Gerald Seymour - Heart of Danger

They made good time.

A lone dog barked at the farmhouse, and there was one small lamp burning in the outbuildings. All the while that they moved he held tight to her hand, controlling her. He had told Ham they would be in fast, there for the minimum time, out fast, and he should have the inflatable waiting. Ham had nodded. "Don't you worry on it. Piece of cake, squire."

They were past the farm, they were far behind the lines.

"Where do they come back to?"

He tried to back his head away, twist his neck away, but the interrogator's punch came too fast for his reaction. The punch caught him on the tip of his nose and his eyes watered.

They had been waiting for him at the old police station. Ham had done as he had been told to do, driven Ulrike's car to her apartment block, parked it, pushed her keys through her letter box and then walked back to the old police station, where they had been waiting.

"Where is the rendezvous on the river, when is the rendezvous?"

Her hand came up fast from beside the trouser pocket of her fatigues and took him behind the ear, jack-knifing his head forward, and as his head bucked her other hand with the clenched knuckles drove into his lips.

Two of the military police had been waiting for him when he had come back into the yard behind the old police station and they had taken his arms with no explanation, and marched him up the steps and into the room of the Intelligence Officer who fronted as Liaison. "Don't be boring, don't be slow to help yourself, don't believe that I won't hurt you." The interrogator hit, as if his head was a punch ball in a gymnasium, with the left-right combination, and each blow was harder and there was the first warm trickle of blood from his upper lip that ran sweet to his gums. The two military policemen had pushed him in through the door of the Intelligence Officer's room, and he had seen the First Secretary and tried to raise something of a cheerful smile to be met only by cold hostility, and the Intelligence Officer had gazed at him like he was reptile's dirt. He had seen the chill in the eyes of the interrogator. She wore fatigue uniform, baggy because it was too large for her smallness, and she had a heavy pistol holster belted to her wa sped waist. The woman had motioned him to the chair, and when he had sat on it, straight-backed, she had hit him the first time. "You can be a very sensible man, Ham, or you can be a silly man

… Where, when, is the rendezvous?" She punched straight into the fullness of his mouth, and the wide dulled gold of her wedding ring clipped the cap of his front tooth and broke it. He reckoned the interrogator was a pretty woman, but 'fanny' always looked good in uniform, always looked best with a webbing belt and a holster. She had no cosmetics and there was a great weariness at her bagged eyes, and her breasts were heavy in their fall into the fatigue tunic when she stretched her back after each blow, like they'd suckled children. He couldn't see the First Secretary because the bastard was behind him, and he couldn't see the Intelligence Officer because he was away to the right of him, and his right eye was already closing from the interrogator's blows. He could read her face, and her face was iced calm. From what he read in her face, the fanny was bloody tired, but she would go on hitting him until she dropped, and she wouldn't care if she rasped her fists, and she wouldn't care if she hurt him. He thought she was without mercy. He knew that sort of fanny, in the Defence Force, all the fucking same. All the same because they'd had a man killed somewhere on the fucking line, some time in the war, and they'd parked the kiddies with their mothers, and they'd put on the uniform, and they hated. There was no mercy from the fucking women. The women were the fucking worst. He had his hands up, tried to cover his face.

"You don't leave here, Ham, before I have the time and the place of the rendezvous. When, where…?"

Because he tried to protect his face, he did not see the short swing of the interrogator's boot. She kicked him hard, boot into his shin, toecap onto the bone of his leg. He cried out.

He didn't doubt her. He seemed to see himself bloodstained and screaming and cringing. He seemed to see the guys who had been behind in the open field amongst the trees. He seemed to see her with the knife bent over the guys who had been wounded and could not save themselves. All the goddamn same, fucking Serb bastards and fucking Croat bastards. He did not know how long it had been, whether he had been in the chair in the Intelligence Officer's room for half an hour or an hour. A goddamn awful pain in his leg. And Penn was nothing to him, goddamn nothing. He should come first, second, tenth, he should come ahead of goddamn Penn every fucking time. He owed Penn nothing.

"Come on, Ham, what's the time and what's the place?"

She had hold of his head. The interrogator's fingers and sharp nails seemed to be able to take a grip on the folds of the skin over his scalp, and she shook his head until he thought his mind would explode.

Dumb and stupid enough to let himself get hacked around, kicked around. He owed Penn nothing…

Ham told where he was to be waiting to take the inflatable across the Kupa river to collect Penn and the German woman and the eyewitness, and the prisoner.

The First Secretary said, "That's a good boy."

Ham told when he was to be beside the Kupa river to pick up Penn and the German woman and the eyewitness, and the prisoner.

The First Secretary said relieved, "That's a sensible boy."

"Will you, please, close your mouth."

