"You told me to be cruel."
"And it is hard for you to be cruel."
"It is hard."
"Because you do not see the evil in him."
"I cannot make the link between what he was, what he did, and what he is now, pathetic."
She was so strong. He could see that she did not waver, and that she had no doubt.
Ulrike said, "It is what they are all like, it was the same long ago, and it is the same now ... It was the same long ago in my country, when the men and women who had committed acts of evil were stripped of that power and put in the cells to await trial, and left in the cells to await execution, and when they were taken to the scaffold some had dignity and some were pitiful.. . they could not be recognized for what they had been, what they had done .. ."
Penn hissed, "Don't worry, don't bloody worry your pretty head, because I will try to be cruel."
He went on. Penn led. It came to him again, the instinct ... He thought they might be a mile from the farm with the outbuildings where the troops were billeted. Twice he looked behind him, long and hard, and his eyes that were drifting with tiredness saw only the swaying trunks of the trees and the spreading shadows. He thought that the worst would begin after the farmhouse where the troops were billeted, and the worst would be all the way to the Kupa river and he still could not escape the instinct that they were followed in their flight.
There was no minute taken of the meeting, no stenographer present, no tape recorder in use. The room allocated for the meeting was on the third floor of the Ministry of Defence building with windows that looked down onto the central courtyard where the lights now burned bright. The room was the office of a senior civil servant, young and Harvard-trained.
"It will be done with discretion. There will be Special Forces, of the Black Hawk unit, under the direct command of the Intelligence Officer of 2nd Bn, 110 (Karlovac) Brigade. They are to be given no help, the German woman and the Englishman, in crossing the Kupa river. They are in charge of their own destiny. Under no circumstances, none, will they be permitted to bring Milan Stankovic across the river. From what I hear, if Stankovic crosses then Karlovac and Sisak will be shelled, Zagreb will be attacked by missiles. There can be no misunderstandings in this matter." The First Secretary leaned forward, elbows on the table. "No misunderstandings .. . because if Stankovic comes across and into your jurisdiction then international opinion would demand your own dark corners be examined, your own psychopaths be arraigned, and that would never do." Parked in the courtyard below was the Mercedes of UN PRO-FOR's Director of Civilian Affairs. "The meetings that we are brokering, from what I hear from my sources on the other side, will be immediately curtailed if a Serbian is kidnapped and brought before a war crimes tribunal. Gestures are unimportant. It cannot be allowed to happen. Gestures are trivial and cost lives. A substantial window for peace would have been closed." The First Secretary swung back in his chair. "And we must not block the path to the appeasement of violence, good God, no. Peace in our time, peace at any price. Why not .. . ? And you should know, what I now realize, she was a very fine young woman, Miss Dorothy Mowat, and such a shame that her murderer, by our hand, should walk free ... If you'll excuse me .... It's my job to be on that bloody river bank tonight." He had made four telephone calls and all had been deflected. Four separate times he had dialled the number of the old police station, the number of the 2nd Bn, 110 (Karlovac) Brigade. He had asked, in turn of the duty officer and the commanding officer and the liaison officer and the adjutant, if he could be hooked through to Hamilton, Sidney Ernest, on a matter of importance. Four times asked to wait no problem four times asked the business of the call personal four times asked his name mumbled and unintelligible four times told that Hamilton was not available to come to the telephone and asked again for the nature of the business and the repetition of his name.
Marty Jones was not easily unsettled, less often now that he had been in Croatia and Bosnia for close to a year. But now apprehension crawled in him. Dusk was coming to the parade ground beyond his converted freight container .. . Hell, he was not going to take goddamn crap from them .. . After the fourth deflection, Marty telephoned Mary Braddock, told her he was coming soonest to collect her, that she should have warm clothes.
He did not know the place of the rendezvous on the bank of the Kupa river, and Ham should have rung him. He felt a bad night was taking shape.
Before he locked the door of the freight container behind him, he looked a last time, longingly and almost lovingly, at the camp bed with the sleeping bag and the blanket primly folded, at the brightness of the handcuffs, at the length of the chain and the strength of the ring set in the floor.
