Read THE HEART OF DANGER Online
Authors: Gerald Seymour
Tags: #War Crimes; thriller; mass grave; Library; Kupa; Croatia; Mowatt; Penn; Dorrie;
his
tears, that it was a sweet and literate letter, not the ravings of
a
beast, but a letter searching for dignity from a man who was
frightened. She leaned forward. Her hands groped past the backpack
given by Ham. Her hands found Penn's. She held tight to his hands.
She whispered, "There is something you must know. Perhaps you
already
know it. Something that is important .. ."
He hissed for her to be quiet.
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She pressed. "To you, now, he is an animal. When you have him, when he is taken, he will be weak, he will be human. You must not soften
then, Penn, when he is weak, when he pleads ... I am sorry, Penn,
but
then you will have to be cruel .. ."
His hand, freed from hers, was across her mouth. The sounds were
the
slight splashing of the paddle and the wash of the river current
against the side of the inflatable. His hand dropped from her mouth.
She eased back from him.
"If you are weak then you betray so many. You walk for those who
are
dead, and for the dispossessed, the tortured. It will be, for you,
difficult to be cruel .. ."
She could see the dark high outline of the steep bank ahead. It had
seemed important to her to tell him. Behind was the greater
darkness,
only a single light to see, far down river from where they had launched
the inflatable. Perhaps it was why she had come, to give him the
edge
of cruelty .. . She had seen the convoys of UNPROFOR troops going
through the Turanj crossing point and heading for Bosnia in their
personnel carriers, she had seen the vapour trails of the American
jets
as they arced in the skies for their threatening flights over Bosnia,
she had seen on the satellite television the politicians talk about
the
sanction of war crimes tribunals for Bosnia, and nothing happened,
the
misery continued, nothing changed. The darkness was around her, the
blackness of the bank was ahead of her.
Ulrike whispered, "It is left to the small people to do something
..
."
He slapped her face, quite sharp, stinging her. Her anger surged
a
moment, then lapsed. He slapped her, she thought, to give her the
reality. The reality was danger. She bobbed her head as if in
apology, and he would not have seen it. He would believe he was
responsible for her.
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The front of the inflatable hit the bank, then sidled into the broken
reeds. He threw the backpack up the bank, and then she felt her arm
taken roughly. He dragged her forward, had firm hold of her, then
pitched her off the inflatable. She was in the void. Her fingers
clawed into wet mud and her feet splashed in the water among the reeds,
and his hands were at her hips and heaving her higher. She scrambled
up the bank, fists and knees and toes. She heard the murmur of voices
behind her, the time of the pick-up, and the place of the rendezvous.
He jumped and he fell half onto her and his weight beat the breath
from
her chest. His hand scraped up across the fatigue jacket and found
a
grip by her armpit, and he pulled her up to the top of the bank.
She heard the soft wash of the paddle in the water, fading.
Seventeen.
"Who is he?" "Some drone from the Stone Age." "What's he doing here?"
"He comes in two days a month, he ferrets into files that weren't
annotated at the time. He's supposed to get them into shape so they
can go onto disk for Archive, only low-grade stuff. He was in Century
way back, when there were carrier pigeons, one-time pads, when it
was
Boy Scouts time." Their voices murmured in Henry Carter's ears.
"God,
he stinks. Look there .. . Food grease. The wretched man's been
eating in here. I suppose it's a sort of charity really, finding
people like that a bit of work. Nothing that can be said to be
useful?" "It's something about former Yugoslavia." "Out of which nothing good ever came." "It can't be important or they wouldn't have
let him near it .. . I'm trying to remember what he did when he was
here, certainly wasn't senior executive rank .. ." "Well, he's certainly noticeable now is it his socks? Extraordinary, really,
there's a file that nobody is remotely interested in, and it gets
dug
out and worked all over, and then it's reburied on disk, and still
nobody is remotely interested in it. Waste of time." Henry Carter, his head across his elbows on the desk, opened his eyes. He saw the
day supervisor and a callow skinny young man that he assumed to be
from
In-House Management. The woman who was the day supervisor laughed,
hollow. "Amazing, he's alive .. . Mr. Carter, you do not have
permission to camp in here like a dosser. You do not have permission
314
to eat hot fat-ridden food in Library." "So sorry." The young man said, "It's not exactly pleasant, Mr. Carter, for the people who
work
here to have a man who smells .. ."
Most times, Henry Carter would have grovelled a further apology. But
he had been dreaming .. . Because he had been dreaming he did not
offer
a second apology. His voice rose.
"Not important? Of course not ... A waste of time. Of course ..
. You
wouldn't have the faintest idea. It shouldn't have been asked of
him.
No human being in their right mind would have driven Penn back across
that river. That river, it's what European history is stuffed solid
with. It's a barrier, it's a demarcation line, beyond that river
is
the sort of danger and risk that you in your smug and complacent little
lives would not comprehend. It's always the people who are smug and
complacent who send young men across rivers, through minefields, into
the heart of danger, and in their arrogance they never pause to
consider the consequences. Now, if you will please excuse me I have
work to get on with .. ."
They backed off.
None of the women at their consoles lifted their heads to stare at
him.
They left him at his desk.
