Read THE HEART OF DANGER Online
Authors: Gerald Seymour
Tags: #War Crimes; thriller; mass grave; Library; Kupa; Croatia; Mowatt; Penn; Dorrie;
the
evidence quickened their pace up the track through the trees. There
was a light rain falling in the trees and heavy cloud coming from
beyond the hill, and Milan could see the rain, later, would be
heavier.
He was at the head of the column and walked immediately in front of
the
leader of the irregulars. His own people were behind him and he could
not see their faces and he did not know what their enthusiasm for
the
work was. It was where the Headmaster had said it would be, the cave
entrance between the two large rocks, and in the worn mud close to
the
entrance was the boot print squashed over the lighter traces. Milan
could smell her .. . There were many torches crowded into the narrow
cleft of the cave's entrance, and the beams caught her. There was
laughter behind Milan. The torches found her cringing back at the
far
wall of the cave, like a trapped rat. There was more laughter behind
Milan. Milan turned. He called forward Milo who had the scratches
on
the cheeks of his face, and he gestured forward Stevo who had the
bruised privates. There were many pressing behind him to see the
trapped rat that was Katica Dubelj who had fed him and most of them
with their lunches at the school .. . She was the trapped rat and
her
mouth seemed to snarl at the torch lights, and she had no teeth, and
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she was the evidence. He knew that the man had not been found, and
he
knew that a lorry with failed brakes had crashed the checkpoint at
Turanj, and he knew that his name was on a file in Karlovac, and on
another file made by the Political Officer at Topusko, and the trapped
rat was the eyewitness. He wondered if he would tell Evica .. .
The hand of the leader of the irregulars was on his shoulder, pushing
him into the cave.
"You're not telling me, in honesty, that you wrote it up .. . ?"
"Of course I wrote it up, Arnold, I wrote up what you told me."
"Georgie, it was in confidence .. ."
Georgie Simpson didn't like to face him. Not that he would have
described Arnold Browne as a friend, not really possible for Six men
to
be friends with Five men, but he was almost fond of the man. They
had
nothing in common, not hobbies, not holidays, not career paths, but
he
had come rather to enjoy their weekly session and weekly lunch. That
would all be behind them now, the sessions and the lunches, there
would
be different men given the job and few enough confidences exchanged
then .. . He didn't like to face him because Arnold Browne made no
attempt to hide his quite positive anguish.
"I'm not proud, and I'm not a happy man. I put a memorandum in, I
reported our conversation .. . This morning, Arnold, and I might face
a
firing squad for telling you, this morning I was summoned on high.
I
was instructed to telephone you, arrange an extraordinary meeting,
I
was to pump you, Arnold. You said your man was "dogged" .. ."
"You reported my confidences back, you should know what I said."
Georgie Simpson ignored the sarcasm, no citations to be won here,
best
ignored. "You said your man would go to the end of the road .. .
We
have a listening post at Zagreb airport. We monitor Serb radio
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traffic
principally. We have 2,500 troops in Bosnia, we have to know what's
planned. Please don't interrupt me, Arnold, please don't. The
radios
are monitored twenty-four hours, but obviously we're not wasting our
time interpreting whether General Mladic wants express delivery of
new
loo paper, soft tissue. We have trigger words. When a trigger word comes up then the transmission gets classified Immediate for
analysis.
Obviously their tongue-twisted version of "British" is a trigger.
It's
been pretty shambolic transmission, but we picked up "British spy"
and
"British investigator", captured then escaped, and the transmission was
coming out of a village called Salika, and there was a name .. . What
I'm telling you, Arnold, in confidence, is that Salika is adjacent
to
Rosenovici, and the name of the spy, investigator, is Penn .. ."
He thought he might have smacked poor Arnold Browne across the bridge
of the nose, to make his eyes water.
"What are you going to do?"
"Your people are out of their depth, Arnold. They are meddling in
matters beyond their remit .. . Our station officer, Zagreb, if your
dogged Mr. Penn gets safe back to base, will pick him up by the scruff
of his neck and throw him on the first plane to Heathrow. And your
lovely lady will be told by my hairy-arsed director to cease
interfering. Your Penn is a busted flush, I'm afraid, and we'll be
taking his legs off at the knees .. . Sorry, Arnold, but it's a sharp
game, ours, and that's the way it'll always be .. ."
corner.
Penn dictated and Ulrike typed and Ham whined away in the corner.
He
was rambling, contradicting himself, coming to stand behind her and
reading what she had down on paper and changing it. It was full of
errors because it was an old stand-up typewriter that she had begged
from reception and the arms were forever sticking because it had been
on the floor of the back office and was clogged with muck. Ham was
muttering to himself, wallowing in his own pity, and they ignored
him
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except for when he filled the glasses.
"No, I need what Alija said before I have what Sylvia said, and what Alija said should be in direct quotation, because she is the more
important eyewitness. "The women who were with me, they said she
was
so brave. The women said she was an angel .. ."I want that in direct quote."
"So, where then does Maria go, does she go after the American? You know what this will do, Penn, when it reaches them? It will break
them, you know that .. . ? Right ... for the top copy, Maria and
then
Alija and then Sylvia, and then your journey .. ."
