Read THE HEART OF DANGER Online
Authors: Gerald Seymour
Tags: #War Crimes; thriller; mass grave; Library; Kupa; Croatia; Mowatt; Penn; Dorrie;
the Irishman? Washed or changed since the battle for Rosenovici and
the death by a sniper's aim of her husband, and her flight to the
woods, the cave? His Jane showered in the morning and in the evening.
His mother stood in the kitchen of the tied cottage and stripped to
the
waist, and didn't care if her kiddie had seen her, and soaped herself.
He made the markers and wondered if she had ever washed or changed
since she had come to the cave.
He tried to smile across the cave floor. Would she come back with
him?
Katica Dubelj was the eyewitness. Would she come back to Zagreb and
make the statement?
Had she the strength to go back with him, across country?
Penn smiled and he gazed into the dead animal eyes of the old woman.
He
did not think she had the strength .. . They had no language that
was
common to them. He pulled his backpack round from its pillow
position
and when he made the movement she cringed back against the cave wall
as
if seeking a cranny where she could hide from him. When the
Headmaster
returned then they would make a statement and the Headmaster would
write the story of the eyewitness, and she would make her mark as
authenticity. She did not have the strength to go back with him,
across country. He had given ham for the cat and sandwiches for the
dogs, he was down on his food stock. There were bread rolls in the
backpack and there was cheese, and the opened packet of ham, and there
was an orange .. . Penn split a roll open and he laid a piece of cheese
in the roll and then peeled off a slice of the ham and laid it with
the
cheese. He crawled towards her across the cave floor and he held
the
roll of dried-out bread in front of him. She could go no further
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back,
and he came close to her, until her hand, the bony, filthy claw, darted
forward to snatch the food from him. Christ, and she had no teeth
.. .
She tore at the roll, broke it into pieces and wolfed the pieces.
She
could not chew them down, they were swallowed indigestible. When
she
had finished the pieces then she picked for each crumb and each
fragment of the flaked bread. It was as if he fed an untamed animal.
He passed the orange to her. He wondered when she had last seen an
orange. Jane had orange juice on the table each morning, and it was
maybe a year, maybe a year and a half, since Katica Dubelj had last
seen an orange. She grabbed at the orange and her fingernails,
black-coated, nicked the full flesh of his hands, and a little blood
ran. She pulled the orange into pieces and stuffed them down, pith
and
fruit and peel, into the mouth without teeth. He saw the juice
dribble
from the side of her mouth and when the orange was gone she lifted
the
fold of her dress to her lips and licked the juice off. She had
gratitude and she wanted to share. It was picked from the cave floor
from amongst her bedding sacks. It was passed to him in her closed
claw fist. He held out the palm of his hand and the claw fist opened
.. . Christ, a bloody root. She scurried back to her far edge of
the
cave. A sucked bloody root .. . She watched him. It was truth, the reality of the war. He wondered how many of them there were, old
people holed up in caves in the woods behind the lines, sucking roots
for survival. He thought that if he sucked the bloody root then he
would be sick onto the floor of the cave .. . They would have sucked
bloody roots in caves in the glorious and pleasant land that was
England a thousand years and more before, but this was civilized
fucking Europe, and now ... He would have the statement when the
Headmaster returned, and her signature, her mark, as an eyewitness.
He
reached again into his backpack. Penn took out the brown paper
envelope. He had the photograph of Dorrie Mowat. Penn showed the
face
of Dorrie Mowat, the cheeky smiling mischief challenging face, held
it
up. There was joy cracking the mouth of Katica Dubelj, as if the
mouth
had been touched by love, as he had been touched, and there was the
cackle laugh of the old woman, a memory coming back to her that had
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been private and suppressed too long. She reached for the photograph
and she took it and she kissed it. She babbled at him and he shook
his
head because he understood nothing of what she said. She took his
hand
in her tight claw fist and she led him as a child out into the sunlight
falling through the high tops of the trees. She pointed down through
the trunks of the trees towards the village and then gestured towards
the sun and made with her small arm the arc of the sun falling. Penn
thought it was the promise of Katica Dubelj that she would take him
to
the village when the darkness came, where the truth was, and he would
have her statement. He had heard his wife's voice beyond the steel
door, frightened, sent away and not arguing .. . The Headmaster sat
on
the mattress on the concrete shelf. He had heard Milan Stankovic's
voice, harsh, in the guardroom beyond the steel door, state that the
matter would be dealt with on his return, later .. . The Headmaster
sat
cramped in the cell built of concrete blocks and the light came
through
the meshed grille at eye level in the steel door. He had heard the
postman talking about his hands and his fingernails, and he did not
know why the state of his hands or fingernails was important ... The
Headmaster sat in his damp trousers, sat huddled in his jacket, and
they had taken away his tie and his belt and the laces from his shoes.
He did not know what he would say when Milan Stankovic returned from
his meeting, wherever he went, and his mind was too terrorized to
concoct a reason for his having been alone, in darkness, soaked wet
from crossing the stream's ford, in the village of Rosenovici. His
mind was too confused to manufacture a story of innocence. If he
had
not met the Englishman .. . They had not brought him food, and they
had
not talked to him. They left him solitary to wait for the questioning
of Milan Stankovic. It was an aspect of the madness that so many
men,
hundreds, thousands, had sat in cells throughout the beauty of their
land and waited for questioning and torture. If he had not stayed
so
long at the cave .. . He did not know, could not know, how he would
respond to the beating or to the knife or the burning by cigarettes.
