THE HEART OF DANGER (33 page)

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

193

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