An hour later he said, "I'll work out what it would cost, how many days I estimate it will take. Goodbye, Mrs. Braddock. You'll hear from me."
Three.
The pub was down the road from the launderette, and round the corner, "You know what you are, Penn? You are a jam my bastard." The pub, Basil's 'watering hole', was mean and dirty and dark. There was a table beyond the bar that was his, out of danger from the darts board. Basil, one-time detective sergeant, had made the table his own since retirement from the Metropolitan Police nineteen years back. Most lunch times, Basil was at the table with Deirdre. "You milk that one, my son, because it's cream for the cat. You spin it out, my son." Jim didn't use the pub at lunch time, left Basil clear with Deirdre, but he came by at five most evenings. Jim, one-time detective constable in the Fraud Squad, liked a game of pool in the bar and a swift pint, or three, with Basil. It was where the hard business of Alpha Security was talked through. "They don'c come on trees, young fellow, they're gifts from heaven. You fell on your feet, young fellow." Henry, one-time Telecom engineer, came to the pub only at Christmas, birthday, or celebration time, and nursed orange juice. Henry was valuable, always sober, and spent his drinks money on bug equipment and the gear for tapping hard lines, and the new pride and joy was a UHF room transmitter built into a thirteen-amp wall socket. "Milk it .. ." "Run it .. ." "Enjoy it .. ." It wasn't talked about, but Penn assumed that Basil and Jim and Henry did odd-job work for Five. Work that was boring and work that was illegal would be farmed out, Penn assumed. It had to be a good assumption because when he had been working out his notice at Gower Street, when he was getting all the flak from Jane as to where the mortgage money was going to come from, there had been the quiet call from the fourth floor and the request that he attend the office of Senior Executive Officer Arnold Browne. A soft word of sympathy, a frowned nod of understanding, and a suggestion that Alpha Security, SW19, might be looking for an able man. He guessed a little empire had been built, the tentacles spread, and Henry never seemed short of gear that cost, and plenty more than he saved by drinking only orange juice. They were a good little team: give Basil three phone calls, he could find a burglar, a mugger, a safe-breaker; give Jim half a day, he could get an Inland Revenue annual statement print-out; Henry could fix, in twenty-four hours, best quality audio and. visual surveillance. They were a good little team, but needing young legs and young eyes and a guy prepared to sit through the bread-and-butter crap .. But it wasn't bread-and-butter crap they were celebrating in the pub, with Penn buying the drinks, it was a hell of a good overseas contract, with money going half share to the partners .. . Penn felt quiet satisfaction, because Basil was almost jealous, and Jim couldn't quite hide the envy, and Henry didn't seem too cheerful. Penn was reaching for their glasses, and none of them was shouting that it was his round. Penn said, "Actually, she's quite a decent woman ..." "Bollocks, she's a punter." "Daily rate, plus per them expenses, plus Club-class flights." "Half the daily rate up front, per them expenses in your greasy hand for a clear week before you go, and that doesn't include the hotel of your choice." Penn said, "Pity is that her daughter was a right little tosser .. ." He scooped up the glasses and headed for the bar. Two pints of best bitter, an orange juice, and Penn was taking low alcohol because when he was shot of them he would be going back to the office over the launderette and he would be typing up the finances and faxing them down to the Manor House on the Surrey/ Sussex border, and then he would be going home to Jane, and hoping to God, some hope, that the baby slept hard .. . and hoping to God, some hope, that Jane wasn't flat on her back with exhaustion ... It was going sour with Jane, not solicitors and courts stage, just going stale, and he did not know what to do about it, nor whether it mattered if he did nothing about it. He brought the drinks back, shouldered his way through the shop people and the mechanics in their overalls and the building site workers who were all on the 'black'. Wouldn't have been seen in there, not seen dead in there, when he had been at Gower Street. It still seared him, and it would do so for a goddamn long time, the memory of when he had come back home to Raynes Park off the train from Waterloo, and told Jane that he was washed up, working out his notice, gone. Jane, seven months pregnant, and hysterical, and him not able to staunch the screaming. She'd done it, Jane, she had wound him up when she had packed her job in because the baby was coming. She had done the sums of the household accounts, told him they couldn't survive, not with the baby coming, not without her money, unless he had himself promoted. She had told him he should have been made up from executive officer to higher executive officer, and like a bloody fool .. . Basil took his drink. "Cheers .. . I'm going to give you advice, you jam my bastard. Don't go sentimental on it, don't get yourself involved." Jim grasped the pint