Bosnian Inferno

by David Monnery

  The telephone started ringing in the living-room.

  ‘Who can that be?’ she asked, walking towards it.

  Docherty had unwrapped one bundle when she returned. ‘It’s your old CO,’ she said, like any English military wife. ‘Barney Davies. And he sounds like he’s calling from a pub.’

  ‘Maybe they’ve realized my pension should have been twice as much,’ Docherty joked, wondering what in God’s name Davies wanted with him.

  He soon found out.

  ‘Docherty? I’m sorry to call you at this hour, but I’d appreciate a meeting,’ Davies said.

  Docherty raised his eyebrows. It did sound like a pub in the background. He tried to remember which of Hereford’s hostelries Barney Davies favoured. ‘OK. What about? Can it wait till after Christmas?’

  ‘Tonight would be better.’

  ‘Where are you?’ Docherty asked.

  ‘In the bar at Central Station.’

  The CO was in Glasgow. Had maybe even come to Glasgow just to see him. What the fuck was this about?

  ‘I’m sorry about the short notice, but…’

  ‘No problem. In an hour, say, at nine.’

  ‘Wonderful. Can you suggest somewhere better than this?’

  ‘Aye, the Slug & Sporran in Brennan Street. It’s about a ten-minute walk, or you can take a cab…’

  ‘I’ll walk.’

  ‘OK. Just go straight down the road opposite the station entrance, then left into Sauchiehall Street and Brennan Street’s about three hundred yards down on the right. The pub’s about halfway down, opposite a pool hall.’

  ‘Roger.’

  The phone clicked dead. Docherty stood there for a minute, a sinking heart and a rising sense of excitement competing for his soul, and then went back to his fish and chips. He removed the plate which Isabel had used to keep them warm. ‘He wants to see me,’ he said, in as offhand a voice as he could muster. ‘Tonight.’

  She looked up, her eyes anxious. ‘Por qué?’ she asked.

  ‘He didn’t say.’

  Lieutenant-Colonel Barney Davies, Commanding Officer 22 SAS Regiment, found the Slug & Sporran without much difficulty, and could immediately see why Docherty had recommended it. Unlike most British pubs it was neither a yuppified monstrosity nor a noisy pigsty. The wooden beams on the ceiling were real, and the polished wooden booths looked old enough to remember another century. There were no amusement machines in sight, no jukebox music loud enough to drown any conversation – just the more comforting sound of darts burying themselves in a dartboard. The TV set was turned off.

  Davies bought himself a double malt, surveyed the available seating, and laid claim to the empty booth which seemed to offer the most privacy. At the nearest table a group of youngsters sporting punk hairstyles were arguing about someone he’d never heard of – someone called ‘Fooco’. Listening to them, Davies found it impossible to decide whether the man was a footballer, a philosopher or a film director. They looked so young, he thought.

  It was ten to nine. Davies started trying to work out what he was going to say to Docherty, but soon gave up the attempt. It would be better not to sound rehearsed, to just be natural. This was not a job he wanted to offer anybody, least of all someone like Docherty, who had children to think about and a wife to leave behind.

  There was no choice though. He had to ask him. Maybe Docherty would have the sense to refuse.

  But he doubted it. He himself wouldn’t have had the sense, back when he still had a wife and children who lived with him.

  ‘Hello, boss,’ Docherty said, appearing at his shoulder and slipping back into the habit of using the usual SAS term for a superior officer. ‘Want another?’

  ‘No, but this is my round,’ Davies said, getting up. ‘What would you like?’

  ‘A pint of Guinness would probably hit the spot,’ Docherty said. He sat down and let his eyes wander round the half-empty pub, feeling more expectant than he wanted to be. Why had he suggested this pub, he asked himself. That was the TV on which he’d watched the Task Force sail out of Portsmouth Harbour. That was the bar at which he’d picked up his first tart after getting back from Mexico. The place always boded ill. The booth in the corner was where he and Liam had comprehensively drowned their sorrows the day Dalglish left for Liverpool.

  Davies was returning with the black nectar. Docherty had always respected the man as a soldier and, what was rarer, felt drawn to him as a man. There was a sadness about Davies which made him appealingly human.

