“That’s true,” said Lionel.
“And anyway,” said Vauthier, “I didn’t want him to go to jail.”
“And why not?”
“Because I’d rather deal with him myself.”
There was a long silence. The low-angled, straw-colored sunlight made the patches of snow stand out against the muddy black earth. Lionel, leaning over the bluish flame of the camping stove, glanced at Alex and saw that he was dozing again, lying on one elbow, still drowsy from the drug Marc had given him.
“Exactly,” said Lionel, shrugging his shoulders, “We’ll deal with him ourselves. And what do you propose, can you tell me that?”
“We’ll start by fixing the truck, no rush. I’m sure we’ll find a farm somewhere nearby where they have a pump or a compressor.”
Then he added, more quietly, “For the rest, don’t worry: they’ll get what they deserve. And it would be better if we’re not around when it happens.”
“What have you drummed up for them?” asked Lionel.
Vauthier pulled his brand-new fur-lined jacket closer around him. Pointing to Alex with his chin, he gave Lionel a knowing wink, as if to advise caution.
“This is a dangerous region,” he continued in a low voice. “You saw, yesterday. The paramilitaries are out of control, there are gangs of killers roaming around. They can do plenty of damage.”
“You mean . . . they’re going to run into guys like that?” said Lionel with a start. “How do you know?”
“Just an intuition.”
Vauthier took a beanie out of his pocket to cover his bald head. Lionel was livid.
“Don’t tell me you’ve taken a contract out on them . . . ”
Vauthier didn’t answer. He smiled, his expression smug, cruel. He clearly had no intention of saying anything more, and Lionel didn’t insist. The prospect of being accessory to a murder frightened him. At the same time, if that was the way things were meant to happen, he couldn’t help but feel a real pleasure. Basically, he liked the idea of revenge, provided he didn’t have to be responsible. Vauthier did not have such scruples.
At that moment, looking at the big ginger man with his darting little eyes, Lionel almost liked him.
2
They were taking turns driving, and Maud had been at the wheel for three hours. Now she was back in the passenger seat and was supposed to get some sleep. But she was too restless to doze off.
“How long will it take us to get to Kakanj?”
“We’re not going to Kakanj.”
“Oh! Then where are we going?”
“Where they’re expecting us.”
Coming from anyone else, an answer like this would have exasperated her. She hated it when people wouldn’t give her a straight answer, as if she were not deserving of serious information. But she was beginning to know Marc. He never ventured anything more than what he’d been asked. It was probably the result of his military upbringing. If you wanted to know more, you just had to ask him more.
“Who is expecting us, and where?”
He took his left hand off the wheel and rubbed his eyes. It was the only sign of fatigue he allowed himself. He also made this gesture when he was about to speak at length. Which meant he didn’t do it often.
“What exactly did Alex tell you about Kakanj?”
Clearly the point of this question was to determine where he should begin his story, in hopes he could say as little as possible.
“He told me about his girlfriend, Bouba. And he told me you often went to see the Croats who were surrounding the camp.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes, more or less. I won’t hide the fact that I was surprised by what he told me. Apparently they’re real bastards. They throw stones at the refugees when they get near the barbed wire.”
Marc waited until he’d negotiated a long downhill bend to start speaking again.
“There are bastards on every side. Have you never been to a country at war before?”
“Never.”
“That’s just what it is, civil war: the triumph of the bastards. You see them coming out of the woodwork. You’re even surprised there are so many and that you don’t take any more notice of them than usual.”
Maud nodded. She had no trouble seeing the bastards. She saw them in every milieu and every circumstance; she could unmask them in spite of their disguise. Basically, she thought, maybe she’d always seen the world as if it were at war.
“But that doesn’t matter,” said Marc. “Bastards are a product of the war, not the cause. Most of the time those who are really responsible, the ones who unleash the violence and trigger the conflict, are very decent people. Sincere, generous, educated people. Anyway, never mind. That’s not the topic.”
“It’s still not a reason to get all cozy with a bunch of bastards.”
“The Croats surrounding Kakanj are not all bastards.”
Maud did not seem very convinced.
“Well, that may be, but Alex told me what they did to Bouba’s family . . . ”
“Of course. As soon as the war started, all the frustrated, jealous neighbors or perverts went berserk. But they’re not the only ones fighting.”
The clear sky of morning had yielded to thick black clouds, and banks of fog enveloped the road as the valley rose and fell. Marc did not slow down in the fog but he was more cautious: two or three times they had almost crashed into horse-drawn carts emerging from the mist at the last minute.
“I knew them pretty well, those refugees at the mine, and I have to say I liked them. It wasn’t hard, after all. They were defenseless people, women and children, victims. With all due respect to your humanitarian friends, anyone is capable of liking a victim.”
Maud could have argued the point. She wondered whether humanitarians—Lionel for example—really did like the victims, or whether it was simply the idea of being able to help victims that they liked, for it gave them a feeling of superiority. But that was a different question.