glass and nodded his agreement. Henry sipped at the orange juice. "Good trip .. . Just pile the paper up, reports, analysis, interview transcripts, like you've been a busy boy." "I hear you." He made his excuses and left them still talking, debating, arguing, what the rate of per them expenses should be. He walked out onto the street. They were closing the shutters down on the fruit and vegetable shop, and locking up the jeans and denim store, and the launderette was packed full. Gary bloody Brennard, Personnel, wouldn't be unlocking a paint-peeled door beside a launderette and going back to work at 6.33pm, and Gary bloody Brennard, Personnel, wouldn't even remember his little talk with Bill Penn, executive officer. His own fault, because he had not copped on to the new scene at Five. Too dumb, too stupid, to have evaluated the new mood at Five. Entry to General Intelligence Group was restricted to higher executive officers, new scene, didn't he know? Entry to General Intelligence Group was restricted to university graduates, there was a new mood, didn't he know? They didn't want watchers, nor leg-men, nor ditch-men .. . they wanted analysts and information control management, and they wanted graduates. "Don't have a degree, do you, Bill?" Gary Brennard's sneer. "Didn't make university, did you, Bill?" His feet hammered the linoleum above the launderette. He snatched the cover off the typewriter. "Without a degree, without a university education, you've reached your plateau, haven't you, Bill?" He began to type. He accepted the assignment. He listed the daily rate and a half to be paid in advance, and the per them expenses rate .. . He pounded the keys of the typewriter. "If that's the way you feel then you should consider transferring your talents to the private sector. We wouldn't want disaffected junior officers, would we, Bill?" He read through the paper. No, he wouldn't be sentimental. No, he wouldn't get himself involved. He dialled the number. He watched the fax sheet go. There was not enough light for him to make a clean job of the sewing. He did it as best he could, and it was poor work because he could barely see where he pushed the thick needle, and his hands shook. His hands shook in fear. Ham sewed strips of black elastic onto the arms and the body of the tunic. The others watched him and waited their turn with the one needle and the reel of heavy cotton. He tried hard to hide the shaking because each of the other five men who would go across with him believed in his professionalism. It was what he was paid for, what he was there for, to communicate professionalism. There were eight lengths of black elastic now on his tunic, and he had already sewn five lengths onto his combat fatigue trousers, and when they were down at the river, when they were ready to slip into the inflatable, then they would collect old grass and they would tuck the grass lengths in behind the elastic straps. They were important, Shape and Silhouette. He passed on the needle and the cotton reel and the roll of black elastic tape. He set himself to work on Shine. He spat into the palms of his hands and then scooped the cream from the jar and worried the mess together, and made the sweeping smears across his eyebrows and nose and cheeks and chin, and his ears and throat and wrists and hands. He handed the jar to those who were waiting to use the needle and the cotton roll. He had told them about Smell, and he had bloody lectured them that there should have been no smoking since the middle of the day, and he had checked that the tinfoil was in his own battle pack for their shit and the burying of it. He
had lectured them about Sound, and he had shaken each of the webbing harnesses they would wear for the rattle of loose ammunition magazines, and he had made them all walk round him in a circle until he was certain that their boots were quiet.
Ham had learned Shape, Silhouette, Shine, Smell, and Sound at the Aldershot depot, and none of the others, the dozy buggers, cared .. . They needed it, too fucking right they needed Shape and Silhouette and Shine and Smell and Sound, where they were going .. . the others were from 2nd Bn, 110 (Karlovac) Brigade, and they had been pissed up since morning and Ham was stone sober and his hands shook and his gut was tight. They were dumb bastards to be spending the night with, across the Kupa river, behind the lines. On down his checklist .. . ammunition magazines for the Kalashnikov, knife, gloves, the radio that thank Christ he wouldn't be bent under, cold rations, the balaclava, the water bottle that wasn't full of bloody brandy or the usual slivovitz piss, map and compass, field dressings .. . The big fear, what tightened Ham's gut, shook his hands, was of being wounded, of being left. It was better in the old days, better when there were Internationals on the ground like flies on meat, because then there was the promise that the Internationals, the 'meres', would look after their own if one was wounded. You wouldn't know with this lot, wouldn't know if they'd fuck off and get the hell out in a stampede back towards the river from behind the lines. They were chuckling at him, the others, and it was because they laughed at his care and his thoroughness that Ham felt the fear.
