Scorpion Trail

by Geoffrey Archer

  Suddenly in front of him he saw a pair of green Goretex boots. Small feet – belonging to a woman . . .

  Slowly, very slowly, he straightened himself up.

  Lorna Donohue.

  The passage of time had scored lines in her face, but to him it still radiated magic.

  Her mouth dropped open.

  ‘Alex?’ she gasped.

  His chest felt as if it was about to explode.

  ‘Lorna,’ he gulped. ‘It’s you.’

  ‘And it is you!’ Her voice rose an octave. She pointed at his face. ‘The beard. I didn’t . . . I don’t believe this . . .’

  She felt she was going into shock. He reached an arm out to her, but it didn’t quite connect.

  ‘I thought I saw you the other day,’ Alex spluttered. ‘Coming off the ferry at Split. But this is amazing!’

  He wanted to grab her, hug her, kiss her. But he didn’t dare.

  ‘Twenty goddam years!’ she mouthed, her face a mask. There was no invitation there.

  Didn’t dare show him her feelings. Didn’t even know what they were. She spun away from him and ran her hands through her hair.

  ‘My God!’ she murmured. ‘This isn’t happening.’

  ‘It’s amazing,’ Alex repeated, his hands flapping. He felt like a kid on his first date, weak at the knees with wondering what to say.

  He became conscious of McFee watching them.

  ‘This is Lorna,’ he gestured. ‘The one on the ferry . . .’

  McFee leered, as if to say, ‘not bad’.

  Unsmiling, Lorna turned to face the man who’d once meant everything to her. She felt sandbagged. Had to play for time.

  ‘What are you doing here, for heaven’s sake?’ she asked, looking at him opaquely.

  He waved his hand towards the Bedford.

  ‘Endeavouring to be useful, I suppose. You too?’

  She nodded, eyes hard, trying to show that whatever she felt about meeting him again, it wasn’t necessarily pleasure.

  He told himself to get a grip and moved a little closer.

  ‘You look fantastic, Lorna. Haven’t changed at all. Astonishing . . .’

  ‘Older,’ she replied. ‘And wiser . . .’ She raised one eyebrow.

  ‘Aren’t we all.’ He could see she intended to give him a hard time. ‘We . . . we’ve got a lot to talk about, I guess.’ He reached out to touch her, but she backed off.

  ‘We certainly do.’ He saw the hurt in her eyes. She let out a long, deep breath. ‘We sure do, Alex!’

  She felt she was clinging on by her finger tips. Time for a smile, she thought. Mustn’t let him see she was floundering.

  ‘Well! Well, well . . . So this is your truck? What have you got there, food and clothes?’

  ‘Yep. Bosnia Emergency is the name of the charity. Oh, and this is Moray McFee. Moray? This is Lorna . . . Donohue?’ he checked.

  ‘Donohue will do. Nice to meet you, Moray.’

  ‘This chap Crawford tells me you go back thirty years . . .’ McFee ventured. Lorna darted Alex a suspicious glance – his name had been Jarvis when she’d last seen him. Her name change had a simple reason – but his?

  ‘Thirty years! You’d have been in nappies when you met, surely?’ McFee grinned.

  ‘If only,’ she laughed, thawing a little. ‘But thanks for the compliment.’

  McFee spotted the Nikon on a strap round her neck.

  ‘Here, gi’ me that camera! It’s a moment of history, this.’

  She faltered but handed it over.

  ‘Stand together, now. Alex, put your arm around her for God’s sake!’

  McFee’s request brooked no refusal. For a moment Lorna leant uneasily against Alex.

  She forced a thin smile. McFee snapped off a couple of pictures, before handing back the camera. Lorna was grateful to break off the unsettling contact.

  ‘I’ll leave you to reminisce for a moment,’ he offered, backing away. ‘Don’t worry, Alex. I’ll do the boxes.’

  ‘So . . . What’s all this Crawford stuff?’ she snapped, businesslike again, as McFee went over to the Bedford.

  He took her arm and led her out of earshot.

  ‘I’ve been using the name since Belfast. I’ve had to hide. The Provos wanted to kill me, you know.’

