Read THE HEART OF DANGER Online
Authors: Gerald Seymour
Tags: #War Crimes; thriller; mass grave; Library; Kupa; Croatia; Mowatt; Penn; Dorrie;
his
face. "Stop."
The children turned to him. He saw her defiance. She dared him to
step forward. He saw his children despised him. He saw the children
of the carpenter and the gravedigger and the postman. He saw the
grandchildren of the Priest. He saw the child of Milan Stankovic.
He
saw the freshness of the faces and their contempt. He turned in the
doorway. He heard the shout behind him, forty children's voices,
unbroken, in unison. "It is better to die honest than to live in
disgrace." The Headmaster began the slow walk home. He had only
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his
secret to sustain him, the knowledge of Katica Dubelj existing as
an
animal in the ruins of Rosenovici ... He knew no longer how to use
it.
It had been done easily and smoothly, and Penn had recognized it.
"So,
what are your future plans, Mr. Penn?" Jovic had introduced the
officer as liaison. Jovic had said that he was a captain and liaised
between the Croatian army, 2nd Bn, 110 (Karlovac) Brigade, and the
UNPROFOR troops across in Sector North. Jovic claimed him as a
friend.
"Just to pick up what help I can, captain, and to write a report,"
Penn
said. Jovic had said that the captain was his friend and had been
with
him at Sisak, when he had lost his arm. Only a report into the death
of Miss Dorothy Mowat? "Only her death, yes." Not the specific situation in that part of Sector North where she died? "How it
happened, when it happened, pretty bland." Why was the death of Miss Dorothy Mowat, when so many had died, so important? "Rich mother,
reckons she can buy anything." A sensitive area, a sensitive
situation, did he not know that? "Just a report, just to let her
mother sleep the better at night." And who else would read his
report?
"Shouldn't think anyone will, just her mother." It was the gentle probing of an intelligence officer. Penn recognized it. He hoped
his
answers were ignorant, facile. He reckoned the Intelligence Officer
was poorly trained. He would have done it differently himself, bored
harder. He knew about digging into the recesses of a man's life
because he had worked in the positive vetting team that cleared
personnel for work at the Atomic Weapons Establishment, Aldermaston.
Trust no one, believe in no one, that was any intelligence officer's
maxim, and he guessed that Jovic would have telephoned ahead and
engineered the meeting so that Penn, enigma, would be checked over.
And his report would not be used as a start point for a war crime
investigation? "Good God, no .. ."
The gentle probing of the Intelligence Officer, Liaison, was done
during the tour of the cease-fire line. The village of Turanj was
across the Korana river near to where it joined with the Kupa river
east of Karlovac. Not a house undamaged, every building hit by
multiple machine-gun bullets and by tank fire, and artillery shells.
The officer said, for the benefit of his visitor, that it was where
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the
Serbs had been held, where their advance had been stopped. He was
told
of the battle, close-quarters fighting. He listened and looked
around
him. An old woman was picking at burned roof timbers in the yard
behind what had been her home. They were past the defensive
machine-gun nests. They walked in the village of Turanj as if it
were
a museum, but the old woman searching in her yard told him of present
reality. The front wall was off the food shop. The roof was off
the
scorched interior of the repair garage. Flowers grew in overgrown
front gardens, and the blossom was on the magnolia and the apple
trees.
He was shown the co-operative building, and he was told not to go
past
it because he would then be in the field of vision of the snipers,
and
the cease-fire was variable. A cold place and quiet.
The officer said, "In war itself there is an excitement, in combat
there is an elation. Most men, you ask them, and if they give their
secret answer, tell you that war, combat, should not be missed ..
. But
the war goes by. I know nothing more degrading than a former
battlefield where there are no bodies, where there is no noise. The
war passes by and the excitement is quickly forgotten. Only the
vandalism of the war is left. It is the worst place you can be, Mr.
Penn, an old fighting ground, with just the ghosts."
A cat saw him, was bent low and scurrying, but took the time to turn
and spit at him. The poles that had carried the telephone wires were
down. "Would it be the same in Rosenovici?" "Why do you ask?"
"Just
trying to get the picture .. ." "It would not be the same," the officer said. "Here the buildings are destroyed by war. In
Rosenovici
a few buildings would have been destroyed by war, the rest would have
been destroyed by placed explosives. Here there is a chance to
rebuild, one day. In Rosenovici there would be no chance to rebuild
because nothing is left. In Rosenovici, villages like it, they went
as
far as bulldozing the graveyard. Here, there is still feeble life.
In
Rosenovici there is only the memory of death .. ." Penn thought he 124
was
being tested. He looked away. He stared up and beyond the jagged
and
broken roofs of Turanj and he could see the first line of trees. The
officer anticipated him. '.. . It is where their guns are. They
will
be following you, through telescopic sights, maybe if they are bored
they will shoot at you." "I am just here to make a report." He played
ignorant. Penn walked back down the road, like getting his head shot
off was no part of making a report. They drove away in the officer's
car. They went back past the machine-gun positions and the soldiers
waved to them, they went across the bridge over the Korana river and
Penn saw, moored at the bank, two grey-coloured inflatables. He
didn't
like to look hard because frequently the officer slung a fast glance
at
him to see whether it was a trained eye or a rubber necker eye that
examined the front line. There were tank obstacle teeth beside the
road into Karlovac, and more defence positions, and there was the
emptiness. They drove on, past the officer's headquarters in a new
building where all the windows were taped against artillery blast.
