Heart of Danger

Twelve.

Penn woke, no dreams, deep sleep.

Could recognize nothing. Blinked to get the light into his eyes. Tried to focus. Did not know where he was… It came fast… He kicked back the blanket. He felt the damp in his hip joints and his shoulders and the ache from the rough ground, and was hell's thankful for the hotel's blanket. The smell caught at him. Penn remembered…

The sun threw a long shaft into the recess of the cave. He wondered if she had been there all night, if she had slept, if she had stayed in the crouched posture against the inner wall of the cave. The cave, big in the small light of the Headmaster's torch, seemed shrunken, little more than a cleft. He yawned, stretched. He smiled at her and won back no acceptance of his presence. He tried to smile warmth.

He looked hard at her.

There was little to see of her because there was a shawl of torn cloth across the crown of her head that covered also her ears and her throat. What he could see of the face was a mosaic of age lines, weathered and grimed. Small hands, without spare flesh, were clasped rigidly on her lap, and he saw the deep-set dirt as if they were painted with it. She wore a long dress of black cloth that shrouded her and the cloth had the stale dankness of the cave. Over her dress, open to the waist, was a big overcoat, too large for her sparrow size, and Penn thought it might have been her husband's, and there was a knotted string holding it to her waist. Her short legs were extended in front of her and her stockings, heavy grey wool, were shredded at the knee and her feet were in small-sized rubber boots that came half of the way up her shins. It seemed to Penn as if the shawl and the dress and the coat and the stockings and the rubber boots were moulded to her body… Did she have other clothes? Did she change the clothes? Did she go to a stream and strip and wash?… He was wondering how long it had been since she had changed her clothes, washed herself. In his mind he made small markers. Had she changed or washed since his little Tom had been born? Washed or changed since the acid session with Gary bloody Bren-nard (Personnel)? Changed or washed since he had last laid up rough, through a night, in the undergrowth beside the Network South-East rail track when they were watching the lock-up garage for the Irishman? Washed or changed since the battle for Rosenovici and the death by a sniper's aim of her husband, and her flight to the woods, the cave? His Jane showered in the morning and in the evening. His mother stood in the kitchen of the tied cottage and stripped to the waist, and didn't care if her kiddie had seen her, and soaped herself. He made the markers and wondered if she had ever washed or changed since she had come to the cave.

He tried to smile across the cave floor. Would she come back with him?

Katica Dubelj was the eyewitness. Would she come back to Zagreb and make the statement?

Had she the strength to go back with him, across country?

Penn smiled and he gazed into the dead animal eyes of the old woman. He did not think she had the strength… They had no language that was common to them. He pulled his backpack round from its pillow position and when he made the movement she cringed back against the cave wall as if seeking a cranny where she could hide from him. When the Headmaster returned then they would make a statement and the Headmaster would write the story of the eyewitness, and she would make her mark as authenticity. She did not have the strength to go back with him, across country. He had given ham for the cat and sandwiches for the dogs, he was down on his food stock. There were bread rolls in the backpack and there was cheese, and the opened packet of ham, and there was an orange… Penn split a roll open and he laid a piece of cheese in the roll and then peeled off a slice of the ham and laid it with the cheese. He crawled towards her across the cave floor and he held the roll of dried-out bread in front of him. She could go no further back, and he came close to her, until her hand, the bony, filthy claw, darted forward to snatch the food from him. Christ, and she had no teeth… She tore at the roll, broke it into pieces and wolfed the pieces. She could not chew them down, they were swallowed indigestible. When she had finished the pieces then she picked for each crumb and each fragment of the flaked bread. It was as if he fed an untamed animal. He passed the orange to her. He wondered when she had last seen an orange. Jane had orange juice on the table each morning, and it was maybe a year, maybe a year and a half, since Katica Dubelj had last seen an orange. She grabbed at the orange and her fingernails, black-coated, nicked the full flesh of his hands, and a little blood ran. She pulled the orange into pieces and stuffed them down, pith and fruit and peel, into the mouth without teeth. He saw the juice dribble from the side of her mouth and when the orange was gone she lifted the fold of her dress to her lips and licked the juice off. She had gratitude and she wanted to share. It was picked from the cave floor from amongst her bedding sacks. It was passed to him in her closed claw fist. He held out the palm of his hand and the claw fist opened… Christ, a bloody root. She scurried back to her far edge of the cave. A sucked bloody root… She watched him. It was truth, the reality of the war. He wondered how many of them there were, old people holed up in caves in the woods behind the lines, sucking roots for survival. He thought that if he sucked the bloody root then he would be sick onto the floor of the cave… They would have sucked bloody roots in caves in the glorious and pleasant land that was England a thousand years and more before, but this was civilized fucking Europe, and now… He would have the statement when the Headmaster returned, and her signature, her mark, as an eyewitness. He reached again into his backpack. Penn took out the brown paper envelope. He had the photograph of Dorrie Mowat. Penn showed the face of Dorrie Mowat, the cheeky smiling mischief challenging face, held it up. There was joy cracking the mouth of Katica Dubelj, as if the mouth had been touched by love, as he had been touched, and there was the cackle laugh of the old woman, a memory coming back to her that had been private and suppressed too long. She reached for the photograph and she took it and she kissed it. She babbled at him and he shook his head because he understood nothing of what she said. She took his hand in her tight claw fist and she led him as a child out into the sunlight falling through the high tops of the trees. She pointed down through the trunks of the trees towards the village and then gestured towards the sun and made with her small arm the arc of the sun falling. Penn thought it was the promise of Katica Dubelj that she would take him to the village when the darkness came, where the truth was, and he would have her statement. He had heard his wife's voice beyond the steel door, frightened, sent away and not arguing… The Headmaster sat on the mattress on the concrete shelf. He had heard Milan Stankovic's voice, harsh, in the guardroom beyond the steel door, state that the matter would be dealt with on his return, later