Ham said, splashing the drink from the bottle, "Get it down you,
squire, 'cause you bloody earned it, and don't leave yourself short
of
credit. Take the bloody credit for what you did. We never got the
bloody credit for what we did, the Internationals, when we held those
fuckers at Sisak. If they'd broken us at Sisak, where Billy and Jon
Jo
were zapped, where Herb who was A.W.O.L. from the Guards was fragged,
where the big Oz guy went, they'd have been in fucking Zagreb for
tea.
Didn't give us any bloody credit .. . You make double bloody certain,
squire, those posh smart arses know what you did .. ."
Slow going in the hotel room, the writing of Penn's report.
And what it would do to them, that was not his problem.
Because Mrs. Chadwick had the flu, Mary worked in the kitchen alone.
Most times, when there was dinner for friends, Mrs. Chad-wick came
in
to help. Mary was happier alone actually .. . Other friends, of
course, had daughters still at home who would flick the recipe pages
and find the outrageous and get the exotic into the Aga. The sun
was
going down, slanting through the window and onto the wide pine table
..
. She hadn't a daughter .. . She worked briskly at what she did best,
boring food. She had the clock on the wall to guide her, and if she
worked briskly then everything would be in place, and there would
still
be time for her in the last light to walk the dogs through the village
266
to the church .. . The report was two sheets, closely spaced typing,
and there were Penn's last notes handwritten in the margin. He
glanced
down at the two sheets, and the words were a jumble for his eyes.
There
was precious little left in the bottle, and there was precious little
down on two sheets of typing paper .. . precious little to tell of
eleven days. They were all allocated their lines, and they had caps
for the typing of their names. He should have felt an elation, should
have felt proud and strutted the length of the room. But there was
only an emptiness ... He should have wanted to share his pride. He
had
no conceit. It did not seem significant to him that he had made the
march, learned, and ultimately broken clear from the certainty of
death
... He had been close to Dorrie and he thought that he had joined
the
queue of those who had failed her. In his terms, her life was worth
just a report. It was the measure of how she had driven him, mocked
him, that his best effort was just a report. It was as if, in his
mind, she had given him the one chance of his life to walk alone from
the herd, to walk tall above the herd, and he had failed to take that
chance. He felt a failed man, not a changed man. The old
disciplines
were supreme. A clear and brief report sent immediately, a fuller
report to follow, just what he would have done after a week's session
in the surveillance team, what he would have done for a client of
Alpha
Security ... He would never forget her, and now he would turn his
back
on her. He would go back to the office above the launderette, and
the
maisonette that was too small. People liked to say there was one
bloody chance in this bloody life and they were probably bloody well
right. He glanced down at the sheets of paper and Ulrike looked up
at
him and she waited for him to nod his satisfaction. He wondered
whether the report would be read in the kitchen or taken to the old
elegance of the sitting room, whether she would take it upstairs to
Dorrie's bedroom. Just a mass of words now, blurred by the Scotch,
but
the names with the caps were highlighted. Three lines for the
Croatian
war crimes investigator, seven lines for the American Professor of
Pathology, five lines each for Maria and Alija and Sylvia, four lines
for the Croatian Liaison Officer .. . Three lines for Ham who had
267
gotten him there, four lines for Benny Stein who had taken him out
of
there .. . fifteen lines for the Headmaster, twenty-one lines for
Katica Dubelj, and on the lower half of the second page were
twenty-five lines that quoted the words and described the body and
face, and the village, of Milan Stankovic. Under the long paragraph
concerning Milan Stankovic, killer of Dorrie Mowat, there had been
room
for Ulrike to type his name. Penn nodded. He was satisfied. He
took
the room's gratis biro and he scribbled his signature above his own
typed name, and then he wrote the fax number with the international
code at the top of the first sheet. It was his report and he was
finished. He put his hand, momentarily, on Ulrike's shoulder, and
he
felt the hardness of her bones, and he took his hand away in shyness
because he could remember the soft fingers that had dabbed the iodine
into the cuts on his face. The road had turned. At the point that
the
road had started she had been a horrid young woman, and he could see,
the last time that his tired eyes speed-read across the two pages,
the
words 'courage' and 'bravery' and 'love' and 'angel' ... He hoped
that
she would read it in the bedroom, alone, where she could not be seen
..
. Just bland bloody words that filled two pages of a report and they
did no justice to so many, and they short-changed the Headmaster and
Katica Dubelj .. . just a bloody inadequate report. No place for
the
fear, no space for the terror .. . Just a report, something that money
could buy when it was thrown at a problem. He hoped she would read
it
in the bedroom, alone, because his report might just break Mary
Braddock. "You still with us, squire?" Ham slurred. "Still with you,
Ham." "Let me give you my advice. Good advice from real combat ..
."
Ham belched, and he was rolling across the room, and the last of the
bottle was going on the desk and on the typewriter's keys. "It's
just
a fucking job, squire .. . What you need, squire, is a little of the
old home comfort, a lot of the old bottle .. . You need to get well
pissed, have a bit of a cuddle, forget it because it was just a fucking
job .. ."
268
He saw the kind care of Ulrike, different to the stand-off mischief
love of Dorrie. Perhaps it was 'old home comfort', perhaps it
promised
'a bit of a cuddle'. Probably it was getting 'well pissed' .. . He
might ring Jane in the morning, and he might not. He might get a
plane
in the morning, and he might wait until the afternoon .. . The city
moved noisily below the window of the hotel room. It would be a long
time, Penn thought, before he heard again a silence like that of
Rosenovici village, and the lane past Katica Dubelj's house to the