Heart of Danger

by Gerald Seymour

  He turned away.

  It was what he had come to find .. .

  The power of the light seared into Perm's face.

  Thirteen.

  His eyes saw only the white brightness of the light. There were excited shouts from in front of him and then all around. The light stripped him bare. He stood in the white brightness. He dared not move. If the fear, the panic, had not been frozen into him in that moment when the light caught him, then he might have tried to duck away or throw himself to the edge of the light, but the fear was in him and with the fear was blindness. The old woman had been behind him. She had been in the pit behind him when he had turned away. With the shouts, with the click of the safety catches, there was a sudden stifled scream, a man's hoarse pain. The light never left Penn. It was what he himself would have done, or what his instructors from far back would have told him to do. "Put the light down, sonny boy. Be close to the light but not on it, sonny boy. "Cause if they're going to put suppressive fire down, sonny boy, it'll be the light they go for .. ." That is what an instructor would have said, and he realized the angle of the light was low, as if it was on the ground. There was a hammer of shots behind him, semi-automatic on a rifle, and after the shots and the scream there was the sound, briefly, of ripping cloth. Penn did not dare to turn to see whether Katica Dubelj, old woman gone animal, old woman gone eighty years of her life, old woman who had never been on a surveillance or an evasion course, old woman not strong enough to go cross country, had made it clear through the thorn and wire in the hedge beyond the pit. There was a loaded pistol weighting the pocket of his coat. There were four grenades in his backpack. Penn did not dare to reach for either. Very slowly, so carefully that the movement should not be misunderstood, he stretched out his arms, kept his hands open, raised his arms.

  He thought he was the prize. He heard behind him, after the bullet volley, nothing of pursuit. Fear seemed to numb the movement of his legs so that they were rigid scarecrow stilts, and to loosen the hold of his guts so that he wanted to piss, crap. The fear trembled the movement of his arms, up high and into surrender. His eyes bunked, uncontrolled, and the water from his eyes distorted the glare of the cone of light.

  There was still shouting, but coming closer to him, moving closer and slowly because they could not know the fear that shackled him, as if he was still dangerous to them.

  Only his mind was not frozen. In his mind the thoughts raced .. .

  Ham hadn't talked of escape and evasion. The fat-faced little bastard hadn't talked about what to do ... He had once been at a Territorial Army depot in Warrington, a marksman's rifle gone missing, a suspicion that it might have been sold to Protestant para militaries from Ulster which was enough to bring in Security Service involvement, and an Escape and Evasion pamphlet picked up off a book shelf. He had been waiting for them to wheel in the armourer, and he had flicked the pamphlet's pages, just from interest. He had read .. . the first moments of capture offered the maximum opportunity of escape, also offered the maximum opportunity of getting the old head blown off because of the high state of adrenaline of the captors .. . He had read that it took real guts, big bravery, to antagonize captors by going runabout. His hands were high above his head.

  In his mind the thoughts cavorted , ..

  He was shit scared, frightened, and Dorrie Mowat had been here. Dorrie Mowat, the horrid young woman, had kicked one man in the privates, punched one man in the eyes, spat at the whole goddamn lot of them. Dorrie, the one that all who had touched had loved, had sat in the wet grass where he now stood in surrender, and her arms had been round the wounded man that she had chosen, and she had sat and waited while the bull dozer dug out the pit. She hadn't had the fear. A shape loomed at the edge of the cone of light.

  In his mind the thoughts raced .. .

  Jane in the small room, little Tom on her lap, with the television on: "And what's the point of you going there, what's anyone to gain from it?" Failed her. Mary in the kitchen and making the coffee: "I think she took a pleasure in hurting me .. . and, Mr. Penn, she was my daughter .. . and, Mr. Penn, her throat was slit and her skull was bludgeoned and she was finished off with a close-range shot.. . and, Mr. Penn, not even a rabid dog should be put to death with the cruelty shown to my Dorrie." Failed her. Basil holding court to Jim and Henry in the darts bar of the pub round the corner from the launderette: "You know what you are, Penn? You are a jam my bastard." Failed them. The old American Professor of Pathology: "Build a case, stack the evidence' .. . Maria who was a refugee: "She was an angel in her courage' .. . Alija who needed the operation to her eyes: "She could not protect herself because she had the wounded fighters to help' .. . Sylvia who was cloaked in the nervous collapse: "Does anybody care what happened to them, who did it, anybody?" .. . Failed them.

  The blow was at the back of the neck.

  Failed them all ... The blow was with the stock of a rifle, short swing.

  And failed Jovic who had interpreted for him, and Ulrike who had touched his arm to make a talisman for him, and Ham who had given him the map .. . And failed himself.