  ‘You and me both, kiddo.’ She pulled her arm from his grip. Why was he standing here like this, bold as brass? He should be on his knees begging for forgiveness.

  ‘Look, I got work to do,’ she said brusquely. ‘I guess this isn’t the place to talk. Where are you staying?’

  ‘Vitez. You?’

  ‘Zenica. The International Hotel.’

  She wasn’t going to suggest they should meet. Leave that to him.

  ‘And who do you work for?’ he asked, unnerved by her coolness.

  ‘Have you heard of CareNet of New England?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘It’s a disaster agency that helps kids. We hand out medical supplies, and find homes for war orphans.’

  ‘People to adopt them?’ he frowned.

  ‘Sure. You don’t approve?’

  ‘It is rather controversial . . .’

  ‘And that is an old-fashioned, English understatement.’

  Her blue-grey eyes softened. She wasn’t altogether disagreeing with him.

  Alex glanced towards the truck. The remaining boxes were being unloaded in an orderly relay. Better to steer clear of the past for now. Keep talking about the present.

  ‘And what are you in this village for? Medicines, or orphans?’ he asked.

  Questions, questions, the biggest one inside her own mind. Why was he really here? But he’d just asked her something . . .

  ‘This one’s special. There’s a kid here in real danger. You’ve heard of . . .’

  She stopped in mid-flow. Hell, she thought. I’m doing it again. Telling him things. It’s those soft brown eyes, and the way he listens as if he cares.

  She slipped her mask back in place and looked at him out of the corner of her eye.

  ‘Last time we met . . .’ she began, ‘you were a spook. MI5 wasn’t it?’

  He began to sweat.

  ‘We’ve got to talk about that, Lorna. Let’s work out when we can meet . . .’

  ‘Do you still do that?’ she interrupted. ‘Are you still a spy? Out here?’

  ‘Give me a break, Lorna.’

  ‘Gimme a break! You watch too many soaps. Is that why you’re here?’ she demanded.

  ‘No, it’s not.’

  It’s happening again, he thought. Lying to her because the truth’s too complicated.

  ‘I told you, I came here to help . . . and to get away. I had problems at home. You know what I mean?’ he added, appealing for sympathy. He saw pain in her eyes.

  ‘Sure,’ she nodded. ‘I know what you mean.’

  A couple approached, the man in a leather jacket. He had dark, greasy hair and jealous eyes.

  ‘Lorna . . .’ Josip snapped, irritated by her intimacy with this stranger. ‘Monika – she say we must hurry.’

  ‘Okay, okay!’ Lorna replied. ‘Just give me a minute.’

  This time she took Alex by the arm and led him a few metres away.

  ‘He’s my translator,’ she explained. ‘I’ve got to go. There’s a kid here who lost all her family in a massacre.’

  Massacre. He had an eerie sensation of a window opening.

  ‘All right, but let’s meet up somewhere. I’m staying opposite the UN camp in Vitez. Any chance you could get there?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve got a lot to fix . . .’

  ‘That massacre,’ he asked, ignoring her prevarication, ‘was it Tulici?’

  ‘Uhuh,’ she acknowledged warily. ‘Were you here then?’

  ‘No. It’s just that the way I’d heard it, there weren’t any survivors.’

  ‘Mmm. That’s what most people think. It’s safer that way.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Lorna swallowed hard. Nobod
y was supposed to know Vildana was in this village.

  ‘Because if there’s a survivor, she might be able to identify the guy who did the killings. And if he knew there was a witness, he’d want to kill her too.’

  She’d said enough.

  ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Hang on!’ Alex gripped her arm. ‘If this girl can identify the killers . . .’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ Lorna protested.

  ‘But if she can identify them, then the UN must be told. They want to put the Tulici killers on trial. Did you know that?’

  ‘Not my problem! All I’m concerned about is the safety and future happiness of a twelve-year-old.’

  ‘She’s here in this village, you say?’

  Questions. Questions. Just like Belfast.

  ‘I must go.’ Yet she couldn’t. Not without fixing to meet him again.

  ‘Can I come with you?’ he pleaded. ‘To see the girl?’

  ‘You have to be kidding,’ she protested. ‘Do you know what it took to persuade Monika to bring me here? No way.’

