Heart of Danger

by Gerald Seymour

  It was as if the Headmaster called, softly, to a frightened cat, or to a dog, or to a wild crow that should come for food.

  The torch beam trapped the narrow mouth of a cave set behind a rockfall.

  "I used to come here with food. I used to take the food from my wife's cupboard. You take food from a woman's cupboard and she notices, she questions. She said that if I took more food, for the Ustase bastards, then she would denounce me. Do you understand, Penn, that in the madness in which we live a wife can denounce her husband .. . ? I have my own shame, because I do not bring her food any more .. ."

  The Headmaster tugged at Penn's sleeve and dragged him, hunched low, into the mouth of the cave. He could have been sick, was swallowing back the bile, coughing, the smell was like a cloud. The torch beam played faintly around the walls of the cave where the water dribbled, glistening, then wavered on deeper into the cave.

  It was not often that Penn had a big thought, not in his childhood and not with the Service and not with Alpha Security. The rag bundle was cowered in the recess of the cave. Perhaps a big thought could only come in a place such as this. It would only have been a rag bundle if there had not been the brightness of the eyes reflected back by the torch beam. Penn's big thought was that this was the one chance in his life to find truth. She was so small. She was wrapped in sacking rags ... He followed the Headmaster down onto the floor of the cave, sat cross-legged.

  The Headmaster talked.

  Her voice cackled back.

  Penn heard the clock chimes come faintly from across the distant stream.

  "She saw it herself. She saw them taken past her house and into the field. They had to wait while the bulldozer dug the pit. She could see it from the window. Each of them killed one man, but she says that she saw the girl killed by Milan Stankovic .. . I have to go back, across the stream. What more do you want?"

  Penn said, "I want her to walk me through what she saw, each place and each moment what she saw, right to the killing of Dorrie Mowat."

  The Headmaster was glancing furtively at his wristwatch, shining the torch beam onto the hands. He said that he would return the next evening. Did Penn know the risk of staying? But the intoxication of the truth had caught him, and he waved his hand, dismissive, to reject the risk. The Headmaster was gone.

  Truth was evidence. Evidence was the naming of Milan Stankovic.

  Penn sat on the floor of the cave and could not see her, the eyewitness.

  Twelve.

  Penn woke, no dreams, deep sleep.

  Could recognize nothing. Blinked to get the light into his eyes. Tried to focus. Did not know where he was ... It came fast ... He kicked back the blanket. He felt the damp in his hip joints and his shoulders and the ache from the rough ground, and was hell's thankful for the hotel's blanket. The smell caught at him. Penn remembered .. .

  The sun threw a long shaft into the recess of the cave. He wondered if she had been there all night, if she had slept, if she had stayed in the crouched posture against the inner wall of the cave. The cave, big in the small light of the Headmaster's torch, seemed shrunken, little more than a cleft. He yawned, stretched. He smiled at her and won back no acceptance of his presence. He tried to smile warmth.

  He looked hard at her.

  There was little to see of her because there was a shawl of torn cloth across the crown of her head that covered also her ears and her throat. What he could see of the face was a mosaic of age lines, weathered and grimed. Small hands, without spare flesh, were clasped rigidly on her lap, and he saw the deep-set dirt as if they were painted with it. She wore a long dress of black cloth that shrouded her and the cloth had the stale dankness of the cave. Over her dress, open to the waist, was a big overcoat, too large for her sparrow size, and Penn thought it might have been her husband's, and there was a knotted string holding it to her waist. Her short legs were extended in front of her and her stockings, heavy grey wool, were shredded at the knee and her feet were in small-sized rubber boots that came half of the way up her shins. It seemed to Penn as if the shawl and the dress and the coat and the stockings and the rubber boots were moulded to her body .. . Did she have other clothes? Did she change the clothes? Did she go to a stream and strip and wash? ... He was wondering how long it had been since she had changed her clothes, washed herself. In his mind he made small markers. Had she changed or washed since his little Tom had been born? Washed or changed since the acid session with Gary bloody Bren-nard (Personnel)? Changed or washed since he had last laid up rough, through a night, in the undergrowth beside the Network South-East rail track when they were watching the lock-up garage for the Irishman? Washed or changed since the battle for Rosenovici and the death by a sniper's aim of her husband, and her flight to the woods, the cave? His Jane showered in the morning and in the evening. His mother stood in the kitchen of the tied cottage and stripped to the waist, and didn't care if her kiddie had seen her, and soaped herself. He made the markers and wondered if she had ever washed or changed since she had come to the cave.

