Heart of Danger

by Gerald Seymour

  SECTOR NORTH

  (Situation as of April/ May 1993.) Sources: Newspapers, Field Station (Zagreb), Field Station (Belgrade), United Nations Monitors (SIS personnel), FCO digest. Sector North represents that area closest to Zagreb, administered by local paramilitary Serb forces. An armed camp. All aspects of civilian life are governed by Territorial Defence Force (TDF). No central government, power rests with local warlords. Local warlords exercise power of life and death over few remaining Croat civilians (elderly), and over their own people. Male population has been mobilized into TDF. Patrols and roadblocks manned at night. Large areas of afforestation have been mined. High state of alert amongst all sections of population fed by local radio (Petrinja and Knin), constant reports of vigilance required against Croat spies and saboteurs. Croat S-F (Special Forces) efforts at penetration for intelligence gathering have most generally ended in failure, even when utilizing personnel formerly familiar with topography. Use of high ground with visibility for defence positions and strong points In addition to TDF forces there is a major commitment by former JNA (Yugoslav National Army) on the ground. Under forest cover there are sufficient armoured vehicles to punch through to Zagreb, also substantive artillery and missile positions. Location of JNA and TDF forces made next to impossible by restrictions on UNPROFOR movement inside Sector North. Both paranoid that UNPROFOR provides intelligence to Croats, hence severe curtailment on movement. That movement restricted to a few main roads; all access to front line area is denied. Security Council tasking cannot be fulfilled by UNPROFOR units. UNPROFOR HQ logistics officer (Canadian): "Our operations in Sector North have virtually ceased to have any meaning. No respect now exists for the blue flag. It is impossible to function." TDF personnel frequently drunk, always hostile. No dissent in Sector North to authority of warlords. To complain is to be beaten, killed, expelled. Local population characterized by extreme brutality and hardness, a historical legacy. Were buffer population implanted by Hapsburg empire to block Ottoman expansion succeeded. Topography is rolling hills, heavily wooded, small villages surrounded by farms, few roads. Offers potential for incursion by trained S-F, but difficulties as listed above mitigate severely against non-skilled personnel. Summary: A man trap for the uninitiated. Area of extreme danger. He had the words of the file, and the photographs, and in the morning he would have the large-scale map. The light was slackening outside. He understood. He would not have claimed any particular credit for his understanding, but he felt the events were within his experience. Been there, done it, seen it, hadn't he? No, not to this squalid little corner, not to this exact place, but he had been to other armed and fortified front lines, and he had pushed young men, with quite a firm shove, into such man traps of suspicion and hostility. It was because he understood that the memories seeped back. So many yean before .. . He did not think these young men, dull and ordinary and boring, went because they were brave. He thought they went because of their fear of personal failure .. . Old men such as Henry Carter, senior men, experienced men, men who had never done it themselves, went to these front lines that were armed and fortified and gave a young chap a pretty firm shove, then went back to a hotel or a safe house villa to hang around, stooge around, wait to see if they made it out of Iraq or East Germany or Czechoslovakia or Iran ... An awfully long time ago. But they were all sharp in his mind, all the young men. All of them dragged to the cliff edge. Extraordinary, but they all seemed to go willingly. He stood, stretched. He took the fax message that he had written earlier to the supervisor. He asked for it to be sent, and he believed that his smile was gracious. The memories came close. Too often the memories that would be carried to the grave hustled into the mind of the old desk warrior. Standing on the safe side of the fence with the minefields and the tripwires and the self-firing guns, and hearing the explosions and the shrill German shouts, seeing Johnny Donoghue leave the young woman who was living and her father who was dead, watching Johnny climb the bucking bloody wire. The memories, standing and seeing and watching, were not erased. Sharpest of the memories, neatly condensed for an addendum to his file, was the late supper of cold cuts of meat and spiced cheese and gassy beer, served by an impatient landlord in the Helmstedt hotel. Johnny, lovely young man, bottling his emotion in silence. Such dignity .. . and he had been on the safe side and did not know how to communicate with Johnny, and the two of them toying with the food .. . he felt so humble. In the morning they had caught the flight from Hanover back to Heathrow, parted with a limp handshake. Before the next Christmas he had sent a card to Johnny, but it was not replied to. He had never again seen Johnny, lovely young