Read THE HEART OF DANGER Online
Authors: Gerald Seymour
Tags: #War Crimes; thriller; mass grave; Library; Kupa; Croatia; Mowatt; Penn; Dorrie;
one of fifteen Seddon Atkinsons in the lorry park that was contrary.
Two engineers worked with Benny Stein to get the tricky girl road
worthy for the morning, and two more of the drivers had come back
after
their hotel dinner to the lorry park out by the Zagreb airport to
see
if the tricky girl would ride in the morning across the Turanj
crossing
point and down through Sector North and on into Sector South.
If it had stood up and slapped his face, Benny Stein would not have
recognized a compliment, but it was one hell of a big compliment to
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him
that two engineers were prepared to work as long as it took through
the
night to get the tricky girl road worthy and two of the other drivers
had come the long drag out of the city centre to check how they were
doing.
Past midnight, and the convoy manager had joined them to peer down
into
the exposed engine space, and leaning forward behind the convoy
manager
was the convoy administration manager, quite a crowd to get the tricky
girl road worthy Not that Benny Stein, long-distance lorry driver,
overweight, middle-aged, stubbed height, shiny bald head that was
alive
with oil smears, would have noticed. An aid convoy going down
through
Sector North and on into Sector South might not be safe if Benny Stein
wasn't in the line, might not be fun. When the transmission was
fixed,
when he'd gunned the engine, when he'd driven round the lorry park
lunatic fast, when he'd crashed the gears, done the emergency stops,
when he'd put the tricky girl through the hoops, Benny Stein
pronounced
himself satisfied.
He tried not to think of the past, but to concentrate on the present.
The image of the fox was the past.
Penn's present was each footfall of ten strides, then the listening
and
the silence, then the moving again. He could not kill the image of
the
fox. The present was going forward in the dawn and he had slept too
poorly to have wanted to eat before there was enough light for him
to
leave the timber men's hut, and he counted himself lucky that the
rain
showers that had beaten on the tin roof of the hut had been cleared
by
the wind. Ham's map was finished, and the map bought in the shop
in
Karlovac was too small a scale to help him with much beyond the lines
of the roads. He could get a rough bearing from the early movement
of
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the sun and that was sufficient to guide him. He was deep in the
woods
and going well, but always there was the prickle of nervousness at
his
back.
The past was the image of the fox.
There had been chickens inside a walled and roofed wire cage at the
bottom of the tied cottage's garden. It had been his job through
his
childhood, each evening, to feed the chickens and to collect the eggs.
It was easy enough for a fox to approach the cage, to sniff the wire
mesh of the cage. But approaching the cage, sniffing the cage,
didn't
fill the gut of the fox. The fox had to find a way through the wall
of
the cage, scratch back the loose seams of the wire, dig frantically
under the wire, chew at the frame of the door, if the fox were not
to
go hungry. And scratching, digging, chewing, aroused the frightened
screams of the chickens. It was easy enough to get close but the
bloody awful bit, for the fox, was doing the business. With the
cackle
of the chickens came his father with the shotgun, and the dogs from
the
shed and the big flashlight from the shelf beside the kitchen door.
Three foxes were killed near the chickens' cage during his childhood,
two shot by his father when caught in the flashlight, one trapped
by
the dogs against the panel fence by the fruit bushes. One fox had
made
it in. It was the night when his father and his mother had taken
him
to the pantomime in Chippenham, a foul wet night, and before the
expedition to Chippenham he had fed the chickens fast under the rain
and not latched properly the gate frame, not hooked the chain onto
the
bent nail. Penn couldn't count on it, that the frame door to
Rosenovici would have been left open. It was easy enough for him
to
get there, but when he roused the chickens .. . But he was trying
not
to think of the past.
Penn could hear the sounds of tractors.
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He had been going along the side of a hill that was close set with
trees. He had no path to guide him, no trail. He could move well
and
quietly on the mat of damp leaves. He was drawn forward towards the
engine sounds of tractors.
Suddenly, he was looking into the valley. There had been a fine rock
in front of him, weather-smoothed and lichen-coated, and the rock
had
blocked the valley from him. Past the rock, and he saw the valley.
There was a stream going fast, well swollen, that cut the valley into
halves. Two tractors worked in the grass fields on the far side of
the
stream from him, and both pulled old laden manure spreaders. The
fields on his side of the valley were unworked and weeded up.
He saw the contrast, and he understood.
His eyes tracked the progress of the stream past a pool where the
water
ran slower with the white spume giving way to dark depths, and he
thought it would be a place for trout. Beyond where the tractors
heaved out manure there were cultivated strips and he saw women
working, dark shapes in the early morning mist wrapped in thick coats
against the cold and bent over hoes and forks. On his side of the
stream there were no cultivated strips, no women, nothing planted.
His eyes moved on, attracted to the soft colours further down the
valley. The apple trees were in blossom, there were cattle grazing
across the stream and children played amongst routing pigs and a dog
drove sheep along a track, and it was all on the far side of the
stream.
Yes, he understood.
