Read THE HEART OF DANGER Online
Authors: Gerald Seymour
Tags: #War Crimes; thriller; mass grave; Library; Kupa; Croatia; Mowatt; Penn; Dorrie;
black expanse of the field. It was through the gate that they had
taken them, and then the bulldozer had followed, and the bulldozer
had
clipped the gate post, collapsed the gate. Short of the field, where
the lane bent, was the small house which had not been destroyed. It
might have been the postman, Branko, or it might have been the
gravedigger, Stevo, but both had claimed to have shot the old bastard
Ustase. He could remember it, seeing the flash of her face at the
window, the old bitch Ustase, as he cursed them to go faster, and
he
could remember the face of the girl. It was only a hovel. The
carpenter reckoned he would not have put pigs in the house of the
old
bastard and the old bitch, but the hovel had been there since the
time
he was born and the timber would be good, seasoned. In his mind,
they
were both together, the face of the old bitch at her window, and the
face of the girl .. . The door groaned as he pushed it. The hurricane lamp threw its light inside the one room. He smelled the damp of
the
room. It was close and small and he saw the sacking in the corner,
as
if it was used for a couch bed. Not a place for a pig, not for cattle.
He had to work quickly because the oil was poor quality in the
hurricane lamp and burned faster than good oil, but good oil was no
longer available. He began to rip the wide panel strips from the
wall,
the best wood and seasoned. He used the jemmy, and then the lump
hammer to hack away at the last holding nails. The noise was around
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him and the dust of the plaster lathe. He often thought of the girl.
It need not have happened to the girl. She could have gone, with
the
other women. The postman, Branko, had tried to pull her away from
the
two wounded men, tried to save her, and she had fought the postman,
had
hurt him. The dust clogged at his nose. And when the wide panel
strips were free, he reached up and belted with the lump hammer at
the
ceiling plaster that cascaded on him. The beams were good. He
wanted
two lengths of beam, each his own height, for the legs of the table
he
would present to Milan. Making room with the jemmy and the lump
hammer
for his bow saw .. . The blow caught him. He was turning in the grey
white of the dust storm. The shrivelled figure, black, and the
hurricane lamp guttering, and the stick raised as a club. His eyes
watering from the blow, his vision hazed. He clung to the stick,
the
club, wrestled it away. Claws in his face. Feeling the drag of the nails, razor lines of pain, on his face. Clutching at thin wrists,
seeing the bony fingers reaching for his eyes. The shrivelled
figure,
black, gone in the mist of grey white, gone into the darkness of the
door. He staggered to the door. He had his pistol out from the
holster. There was only silence around the carpenter. He fired the pistol up the lane and down the lane and the crash of the shots
burgeoned at his ears. He had no target. He did not know where to
fire. He emptied the magazine of the pistol, and he ran. He left
behind him his bow saw and the jemmy and his lump hammer, and the
failing light of the hurricane lamp. He ran down the lane, he
splattered the potholes of rainwater, and he ran through the square.
He
was panting hard when he reached the bridge and he shouted out his
name
that the guards should not shoot him. He found them scared,
cringing,
hiding down behind the sandbags, and they had their own light which
they shone in his face. He wiped his cheeks. He did not know what
he
could tell the young men who guarded the bridge across the stream.
His
own blood stained the palm of his hand. Finished, or not begun.
Penn
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sat on a bench in the park, the darkness around him. Penn thought
he
had made the decision. To go to the end, that was his father's code.
Doing it properly, that was his mother's code. On a bench in Zagreb,
with noisy basketball played open air under floodlights beyond the
darkness, he thought of them. His father, looking at him direct,
pipe
clamped in his teeth, would have said that he had taken the money
and
that if he hadn't wanted shit in his face then he should not, first,
have taken the money. His mother, averted head and pursed lips and
wiping her hands, would have told him that he was under obligation,
but
that he should go carefully. When he had swotted for the exams that
had lifted him from the countryside, prompted by his history master
who
had helped with the forms, he had sent off an application for work
as a
clerk in government. He was going back into the rock of previous
years, now, chiselling for guidance. Taken on at the Home Office.
He
wondered how they would have reacted, at the Home Office, to his query
as to whether he had finished or whether he had not begun. Working
with paper, pushing paper, annotating paper, moving paper,
discarding
paper, for the Prison Service department of the Home Office. They
would have said, the ones who had worked with him in the clerks' pool,
who were still there working in the clerks' pool, that he had
finished.
Five o'clock, old chummy, time to be gone, always finished at five
o'clock, old chummy. One late night and there was a panic meeting
between the Home Office and Security Service and an assistant under
secretary stamping empty corridors, searching for a file fetcher,
finding Bill Penn, clerk. He had run half the night down to the
basement and back up to the third floor with the files they had needed.
He had brought the coffee. He had gone out for sandwiches. He had
kept the files coming, and the coffee and the sandwiches, when their
heads were on their bloody knees in tiredness, and a week later the
job
offer had come through, clerk grade in Library at Curzon Street, then
at Gower Street. In Five's Library they would have said he had
finished. Into F Branch, pushing paper on 'subversives'. Into A
Branch, working with the 'watchers'. The guys in F Branch and the
guys
in A Branch, they would have said, too damned right, he had finished.
The guys in F Branch and A Branch would have been quoting training
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courses, evaluating back-up, querying days in lieu for extra days
worked. But there was no training, there would be no back-up ...
