Gerald Seymour - Heart of Danger

Losing the minutes. Could not tell a bored man sitting the night watch on the radio at Glina barracks about a grave, about an investigator with evidence, about a young woman who had not shown fear.

Milan shouted, "If the crossing point is not closed, if the convoy is not searched, I will come for you, my friend, and I will flay the skin off your face…"

When the alarm clamoured for the Close Support platoon, Ham was on his bed in the dormitory quarters, and reading his best magazine. His mother sent it him, not often because most times the old cow forgot. Nagorno Karabakh, wherever the fuck it was, seemed the right place, and there were guys already there, but then there was also an article with photographs of guys who had made it down to Tbilisi, wherever the fuck that was… The alarm shifted him.

He was snatching webbing kit, going for the Dragunov marksman's rifle that was his personal weapon when Close Support platoon was on 'immediate', buttoning the flies on his camouflage trousers, running for the stairs of the old police station.

And no fucker in the lit yard taking the trouble to explain to him why the alarm had gone. He heard, among the bloody yelling, there was heavy radio traffic on the other side, there was a guy running on the other side, there was some sort of flap at the crossing point, something about a bloody convoy… It was all to do with their radio traffic, on the other side.

He was in the lead jeep going down sharp to Turanj. He thought about Penn, crazy guy.

They were slowing.

The convoy manager was saying, distorted, in the cab, "I'm hooked into their radio. There's a problem, but I can't make sense of what it is, probably just that we're so delayed… They're saying they need to search the lorries. You know the form, guys, that we are not supposed to allow UN vehicles to be searched…"

He lay behind Benny Stein's seat and the passenger seat. He had a rug that covered some of his body. He heard the sharp whistle of Benny Stein's breath and heard him mutter an obscenity. Going down through the gears, crawling. The voice was saying, "What I'm thinking, guys, is that the laws of the game might just get bent a bit. If the choice is between bending or sitting here for the rest of the night high on principle, and since we've not any loose women from Knin on board… OK, guys?" Penn said, "I'll do a runner, which door?" The answer was very quiet, so calm. "What I'm seeing on my side is a big jerk with an ugly machine gun. And on the other side, three jerks with rifles, and what I'm seeing further up front doesn't get better." Penn said, "I'm sorry, I mean that." "Bit late, my old cocker… They've stopped ahead. We're all closing up." So helpless. It had all been for nothing. For nothing he had found the Headmaster praying in a grave. They were inching forward. For nothing he had found Katica Dubelj, eyewitness. He waited for the grinding of the brakes. For nothing he had found Milan Stankovic, war criminal. "What are you going to do?" "They're opening up the cabs ahead, my top cat's letting them in. You know what Oscar Wilde said? He said, "In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing." Give it a go." Penn was looking into Benny Stein's face, and it was calm as if he was taking the kids out for a Sunday afternoon ride. Going very slow, and swinging the big wheel so that the lorry went out of the line that was pulling up, then straightening the wheel. Penn saw the hands go to the gear lever, then to the ignition, and the engine slurped to quiet. A silence around Penn, and the gentle rocking of the cab going forward. The pace of the lorry quickened. Benny Stein was winding down his door window. "Time to see if old Oscar had it right…" They were rolling faster. Penn heard the first yell, and Benny Stein had his head out of his door window and was howling it into the night. The brakes… The brakes gone… No control because the goddamn brakes had gone. Going down the incline through Turanj. Penn saw the white sides of the freight lorries slipping by, quicker. All the time Benny Stein was yelling that his brakes had gone, and waving every miserable mother out of the road. Going by the Land-Rover, and Benny Stein was turning, side of his mouth, muttering about "Shit or bust', saying they'd shoot or they'd laugh. They hit the checkpoint. The cab of the lorry clipped the corner of the sandbag wall. He had his head down and he had his hands over his head, and he would have said, and reckoned he'd not lied, that Benny Stein had twisted the wheel the necessary fraction to take out the corner of the sandbags. The cab lurched, and Penn bounced, and he thought there was a popping of tyres, as if there had been a chain with spikes on the road. They were waiting for the shooting, or the laughing. They went clean through the UN barrier, broke the pole across the road. And the cab pitched worse, and he felt the tyres shredding, and all the time Benny Stein was yelling himself hoarse that the brakes had gone. The lorry jerked and he saw the wall loom against the cab's passenger side window, and that slowed it, and Penn saw Benny Stein's hand furtively slip to the brake handle, and he saw his foot pump the brake pedal, but gently so that the ripped tyres did not scream. They came to rest. Penn croaked, "That, Mr. Stein, was style…" "Get out. You told a good story." "I said that I was sorry