They were dumb bastards to be with, but there was no one else who would have Sidney Ernest Hamilton, late of 3 Para, late of east London, late of the Internationals attached to the Croatian army. His fingers found the twin dog tags hanging from the dulled chain at his neck. The tags were bound in sellotape to keep them quiet. The tags gave his number from 3 Para, his name, and his blood group, and his number and name and blood group from the Croatian army. He knew it would be bad bloody news for any of them if they were wounded, captured, across the river, and double bad bloody news for a mercenary.
Ham didn't eat any of the bread that was offered him, and he turned down the alcohol, and he thought the Croatians must have known that he was shit stiff scared.
It would be late evening when they moved off down towards the Kupa river where the inflatable was hidden.
Under the new scene, the new mood, there were little chores for a senior executive officer.
The little chores were adequate to remind Arnold Browne that he was outside the mainframe of Service operations. Once a week, a little chore, he met with a senior executive officer from Six, and they talked platitudes, nothings, for an hour before going to lunch on expenses. A little chore because it was unthinkable that the Service would offer valuable information to Six, and inconceivable that Six would volunteer worthy information to the Security Service, Valuable information, worthy information, was power and would not be squandered on the sister organization .. . So, Arnold Browne who was old guard and old time would parry and probe for a straight sixty minutes with a man who was also without a future, and then go take a damn good lunch. The probing and parrying that morning had involved the tedious matter of Ukrainian nuclear warheads and he had extracted nothing that was worthy or valuable. It was ludicrous, of course, that Six should not share their information from the Ukraine so that Five could follow and monitor the Kiev government's attempts to get the hardware of the former Soviet Union operational, bloody pathetic but, then, Arnold Browne was not sharing with Six what Five had learned of PIRA arms acquisition on the Continent. He did not apportion blame. It was the way of the sisters to squabble, bicker, hold their cards close. But lunch was good, and at a personal level he enjoyed the company of Georgie Simpson. A bowl of pasta, a bottle from the Friuli region, a plate of liver and spinach, a second bottle called for, and the talk twisting to Croatia. Safe ground because Georgie Simpson never set foot outside inner London, and would have no secrets to guard. A belch from Arnold's lunch guest. '.. . I'm like the rest of the great British herd, I'm bored out of my mind with the place. Victoria won't even have it on the television now, switches it straight off. She did the jumble bit last year, getting parcels together, then she read that the stuff she collected was all sitting in a warehouse; she does parcels for Somalia now. I mean, they're just animals, aren't they? They're animals, all of them, not a peck of difference between the lot of them. What gets up my nose is that people here, in their ignorance, seem surprised by the bestiality of the place. I've had the place drilled into me from birth, by my father. Back in the war, he was on gunboat escorts that ran weapons down to the Dalmatian coast for the partisans, Tito's crowd. Two or three times my father went ashore and had to go up into the mountains to meet the Serbs, and he saw a bit of what was done to them by the Croats .. . small wonder they're all A grade for cruelty. Don't want to put you off your food, Arnold, but the Croats, the fascists in their Ustase movement, used to gouge the eyes out of their Serb friends' faces, sack them up and send them back to their hero leader in Zagreb .. . My father says the Ustase could make the SS blush. I mean, it wasn't just genocide, it was good fun thrown in. My father said that it wasn't just a matter of killing people, they enjoyed it, most of all they enjoyed causing pain. Incredible people, barbarians. Should leave the blighters to it .. ." It might have been the wine, could have been the company, but Arnold offered a confidence. He spoke quietly, without restraint, of his neighbour and his neighbour's second wife, and his neighbour's stepdaughter. '.. . who must have been a right bloody fool to have let herself get caught up in that lot. What I'd call a self-inflicted wound." "And a wound for everyone else," Arnold said. He waved to the waiter for more coffee, and the bill. "And, she, the mother, wants to know what happened? If you want my opinion, she should let it rest. It's like scratching a bite, yes? You end up with blood and pain. It's different values there, their values and ours don't mix .. ." "Not the sort of woman to let it rest. Sad, really, but she won't let it go until she's got the full picture .. . Actually, I put her in touch with a private detective .. ." "What on earth for?" Arnold was brought the bill. He paid cash, and it would be a