THE HEART OF DANGER (57 page)

she realized the patience of the chief of the irregulars, that he

let

her son regain his confidence through the story of their fishing ..

.

The big fish, the good trout, had taken the worm, stripped it from

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the

hook. They had bent to put another worm on the hook. They had cast again into the pool.

The fish had taken the worm, taken the hook. A big fish, pulling

at

the rod, and his father helping him to hold the rod up ... But the

time

was running and the darkness was gathering.

"Hurry, Marko, what you saw .. ."

And she was cut to silence by the slashed wave of the chief of the

irregulars.

He stood amongst them, her son, and he told his story .. . The man

had

come from behind them as they held the rod together to fight the fish.

His father had loosed the rod. He had looked round. His father was on

the ground, on the grass of the field. The man was without trousers.

The man knelt on his father and was binding his arms. The man had

pulled his father up and hit him. He fought the man, he tried to

kick

the man's legs. A woman had come. He tried to stop them from taking his father. The woman had thrown him down, the woman had hurt him

..

.

"What was he like, the man?"

Some of them already knew. She trembled. She remembered. She

heard

the voice that she had translated: "I have the evidence for my report that Dorrie Mowat was killed by, was murdered by, Milan Stankovic."

She

saw the face of the man, beaten and scarred and cut. They shared

the

guilt.

Pandemonium breaking out of the office area of the TDF headquarters.

Shouts, cries in the night, and the gathering up of weapons, and the

howling of awakened dogs. And who was the leader now .. . ? The

one

from the irregulars, but he did not know the terrain of the valley?

The

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postman? The grave-digger? The carpenter? And was there a

working

telephone line out of the village? And where was the man to link

the

radio to Glina military? And where should the search begin, in the

woodland across the stream, in darkness? At the deep pool where her

Milan had been captured? She heard the babble of argument, and time

was running.

She shouted above their voices, "Cowards .. . you all share the guilt.

It was not just him that did it ... Idiots, if Milan is taken, your

leader, it is all of you who are threatened. Murderers .. ."

In confusion, in disordered chaos, the village was armed, the link

was

made and interrupted and made again and interrupted again with Glina

military, and the search party moved out into the lane in front of

the

old agricultural store, and the debate of tactics began.

They had no leader.

She remembered the man, what he had said and what he had seemed to

be.

'.. . Tell Dorrie's mother the name of the man who killed her

daughter

.. ." Dignified, brave, remote from the law of the bastard village that was her home, not intimidated by the violence threatening him.

If

that man had her Milan .. . Evica reckoned that the man and the woman

who had taken her husband had a start on them of near to an hour.

At the first halt, an hour gone since they had moved into the haven

of

the tree line on the west side of the valley, he had given Milan

Stankovic's pistol to Ulrike and he had shone the torch full into

the

face of Milan Stankovic and he had held the small-bladed knife against

the bearded throat of the man.

She knew their language, she interpreted.

Into the wide grey-blue eyes he had said that, if they were trapped,

if

they were intercepted, if they could go no further, he would slit

that

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throat. And at the rest stop, two minutes on his watch, he and Ulrike

had taken their turn in watching him close and they had slipped on

again their dry trousers. He had whisper growled the threat to slit

Milan Stankovic's throat, and he did not think he was then believed.

He attempted to be cruel because it was what Ulrike had ordered of

him.

And as the second hand of his watch was slipping for the end of the

two

minutes, he had summoned what he hoped was ferocity and he had told

Milan Stankovic that if he shouted, screamed, howled, he would cut

his

throat.

Penn dragged him forward. Ulrike led with the torch cupped in the

palm

of her hand so that it made a short cone of light ahead of her feet.

Penn had the knife close to Milan Stankovic's neck so that when they

pitched or stumbled then the tip of the blade would waver against

the

fullness of the man's beard. It was not important to him that the

man

had spat contempt at him.

The man did not shout, but instead talked softly. He was not gagged

because Penn had thought that if he were gagged with the torn strip

off

the tail of his shirt then his breathing would be impaired and he

would

not be able to go as fast as was required of him. A low and calm

voice. He could hear the murmur of the voice and the staccato bursts

of Ulrike's side-of-mouth interpretation. '.. . You think you can

succeed, then you are a lunatic .. . The whole village will be coming,

man and boy, guns .. . You are the stranger here, don't know the ways

in the forest, they know them .. . You only took me because I had

the

boy with me, because I was distracted with the boy, if I had not had

the boy you would not have taken me ... You are shit, shit when you

came the first time, shit now .. . They will be coming after you,

coming close to you ... It is our forest, not yours, why you have

no

possibility .. . You say you will kill me, you would not dare .. ."

There was a change in Ulrike's voice. There was no longer an

automaton

translation, but something said softly in the man's language, and

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the

man's words dried. Penn asked, "What did you tell him?" Ulrike said,

not looking back, "You might not kill him, but I would. That's what I

told him, that I would kill him. He may not believe you, he should

believe me .. . and I asked him if he felt guilt." She was so strong

... He wondered if she had ever felt weakness. And everything of

her

was denied him. He wondered where she had been five years before,

when

he had waited on the railway station for the delayed train and chatted

to the stranger, Jane, and taken the taxi down to Raynes Park where

Jane lived. He wondered if Ulrike Schmidt, who allowed no sentiment,

would have looked at him then, admired him or wanted to share with

him.