Did not know whether he could hold his silence against the pain.
Could
not know whether the pain of torture would prise from him the secret.
If he had not hurried noisily back through the village towards the
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stream's ford .. . Benny flicked the 'speak' switch. He said
gravely,
"We can't all be heroes, somebody has to sit on the kerb and clap
as
they go by." He heard the laughter, distorted, coming back over the loudspeaker in the Seddy's cab. "That original, Benny? .. . Who'd you
lift that off, Benny? "Nothing original about me. Will Rogers and I
collaborate." "Cut it, Benny, do me the favour." He obeyed. The convoy manager had cause to be stressed up, pissed off, because the
rock that had come through the side window of the Land-Rover had
caught
his face above the collar of the flak jacket and below the rim of
his
helmet. The move out of Knin had been sweet enough, 0700 departure,
but
the shit had started in a village just up the road from Titova Korenica
with ugly women and dwarf kids lobbing rocks. The convoy manager
had a
bandage over his face, looked a really fine hero. Rocks in that
village, and four windscreens broken. They were blocked now by
mines.
They were up from Slunj, almost with the whiff of the river at the
Turanj crossing point in their noses, and there were mines, and four
little arse holes to negotiate with. Good stuff for the hero, the
convoy manager, to negotiate with. They were blocked in between a
cliff face and a river, a good place to get the old head blown off.
It
didn't happen on every run, but happened too often, that they were
messed around on the convoy route. Benny reckoned that up the road,
between Slunj and Veljun, they were moving tanks, maybe artillery,
and
a track had gone broken or a wheel had got holed, and they weren't
having a United Nations relief convoy going by and seeing what they
were moving. It was difficult for him to get the bloody great pisspot
on his head out of the window, but he took the trouble. Past all
the
lorries, past the Land-Rover, the convoy manager was in his second
hour
of failing, too right, to negotiate the removal of the mines from
the
road. Their schedule was all shot to hell. The kids with the mines, from what he could see, were drunk, and they'd a good game going.
He
saw the convoy manager stride back to his Land-Rover.
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The voice, tight with controlled anger, was in Benny's cab.
They were going to take a minor road over towards the Bosnia border.
They were going for the scenic route ... for the tourist run .. .
going
up towards Glina, then would work back through Vrginmost for the
Turanj
crossing way behind schedule.
He sat in the Seddy's cab, snuggled in the flak jacket and with the
weight of the helmet squat on his head, and hit the gears. The convoy
took the fork road east, drove off the main drag, and away from the
kids with their 'frag' mines, and he smiled down at them like it was
a
pleasure for him to be going the scenic route. And the kids loosed
off
their AKs into the air, as if they'd won a war and not just diverted
an
unarmed aid convoy.
They were laid out neatly on the bed, her new files. She had drawn
the
new curtains back, because she came into the room each evening and
closed them. Mary Braddock sat beside the new files on the new duvet
and she had kicked off her shoes onto the new carpet. The new soft
toys, bears and rabbits, were on the new pillow of the bed, and the
shop assistant, when Mary had bought them, had prattled to her as
if
she were a grandmother, and she had not contradicted the shop
assistant, nor told her of obsession, or the weight of guilt.
Because
of the new paint and the new wallpaper it was a pretty room, and a
room
that was correct for a child who would grow to be a climbing star,
not
a horrid young woman. It was after a spring shower that had beaten
on
the mullioned window, and the sun shone into the pretty room.
The size of the new file was a measure to Mary of the scale of the
obsession. She had read about herself in the newspapers, different
name and different address, but read about parents who shared with
her
the obsession to know. The newspapers printed sad photographs of
fathers and mothers sitting close on settees, with the picture of
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the
dead child, the lost loved one, in the frame behind them, those who
demanded to know and who had failed. She could recall the sad
photographs of the stunned parents of the 'friendly fire' boys in
the
Gulf, of the girl in the Kenya game park, of the young man murdered
in
Chile's capital, of the young woman who had died in Saudi, and the
sad
parents all had the same refrain of confused criticism for the help
they had been given. All her friends said it was obsession. She
shared the file with none of them, and she did not allow her secretary,
two days a week, to type the letters of which the copies went into
the
file. There were the copies of fourteen letters written to the
Foreign
and Commonwealth Office; her friends said she should close her mind
to
an episode better forgotten. There were four letters personally
addressed to the ambassador in Zagreb; there were two letters written
by hand to the President of Croatia. None of the replies were curt
or
brusque or rude the replies, aide-drafted, signed by the dignitaries,
were bland and oozed sympathy, and were bloody useless. Her friends
said that she should start again .. . The telephone stampeded her
out
of the newly decorated, newly furnished bedroom for a child. She
ran
for the stairs. God, please, make it the call .. . Penn's call ..
.
The dogs slithered with her down the stair carpet, cannoning against
her legs. God, please, make it Penn's call. She snatched up the
telephone in the hall. The dogs barked raucously, as if her run for
the telephone was a fun game. "Charles here. Where were you?
Outside? A nice morning up here in this filthy city. Sorry,