“In any case,” said Marc, “it’s another matter altogether, and a lot harder, when it comes to liking combatants—people who are on their feet, who are fighting, not holding out their hands to be fed.”
He turned to her for a moment and smiled. It was a serious smile, rather sad, and she got the impression it wasn’t really meant for her.
“It’s true, I did make a few good friends among the Croats. All sorts of guys. Simple soldiers, in particular, guys who were fighting even when they didn’t really want to, and who didn’t hate anyone.”
“They aren’t obliged to fight, in that case.”
“You know, when your country collapses, you don’t have a choice. You defend your land. You protect your loved ones. That’s hard for us to imagine.”
“Maybe.”
“Those basic soldiers are not the most interesting. In general, they don’t really know what’s happening. They just know what’s going on around them, that’s all, and they obey orders. But there are also people who see the bigger picture.”
“Real soldiers, is that what you mean?”
Maud smiled as she spoke. But Marc had not grasped her irony.
“Not necessarily. Not at all, even. In fact, it’s a makeshift army. Most of the men fighting are not career soldiers. I made friends with a doctor and an architect. They wore stripes so they’d look like real officers. But they were first and foremost civilians.”
“What was their role?”
“The doctor was called Filipović. He was a cardiologist from Banja Luka. At the beginning of the war, when the Serbs were bombarding Vukovar, he went there as a doctor. But very quickly he took up arms. After two months he was a colonel. When I met him he was commander for the Kakanj sector.”
“And the architect?”
“He’s a younger guy, not even thirty-five. His name is Martić.
He had just gotten his degree when the war broke out. He was from Mostar. He managed to escape when the Muslims were ‘cleansing’ his neighborhood. In Kakanj he became head gunner. As he put it, he was now in charge of destroying houses instead of building them. But I still got the impression he knew what he was talking about . . . ”
Marc glanced at Maud with a faint smile on his lips. He was not without a sense of humor, she thought. But it was black humor, always focused on death and destruction.
She waited for him to go on with his story but he slammed on the brakes. He fell silent and peered into the fog, leaning forward, looking worried.
“What’s that, up ahead?” he said.
They had not seen any checkpoints since they had left the others behind. That might have been normal, because the region was a confused patchwork of enclaves. Perhaps they had crossed an unmanned border, but that was unlikely. In any case, they had to be very careful: in the thickening mist, they might suddenly come upon a checkpoint without warning.
A few hundred yards in front of them there were dark shapes blocking the road. From a distance, however, it didn’t look like a checkpoint. It looked rather like a convoy that was stopped, with men moving all around it.
“They don’t seem to be moving forward,” said Maud. “Do you think they saw us?”
Marc switched off the engine and pulled the handbrake. They were hidden by a curtain of trees, and with the fog, the people on the road had surely not seen them. They just had to hope they had not heard them coming. Marc was thinking fast. It actually looked like some sort of ambush. But who’d set it up? It was unlikely that Lionel and the others could have already alerted the UN. They’d been nowhere near any bases when they’d made their escape. But of course it could always be a coincidence. A UN convoy might have gone by their last camp and reported their flight to all units, thanks to their radio network. Unless it was something else, thought Marc. And in that case, the possibilities were bound to be unpleasant . . .
Just as Vauthier had supposed, they had no difficulty finding a nearby farm. Exceptionally, the farmer had not gone off to fight, because he lived alone. The farm would be lost without him there to look after it. He came himself to reinflate the tire with an electric pump that worked off a battery. Then they took the time to get dressed and put away the tents and the kitchen utensils. Now they were driving down a road that was almost perfectly straight, bordered by bare alder trees. Lionel, at the wheel, was rehashing rap couplets in a muted voice. Vauthier was sitting very calmly on the right-hand side of the front seat. Alex had not yet eliminated all the sedative, and was asleep on the bunk in the back.
“Tell me something, Vauthier. Those agent friends of yours you met in town the other day: are you working for them?”
“You might say that, yes.”
“So you didn’t volunteer at La Tête d’Or just to go sightseeing.”
“Not at all.”
“So you’ve been spying on us.”
“Absolutely not.”
There was no reproof in Lionel’s tone. He was increasingly grateful to Vauthier for having rescued the situation. What he felt now was curiosity bordering on fascination.
“You weren’t spying on us?”
“No.”
“I confess I find that hard to understand.”
“And yet it’s simple. My agent friends, as you call them, needed to be informed about what is happening here: combat zones, opposing armies, front lines. That’s why they entrusted me with this mission. In a convoy like this, we’re on the move, we go through regions where no one else goes, and we can talk freely with everyone. That’s why I came with you. It certainly wasn’t to indulge an interest in your pimply little teenage dramas.”
Lionel didn’t like knowing his convoy was being watched by Intelligence. At the same time, he was rather flattered by the fact that Vauthier trusted him enough to speak openly. In any case, he felt he was on his side now.
