Gerald Seymour - Heart of Danger

The gasp of Evica beside him.

The face swollen in putrefaction, but with the bludgeon wound on the forehead.

The face that he recognized, and the bullet wound above the ear.

And they were all watching him because he was their king, and the fear twisted in him and could not be shown. The freedom was gone, the liberty was lost, and the brandy was beating in him. Trying to focus on the face on the floor and the face in the photographs. The face of the man on the floor gazing back at him, and the face of the woman in the photograph, and blood on the faces that merged. He unhooked the clasp knife from his belt, threw it to the carpenter. The twine at the ankles and at the wrists was cut… she had not been bound. Evica held the photographs and shivered. It was what was expected of the king. Branko and Stevo lifted the man up, and he stood in front of Milan and swayed. Milan should not show fear, not in front of those who admired and worshipped the king, and she had not shown fear…

A short arm blow, as hard as he could punch, he hit the stomach of the man.

The man staggered, went down, was on his knees.

The man stood again. Milan did not see the fear, and she had not shown fear…

He threw the man into the crowd around him, for their pleasure.

They were crawling into the village.

Benny reckoned they were going slowly because they had missed the turn. He reckoned they should have taken the left turn before they were into the village. He knew it was a Serb village because the roofs were on the houses and the church had a tower and what looked like the school wasn't a burned shell.

The convoy manager, Benny reckoned, had screwed up and was crawling because he knew it, and it was long odds against tiptoeing away when they had to turn round and back up, a Land-Rover and fifteen Seddon Atkinson lorries.

It was strange, Benny thought, that they could pitch up in this lost forgotten corner of pretend civilization and not have half a hundred people coming out the woodwork to know their business. Peculiar… The convoy manager, up ahead, had started the turn and back-up routine… It looked, dark quiet, a hell of a bad place to be lost, a hell of a good place to be shot of. The lorries were manoeuvring, like leviathans, and at present no bugger with an AK's safety off and armed coming out of the houses to ask their business.

Benny waited his turn to manoeuvre.

Penn heard, just, the shout. The shout was an order.

The last of the kicks went into him, into the small of his back, and the last of the women's nails clawed at his face, and the last of the punches went to his unprotected stomach.

The pain ran rivers in his body. The shout was a command. He tried, hard, to keep his eyes open because that seemed important. He lay on the floor and the boards were wet with his blood and his spittle and his urine. Six would have done courses on Resistance to Interrogation, Five didn't… any rate, not for his level of A Branch non-graduate. In a circle around him were the heavy laced shoes of the men and the light slide-on shoes of the women and on some of the shoes were dulled stains… not a course for his level of A Branch non-graduate, but maybe for the top grade, super fucking experts who went to Belfast. It was a hallucination for Penn, kicked, clawed, punched, to be thinking of courses for Resistance to Interrogation for top-graders who went to Belfast, but the hallucination swamped him.. . There was a woman in Gower Street and he'd been down a queue for the coffee machines when she'd been at the head, she'd been pointed to and he'd been told that the Proves had trapped her in some God-awful pub, no back-up present, and she'd fought her way out, just a slip of a woman with rusted gold hair and a flat chest and rounded shoulders, who had taken her coffee and walked slowly back to her office like she was a bored woman, not a top-grader…

The big man, the voice of command, the one who had swayed when he had seen the photograph, the one who had hit him first, broke the cordon circle. The big man came towering towards him.

Penn blinked up and tried to retain the focus of his vision… couldn't break the hallucination. There were two women in his mind. Both top-graders… The woman with the rust-gold hair, bored in London, in the coffee queue, who had the courage to fight clear of a killer enemy… and the woman with the cropped hair, the mischief smile in her photograph, who had the courage to bury her fear when the killer enemy closed. He was so wanting to be brave. Bravery might just be survival, or it might just be dignity, or it might just make the fucking knife and the fucking bludgeon and the fucking pistol shot fucking easier… The hallucination rode him. Talking in the open-plan office area of A Branch, chattering idly about the hostages in Lebanon, and the big mouth, graduate 2.2 Reading, claiming that he would have gone for escape; and the simpering mouth, graduate 2.1 Warwick, whining that she would have gone for a runner; and Penn, non-graduate, trying to contribute quietly that an escape attempt took more courage than anything, and being ignored… and just the idle chatter of a hallucination in a quiet hour of a London office because fucking escape was not on the reality agenda… The big man pulled him up.

The big man had a loose beard grown free across his face, not trimmed. Between the matt of the beard growth, the tongue of the big man wiped his full lips. Above the growth of the beard were the eyes, evasive. The face, the eyes and the mouth, as Penn saw it, were empty of passion.

The woman beside the big man held the photographs outside the envelope, as if she did not wish again to look at them. She wore a bright full skirt, flower-patterned, and an ironed white blouse that was simple, and there were sweat streaks in her hair at her forehead.

Penn stood and hoped that he would find the courage.

The question was put to him. The woman interpreted the question.

"Who are you?"

Trying to speak strongly. "I am William Penn. I am a British citizen."

The answer was repeated by the woman to the big man. A second question. "Are you a mercenary from the Ustase scum?"

Trying to stare into those evasive eyes… "I have no connection with the Croatian army."

"A lie. You wear the uniform of the Ustase scum."

"I bought the camouflage uniform on the black market in Karlovac."

The big man made the question. The woman interpreted the question. She spoke formal taught English. "What was the mission?"

Penn heard it, the revving of heavy engines behind him. No one moved around him. They hung silently on the questions put by the big man and the answers given by the woman beside him. Could not know where it would lead him, where it would take him, but knew the importance of bold talk…

"The village of Rosenovici, across the stream, was taken in December of 1991. There were wounded men in the village who were sheltered in a cellar during the final attack on the village…"

"What has that to do with a mercenary?"

'… The wounded men were taken from the cellar after the fall of the village. They were taken to a field, they were sat in the field, laid out in the field, while a bulldozer dug…"

The interruption. The woman had translated in a quiet voice while he talked, and the circle craned for her words.

"What has that to do with…?"

'… While a bulldozer dug a grave pit. The wounded men were then killed with knives, and were bludgeoned, and were shot, and they were buried…"

"What has that…?"

'… They were buried in a mass grave in the corner of the field …"

"What…?"

'… Buried in the mass grave in the corner of the field was a young woman. The young woman was not wounded in the battle for the village. She had chosen to stay with the wounded. She had chosen to be with them at the end. She was not a fighter, she had no guilt. She was butchered in the pit dug by the bulldozer "Why was she important… ?" Staring all the time into the face of the big man, and the eyes above the matt of the beard darting away, and the tongue in the midst of the beard sliding on dried lips. '… She was English, and that is why I came. She was not Serbian and not Croatian and not Muslim. She was not a part of the quarrel. She was English and her name was Dorrie