  ‘So what’s brought you all the way to Glasgow?’ Docherty asked.

  Davies grimaced. ‘Duty, I’m afraid.’ He took a sip of the malt. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any point in beating about the bush. When did you last hear from John Reeve?’

  ‘Almost a year ago, I think. He sent us a Christmas card from Zimbabwe – that must have been about a month after he got there – and then a short letter, but nothing since. Neither of us is much good at writing letters, but usually Nena and Isabel manage to write…What’s John…’

  ‘You were best man at their wedding, weren’t you?’

  ‘And he was at mine. What’s this about?’

  ‘John Reeve’s not been in Zimbabwe for eight months now – he’s been in Bosnia.’

  Docherty placed his pint down carefully and waited for Davies to continue.

  ‘This is what we think happened,’ the CO began. ‘Reeve and his wife seem to have hit a bad patch while he was working in Zimbabwe. Or maybe it was just a break-up waiting to happen,’ he added, with all the feeling of someone who had shared the experience. ‘Whatever. She left him there and headed back to where she came from, which, as you know, was Yugoslavia. How did they meet – do you know?’

  ‘In Germany,’ Docherty said. ‘Nena was a guest-worker in Osnabrück, where Reeve was stationed. She was working as a nurse while she trained to be a doctor.’ He could see her in his mind’s eye, a tall blonde with high Slavic cheekbones and cornflower-blue eyes. Her family was nominally Muslim, but as for many Bosnians it was more a matter of culture than religion. She had never professed any faith in Docherty’s hearing.

  He felt saddened by the news that they had split up. ‘Did she take the children with her?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. To the small town where she grew up. Place called Zavik. It’s up in the mountains a long way from anywhere.’

  ‘Her parents still lived there, last I knew.’

  ‘Ah. Well all this was just before the shit hit the fan in Bosnia, and you can imagine what Reeve must have thought. I don’t know what Zimbabwean TV’s like, but I imagine those pictures were pretty hard to escape last spring wherever you were in the world. Maybe not. For all we know he was already on his way. He seems to have arrived early in April, but this is where our information peters out. We think Nena Reeve used the opportunity of his visit to Zavik to make one of her own to Sarajevo, either because he could babysit the children or just as a way of avoiding him – who knows? Either way she chose the wrong time. All hell broke loose in Sarajevo and the Serbs started lobbing artillery shells at anything that moved and their snipers started picking off children playing football in the street. And she either couldn’t get out or didn’t want to…’

  ‘Doctors must be pretty thin on the ground in Sarajevo,’ Docherty thought out loud.

  Davies grunted his agreement. ‘As far as we know, she’s still there. But Reeve – well, this is mostly guesswork. We got a letter from him early in June, explaining why he’d not returned to Zimbabwe, and that as long as he feared for the safety of his children he’d stay in Zavik…’

  ‘I never heard anything about it,’ Docherty said.

  ‘No one did,’ Davies said. ‘An SAS soldier on the active list stuck in the middle of Bosnia wasn’t something we wanted to advertise. For any number of reasons, his own safety included. Anyway, it seems that the town wasn’t as safe as Reeve’s wife had thought, and sometime in July it found itself with some unwelcome visitors – a large group of Serb
ian irregulars. We’ve no idea what happened, but we do know that the Serbs were sent packing…’

  ‘You think Reeve helped organize a defence?’

  Davies shrugged. ‘It would hardly be out of character, would it? But we don’t know. All we have since then is six months of silence, followed by two months of rumours.’

  ‘Rumours of what?’

  ‘Atrocities of one kind and another.’

  ‘Reeve? I don’t believe it.’

  ‘Neither do I, but…We’re guessing that Reeve – or someone else with the same sort of skills – managed to turn Zavik into a town that was too well defended to be worth attacking. Which would work fine until the winter came, when the town would start running short of food and fuel and God knows what else, and either have to freeze and starve or take the offensive and go after what it needed. And that’s what seems to have happened. They’ve been absolutely even-handed: they’ve stolen from everyone – Muslims, Serbs and Croats. And since none of these groups, with the partial exception of the Muslims, likes admitting that somewhere there’s a town in which all three groups are fighting alongside each other against the tribal armies, you can guess who they’re all choosing to concentrate their anger against.’

