Gerald Seymour - Heart of Danger

… The Headmaster sat cramped in the cell built of concrete blocks and the light came through the meshed grille at eye level in the steel door. He had heard the postman talking about his hands and his fingernails, and he did not know why the state of his hands or fingernails was important… The Headmaster sat in his damp trousers, sat huddled in his jacket, and they had taken away his tie and his belt and the laces from his shoes. He did not know what he would say when Milan Stankovic returned from his meeting, wherever he went, and his mind was too terrorized to concoct a reason for his having been alone, in darkness, soaked wet from crossing the stream's ford, in the village of Rosenovici. His mind was too confused to manufacture a story of innocence. If he had not met the Englishman… They had not brought him food, and they had not talked to him. They left him solitary to wait for the questioning of Milan Stankovic. It was an aspect of the madness that so many men, hundreds, thousands, had sat in cells throughout the beauty of their land and waited for questioning and torture. If he had not stayed so long at the cave… He did not know, could not know, how he would respond to the beating or to the knife or the burning by cigarettes. Did not know whether he could hold his silence against the pain. Could not know whether the pain of torture would prise from him the secret. If he had not hurried noisily back through the village towards the stream's ford… Benny flicked the 'speak' switch. He said gravely, "We can't all be heroes, somebody has to sit on the kerb and clap as they go by." He heard the laughter, distorted, coming back over the loudspeaker in the Seddy's cab. "That original, Benny?… Who'd you lift that off, Benny? "Nothing original about me. Will Rogers and I collaborate." "Cut it, Benny, do me the favour." He obeyed. The convoy manager had cause to be stressed up, pissed off, because the rock that had come through the side window of the Land-Rover had caught his face above the collar of the flak jacket and below the rim of his helmet. The move out of Knin had been sweet enough, 0700 departure, but the shit had started in a village just up the road from Titova Korenica with ugly women and dwarf kids lobbing rocks. The convoy manager had a bandage over his face, looked a really fine hero. Rocks in that village, and four windscreens broken. They were blocked now by mines. They were up from Slunj, almost with the whiff of the river at the Turanj crossing point in their noses, and there were mines, and four little arse holes to negotiate with. Good stuff for the hero, the convoy manager, to negotiate with. They were blocked in between a cliff face and a river, a good place to get the old head blown off. It didn't happen on every run, but happened too often, that they were messed around on the convoy route. Benny reckoned that up the road, between Slunj and Veljun, they were moving tanks, maybe artillery, and a track had gone broken or a wheel had got holed, and they weren't having a United Nations relief convoy going by and seeing what they were moving. It was difficult for him to get the bloody great pisspot on his head out of the window, but he took the trouble. Past all the lorries, past the Land-Rover, the convoy manager was in his second hour of failing, too right, to negotiate the removal of the mines from the road. Their schedule was all shot to hell. The kids with the mines, from what he could see, were drunk, and they'd a good game going. He saw the convoy manager stride back to his Land-Rover.

The voice, tight with controlled anger, was in Benny's cab.

They were going to take a minor road over towards the Bosnia border. They were going for the scenic route… for the tourist run … going up towards Glina, then would work back through Vrginmost for the Turanj crossing way behind schedule.

He sat in the Seddy's cab, snuggled in the flak jacket and with the weight of the helmet squat on his head, and hit the gears. The convoy took the fork road east, drove off the main drag, and away from the kids with their 'frag' mines, and he smiled down at them like it was a pleasure for him to be going the scenic route. And the kids loosed off their AKs into the air, as if they'd won a war and not just diverted an unarmed aid convoy.

They were laid out neatly on the bed, her new files. She had drawn the new curtains back, because she came into the room each evening and closed them. Mary Braddock sat beside the new files on the new duvet and she had kicked off her shoes onto the new carpet. The new soft toys, bears and rabbits, were on the new pillow of the bed, and the shop assistant, when Mary had bought them, had prattled to her as if she were a grandmother, and she had not contradicted the shop assistant, nor told her of obsession, or the weight of guilt. Because of the new paint and the new wallpaper it was a pretty room, and a room that was correct for a child who would grow to be a climbing star, not a horrid young woman. It was after a spring shower that had beaten on the mullioned window, and the sun shone into the pretty room.

The size of the new file was a measure to Mary of the scale of the obsession. She had read about herself in the newspapers, different name and different address, but read about parents who shared with her the obsession to know. The newspapers printed sad photographs of fathers and mothers sitting close on settees, with the picture of the dead child, the lost loved one, in the frame behind them, those who demanded to know and who had failed. She could recall the sad photographs of the stunned parents of the 'friendly fire' boys in the Gulf, of the girl in the Kenya game park, of the young man murdered in Chile's capital, of the young woman who had died in Saudi, and the sad parents all had the same refrain of confused criticism for the help they had been given. All her friends said it was obsession. She shared the file with none of them, and she did not allow her secretary, two days a week, to type the letters of which the copies went into the file. There were the copies of fourteen letters written to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office; her friends said she should close her mind to an episode better forgotten. There were four letters personally addressed to the ambassador in Zagreb; there were two letters written by hand to the President of Croatia. None of the replies were curt or brusque or rude the replies, aide-drafted, signed by the dignitaries, were bland and oozed sympathy, and were bloody useless. Her friends said that she should start again… The telephone stampeded her out of the newly decorated, newly furnished bedroom for a child. She ran for the stairs. God, please, make it the call… Penn's call… The dogs slithered with her down the stair carpet, cannoning against her legs. God, please, make it Penn's call. She snatched up the telephone in the hall. The dogs barked raucously, as if her run for the telephone was a fun game. "Charles here. Where were you? Outside? A nice morning up here in this filthy city. Sorry, darling, but it's all negative. Did I tell you, can't remember if I did…? I pushed the problem of that odious detective to Frankfurt. They've a satellite office in Munich. Their people in Munich have called up Vienna. Vienna have links into Zagreb. I got a few faxes to fly… Someone from the associate office in Zagreb actually went to the hotel, this morning

… I don't know what it means, but the bastard hasn't been in the hotel for four nights. He hasn't checked out, his account's still ticking up, but he hasn't used the hotel for four nights… They don't know where he is… I'm sorry, darling, but I did tell you what I thought of Mr. Penn…"

Mary held the phone, swayed.

"Are you still there…?"

Small voice. "Yes."

"I'll burn his bloody arse when I get to meet him, when I get his bloody bill… Darling, dinner tomorrow, can we manage two more? Push the chairs up a bit, can we? A quite hideously boring couple of guys from Utrecht, but it's an EC contract, and fat. Don't know how they'll mix with our crowd, but it shows willing. "Course you can cope, darling… Why don't you run out to Guildford, get something nice, new? See you this evening…"