Haclan’s men, demoralised by the disastrous outcome of their operation and the remarkable rate of attrition they had suffered at our hands, were soon flushed out of their hiding places and arrested. By this time, we’d disembarked at the harbour in Thessaloniki and been driven by minibus to the police station, where they fed us a breakfast of rice pudding, sweet pastries and coffee. I watched the careless, unenthusiastic way Katya ate and my heart was heavy. When she had finished, I took her in my arms again, hoping that as long as I could control the sobs, she wouldn’t see how close I was to collapse.
They put us in the back office, the interview room being thought ‘unsuitable’. The other girls sat in office chairs, studying us solemnly. Orphans, of course – that is what made them good subjects for trafficking. At least they looked as if they had started, tentatively, to believe they might be safe.
‘Where is James?’ I asked the officer in charge. ‘Is he OK?’
The officer looked doubtful.
‘He got on board the Santa Cristina. You must have found him by now.’
There followed an exchange of crackles and hisses by walkie-talkie.
‘They’ve made a thorough search. Are you sure he was on board, Mrs Galica?’
All is not well with my poor Katya, but James, I would like you to know that I forgive you. I still do not understand everything that happened, but I could not have got her back without you, and the past cannot be undone.
Anyway, you took the blame on yourself – almost too eagerly, you might say. At the time it felt as if I were using you, your strength and intelligence, your ferocious determination. You were driven by some force that would crush anything which stood in your way. Guilt, rage, madness? Whatever, I wanted it on my side. I was close to despair when you found me outside the bus station in Skopje. I don’t say I would have given up, but my efforts to find Katya were beginning to lack conviction.
You could not have given up, even if you’d wanted to. It would never have been enough for you to blame those really responsible. You are a man of rare conscience and nobility, if a little serious (even your sense of humour is grave). Not to mention being easy on the eye, as Eleni observed, the first time she saw you – even though she disapproved of you most entirely at the time! I wish we could have met before Katarina was taken away from me. I will always remember you holding me in your arms in the back of the hired van – the silence, the snow tumbling past the window – and wonder how different things might have been.
James
44
Water. Cold as iron. Lungs pressed shut like meat in a can. Locked up, won’t budge. Not for water, nor even for air. Brown brine rank in the sinus.
Save me.
It means you are dead, stupid boy.
Water clasps water tugs. Its limbs are too cold its limbs are too heavy. Save me.
Send forth your sighs.
Mouth tilts clear for half a breath. Wave-slop wallows, slaps, sea swamps in. Cold fingers plug my throat. Too weak to cough. Roll over and rest. Easier like this. Below the darkness teems with half-dead things.
A thousand drowning eyes.
No! My face flies up, salt-grit streams from my eyes, sky light gleams and I’m blasting sea from my throat, sucking air. How many times did that happen? Retching. Water rattles and coos in the chambers of my chest. The ship. . . I swivel in my barrel of sea. Three-quarters round, the Santa Cristina, far away across the shrugging waves.
I’m strong enough to keep my mouth clear of the salt-slop. Strong enough for now. Drift east. The far side of the bay is only. . . Only so far away. Say a little prayer.
Something tugged at my arm. I opened my eyes. Sprawled across a jumble of rocks, with a girl of about twelve holding my hand in the air.
‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘You’re going to be OK.’
She released my hand and ran off, returned some time later with an old man in tow. He had a concave face, baggy eyes and a goitre under his jaw. He knelt over me and started to tear open my shirt. I smelled raki on his breath.
‘Doctor,’ he said crossly.
He found the wound in my ribcage, prodded it with his fingers, then mopped it with the edge of my shirt. He soaked a cotton pad in something and slapped it over the swollen flesh, bound it up with a single length of bandage. Then he performed the same impatient ritual on a furrow left by the bullet that had torn through the outside of my thigh.
‘You OK. Go. Go now.’ He made a shooing motion with his hands.
‘Give me a lift into town,’ I said faintly. ‘I’ll pay. . .’
He was already stomping off along the dusty path that led away from the shore. The girl put a white plastic bag beside me.