But she didn't. He thought it was excitement, adrenaline, whatever unnamed chemicals were screwing about in her bloodstream, that made her need to talk. He supposed she was a town person and had to communicate, and he knew that he was a country person able to subsist on his own company. He didn't bloody well need to talk, she did… They had been on the move for ten hours before he had signalled the long halt. They had gone slow through the darkness and faster in the dawn light, and quickest when the sun had started to stream down through the thickening foliage above them. The sun was up now, throwing down gold shards, picking out and spotlighting the mulch floor of the forest.

"If we don't talk then you don't know why. It should be important to you, why. You must wish to know why I have come…"

"What I know is that sound carries in the forest. You think you are quiet, you are like a rhino…"

"What is a rhino?"

"God, a rhino moves like a double-decker…"

"What is a double-decker?"

"A rhinoceros is a very big, very fat, noisy animal. A double-decker is a two-floor, very big, very heavy, noisy bus…"

"I know what is a rhinoceros and what is a bus. How can you say I am like a rhinoceros and a bus?"

"God, Ulrike… will you say what you have to say, and then, please, be quiet."

"Don't you need to know why?"

They were off the track. He thought they might be an hour going fast, probably more than an hour, from the place where there were the bones and the cases and the bags. He felt so tired. He lay on his back and his head was crooked up against the backpack and she sat cross-legged beside him. His eyes were opening, closing, opening again, and he could see the excitement in her face, the adrenaline and the chemicals, and he thought that if he slept and she stayed awake then he would have lost control of her. He was frightened to lose control of her in case a dog came, in case a patrol came, in case a group of loggers came, in case… He had not told her about the skeletons of the refugees and their bags and their cases, and he did not know if he could bypass the place so that she would not see them. "It is not required for me to know why. I have told you that I am grateful that you have come. It does not help me to know. But you insist… So, tell me why, then be quiet." So serious: "You have to know why." Tell me." "It is about a future." Brutal, he said, "Not our future. We have no future." She hissed, peeved, "There is more than our future. There is the future of the principle." His eyes closed again, he forced them open. "I know nothing of principles." "Rubbish. You are not here without principles. You are a man of principle…" "Principles get people killed. That's not for me." "Silly, stupid man. Without principle you would have been on the aircraft, you would have been at your home. You sell yourself too cheap. You have principle, and you have anger…" "The anger is because you won't shut your mouth." "You have anger and principle, and they ride together, that is why I came." "Brilliant, thank you, good night. Lights out and silence, please…" And he could not push open his eyes. Eyes closed and the tiredness clinging in him. Typical of a bloody woman that there must be a bloody discussion… Just like at Five, just like the women graduates in General Intelligence Group. Why must the mountain be climbed? Analysis and thought and team discussion as to why the mountain must be climbed. Best to have a paper written on Aims and Objects for Climbing the Mountain, then have a subcommittee report on the paper to the full team. Penn was climbing the mountain because the bloody mountain was there. Penn was going up the bloody mountain because Mrs. Mary bloody Braddock was holding a bayonet, sharp as hell, against his backside for him to impale himself on if he should bloody well stop climbing the bloody mountain. Penn was crawling up the bloody scree slope of the mountain because she was there, Dorrie was at the top with the wind in her hair and the rain on her face and the mist about her, bloody laughing and mocking him… Ulrike was close to him. He sensed her bent over him. There was a garlic taste on her breath. Her fingers were smoothing the hair from his forehead… Because the bloody mountain was there, with Dorrie astride it. She said into his ear, "I understand that there is no future, and the future for us is not important, but the future of the principle is everything. If nobody speaks, if nobody calls out, if there is only silence, then there is a new dark age of barbarity…" He murmured, "Principles are not important. What is important, if we take Milan Stankovic, when we run with Milan Stankovic, then the wasps' nest is well stirred. It's shit-frightened running then, and when you're running it's not bloody principles that'll help you along. And if we try to take the eyewitness, she's old, slow, needing to be carried.. ." Maybe it was just the movement of her lips speaking into his ear, maybe she kissed his ear, but they had no future. The future was Jane, was Tom. It was not important whether he wanted it, or what he wanted. There was no future with Ulrike. "It is the difference between us and them, we have principle and they have only barbarism…" "Christ, Ulrike, principles don't stop bullets, can't blunt knives." Tenn '…?" "Yes." So tired, and slipping, and her lips breathing the words to his ear. Tenn, if you had him, if you have taken him, but you are blocked, and you cannot bring him out, would you kill him?" "I don't know." "You have to make an answer. Would you kill him as justice? Would you kill him as revenge, for what he did to the wounded?" "I don't know." "Kill him for what he did to Dorrie?" "I don't know." "You will remember what I told you… if he is begging you for his life, you will have to be cruel. Do you have it inside you, good and ordinary and decent man, to be cruel…?"