Read THE HEART OF DANGER Online
Authors: Gerald Seymour
Tags: #War Crimes; thriller; mass grave; Library; Kupa; Croatia; Mowatt; Penn; Dorrie;
back up the track from them, testing each footfall, looking behind
him
to be certain there was no dried wood that he might step on. He slunk away from the track and into the depth of the trees, and he lowered
his
weight down slowly and then he knelt and then he lay on his stomach
and
there was a thick bush of holly between himself and the track. He
heard their laughter and their cursing. They were moving again,
coming
to that part of the track closest to where he lay. Not daring to
move
... He could have been pitching up for work at Alpha Security, first
in
and climbing the stairs to the office above the launderette, he could
have been hearing the wail as the shutters went up on the shops beside
the launderette. He could have been going to work with the smell
of
Jane on him, and the taste of Tom's food from the kiss on the cheek.
He
could have been going in to collect the Legal Process to serve, or
going in from the night-time watch on a husband's cheating, or going
in
to meet a builder whose competition knew the contracts he was bidding
for ... Not daring to move, and seeing the young faces of the militia
men. Ham hadn't told him what to do if he were bounced. Ham hadn't been through the capture bit. Each one of them had a knife at his
belt. They went by him close enough for him to see that. They went off down the track. He had almost walked into them. He felt a true excitement. The excitement was an exhilaration. Truth was that he
had
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never before known such excitement. The blood pumped in him. They
wouldn't have known what he meant, about the excitement, at Alpha
Security, how it coursed in him and lifted him. The excitement was
danger. They wouldn't have known what he meant in A Branch. The
excitement was his own. He would move for another hour, and then
rest
up till the dusk. "Nothing I can do for you, Mr. Jones. It's the pressure of space .. ." The Danish woman in Administration
(Property)
deflected him. "We all have our little crosses, Mr. Jones. Better we
learn to accept them and live with them .. ." The Libyan man in
Administration (Headquarters) put him down. "Can't help you, Mr.
Jones. My good fortune, I don't have a dog in that fight .. ." The Canadian man in Administration (Finance) moved him on. "It's
sardine
time here, Mr. Jones. You're lucky to have what's been allocated
you
without sharing .. ." The Swiss woman in the Civilian Affairs Office (Central Directorate) dismissed him. "The question is one of
protocol,
Mr. Jones. Protocol dictates container accommodation as suitable
for
your work .. ." The Ethiopian man in the Civilian Affairs Office
(Deputy Director) was contemptuous. "You people, your job, your end game it pisses' me off, Mr. Jones. If I put it bluntly then perhaps you'll understand me better .. ." The Irish man in the Civilian
Affairs Office (Director) kept a pleasant smile and spat through his
teeth. It had taken Marty all morning to get that far. He had been shuffled up the ladder, and with each put-down he could have tossed
in
the towel and gone back to the ovenlike container on the far side
of
the parade ground at the Ilica barracks. But not that morning, no
sir
... There was a big photograph on the wall of the office of the
Director of Civilian Affairs. The photograph was labelled as "Co.
Cork
Where God comes to Holiday'. The Director liked to show the
photograph
to his visitors, show them where he was reared and where his parents
still lived. Marty thought the seascape of cliffs and the Atlantic
was
second-rate compared to the mountains and fiords of Alaska. He had
not
come to talk about Co. Cork, he had come to demand better
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accommodation for his work than a pressure cooker steaming goddamn
freight container. He had been told outside by the willowy German
secretary to the Director that there was no possibility of entry
without an appointment, and when the meeting inside had broken he
had
simply elbowed his way inside, sat down, challenged for attention.
'..
. You, your work, Mr. Jones, is an obstruction to what we attempt
to
achieve." "I want a proper room. I am integral to the United Nations'
effort in former Yugoslavia. I want decent accommodation." While he
had waited outside there had been a multinational bicker in the
English
language between the secretaries with German, Swiss French,
Scandinavian and Indian accents, about desk space. He had filed an
affidavit the last evening, from an eyewitness, who had seen
prisoners
of the Serbs beheaded by a chain-saw. Rome was not built in a day,
that sort of crap, but sure as hell the UN empire was putting in a
spirited challenge. He had transferred to disk the statement, the
last
evening, of an eyewitness who had seen a man castrated after a cable
had been tied between a motorcycle and his scrotum, and the motorcycle
had been ridden away, and the man had died from blood loss. The
secretaries had air conditioning and they had window light. His work
was pissed on. The goddamn secretaries were looked after and he was
not. "I am a busy man, Mr. Jones, so do me the favour of bugging
out
of here and going back to your quite adequate work area."
"A dog couldn't work in there."
But he was an Anchorage boy. Anchorage bred them stubborn. What
he
had learned from twenty-two months in New York, turning round paper
on
member nations' subscription debts, and what he had learned in Zagreb
had given him a deep-running hostility to the fast-created empire.
They
had the good apartments, and the good allowances, and the good life,
while Marty Jones survived in a stinking hot goddamn oven.
"Maybe a dog would be doing something more useful than your war crimes shit. Let me tell you a few facts of life, young man. War crimes
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talk
is just a sedative for the poor punters outside of here who've joined
the "Can't We Do Something Brigade". There will be no war crimes tribunal. You may want to jerk yourself off each night at the thought
of Milosevic, Karadic, Mladic, Arkan or Seselj, standing in the dock
without a tie or a belt or shoe laces it won't happen. Like it or
not,
and don't patronize me by thinking I like it, it c?nnot happen because
I need those bastards, and all the rest of the grubby little murderers
that walk this godforsaken corner of earth. I need them to sign a
peace treaty for Bosnia, then a peace treaty for occupied Croatia,
and
I'm not going to get them to sign if there's a sniff of handcuffs
in
the wind .. ."
