Read THE HEART OF DANGER Online
Authors: Gerald Seymour
Tags: #War Crimes; thriller; mass grave; Library; Kupa; Croatia; Mowatt; Penn; Dorrie;
the road and her hands tight on the wheel. Ham was sitting beside
her
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and he had the rifle down between his legs and he was twisted awkwardly
so that he could face Penn who was stretched across the width of the
back seat. He knew where it was going. It was "Freefall' Hamilton's lifetime skill that he could deflect the big decision, and he thought
this time round that deflection was fucking out the window. He
squirmed because the bullshit stakes were finished.
Ham blurted, "Don't think I'm going with you .. ."
"Hadn't asked you, wasn't going to ask you."
"Don't think I'm going in there with you, don't think I'll be there watching your arse. I'm not going in there with you, and that means
you can't fucking go .. ."
"I was never asking you."
"You go back in there and you're dead meat. Just say, just suppose, that you make it in there .. . Just say that you find the bastard,
just
suppose you take him ... Do you think, when the balloon goes up, and
sure as hell it will, that one man can take that fucking bastard out.
Hot pursuit, going fast crosscountry, going covert with a prisoner.
You've no chance .. . For Christ's sake, you know you've no fucking
chance. Believe me, Penn, no chance .. ."
"It's not your worry."
"Are you just thick .. . ?"
"It's not your worry because I am not asking you."
She was driving in the falling light on the wide road back down to
Karlovac. She seemed to stiffen. Her lips moved, pale and thin lips
without make-up, as if she tested something she would say out loud.
She
glanced across at him, away from the road.
"You don't have to be ashamed, Ham, because you are frightened. We are
all frightened here, all of the time, not only you. You should just
make available the weapons, the food, the method of crossing the
river,
the rendezvous on the way back .. ." "Don't fucking tell me .. ."
The
headlights of the Volkswagen flared over the empty road ahead. "You 307
speak the truth, Ham, he has no chance if he is alone." He knew his place in the great organization of Six. He knew his place,
influence,
authority, because his wife cared to remind him of it most weeks.
There
were occasional good days, when Georgie Simpson would let himself
into
his mock-Tudor semi-detached home in Carshalton, and pocket the
latchkey, and sing out the news of his arrival, and be anxious to
tell
her of some minimal triumph achieved that day in the great
organization
of Six. His wife, on those evenings, would be sitting in front of
the
television, and she would recognize his minor elation, and diminish
him. She could put him down when he was up, and she seldom bothered
to
try to lift him up when he was down. He replaced the secure telephone
on its cradle. The central heating, blown along ducts from a main
boiler unit, was still functioning, would be for another month. Most
of those around him had discarded their cardigans or jackets, and
Georgie Simpson shivered. Only little tasks were given him. If he
carried out, flawlessly, those little tasks, then he could expect
to
hide in the corner and remain unobserved by those bloody people who
now
trawled through the building for dead wood that could be hacked from
the body of Six. If he were to be forcibly retired, sent packing
because he could not even be relied upon to fulfill the little tasks
... He shivered. He felt the sweat cold on his body. He unlocked
the
drawer of his desk, took out the notebook where his sacred telephone
numbers were written. Georgie Simpson thought of going home that
evening to his wife, sitting in front of the television, and if he
told
her of a disaster, his disaster, then she would laugh back in his
face.
He dialled. "Arnold, it's Georgie here .. . No, be a good chap ..
.
Past's past, let it go, please. Arnold, I beg you, please, listen
.. .
I've just had our field station, Zagreb, on ... We have a problem,
a
huge problem .. ." The memorandum was in front of him. He cast his eye over it, slowly shook his head. Henry Carter had never thought
greatly of Georgie Simpson. The memorandum of Simpson (Six)
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concerning
his telephone conversation with Browne (Five). He thought it a
pathetic little document, and all the self-serving was there of a
panic-laden man who was attempting to pass on the parcel. No, Henry
Carter did not think 'panic' too strong a word. He knew the way the
place worked. He understood the culture of Six. It would not have
changed in the years since he had left his own full-time employment
in
the old Century House. There was a child's grin on his face. Yes,
Henry Carter could picture panic running a limited course, early on
a
spring afternoon some twenty-three months before, through the
corridors
above him. A man who should have been tied down, fastened tight,
was
free and going loose behind the lines. A man, who was a freelancer
and
an amateur, was behind the lines and beyond recall. A child's grin
and
a quiet chuckle, because panic would have been scampering down those
'corridors of inaction' above him, kicking down the doors into the
'offices of inactivity' above him. Clever men, the men who drew up
clever plans, would have been cursing, swearing, twisting pencil
stems,
and passing on that parcel of responsibility. There was a new cup
of
coffee in front of him, the last that the night duty supervisor would
bring him before the day shift came on in an hour's time. He knew
his
socks smelled, and he could feel the rude stubble on his chin. He
thought that somewhere in the vast recesses of Babylon on Thames there
would be a plastic razor that he could beg, but he did not know where
he would ask for replacement socks. His chuckle was because he saw
the
clever men with their clever plans cursing and scampering in panic
.. .
He thought of the man running loose behind the lines, beyond recall.
