‘It wasn’t just one setback, though. It was Naomi, too.’
Ana nodded, looking softer than Amber had seen her before. ‘And when that Ustaše tried to . . . hurt you.’ Ana was blunt about most matters, but on the subject of the rape she had been guarded.
Amber looked at the ground.
‘You are more than I thought at first.’ Ana touched Amber on the shoulder, looking more serious. ‘What happened to you was dreadful.’
‘If Stimmer hadn’t saved me . . .’ She swallowed.
‘That German had his uses. Some men have their limits, some sense of decency. I suppose that should give us hope. But most of them find . . . these things hard to discuss. Easy to carry out, perhaps, but when it’s their own wife or daughter, that’s different.’ Ana shrugged. ‘When you go back to England, I would not tell any man you are fond of what the Ustaše tried to do to you.’
Amber looked at her enquiringly.
‘I can tell there is a man.’ Ana nodded at her pocket. ‘You barely smoke, but you carry that lighter everywhere, and you take it out of your pocket and stare at it sometimes with this dreamy look on your face.’ Amber blushed. ‘Someone you care for gave it to you, didn’t they?’
She nodded.
‘It will be hard for you to tell him what happened. The history of the Balkans has been centuries of occupation and rape by invading armies. In the twentieth century you’d hope that would change. But this war stirred up old barbarities.’ Her voice had dropped to a near murmur.
Rape was something Amber had only rarely heard discussed at home. Occasionally, there would be a newspaper article about a man arrested or brought to court, but couched in vague terms. Amber could not remember ever discussing the subject with either of her parents and only very rarely with her friends.
‘Of course it may be different in England, but . . .’ Ana stopped, turning her head, listening to the sound of a horse approaching.
It was a boy of about eleven on a small, skinny pony. He dismounted and handed Ana a scrap of paper.
‘Miko,’ she said, peering at it. ‘He must have guessed we’d still be here.’ The scrawled letters on the scrap looked loose and badly formed. When she lifted her head, an expression Amber had never seen before, not even up in the mountains, had washed over her face. Fear.
Amber’s mouth opened to ask the question. Ana cut her short with a shake of the head. ‘Not dead. But a gunshot here.’ She placed a hand on her own lower stomach. ‘He seems in too much pain to write clearly, but says they can’t remove the bullet. If it isn’t done speedily . . .’ she looked away but not before Amber could see her expression.
Miko would die. Amber pictured a Chetnik field hospital, dirty bandages, lack of anaesthetic. Ana was an experienced field surgeon. She had told Amber of the operations she had performed, of how the doctor who’d sheltered Naomi had trained her in surgery in Belgrade.
‘They’re taking him to a proper hospital in a town, but who knows whether there are still any decent doctors left.’ She stood up, paper in hand, frowning. The boy was waiting for an answer, the pony grazing the grass. ‘I was one of the best surgery students in my year. I could remove that bullet safely and meet you back at Branko’s without anyone needing to know where I’d been.’ There was a question, a plea, in her eyes. ‘It’s nearly two days’ walk north, much less if I can borrow that pony. A day, perhaps two, to treat Miko. Then four days to get back to Branko’s unit again. A week altogether, at the outside.’
‘What would I tell Branko?’
‘The truth.’ She lifted her head and the worry in her eyes turned to cold pride. ‘I have never lied to my sons.’
‘But you’re injured yourself, you can’t even light your own cigarette—’
‘I’d manage if you weren’t here.’
‘Well enough to operate? Can you really remove a bullet one-handed?’
‘I’ll rest the hand while I ride. And I can direct others if I can’t use both of my hands by the time I’ve got there.’
Ana would be saving the life of her son, but healing an enemy soldier, enabling him to return to the fight. And if Amber let her go she would be assisting her in this deed. Amber dropped her head. ‘I can’t stop you.’
‘No. But you can say you understand, Amber.’
‘Do you mind whether I do or not?’
‘When you first arrived I wouldn’t have cared. I do now.’
Amber lifted her head, looked the older woman in the eye. ‘You know what they’ll call you? A traitor.’