  ‘How long will you be? I’ll wait.’

  Lorna shrugged, exasperated. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I’ll wait.’

  She hurried after the others. Monika led them briskly up the street to a half-built house less than fifty metres away.

  Suddenly Alex looked over to the truck. Children riffling the cab for anything consumable.

  ‘Hey, get out of there!’ he yelled, sprinting across. He grabbed at the squirming bodies and yanked them out.

  Ivan appeared and shouted in Serbo-Croat.

  Alex climbed onto the driving seat. A couple of packs of Marlboros that he’d left on the dashboard were gone.

  ‘They have nothing . . .’ Ivan explained in mitigation.

  ‘They have now.’

  He looked over to the school. The last of the boxes was being carried inside. McFee started weaving through the crowd towards them.

  ‘Lots of happy faces in there, now,’ he beamed, when he reached them. ‘Where’s your lady-friend?’

  ‘Up the road somewhere.’

  He cocked his head on one side and studied Alex’s face.

  ‘So how was your big reunion? Cut your dick off, did she?’

  Alex smiled. ‘Not quite.’

  ‘Okay. We’d better get a move on. Young Ivan here needs to get back to his folks.’

  ‘We can’t go yet.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘I have to talk to Lorna again, when she’s finished doing whatever she’s doing.’

  ‘Oh, great! And how long’s that going to be?’

  ‘I don’t know, but not too long.’

  McFee didn’t disguise his annoyance.

  ‘Couldn’t you have arranged to meet up this evening or something? A little tête à tête in the Vitez cookhouse, maybe.’

  ‘No.’ He wasn’t going to explain. ‘I’ll keep a lookout for her, now you’re back to guard the truck.’

  He gave him the keys, pushed open the door and dropped to the ground.

  Monika hustled Lorna down a path of broken bricks at the side of a house. The building was made of unrendered breeze-blocks and a concrete frame. The tiled roof was intact, but the windows were polythene.

  Inside, a young couple wearing pullovers and tracksuit trousers stood awkwardly beside a small kitchen table and two plain, wooden chairs. It was the only furniture in the room, which had a bare concrete floor and rough, plastered walls.

  Lorna’s head spun in disbelief at what had just happened. Suddenly she feared it had been some extraordinary fantasy and wanted to run back into the road to check he was still there.

  Then she saw the fear on the faces of the Bosnian couple and jerked back to reality. Monika introduced them with names she didn’t catch.

  ‘This man is cousin of friend of Vildana family,’ Josip translated. ‘Friend who live in Tulici . . . Also dead.’

  The woman of the couple began talking volubly, all the while dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief.

  ‘She say Vildana very . . . well, shocked, I should say,’ Josip explained in a whisper. ‘She eat and sleep little. Every time she hear gun, she cry and looking somewhere to hide, like animal.’

  ‘Poor little thing,’ Lorna breathed. A child that traumatized might be hard to place.

  The woman put a hand to her mouth and spoke lower.

  ‘Vildana has something on mouth,’ Josip whispered. ‘Some mark . . . Boys threw stones because of this. She always running away. That’s why she alive the woman say. She know all the place to hide.’

  Lorna sensed an abyss opening up. This was no normal child.

  ‘Monika, we need to talk to the kid,’ she pressed, gently. Josip relayed her words.

  The woman dried her eyes and blew her nose. Then she opened the door into the next room. A double mattress and a smaller single one lay on the bare floor. Blankets and bedding were scrunched up at the end of each.

  At first Lorna thought no one was in the room. Then she realized that what she’d taken for a pile of clothes in a corner was in fact a child. In bright red pullover and yellow trousers, a multi-coloured scarf draped over her head, and hands covering her face, this was Vildana.

  ‘Vildana?’ the woman coaxed. She walked across and knelt before the cowering girl.

  A tang of salt burned the back of Lorna’s throat as she swallowed her welling tears.

  The small hands slid cautiously down the face, exposing dark-brown, frightened eyes. Vildana kept her mouth covered, however.

  The woman talked to her softly in a sing-song voice.

  ‘She explain who we are,’ Josip whispered, resting a hand on Lorna’s shoulder and putting his face close to her ear.