“Obviously, when I realized those two former soldiers had infiltrated your mission, I had to inform my superiors as well. And it’s a good job I did: that way, they were able to do some cross-checking and find out what that son of a bitch was up to.”
Behind them, Alex gave a grunt as he tried to sit up. His hair was disheveled and he was rubbing his eyes. When Vauthier saw he was awake, he fell silent. He played with his earring and his little eyes squinted slightly, as they did whenever he was angry.
3
They were still stopped, and the fog around them was getting thicker. Or perhaps it was simply that night was beginning to fall. In any case, it was getting harder and harder to see. Marc did not switch on the headlights, and before long they were in the dark.
“Do you think they saw us?” asked Maud.
“They would have come over.”
“If it’s a checkpoint, it’s dangerous to hide just next to it, isn’t it?”
“I don’t think it’s a checkpoint.”
“Why not?”
Her questions clearly annoyed Marc. He was concentrating, trying to find a solution. The shapes on the road in the distance had not moved. What was more worrying was that they had not turned on their headlights either, even though it was totally dark now. Marc opened his door and stepped out onto the road. It was not wide enough for the truck to turn around without making several maneuvers, particularly as it did not turn on a dime. The ditches on either side were full of brushwood. Marc tested the ditch, cautiously advancing one leg. It was very deep, and if a wheel got stuck in there, there would be no getting back out. He walked a short distance behind them to see whether there was not a way into a field, or a wider stretch of road. But he didn’t find anything. He came back to the truck and climbed onto his seat.
“So,” said Maud, “what do we do?”
She was afraid now, and Marc’s presence had two opposite effects on her. He was the one who had given rise to her alarm. In a way, it was his fear that she was feeling. At the same time, his very presence reassured her. She would leave it up to him to decide what to do.
“You get behind the wheel and I’ll push the truck in reverse. The road slopes gently and the ground is fairly even. I should be able to get it rolling. Keep your door open, and try to keep an eye on where you’re going. There are ditches on either side. If I see you’re starting to veer off, I’ll bang on the hood.”
Maud slid over to the driver’s seat. In the dark she bumped into Marc, who hadn’t gotten out yet. She couldn’t help herself, she reached up and grabbed him by the neck. She couldn’t see his face and she groped to find his lips. They were still pressed hard, the way they were when he had his daytime face. But at the contact of her lips, she felt them part, and they kissed for a long time. In the moonless night, with the creeping cold and danger, their embrace was like a refuge, a denial of the world. Maud did not want it to end, and a deeper, more complete desire came over her. But Marc pushed her away and got out onto the road.
It took her a long time to regain her composure.
“Let’s go,” he said.
She removed the handbrake, made sure at the gear was in neutral, then, leaning outside with her hands on the wheel, she got ready. The dark pavement was hardly any lighter than the shoulder of the road on either side.
“Whenever you’re ready.”
She could tell Marc had arched his back and was pushing with all his might, because she heard him grunting. At one point he let go and exhaled noisily. The truck hadn’t budged.
“Let’s try again,” he said.
She gave a new signal. He began pushing. This time, she got the impression that the truck reversed slightly, but then it rolled forward again.
“I have to clear the wheels. One of them must be stuck in a rut.”
She heard him go around the truck and scratch at the ground.
They tried again four times, to no avail. Marc climbed ba
ck into the truck. Maud sensed he was thinking hard, and she didn’t ask any questions. A moment later, there seemed be an odd quality to the silence. And she realized there were snowflakes on the windshield.
They both had the same thought: if it snowed long enough, it would muffle any sound. It might even cover their tracks. The men up there in the distance must have gotten into their cars for shelter. Any outside noise would not be easy to hear. Maud and Marc waited for a long time. The snow went on falling. The terrain was beginning to take on a pale hue and they could tell the light ground from the dark sky. Marc got out, walked around the truck, and Maud gave him her seat at the wheel. He turned the starter. The diesel started up on the second try.
Not wasting a moment, he put it into reverse and began going back. By braking intermittently, he could use the dim glow from the brake lights as a guide. Slowly, smoothly, he managed to back up about a hundred yards. At that point, the truck would no longer be visible to the men waiting in ambush. Marc switched on the headlights. A very muddy, narrow forest track led off to the left. The snow had collected on the fir trees on either side, but had not yet covered the ground. Marc drove up the track. Thirty or forty yards higher up, the track stopped in a clearing. There were long piles of carefully stacked logs, waiting to be loaded. Marc parked the truck next to one of the stacks. Then he switched off the ignition.
“Are we going to spend the night here?”
“Yes. Tomorrow I’ll go and see if the roadblock is still there.”
The damp chill had permeated the cab. There was no electric heating in that truck, and no bunk, either.
“What shall we do? Shall we put up the tent?”
“It would be better to stay in the cab. In case anything happens . . . ”
Maud took out a second fleece and put it on. She unzipped her sleeping bag and used it as a blanket.
“Lie down on the seat,” he said.
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