His best friend, Dougal Gray, would have understood. Penn had heard

that Dougal Gray, in Belfast, now lived with the separated wife of

a

policeman. In the heart of danger men and women were thrown together

and thought they found love when they squirmed only for comfort. In

a

year, when Dougal Gray finished his extended tour, and was posted

back

to Gower Street there would be no chance that the separated wife of

a

policeman would up sticks to travel with him .. . There was no future.

He had a hold of the wrists of Milan Stankovic that were knotted with

the fine rope at the pit of his back. Each time that they had gone

a

hundred metres, each moment that they stopped, he strained for the

sounds of pursuit, and Milan Stankovic was listening too, each time

he

bent his neck that he would hear better the first signs of the chasing

pack. They went on into the depth of the woodland, climbing from

the

valley. There were some who said they should take cars and the jeep,

and go up the road beyond Bovic towards the Pokupsko bridge where

the

Kupa river was the cease-fire line. There were others who said they

should drive up the Vrginmost road and then take the turning towards

the artillery position and fan out into the woods from there. And

there was delay while the cars were filled with gasoline from the

pump

in the yard of the old agricultural store, and there were some who

said

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they should go on foot into the woodland from the Rosenovici side

of

the stream, and others said they should go first to where the boy

had

told them his father had been taken. More delay for the argument.

Some

said they should wait for the army to come from Glina military, some

said they should do the work for themselves. She listened. She

wept.

They decided. They had filled the cars with gasoline, but they would

not use them. They would go on foot. They would go across the bridge

and through the village of Rosenovici, and they would make a beating

line through the woodland. She wept because she saw the wild

excitement in torch-lit faces, as if they were away and off to drive

a

boar from thicket scrub, to rouse a deer for shooting. She watched

the

column of bouncing lights, raucously tailing away towards the bridge.

Evica Stankovic realized how greatly she loathed them, all of them.

And she wiped the tears off her face, and she led Marko away. She

went

to the house of the Priest. The Priest should have been her friend,

as

the Headmaster should have been her friend. She gave her son into

the

care of the Priest and his wife. She despised the man, as she

despised

herself. The Priest and the Headmaster and herself were the only

three

souls of the village with education, but amongst them only the

Headmaster had stood up for what he believed. She told the Priest

that

Milan had been taken as a war criminal, and she saw the shallow sneer

on the Priest's face, and she knew him to be an ambivalent bastard.

He

told a story in his low singing voice. It was the story of a Croat,

the story of Matija Gubec, the leader of a revolt in the year of 1573

against the tyrant Franjo Tahi. He said it was the story of a little

man who had risen to great power. '.. He wanted, Gubec, to be a

big

man amongst the peasants, and he made an organization of revolt. The

sign of recognition with his people was a sprig of evergreen. The

simple people followed him, but they were tricked by the superior

intellect of the tyrant: they were told that while they went with

the

peasant rabble so the Turks were gathering to pillage their homes

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and

they deserted Gubec. He was taken. He was brought to Zagreb. He

was

led to St. Mark's Square for a coronation. But the crown was iron, and the crown was heated by fire until the iron was white hot. He

was

crowned, and then he was dismembered. It is a story of long ago,

before we were civilized, the story of a man who reached too far."

He

would have known that she was desperate for speed, and he had held

her

with the mincing words of the story, and with the tail of the story

he

had kicked her. So many times the Priest had walked to her house

and

wheedled for favours from her Milan and patted the head of her Marko.

The chess, set was laid out on the table of rough stained oak .. .

The

Priest, the bastard, had not had the courage to stand beside his

friend. When the Headmaster faced death then the Priest, the

bastard,

had stayed quiet. That the Priest dared taunt her was absolute proof

of how alone she was. They blamed her, the Priest and his wife, for

the humbling and the killing of a friend. She left her son there,

whimpering, with the thin-boned fingers of the ambivalent bastard

resting on the boy's shoulder. She went back to her home and she

put

on heavy boots and took the rusted bayonet down from the high wall

hook, and she called for the dog to come with her. She knew the name

of the dog, the name given it by the Ustase Croat people, and she

took

the big flashlight. With the dog at her heel she went away across

the

fields on the east side of the river. She could see their torches

going through Rosenovici village, and she could hear them. She went

alone with the dog, and she called it with its Ustase name to be close

to her. She knew how it would be ... They would search a small area,

the area around the villages, their own area. They were tribal.

They

would not move beyond the boundary of their own area. She could

recall

when some of the young men of the village had been volunteered for

duty, last year, outside Petrinja, in the trenches facing Sisak, and

they had drifted home within twelve days because it was not their

own

war, beyond their own area.

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Her dog would know the scent of Milan.

Her torch found the jar of worms and the landing net and one of the