The last of the sun, rich gold, came from the trees on the far side of the river and made sweet lines on the moving water, and bathed the worn face of Zoran Pelnak and hurled his shadow back against the old timbers and the weathered brick of his home.
Too much of his time, he liked to joke with the soldiers who came from their tent camp for his well water, was spent gazing at the great Mother, the force, that was the Kupa river. He could spend more hours than the day gave him just watching the movement and the flow of the river. Each day, each hour, he could find something that was new in the movement and power of the river .. . And the river was something to respect, as worthy of respect as had been his own mother, because the river was strength. They did not comprehend, the soldiers who came with the scrubbed old milk churns for their water from his well, the force of the great Mother. Zoran Pelnak did .. . His respect, his awe, of the river had been with him since he was a child, since the evening that the sunken log had come without warning to beat against the bow of his small boat and trip it. He had lost his footing, fallen, scrabbled, slid into the dark cold of the water. What he could remember was the helplessness that he had felt, long ago as a child, thrashing against that force, and his father had pulled him clear. The force would never be forgotten by Zoran Pelnak, never trifled with. He had not swum in the river that bordered his fields since that day when he had struggled in panic against the cold darkness of the current. He knew the force of the great Mother .. . And there was always something new to see.
He paused at the door of his home, and he scratched the debris from the animals' fodder off the sleeves of his greatcoat.
There was a place in the first line of the trees opposite, where the herons made their nest. He could not look into the low sun at the nest, but he could see the male bird erect in the shallow water by the reeds poised and waiting, perhaps for a frog.
He considered the male heron to be the most beautiful of the river's birds.
And when he was inside, warm from the fire, his meal taken, then he would sit by the window and light his lamp and wait for the moon to climb, and the gold would have gone from the great Mother, replaced by silver.
The pistol was aimed at her.
The man was crouched down beside the tree and he held the pistol, aimed at her, with his arms extended. The woman stood beside the man and held the knife against Milan's beard, against his throat. She stopped, and she took the weight of the dog and the farm twine tied to the dog's collar cut at the palm of her hand. She stopped, and she clutched the rusted bayonet.
The pistol was aimed at her across the width of the track that divided them.
She said it in the man's language, deliberate. "Let him go .. ."
Evica had come fast, closed the last gap, run noisily through the final metres, and she had blundered from the cover of a corner of evergreen holly. They would have heard her come the final metres, but they would only have seen her when she broke the cover of the holly. The dog strained to cross the track.
The aim of the pistol wavered.
"Let him come to me .. ." Penn blinked at her across the track and she saw the raw tiredness of his eyes that tried to lock along the barrel length of the pistol. It was as if the birds had gone, fled the place, because the silence crawled around her. There were scars on his face. He was t
he man who had come into her life, the man who would destroy them. The weight of the dog cut the farm twine across the palm of her hand. If she let go of the twine, if she released the dog, then the dog, going forward, forty kilos weight, would overwhelm the man, Penn, with exhaustion in his eyes ... if she let go of the twine. "Let him be free .. ." She looked away from the man, Penn, away from the muzzle of the pistol. The woman's hand did not move. The man, Penn, whispered to the woman, as if he placed and identified her. The knife was steady against the hair of Milan's beard, against his throat. She saw the chilled certainty in the woman's face, as if tiredness had not washed it clear. The knife was sharp and clean. Evica had seen before such chilled certainty, seen it on the faces of the men as they had gone away across the bridge early on the last day of the battle for Rosenovici, and she had heard later that day, and not looked from her window, the rumble of the bulldozer in the field across the stream, and heard the final shots. And she had seen the chilling certainty on the faces of the men who had gone to the headquarters to take the Headmaster from his cell .. . She knew, in her exhaustion, that the dog could take the man, Penn, even if he fired, even if he hit. She knew, in the anguish of her mind, that if she loosed the dog then the woman, determined, cold, would gouge the blade of the sharp clean knife deep into the throat of Milan, would not hesitate because it was in the certainty of the woman's