‘Thank you.’
She twisted her hands together, smiled, and ran after the doctor. In the bag was a bottle of tap water, three dried figs and a half-loaf of bread with honey drizzled into the crumb.
Had Anna and Katarina been reunited? I longed to know, but for now I was too weak to do anything but lie back and rest my head against a ledge of bare earth beside the path. Out at sea, the Santa Cristina was riding at anchor beneath the fuzzy blotch of the sun, a police launch moored to her stern. It must have been sirens I’d heard before I’d fallen overboard. They’d staked out a section of the beach where the RIBs had come ashore, but there weren’t any vehicles to be seen, other than the Fiat Frightful stranded a few hundred yards away.
It was confusing to find that the maelstrom of the hour after dawn when we’d fought to keep the Santa Cristina from carrying Katarina out to sea had given way to this gloomy and inanimate scene. I realised I must have been out for a long time before the girl found me, maybe five or six hours. I felt very sick, but as one of the army training instructors I’d toiled under was fond of saying, You can’t say, ooh, ooh, I don’t feel well, I need to lie down, when there’s half a dozen Taliban sniffing your next shit.
I stood and waved my arms at the vessels out in the bay, but they were a long way off and I couldn’t put on much of a show because the movement made the wound in my ribs weep and the gauze pad kept slipping out from beneath the single loop of bandage. At least I was too cold to bleed much. I sat down again and ate the food the girl had brought me. I chewed the crust and tasted the sweetness of the fruit and honey on my tongue – and I vowed to come back some day and thank her for saving me, because until that time, although I’d known I was not dying, still I’d felt close to death.
But now I decided I was strong enough to make my way to Thessaloniki. I’d drifted to the eastern shore of the bay, but the coast road wasn’t far. After that, what, fifteen kilometres to town? Four hours in my state. Six maybe. I could hitch a lift, but I hadn’t seen or heard a single car since coming to consciousness the best part of an hour ago.
I started gingerly along the path, setting myself targets as I walked: a bend in the path, a wizened old bush, a corner where the grey sea lapped up to the edge of the road. I reached the place where we’d abandoned the Fiat, hobbled over and sat in the driver’s seat. The key was in the ignition but I couldn’t get the engine to fire. On the fifth turn, the battery died.
I got out and looked for a way across the western promontory of the bay at sea level. There wasn’t one, so I had to limp up the road and over the top. I could see Thessaloniki from here, sprawled against the low hills to the north. On the way down, I felt a throbbing, burning sensation beneath my armpit. Later, a thin, trickly sweat broke out on my face and chest. I became conscious of my head bobbing around like a helium balloon, my feet dragging like clods of meat. Several times I lay down at the side of the road and rested. Cars came past, but by the time I’d raised my arm to hail them, they’d gone.
At some point I lay down and stopped seeing or hearing anything at all.
45
The wound in my ribs was infected, my blood poisoned. Days passed, uncountable days filled with uncountable hours of shouting, sweating, hallucinations in which I fought to keep a cavalcade of toothed creatures from gnawing t
he flesh off my shins. Even when I came to for a moment and saw that the polystyrene ceiling tiles above my head had not been punched open by scabby jaws, I knew I’d be going back to face them again soon. The wound swelled and suppurated. I smelled raki. I smelled vomit. The girl twisted her fingers and begged me to save her. The white plastic bag she brought had a rat inside it. I thought Anna was watching me, but it might just have been striplight sheen playing over the white tiles. At last I slept, and woke to a heavy prod from below. Someone was underneath my bed. An arm reached up and deposited two oranges on the bedside cabinet. An apple followed, accompanied by a sigh of exasperation. Finally, a head appeared.
‘Eleni?’
She smiled – a thing of great warmth and beauty. Her eyes brimmed with tears and she kissed me repeatedly, laying her cheek against mine and pressing with such fervour that her gift of fruit rolled off the cabinet again and plonked to the floor.
‘Oh, James, thank you, thank you! It is good to see you awake again, really it is lovely. . . Such a terrible time you’ve had. . . Wait, I must call Anna.’