It
was Penn's decision. He had the obligation, and he would go
carefully.
It would be for her, Dorrie .. . Not for Mary Braddock in the Manor
House, not for Basil and the creeps at Alpha Security, not for Arnold
bloody Browne who had not lifted a finger when he'd needed help, not
for his Jane and his Tom and the paying of the mortgage for the roof
over their heads, but for the love of Dorrie ... He had the photographs
of her. The photographs were in the inside pocket of his blazer,
dry,
safe, close to him. He thought that what he wanted, wanted most in
the
world, was to share in the love of Dorrie. He saw the face that was
loved, the face of mischief, sparkle, hatred, bloody-mindedness,
courage, the face that was putrefied and drawn from the ground and
wounded with cuts and blows and a pistol shot .. .
And all the rest was shit .. .
It was as if she called. It was as if he should follow. He knew
that
he wanted her love, certainty, more than anything he had wanted in
his
life. He craved the freedom that had been hers. As if he heard her loud laughter, daring him.
Not finished, because it was not begun.
Ham saw him come through the door. Then he was looking round,
checking
the tables, searching for a face.
"Hello, squire, funny seeing you in this shit heap .. ."
Most evenings Ham ate alone. Couldn't abide the crap they served
up in
the old police station. Most evenings he asked the guys if they'd
come
down the town and join him, and most evenings they had a reason not
to,
fuck them. He ate alone in the cafe on Krizaniceva inside the walls
of
the old city. He pushed out the chair opposite him.
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'.. . So what brings you down the sharp end, what brings you to sunny Karlovac?"
"You wanted a bit of tracing done. You wanted to know where your
wife
was, and your kiddie. I'll do that."
Ham said quickly, "Can't pay a fancy fee .. ."
"No fee, no charge."
Ham said, suddenly doubtful, "Not for fucking charity. What's the
game, squire?"
"For a favour."
"You tell me, what's the favour?"
"You said you'd walked into Sector North. I want a route. I want
to
know where to go, where not to go. That's my fee for the trace."
Wide-eyed, Ham said, "That's fucking dumb talk .. ."
"No charge for the trace, but you give me a route so as I can walk
to
Rosenovici."
Ham said, "You don't get me to go .. ."
"I want a route, to go on my own."
Nine.
There was the same message on each of the boxes, different languages.
The boxes were stacked high to the ceiling cross struts. Baby Food
(Nutritional) Gift of the People of Germany. Pasta (Shapes various)
Gift of the People of Italy. Medicines Antenatal/ Postnatal Gift
of
the People of Holland. Rice -Gift of the People of the United States
of America. Tents (with blankets) Gift of the People of the United
Kingdom. The biggest section of boxes was labelled as a mobile
operating theatre Gift of the People of Sweden and there were
cigarettes in boxes, and alcohol, and soya, and hospital drugs. Penn
was walked down the corridor between the boxes that filled the shed.
He
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read each label. He thought of the advertisements he saw in the
papers
back home, and those on the commercial radio stations. He thought
of
the kids standing in the High Street where he lived and rattling
collection tins, and he thought of the women who knitted warm clothes
for refugees, and he thought the business was dirty. He had not been
brought to the shed for food, medicines, drugs, nor for cigarettes
nor
alcohol. The mercenary had brought him to the shed because that was
where he could buy a gun. Anything could be bought, that was what
Penn
had been told. Anything he had the money to pay for he could buy
in
the shed. Ham had brought him out from the old quarter of Karlovac,
out through the modern city, and he had seen the scar marks of the
shelling, and they had crossed over the Kupa river and headed into
the
industrial estate. It was a dead city. No smoke from the chimneys, no
lorries carrying away finished products. The city had died because
the
city sat astride the front line. There had been two 5-series BMWs
parked outside the shed, and an Alfa. A giant man had come quickly
through the door of the shed and his gaze had been hostile,
intimidating, before he had seen Ham. There was an office space at
the
far end of the corridor between the cardboard and wooden crates. Ham
had said he should take a gun. Ham had said that walking into Sector
North without a gun was about the same as going in bare-arsed. Ham
had
said that he should pack a gun before he packed his toothpaste. Three
men were in the partitioned office at the end of the shed. They
lolled
back in easy chairs and there was a haze of cigar smoke, and one
listened at a telephone and one was talking local language into a
mobile, and each wore designer jeans and a loose-fitting designer
leather jacket as if for uniform. They were all under thirty years
of
age. Penn stood distant in the doorway and each casually shook Ham's
hand, but the enthusiasm was the mercenary's, and they seemed to Penn
to regard Ham as dog shit on the pavement. What sort of gun did he
want? Penn shrugged, like they should tell him what was on offer,
and
there was a big peal of laughter from the heavy man who was not
listening on the telephone. Good English spoken. He could have a
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T-54
tank (Soviet), he could have a 120mm howitzer (American), he could
have
an RPG-7 rocket launcher (Soviet), he could have a Stinger
ground-to-air (American), if he could pay .. . The mocking laughter
subsided .. . He could have a Heckler & Koch machine pistol, or an
Uzi
high-fire-rate sub-machine gun, if he could pay .. . The eyes were
locked on him .. . Ham had said to him, where he was going, every
male
understood the workings of firearms, their culture, cradle-to-grave
stuff. Penn felt like stale piss. He knew how to strip down and
clean
and reassemble a .410 shotgun because that was what he had used around