Dead of Night

CHAPTER NINE

For the first few minutes I kept myself occupied, sitting on the table, checking out the scenery, looking for any movement, anything at all. But soon I got a feeling for our surroundings, out there beyond our little sanctuary. The parked Land Cruisers were behind me, hidden by tree cover, and I could see fairly well over the tops of the trees. All around the hill the slopes fell away either to a treeline or to the road. I did as Charlie instructed, raising the scope to my eyes every few minutes, feeling a bit of power in my grasp as the nightscape came alive in the green glow of the instrument.

But after a while the novelty of using the night-vision scope began to wear off, and I became conscious of how cold and hard the picnic table felt against my butt, and I felt the breeze that chilled my arms and legs. I wished that I had thought earlier of bringing up a blanket to keep myself warm, but that might have made me sleepy and I had promised Charlie that I would stay awake. No falling asleep on the job. But something else in the nether regions below my waist was demanding my attention so I got up from the table and walked down the far slope for a minute or two until I came to a low clump of bushes. I undid my pants and let loose, the stream of water arcing out into the foliage, and I felt such a sense of relief.

As I did my pants up I heard the low roar of jets flying overhead, and I looked up and saw nothing but blackness. No stars, no moon, nothing but the cloud level that prevented an extraction by helicopter. We’d been warned when we’d started that we would have few friends or allies out here in the countryside; nobody had told us that the weather would be against us as well.

I started back up the hill, walking carefully, feeling the darkness all around me, and I wished I had brought the night-vision scope with me. But soon enough I banged my knee against the table and got back up on top. The scope came up, my hands grew colder—and then I saw movement, down there in the field, about a hundred meters or so from where I had been relieving myself.

I moved to get off the table and to go get Charlie, but hesitated. Movement, all right, there was movement. But what kind of movement?

I put the scope back up, saw shapes down there, moving around. I felt along the side of the scope and found a little knob, and by experimenting with it I learned that it was a zoom-feature control. I moved it slowly, focusing in on the group of shapes, and let out a breath as I saw it was a pack of dogs, running and chasing around. I watched them as they played, as they fought each other over something, and then the lead dog ran away with something in its jaws. It looked like a tree branch. I hoped it was a tree branch. In my neighborhood in Toronto, dogs were cheerful little critters, kept under control by their human masters. In this particular bleak district, these dogs were out on their own. And I tried to shake off the image of that dog, with something large in its jaws, remembering a story that Karen had told about her service in Rwanda, where packs of dogs would haunt the roadways and alleyways of destroyed villages, devouring and gnawing at the human bodies heaped up in bloody piles.

I dropped the night-vision scope in my lap, rubbed my hands. Another flight of jets went overhead, and I envied the pilots up there, warm and safe and secure, far away from the ground and the animals that feasted on the dead.

Once again during the night I went into the bushes for relief, knowing it was the stress of being up here, responsible for everyone, that had made my bladder overactive. The sounds kept me jumpy too—the few insects out there, the sound of night birds on the prowl—and other things as well: the growl of jets overhead, another engine of some sort—an APC? a truck?—from beyond the line of trees, and once, the far-off thump of an explosion. In some ways I was flashing back to when I was eight, not believing that my own father had forced me outside and had locked the door after me.

I checked my watch, saw that nearly three hours had passed. I was tempted to go down and wake up Charlie but he’d said he would get me when it was time. And I should let the poor guy sleep. He was right: he wasn’t some robotic Rambo, out here protecting us with only an oil change and a dusting-off every three thousand kilometers or so. I could sleep during the day, maybe, if we did get back to the motel by a different route. And Charlie? He’d been on the job, like he was all the time.

So I sat, shivering occasionally from the cold, and then I raised the night-vision scope for a scan of our neighborhood. Still nothing.