  He was pitched forward by the blow. They were all around him and the shadows of their bodies masked the cone of white light. He wondered if they would shoot him there, or whether they would take him some place else to kill him, and felt he did not have Dome's courage. He tried to cry out, beg mercy of them, but his voice was suffocated. The fear consumed him. When they had hit him some more times, when he had seen the grinning of cold faces, when he had smelled the foul close breath of them, then they searched him and found the pistol and they skewered his arms back and pulled the backpack off him, then they hit him with the rifle stocks some more.

  Penn was pulled to his feet. He could hear the music from across the stream.

  Penn (William), Five reject, failure ... He was held tight and dragged towards the pin lights of the village across the stream.

  They were through Glina.

  The convoy was belting. It was not usual for the convoy manager in his Land-Rover to let the fifteen Seddys behind him sniff the wind and belt, but they were all pissed off and Benny who was driving three from the back supposed that the wound on the convoy manager's face had lost its numbness and would now hurt like hell.

  Benny wasn't fussed. It did not matter to him that they had been off the main roads, into the ditches, up bloody awful rutted lanes. He'd done the runs into northern Iraq out of Turkey to resupply the Kurds in winter, grinding in low gear down tracks that had never seen a loaded Seddon Atkinson before. He made it his business to know the land, read up on his guidebooks and he wrote twice every week to his wife, Becky, to tell her where he had been and what he had seen. There wouldn't be much to write to Becky about Glina because they had belted through the pretty little town, but he'd think of something to say. He only wrote to Becky about the towns being pretty, never about the people being shit. It was not his way to frighten her, to tell her that most days he wore a pisspot on his head and a flak jacket of kevlar plates front and back across his body, and he didn't tell her that the doors of the cab were armour-reinforced, nor that he had sandbags under his seat as protection from mine blasts. On the main road and belting, perhaps forty-five minutes if they weren't messed again from the Turanj crossing, and the voice crackled on the radio in his cab.

  "Guys, there's usually a roadblock between Glina and Vrgin-most. I don't want to spend half the night yammering with some defective on a roadblock. There's a right a few miles ahead, up to a village called Salika, I reckon we can get round the block, then back onto the main heave .. . OK, guys?"

  They didn't have call signs, the drivers didn't like to play at military games. If they'd had call signs then all of them would have been Foxtrot Something, all F-word stuff. Call signs were for kids playing soldiers .. . The answers tripped over each other, and not many of them polite. And Benny's next letter to Becky would not tell her that his nerves were hacked jagged by driving in darkness on stone tracks through these shit awful villages
, through these shit awful people.

  Bad news that there would be another shit block to divert round .. .

  He flicked the 'speak' switch. It was important to get a laugh because the nerves of all the drivers and the convoy manager would be as hacked jagged as his own.

  "You know what Lily Tomlin said: "Things are going to get a lot worse before they get worse" .. ."

  They brought him down to the bridge.

  They had tied his wrists together, cutting hard, behind his back, and his ankles so that the bones chafed each other, and they had to drag him.

  They came down to the bridge and they pitched him onto the planks and he fell onto his stomach and was trying to twist his head away so that his nose did not take the force of his fall. There was a rusted old hurricane lamp on the bridge that threw a good light from beside the sandbag position of the guards. It was then he saw for the first time the three men who had taken him. The one was thin and big, another had a heavy body and was taller, the last was slight and shallow in his build. They'd thrown him down, dropped him like the dead roebuck that a stalker and the keeper had shot in the long copse behind the tied cottage, and they had the same excitement of the stalker and the keeper, and all three had the weathered faces of the country, aged, and Penn knew the country was cruel ... He was a specimen to be boasted of, and he heard words that were similar to "English' and to 'spy', and the old bastards were showing the young guards of the bridge his passport and the Browning 9mm automatic pistol and the spare magazines and the grenades. He did not see any more at the bridge. Penn tried to tuck down his head when the young guards at the bridge took their turn.

  She hadn't flinched from the kicking ... Dorrie had faced up ... She had kicked them back, punched them back, shouted back .. . She had kept her pride, her goddamn courage. Dorrie Mowat, a horrid young woman, hadn't let them see her fear. He forced his eyes open. He looked into their faces as she had looked into their faces, into their boots, into their eyes. He didn't see Jane, he didn't see Mary ... He saw Dorrie Mowat. He wondered if she watched him and laughed at him, wondered if she knew the love .. . God, and he had failed her. They picked him up with rough hands under his armpits, and they dragged him on over the bridge, and he heard the beat sound of the music from among the pin lights of the village. The sergeant came to her with his thermos of coffee. A good hour gone now since the sergeant had last tried to play the kind uncle, and get Ulrike on her way. She took the coffee, thanked him. She sipped the warmth of the coffee. The sergeant was defeated, knew it and did not seem to care. She was not moving. She was staying until the aid convoy came through. The convoy was eight hours late .. . She did not believe the sweet talk of the Liaison Officer who was long gone. Sweet talk seldom convinced Ulrike Schmidt. Sweet talk of happiness and friendship had lured her to the job with the organizing committee for her city's Olympic Games. Nineteen years old, waiting to go to university, taking the job of helping to get out the results for the swimming and the judo and the archery, joining the weeping girls with her own tears when the shadow stain of violence cut down the Israeli athletes. Sweet talk of progress in ending human misery had trapped her into United Nations work, the university discarded, and service in Lebanon and Cambodia, becoming a part of the cynical company that realized nothing changed through their efforts, little was made better. Sweet talk of love and marriage had brought her to the bed of an Australian army major in Phnom Penh, and there was the letter left casually on the dressing table of his quarters, and the photograph of the major's wife and four children in the drawer, under his uniform shirts.