  He tried to smile across the cave floor. Would she come back with him?

  Katica Dubelj was the eyewitness. Would she come back to Zagreb and make the statement?

  Had she the strength to go back with him, across country?

  Penn smiled and he gazed into the dead animal eyes of the old woman. He did not think she had the strength .. . They had no language that was common to them. He pulled his backpack round from its pillow position and when he made the movement she cringed back against the cave wall as if seeking a cranny where she could hide from him. When the Headmaster returned then they would make a statement and the Headmaster would write the story of the eyewitness, and she would make her mark as authenticity. She did not have the strength to go back with him, across country. He had given ham for the cat and sandwiches for the dogs, he was down on his food stock. There were bread rolls in the backpack and there was cheese, and the opened packet of ham, and there was an orange .. . Penn split a roll open and he laid a piece of cheese in the roll and then peeled off a slice of the ham and laid it with the cheese. He crawled towards her across the cave floor and he held the roll of dried-out bread in front of him. She could go no further back, and he came close to her, until her hand, the bony, filthy claw, darted forward to snatch the food from him. Christ, and she had no teeth .. . She tore at the roll, broke it into pieces and wolfed the pieces. She could not chew them down, they were swallowed indigestible. When she had finished the pieces then she picked for each crumb and each fragment of the flaked bread. It was as if he fed an untamed animal. He passed the orange to her. He wondered when she had last seen an orange. Jane had orange juice on the table each morning, and it was maybe a year, maybe a year and a half, since Katica Dubelj had last seen an orange. She grabbed at the orange and her fingernails, black-coated, nicked the full flesh of his hands, and a little blood ran. She pulled the orange into pieces and stuffed them down, pith and fruit and peel, into the mouth without teeth. He saw the juice dribble from the side of her mouth and when the orange was gone she lifted the fold of her dress to her lips and licked the juice off. She had gratitude and she wanted to share. It was picked from the cave floor from amongst her bedding sacks. It was passed to him in her closed claw fist. He held out the palm of his hand and the claw fist opened .. . Christ, a bloody root. She scurried back to her far edge of the cave. A sucked bloody root .. . She watched him. It was truth, the reality of the war. He wondered how many of them there were, old people holed up in caves in the woods behind the lines, sucking roots for survival. He thought that if he sucked the bloody root then he would be sick onto the floor of the cave .. . They would have sucked bloody roots in caves in the glorious and pleasant land that was England a thousand years and more before, but this was civilized fucking Europe, and now ... He would have the statement when the Headmaster returned, and her signature, her mark, as an eyewitness. He reached again into his backpack. Penn took out the brown paper envelope. He had the photograph of Dorrie
Mowat. Penn showed the face of Dorrie Mowat, the cheeky smiling mischief challenging face, held it up. There was joy cracking the mouth of Katica Dubelj, as if the mouth had been touched by love, as he had been touched, and there was the cackle laugh of the old woman, a memory coming back to her that had been private and suppressed too long. She reached for the photograph and she took it and she kissed it. She babbled at him and he shook his head because he understood nothing of what she said. She took his hand in her tight claw fist and she led him as a child out into the sunlight falling through the high tops of the trees. She pointed down through the trunks of the trees towards the village and then gestured towards the sun and made with her small arm the arc of the sun falling. Penn thought it was the promise of Katica Dubelj that she would take him to the village when the darkness came, where the truth was, and he would have her statement. He had heard his wife's voice beyond the steel door, frightened, sent away and not arguing .. . The Headmaster sat on the mattress on the concrete shelf. He had heard Milan Stankovic's voice, harsh, in the guardroom beyond the steel door, state that the matter would be dealt with on his return, later .. . The Headmaster sat cramped in the cell built of concrete blocks and the light came through the meshed grille at eye level in the steel door. He had heard the postman talking about his hands and his fingernails, and he did not know why the state of his hands or fingernails was important ... The Headmaster sat in his damp trousers, sat huddled in his jacket, and they had taken away his tie and his belt and the laces from his shoes. He did not know what he would say when Milan Stankovic returned from his meeting, wherever he went, and his mind was too terrorized to concoct a reason for his having been alone, in darkness, soaked wet from crossing the stream's ford, in the village of Rosenovici. His mind was too confused to manufacture a story of innocence. If he had not met the Englishman .. . They had not brought him food, and they had not talked to him. They left him solitary to wait for the questioning of Milan Stankovic. It was an aspect of the madness that so many men, hundreds, thousands, had sat in cells throughout the beauty of their land and waited for questioning and torture. If he had not stayed so long at the cave .. . He did not know, could not know, how he would respond to the beating or to the knife or the burning by cigarettes. Did not know whether he could hold his silence against the pain. Could not know whether the pain of torture would prise from him the secret. If he had not hurried noisily back through the village towards the stream's ford .. . Benny flicked the 'speak' switch. He said gravely, "We can't all be heroes, somebody has to sit on the kerb and clap as they go by." He heard the laughter, distorted, coming back over the loudspeaker in the Seddy's cab. "That original, Benny? .. . Who'd you lift that off, Benny? "Nothing original about me. Will Rogers and I collaborate." "Cut it, Benny, do me the favour." He obeyed. The convoy manager had cause to be stressed up, pissed off, because the rock that had come through the side window of the Land-Rover had caught his face above the collar of the flak jacket and below the rim of his helmet. The move out of Knin had been sweet enough, 0700 departure, but the shit had started in a village just up the road from Titova Korenica with ugly women and dwarf kids lobbing rocks. The convoy manager had a bandage over his face, looked a really fine hero. Rocks in that village, and four windscreens broken. They were blocked now by mines. They were up from Slunj, almost with the whiff of the river at the Turanj crossing point in their noses, and there were mines, and four little arse holes to negotiate with. Good stuff for the hero, the convoy manager, to negotiate with. They were blocked in between a cliff face and a river, a good place to get the old head blown off. It didn't happen on every run, but happened too often, that they were messed around on the convoy route. Benny reckoned that up the road, between Slunj and Veljun, they were moving tanks, maybe artillery, and a track had gone broken or a wheel had got holed, and they weren't having a United Nations relief convoy going by and seeing what they were moving. It was difficult for him to get the bloody great pisspot on his head out of the window, but he took the trouble. Past all the lorries, past the Land-Rover, the convoy manager was in his second hour of failing, too right, to negotiate the removal of the mines from the road. Their schedule was all shot to hell. The kids with the mines, from what he could see, were drunk, and they'd a good game going. He saw the convoy manager stride back to his Land-Rover.