Then, when I lowered the scope one more time, I noticed a lightening of the overhead cloud cover. It seemed as though dawn was approaching. I could make out the planks of the picnic table, the thin grass cover on the ground and even the clump of bushes that I had used as a urinal. I rubbed my hands, thinking that my job was nearing its end. Charlie would probably be up soon and then I could come off the top of this damn hill and let somebody else worry about safety for a while. I didn’t much care what was for breakfast; I knew that we had enough tea and coffee for something hot to drink, and that was all I cared about.

I brought the scope up to my eyes again, and then my hands began to shake. Something was going on, down by the road. I lowered the scope, rubbed at my eyes, and then looked again. The damn light was giving me a problem, for with the approach of day the image was fading. I focused as tightly as I could without losing the definition and I wished I had thought of bringing my own photo gear up here. I moistened my dry lips and continued looking. I only had them in view for a few moments. There was a line of people walking along the side of the road. There looked to be about six or seven men and women bunched together in the middle of the column. Nothing unusual, except I could tell that the men leading the group and those following it had weapons. And the central group itself moved oddly -even in the lousy image I was getting through the scope I could tell that they were bound together. A line of prisoners, moving along in the dawn, their captors secure in the knowledge that the cloud cover was preventing any surveillance.

Damn them, damn them all.

They disappeared around a curve in the road. I lowered the scope for the last time as birds began chirping and moving about. I heard a rustle and turned to see Charlie coming up the faint trail, his assault rifle slung over his back. He was yawning but he looked good, and in his hand he had two metal cups, steaming. He came up to me, passed one over, and said, ‘How was the night?’

‘Quiet,’ I said, the cup shaking in my hands.

Charlie raised his own cup to drink and then paused. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I just saw something.’

‘Nearby?’

‘No, down there on the road. It’s gone now.’

‘What was it?’

‘It…it was…’ I paused, swallowed, conscious that no matter how upset I was it sure felt good holding that warm mug of coffee in my cold hands. ‘Damn it, Charlie, I think I just witnessed a war crime.’

Charlie nodded, sat up on the table next to me.

‘Considering where we are, that sure makes sense,’ he said. ‘Anything’s possible in the dead of night.’

We went down and talked to Jean-Paul. He called in my sighting and didn’t say much else as he and Charlie looked at a map spread out over the hood of one of the Land Cruisers. There was a frightened feeling to the group that was beginning almost to ache through my bones. I remembered the first time we had gone out, a few weeks ago, and how at that time nothing would have stopped us from doing our job. Back then, if I had come down with a sighting of some prisoners being led along the roadside we would have roared out after them, no matter what. We would have depended on our brashness, on our confidence that we were on the side of right, to do what had to be done. But not this morning. Jean-Paul just called it in and stayed there by the Land Cruiser, cup of coffee at his elbow, while he and Charlie looked over our options on the map. Their conversation seemed depressing enough, so I didn’t stick around.

I yawned a couple of times and joined Miriam who was leaning against the door of the closest Toyota. She smiled at me, warming me right up. ‘You do OK?’ she asked.

‘I did,’ I said. ‘Quiet night, except for what I saw just before daybreak. A line of people, being led off. It looked like they were under armed escort.’

Miriam’s face looked white in the early morning light. ‘Does Jean-Paul know?’

‘Yep. And so does the regional office. So here we sit, all of us, while those people are being led away.’

‘We can’t do everything, Samuel. You know that.’

‘Yes, I do,’ I said, feeling an urge to yawn again. ‘But I hate it when people keep on reminding me about it. It sounds so—’

Karen came up from the trail that led to the road, buckling on her helmet with shaking fingers. ‘There’s a white van, coming up the trail. Looks like it’s full of men.’

Jean-Paul looked up from the hood of the Toyota. Charlie moved away and grabbed his binoculars and M-16. ‘Stay here,’ he commanded. We obeyed him for about a second or two and then we followed him. The van coming up the road slewed from side to side on the dirt path. It was white but, like our own vehicles, it was filthy with mud along the sides. Charlie looked back at us, shook his head in apparent amazement that none of us could follow directions, and then raised his binoculars to his eyes.