… The Headmaster sat cramped in the cell built of concrete blocks and the light came through the meshed grille at eye level in the steel door. He had heard the postman talking about his hands and his fingernails, and he did not know why the state of his hands or fingernails was important… The Headmaster sat in his damp trousers, sat huddled in his jacket, and they had taken away his tie and his belt and the laces from his shoes. He did not know what he would say when Milan Stankovic returned from his meeting, wherever he went, and his mind was too terrorized to concoct a reason for his having been alone, in darkness, soaked wet from crossing the stream's ford, in the village of Rosenovici. His mind was too confused to manufacture a story of innocence. If he had not met the Englishman… They had not brought him food, and they had not talked to him. They left him solitary to wait for the questioning of Milan Stankovic. It was an aspect of the madness that so many men, hundreds, thousands, had sat in cells throughout the beauty of their land and waited for questioning and torture. If he had not stayed so long at the cave… He did not know, could not know, how he would respond to the beating or to the knife or the burning by cigarettes. Did not know whether he could hold his silence against the pain. Could not know whether the pain of torture would prise from him the secret. If he had not hurried noisily back through the village towards the stream's ford… Benny flicked the 'speak' switch. He said gravely, "We can't all be heroes, somebody has to sit on the kerb and clap as they go by." He heard the laughter, distorted, coming back over the loudspeaker in the Seddy's cab. "That original, Benny?… Who'd you lift that off, Benny? "Nothing original about me. Will Rogers and I collaborate." "Cut it, Benny, do me the favour." He obeyed. The convoy manager had cause to be stressed up, pissed off, because the rock that had come through the side window of the Land-Rover had caught his face above the collar of the flak jacket and below the rim of his helmet. The move out of Knin had been sweet enough, 0700 departure, but the shit had started in a village just up the road from Titova Korenica with ugly women and dwarf kids lobbing rocks. The convoy manager had a bandage over his face, looked a really fine hero. Rocks in that village, and four windscreens broken. They were blocked now by mines. They were up from Slunj, almost with the whiff of the river at the Turanj crossing point in their noses, and there were mines, and four little arse holes to negotiate with. Good stuff for the hero, the convoy manager, to negotiate with. They were blocked in between a cliff face and a river, a good place to get the old head blown off. It didn't happen on every run, but happened too often, that they were messed around on the convoy route. Benny reckoned that up the road, between Slunj and Veljun, they were moving tanks, maybe artillery, and a track had gone broken or a wheel had got holed, and they weren't having a United Nations relief convoy going by and seeing what they were moving. It was difficult for him to get the bloody great pisspot on his head out of the window, but he took the trouble. Past all the lorries, past the Land-Rover, the convoy manager was in his second hour of failing, too right, to negotiate the removal of the mines from the road. Their schedule was all shot to hell. The kids with the mines, from what he could see, were drunk, and they'd a good game going. He saw the convoy manager stride back to his Land-Rover.

The voice, tight with controlled anger, was in Benny's cab.

They were going to take a minor road over towards the Bosnia border. They were going for the scenic route… for the tourist run … going up towards Glina, then would work back through Vrginmost for the Turanj crossing way behind schedule.

He sat in the Seddy's cab, snuggled in the flak jacket and with the weight of the helmet squat on his head, and hit the gears. The convoy took the fork road east, drove off the main drag, and away from the kids with their 'frag' mines, and he smiled down at them like it was a pleasure for him to be going the scenic route. And the kids loosed off their AKs into the air, as if they'd won a war and not just diverted an unarmed aid convoy.

They were laid out neatly on the bed, her new files. She had drawn the new curtains back, because she came into the room each evening and closed them. Mary Braddock sat beside the new files on the new duvet and she had kicked off her shoes onto the new carpet. The new soft toys, bears and rabbits, were on the new pillow of the bed, and the shop assistant, when Mary had bought them, had prattled to her as if she were a grandmother, and she had not contradicted the shop assistant, nor told her of obsession, or the weight of guilt. Because of the new paint and the new wallpaper it was a pretty room, and a room that was correct for a child who would grow to be a climbing star, not a horrid young woman. It was after a spring shower that had beaten on the mullioned window, and the sun shone into the pretty room.