Ana nodded.
‘If you can deal with that, then go. Miko helped us find the servicemen. He warned us about that man prowling around on the border.’ She swallowed. ‘And he is your son.’
For a moment longer they maintained eye contact. Ana called the boy back and told him that there would be food and money for him in return for the pony, an exchange accepted with enthusiasm. ‘What if you come across Ustaše?’ Amber asked.
‘I will travel quietly by tracks they do not know well.’
Amber remembered the near-confrontation with Miko’s group, how she, Ana and Stimmer had jumped behind the bushes to hide. But they hadn’t fooled Miko. ‘But if you do run into them, how will you defend yourself?’ In her mind’s eye she could see Ana dropping the reins from her good hand, struggling to extract the Walther from her holster. ‘Take a rifle.’ Even more cumbersome to use in a hurry, but it would give Ana the ability to defend herself from a distance. ‘So how exactly do I present this to Branko?’ Amber was already dreading the conversation.
‘Tell him I swore I would come to him or his brother if they needed me. I will return to the unit as quickly as I can. If Branko wants to punish me by firing a bullet into my head, he must do so then.’ She strode off towards the farmhouse, presumably to grab her rucksack. ‘I will be back to help you find airmen and get them safely out of this country. I am a Partisan, Amber. I know my duty. Expect me at Branko’s.’ She waved the bandaged hand at Amber.
Expect me at Branko’s. No more of a farewell than that.
‘But a week passed and she never turned up,’ I tell Dr Rosenstein. ‘I returned to her Partisan son’s group and gave him the message from his mother.’ I’m still choosing my words with care so that I don’t give away the details. ‘He was furious, calling her a traitor. The camp had a new member: a commissar, a political leader who kept an eye on the Partisans and made sure they towed the Communist line. Everyone feared the commissar might report back on them for any perceived lapses in ideology.’
‘I hear a weariness in your tone,’ Dr Rosenstein says.
‘Even in the height of war they squabbled about what was or wasn’t doctrinally correct. I couldn’t understand why it mattered so much. I could see Robert’s point when he said . . .’
‘Said what?’
‘I’m trying to remember. Something about how the Chetnik cause was probably closer to ultimate British interests. That was later on, though.’ I was standing next to Branko, facing the men and women of his unit, feeling sympathy for him as, shoulders back, chin jutting forward, he explained to them what had happened to Ana. He used the form of words he and I had agreed, one we hoped would be not entirely untruthful if anyone decided to look into it, but which left out the salient details of exactly whom Ana was treating.
‘My mother was treating a wounded POW and now finds herself the wrong side of the lines.’ Branko stood facing the commissar and others, not a hint of his anger showing. Clearly one member of Ana’s family didn’t share her belief in always telling the truth. ‘She will return soon.’
‘What about the wounded here, waiting for treatment?’ the commissar asked.
‘My mother trained others in her work. They are skilled and will continue to provide treatment.’
In private with Amber, however, Branko’s anger had surged out. ‘My mother has brought shame upon herself,’ he told her. ‘Conspiring with that traitor brother of mine. Obviously I couldn’t tell the others what she
’s been doing. Perhaps I should.’
‘Before you do, bear in mind Miko helped us find those POWs and airmen. He showed us where the old landing strip was, he—’
‘Don’t try and convince me that I should be proud of him.’ Amber had not seen Branko like this before. ‘He has led our mother to abandon her duty here.’
‘She’s going to come back.’
‘How could she consort with that despicable Miko?’
‘Branko, your brother wants the Germans gone, too.’
‘The consequences of the Chetniks’ actions will not be limited to the length of this war.’ There was a coldness in his tone. ‘They will not be forgotten or forgiven. Tito himself promises a reckoning.’
‘He’s your brother,’ she hissed.
‘He’s your enemy as well as mine, as your Mr Churchill would agree. Anyone who opposes the Partisans is a traitor. The correct way to deal with traitors is death.’
The commissar, a thin man in his early thirties with pince-nez spectacles, was walking back towards them. Branko opened a map. ‘We should discuss other matters. Drop sites for more supplies. You’re signalling Cairo?’