Karen stood next to Sanjay, and Peter was with Jean-Paul. Miriam was behind me and I felt an odd protective urge, making sure that I was in front of her. Karen said, ‘Who are they, Charlie? UN? Local people? Militiamen?’

Charlie lowered his binoculars and said slowly, ‘Well, none of the above. How’s about that?’

Sanjay said, ‘Is it good? Or bad? Can you tell us that?’

Charlie shrugged. ‘Up to you to decide if it’s good or bad. It’s the press, that’s who. Television.’

Which was true, we realized as the van slowed to a halt on the slope of the hill and the sliding door on one side opened up.

We came down to meet them, and the mood of our little group instantly changed. After all the dark events these past couple of days, seeing the press was a good thing. It meant contact with someone from the civilized outside, someone who wouldn’t take a shot at us because we were the wrong religion, ethnicity, political party—or because we were from the UN. We soon learned that the television crew consisted of an older cameraman, a female producer and a polished young man who was apparently the ‘talent’. On the windshield and side windows of the van the words AUSSIE TV were displayed with letters made from masking tape, and even the radio antenna flew a small Australian flag.

They seemed as short on sleep as we were, stumbling out of the van. The cameraman seemed to be in his fifties, with a thick beard and a red nose that looked like it had been rearranged a couple of times in a barroom brawl or two. He carried his camera in one beefy hand. The woman producer was about twenty years younger than the cameraman, and seemed to be the same age as the on-air talent. She had on tight blue jeans, knee-high leather boots and a thick red down vest, and she had a clipboard in her hands. The talent yawned and rubbed at the back of his head. He had on dress shoes, dark slacks and one of those thigh-length trench coats that foreign correspondents must be issued with each time they get their passport stamped. There was a flurry of introductions and though I’m bad at names—I often forget them the moment I’ve heard them—I remembered that the cameraman’s name was Mick, the woman producer was Alice and the talent was John. Alice and John started to talk to Jean-Paul and Charlie, while Mick stayed behind, scratching at his beard.

Karen said, ‘How long have you been out? Did you see anything this morning? Is it safe?’

Mick grinned at her. ‘And g’momin’ to you, luv. Let’s see. We’ve been out in this countryside for about a week now. What did we see this morning? Whole lotta nothing. Is it safe? Christ on a crutch, is anything safe in this country? Hmmm? All I know is that we’re Aussies, and so far nobody out in these woods has got a beef against Aussies.’

‘What are you doing out here?’ I asked. ‘Looking for Site A?’

Mick laughed, gestured to his two companions who were still talking loudly to Jean-Paul and Charlie. ‘Maybe they are, but you want to know a big secret? We’re lost. We’ve been lost for days, rumbling around all these deserted roads and little hamlets. Site A, Site B—who friggin’ cares? All those two care about is a good story, and we’ve had diddly these past few days. It’s like everybody either moved east or north, crossing the border. You boys and girls up to anything interesting?’

Peter, with his arms crossed against his chest, said dryly, ‘Well, we found a couple of dead cows the other day.’

I thought about what I had just done these past several hours, and the photos I had taken of those militiamen driving up to that farmhouse. I said, looking right at Peter, ‘And besides that we’ve been eating some swill, day after day, that someone claims to be food. You got anything good to eat in the van?’

I saw Miriam cover her smiling mouth with her hand as Peter’s face turned red, and then he strolled away. Sanjay said, ‘Samuel’s telling the truth. You’ve got any food in there? We’re running kind of low.’

‘Sorry, mate, all we’ve got left is oatmeal and instant coffee,’ Mick said. ‘I think we was hoping we could— Oops, time to get to work. Hold on.’

Curious, I followed Mick as he went over to the producer and the correspondent. With a practiced move, Mick tossed the camera up and balanced it on his shoulder, and like magic, Alice, the producer, passed over a wireless microphone to John who held it under Jean-Paul’s chin. The microphone had the logo of their Australian television network, ABC, on one side. John looked over to Mick and said, ‘Ready?’

‘Yep. Count off, will you?’

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Three, two, one… All right, your name, please.’