The memory of the dream was with him. It was a damnable dream, a
nightmare. What he knew of those young men who pressed forward
towards
the heart of danger was that they were frightened of spitting back
into
the faces of those who urged them further down the road. They were
compelled towards the brink of the precipice, dragged towards the
edge.
He seemed to have seen in his dream the young man going forward as
a
shadow shape in darkness, and he still saw Penn, and the image of
Penn
shut out the languid movement around him of the personnel of Library.
He coughed some phlegm from his chest into the mess of his
315
handkerchief, he had more bronchial problems now than ever before.
God,
and he needed to be out of London, needed to be on the old railway
line
at Tregaron, needed to be alone with the big kites manoeuvring above
him .. . but not before the file was prepared, the matter was
settled.
The day supervisor was a few paces behind him, stood back as if she
were nervous that the 'old drone' still had enough teeth in his old
mouth to bite.
There was the hissing of the air freshener aerosol.
He was drawn back towards the pain of the memories. The memories
were
of men who had trusted him. Johnny Donoghue, schoolteacher,
persuaded
to travel into East Germany, had trusted him. Mattie Furniss,
pompous
and decent, had trusted him .. . but the damned job took precedence
over trust .. . Almost as if he wished that this young man, fleshing
in
the file, had trusted him. What they said, the old men of Century
and
the new men of Vauxhall Cross, was that there was no escape from the
job, and never would be. He smelled the fragrance that fell around
him. He seemed to feel, not just at his feet and in his shoes, but
across the whole of his body, the cold damp of the great Kupa river.
He led her up the bank. Penn held Ulrike's hand as he took her up
the
bank and beyond the line of the reeds. He did not hold her hand
because he thought she was weak or because he thought she needed
comfort. He held her hand so that he could dictate the speed of each
step that she took, and so that he could communicate the need for
absolute quiet. In the darkness, with the black depth of the river
behind them, it seemed to him an age before he was satisfied and
prepared to move forward. Perhaps it was two minutes, perhaps three,
but he was crouched down and she was kneeling close to him and he
held
her hand and he could hear, just, the heave of her breathing. He
could
not hear the soft splash of the paddles any longer, and there was
no
sound from back across the river to tell him that Ham had successfully
reached the other bank and had taken the inflatable out of the water
316
and had dragged it to the hiding place among the scrub in the swamp
ground ... it was not good to think of the swamp ground on the other
side of the river. To think of safe territory was facile, dangerous.
Penn released Ulrike's hand. His fingers ran the length of her arm
and
across her neck and he touched the hair on her head and he brought
her
head close to him so that her ear was against his lips. He whispered,
so quietly, into her ear that she was not to speak. On no account
should she speak. To speak was to hazard them, no bloody way should
she open her bloody mouth. Again, his hand took hers. They began
to
move forward. He did not want her too close to him so that she
stumbled against him, nor so far back that she might lose contact
with
him and then hurry to regain it. He went the way he had gone before,
and it had to be that way because Ham knew no other route. He led
her
across the path that was set back from the river's bank, and he groped
down with his free hand so that he could find the single strand of
wire
and he made the circle of his thumb and forefinger around the wire
and
soon he had reopened the scratches in his hand. They went faster
than
he had gone the last time .. . She stepped on a twig which his own
boots had missed, and he jerked her arm hard as if it were a capital
sin to step on and break a twig when moving in the total darkness
of a
night forest.
They made good time.
A lone dog barked at the farmhouse, and there was one small lamp
burning in the outbuildings. All the while that they moved he held
tight to her hand, controlling her. He had told Ham they would be
in
fast, there for the minimum time, out fast, and he should have the
inflatable waiting. Ham had nodded. "Don't you worry on it. Piece of
cake, squire."
They were past the farm, they were far behind the lines.
"Where do they come back to?"
317
He tried to back his head away, twist his neck away, but the
interrogator's punch came too fast for his reaction. The punch
caught
him on the tip of his nose and his eyes watered.
They had been waiting for him at the old police station. Ham had
done
as he had been told to do, driven Ulrike's car to her apartment block,
parked it, pushed her keys through her letter box and then walked
back
to the old police station, where they had been waiting.
"Where is the rendezvous on the river, when is the rendezvous?"
Her hand came up fast from beside the trouser pocket of her fatigues
and took him behind the ear, jack-knifing his head forward, and as
his
head bucked her other hand with the clenched knuckles drove into his
lips.
Two of the military police had been waiting for him when he had come
back into the yard behind the old police station and they had taken
his
arms with no explanation, and marched him up the steps and into the
room of the Intelligence Officer who fronted as Liaison. "Don't be boring, don't be slow to help yourself, don't believe that I won't
hurt
you." The interrogator hit, as if his head was a punch ball in a
gymnasium, with the left-right combination, and each blow was harder
and there was the first warm trickle of blood from his upper lip that
ran sweet to his gums. The two military policemen had pushed him
in
through the door of the Intelligence Officer's room, and he had seen
the First Secretary and tried to raise something of a cheerful smile
to
be met only by cold hostility, and the Intelligence Officer had gazed
at him like he was reptile's dirt. He had seen the chill in the eyes
of the interrogator. She wore fatigue uniform, baggy because it was
too large for her smallness, and she had a heavy pistol holster belted
to her wa sped waist. The woman had motioned him to the chair, and