‘The transmission’s scheduled for tonight.’
Amber continued with her work, sending signals that enabled two further drops of supplies. Samuel and Daniel returned from an expedition east to the Bosnian border, bringing with them four downed American airmen. Amber shared with them the news of Naomi and sat with them while they lowered their heads in silence.
‘She was young,’ Samuel said. ‘Just a girl, really, living in safety in Palestine, in the countryside.’
‘She liked looking after the poultry,’ Daniel said. ‘Checking on the hens and collecting the eggs. I remember her coming inside with the baskets, smiling like a child. She chose to come out here of her own free will. But for what?’ Daniel scuffed at the dirt with the toe of his boot. ‘Her death was a waste.’
‘It was more than that.’ Samuel sounded furious. ‘It was a murder, a betrayal.’ He turned to Amber. ‘You say there was a foreigner in the hills near the village, and you think he was involved with this?’
She nodded.
‘When you are debriefed in England you must tell them everything, Amber. You must make sure they find out more about this man. If he is involved, he must be punished. Do you promise?’
‘I’ve already told them. But I will tell them again.’ A man of heavy build. A man who’d made her feel somehow queasy. How to explain that sensation? ‘I promise.’
Amber escorted the four Americans to the coast, returning to Branko for a final few days, by which time Daniel and Samuel had disappeared into the interior for another expedition.
Ana was still absent. ‘We have heard nothing from my mother.’ Branko frowned as they sat by a stream, talking in low voices for fear of the commissar’s long ears. ‘I fear that she may not be able to leave the Chetniks now.’ His anger seemed to have transformed into concern. ‘They may have conscripted her.’
Experienced medics were always at a premium. Presumably Ana had spun some story about being a non-combatant civilian so that they wouldn’t shoot her on arrival, but they’d be suspicious, perhaps keeping her under guard while demanding that she treated their wounded. Assuming she hadn’t fallen into the hands of the Ustaše before she’d even reached Miko.
It was approaching midsummer now. Wildflowers bloomed in the fields and the mountains to the north and west had softened their outlines to a bluey-green. Branko and his group had pushed north, beyond the drop site where Amber had landed in March. He had regained territory and more. Something in his attitude towards her was softening now, too. The arrival of more weapons and medicine in the two drops had probably helped with that. The commissar himself had not scowled at Amber when she’d returned and something almost approaching approval had registered in his spectacled gaze. Word had come of a great landing of men on the Normandy coast, which also lightened the atmosphere.
‘We Partisans are tough, Amber.’ Branko adopted what she thought of as his poster-Partisan pose: chin out, chest up. ‘We will do anything for our comrades. It doesn’t matter whether you are a Croat, Serb or Bosnian, you can be a Partisan. This war will end. We will be one nation together.’ He spoke with such passion that the poster-Partisan mask slipped for a moment and she saw him as a young man only a little older than she was.
‘So much blood has been spilled,’ she said.
‘It hasn’t been in vain. These terrible years can never be repeated.’
For his sake, for Ana’s, she prayed he would be proved right.
Finally, another Lysander landed to pick up both Amber and a POW who’d escaped from Slovenia. She stood with Branko on the landing strip and watched the Partisans light the oil lamps, listening out queasily for the sounds of approaching Stukas. ‘We didn’t do so badly,’ Branko said. ‘You flew out your airmen and you arranged the drops for us. Those Brens and bullets, the boots and the food, they’ve helped us fight.’ There was something approaching approval in his voice. ‘Your operation was a success, Amber.’ He put out his hand to shake hers, despite the presence of the commissar, who seemed to frown on conventional signs of politeness.
The roar of the approaching Lysander seemed to further embolden Branko. ‘I’m going to send someone north to look for my mother,’ he said. ‘You’re right. If she’s been sucked into my brother’s little world of chocolate soldiers-turned-Fascists, she’s in danger.’
For a second their eyes met. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure the commissar was out of earshot. ‘We were close as boys. When the war ends I must find him, make sure he is safe. In time he will see I chose the right side and he the wrong.’