  The voice, tight with controlled anger, was in Benny's cab.

  They were going to take a minor road over towards the Bosnia border. They were going for the scenic route ... for the tourist run .. . going up towards Glina, then would work back through Vrginmost for the Turanj crossing way behind schedule.

  He sat in the Seddy's cab, snuggled in the flak jacket and with the weight of the helmet squat on his head, and hit the gears. The convoy took the fork road east, drove off the main drag, and away from the kids with their 'frag' mines, and he smiled down at them like it was a pleasure for him to be going the scenic route. And the kids loosed off their AKs into the air, as if they'd won a war and not just diverted an unarmed aid convoy.

  They were laid out neatly on the bed, her new files. She had drawn the new curtains back, because she came into the room each evening and closed them. Mary Braddock sat beside the new files on the new duvet and she had kicked off her shoes onto the new carpet. The new soft toys, bears and rabbits, were on the new pillow of the bed, and the shop assistant, when Mary had bought them, had prattled to her as if she were a grandmother, and she had not contradicted the shop assistant, nor told her of obsession, or the weight of guilt. Because of the new paint and the new wallpaper it was a pretty room, and a room that was correct for a child who would grow to be a climbing star, not a horrid young woman. It was after a spring shower that had beaten on the mullioned window, and the sun shone into the pretty room.

