Gordon Stevens - Kara’s Game

‘People like me win because we have power, because of who we are and what we do. So people are afraid of us. Therefore we can win.’

‘What about if you don’t win?’

‘There’s a saying,’ he told her. Perhaps it was a poem, perhaps just a quotation – he couldn’t remember. Why complicate things, he asked himself; why allow himself to be drawn into this maze? ‘It isn’t the critic who counts; it isn’t the one who points out how the strong man stumbled or how the doer of deeds might have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena. Who, if he wins, knows the triumph of achievement. And who, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.’

So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat, he might have added.

So how do you win? she asked. What decides who wins?

His regiment had a motto, he told her.

What’s that, she asked him.

Who Dares Wins.

They left the ward and sat against the wall. The gloom in the corridor was deeper, colder.

‘So how can I win? The next time they bomb Maglaj or Tesanj or somewhere like it, and the West and the United Nations does nothing to stop it, what must I do and what must I have to make the West stop it?’

What can my people do, she meant, what must my people have?

‘Power,’ Finn told her again. ‘The next time you must have something the West wants, or something which makes them afraid of you.’

Outside it was dark and the buildings were like ghosts. He opened a food pack and made them each a tea, broke open a pack and gave her the fruit biscuits inside. In the room to the left someone was sobbing.

‘Why did you come back last night?’ She wrapped her fingers round the mug and tried to massage some warmth back into them.

‘Because I said I would.’

‘That doesn’t answer the question,’ she told him. ‘You were supposed to leave last night, so why didn’t you? Why did you come to the house? Why did you save little Jovan?’

They went again into the ward, stood again by Jovan’s bed and watched him sleeping, went back again to the corridor and joined the others.

‘So now we’re even,’ Kara suggested. Because I saved yours and you saved mine.

In the shadows to the right Steve watched without speaking.

Yet you think you still owe – Kara looked at Finn. Because I saved two of yours and you only saved one of mine. But the one of mine was my only son, therefore I owe you more than you can ever imagine.

‘We came back because you’d done something for us,’ Finn told her. ‘You helped us even though you didn’t have to.’

Therefore we still owe.

‘You’re leaving?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’ Because the United Nations have refused to sanction further air strikes. Because everyone else thinks we stayed behind to provide ground cover in case the opposition attacked as the chopper took Janner and Max out. Because we should have been out of here twelve hours ago. Because nobody else knows we’re still here.

Perhaps the guilt was settling again, perhaps it hadn’t lifted.

They went to the ward and stood by Jovan – Kara and the four men. Smiled at him and told him he was a good boy even though he was barely awake and would not have understood them anyway. Then they walked to the corridor and picked up their bergens.

‘Thanks, Jim.’ She shook each of their hands. ‘Thanks, Ken.’ Kissed each of them on the cheek as a sister would kiss them. ‘Thanks, Steve.’ Suddenly and spontaneously. ‘On behalf of little Jovan.’

‘Thanks, Kara,’ they told her. ‘On behalf of Janner and Max.’

She smiled, wiped away the tears.

‘Thanks, Finn.’

‘Thanks, Kara.’

‘Ciao, Finn. See you again sometime.’

‘Sure, Kara. See you again.’

London was bleak. No snow or ice, just the incessant drizzle which marked the capital at this time of year.

Langdon’s schedule was even tighter than most days. Breakfast at six – full English, the way he liked to start each morning; briefings at the FCO, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, then the flight to Brussels for the 10.00 AM meeting of European Foreign Secretaries. And after that the rush home for a full day squeezed into late afternoon and evening.

When his driver delivered him to Whitehall there was still an hour of darkness left. His advisers, some of whom would accompany him to Brussels, were waiting in the room outside his own office, the aroma of fresh coffee hanging in the air. He led them through, settled in his favourite chair, accepted a coffee and began the briefing.

‘Bosnia.’ Because Bosnia would top the Brussels agenda, especially with the peace negotiations in Vienna seeming to report some progress.

They went through the overnights, plus the way Langdon should play whatever else the other Foreign Ministers might bring up.

One: the so-called ceasefire, even though it was in name only, and even though the UN had sought to play down violations in case they interfered with the Vienna talks.

Two: the state of siege in the Maglaj – Tesanj pocket and the reason for the UN pulling out the air strike at the last minute.

Three: the reporting of the siege by the press, mainly based on radio messages from the two towns pleading for help.

Four: the presence of the SAS in the area, the deaths of two SAS men and the wounding of two others. Plus the follow-up on how the FCO should play it vis-à-vis the press.

Langdon was in his mid-fifties but fit and tall, with dark hair just beginning to show the first streaks of silver. His background was representative of the new guard elbowing its way to the top at Westminster: Eton, Oxford, the City, twenty years in politics, the last fifteen in government, the last ten in the Cabinet, and the last three as Foreign Secretary.

Balkan Games, he thought. The Serbs, the Croats and the Muslims in one game. The Serbs and the West in another. London, Washington, Moscow and Paris in a third. The United Nations and the governments comprising the Security Council in a fourth, even the games within the UN itself.

And somewhere in the middle the people whom the UN was supposed to help. But if you allowed yourself to think like that then you lost the game before it was even started.

He closed the meeting and was driven to Heathrow.

The night had been long and cold, even in the ward, the occasional shell or mortar falling on the town. Kara had sat by the bed and held Jovan’s hands, told him his favourite stories as he drifted in and out of sleep.

It was seven o’clock in the morning. She was in the corridor, jerking in the half-world between sleep and fear.

‘Hello, Kara.’

She woke and looked up. Was laughing and crying, holding her husband and hugging him. ‘You made it,’ she was asking Adin, telling Adin. ‘You’re alive. You got the note.’

‘How’s Jovan?’ Adin held her tight, kissed her again and again. ‘Where is he, can I see him?’

They stood by Jovan’s bed, stayed an hour till the boy woke and saw his father, then they sat together in the corridor and shared the food, leaning against each other with their backs against the walls. It was going to be all right, she knew: Jovan had pulled through and Adin was alive.

‘Tell me what happened,’ Adin’s arm was round her. ‘Tell me how you got here.’

She told him, though her account at this stage was disjointed and apparently without logic. About how she had heard a scream in the night and thought it was him, how she helped the two injured men and how Finn and the others had come back. How they had carried Jovan to Tesanj and how they had given her their food when they had left.

The shells and mortars echoed outside.