month before the money was reimbursed by Accounts. "I thought that if she had something on paper, some evidence, then she might just be able to detach herself, disengage, rejoin the living." "Where did it happen?" Accounts would not wear gratuities. Arnold scooped the change from the saucer. "The daughter was killed near Glina, the territory is now occupied by the Serbs. I believe it's called Sector North .. ." Georgie Simpson laughed out loud, a real good belly laugh. "It'll be a pretty thin volume then, this joker's report .. . Nice meal, thanks, puts me on my mettle, where to go next week .. . That would be a pretty bloody place to be sniffing." "It's only a bromide job, of course; it's not sharp-end work .. ." They had their coats on, they were out on the pavement, their voices drifted. "Come on, Arnold, what would you have ever known about sharp-end work .. . ?" Arnold Browne sniggered. "Same as you, Georgie, damn all of nothing ..." It was the late afternoon, and a thin sun was through the cloud, and the garden grass was drying. The child played between the apple trees that spread above the vegetable patch. Marko had the plastic pistol. It had not been out of his sight since his father had brought it to him, taken to school, laid on the pillow of his bed. He weaved among the old tree trunks and saw the old Ustase enemy, and fired on them and killed them. It was the game he played every day, with a wooden stick that made the shape of a rifle before his father had brought him the plastic pistol from Belgrade, killing the Ustase enemy. He played alone. In the village there was the scream of a car horn, sounded like an alarm, and Marko heard the shouts of men. He played alone, because his friend, the one friend of his life, was gone. It was as if he no longer trusted that he could find a good friend again. He was six years old, and his birthday would be the next week, and although it was many months since his friend had gone he could still remember, so clearly, the knowledge that his friend had betrayed him, his friend had been a part of the Ustase enemy. Where Marko played, ducking, runnin
g, throwing himself down onto the grass to find shooting cover beside the apple trees, he could see across the field, and across the narrow stream, and across more fields, to the village where his friend had lived. He could see the house in the village across the stream, and there was no roof on the house, and where the side wall of the house had collapsed he could see the bright cream and red of the wallpaper of the room that had been his friend's. Most days in summer he had waded the ford in the stream or his friend had come the same way to him, and most days in winter when the stream was high he had gone across the plank bridge or his friend had come that way to him. And now he knew that his friend was an Ustase enemy, and he knew that the parents of his friend and all in the village across the stream had planned to slit the throats of their Serb neighbours ... He knew it because he had been told it by his father. He had wondered, often, if his friend would have come in the night with all the other Ustase enemies, and carried a knife, and cut his throat. It was too much of a betrayal for him to care to find another friend. Marko's game died. A car screamed down the lane towards their house. The car braked and scattered mud in front of the house, and his father was jumping from the car while it still moved and was running towards the big door. The dog was barking and running after his father and into the house. Marko came from the orchard, hurrying. He whistled for the dog to come to him. The dog had no name now, but it came to the whistle. There were five men in the car and they were crashing magazines into their weapons. The dog was his. He had saved the life of his dog. The dog had belonged to the family of his friend who was now an Ustase enemy. It had been before the battle for the village across the stream that his friend had gone with his family, all packed with cases and bedding into the Yugo car. He had watched it from behind the apple trees. He had been behind the apple trees because for a week the snipers had fired across the narrow stream, and his mother would have beaten him if she had known he was at the back of the house. They had left the dog. He had seen how the dog had run after the weighed-down Yugo car, and he had heard his friend's father curse the dog for running beside the wheels, and the dog had run after the car until they were gone from his sight. It had been a week after the battle that he had heard the dog barking in the night from beside his friend's house, and his father had said that he would go shoot the dog in the morning, and he had cried for the dog in a way that he had not cried for his friend .. . His father had crossed the stream and brought the dog home, and his father had said that there was no point in giving the dog a new name because it would not respond, and they could not use the old name of the dog because it was an Ustase name. He had hold of the dog's collar when his father exploded