face. "Please, you should let him come to me .. ." There was a wetness on the face of Milan, and she could see where the tears had run from his eyes and across the dirtied skin of his cheeks, and gone to the matt of his beard. And Evica saw the fear in Milan's eyes, as if he too knew the certainty of the woman, "I beg of you, let me take him home .. ." The man gazed at her, dulled. She remembered, a long time ago, many years, when she had gone with the beaters and the dogs to flush a boar, a long hard run and chase and they had found the boar against a rock outcrop that it could not climb, and it had turned to face the leashed dogs and the guns, and she had seen the dulled eyes of the boar. The man with the pistol did not have the cold certainty of the woman who held the knife so steady against Milan's beard and throat. But it was not the man who spoke. She had a clipped voice, controlled. "What was done at Rosenovici was a crime. What has been done through former Yugoslavia is a crime. At stake is the rule of law .. . What we do is small, because we are only small people, but it is necessary to find a point for a beginning. You are the wife of Milan Stankovic, you know what he did. After the flag of surrender, he took the wounded from Rosenovici, and he had a grave dug, and he butchered those wounded .. . You are his wife, you know what he did, you know the scale of his evil .. . And with the wounded was a young woman .. ." The young woman, the girl, coming to the school at Evica's invitation, speaking English that Evica might improve her language, coming in torn jeans and sweaters that were holed at the elbow, sitting with the fun laughter bubbling in her ... dead and buried. "The crime of the young woman was that she stayed when others ran. She stayed with those who were wounded. She gave them help and love. Your husband made the chain. The chain is from the young woman to her mother, to Penn, to your village, to your husband. He made the chain when he killed that young woman .. . We do what small people, Mrs. Stankovic, have always done through history, we make a beginning. And the law, Mrs. Stankovic, belongs to small people, and I am small and Penn is small, and the law belongs to us. We cannot give him back to you and to your child because the rule of law, without which we all fall, demands that your husband be brought to account .. ." Evica thought the woman was without mercy. The fingers that clasped the knife against Milan's beard had no gold wedding ring. She could see the tight waist of the woman behind her opened coat and there was not the slackness at her stomach of childbirth. Evica thought the woman was without love. "That night, when he came back from Rosenovici, did he tell you what he had done? Did you hold him, and tell him that it did not matter? Did you cuddle him, and tell him he was without guilt .. . ? Or did you feel shame, Mrs. Stankovic, did you feel that when he lay beside you he dirtied you. You should go home, you should go home to your son and tell the child that his father is a murderer, and you should tell the child that the rule of law demands his father's punishment .. ." She looked into her husband's face. She remembered the night. She remembered how she had lain awake, how she had pushed him away from her, how he had slept and she had not, how he had cried out twice but not woken, how he had once thrashed with his arms as if to beat away a nightmare, and how in the first light of the morning she had stood at the window of their bedroom and looked across the fields, across the stream, and seen the smoke rising from the buildings and seen the grey-black scar in the corner of the field. Penn said, "He has nothing to fear from me. It will not be as it was for Dorrie Mowat .. ." She let the bayonet fall from her hand. '.. . I protect my prisoner with my life." She turned away. Evica pulled the dog, reluctant, after her. She twisted her back on her husband. The dusk was falling on the woodland. She could not answer the argument of the woman. She could not fault the promise of the man. She heard them moving, first loud and then fainter. Evica never looked back, never turned to see her husband taken as a prisoner towards the Kupa river. He turned the pages. Perhaps it had been stupid of him to ask for the books. He leafed through photographs in expensive colour that showed children in national costume, and wedding dances, and the archaeology of the national heritage, and Roman amphitheatres, and the beauty of polyptych work from churches. Henry Carter thought it an obscenity that a nation of such age-old talent should have stooped to such far-down barbarity .. . God, and since when had he been qualified to criticize? He leafed the pages, searched patiently. There was an aerial view, across two pages, of the old quarter of Karlovac, and he could make out clearly the former barracks built by Napoleon's marshal where the German woman had administered the Transit Centre.
Heart of Danger Page 38