  ‘Us?’

  ‘In a nutshell. According to the Serbs and the Croats there’s this renegade Englishman holed up in central Bosnia like Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now, launching raids against anyone and everyone, delighting in slaughter and madness, and probably waiting to mutter “the horror, the horror” to the man who arrives intent on terminating him with extreme prejudice.’

  ‘I take it our political masters are embarrassed,’ Docherty said drily.

  ‘Not only that – they’re angry. They like touting the Regiment as an example of British excellence, and since the cold war ended they’ve begun to home in on the idea of selling our troops as mercenaries to the UN. All for a good cause, of course, and what the hell else do we have to sell any more? The Army top brass are all for it – it’s their only real argument for keeping the sort of resource allocations they’re used to. Finding out that one of their élite soldiers is running riot in the middle of the media’s War of the Moment is not their idea of good advertising.’

  Docherty smiled grimly. ‘Surprise, surprise,’ he said, and emptied his glass. He could see now where this conversation was leading. ‘Same again?’ he asked.

  ‘Thanks.’

  Docherty gave his order to the barman and stood there thinking about John Reeve. They’d known each other almost twenty years, since they’d been thrown into the deep end together in Oman. Reeve had been pretty wild back then, and he hadn’t noticeably calmed down with age, but Docherty had thought that if anyone could turn down the fire without extinguishing it altogether then Nena was the one.

  What would Isabel say about his going to Bosnia? he asked himself. She’d probably shoot him herself.

  Back at the booth he asked Davies the obvious question: ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘I have no right to ask you to do anything,’ Davies answered. ‘You’re no longer a member of the Regiment, and you’ve already done more than your bit.’

  ‘Aye,’ Docherty agreed, ‘but what do you want me to do?’

  ‘Someone has to get into Zavik and talk Reeve into getting out. I don’t imagine either is going to be easy, but he’s more likely to listen to you than anyone else.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Reeve had never been very good at listening to anyone, at least until Nena came along. ‘How would I get to Zavik?’ he asked. ‘And where is it, come to that?’

  ‘About fifty miles west of Sarajevo. But we haven’t even thought about access yet. We can start thinking about the hows if and when you decide…’

  ‘If you should choose to accept this mission…’ Docherty quoted ironically.

  ‘…the tape will self-destruct in ten seconds,’ Davies completed for him. Clearly both men had wasted their youth watching crap like Mission Impossible.

  ‘I’ll need to talk with my wife,’ Docherty said. ‘What sort of time-frame are we talking about?’ It occurred to him, absurdly, that he was willing to go and risk his life in Bosnia, but only if he could first enjoy this Christmas with his family.

  ‘It’s not a day-on-day situation,’ Davies said. ‘Not as far as we know, anyway. But we want to send a team out early next week.’

  ‘The condemned men ate a hearty Christmas dinner,’ Docherty murmured.

  ‘I hope not,’ Davies said. ‘This is not a suicide mission. If it looks like you can’t get to Zavik, you can’t. I’m not sacrificing good men just to put a smile on the faces of the Army’s accountants.’

  ‘Who dares wins,’ Docherty said with a smile.

  ‘That’s probably what they told Icarus,’ Davies observed.

  ‘Don’t you want me to go?’ Docherty asked, only half-seriously.

  ‘To be completely honest,’ Davies said, ‘I don’t know. Have you been following what’s happening in Bosnia?’

  ‘Not as much as I should have. My wife probably knows more about it than I do.’

  ‘It’s a nightmare,’ Davies said, ‘and I’m not using the word loosely. All the intelligence we’re getting tells us that humans are doing things to each other in Bosnia that haven’t been seen in Europe since the religious wars of the seventeenth century, with the possible exception of the Russian Front in the last war. We’re talking about mass shootings, whole villages herded into churches and burnt alive, rape on a scale so widespread that it must be a coordinated policy, torture and mutilation for no other reason than pleasure, war without any moral or human restraint…’

  ‘A heart of darkness,’ Docherty murmured, and felt a shiver run down his spine, sitting there in his favourite pub, in the city of his birth.

