Gerald Seymour - Heart of Danger

"You should let him sleep."

Hamilton, horrible little "Freefall', crabbed his way to the window and the rifle was dragged with him. Horrible little "Free-fall' caught the curtains and pulled them apart, letting light into the hotel room. The woman, the cat cornered with a rabbit and threatened, hovered over the sleeping man.

"Christ… who did that to him?"

The First Secretary saw the wounds and the discoloured bruises and the scars. He felt sickness in his throat. Penn's breathing was regular and his face was at peace. The First Secretary knew enough of what happened in sunny former Yugoslavia to an enemy. He gagged the vomit back. He remembered Penn, coming to his office.

The First Secretary said, "You will bring him to the airport, the 1500 hours flight. I'll see him onto the plane. You get him there.. ."

The curtains were pulled shut again.

'… He'll be there, Hamilton, or I'll break you."

The aircraft banked.

She was reading the bones of '(2) Ambit of Criminal Jurisdiction, Paragraph 62I/Extra Territorial Jurisdiction', and slipping on to "Paragraph 622/Sources and Rationale of Territorial Jurisdiction'.

The aircraft levelled out, west from Zagreb.

She was reading for the last time the pencilled written notes under the heading of '3. Offences Against the Person, (1) Genocide, Paragraph 424', and her eyes slid across the pages to "H. Offences Committed Abroad', and 'sub-section 4, sub-paragraph 1 Murder (see para 431 and sec post)'.

The aircraft was losing height.

She was reading quickly, reminding herself of '(3) Geneva Red Cross Conventions, 1864'. Turning through "The Geneva Conventions, (3) The Convention Relative to the Treatment of

Prisoners of War'. Riffling through '(4) The Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilians in Time of War'.

The aircraft wallowed over the end of the runway.

She was reading the last page of the young barrister's notes, learning them so they were ingrained, Treatment of the Wounded etc, Paragraph 1869/General Protection… At all times, and particularly after an engagement, parties to a conflict must take measures to search for and collect the wounded, sick and shipwrecked, protect them from pillage and ensure their adequate care; and the dead must be searched for and their spoliation prevented… At all times the wounded, sick and shipwrecked must be treated humanely without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth, wealth or any similar criteria."

The aircraft's wheels touched down.

She was reading, "Paragraph 1866/Conflicts not of an International Character… Treat humanely persons who take no active part in the hostilities, including members of the armed forces who have laid down their arms or are rendered unable to take part by reason of wounds.. . violence to life and persons including murder… the passing of sentences and carrying out of executions without a proper trial upon non-combatants are prohibited. The wounded and sick must be cared.. ."

The music played cheerfully over the loudspeakers as Mary Braddock put away in her bag the notes and the two sheets of the faxed report.

The pain beat against the bone behind his temples, and there were needle pricks behind his eyeballs, and there was a battering throb behind his ears. It had been a hell of a long time since Penn had been this hungover. The others were still asleep. He was padding, half-naked, round the room, moving without order, stumbling round the bed where Ulrike slept, hiking his feet over Ham's outstretched body. He should have been working to a system, should have cleared the bathroom first, then been to the wardrobe and had his shoes off the floor and his shirts and underwear and socks out of the drawers and his jackets and slacks off the hangers, and then he should have been gathering up everything that belonged to him from the shelf below the mirror including the two typed sheets that had gone for the fax transmission. But there was no system, the pain dictated that there was no order in his packing. Penn blundered around, collecting, forgetting, carrying, cursing the aftermath of the alcohol. He couldn't hold his bloody concentration, not at all. He had the case on the bed, and now he was emptying the case because the shoes and the plastic bag for his toothpaste and his shaving cream and razors were out of place, should always be shoes at the bottom and washing gear, and then the dirty clothes and then the clean clothes and then the folded trousers and then the jackets, and the whole bloody lot were out of order… Ulrike slept hard as he skirted the bed, and Ham slept deep as he stepped over his legs and that horrible bloody rifle, because both would have been awake through the night, watching for him. They were a holiday friendship, he knew, and they would be gone, belted out, when the big bird lifted off the tarmac at Zagreb airport. Ships that pass in the night, that sort of crap. They slept now because they had stayed awake through the night and watched his own sleep, and the thought of it, through the pain and the confusion of packing out of order, made Penn feel humility. He wouldn't see her again, nor would he chase after Ham's woman who had done a runner with her kiddie. But they had watched over him while he slept, a lonely woman and a small scumbag frightened because he hadn't a friend. He might tell Mary Braddock about them, because they were each in their way a part of his finding Dorrie's truth. Or then he might not get to see Mary Braddock. When he hadn't the pain in his head he could work it through whether he would see Mary Braddock, or whether it would just be the fuller report in a week's time and the full invoice of his charges, sent in the post by Recorded Delivery…

He had never been drunk incapable when he was a teenager living at home in the tied cottage, because that was the example of his mother and father, his mother taking only a sherry at Christmas and his father talking of it like it was a devil. He had been drunk incapable once when a clerk at the Home Office, and taken out to a party in the Catford flat of another clerk, and thinking afterwards that it might just have been because he was so bloody boring that they had spiked the drinks and had good sport out of him reeling and crashing and throwing up in the street; and ashamed. He had been drunk incapable once when with Five, and they had worked seven weeks on a surveillance before showing out on a shift change into the derelict van with the flat tyre that was parked up opposite the safe house, and the Irish target gone and lost, and the guys going down to the pub when the operation had been called off with heavy recrimination and an assistant deputy director general level inquest, and sleeping on the floor of the taxi home; and ashamed.

Now, he had no sense of achievement. There was no elation. It was just a report that he had written, as he had written previous reports that cut into the lives of the dead and the vanished and the criminal, as he would write further reports. He wanted out and he wanted home, and he wanted to sleep out of his system too much goddamn Scotch, and he wanted the bastard place behind him, and the fear, the shit, the pain. It was only a report… And the one chance was gone.

He had the shoes back at the bottom of the case, and the washing gear with them, and the underpants and the socks into the space between the shoes and the washing bag, and the dirtied clothes and the ones that he hadn't used. He was starting to fold the slacks and the jackets. The fatigues that he had worn into Sector North were on the floor near to where Ham lay stretched out, holding the bloody rifle like it was a baby's toy, and the fatigues weren't going with him, nor the boots that were under them, and he heard a brisk knock at the door.