Kevin Sullivan - The Longest Winter

‘And you’re not getting the cooperation you need from the UN?’

‘They have a difficult job.’

‘My source told me you weren’t getting cooperation.’

‘That so?’

The waiter brought dessert for Terry and Jurić.

‘How old are your boys?’ Terry asked Jurić.

‘Six and eight. The older one is a musician, quite gifted I believe, a flautist.’ He paused and then, as if this thought had just occurred to him, he added, ‘I miss them.’

‘Of course,’ Terry said. ‘But it’s better that they aren’t here.’

‘When did you get them out?’ Baring asked.

‘Before the beginning of the war.’

‘Exceptional foresight. Ah, here’s my wine!’ He accepted the bottle from the waiter. ‘Two more glasses, please.’

Baring’s voice droned on while Terry’s thoughts raced. Her mind moved into a familiar and painful groove, impelled by Jurić’s question about marriage. The immediate circumstances that had brought her to this table involved a last-minute change of plan by the Medical Action Group, but the root cause went further back than that. One bright morning the year before, Terry drove to the university to bring her husband a notebook he’d forgotten. He hadn’t called to ask her to bring it but she knew that it contained notes he’d been making for a lecture on medieval symbolism and he’d left it on the hall table. She wanted to drop it off on her way to the hospital: things were going well between them after months of quarrelling. His research assistant was not in the outer office: Terry found her in her husband’s office, assistant and lecturer leaping apart when Terry opened the door. She remembered noticing how shabby his office was, and how dull was the view from the little window. They separated soon afterwards. He was living with his assistant now.

Terry took the packet of Marlboro from her bag.

‘May I have one?’ Jurić asked.

‘Two doctors smoking. Whatever next!’ Baring remarked.

‘They have shot him!’ the Professor said. He hurried out of his office on the first floor of the presidency building.

He had been nicknamed ‘the Professor’ by foreign reporters because he spoke impeccable English and had a habit of explaining issues in minute and logical detail, as though instructing anatomy students on the intricacies of the digestive system. He was among the more influential ministers.

The Professor had thick black hair, long enough at the front to fall raffishly over his forehead. Invariably he was well dressed, a bit of a dandy. But the way he now approached Brad didn’t encourage a relaxed consideration of the doctor’s wardrobe. He was wild eyed.

‘Go and tell the world about this!’ he said. It didn’t sound portentous, maybe because he said it in a low, peculiar voice, struggling to get control of his vocal cords. ‘They have assassinated a member of our government!’

Brad wasn’t sure if the Professor knew anything more than he himself had already learned. Rumours took on a life of their own in the city. The Professor might have got the wrong end of the story from the Airport Road.

‘He is fighting for his life,’ the Professor continued.

‘Where is he now?’

‘At the PTT. The General is there. He spoke to me by phone a few minutes ago.’

The General, though, might also be hysterical, Brad thought.

The Professor started to walk away. Brad followed him. ‘What’s the government going to do?’

‘Emergency Cabinet session. Here. Tonight.’ He looked at Brad impatiently. ‘I must go now.’ He increased his pace along the corridor.

Brad scribbled the Professor’s remarks in his notebook and then walked back the way he had come.

A thick red carpet stretched the length of the corridor. The sound of Brad’s footsteps was muffled beneath the gilded Habsburg cornices. The walls were cream-coloured and there were heavy red curtains with gold embroidery over the tall windows.

He looked ahead at the three guards standing in the lobby. Two were holding their machine guns at the front, the third had his slung over his shoulder. The soldiers and police in the presidency building were turned out smartly, boots polished, fatigues pressed.

Brad had been the only one at the Delegates’ Club when Alija came in out of the blizzard, and he’d caught the Professor for a comment before the Cabinet went into session. Outside, he ran. He hated the stretch of pavement leading from the back door of the presidency round the side of the building towards Tito Street. The pavement was exposed to sniper fire. He was particularly nervous because he was the bearer of important news. He must not under any circumstances let it fall on the frozen ground.

When he reached the main road he slowed down to catch his breath. It was dark and silent and he could hear the sound of his own breathing. He was out of condition.

He began to walk more quickly when he got to the Alipašino Mosque. Someone else might pick up the story in the time it took Brad to walk, run and hobble over the snow from the presidency to the Holiday Inn. Word was sure to get out from the PTT, where the General was.

In the hotel he climbed the back stairs by torchlight and went straight to his room. Inside, he connected the small lamp above his desk to the car battery on the floor and switched on the computer. The satellite equipment below the desk was blinking. There was a message.

As he read the incoming message Brad’s excitement began to be displaced by anger. The message wasn’t for him but for Anna. The desk commended her on a piece she’d sent that morning – a feature on women at war – and told her to go ahead with the story she’d proposed for the following day. She was going to write about Dr Barnes’ bid to bring little Miro to safety in London.

She hadn’t told Brad she planned to write about that.

Brad had been in the city for months and Anna had been there just over a week. They were circling around one another. He hadn’t made up his mind about her but he didn’t like her dealing with the desk direct, over his head.

There was a crate of Carlsberg in the corner by the window. Brad fetched one of the cans and opened it. He began to type.

He wrote that the minister had been shot while travelling under UN escort. He reported that the man was fighting for his life. The incident placed a question mark over peace talks in Geneva scheduled to begin that week. The Cabinet was about to meet in emergency session.

Finished, he read the piece, made corrections, set up the communications protocol and pressed the ‘transmit’ option. The signal blinked on the satellite transponder, and he waited for confirmation that the message had been received.

He took his can of beer to the window. Outside it was deathly quiet. A car raced down Sniper Alley, over the snow, headlights on and off. There was sporadic tracer fire in the distance. He lit a cigarette, inhaled, took another sip of beer and moved back to the computer. Message received .

He hurried out again and went down to the car park in the basement. Anna had taken the Land Rover. The sedan had a dodgy battery and no rear window and it didn’t have armoured plating, but he couldn’t make another dash to the Delegates’ Club and then the presidency on foot.

He found the car, got in and switched on the engine. It started.

‘Thank you!’ he shouted at the dashboard. He lit another cigarette and began to ease the car through an impossibly tight geometry of parked vehicles. At the entrance to the car park he gunned the engine. The most dangerous part of the journey was exiting the hotel and turning the corner on the ramp out of the car park, in full view of the sniper nests on the other side of the river.