from the big door of the house. His father carried his army pack and a small radio and his rifle. There was the roar of the car leaving. Marko ran to the gate onto the lane. Up the lane, in the square of the village, he saw more cars gathered, and he heard more shouting. His mother had hold of his shoulder. He should be inside the house. He should not be out of the house. His mother told him that his father had gone to lead the search for Ustase spies, who had crossed over the Kupa river, who were in the forest and the hills above Rosenovici village. All the rest of the afternoon Marko stood at the window of his bedroom and he gazed across the narrow stream into the curtain of trees that covered the hillside. She paid the taxi off fast, thrust the note at the driver and did not wait for the change. The drizzle was back, and the wet clung to Charles's shoulder. Typical of him to wait on the pavement for her. She reeled off her excuses, the weather, late train, no taxis .. . She saw his expression, set hard and annoyed. "Sorry, sorry .. ." He marched up the wide office steps. "I saw your Mister Penn. I told him his figures were ludicrous .. ." "And .. . ?" '.. . I told him they were extortionate." "And .. . ?" "He said that was his rate." "And .. . ?" "He said that if I didn't like it, I could shove it up my .. ." "And .. . ?" "He was pretty damn lucky to catch me happy. He won." Charles Braddock grinned, sourly. "He said that he would be leaving for Zagreb in the morning. But don't think you'll be getting anything more than a load of paper ... He was pretty damn lucky." She kissed her husband's cheek. "Thank you. I rather liked him. What I liked about him was that he told me to mind my own business. Doesn't grovel too much, not to you, not to me .. ." "Come on." They were going to the lift. The commissionaire had the doors open for them, wore his medals proudly, and ducked his head in respect to them. Penn had told her husband that if he didn't like the terms he could shove the assignment, and he had told her to mind her own business .. . quite amusing. The lift doors closed. Mary said, "My guess is he's been badly used. He's rather sweet but so naive .. ." "If we could, please, just enjoy a normal evening .. ." It was the usual type of gathering for which Mary Braddock hiked to London, her husband's senior colleagues and the design team and the clients. She thought that her Mister Penn would not have stood a cat in hell's chance, would have been kicked away down the lift shaft if it hadn't been that the clients had put ink on the contracts that very day. She wafted through the salon, she meandered into and out of conversations. Her mind was away, away with the man who would be travelling to Zagreb, away with her daughter who was dead, buried, gone ... A thin little weed of a man approached, her husband's financial controller, and he had caught her. "Sincerest condolences, dear Mary, such a dreadful time for you .. ." Sincerity, he wouldn't know what the word meant. "Heartfelt apologies, Mary, that I couldn't make the funeral, just not enough hours in the day .. ." No, he wouldn't have taken time off for a funeral from the small type of a contract. "Still, she was so difficult, wasn't she? We have to hope, at last, that she lies in peace. Your Dorothy, she was such a trial to you." She did it expertly, and fast. She tipped her Cointreau and ice against the left side of his pale-grey suit jacket. She thought it would be a lasting stain, hoped it would defeat the dry cleaner. The amber ran on the grey. "Dorrie, she was mine, damn you, she was mine ..." She was sitting in the chair by the door and watching him. She didn't help him to pack. "How long are you going to be there?" His suitcase was on the bed. His clothes were stacked close to the case and he tried to make a mental note of what he would need. "Where are you going to be staying?" She had the baby, Tom, on her shoulder and she gripped him tight. Her statements came like machine-gun bullets, hurting him, wounding. "What's the point of it all?" His shoes went into the bottom of the case with his bag for washing kit and toothpaste and razors, and a guidebook of former Yugoslavia, and around their bulk went his socks and his underclothes. Penn told his wife, quiet voice, that he thought he would be away for a minimum of a week and he told her the name of the hotel where he was booked and he told her about Mary Braddock. On top of his socks and underclothes he laid two pairs of slacks, charcoal-grey. "So, I'm just supposed to sit here and wait for you to show up again?" All his shirts were white. It was like a uniform to him, that he wore charcoal-grey trousers and white shirts and quiet ties. He had always worn the uniform when he had gone to work at Gower Street. The jeans and the sweaters and the casual shirts that were right for Section 4 of A Branch had been kept in a locker. "If you hadn't made such a fool of yourself then you wouldn't be running round with that deadbeat outfit, would you?" Their home, two bedrooms, one floor, had cost 82,750. Their mortgage was 