  She flinched as the stubble of his chin brushed her cheek and she caught the smell of his hangover breath.

  ‘Ask Monika if Vildana knows that we’re planning to get her out of the country,’ she told him brusquely.

  Josip obliged. Monika bobbed her head from side to side as if to say ‘yes, but . . .’

  How much of anything did Vildana understand, Lorna began to wonder.

  She crossed the room and kneeled on the rough concrete a few feet in front of the child. Twelve years old. About the same age as Julie was when she’d had to give up caring for her.

  ‘Hi, Vildana. I’m Lorna,’ she said, forcing a smile.

  The dark eyes wouldn’t look at her. The grubby hands still covered her mouth. Twelve years old and still so much a child. Julie had developed a woman’s ways by this age.

  ‘Vildana? I want to help you if I can. If you’ll let me.’

  She beckoned Josip over to translate.

  ‘Do you want me to help you?’

  Josip let the translation slip softly from his tongue.

  The girl’s eyes looked up for guidance. The woman who’d been caring for her nodded.

  ‘Will you tell me?’ Lorna pleaded. ‘I want to be your friend, Vildana.’

  Slowly Vildana pulled her hands away from her mouth, eyes watching for the look of distaste which, experience had told her, would flit across the visitor’s face.

  A strawberry birthmark. A big one. Poor kid, Lorna thought. Such a pretty face otherwise. Maybe the surgeons could fix it.

  Fighting for self-control, Lorna let nothing show. Just smile, she told herself. She’d done it for Julie, she could do it for this girl.

  She reached out. Vildana’s cheek felt hot and moist.

  ‘Do you know where America is?’ Lorna coaxed.

  Josip relayed the question. Vildana nodded.

  ‘Would you like to go live there?’

  She shook her head and the eyes began to fill with tears.

  The woman looked desperate. She hugged the child, then whispered something to Josip.

  ‘She say they cannot look after her much longer. They only marry few months, and Vildana not their family.’

  ‘And there’s no one else? No uncles, aunts, cousins?�
��

  ‘She say no. Vildana father killed months ago, and the rest of her family die at Tulici.’

  Monika beckoned Lorna and Josip to the other side of the room.

  ‘Well, she say there is nothing for this girl in Bosnia,’ he explained.

  They both glanced at the damaged creature in the corner. The problem was how to get her out of the country. Apart from anything else she’d need a passport.

  Lorna turned to the girl again, an idea forming in her head.

  ‘Vildana, can I see how tall you are?’ She held out her hands and beckoned the girl over. Hesitantly Vildana obliged.

  She can walk at least, Lorna thought. Looks more normal standing up. She held her lightly by the shoulders.

  ‘Monika, can you explain to Vildana that we’ll try to find her a nice family to live with, in a place where there’s no shooting?’

  Lorna watched the girl’s face as Monika talked to her.

  ‘Tell her she’d have her own room, lots of nice clothes and things.’

  She was determined to find something that might bring hope to those tragic eyes.

  No response.

  Hell! This was like walking a minefield, but she’d give it a shot.

  ‘Josip,’ she whispered in an aside, ‘tell Monika to say to Vildana there’d be doctors in America who’d make her mouth better. She could look as beautiful as a moviestar and have all the boys begging for her to smile at them.’

  Josip coughed.

  ‘You’re sure you want me translate?’

  ‘Whisper it to Monika. See if she thinks it’s a good idea.’

  He did so. Monika’s tired eyes seemed to grow in their sockets. She looked across at Lorna as if to say ‘how could you?’

  Then the girl’s eyes darted from one face to another.

  ‘She heard you,’ Lorna whispered.

  Vildana’s voice when it came was a husky squeak.

  ‘She ask if it true,’ Josip confirmed.

  ‘Then we’re getting somewhere. Josip, bring Monika next door, would you?’

  Lorna walked back into the room with the kitchen table. The other two joined her a moment later.

  ‘Maybe Vildana will be happy to go with me,’ Lorna began. ‘But the first problem is how to get her out of here. Would I be able to take her through the checkpoints on the road to Split, without any papers?’

  Josip make a ‘tchk’ sound.