THE HEART OF DANGER (51 page)

you ever listened to your daughter, but then I am sure you are a busy

woman and capable and resourceful, with many demands on your time.

Does

life always revolve around you? For Dome's sake I will bring him

out,

and for myself.. . Don't drop your head, Mrs. Braddock, and please don't offer me more money .. . And don't think the United Nations

in

their glory will stand and cheer, nor our embassy, nor the government

here .. . I will bring him out because knowing and loving your daughter

has been my privilege. I will bring him out."

The woman came off the bed, and she was tucking her blouse into the

waist of her trousers, and then she was buttoning her blouse, and

she

seemed to look at Penn as if to satisfy herself that he had made up

his

mind. She did not question him, just checked him, and she was

slipping

from the bed and going for the telephone on the shelf beneath the

mirror.

And the small man, the man who was crouched down on the floor with

his

rifle, shook his head like he heard something that he could not

believe, and he said, "That, squire, is the biggest piece of fucking madness that I have heard. Just 'cause the cow winds you up, doesn't

mean you fucking have to."

The woman was dialling a number.

She looked at the scars and bruises and cuts. "I didn't know."

He said simply, "We loved her, all who were touched by her came to

love

her. Your problem, Mrs. Braddock, is you knew nothing about that

love."

His hand was laid on Evica's hand. Just for the moment she allowed

his

hand on her hand. She took her hand from under his. Milan's hand

lay

on the kitchen table. He drummed his fingers, he looked into her

face.

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She did not criticize him with her eyes because the log bin beside

the

stove was not filled. She did not criticize him because he had sat

at

the table rereading old newspapers through the whole of the morning

while she had been with Marko at the school. She did not criticize

him

because he had not risen from their bed before she had gone with Marko

to the school, had not been to the store in the village to see if

there

was fresh bread, had not swept the floor of the kitchen. Evica pushed

the last logs of the bin onto the fading fire of the stove. She did

not criticize him because she had to go out into the shed behind the

kitchen door to get potatoes and beetroot, and she was wearing her

washed and ironed blouse and her neat skirt that were appropriate

for

the acting headmistress of Salika's village school, and she took the

emptied log bin with her. Her face, when he had laid his hand on

hers,

was without expression. He could not know from looking at her face

whether she was ashamed of him, whether she was frightened for him,

whether she loathed him. The body of the dog was pressed against

the

kitchen door as if waiting for the mistress to come, as if the master

were no longer of importance. They had been married more than a dozen

years ago, when he was the basketball star of the Glina Municipality

and she the prettiest girl in Salika village, and he did not know

her.

The boy, his Marko, came to him, sat on his lap, sturdy weight on

his

upper thighs, and he thought that perhaps the boy had been crying

as

his mother had walked him home from morning school, and there were

the

scars of fighting on the boy's face. She came back into the kitchen.

She was carrying the log bin, filled, and a cardboard box of potatoes

and beetroot, and he could see the stain of dried mud on her blouse,

and the strain of her arm muscles because the logs were damp and still

heavy. And he could see, near to the broadest of the smears of dried

mud, the place on the waist of her blouse where she had stitched a

short L-shaped rent in the material. She did not criticize him

because

it was impossible now to buy new clothes. She did not criticize him

because she could no longer go to the shops in Karlovac and Sisak.

She

did not criticize him as if he were responsible, as if it were personal

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to him, for the war. She had dumped the bin. He held tight to his

son. She was tipping potatoes and beetroot into the bowl in her sink

for washing and peeling and cutting. She knew of the death of the

Headmaster, and she would know of the killing of Katica Dubelj, she

had

translated the accusation of the stranger who had come to their

village

.. . and he did not know what she thought. It had rained hard in

the

night. Through the window he could see the cloud on the hill above

the

village across the river. Her back was to him. She worked

methodically over the sink.

Milan said, "Because the stream is in spate it cannot be today, and I

do not think it can be tomorrow, but when the pace of the stream is

settled then I will take Marko to fish. Far up the stream, up past

where they graze the sheep, where they plough, there is a good pool.

I

saw trout there. We will dig some worms, we will bring you back a

trout .. ."

He laughed out loud and he cuddled the boy who was heavy on his upper

thighs, and the weight of Marko tautened the belt at his waist and

dragged the bulk of the holster into the flesh of his hip and he would

always wear the holster now, and she did not turn to face him, and

he

did not know what she thought.

He was waiting for them at the entrance to the barracks.

Marty signed them in, and the Swedish sentries issued, lazily,

visitor's permits for Ulrike and the Englishman and for the mercenary

and for the tall woman with them who was elegant and beautiful.

He showed Ulrike where she could park the car.

Marty walked them from the parking lot to the freight container.

He took them inside the freight container, and he apologized for the

wet mud on the vinyl flooring, and he shut down his screen and he

tidied away the papers on his desk, and he said he would make coffee

for them. If she had given him more warning with her telephone call

requesting a meeting, then he would have gone out of the Ilka barracks

and bought flowers for Ulrike Schmidt. He was filling the kettle,

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finding the mugs, getting the milk carton from the small fridge,

looking in his cupboard for sugar.

The elegant woman, the Englishwoman, came right at him. "Mr.

Jones,

you are a war crimes investigator .. . ?"

