. And five US dollars for the boots. Penn peeled the American dollars off the wad in his wallet. The heavy man said that he liked to offer a discount, and the discount was five dollars. Penn didn't smile. Penn handed him the four hundred and twenty-five dollars. He stood his ground, waited on his receipt. He hitched one strap of the backpack over his blazer shoulder so that it hung loose against him. He stood in the doorway. "Thank you, gentlemen. I hope you'll give me a good price when I bring them back." Penn was halfway down the corridor between the boxes and crates before their laughter subsided. The nice girl, Penny, who showed some respect for him, brought back the backgrounder sheet she had typed for him. Henry Carter looked up, smiled at her the way that he thought young people liked to be smiled at. He thought she was a nice girl because he had worked with her father, a considerably long time ago, but he always made the point of asking after her father's health, just to remind her that he had pedigree. "Still hard at it then, Mr. Carter?" He rested from his writing. "Yes, it's rather an interesting one." "Very interesting, what I've just typed up for you. Will there be more for me to type up?" "Tomorrow…" He grinned, then whispered, "Dragon alert…" He could see over her shoulder, the return from tea break of the supervisor. The nice girl, Penny, scuttled away from him. The file was taking shape now, and he placed her typed work where he thought it relevant, near to the start. Good background, notwithstanding the arguable advantages of hindsight, he thought always useful, and the thin biography. Always useful to improve the understanding of a file. Well, if a future reader of the file did not comprehend the situation on the ground, and the prime player's personality, then it would not be easy to appreciate the quite dreadful hazard into which this young fellow proposed to walk. He read back what he had written.