  After giving Davies a lift to his hotel Docherty drove slowly home, thinking about what the CO had told him. Part of him wanted to go, part of him wasn’t so sure. Did he feel the tug of loyalty, or was his brain just using that as a cover for the tug of adventure? And in any case, didn’t his wife and children have first claim on his loyalty now? He wasn’t even in the Army any more.

  She was watching Newsnight on TV, already in her dressing-gown, a glass of wine in her hand. The anxiety seemed to have left her eyes, but there was a hint of coldness there instead, as if she was already protecting herself against his desertion.

  Ironically, the item she was watching concerned the war in Bosnia, and the refugee problem which had developed as a result. An immaculately groomed Conservative minister was explaining how, alas, Britain had no more room for these tragic victims. After all, the UK had already taken more than Liechtenstein. Docherty wished he could use the Enterprise’s transporter system to beam the bastard into the middle of Tuzla, or Srebenica, or wherever it was this week that he had the best chance of being shredded by reality.

  He poured himself what remained of the wine, and found Isabel’s dark eyes boring into him. ‘Well?’ she asked. ‘What did he want?’

  ‘He wants me to go and collect John Reeve from there,’ he said, gesturing at the screen.

  ‘But they’re in Zimbabwe…’

  ‘Not any more.’ He told her the story that Davies had told him.

  When he was finished she examined the bottom of her glass for a few seconds, then lifted her eyes to his. ‘They just want you to go and talk to him?’

  ‘They want to know what’s really happening.’

  ‘What do they expect you to say to him?’

  ‘They don’t know. That will depend on whatever it is he’s doing out there.’

  She thought about that for a moment. ‘But he’s your friend,’ she said, ‘your comrade. Don’t you trust him? Don’t you believe that, whatever he’s doing, he has a good reason for doing it.’

  It was Docherty’s turn to consider. ‘No,’ he said eventually. ‘I didn’t become his friend because I thought he had flawless judgement. If I agree with whatever it is he’s doing, I shall say so. To him an
d Barney Davies. And if I don’t, the same applies.’

  ‘Are they sending you in alone?’

  ‘I don’t know. And that’s if I agree to go.’

  ‘You mean, once I give you my blessing.’

  ‘No, no, I don’t. That’s not what I mean at all. I’m out of the Army, out of the Regiment. I can choose.’

  There was both amusement and sadness in her smile. ‘They’ve still got you for this one,’ she said. ‘Duty and loyalty to a friend would have been enough in any case, but they’ve even given you a mystery to solve.’

  He smiled ruefully back at her.

  She got up and came to sit beside him on the sofa. He put an arm round her shoulder and pulled her in. ‘If it wasn’t for the niños I’d come with you,’ she said. ‘You’ll probably need someone good to watch your back.’

  ‘I’ll find someone,’ he said, kissing her on the forehead. For a minute or more they sat there in silence.

  ‘How dangerous will it be?’ she asked at last.

  He shrugged. ‘I’m not sure there’s any way of knowing before we get there. There are UN troops there now, but I don’t know where in relation to where Reeve is. The fact that it’s winter will help – there won’t be as many amateur psychopaths running around if the snow’s six feet deep. But a war zone is a war zone. It won’t be a picnic.’

  ‘Who dares had better damn well come home,’ she said.

  ‘I will,’ he said softly.

  2

  Nena Reeve pressed the spoon down on the tea-bag, trying to drain from it what little strength remained without bursting it. She wondered what they were drinking in Zavik. Probably melted snow.

  Her holdall was packed and ready to go, sitting on the narrow bed. The room, one of many which had been abandoned in the old nurses’ dormitory, was about six feet by eight, with one small window. It was hardly a generous space for living, but since Nena usually arrived back from the hospital with nothing more than sleep in mind, this didn’t greatly concern her.

  Through the window she had a view across the roofs below and the slopes rising up on the other side of the Miljacka valley. In the square to the right there had once been a mosque surrounded by acacias, its slim minaret reaching hopefully towards heaven, but citizens hungry for fuel had taken the trees and a Serbian shell had cut the graceful tower in half.