I listened to her gabble into her cellphone, then heard her say Katya. . . I could tell from Eleni’s tone of voice that the girl had been reunited with her mother, but the joy I felt was quickly smothered by apprehension. It is one thing to feel guilty, to act like a guilty man, to strive to undo the wrong you have done – but soon I would come face to face with Katarina and see the damage my callow negligence had inflicted on her. I would see it in her manner, in how she held herself, in her eyes.
‘They will be here in twenty minutes. Your face is so white, James. You must tell me if you feel ill again.’
I looked around for other patients but there were none, only beds without sheets, curtains tucked into tie-backs, humming striplights.
‘How long have I been out for?’
‘Three days. They found you lying by the side of the road. You had a bit of bandage which had come undone and flapped in the wind. Otherwise, no one would have found you. Oh dear.’ She covered her face with her hands.
‘Eleni, you can mourn when I really am dead. In the meantime, tell me what happened.’
‘Oh, Anna begged them to look for you, but first she had to take care of Katya, you understand?’
‘Of course. I didn’t mean that—’
‘If we knew you had fallen into the sea, we would have told them to search for you. But Anna thought you were still on the ship.’
‘It doesn’t matter. How is Katarina?’
‘She has been through a terrible experience, more terrible than we can imagine. But we cannot tell how she is in herself, you know? She doesn’t want to talk – this is to be expected. It will take time. What she needs now is the comfort of her mother, plenty of sleep, good food.’
‘What about Adjani’s men?’
‘All locked up. If they face a firing squad – this is possible in Greece – I will volunteer.’
‘They’re not worth it,’ I said, pulling myself into a sitting position while Eleni fussed over the cushions at my back. ‘Hired hands. If Haclan hadn’t found them, they’d be street thieves and drunks.’ I felt weak and sore, but with that sweet languor the body experiences when it is over a crisis.
‘You must not be sentimental, James. Gang bosses cannot operate without such people to do their killing.’
‘What about the clients of the Vegas Lounge?’ I said. ‘Who will lock them up? What about the men who knew what was going on but didn’t put a stop to it?’ And what about Father Daniel, I might have added, had I not remembered in time that I hadn’t mentioned the Book of Prayer to anyone except Maria.
‘The Vegas Lounge? I have not heard of this place.’
Another thing I hadn’t yet mentioned. . .
‘If only there were not criminal gangs,’ Eleni went on, without waiting for me to explain. ‘If only powerful men did not always want war. If only the world was like heaven and full of angels.’
She looked at her watch, then frowned at me: Anna and Katarina were due soon, said the frown, and now was not the time to discuss the world’s more intransigent ills. We chatted about nothing for a while, then I saw her walking across the empty ward with her mother at her side. I drew in my breath, but the surge of guilt did not come. What I mostly felt was relief – that she was alive, that she was safe, that she looked so ordinary in her pale blue hoodie and black jeans so clean you could see the stiffness in the creases. Beautiful, yes, with her pale olive skin and jet-black hair, and graceful, despite the awkwardness of the moment. But really just a girl with her mother, visiting an acquaintance in hospital – a girl who would probably rather be back home watching TV.
Anna was smarter than I had ever seen her: green and red patterned skirt, cream jersey, hair tied back to set off the spare, elegant contours of her face. No one could have guessed what these two had endured. You’d have said it was teenage shyness that made the girl so reluctant to meet my eye; that the shadows in the mother’s face were probably caused by having to work late.
Anna kissed me and whispered in my ear: ‘She’s feeling a bit overwhelmed. Don’t think badly of her if she doesn’t say anything.’
She pulled an envelope from her handbag and handed it to her daughter. Katarina took it, but I could see that the maternal prompting made her cross, and I was reminded of the impatient way she had hopped out of my arms while we’d been waiting for the ride into Skopje. She proffered the envelope, eyes downcast.
‘I can’t believe I didn’t notice you’d been shot, James,’ Anna was saying. ‘It seems so ungrateful. When I think of you in that cold water – you must have thought we’d abandoned you, as if you meant nothing to us. I’m sorry.’