man. He had used him, and the memories, damn them, did not mist. Back at his desk, he thought of the place, Sector North, as a man trap They were in a wood. It was the middle of the day and the sun dappled down through the early leaves on the birches. Ham had quit the bullshit. Penn asked questions about his Karen and his Dawn. There was a softness in Ham's voice and he'd lost the obscenities and the swagger. It was later that Ham had gotten round to talking about the rudiments, what could be told in a couple of hours, of survival movement behind enemy lines. There was a cordon around the village, as tight a line as the men from Salika could draw. Eighteen of them made the line, covering with their guns the open fields around the village. It was like a rabbit shoot. Eighteen men to watch the fields between Rosenovici and the stream and the road and the woods on the higher ground. They had whistles, and each man in the cordon line, when he was in the position given him, blasted his arrival. Some had the new AK47 assault rifles and some had the hunting rifles with the long accuracy barrels that had been handed down from their fathers, and some had shotguns. Branko, the postman, waited on the road that led to Rosenovici from the bridge for all the whistle blasts. With him were his constant companions: the gravedigger, Stevo, and the carpenter, Milo. They were the dogs that would go in and flush the rabbit, and the postman chuckled, some goddamn rabbit, some goddamn claws on that rabbit, and he looked slyly across at the carpenter and the raw lines on the carpenter's cheeks. It was a bright morning, good for sport. He heard Milan's shout. Milan was on the high ground above the village. They went forward, three of them, with the dog bounding ahead. He could see Milan, past the tower of the church that was broken, and Branko waved his handkerchief to show that he had heard, that they were moving. Milan should have been with them. It had been the postman's idea to ask Milan to bring the dog. He'd thought the idea clever, because he had reckoned that if Milan brought the dog then Milan would be with them among the ruins of Rosenovici. Something had to shake the man out of his morose misery. And the dog would know where to look, the postman reckoned. Milan had said that they could take the dog, that he would control the cordon line. The dog led them into each building. They watched each house, put the dog in, then followed the dog, always the dog went first. They searched each building. It was necessary to be careful because the fire and the dynamite had weakened the floor boards and brought down the rafter beams. He had known those who had lived in each house because he had come there each day, way back, with the letters from the kids who were away at the colleges in Belgrade and Zagreb, and the letters with the stamps of Australia and America. The postman felt nothing bad, because they had been, all of them, goddamn Ustase. They were the people who would have come into Salika at night, with knives, and with fire, no doubting. They would have done what their grandparents, the original goddamn Ustase, had done, killed and burned. He felt nothing bad, and did not understand why Milan, the best, felt something bad. They had cleared the homes leading into the square. They cleared the church and the store and the home that had been used as the HQ. They put the dog into the cellar of Franjo and Ivana's farmhouse, and while the dog was down in the cellar he had stood on the stone flags of the kitchen. Most times that he came to the farmhouse, Branko had been given a slash of brandy in the kitchen while they opened the letters from Franjo's nephew who was in Australia or Ivana's aunt who was on the West Coast in America. No concern to him, the brandy, because Franjo
and Ivana were the same as the others, goddamn Ustase. If it was no concern to him then he did not understand why it concerned Milan. They cleared the school. They shouted their progress across the village, across the fields, up to the tree line on the hill where Milan controlled the cordon. Branko watched the dog. It would have been the first time that the dog had been taken back to Rosenovici since its family had gone, left it, let it run beside the wheels until it could run no more. The first time that the dog had been back since Milan had gone to the edge of the village and called the dog and brought it home to his son. And the goddamn Ustase dog was remembering. The dog whined at a heap of collapsed rubble. The dog whimpered beside the wall section with the green flowers on a yellow base of interior wallpaper. The dog curved its tail over its privates, sniffed, crawled on its belly over the wall section with the wallpaper. The postman was not concerned that the old American had come with the UNCIVPOL and dug for the bodies .. . They could dig where they goddamn wanted, they could cart the bodies, stinking, back to Zagreb, and then they could do goddamn nothing .. . And he did not understand why Milan had such morose misery. What could they goddamn do, nothing? He shouted for the dog and it came back to his side. They were going up the lane.

