Gerald Seymour - Heart of Danger

A small shed. A stone shed with a roof of rusted corrugated iron. Precious dynamite would have been wasted on the shed, fire would have had little to burn. In the shed the dog found a plastic bag. The bag was white, and inside the bag were dried crumbs of bread. The shed was forty paces short of what had been the home of the Dubelj pair, goddamn Ustase. Between the shed and the home of the Dubelj couple was a small paddock, thick with weeds. A cow had been kept in the paddock and a goat and two pigs. Stevo had the cow, and Milo had the pigs. The postman had taken the goat, but had killed and eaten it. He had felt strong until they reached the house of Katica Dubelj.

The door hung open, held only by the lower hinge. It was dark inside. The dog held back. The postman kicked the dog through the door. The carpenter was behind him and there were the raw scratch scars on the cheeks of his face, he was not hurrying to push past him. He went inside, into the goddamn smell and the darkness. He held tight to his gun. He had to stand, very still, and wait for his eyes to work for him. The dog was in the corner. The image cleared. The dog scratched in a heap of rags, maybe sacks, in the corner. He saw the hurricane lamp that had died and the bow saw and the jemmy and the lump hammer dropped on the old linoleum. There was another bag, white, and he lifted the bag and crumbs of bread crust fell from it. The dog had come from the corner and sniffed at a chewed apple core.

The dog held a scent down the lane from the house and through the entrance to the field where the bulldozer had crushed the wooden gate.

The dog followed a scent that skirted the low wall of grey black mud around the pit, went over the tyre marks of the jeeps. There had been heavy rain in the night and Branko slipped and fell in the field as he tried to keep pace with the dog. He could see Milan above him, close to the tree line. The dog went past the grave.

The dog reached the small ditch that came down the field and, at the ditch, the dog lost the scent.

They tried the dog up the ditch, right side and left side, but the dog had lost it.

The postman trudged up the field, sliding, cursing, until he reached Milan. He showed Milan the plastic bags in which they had found the crumbs, and the chewed apple core. He told Milan that someone had been there, recently, had eaten there, slept there, the scar scratches on the carpenter's face proved it. He asked Milan to come down into Rosenovici so that he could see for himself where they had found the plastic bags and the apple core. Milan refused him.

Milan was the postman's leader, he would never criticize him. He watched Milan walk away. He had taught Milan, boy and man, everything he knew of the game of basketball and he had been superb. Milan walked away along the edge of the tree line, took the long route so that he would not have to cross the village. He could remember when Milan, in attack, brilliant in the dribble, fantastic jumping for the net, had led Glina Municipality to victory against Karlovac Municipality, taken the cup, a player without doubts. Milan was going the long way round the village towards the bridge.

The postman did not understand the goddamn problem.

Ham had slung a white T-shirt, filthy as if it had been used to clean the plugs of a car engine, across a low bush of thorn. They sat a dozen paces back from where the T-shirt was draped and Ham talked Penn through the maintenance and cleaning of the Browning 9mm automatic pistol, and then made Penn do it, and then tied a handkerchief round the front of Penn's face and made him do it again, and he made Penn load a magazine with the blindfold still in place. It was seven years since the two-day firearms course and it was more forgotten than he had realized.

Later Ham would show him what he had also damn near forgotten: how to crouch, lock his legs, extend his arms, find the target, aim and hold it, how to fire the pistol. Ham talked low and keen, as if firing the pistol was of importance.

In the grip on the back seat of the Cherokee jeep were seven video tapes, nine hours of audio recording, thirty-seven pages of handwritten notes.

Marty drove along the wide highway, back to Zagreb.

They were good 'snapshots', the video and the audio and the notes from the stories of the latest refugees from the village outside the Bosnian town of Prijedor. He drove steadily, did not exceed the speed limit, although the road ahead was empty. EWT 19, traumatized but coherent, had said that he had seen seven pairs of fathers forced to have oral sex with their sons, before the fathers and sons were shot evidence. EWT 12, thirteen years old but with a visage going on sixty, had said that he had seen prisoners ordered to castrate fellow prisoners with their teeth evidence. And plenty more… eyewitnesses telling his microphone of rape and beating and killing, telling it like it was evidence. The evidence would go from his notes onto disk. The disks and the video tapes and the audio would go on the courier flight back to the second-floor office in Geneva. But it was just damned ridiculous… It had hurt him that he had not seen the German lady when he had pulled out from the Transit Centre. He had wanted to see her, wanted to be with her, had checked her office, actually gone up the staircase and through each of the third- and the second-floor rooms, and the dispensary, and the kindergarten and the kitchens, been told she wasn't there, anywhere, and kept looking for her. It had been a long time since he had last gone looking for a woman, and wanted to be with that woman… It was just damned ridiculous that his work, work of this importance, should be dumped off in a damned converted container.

He was coming into Zagreb, picking up the traffic.

Had he looked at himself, which he did not, Marty Jones might not have liked what he saw. His mind did not acknowledge the ravages of stress. The videos that he filmed were of rape, the audios he recorded were of torture, the notes that he wrote were of foul cruelty. The woman he reported to in Geneva, three weeks back when she was down in Zagreb, had said to him, "Don't you get sick of it, Marty? Why don't they just kill each other? What does it do to you, Marty? Why do they have to cut out eyes, cut off noses, cut off heads why can't they just kill each other. How do you stay sane, Marty?" He had not known how to answer her.

But he never looked in the mirror. He had a dream, and the dream was a prepared case… It was just damned ridiculous that he had to make the dream in a converted freight container.

He drove into Ilica barracks. The parking lot available to him was up by the A block, where the big shots were. There were workmen carrying prefabricated partitioning and timbers in through the main doors. The big shots were extending their office space, reaching into the roof area. The big shots had space, and he had the damned converted freight container.

For the rest of the day he would get his notes onto disk, and get the package off, and then he might just raise some damned noise.

He unlocked the door of his container, pulled it open, and the wall of heat hit him.

The crows above them had scattered with the first shot. The quiet came again to the woodland of birches. The magazine was exhausted. Four hits on the T-shirt, two hits for every three misses. Ham didn't criticize. Back on the training course the instructor had given him hell with three hits for every five misses. Penn guessed that Ham didn't criticize because it was too late to rubbish him. Quite relaxed he had been on the training course, but time was not running then… When he had cleaned the pistol, he sat with Ham and they went over the maps. They had a tourist map that Ham had bought in Karlovac, and they had the sketch map that Ham had drawn. The sketch map would take him to within six miles of Rosenovici. There were minefields marked on Ham's hand-drawn map, and strong points and villages where there would be patrols and roadblocks. And all the time Ham seemed to watch him, in a manner open but sly. Ham watched him as if he were meat hanging from the hook in a butcher's window, evaluated his quality. Penn thought Ham was making a reckoning on whether he would get himself back to go for the hunting of Karen and Dawn, and he thought also that Ham judged him capable of bringing back intelligence bullshit that the mercenary would present to his officers… He was a rotten little man but he had taken the one chance and perhaps would be remembered. Dorrie was a horrid young woman but she had taken the one chance and was loved. Jovic was a prickly bastard who learned to paint with his left hand, and might succeed… It was about winning his own respect, about walking his own path, taking the one chance… And the afternoon was slipping.