He saw the smoke climbing from the chimneys of the village across
the
stream, and when he squinted his eyes and shaded them from the low
sun
he could see the shape of the houses and the block of the church and
the brightness of flowers. He saw a car pass another car. His gaze roved across from Salika, over a linking bridge, rested on the twin
village that was his side of the stream. He saw at first the mirror
image, then the reality came. The broken church, the small houses
without roofs, the foliage of brambles and nettles growing high in
191
a
lane. It was difficult for him at that distance, more than a mile,
to
see the detail of Rosnovici. But he saw that one village lived and
one
village had died. And at the edge of his vision, blurred by mist
coming off the dew on the grass, he thought he saw a grey-black scar
in
a corner of the field that was immediately before the village that
had
died.
A cock pheasant faced him.
He saw nothing that was danger. The valley was at gentle peace. He knew the fox would have thought the chickens' cage was a place of
gentle peace until the birds screamed and the gun came and the dogs
were loosed. It was where Dorrie Mowat had been .. . and where Dorrie
Mowat had been knifed and bludgeoned and shot to death.
The cock pheasant rose up on its clawed feet, beat its wings, shouted
the warning.
He looked again across the stream to the ruin of Rosenovici. He had
taken the money, and when he had taken the money he had given his
commitment. He wanted to earn his own pride ... He sat in the shadow
of the big rock, where he could see down the valley, where he would
wait through the day. When he could no longer see the apple blossom,
and when the tractors had driven back to the living village, and when
the women had trudged home, and the children, then he would move again
and work his way under the cover of coming darkness towards the
village
that had died ... He wanted to make a report that would earn his own
pride.
The cock pheasant careered away in noisy flight down the length of
the
valley at gentle peace.
Eleven.
So nearly .. . First would have come the crows, and after the crows
had
taken carrion there would have come magpies and jays, and after
magpies
and jays there would have been rats, and after the rats there would
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have been crawling insects, and the worms would have come for the
final
feast. The jaws seemed to laugh at Penn, the eye sockets seemed to
stare at him. He had so nearly stepped on the skull. Two winters
and
a summer, he thought, had given every chance for the birds, rodents,
insects and worms to strip the flesh and muscle and tissue from the
face of the skull. The mouth leered, the eye sockets challenged him.
Walking a pace to the side of the track in the late afternoon
half-light under the tree canopy, his foot poised to drop and take
his
weight, he had seen the skull in the leaves and brambles. The
skeleton
was lying on what had been its stomach, but the head was twisted as
if
the final living movement had been the attempt to see the killing
danger behind. The skeleton was clothed in a long dark-brown
overcoat,
and there were trousers that had also not rotted, but he could see
the
bones at the ankles, above the shoes, because the man had not worn
socks, and he could see also the bones of the hands still clasping
a
farm sack of rough hessian. He was in the tree line, going towards
Rosenovici, and he could see down through into the trees and into
the
quiet calm of the valley, and there-was a golden light settled on
the
valley. He had no business with it, the knowledge could not help
him,
but he bent and he took the finger bones from the neck of the sack
and
they came away easily. Inside the sack, stuffed in, were the clothes
of basic winter necessity, what a man could carry for himself and
for
his woman. He saw it in his mind .. . the moment when someone in
the
doomed village had claimed there was a window of opportunity for
flight, and frightened men and women had jumped for the window, taken
what they could carry, and tried to smuggle themselves through the
perimeter lines of their enemy. He wondered if Dorrie Mowat had seen
this man go, wondered if she had wished him well, wondered if she
had
kissed him or if she had hugged him, wondered if she had told him
that
she would stay ... He had so nearly stepped on the skeleton of the
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man
who had been at the head of the fleeing column.
When he went forward, edging his way, he found the others. All
skeletons, all dressed against the cold. The skeletons lay in a
straggled line. There were the remains of women and of children and
of
babies. There were bulging suitcases of rotted cardboard and
decaying
imitation leather that were tied shut with farm twine, there were
more
hessian sacks, there were the heavy plastic bags that had once held
agricultural fertilizer. He counted a dozen skeletons in all. In
the
cases and sacks and bags he found the necessities of survival, clothes
and children's favourite toys and the small framed pictures of Christ
in Calvary. He supposed a machine gun had taken them, traversing.
Some
would have run forward at the first explosion of shooting and some
would have frozen still and some would have tried to go back. Last
in
the line was a tall woman and he could see that her body wore three
dresses, and there was a bag beside her where she had dropped it and
each hand still held a small swaddled bundle and the bone of the third
finger of her left hand was amputated, where her wedding ring would
have been. He understood what she had carried, what in her death
she
had not let go of because the two small skulls were close to her boots.
He wondered if Dorrie had known them, if Dorrie had kissed and hugged
the babies, if Dorrie had told the mother why she would stay to the
end
with the wounded.
He felt no hatred, because his mind was chilled.
No fear, because his mind was numbed.
He went forward. He had walked half of the distance to the village
that he must travel before darkness. Dorrie had been here, in the
valley, and would have seen the tractors and the women and the
animals,
and Dorrie had stayed to the end .. . She pulled him forward. It
was
as if she had taken Penn's hand, and there was mischief in her smile,
as if she taunted him, as if she dared him to come closer to
Rosenovici. He did not think there was anything in his life before