THE HEART OF DANGER (52 page)

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)

308

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

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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

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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

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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