Lunatic, of course, but predictable. Too lethal and emotional a
cocktail for a decent fellow to have rejected .. . It was usually
the
decent ones who could be inveigled to go behind the lines, beyond
recall. He knew the scenario, of course he did, he had himself
twisted
the screw, manipulated young and decent men, and he was not proud
of
what he had done, and he hoped, quite fervently, as the dawn came
309
up
over the Thames, that Mrs. Mary Braddock was not proud. The night
supervisor was locking away the small microwave in which the bacon
for
the sandwiches had been cooked, and a young woman from the shift was
spraying that end of Library with an air cleanser, and the music was
already gone. Another damn morning was coming. She was unpacking
in
her room. It was a better hotel than the one she had used on her
two
previous visits to Zagreb. She was on a floor above the room from
which she had hunted out Penn, and there was a good vista from the
window that went away past the hospital with the big red cross painted
on the white background over the tiles, and over the wide street that
was laced with tram tracks, on towards the formidable floodlit public
buildings of the Viennese style of a century before. When the
telephone rang she was ferrying her clothes from her opened case to
the
wardrobe. She went to the telephone with the framed photograph of
her
Dorrie beside it. Her husband's voice hacked anger at her. '.. .
Do
you know what you are doing? You are interfering, you are
interfering
and meddling. I have had Arnold bloody Browne into my house, as if
I
were some sort of criminal, as if I were responsible for you. You
are
interfering with policy, you are meddling in matters, damn it,
matters
beyond your pitiful understanding .. . And don't you think you owe
me
some sort of bloody apology? Do you know what you did to me, and
my
guests? You made a bloody fool of me ... Did you stop and think what
you were doing to me, humiliating me ... You sent that man back, that's
what Arnold bloody Browne is saying, always have to get your own
bloody
way, don't you? That man was close to getting himself killed first
time around, his luck and a deal of guts from other people saved his
life. But you couldn't let it go, had to send him back again .. .
God,
Mary, do you understand what you've done .. . ?" She put the
telephone
down on him. She sat in the chair. She stared at the photograph
of
310
her Dorrie, such an old photograph because the child was laughing.
He
sat on his son's bed. He was cold from the night air. There was
no
heating in the house outside the kitchen, and no electricity that
evening. The oil lamp threw a feeble yellow light into his son's
room
from the timbered landing. Milan told his Marko that the night was
clear with no sign of rain. He did not tell his son that he had walked
out into the village that evening, after the darkness had come. Did
not tell him that he had walked as far as the headquarters building
of
the TDF, and that he had gone inside and into the room that had been
his office since his election by acclamation as leader. He did not
tell his son that Branko was in his chair and sitting at his desk
and
working through a new duty roster for the sentries on the bridge to
Rosenovici and on the roadblock to Vrginmost, and it was the leader
who
made the roster for the sentries. He did not tell his son that Stevo
was deep in negotiation with the chief of the irregulars and handing
over money for the supply of diesel, and it was the leader who
controlled the fuel resource for the village. He did not tell his
son
that Milo was talking with others of the irregulars for the
acquisition
of more of the heavy .50-calibre machine guns and more grenades for
the
RPG-7s that were stored in the concrete-lined armoury, and it was
the
leader who had charge of the armoury. He did not tell his son that
he
had been ignored by the irregulars, and by the gravedigger and the
postman and the carpenter. Milan held the boy's hand. "If there
is no
more rain, if the stream has gone down, then tomorrow afternoon may
be
good for fishing." Ham took them across. She could see nothing
around
her beyond the white swirl of the water where he dipped the paddle.
Penn was in front of her, settled across the forward angle of the
inflatable, not speaking, and Ham was behind her and grunting at the
exertion of propelling the craft into the strong current of the river.
Ulrike thought that she understood what was ahead .. . she should
have
known. The refugees who came by bus to the Turanj crossing point
311
had
been through what was ahead. What was ahead was enough to traumatize
and crush and terrorize. The inflatable staggered against the
current's power. Her father was in her mind. She had been twelve
years old when he had first talked of it to her, opened the chapter
of
his life that was closed away before. Her father was a pacifist
teacher and had stayed silent for self-preservation, and the tears
had
run thick on her father's face as he had explained the call of
survival, for he had known who was taken to the cells and who was
interrogated and who was eliminated, he had known the evil and stayed
silent. It had been with her all through her life, from the age of
twelve, that if a man or woman stayed silent then the time would come
in later age when the tears would roll helplessly on the face, witness
to shame. Her father would have understood why she rode the
inflatable
against the current into the width of the Kupa river. She did not
wish
to cry when she was old. And her father had told her, her twelve
years
old, and him sitting beside her and holding her and weeping, that
after
the surrender he had found work as an interpreter for the British
Control Commission. It had been part of his work to translate in
the
courts that arraigned and sentenced the war criminals. The night
before the execution of a sentence, by hanging, her father had been
taken to the condemned cell of the deputy commander of a camp in the
Neuengamme Ring, and it had been her father's job that night to
interpret for the British gaolers the last letter written by the
deputy
commander to his wife, and the wife would receive the letter several
hours after the hanging. And her father had said to her, through