Gerald Seymour - Heart of Danger

"You are, my old cocker, a heap of trouble…"

When the big torches came and the guns, they would have him against the stream. Milan shouted orders among the babble of the men of the village. "Make a line… Search everything, coal sheds, tool sheds, the barns… Search your houses… Keep the line…" The men of the village stood in line as they had been told to, waiting for the big torches and the guns to be brought. Between shouting the orders, his eyes flicked down to his watch. Milan stood on the steps of the school building and behind him were the two swing doors into the hall. They had only their small torches, sufficient to light a way from their homes to the hall for the social evening, and they had no rifles until the firearms were brought from the locked armoury of the headquarters building… Five clear minutes lost… Five minutes lost since Branko had pushed his way back into the hall, licking at his wrist that was bitten, and Milo had followed him with his hands held across his groin. Five minutes lost since they had blurted that the bastard had gone… and been heard to crash through Petar's fence, and been heard to run into the greenhouse where Dragon brought on his spring lettuces. He had not seen it for himself and he must take their word on trust… Behind Petar's fence and Dragon's greenhouse was wire and then sodden fields, and then the stream. That was where they would get him, the bastard, when he came to the stream. The first orders he had given with his barely suppressed fury had been that they should run, shit quick, to the bridge, alert the bridge guards and get themselves across the fields on the far side of the stream. They alone had guns and a torch. They'd gone fast, scuttling in their goddamn shame. Five minutes lost and men were running back to the school steps with their torches, and Vuk was panting his way back from the armoury at the headquarters with an armful of rifles, with his pockets bulged by the magazines.

The line was formed.

It was a muddled story, it was something about the bastard breaking clear, and rolling under the lorry, and then going through Petar's fence, and then breaking Dragon's greenhouse… Where was the goddamn lorry? But Milan had to move the line. The torches caught at Petar's fence, and the broken glass of Dragon's greenhouse. There was the clatter in the line of rifles being loaded and cocked.

He glanced again at his watch. They should be in position now on the far side of the stream, and they would be raking the bank with their flashlights. They would drive the bastard to the bank… He gave the order for the line to move… and the minutes were crawling and lost.

Milan heard the curses from the line. The men wore their best trousers, and their best shoes, and their best sweaters or jackets. The women in their best dresses were streaming from the doorway behind him, and they carried away on plates the bread that had been baked for the evening and the fruit and the cheeses that had been taken earlier to the hall. It had been an attempt by his trapped village to throw off the mood, his own mood and everybody's, of being held prisoner, and the bastard had destroyed the attempt. He searched the faces of the women who carried the food home, because they had all heard his name given, and all heard the name of Dorrie Mowat, and the bastard had used the word that was coward. He searched the faces, and none met his, and the minutes on his watch were frittering away.

Evica was beside him, carrying in a linen cloth the food she had brought for the evening.

"Do you have him?"

The excitement of the chase, of being the king who gave the orders, slipped in him. "No."

Evica said, simply, "I could not help myself, when he looked at me, when he asked who had met her. He was so… so bold.

