Gerald Seymour - Heart of Danger

… He loved her, the young woman who cared for the wounded in the cellar… Penn stirred, his eyes flickered. The fingers with the cotton wool were close to his eyes… God, and his face hurt. It was a woman's room, bright and alive, and the candle in the cellar was gone, and there were flowers on a table across the room from the bed. Ham sat on the floor, his back against a neat chest, and he held the long-barrelled rifle across his knees. Ulrike flashed her smile, nervous and short, embarrassed, and she was pushing up from beside the bed, as if she had been kneeling close to him as she had cleaned his face wounds and sterilized them. Ham said, "You cut it fine, squire.. . You got through before they'd organized. Their communications are piss-awful, you wouldn't have got through half an hour later… That driver did you well, there's not another fucker other than me and the lady knows you were up aboard… How much did you drop the driver, squire?" Penn said, "I told him why I'd gone." He said that he wanted to go back to Zagreb, make his report, and buy the biggest bottle of Scotch in the city, and they said that they'd share it. It was morning. They helped him to dress, Ulrike carefully and Ham roughly, and the pain of the kicks and the punches had stiffened to each corner of his body. He thought he would always remember, long after he had written the report and drunk the Scotch, the image of a cellar and wounded men, and a young woman without fear. He went hunting trouble first thing. Marty had talked it through with the doctor from Vukovar, his landlord, and the doctor had steeled him to it. He had talked it through because the long-distance telephone call had woken them both in the apartment, and half the night they had sat over coffee, and the doctor had toughened him to it. It was raining soft, like it did in the spring in Anchorage when the snow melted, as Marty strode across the central grass towards the steps and doors of A block. He had gone hunting trouble before opening up the converted freight container. There would need to have been a GI provost on the door of the suite of the Director of Civilian Affairs to have stopped him. The goddamn phone call, in the bad half of the night, hadn't been from Geneva, but goddamn New York. Marty went past the secretaries to the door and didn't knock, he went on in. They were round the Director's desk. Marty saw on the sleeves of their uniforms the insignia of Canada and Jordan and Argentina. They had a big map over the desk, and the Director was with them and looking at the map's detail through a magnifying glass, and a cigarette hung from his lips. And they turned, the soldiers and the Director, in annoyed surprise. He hammered, "I just wanted to say that I am not prepared to be treated like crap any more. And I just wanted to say that I find it incredible that one United Nations agency is active in blocking the work of another United Nations programme. I find it shameful that you have gone behind my back to sabotage my work…" "What the fuck are you talking about?" "I am talking about getting pitched out of my cot in the goddamn middle of the night by New York, to tell me that my work is causing offence, my work is a nuisance. I will not tolerate that goddamn crap … I will not tolerate you crawling behind my back to get New York to order me to cool it. Are you with me?" "If you go now you can go down the stairs on your feet… If you wait one minute, you'll go down the stairs on your face." "Because I am inconvenient…?" "Because … listen to me, you silly young man, listen hard… There were refugees supposed to be coming through Turanj crossing point today, but the crossing point is closed. There was an aid convoy supposed to be going through Turanj today, but its passage has been cancelled.. ." "That's not my problem. My work is to prepare war crimes…" "Listen… I'll tell you my problem. They have a maximum alert along their line, they are leaping about like they've pokers up their arses. Our movement is quite restricted. Why…? There is some garbled story about a war crimes investigator, captured and escaped…"

"I know nothing…"

"Too fucking right… I doubt you know the length of your dick. My job is to" keep our access into Sector North. And all this is after I suggested to New York that I could do without a wet-behind-the-ears puppy giving me shit from the high moral ground."

"Where?"

"Glina Municipality…"

Marty looked at the map, where the magnifying glass rested. "Where?"

"The rumour is he was picked up in Rosenovici…"

He swayed. He felt the cold on him. He remembered what he had seen, the man in the Transit Centre, the man with Ulrike. He remembered the lecture he had given, goddamn patronizing, and the answer, "I've just a report to write, then I'm gone." He remembered the Bosnian Muslim woman that the man had talked to, and she had been in Rosenovici. He rocked.

"It's just a rumour… I am a busy man. Do you wish to leave on your feet or on your face?"

Marty had no more anger. He let himself out, quietly.

It was the irregulars, from Glina town, who interrogated the Headmaster.

They were the men of Arkan, who was Zeljko Raznjatovic, and they called themselves the Tigers, and they were men freed from gaol cells in Belgrade. They had come at first light from Glina, and they had taken control of the headquarters building in Salika. They had come to the village because he was known to them, because Milan had once posed for a photograph in front of the War Memorial with their leader, Arkan

… it was as if his only function that morning was to make them coffee. They had taken his room and his radio and his desk, and they stubbed out their cigarettes against the bared stomach of the Headmaster. The screaming rang in Milan's ears. It was the agonized screaming of the man who had taught him at school, of the man who had been Evica's friend. With the cigarettes, crushed and stubbed out,

Milan heard of the Englishman's journey of discovery, and of Katica Dubelj who was the journey's guide. After the screaming and the telling, the irregulars of Arkan took the Headmaster from the cell of the headquarters and out into the road that cut the village. They wore plain belted one-piece uniforms of grey-green, and when they came out into the road they had put black hoods over their faces so that only their mouths and their eyes were visible. Out in the road they did not need Milan to bring them coffee, so they sent him from house to house in the village to get the people to come and watch, and he did as he was ordered, until there was a small crowd in front of the Headmaster's home. He could not face his own people, nor could he face the Headmaster who was made to stand in front of the door of his home, nor could he face the weeping wife of the Headmaster who was held back by the irregulars. They shot him first in the legs, and then in the stomach, so that death would be slow.

When the Headmaster died, the men of the village and Milan, led by the irregulars, were climbing the track in the woods, going where the Headmaster had told them they should go.

Ulrike drove the car, and Ham talked all the way. Ham talked his bullshit, of battles and fire fights, and Ulrike drove and said nothing, and Penn lay across the back seat of the car.

He was leaving behind him Dorrie's place. He was quitting Dorrie's war.

The boot print was sharp in the mud of the track, and the man had worn military boots when he had been brought to the school. They had the clear tread of the boot to tell them that the Headmaster had not lied when the cigarettes had been stubbed out against his stomach, and the evidence quickened their pace up the track through the trees. There was a light rain falling in the trees and heavy cloud coming from beyond the hill, and Milan could see the rain, later, would be heavier. He was at the head of the column and walked immediately in front of the leader of the irregulars. His own people were behind him and he could not see their faces and he did not know what their enthusiasm for the work was. It was where the Headmaster had said it would be, the cave entrance between the two large rocks, and in the worn mud close to the entrance was the boot print squashed over the lighter traces. Milan could smell her… There were many torches crowded into the narrow cleft of the cave's entrance, and the beams caught her. There was laughter behind Milan. The torches found her cringing back at the far wall of the cave, like a trapped rat. There was more laughter behind Milan. Milan turned. He called forward Milo who had the scratches on the cheeks of his face, and he gestured forward Stevo who had the bruised privates. There were many pressing behind him to see the trapped rat that was Katica Dubelj who had fed him and most of them with their lunches at the school… She was the trapped rat and her mouth seemed to snarl at the torch lights, and she had no teeth, and she was the evidence. He knew that the man had not been found, and he knew that a lorry with failed brakes had crashed the checkpoint at Turanj, and he knew that his name was on a file in Karlovac, and on another file made by the Political Officer at Topusko, and the trapped rat was the eyewitness. He wondered if he would tell Evica…