‘Jean-Paul Cloutier.’

‘Could you spell your last name, please?’

‘Certainly. C-L-O-U-T-I-E-R.’

‘Your position?’

‘Section leader, war crimes investigative unit four, United Nations Force in the United States. UNFORUS.’

By now all of us were grouped in a semicircle, watching Jean-Paul and the Australian television crew at work. The correspondent said, ‘Mister Cloutier, have you had any success in locating Site A?’

‘No, not yet,’ Jean-Paul said. ‘Though we are confident that we will be able to find this particular war-crimes site.’

‘Before the deadline in a few days, when the current batch of war criminals in the dock are due to be released from The Hague?’

‘If not us, then someone else,’ Jean-Paul said.

Beside me Sanjay hid a smirk, and even Peter shook his head in disbelief at what Jean-Paul was saying. I think we were all feeling like we were having trouble finding our asses with our hands, and here he was, making a ridiculous prediction like that. What respect I had for Jean-Paul just took a little hit—like finding out your high-school biology teacher believed in creationism.

The correspondent said, ‘What have you found so far, in this part of the country?’

Jean-Paul shrugged. ‘The aftermath of a systematic slaughter by one armed group of Americans against their unarmed neighbors, that’s what. People seized, murdered, their bodies hidden, because of who they are, because of where they had fled from. That’s what we have found. Just like other UN investigation teams, I am sure.’

‘But no hard evidence of Site A.’

‘Not yet,’ Jean-Paul said.

‘Mister Cloutier, could it be that you haven’t found Site A because the UN doesn’t want you to?’

‘Excuse me?’ Jean-Paul asked, his voice rising. ‘What do you mean by that?’

John pressed on. ‘There have been rumors that some members of UNFORUS, either through bribery or intimidation, aren’t doing quite as thorough a job as they could. That turncoats within your own organization have sabotaged the investigations. Have you heard any of these rumors?’

It looked like Jean-Paul was struggling to control his temper. ‘No.’

‘Do you have any comment on these rumors?’

‘No.’

‘Anything else you would like to add?’

‘One more thing — if you promise that it will air on your network.’

Now it was time for John to shrug. ‘I can’t promise that, but I’ll see what we can do.’

‘Fine,’ Jean-Paul said. ‘Then this is my last comment. We are here in this country to see that justice is done. That is all. We are not on any witch hunt, nor are we on any mission to undercut the legitimately elected governments of the USA and its individual member states. In fact, the President of the United States has not opposed our entry here, and in his position as Commander in Chief has ordered the US armed forces’ cooperation with the UN teams in those states affected.’

John added, ‘But you know, of course, that the President is in seclusion, at his rest area. Camp David. He’s not said a word in public for several weeks.’

Jean-Paul said, ‘I have nothing to say about the President of this country. All I can say is that we have a mandate from the UN Security Council to perform this work, and no matter the obstacles we will continue to comfort the injured, to aid the homeless, and to seek justice against those who committed these crimes. That is all.’

‘Great,’ John said, pulling the microphone away. ‘Mick? Alice?’

They both chimed in. ‘Fine, just fine.’

Mick lowered the camera and I saw Jean-Paul relax a bit. John said to Mick, ‘Little while, maybe we can do a stand-up for today. Find some burned-out school or farmhouse.’

‘Well, we’ve sure got our share of those to pick,’ Mick said. He looked up at the low-hanging clouds. ‘Wish the weather would improve, though.’

I said, ‘Us, too.’

Alice spoke up. ‘Excuse me, do you mind if we follow you for a bit? We seem to have gotten misdirected, and we’re not quite sure where we are.’

John interrupted. ‘We certainly would know our location if only you two would listen to me, if we’d taken that turn back at the crossroads.’

Alice looked slightly embarrassed, as though she didn’t like the rest of us seeing what she probably had to put up with, day after day. ‘In any event, we’d like to spend some time with you, if it’s all right. Whatever the case may be, we do appear to be, um…’

‘Lost?’ Karen asked.

Mick agreed. ‘More lost than a joey on a bender.’