They
climbed a winding road. They were above the town. On the summit
of
the hill was a fortress tower. They left the car. They walked along a
path and in the grass beside the path were teenagers, cuddling and
messing about and smoking. They looked out. The town was in front
of
them.
Beyond the town were the rivers, winding to their meeting point.
Beyond the meeting point of the Korana and the Kupa rivers was the
green carpet of the forest.
Beyond the forest was the blue haze line of the high ground.
The officer said, "The high ground is the Petrova Gora, dense
woodland,
rock cliffs, sheer valleys. It is special to the Serb people because
it was in the Petrova Gora that Tito had a field hospital for his
Partizans, in the war with the Germans. The German army made many
incursions into the Petrova Gora but they were never able to find
the
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hospital. The failure was a source of frustration, that is why the
Germans killed many of the people in the villages at the edge of the
Petrova Gora. If you were to be there, Mr. Penn, which is
impossible,
then they would lie and tell you that it was Croatian people, fascists
fighting alongside the Germans, who were responsible for the
killings.
Through the lies they justify what they have done, now, to villages
such as Rosenovici .. ."
Penn had his hand across his forehead. He shaded his eyes. He
thought
he could see twenty miles, maybe more. Such peace. It was where
Dorrie had been, Dome's place. It was like the place of his
childhood,
where he had been before the exams and the application forms, and
work
in London. Peace and beauty. He strained to see better.
The officer said, "I am correct, you see nothing that threatens? The front line between here and Sisak is the Kupa river. It is seventy
kilometres in length. Across there, on their side, where you see
nothing, are minefields and strong points and defended villages.
Across there, they have 300 guns that can flatten Karlo-vac and Sisak
in a day. Across there, aimed at Zagreb are medium-range missile
launchers. One day, I hope, we can take our territory back, but not
today and not tomorrow. You see, Mr. Penn, it is important to us
that, today and tomorrow, we do not anger them, across there. It
is of
strategic importance for the future of Croatia, military and
economic,
that the bastards, across there, are not antagonized .. ."
"Who did it?"
"Did what?"
"Who killed Dorrie Mowat?"
"It is important?"
"For my report, yes."
The officer smiled. Jovic was behind them, silent. Penn and the
officer stood together and stared out across the Kupa river and the
forest and towards the high ground. The sun beat at Penn.
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"They do not scatter evidence, they do not leave eyewitnesses. I
do
not know."
"Who would have given the order?"
"Probably the commander of the militia. Perhaps the commander of
the
militia in the village close to Rosenovici .. ."
"What is his name?"
"I used to know him, not as a friend, but I knew him. My wife is
a
teacher and knew his wife. Why do you need the name?"
"For my report?"
"You can make up a name, take a telephone directory. Just for a
report, for a mother who lost a daughter, you can invent a name. Why
not?"
He had been led, subtly, to the trap. He had underestimated the
quality of the Intelligence Officer. Perhaps a graduate would not
have
sprung the trap, not one of the young bloody graduates of the General
Intelligence Group. He stumbled.
"Pick a name out of the air, why not?"
A light murmur of laughter from the officer. "He is Milan Stankovic.
I
see him at my liaison meetings, I used to play basketball against
him.
The militia in the attack on Rosenovici was commanded by Milan
Stankovic."
"What will happen to him?"
"I saw him last month, at the liaison meeting. We talked about the electricity supply. They have our territory but they do not have
power. We have lost our territory but we have power. Last month,
he
did not seem like a man afraid, but then the liaison meeting is always
behind their lines. Today, tomorrow, nothing will happen to Milan
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Stankovic."
Penn said, "I will put that in my report."
On that night of the week it would have been usual for the Priest
to
have gone to the Headmaster's house and, by candlelight, played
chess.
He had not made apologies, he had not given notice of his absence
to
the Headmaster, he had gone instead to the home of Milan Stankovic.
He was a quiet man and through the adult part of his seventy-four
years
he had seldom offered an opinion that he had not first known would
fall
on approving ears. Capable of intrigue but incapable of
confrontation,
he lived out the last years of his life in the intellectual backwater
that was the village of Salika. He knew every man and every woman
and
every child in the village of Salika, but his only friend was the
Headmaster with whom on that night he should have played chess and
taken a glass of brandy weakened with water that would have lasted
him
through the game .. . and he had gone instead to the home of Milan
Stankovic.
He could justify his abandoning of the game of chess.
They were coming in the village to the day when the population of
Salika travelled to the church at Glina where so many had died. It
was
an important anniversary, the fiftieth. All of the village would
travel to the site where the people had been herded by the Ustase
fascists, where the fire had been lit, where a thousand had died.
If
the Priest had not been young, not been fit enough to survive,
emaciated, in the Petrova Gora, if he had been inside the cordon,
then
he could believe that he would have been taken to the church and burned
alive. But, to go to the church at Glina, it was necessary for the
people of Salika to take two buses. The buses were in a barn near
to
the school. To take the buses there must be diesel fuel. To get
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diesel fuel he must have the help of Milan Stankovic. The gaining
of
diesel fuel was his justification for abandoning his appointment with