…" "It was because you talked a good story. Get lost." Benny Stein's hand, fleshy, reached and caught at Penn's collar, and he was dragged through the gap between the seats, and shoved out of the open door. He lay in the road beside the ribboned front tyre. The door above him was scraped. The fender in front of him was dented deep. "Thank you," Penn called back up at the slammed door of the cab. He crawled to the side of the road, to the heaped rubble of a collapsed house. Benny had jumped down from the cab and was striding towards the broken pole of the United Nations block, and the wrecked sandbags of the Serb block. So tired, and all the pain was back with him. He looked past the soldiers, and the woman was running with flapping legs, towards him. She came across the road from where she had been standing beside a car. He saw in the lights of the crossing point her concern, and Ham had broken clear of the group of soldiers and was ambling towards him. There was shouting back up the hill, and he heard Benny's voice, loud. They all danced for Dorrie… He danced for her, and Ulrike Schmidt who gazed into his face, and Ham who walked towards him with a wide smile, and Benny Stein who was yelling hard about the failure of his brakes… She had touched them and they danced for her. "You're a fucking mess, squire. How was it?" And if Ulrike had not had hold of his arm, and if Ham had not taken him under the armpit, he would have gone down. Evica said, "So, he could be this side of the line, or he could have gone…?" Milan lay fully dressed, still in his suit, on the top blanket of the bed. Evica pressed, '… So, he could have been in the lorry that crashed the checkpoint?" The dirt of his suit, and his shoes, would be on the top blanket. Milan said, empty, "I don't know." Evica held his hand, and on the hand was the mud of Petar's garden and Dragon's garden. "What will happen to us, if he went through the line?" All that he had, all that he leaned on, was the wife beside him and the child sleeping in the next room. Milan said, "What I was told was that one day they will come for me… In a month, in a year, when I am old, one day. Perhaps their children will come for our child, one day… We have to wait, for the day they come." "Because we cannot run…?" "Cannot run anywhere. Because of what has happened, of course I have known there will be revenge one day. But it was vague, just in my head. But it was said to me direct, at the liaison meeting, and you know his wife, and he said that one day, direct, if it were not him that came for me then it would be his son that would come for our Marko. It would go on for ever, as long as the memory lives of what was done. Like a curse on us, and on Marko. Maybe I did not believe him, and then the Englishman came, and I was named. It had been a safe world before the Englishman came. We on our side of the line, they on theirs. They could not come across the line and reach us. They could sit in Karlovac town, they could say what the shit they wanted, but they could not touch me, and then the Englishman came to us, to me… I believe him, the Liaison. I believe now that they will come for me one day, or that his son will come for our Marko. If I had known I would not have…" "Not have killed her, but then you thought you were safe." "Not have killed the girl." Evica said, "He made me remember her. Two afternoons and I remember them, when she came to our shop for food because their own shop had nothing. It was three weeks before the fight… It was after the children had gone home…" "You told me." '… And she sat in my room at the school, and we talked in English. I told her there would be no fighting between our village and her village, I told her there was no quarrel between us. She spoke of her home, and her mother, what her home was like and what her mother did…" "We cannot run and we cannot hide." Through the gap of the curtains, Evica saw the first light of the new day. She said, sad, "We have to live. We have to wait, as she waited in the field, but we have to live…" Soft, gentle fingers moving on the wounds… A woman's fingers, and tender… He was in the cellar, and there was only the light of a small tallow candle… He was the wounded, and the face of the young woman was above him, and her fingers dabbed, sweet, at the wounds with sharp iodine and salted water… She touched him and she had no fear