Kevin Sullivan - The Longest Winter

She saw her father walking on the road. He was a short man. He had a thick moustache, and not the kind of sharp suit she had imagined, but a country suit, of wool, and a white shirt with no collar. He had thick hair, and in his eyes an expression of such remorse that she ran to him and flung her arms around him and whispered. ‘It’s OK, Daddy.’

And she walked with them beneath the trees, along that endless road towards the sea.

Danby read the printout again and frowned. Sergeant Matthews stepped back a pace, watching his chief in the light of a night lamp by the side of the camp bed.

Danby sat on the edge of the bed in shorts and singlet. He waited for a few moments more and then he said, ‘No reply.’

When Matthews had gone, Danby lay back and stared into the darkness.

The message from New York said that the minister’s assassination was to be investigated by a specially appointed commission. UN staff in the city were to avoid public comment pending the results of the inquiry. UN officers couldn’t investigate themselves, so the inquiry already announced by the General was to be suspended (in reality it had never begun). The names of three distinguished diplomats were written on the printout. These three would head the formal UN investigation. Their names and biographies were the only pieces of information that were to be passed on to the media.

No date was set for the arrival of the commission. The nature and scope and duration of its investigation weren’t specified.

Danby could imagine the next day’s briefing. The media wouldn’t buy a distinguished commission. They would see it for what it was. They would see it the way Danby saw it.

He was angry because he was the one designated to market this farce. The point of Danby’s work a lot of the time was to place a positive spin on negative developments. Part of his brain was doing that already: the commission demonstrated that the UN was serious about putting its own house in order. The calibre of the diplomats who’d been appointed showed that the inquiry would be high-powered and thorough. It was appropriate that UN staff make no further comment about the assassination since this might be regarded as an attempt to influence the outcome of the inquiry.

But Danby knew that this wasn’t right.

He believed in separating right from wrong and now he was to be the front man for something less than honest: this didn’t sit well.

He thought about the mission, mired in chaos. Despite it all, they had kept hundreds of thousands of people alive, fed them, brought them medicine, brought them the hope of a negotiated end to the fighting. There were massacres that hadn’t been stopped, but there were massacres that didn’t happen and they didn’t happen because UN troops showed up.

Danby dozed fitfully, weighing up usefulness and virtue and honesty and cowardice. In the morning he was still angry, and he became more irritable still at breakfast, sitting with Major Thomson at the large oval-shaped table in the Delegates’ Club dining room.

‘Rocard had a word with me last night,’ Thomson said.

Thomson could see that Danby was in low spirits and he wondered if the pressure was getting too much for the Irishman. It was often the ones who seemed most in command who cracked when the going got tough.

‘Yes?’

‘He was concerned.’

Thomson was hungry and he’d just been presented with ham and eggs and fried bread. He hoped Danby wouldn’t be difficult.

‘He told me you had been to see him,’ Thomson went on.

‘I wanted information.’

‘That’s just it,’ Thomson said, placing a piece of moderately soft egg on top of a slice of ham and skewering this on the end of his fork. ‘All of that is to be left to the new commission.’

‘You know about the commission?’

‘Yes, of course I know about the commission!’ Thomson allowed an edge of irritation into his voice. ‘I’m public affairs too, in case you’d forgotten!’

Danby gave a thin smile and said, ‘Then you may be able to tell me when this commission is going to arrive?’

‘Not until after the airlift resumes.’

‘Resumes?’ Danby put his cup down and it clattered on the saucer.

‘There are problems in Geneva,’ Thomson said between chewing ham and egg. ‘Some concerns regarding security. Flights will stop today until we can extract guarantees from the factions that aid planes won’t be targeted.’

Danby stood up. ‘I wasn’t told about this!’

‘I’m telling you now,’ Thomson said. He tried not to sound triumphant.

‘There are no more flights?’

‘We have to bring in some essential stuff this morning… nothing after that.’

Danby began to walk away. Thomson stood up and said, ‘This isn’t for public consumption. We don’t want a stampede to the airport. Nothing’s to get out to the media.’

Danby hurried upstairs to the Situation Room. Matthews was standing by the window smoking. He put his cigarette into an empty cigarette packet and crushed it in one hand, closing the window with the other. He hadn’t expected Danby to come up from breakfast so soon.

‘Let me see the overnight traffic from New York and Geneva,’ Danby snapped.

Matthews was nervous. ‘Anything in particular, sir?’

‘Just show me the printouts.’

‘Sir, not all the messages are in the regular file.’ Matthews walked to a table in the corner of the room. He came back with a sheet of paper.

‘This came in… for limited circulation until this morning. Doesn’t say what time this morning.’ Danby took the message and read it. Only three officers were authorised to do so. Thomson was one of them; Danby was not. The airlift was to be suspended indefinitely at noon.

Danby left the Situation Room and walked down to the first-floor lobby. He couldn’t immediately think of anything that he could say or do that would make him less angry. Then he turned and climbed back up the stairs. There was one constructive thing he could do.

‘I want you to go to the Holiday Inn,’ he told Matthews. ‘There’s a British doctor there. Her name is Barnes, or Burns, something like that. I don’t know what room. She’s evacuating a little boy to London. They have to get to the airport by twelve, but she won’t know that so you need to get the message to her. If they delay she won’t get the boy out.’

The soldier nodded. Danby spoke quietly. ‘And Matthews, no need to tell anyone where you’re going.’

‘I’ll be off then, sir.’

‘If she’s not there, there’s a journalist who might be able to get a message to her.’ He gave him Anna’s details. ‘They were together yesterday. If you have to speak to the journalist, make it crystal clear the information is unattributable.’

Alija was irritated because he had to make an extra trip. It would take twenty minutes to go to Alipašino Polje, and another twenty minutes to climb up to the sixteenth floor and climb back down again. Milena might want to send a reply to Jusuf – another ten minutes – and then ten minutes more to drive back to headquarters. He was going to waste an hour. He had to be back at the State Hospital by eight. Jurić had promised him syringes and bandages for Otes. Thinking about syringes made him angry. There was almost nothing left to put in them – no antibiotics, no painkillers.

He hit a tailback on the road near the bakery. A Ukrainian APC at the head of a UN convoy was stuck on a corner. The huge tyres were churning up snow. A grey Fiat 500 had tried to drive round the APC and had slipped into a ditch. Two Ukrainian soldiers were helping the people from the Fiat lift it back onto the road.