No, this is all wrong, I wanted to say. I could never think badly of you, Anna! And you mustn’t apologise to me, if I hadn’t been so vain and selfish and irresponsible. . .
‘Do take it, James,’ said Eleni.
‘Sorry.’
I smiled at Katarina but still she would not look at me. The card had a picture of two skinny songbirds trilling in a tree. Inside it said, Dear James, get well soon, Katarina.
‘Did you draw these birds?’ I asked feebly. ‘They’re beautiful.’
Her mother translated and there was silence. I could see Anna and Eleni hoping Katarina would speak, but she only nodded.
‘I’m sorry, Katarina,’ I said quickly. ‘If I hadn’t left you at that house, none of this would have happened. I should have taken you to the UNHCR, it was my fault. . .’
Anna did not translate this time. ‘Don’t ask her to forgive you, James,’ she said gently. ‘Not yet. It’s not that you don’t deserve it, but there’s so much for her to deal with just now.’
She was right, of course. Why shouldn’t Katarina feel just plain angry for a while? She didn’t even want to be here, visiting this oaf in a hospital bed who craved her absolution. I’d spent barely twelve hours in her company, and most of those had been taken up with sleeping and wondering how to get rid of her. The feelings that had stalked me since that terrible night – the guilt, the fury and outrage, the discovery that I might be one of us – none of this had anything whatsoever to do with the girl standing by my bed.
‘You found Katya in the forest and took her to safety,’ Eleni said. ‘She would not have survived the night otherwise. Katya will always know that. James, we will never forget how you helped us.’
We all looked at Katarina, but she wouldn’t meet anyone’s eye.
Anna broke the silence. ‘Will you please come to us when you get out? We’re driving up to Skopje tomorrow. We’ll stay at Eleni’s apartment for a while.’
‘When will you go back to Pristina?’
‘Pristina? Maybe we will never go back. Maybe there will be nothing left.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘NATO are bombing Kosovo. They got the agreement they needed in Paris three days ago. They couldn’t wait to get started.’
46
I slept again
, my dreams no longer feverish but simply bleak. I woke and they changed my dressing. The skin hung in a puckered fold over the curve of rib. I was served with a portion of macaroni pie, which I finished in three mouthfuls. They brought me two more. Each came with a small glass of red wine. I don’t remember finishing the last. I woke to hear a voice I didn’t recognise.
‘We can’t sit here all day. Perhaps one of the nurses might give him a playful squeeze.’
I opened my eyes and saw Clive Silk of MI6, along with my CO, Colonel Andy Hillson, and another man with a pink, muscular face and a head of sleek black hair, neatly groomed around the temples.
‘Good to have you back with us,’ he said.
It was morning. The empty ward was bisected by a triangle of sunlit dust.
‘I’m not with you,’ I said, eyeing Clive Silk. The sight of his smug, I-know-the-bigger-picture face was stoking such a blaze of hatred in my temples that already I felt wide awake. ‘Whoever you are.’
The men looked irritable. Their plastic chairs creaked.
‘Iain Strang, MI6. The Balkans fall under my remit, lucky fellow that I am.’
‘Silk’s boss?’ I stretched my arm and felt that the sticky stiffness in my ribs had gone. ‘What an unwelcome honour.’
‘Christ, Palatine, get off the damn high horse for once, will you,’ said Colonel Hillson. ‘This is important.’
Hillson was the sort of man you set to spy on your closest allies because you can be sure he won’t need to know why. Some of this amenability was supposed to have rubbed off on me, I guess.
‘Oh, let him sit up there for a while,’ said Strang easily. ‘The horse’ll throw him off soon enough.’
Hillson pursed his lips. ‘There are things you don’t and can’t know about, Palatine,’ he said, ‘unacceptable though that may seem.’
‘Sticking to the things I do know about,’ I said, ‘you arrested an English UNHCR officer called Bryan Harley and found out he’d been involved in trafficking girls from a refuge in Kosovo. Some of the girls ended up at the Vegas Lounge in Skopje.’
Say A Little Prayer (A James Palatine Novel Book 2) Page 31