  Sweet talk in Geneva had told her that the refugees from Bosnia would be cleared through the Transit Centre inside four weeks because there were promises of resettlement from the governments of Europe. She dealt each day with hunger strikes, protests, trauma, because the governments lied.

  Ulrike drained the beaker of coffee.

  When the convoy came through then she would know, forget the sweet talk, that there was no alert up the broken road from Turanj, up beyond the machine-gun post, up behind the lines.

  Silent prayer was not sweet talk.

  He was the king, it was the court of Milan Stankovic.

  He was back from the liaison meeting, back from the cell block at the headquarters of the TDF unit of his village. He had survived Evica's carped complaint. In his home, coming sullen to his kitchen, and facing the barb of Evica. Would he get himself together, because now he was shit .. . Would he hike himself up, because now he was pathetic .. . Listened to Evica. Heard her call him shit, rubbish, pathetic. Held out his arms for her and she had come to him, closed his arms on her and their little Marko had clung to his legs and the dog had bounded happily against his back. He was the king, the chief man, and he had held the warmth of Evica against him and felt the warmth of his little Marko against his thigh and his hip ... It was the Canadian policeman who was shit, and the Political Officer, and the liaison man from Karlovac.

  He was amongst his own and was loved.

  He could not be touched. He had kissed the eyes and ears and mouth of Evica, and the head of his little Marko. He was beyond their reach, those who were shit, pathetic, rubbish. The king danced. The music was heat around him. The chief man drank. The shouts were about him. It had been the strength of his Evica that had liberated him, and the spit of her tongue.

  He danced and he drank as if the death shroud was taken from him.

  The king danced with the queen. Space was made for them in the centre of the hall of the school. There were shrill shouting faces around them, and the clapping of a hundred hands about them. She was so lovely, his queen, and dancing wild with him and her full skirt sweeping high on her thighs as he led her. The loveliest girl in the village, now the loveliest woman in Salika. As he danced, wild, the folk dance of the Serb people, so the hands of the men who acknowledged him as king reached out with glasses of brandy. As he danced, he drank. He felt he had found freedom. He was the power of his people, the glory of his village. Spinning with the dance, the skirt of Evica climbing, the music faster, the clapping louder, the brandy spilling from his lips, Milan knew he was the king. Coming to the climax of the music and his feet were stamping and Evica's feet were gliding, and the clapping hammering in him. He was free .. . and when the music had climaxed, and when he had drunk again, then he would sing. He was the king .. . They came through the door of the hall. They were dragging the man. They brought the man to him, through the parted crowd around him that had gone to silence. And the music died. Milan stared down at the man who lay prone on the floor. He saw a man who was trussed at the wrists and ankles. The man was dressed in filthy wet fatigues, mud-smeared. The man gazed back up at him. The face of the man was blood-spattered. Branko was dropping onto the floor, noisy clatter, a heavy pistol and then four grenades, rolling loud. Milo was shaking out onto the boards of the floor a backpack, socks and underpants and a thick sweater and spare magazines for the pistol, and old bread, and an envelope of brown paper. Stevo threw the passport down onto the floor. The postman and the carpenter and the gravedigger smiled their pride. Around him were the people of the village, all watching him. He bent down. He looked at the passport. The passport was British, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. He reached for the envelope. He stood and took a sheaf of photographs from the envelope. The man with the blood on his face gazed up at him. Evica was beside him .. . Like a blow hitting him, Milan saw the face. The face that he had known, and the knife wound.

  The gasp of Evica beside him.

  The face swollen in putrefaction, but with the bludgeon wound on the forehead.

  The face that he recognized, and the bullet wound above the ear.

  And they were all watching him because he was their king, and the fear twisted in him and could not be shown. The freedom was gone, the liberty was lost, and the brandy was beating in him. Trying to focus on the face on the floor and the face in the photographs. The face of the man on the floor gazing back at him, and the f
ace of the woman in the photograph, and blood on the faces that merged. He unhooked the clasp knife from his belt, threw it to the carpenter. The twine at the ankles and at the wrists was cut .. . she had not been bound. Evica held the photographs and shivered. It was what was expected of the king. Branko and Stevo lifted the man up, and he stood in front of Milan and swayed. Milan should not show fear, not in front of those who admired and worshipped the king, and she had not shown fear .. .