  A small shed. A stone shed with a roof of rusted corrugated iron. Precious dynamite would have been wasted on the shed, fire would have had little to burn. In the shed the dog found a plastic bag. The bag was white, and inside the bag were dried crumbs of bread. The shed was forty paces short of what had been the home of the Dubelj pair, goddamn Ustase. Between the shed and the home of the Dubelj couple was a small paddock, thick with weeds. A cow had been kept in the paddock and a goat and two pigs. Stevo had the cow, and Milo had the pigs. The postman had taken the goat, but had killed and eaten it. He had felt strong until they reached the house of Katica Dubelj.

  The door hung open, held only by the lower hinge. It was dark inside. The dog held back. The postman kicked the dog through the door. The carpenter was behind him and there were the raw scratch scars on the cheeks of his face, he was not hurrying to push past him. He went inside, into the goddamn smell and the darkness. He held tight to his gun. He had to stand, very still, and wait for his eyes to work for him. The dog was in the corner. The image cleared. The dog scratched in a heap of rags, maybe sacks, in the corner. He saw the hurricane lamp that had died and the bow saw and the jemmy and the lump hammer dropped on the old linoleum. There was another bag, white, and he lifted the bag and crumbs of bread crust fell from it. The dog had come from the corner and sniffed at a chewed apple core.

  The dog held a scent down the lane from the house and through the entrance to the field where the bulldozer had crushed the wooden gate.

  The dog followed a scent that skirted the low wall of grey black mud around the pit, went over the tyre marks of the jeeps. There had been heavy rain in the night and Branko slipped and fell in the field as he tried to keep pace with the dog. He could see Milan above him, close to the tree line. The dog went past the grave.

  The dog reached the small ditch that came down the field and, at the ditch, the dog lost the scent.

  They tried the dog up the ditch, right side and left side, but the dog had lost it.

  The postman trudged up the field, sliding, cursing, until he reached Milan. He showed Milan the plastic bags in which they had found the crumbs, and the chewed apple core. He told Milan that someone had been there, recently, had eaten there, slept there, the scar scratches on the carpenter's face proved it. He asked Milan to come down into Rosenovici so that he could see for himself where they had found the plastic bags and the apple core. Milan refused him.

  Milan was the postman's leader, he would never criticize him. He watched Milan walk away. He had taught Milan, boy and man, everything he knew of the game of basketball and he had been superb. Milan walked away along the edge of the tree line, took the long route so that he would not have to cross the village. He could remember when Milan, in attack, brilliant in the dribble, fantastic jumping for the net, had led Glina Municipality to victory against Karlovac Municipality, taken the cup, a player without doubts. Milan was going the long way round the village towards the bridge.

  The postman did not understand the goddamn problem.

  Ham had slung a white T-shirt, filthy as if it had been used to clean the plugs of a car engine, across a low bush of thorn. They sat a dozen paces back from where the T-shirt was draped and Ham talked Penn through the maintenance and cleaning of the Browning 9mm automatic pistol, and then made Penn do it, and then tied a handkerchief round the front of Penn's face and made him do it again, and he made Penn load a magazine with the blindfold still in place. It was seven years since the two-day firearms course and it was more forgotten than he had realized.

  Later Ham would show him what he had also damn near forgotten: how to crouch, lock his legs, extend his arms, find the target, aim and hold it, how to fire the pistol. Ham talked low and keen, as if firing the pistol was of importance.

  In the grip on the back seat of the Cherokee jeep were seven video tapes, nine hours of audio recording, thirty-seven pages of handwritten notes.

  Marty drove along the wide highway, back to Zagreb.