By Branko’s standards this was forgiveness of a high order.
‘Together we will inspire the workers of Italy and Hungary and Bulgaria with our example. Perhaps even the workers in Germany.’ His eyes shone with the fervour they took on whenever the revolution to come was discussed. ‘There’ll be no more war because brother will not fight brother.’
The plane bumped towards them, interrupting Branko before he could continue with one of his set-piece addresses. Amber scooped up a handful of Croatian soil. She removed her beret and placed the soil inside it, carefully folding the beret and placing it in her jacket pocket. ‘Goodbye, Branko,’ she said. ‘Thank you for looking after me. And for agreeing to take Stimmer prisoner. I’m sorry we couldn’t get him to Cairo.’
‘You didn’t have to come here, Amber. You and Naomi could have stayed out of this fight. It is so dangerous – deadly, sometimes.’
Did he just mean Naomi, or had rumours of her own ordeal been passed on to him? She couldn’t imagine how; she’d told him about her brief capture by the Ustaše officers but omitted the details. Perhaps there was something different in her face. Their eyes locked. Branko resembled his mother and brother more than she had realised. She wondered if the three of them would ever be reunited.
And then he was gone, vanishing into the shadows.
‘You came to like Branko by the end?’ Dr Rosenstein asks.
I nod. ‘I always respected him: he was a good leader and honest. He could bore on about Communism, but he sincerely thought that the country would be better off if Tito took power.’
‘Maybe it was more than that? You perhaps admired him for not being able to wash his hands of his mother and even his brother, despite his fervent beliefs?’
It’s true. Branko’s more human side had moved me. Perhaps Robert’s training hadn’t entirely taken, after all, and I was still responding as one human being to another, without a filter, just as I had to Miko earlier on. Very dangerous in wartime.
‘And so you said farewell to your operation with some sense of having made a difference?’
I think about it for a moment. And then I nod.
They flew Amber to Bari. Allied advances in the southern Mediterranean meant that SOE operations had relocated north to Italy. Had Stimmer survived he would h
ave been one of the last to be interrogated in Cairo.
When the plane landed, a colleague of Robert’s, a man Amber did not recognise, was standing at the edge of the runway to offer hot food, a warm shower and a bed for the night, and then a morning flight to England. ‘You’ll be debriefed in Blighty,’ the SOE man told her. ‘We have your parents’ address and telephone number in Shropshire. Expect a call.’
14
June 1947
‘I was back in England before my mind caught up with the rest of me,’ I tell Dr Rosenstein. ‘The plane from Bari landed to the south of London; for what they termed operational reasons, nobody seemed able to tell me quite where we were flying.’ Probably because resources were stretched as a result of the Normandy landings.
‘It was cloudy and grey. Nobody was expecting me, and no transport was laid on. I had to find a mechanic to tell me exactly where I was and borrow some money from the aerodrome petty-cash box to catch a bus into London and then a train on to Shropshire.’
‘A cold welcome,’ Dr Rosenstein says.
‘Well, I was safe. On home territory. Nobody was going to shoot or . . . assault me.’ I pause. ‘I couldn’t help thinking that the Partisans would have managed a reception committee and some slivovitz. I had to make do with waiting an hour and a half in the rain for the bus and then sitting in a smelly third-class train carriage with a reconstituted egg sandwich.’ I smile. ‘Grumpy and ungrateful, I know.’
‘Interesting that you can see yourself objectively and with humour.’
Is humour a bad thing to deploy in examining one’s history? Perhaps Dr Rosenstein thinks I’m using it to distract or deceive myself, that I’m not taking myself seriously because I’m scared of what I’ll find.
She leans forward. ‘How did it feel, re-entering civilian life?’
I felt as though I was slipping down a fissure between two personae. ‘Everyone expected me to be Maud again. I couldn’t tell them, my parents, friends, anyone that I had been someone called Amber who had done . . . those things. In those places. They thought I’d been out in Cairo, doing Signals work, in the sunshine. While they’d all been struggling on with more air-raids and rationing.’
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