I could not help myself when he faced me… What does it mean, the man coming to make a report…?" There was a shout. He did not answer her. Milan ran across the road. At the side fence in Petar's garden he was shown the plastic box. There was a single bread roll in the box, with squashed tomato and pressed cheese in the cut in the roll and half a bar of chocolate. He felt his nerves squirm in his belly. Another shout. The torches showed him the way. He climbed the fence between Petar's plot and Dragon's garden. Milan saw the broken glass pane on the roof of Dragon's greenhouse, and more torches shone inside the greenhouse. On the trays of spring lettuces was the fire extinguisher amongst the plants and the shards… It had been gone, it had been buried, and some nights he could even forget it, and the bastard had come to bring back for him the face of the young woman… He was shouting. Who saw the lorry? Was it just one lorry? What colour were the lorries? Which way did the lorries go, towards Glina or towards Vrginmost? The minutes slipping on his watch. Were the white lorries from a convoy of the United Nations? Milan Stankovic ran. He ran like the athlete he had once been. He ran for his life, and for the bastard's life. Hoarse, chest heaving, Milan scrambled into the office area of the headquarters. The minutes slipping. '… They all bad-mouthed her back in England. She was just a horrid young woman. There seemed to be a story about her for every year of her life, the stories seemed to queue up to foul-mouth her. Her mum told the stories worst, like it was something she had to get release from. The way of the release was to find out what happened to her. There was no release until her mother knew what happened to her, who killed her. They were throwing money at it because they'd cash coming out of their ears. "Just go there, Mr. Penn, and write a bloody report, and then we can forget little Miss Dorrie who was an awkward bitch", it was something like that…" Benny listened. Sometimes the voice behind him stopped, when the radio came on, when the convoy manager had some crap to tell them from up front. He drove carefully, and the whole of the convoy was going fast. '… And I came here, and it was all lies that had been said about her. Perhaps, at home, she had just been a bloody nuisance, perhaps she was just a bloody cuckoo child in a second marriage, perhaps she just got in the way, perhaps she didn't start to live until she was at Rosenovici… I came here to pocket the money and write a report, good bromide stuff, a few names and a few quotes, good money. You know how it is, Mr. Stein, when you're sucked into something, it's like you're being pulled towards a cliff. Why did this one killing in one village matter? Can't answer it… Best I can do, it's something about that young woman. I learned about her, each time I was told about her then I was pushed closer to that bloody cliff.. ." Grabbing for the telephone, whirring the handle of the field set that linked to the Glina military, hearing the deathly response of silence… Milan pushed it aside so that it fell useless to the concrete floor. He turned to the radio set that was the back-up, that sometimes functioned. When they had powered out of that God-awful village then the cab radios had gone ape shit Each driver, and the convoy manager, wanting to know what the fuck was going on, what was the shooting. Benny hadn't given them a laugh, hadn't given them anything until right at the end of the exchanges. He'd waited to the end, then pressed his 'speak' switch, and he just said he'd seen nothing, because they'd have kicked him half to death if they'd known. Benny listened. '… She was just brilliant. I don't think I'm just some mooning bloody sheep. She was incredible. It wasn't just that she stayed with the wounded because she loved one boy. You see, Mr. Stein, Dorrie could have carried out one boy. She was a tough little thing, made of barbed wire. She could have put one boy on her shoulder and she would have stood a good to middle chance of hiking him into the woods and finding a hole in their lines, but that would have been walking out on the other boys. She was just brilliant because she gave all of them her courage. I was dragged to that cliff, dragged over that cliff… I looked him in the face, I looked into the face of the man who used a knife on her, the man who shot her. It was like she'd given me the courage, like she was with me, to look into his face and not be afraid… I don't suppose that makes much sense, Mr. Stein." Benny said, "I was going to chuck you out." "Because the shit's in the fan, because they'll be waiting at the crossing point…?" "Because I'm not supposed to get involved." "I reckon if I laid up for a couple of days, rested, then I reckon I could swim the river…" "Like hell you could," Benny snapped, short. "There's a rendezvous tomorrow night, where there's going to be a boat, but I'm off line for the pick-up, I don't have a map for the location, but I reckon I could swim the river…" He hadn't used his pencil torch from the dashboard, not since right at the beginning. From what Benny had seen, when he'd used the torch, the guy wouldn't make it to halfway, not against the current of the Kupa river. The rest of the drivers would kill him if they knew. "You won't be swimming. You'll be staying bloody put… we'll see what's there, at the crossing point…" It was so slow for Milan to make the radio link with Glina militia. The man who knew the radio was away back at the greenhouse in Dragon's garden, and the procedure for transmission was written up in scrawl on the wall above the set. And an imbecile at the other end when he had made the contact. '… And it's a spy you lost? In Salika village, you lost a spy? What would a spy want with Salika village? A foreign spy…?" A bored man, sitting the night watch on the radio in the Glina barracks, nursing a bottle, and at last there was amusement for him. "A foreign spy has come to Salika village, that centre of military secrecy? Should they know in Belgrade that a foreign spy chose to visit Salika village…?"