"Then you give the world over to anarchy, intolerable anarchy."
"I need a lesson from you? Where have you been? You have been
fucking
nowhere. Peace between Egypt and Israel if the Brit buggers were
still
hammering for Begin to be tried for terrorism, for Sadat to be tried
for making war? Peace in Namibia if half the South African Defence
Force were to be wheeled in front of a court on genocide charges?
I
know reality because I have faced reality .. ."
"Your argument is morally bankrupt."
He faced the big, gross-set Irishman. He would screw him down, screw
him down hard, if the opportunity ever came his way. Screw him down
so
that he screamed.
"And your office is a converted freight container, so fuck off back there .. ."
Marty went back in the sunlight across the parade ground, back to
his
video and audio tapes and his computer disks.
The gravedigger, Stevo, had been on the expedition to the church at
Glina, but it was not personal to him.
It was personal to Milan Stankovic and the postman, Branko, and the
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carpenter, Milo, but not to him because no one from his family had
died
in the fire of the church.
They were ahead of the buses, it was usual for Milan to have a car
when
he needed it, and the fuel to go with it. Before the war, before
the
rise of Milan, they would all have been on the buses for the annual
journey to the church at Glina. Since the war, the gravedigger had
not
been able to make the particular long journey that was personal to
him.
His own mother and father had been murdered in the Crveni Krst
concentration camp that had been sited at Nis, near to Belgrade. He
knew that Milan, and he was grateful that Milan had tried, had last
year attempted to arrange the long journey for him, but there had
been
shelling on the road that week, near to Brcko, and all traffic had
been
halted. His father had died in the big breakout, 12 February 1942,
from the camp at Nis, machine-gunned against the wall by the Croat
Ustase guards, and his mother had died at the hands of the Croat Ustase
killing squads on the hill called Bubanj that was near to Nis where
a
thousand were killed each day, and they were buried now, together,
amongst the trees on the hill called Bubanj.
The buses would be far behind them now, and the old Mercedes with
in
excess of 150,000 kilometres on the clock powered them home. He knew
it was not the ceremony at the ruin of the church that affected Milan.
It was not the ceremony and the prayer and the singing of the anthem
and the reciting of the poem of the Battle of Kosovo that left Milan
sullen and quiet, because he had been that way for too many days since
the digging in the field at the end of the lane in Rosenovici.
And the others in the car had taken the bastard mood from Milan
Stankovic.
And because it was not personal to him, where they had been, the
gravedigger, Stevo, thought it right to break that bastard mood. He
leaned forward. The radio in the car played, faint and r distorted,
and the singer was Simonida with the one-string gusla to back her.
He
tapped Milan's shoulder. "Milan, I love you .. . Milan, if you were 181
dead, I would dig the best hole for you .. . Milan, why are you now
such a miserable bastard .. . ?" The gravedigger thought he could
break the mood with mischief. '.. . Milan, you are a miserable
bastard, you are a miserable bastard to be with. If you want me to,
Milan, I will go and dig a hole, as deep as I can dig it, so that
I
have to chuck the earth up over my shoulder, and you can go and lie
in
the hole and I will chuck the earth back on top of you, and that might
cure you of being such a miserable bastard .. ." He had reached
forward, and his fingers worked at Milan's shoulders, like he used
to
see the postman's fingers, Branko's, at Milan's shoulders when he
loosened him before a big match of basketball. '.. . Milan, you
are a
miserable bastard to be with, and you make everyone else a miserable
bastard. Look at us, we are all miserable because you are a miserable
bastard .. ." And the man pulled himself forward, and broke the
grave-digger's hold on his shoulders. And he thought he could play
Milan because he had the sort of black humour that would make Milan
laugh. The gravedigger was on the crest, and he could not see Milan's
face. If he had seen it he might have sat back into the seat, let
the
springs tickle his arse, but he could not see it. "You know why you are such a miserable bastard, Milan? You are a miserable bastard
because you are scared .. ." The gravedigger could not see Milan's face, and he could not see his hands. '.. . You are Scared. Have
been
scared since that old American came and farted over at Rosenovici.
Why
are you scared? Then he saw Milan's face. He saw the erupted anger.
He saw the hands and he saw the pistol. The face was against his,
bright red and flushed. One hand coming past his eyes and locking
into
his old straggled hair and pulling his head forward. One hand
holding
the pistol and driving it through his teeth, grating them, until the
foresight ground against the roof of his mouth. And he had seen Milan
kill, and he could not doubt that Milan would kill. And he had seen
a
bastard Ustase killed by a bullet fired from a pistol deep in the
mouth, and seen the crown of the head, where the hair was thinning,
lift off. And the postman had swerved the car, gone half into a ditch
and come out, and the carpenter cowered away against the far window
of
the back of the car.
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And the anger was gone. The foresight of the pistol scraped the roof
of the gravedigger's mouth and against his teeth and nicked at his
lip.
And the smile was there, as if Milan was saying that he was not
scared.
Stevo's mouth was raw agony and he could feel, already, the wet of
his