And Marty hadn't even gotten round to establishing who had milk and

who

had sugar.

"That's correct, ma'am."

"You are here to prepare cases against war criminals with a view to eventual prosecution?"

"Correct again, ma'am."

"What progress are you making, Mr. Jones?"

"Precious little, ma'am."

"Why are you making precious little progress?"

He grimaced. "Do you have all day .. . ?"

"Please, Mr. Jones, just explain."

"It depends, ma'am, on why you want to know it."

The Englishwoman took from her handbag two sheets of faxed paper,

and

she passed them to Marty. He began to read. The kettle was starting to blow, but Ulrike made that her job. He read the synopsis of a

killing. Ulrike spooned the coffee into the five mugs and they

talked

among themselves about milk and about portions of sugar. He was

reading the brief text of eyewitnesses and the Englishwoman's eyes

never left him as he read. He was reading the material that crossed

his desk each day, that was recorded on his camcorder, that was held

on

his audio tapes. There were photographs pinned to the interior walls

of the freight container, bad atrocity photographs, and the

Englishman

stared at them coldly and Ulrike ignored them, and once the mercenary

made a joke of them, but the Englishwoman seemed not to see them.

303

She

watched him as he shifted from the first sheet to the second, as he

weighed the names, as he drank it in. He thought of telling the

Englishwoman, telling her how many thousands of civilians had died

in

former Yugoslavia, how many of the ethnic minorities had been

cleansed,

how many 'concentration camps' existed, how many homes had been

burned,

how many acts of criminality had been perpetrated against the

defenceless. When he finished his reading he could have told her

that

in the catalogue of bestiality the 'incident' at the village of

Rosenovici was minimal. Those that trusted him, those who were the

eyewitnesses and who provided his 'snapshot' experiences were hungry

and tired and traumatized, they no longer possessed the spark of

action. She was smartly dressed, like a big oil man wife. She had

fine skin, like a woman who was cared for with money. He supposed

she

believed it her right to jump to the head of any queue he made for

the

priorities of his catalogue of bestiality. He handed her back the

two

sheets of paper.

"I make little progress, ma'am, because my work is perceived to be

an

obstacle to eventual peace ..."

"Please, plain language."

"The worst bastards, excuse me, run the show. The thinking in New

York, the thinking in Geneva, the thinking at UNPROFOR across the

parade ground from my kennel, is that the worst bastards have to be

kept sweet so as they'll put their illiterate scrawl on whatever

appeasement document ends this crap session. Plain language, I'm

a

goddamn leper here. Plain language, I am obstructed, short-funded,

blocked. Plain language, I'm pissing into the wind .. ."

"And that's good enough for you?"

But he wasn't angry. He didn't flare. She did not seem to be

insulting him. "I do what I can, ma'am."

"Did the killing of the wounded from Rosenovici, and the murder of

304

my

daughter, constitute a war crime?"

"Yes."

"Does the material here in abbreviated form, provided by Mr. Penn, constitute evidence of a war crime?"

"Yes, but .. ."

"But what?"

"It's good to meet you, good to make you coffee, it's good to learn about your daughter, but .. ."

"But what, Mr. Jones?"

"But it's hollow talk, it's academic, it's wasting your time and my time because the accused is not within jurisdiction. Put simply,

the

guy's the other side of the line."

"And if .. ."

"It's where it stops, the line. I'm sorry."

Suddenly feeling tired, tired because it was a dream. A dream was

a

man in handcuffs, a man who was confronted with evidence. The dream

was a man who flinched when confronted with the cold paper of

testimony. The dream was always with him.

"Mr. Penn is going over that line. I've his promise. He's going

to

take him and bring him back, across that line. So in the plainest

language, have you the balls to handle it .. . ?"

"You bring him, I'll screw him down. My word to you, I'll give it

my

best. My word, I'll not back off."

And Marty knew that he had lost her, lost the German woman. He knew

that he had lost her to Penn. He was crushed. If he had gone more

often to the Transit Centre, if he had gone more often and taken

flowers, if he had pushed and shoved and heaved, if ... He thought

that

305

he had lost what he cared for the most. He searched again for

confirmation.

Marty looked into Penn's face, at the bruises and the scars.

"As long as you know, ma'am, what you're asking that man to do ..

."

First he had watched the outer door of the concourse. He had sat

where

he could see the door, taken a magazine and relaxed.

Later he had gone to stand near to the queue waiting to have their

tickets and baggage processed, and when the queue had thinned he had

gone to the desk and asked, in decent local language, for a fast look

at the passenger list.

Now he used a telephone from which he could still see the check-in,

while the announcement of the flight's closing beat in his ears, and

he

rang the hotel in central Zagreb and spoke to an idiot, and the idiot

confirmed that Penn, William, had checked out, paid up and gone.

The First Secretary hurried from the concourse and outside he heard

the

distant rumble of a jet airliner gathering speed on the runway. It

was

a talent of his that he could control his fury, but he trembled in

the

knowledge of a failure that must be reported, immediately, to London.

"I'll go because I've said I'll go."

Ham said, "I told you, it's just fucking dumb."

"I'll do it because I've said I'll do it."

"You never go back, not when you've been bounced. On your own, no

chance, not second time at it."

"It's what I've said I'll do."

The German woman was driving. She was very quiet. She had her eyes on