Kevin Sullivan - The Longest Winter

Alija left Jusuf outside the apartment on Tito Street. He drove another two blocks to the Chamber Theatre, where he climbed the stairs methodically, glad that he met no one on the way. At the top landing he paused for a moment and then he knocked.

When Sanela saw him, horror settled in her eyes.

Baring was dismayed by the drive out of Otes. Everything on the road was targeted. He drove as fast as was prudent, kept his eye ahead and focused on reaching the barrier at Stup. Battlefields were among the few places on earth where Michael Baring was liberated from his own overweening self-regard.

He couldn’t remember the name of the driver, the one who was killed – Sanela’s boyfriend. He could see that the British doctor was shaken though. He would put that in his story about little Miro’s evacuation. He’d had ten minutes to interview mother and son, and the doctor, before the others arrived.

Now he was on his way to Ilidža and he reckoned there was a possibility, albeit a slim one in view of the source, that he might get material for a third strong story. By evening he would have stashed away a good two thousand words for next day’s paper. A thousand words were guaranteed to make front page.

He swung the car onto Sniper Alley and started towards the flyover. He relaxed his grip on the steering wheel, eased himself back in the driving seat and breathed deeply, starting to feel calm again. Just after he passed the newspaper building a bullet, fired from Nedjarići two hundred yards away, pierced the rear left window of the Golf and exited through the floor.

Baring cursed.

He leaned forward over the steering wheel and accelerated. The next one, he thought, may kill me and I will be left here on this godforsaken bit of road.

He zigzagged the car and made the flyover, where he swung off the road and onto the slip road that led up to the bridge. No more shots were fired. When he reached the Ilidža turning on the Airport Road he pulled the car over onto the right fork. He guessed that Brad had been shaken by the explosion. He must have been pretty unsteady to give away his tip about the witness in Ilidža. Brad desperately needed a story like that right now.

Thinking this he became uneasy. When Brad had taken hold of him in the garage Baring felt it only decent to do whatever would be helpful. Brad didn’t want this story to get away, but he’d opted to take little Miro to the airport rather than go to Ilidža himself.

Now Baring began to wonder.

Brad had heard from a secondary, now deceased, source that someone in Ilidža was willing to tell all to a foreign journalist about the minister’s assassination.

The germ of a hideously unpleasant insight took hold. Baring felt the way he felt when younger journalists glanced at one another while he was in full flow, and he realised that they were making fun of him.

He was already in Ilidža but, obstinately, until he had resolved the sudden suspicion that he might have been tricked, and by a colleague for whom he possessed not an ounce of respect, he decided not to go to the Strand. He would stop and speak to one of his own contacts first. If Brad’s supposed source really wanted to tell his story then the fellow would wait.

Baring’s contact was an urbane and rather witty black marketeer who had just been appointed to the municipal defence council in Ilidža. His name was Mićo, and Baring believed that he was close to the Rebel leadership.

Mićo was fat. He wore an expensive cashmere sweater and smart blue corduroy trousers. ‘What can I do for you?’ he asked when Baring entered his second-floor office in the former Ilidža municipal building. Through diligent study of American television he had acquired a quasi-New Jersey accent. He had a hoarse, slightly high-pitched voice. Baring took out his notebook. ‘The Airport Road,’ he said dramatically.

‘I have a statement from our military command,’ Mićo said without much enthusiasm. He placed a single sheet of paper on the table in front of Baring. The statement was three lines long. It read, The authorities welcome the announcement in New York that a special commission has been formed to investigate the fatal incident on the Airport Road. The authorities will cooperate fully with the commission.

‘What commission?’ Baring was annoyed.

‘They’re sending some heavy hitters from New York.’

‘When?’

‘You’d better ask the UN about that, but I don’t think it’ll be for quite a while. The airlift is being suspended today.’

Baring remained calm. He hated, more than just about anything else in the world, looking clueless.

‘I’d heard something about that,’ he lied. ‘Have the flights already stopped?’

‘Round about now,’ Mićo said, looking at his watch.

Baring knew then that he had been duped. While he wasted time on a wild-goose chase to Ilidža, Brad had an exclusive on a mercy dash to catch the last plane out of Sarajevo. That would top anything else that was filed that day. He guessed that Brad must have known about the airlift suspension. He guessed that Brad probably knew about the UN commission too.

On his way out of Ilidža Baring raced past the Strand, determined to get to the airport before midday. At the same time, a man stepped out of the café; he looked to his right and then to his left and after lingering for a moment he walked away.

‘You OK?’ Brad asked. He could see that she wasn’t.

Anna looked at him and then she looked ahead. She was trying to adjust her flak jacket but she couldn’t do it properly because her thick gloves, blue wool with a pattern of yellow triangles across the knuckles, got in the way.

‘What’s going to happen to Sanela?’ she asked.

Brad slowed the Land Rover as they approached the first UN checkpoint.

He didn’t answer. He thought about Wikram’s mother, when Brad visited her two days after the ambush at Puttalam lagoon. In the shadows, in the large room with high windows, sounds from the garden echoing across the dark teak floor. The woman’s patrician face was drawn. Brad’s voice darted among the shadows; he was unable to say anything adequate or comforting, and when she looked at him he felt like Wikram’s killer.

The French APC reversed off the track and let them pass. He drove the Land Rover slowly over the snow to the second checkpoint, covering the entrance to the airport.

Anna took off one of her gloves and rearranged the Velcro fastening on her flak jacket. Her thoughts darted here and there and she couldn’t get them ordered. She tried to breathe deeply and calm herself but that didn’t work. She could not reconcile herself to the image of a friend cut in two equal pieces.

Brad stopped the Land Rover in front of the APC, which blocked the end of the track on the edge of the airport compound. A sergeant emerged from the sandbag emplacement and walked towards them.

Anna knew then that they were going to be turned back. She took her ID card from her wallet. She tried to understand why she knew they wouldn’t get the APC to move out of the way. Perhaps, she thought, they simply did not have the strength to move it.

They had fled from Otes; they were running, looking for help and they were no match for the APC and the power that lay behind it.

‘What do you have in the back?’ the Legionnaire asked.

‘Two women and a small boy,’ Brad said. ‘They are being evacuated to London.’

The sergeant looked at Brad’s ID and handed it back. Then he flicked his fingers lazily, indicating that he wanted to see Anna’s card. She gave it to Brad and he gave it to the soldier. The man examined it and stood on tiptoe to see into the driving cabin and check that Anna’s face matched the face on the card. He handed it back. The sergeant strolled to the back of the van. Brad got out and walked round the other side and opened the back door.