Karen laughed. ‘Then good luck to you, ‘cause we’re lost as well, and we can’t seem to find our way back.’

Well, Jean-Paul seemed to bristle at that remark, and he said, ‘Come along, we have good maps. The challenge is to find equally good roads to go along with them.’

So we went back up to our little campsite where Mick produced a thin cigar, which he lit up. Karen wrinkled her nose and walked away. Mick looked at me for an explanation and I said, ‘From southern California. You know how it is. Wants a no-smoking area for everywhere, from restaurants to hilltops.’

‘Considering what’s been burning out here, I’m surprised she’d even care,’ he said. ‘You been doing this long?’

‘No, not at all,’ I said. ‘Less than a month. Does it show?’

Mick laughed, took a deep drag on his cigar. ‘Oh, yeah, it does. You look tired, a bit dirty, but you’ve still got that innocent eagerness you get on a puppy’s face. You know? Young and smooth and full of energy. No worry lines. No thousand-yard stares. Like you haven’t been out in the bush that long. No offense.’

‘You look like someone who’s been out in the bush for a very long time,’ I said.

Another drag on his cigar as he carried the camera easily enough in one hand. ‘You got that right, mate. Nearly twenty years humping this camera gear, from one bloody hot spot to the next. Africa, Fiji, South America and now here. All the time recording for posterity the unique ways men have come up with to kill other men, women and children. Car bombs, hanging, knives, rocks and every type of firearm imaginable. That’s the joy of what I do, you know. In the old times the stories of this kind of butchery were told in oral or written tales, passed down from generation to generation. All cleaned up and proper, with heroes and villains. Now here I am, with color film and sound, ready to bring it into your living room while you’re cooking dinner, reading the newspaper or scratching your dog’s arse. Not too many heroes, way too many villains. And you know what I’ve learned?’

‘A lot, I’m sure.’

‘Yeah, but here’s the important one,’ he said, pointing the stub of his cigar at me for emphasis. ‘Real living is having enough to eat, a warm and dry place to sleep, and regular bowels. Everything else is extra. They teach you that at UN school?’

‘Didn’t teach us much at UN school,’ I said. ‘Wasn’t much of a school.’

Now Jean-Paul was in a huddle with Charlie, Peter and the two Australians, John and Alice.

Mick said, ‘The hell you say.’

‘The hell I do, I guess,’ I said. ‘The UN expected you to come along with your own set of skills, and so here I am.’

‘What kind of skills? Investigator? Pathologist?’

‘Journalist.’

This made Mick laugh so hard that I thought cigar smoke was going to come out of his ears. ‘Go on, you’re pulling my leg. A reporter? Where?’

‘In Toronto. For the Star.’

‘What kind of stories?’

I wished I could have said politics, or courts, or even the crime beat. But Mick seemed to be a guy who had a sensitive bullshit detector built in.

‘Feature stories,’ I said. ‘Human-interest stuff. What they call soft news.’

This brought forth another burst of laughter. On this remote hilltop and considering everything I’d seen so far, what I’d just said sounded so ridiculous that I joined in, laughing with him. Mick paused and said, ‘Then what the hell are you doing out here? Writing cheery stories for the papers back home?’

‘Nope, doing something like you folks are,’ I said. ‘Recording what’s happening for posterity—except this posterity is at The Hague.’

‘Oh, got it now. Documenting war crimes.’

‘Yep.’

Mick shook his head, just as Jean-Paul and the group broke up. ‘Tell you what, mate, I could have saved you lots of time. Tape library I got back home shows the same thing. The orphans, the burned homes, the corpses decaying in fields. All you had to do was borrow the tapes and just change the captions. That’s all. Would have saved you lots of time.’

I started walking away, to where Peter and Miriam were waiting for me, up by one of the Land Cruisers. ‘Thanks for the offer, but I prefer to see it first-hand.’

Mick tossed his cigar away. ‘If I see you in a month, I’ll see if you’ve changed your mind.’

‘Deal,’ I said.