Kevin Sullivan - The Longest Winter

Brad left her at a quarter to ten. She was to sleep on the spare bed in Anna’s room.

He brooded on his scoop – consigned to the newsroom wastebasket – as he gunned the engine and drove up the ramp and out of the hotel. The battery was feeble. The car moved off the ramp and onto the road. He accelerated and changed gear and felt the power drain away. The engine stopped and he heard the tyres grind into the snow and thought for the third time that night, I am in view of snipers; there is a clear field of fire . He swore, put the gear into neutral and rolled back down the hill onto the ramp and into the basement. At the bottom of the ramp he tried the reverse gear; the engine didn’t even cough.

Brad arrived at the Delegates’ Club on foot at twenty past ten. The Egyptian guard let him into the garden without asking his name this time. The press conference was ending as Brad entered the foyer. Anna was standing at the back.

‘What have I missed?’

‘Just about everything!’ she said, looking at him with disappointment or annoyance – or both.

He had run most of the way from the Holiday Inn. He was dishevelled and sweating, and the foyer was crowded and very warm.

Standing in the glare of television lights with reporters jostling around him the General put on a calm front. ‘This is a tragedy,’ he said, repeating almost word for word what he’d said earlier outside the presidency. ‘I appeal to all those who would seek revenge… do not make this tragedy worse.’

His face broke into a pattern of fine wrinkles. He grimaced. His steel-rimmed spectacles flashed in the television lights. He was smoking a small cigar.

‘General,’ Michael Baring made himself heard. ‘I’m sure I speak for the press as a whole when I say that not one man jack among us believes you or any of the soldiers under your command bear personal blame for what has happened. However, I’m obliged as a journalist to seek from you an assurance that this event will be investigated in such a way that the world’s media,’ – he made a sweeping motion with his hand – ‘whom we represent here tonight, will be able to assess with whom responsibility rests.’

‘Everything will be done to find out what happened,’ the General said. ‘Now, if you will excuse me—’

He began to move towards the stairs.

Jim Danby shouted over the babble of questions and irritated cameramen trying to secure a clear line of view to the General. ‘There will be a full briefing tomorrow morning at eleven o’clock at the PTT. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. That will be all for this evening.’

‘I’ve got it,’ Anna told Brad. ‘I’ll file as soon as we get back.’

‘Brad!’ Baring swept past him on his way to the door. ‘Wherever were you? That was a crucial briefing!’

‘Crucial?’ Brad asked, catching up with Anna.

‘More curious than crucial,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t the UN’s fault. That was the gist.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Very little in the way of explanation. Very little in the way of apology.’

Terry sat on her own at one of the smaller tables. She had placed her coat on the back of the chair next to her and her black acrylic holdall on the floor. There was a cup of coffee in front of her, but Zlatko could tell that she had finished drinking the coffee long ago. She looked sad, he thought, and bewildered.

There was hardly anyone else in the restaurant. The journalists had all gone to the morning press briefing.

She looked up as Zlatko approached, and he noted the uncertain expression on her face.

He smiled a broad friendly smile and extended his hand.

‘Dr Barnes, I am Zlatko. I am to drive you to Otes.’

He sat down.

‘Let’s have a coffee first,’ he said. ‘And a cigarette.’ He beckoned the waiter over and ordered two more cups of coffee. ‘You are just as Sanela described you!’ he said.

He is very young , Terry thought.

He wore cowboy boots under blue jeans, a black sweater, red scarf and an elegant woollen coat.

‘Dr Jurić isn’t coming, then?’ she asked.

He carried on smiling his wide, getting-to-know-you smile. ‘He’s been detained at the hospital. I’ve just come from there. There are many casualties today, I’m afraid. There was a heavy bombardment this morning, and some of the wounded are coming from Otes.’

Terry had awoken to the sound of explosions. Her first reaction had been to leap out of bed and lie on the carpet as far as possible from the window. She jumped onto the floor so violently that she hurt her ankle, which compounded her existing injury. The pain from her bruise of the previous day had not receded. She lay beside the bed for a few seconds and then decided it was too cold to stay there. The explosions continued so she pulled her coat on and went into the loo. No windows. It felt safer. But the candle used up the oxygen and she started to get a headache, so she came back out and tiptoed to the window as if some artillery officer miles away might be waiting to hear the sound of her footsteps before directing his next round of fire. She peeped through the space in the tarpaulin. The noise was very loud but she couldn’t see smoke or fire or sparks flying. She had hurried downstairs to the restaurant long before breakfast.

Zlatko picked up Terry’s packet of Marlboro. ‘May I?’

She took the packet and extracted a cigarette and offered it to him. He took the book of matches, nearly finished now, and lit the cigarette.

The waiter brought coffee.

‘I will interpret for you,’ Zlatko explained. ‘It’s dangerous today – a lot of shelling – but we’ll manage. Shall I call you “Doctor”?’

It was not clear to her whether he intended this to be funny. Perhaps it was some sort of Central European courtesy. Everything was odd, from explosions and small-arms fire to conversational eccentricities.

‘Yes, if you like,’ she said.

‘We will manage, Doctor. We will manage. Are we to take the little boy to the airport immediately?’ Zlatko hadn’t been given any details.

‘No. Today I’ll examine Miro, and we’ll evacuate him tomorrow.’

‘And you have already arranged this with UNHCR?’

‘Not yet.’

‘We must visit the PTT on our return from Otes, then.’ He guessed that she imagined others would make allowances for Miro, but he knew that they wouldn’t. ‘We’ll get the necessary permission, the papers to enter the airport and board a plane,’ he continued. ‘And after that, I’m going to take you to a concert!’

She looked at him with astonishment.

‘Dr Jurić asked me to bring you to our annual children’s song festival. We’ll meet him there this afternoon,’ Zlatko said. ‘The festival is to take place near the TV Centre and the doctor will be in that part of the city. Anyway, you should have an opportunity to see something positive when you are here, and the song festival will be a contrast to everything else. It was supposed to have been cancelled – it didn’t seem right to hold such an event in these conditions – but there was a contrary view that this is something that we hold every year and we must not let the gentlemen on the other side of the frontline stop us from holding it this year.’

He spoke in a wry, engaging tone of voice, as if the carnage around them was a disagreeable inconvenience. He was dressed as she imagined he might have dressed in peacetime. His winter clothes were stylish and he wore brown leather brogues, a contrast to the heavy boots and arctic jackets and greatcoats that were in universal use.

‘Who is it exactly that you work for?’ she asked.

‘Today, I’m working for you!’ he said. ‘Until the start of this year I was a student.’