60,000. They could not have bought the house and furnished it without the help of her father, digging into his building society savings. They were not quite 'negative equity', but damn near. They could not sell the house without slashing into what her father had loaned them, or what the building society had advanced them. They were trapped in the bloody place. And it was not a home any more, but a little brightly painted prison. He thought there was enough in the case for a week, and something to spare. "What you do now, it's grubby, isn't it? It's prying into people's lives. How do you hold your head up?" Well, he held his head up because there was a cheque coming into the bank each month, and that should have been a good enough reason to hold his bloody head up. He would wear his blazer on the aircraft, not fold it away in the case. He did not take Jane home any more to his parents an
d the tied cottage, and they had not yet seen their grandson, Tom. Nothing said, but understood amongst them all, that he did not take Jane home. If his mother rang and Jane answered the telephone then his mother just rang off. The maisonette was a brightly painted prison and the marriage was a locked cell door, but he hadn't the time to be thinking about solicitors and he hadn't the money to be thinking about new rent to go with the old mortgage. He closed the case and fastened the lock, and put the case on the floor at the end of the bed. "And what's the point of you going there, what's anyone to gain from it?" It was the way of her, to goad him. He looked into the frightened small eyes of her face, and they were reddened from crying from before he had come home. She was looking at his lip, which was better now, but still ugly. Penn said softly, "I am not going into a war zone, the war zone is Bosnia. I am going to Croatia, the war finished in Croatia more than a year ago, the war's gone on by to Bosnia ... I am going to trawl round the embassy, I am going to see the ministries there, I am going to interview and get transcripts from a few refugees, I am going to write a report. That's what they're going to get, a nice little typed-up report. I am going to get a good fee from it, and they're going to get a good typed-up report .. ." The tears had come again. "You'll be sucked in." "No chance." He couldn't talk it through with her. Never had been able to, but it was worse now. It was his habit with her, to hide behind the denials. He could have talked it through with Dougal, his best mate in the Transit team, but Dougal Gray was in Belfast, had extended his tour, and the postcards with the dry tourists' messages didn't come any more. It was only with Dougal that he had ever talked through work problems and Jane problems .. . and had a few laughs .. . and once substituted white paint thinner for milk in the silver tops of an old misery's house .. . and once .. . the best times in the Transit were with Dougal, and then Dougal hadn't been around to talk through his being dumped by the Service. And Dougal had been long gone when he had spent the worst, foul, hour of his life, going home on the train, walking from the station to the front door, preparing to tell Jane that the job was finished. "You'll be sucked in, because you always want to belong." "No way." "Won't you? You'll be stupid Penn knelt beside the chair. He had so little to say to her. He did not have to offer a checklist of their social arrangements that he would not now be able to meet, because they had no social life. Men from PO Box 500 were not a part of any outside community, and the pariah status remained for a reject. There was no amateur dramatics society to be told he would miss a rehearsal. There was no pub skittles team to be told that he was missing the next league outing. There was no evening education class because he could never guarantee his attendance. There was no dinner party or meal out with friends, because Five men, ex-Five men, avoided the great unwashed. He would be gone for a week and no one in their block of maisonettes, in their street, would know or notice. Might just be the story of his goddamn life ... He put his hands on her arms and she flinched from him, and was holding tight to their baby. Wouldn't she just understand, couldn't she try to understand, that he might just want to go .. . ? "I promise that I won't be stupid. It's just a report, Jane, it's not Rambo nonsense. It's just a report that will put some poor woman's torment to rest. It's nothing special." "Don't think, if you play the hero, they'll have you back." "If you'd met her .. ." He remembered the woman, in torment, sitting with her dogs beside the grave, and he remembered that the flowers on the grave had lost their brightness. He thought it a pity that the daughter, Dorrie, had been just a 'messer' and a 'tosser'. He thought that the work would have been more interesting, more fulfilling, if the girl had been worthwhile. There was nothing worthwhile that he had been told about the girl when he had sat beside the Aga in the kitchen and drunk the instant coffee.
Heart of Danger Page 5