THE HEART OF DANGER (53 page)

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

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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

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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

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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?"

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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