Gerald Seymour - Heart of Danger

The Political Officer had come to Salika to offer what he called 'moral weight' to the efforts of the Canadian and Kenyan police officers. He used big language, and he recognized that his words fell empty.

"You should know, Mr. Stankovic, that each obstruction of our work is logged and filed. If I were in your position, Mr. Stankovic, I would be unhappy that my actions had attracted so many reports…"

"Go get the shit out of here."

He regarded the man as a brute. The Political Officer's training was in the quiet world of diplomats and bureaucrats and functionaries. He assumed that he was regarded as a dull man at cocktails and poor company at the dinner parties of the social circuit, but he believed himself to be a man of rectitude and decency. Because of what he believed himself to be, any meeting with Milan Stankovic, was personal pain… and there were so many like men scattered among each valley of the area that he covered from the spa town of Topusko. The length of Bosnia, the width of Croatia, there had been atrocities and graves dug, through the length and the width there were thousands of old women, old men, washed-up debris on a shore, who died alone for the want of a parcel of food brought in secrecy… He made the point of calling this one by the title of "Mister', little victories were hard to come by and Mister Stankovic always wore military fatigues.

"We have the right of free access anywhere in this territory…"

"You go where I say, only where I say. I say you get the shit out."

Nothing of his upbringing in Ivalo had prepared him for confrontation with the likes of Mr. Milan Stankovic, nor for the others similar to him who ruled over similar villages. Nothing of his short work in the Foreign Ministry in Helsinki had prepared him, nor anything in the hushed corridors beyond the Secretary General's inner sanctum. Once, a year after his posting to New York, jogging with his wife and his three children at night in Central Park, he had met such a beast, seen a knife, handed over his wallet and his credit cards from the pouch at his waist. It had been his only experience of the beasts before coming to Topusko. But that beast had gone, running for bushes and shadows and cover, had not stayed in conceit to confront the weakness of him and his family… He knew the Headmaster by sight, for conversation, and he saw him coming up the road behind Stankovic. There was always a curious undressed look about a man without the spectacles that were habitual to him. The Headmaster had twice offered him a game of chess, but there had never been the opportunity. There were deep orange-blue bruises on the Headmaster's face, and welt scars on his cheeks, and the lower lip was split and angry.

"We have a file on you, Mr. Stankovic, that grows more thick each week. I promise you, from the depths of my heart, that we are not stupid men. We have the file…"

The hand was on the holster, fiddling for the locking button of the flap.

"We have a file. Maybe you will be an old man when the file is presented to an examining magistrate. You are one of those, Mr. Stankovic, who tells me loudly that Serbs and Croats can never again live together I tell you, never is a long time. My experience, Mr. Stankovic, those who shout loudest that there can never be reconciliation are those who hide the greatest guilt…"

But the pistol was out of the holster. The Political Officer rated his file as a puny weapon when set against the Makharov pistol. The pistol was armed. The clatter of the metal parts seared at him. For seventeen years he had believed in the power, glory, authority, of the blue flag. The reality was a loaded pistol on a village road. There was a shout from beside the Canadian policeman's jeep, a wiry little man in camouflage fatigues trying to peer past the bulk of the Kenyan's body and into the back of the jeep. He said in his reports that went to the desk of the Director of Civilian Affairs for on-passing to the Secretariat in New York that there was so much cruelty, so much fear, and his power of intervention was so minimal. Milan Stankovic was striding away towards the jeep, and the Headmaster had reached him.

"My friend, what happened to you..,?" The question of a fool.

The small piece of paper was put in his hand. He was told it was a prescription for the lenses of spectacles.

"We will have them made, my promise, we will bring them to you. Was it him that did that to you…?" The question of an idiot.

The Headmaster shrugged, turned away.

They had the door of the jeep open, and the Canadian and the Kenyan were blocked from intervention by the rifles. He saw the bag lifted out and held high, and passed to the hands of Milan Stankovic. It was because of the bag that he had come to Salika with the two policemen, and the Political Officer had believed he possessed the seniority to argue his way through the roadblocks that curtained Rosenovici. The face of Milan Stankovic was in front of him, and the face was contorted in hatred. The white plastic bag was held up. The three cartons of milk were tipped out and each one in turn was stamped on. The three loaves of bread were kicked, as footballs, across the road and into the rainwater ditch, and the cheese and the ham, and the apples from the kitchens of the hotel at Topusko where he had his room.

Another failure.

Failure was the reality of the power, glory, authority, of the blue flag.

He had good control of his voice, did not raise it. "What, Mr. Stankovic, is a war crime? The killing of the wounded after the finish of a battle is a war crime… Who, Mr. Stankovic, is a war criminal? The leader of the men who killed the wounded after the finish of a battle… Do you sleep well, Mr. Stankovic, in your bed? Each night I add to the file…"

"Get the shit out, and stay out."

Another failure.

The Political Officer could not see in the face of Milan Stankovic if there was guilt or shame or fear. He hoped they came, journeyed to the beast in the quiet of the night, gnawed at him. It was all he could hope for, that the brute's face would, one day, quiver in guilt, shame or fear, one day…

He was losing time.

With the lost time came impatience.

Penn wanted to be close up to Rosenovici before the total darkness came down on the woodland of birches.

With the impatience came arrogance.

The wire line that marked the perimeter of the minefield ran away to his left and seemed to reach as far as the edge of the tree line. If he were to skirt the mines going left then he estimated that he would have to break the cover of the trees, and he reckoned there was still sufficient light for his movement to be seen. He looked up to the right and the barbed wire stretched away to a rock wall. To go round the minefield, going right, he would have to backtrack and then climb the cliff, and that would be serious delay. He wanted to be close up to Rosenovici… Penn could see the evidence of the mines.

The trees were thinly spaced here, as if they had been coppiced within the last five years, and there was room for armoured personnel carriers or tracked vehicles to power between the tree stumps of the old harvesting.

The evidence of the mines was from their antennae.

It was his impatience and his arrogance that led him to step over the barbed wire line. The antennae, as far as Penn could see, were laid out in straight lines. The antennae of the mines were eighteen inches high, reaching to just below his knee cap. Penn had never been on a course, not for a weekend and not for half an hour, on mines. It was pretty obvious to an impatient and arrogant man, a man running late, that the mines with the antennae were developed to catch the undersurface of a vehicle chassis if the wheels or tracks rolled clear. He could step out briskly, and ahead of him was better light to tell him that the last of the woodland was near. There would be better light because a field was ahead, and if the map of Alija was correct, if she had drawn it with accuracy, then the village of Rosenovici was beyond that field. The minefield was no problem. There was a quiet around him because the tractors were gone now, and the harsh voices of the women, and the shouting of the children was stilled.