  The size of the new file was a measure to Mary of the scale of the obsession. She had read about herself in the newspapers, different name and different address, but read about parents who shared with her the obsession to know. The newspapers printed sad photographs of fathers and mothers sitting close on settees, with the picture of the dead child, the lost loved one, in the frame behind them, those who demanded to know and who had failed. She could recall the sad photographs of the stunned parents of the 'friendly fire' boys in the Gulf, of the girl in the Kenya game park, of the young man murdered in Chile's capital, of the young woman who had died in Saudi, and the sad parents all had the same refrain of confused criticism for the help they had been given. All her friends said it was obsession. She shared the file with none of them, and she did not allow her secretary, two days a week, to type the letters of which the copies went into the file. There were the copies of fourteen letters written to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office; her friends said she should close her mind to an episode better forgotten. There were four letters personally addressed to the ambassador in Zagreb; there were two letters written by hand to the President of Croatia. None of the replies were curt or brusque or rude the replies, aide-drafted, signed by the dignitaries, were bland and oozed sympathy, and were bloody useless. Her friends said that she should start again .. . The telephone stampeded her out of the newly decorated, newly furnished bedroom for a child. She ran for the stairs. God, please, make it the call .. . Penn's call .. . The dogs slithered with her down the stair carpet, cannoning against her legs. God, please, make it Penn's call. She snatched up the telephone in the hall. The dogs barked raucously, as if her run for the telephone was a fun game. "Charles here. Where were you? Outside? A nice morning up here in this filthy city. Sorry, darling, but it's all negative. Did I tell you, can't remember if I did .. . ? I pushed the problem of that odious detective to Frankfurt. They've a satellite office in Munich. Their people in Munich have called up Vienna. Vienna have links into Zagreb. I got a few faxes to fly .. . Someone from the associate office in Zagreb actually went to the hotel, this morning ... I don't know what it means, but the bastard hasn't been in the hotel for four nights. He hasn't checked out, his account's still ticking up, but he
hasn't used the hotel for four nights .. . They don't know where he is .. . I'm sorry, darling, but I did tell you what I thought of Mr. Penn .. ."

  Mary held the phone, swayed.

  "Are you still there .. . ?"

  Small voice. "Yes."

  "I'll burn his bloody arse when I get to meet him, when I get his bloody bill .. . Darling, dinner tomorrow, can we manage two more? Push the chairs up a bit, can we? A quite hideously boring couple of guys from Utrecht, but it's an EC contract, and fat. Don't know how they'll mix with our crowd, but it shows willing. "Course you can cope, darling .. . Why don't you run out to Guildford, get something nice, new? See you this evening .. ."

  She went back slowly up the stairs and tidied the file on Dome's bed.

  They were a rather more cheerful crowd for him to be with than the day shift, and they did not seem to regard him as a hostile antibody inserted into Library.

  And the memories seeped again over the pages, typed and handwritten, and the photographs and the worn maps. Shaken the hand of that lovely young man, Johnny Donoghue, and watched him go tired away to the entrance tunnel of the Underground train at the end of the arrivals concourse, and gone to look for the car that would run the old desk warrior back to Century House. Walked down his corridor on the eleventh floor. "Hello, Henry, have a good trip?" "Well, I wouldn't say .. ." Carrying the duty free towards his corner of the office. "Just one of those things, I hope you're not thinking it'll be your head on the block?" "Well, we did all we could .. ." Settling down into his chair. "Always a problem when you use an amateur, don't you think?" "Well, you win some and you lose some .. ." Brought a beaker of coffee, and sipped it, and opened his briefcase, and started out on the damned report for the file of a young man's journey through the lines, a used young man.

  It was long after he would normally have cleared the desk and trudged away to the station, but the night shift's supervisor had wandered, friendly, to his desk with a mug of coffee for him. A good young fellow, and chatty, and they talked desultorily about the new world that was dangerous, and nostalgically about the old world that was comfortable. The usual son of garbage .. . He waited his moment, then asked.