The size of the new file was a measure to Mary of the scale of the obsession. She had read about herself in the newspapers, different name and different address, but read about parents who shared with her the obsession to know. The newspapers printed sad photographs of fathers and mothers sitting close on settees, with the picture of the dead child, the lost loved one, in the frame behind them, those who demanded to know and who had failed. She could recall the sad photographs of the stunned parents of the 'friendly fire' boys in the Gulf, of the girl in the Kenya game park, of the young man murdered in Chile's capital, of the young woman who had died in Saudi, and the sad parents all had the same refrain of confused criticism for the help they had been given. All her friends said it was obsession. She shared the file with none of them, and she did not allow her secretary, two days a week, to type the letters of which the copies went into the file. There were the copies of fourteen letters written to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office; her friends said she should close her mind to an episode better forgotten. There were four letters personally addressed to the ambassador in Zagreb; there were two letters written by hand to the President of Croatia. None of the replies were curt or brusque or rude the replies, aide-drafted, signed by the dignitaries, were bland and oozed sympathy, and were bloody useless. Her friends said that she should start again… The telephone stampeded her out of the newly decorated, newly furnished bedroom for a child. She ran for the stairs. God, please, make it the call… Penn's call… The dogs slithered with her down the stair carpet, cannoning against her legs. God, please, make it Penn's call. She snatched up the telephone in the hall. The dogs barked raucously, as if her run for the telephone was a fun game. "Charles here. Where were you? Outside? A nice morning up here in this filthy city. Sorry, darling, but it's all negative. Did I tell you, can't remember if I did…? I pushed the problem of that odious detective to Frankfurt. They've a satellite office in Munich. Their people in Munich have called up Vienna. Vienna have links into Zagreb. I got a few faxes to fly… Someone from the associate office in Zagreb actually went to the hotel, this morning

… I don't know what it means, but the bastard hasn't been in the hotel for four nights. He hasn't checked out, his account's still ticking up, but he hasn't used the hotel for four nights… They don't know where he is… I'm sorry, darling, but I did tell you what I thought of Mr. Penn…"

Mary held the phone, swayed.

"Are you still there…?"

Small voice. "Yes."

"I'll burn his bloody arse when I get to meet him, when I get his bloody bill… Darling, dinner tomorrow, can we manage two more? Push the chairs up a bit, can we? A quite hideously boring couple of guys from Utrecht, but it's an EC contract, and fat. Don't know how they'll mix with our crowd, but it shows willing. "Course you can cope, darling… Why don't you run out to Guildford, get something nice, new? See you this evening…"

She went back slowly up the stairs and tidied the file on Dome's bed.

They were a rather more cheerful crowd for him to be with than the day shift, and they did not seem to regard him as a hostile antibody inserted into Library.

And the memories seeped again over the pages, typed and handwritten, and the photographs and the worn maps. Shaken the hand of that lovely young man, Johnny Donoghue, and watched him go tired away to the entrance tunnel of the Underground train at the end of the arrivals concourse, and gone to look for the car that would run the old desk warrior back to Century House. Walked down his corridor on the eleventh floor. "Hello, Henry, have a good trip?" "Well, I wouldn't say…" Carrying the duty free towards his corner of the office. "Just one of those things, I hope you're not thinking it'll be your head on the block?" "Well, we did all we could…" Settling down into his chair. "Always a problem when you use an amateur, don't you think?" "Well, you win some and you lose some…" Brought a beaker of coffee, and sipped it, and opened his briefcase, and started out on the damned report for the file of a young man's journey through the lines, a used young man.

It was long after he would normally have cleared the desk and trudged away to the station, but the night shift's supervisor had wandered, friendly, to his desk with a mug of coffee for him. A good young fellow, and chatty, and they talked desultorily about the new world that was dangerous, and nostalgically about the old world that was comfortable. The usual son of garbage… He waited his moment, then asked.

Henry Carter requested the trawl. Didn't know what they would find if they trawled for him, didn't know if they would find anything.

He had the clearance.

He wouldn't have called the supervisor a chum, but there had been times back in the old Century House that he had shared a lunch table with him in the canteen.

The trawl had left in the net what he regarded as a prize catch.

A short memorandum at the top of a light pile of flimsies, and worthwhile him staying late because it was a catch that the day shift supervisor would never have searched for…

From: George Simpson, Security Service (Liaison), Rm C/3/47. To: Desk Head Yugoslavia (former), Rm E/2/12. Ref: GS/1/PENN.

Following regular weekly liaison meeting, I took lunch with Arnold Browne, Sec Serv, ranked senior executive officer. In confidence AB spoke of Sec Serv involvement in former Yug, using a reject freelancer. Involvement follows death in Dec 91 of Dorothy Mowat, Brit citizen, in Croatian village overrun by Serb irregulars in area now designated by UNPROFOR as Sector North. Following recovery of Mowat's body (April 93), AB recommended to deceased's family that PENN (William), formerly with Sec Serv and now private detective (exclaimer), should travel to Croatia to investigate circumstances of death. AB drops that PENN, 'dogged' and 'end of road man', will hopefully produce war crimes evidence for use in pressuring Belgrade towards peace talks negotiation which Sec Serv can on pass to FCO… Sounds like empire building, sounds like interference outside Sec Serv remit. Are we happy query.

Signed: Simpson, George.

He knew Simpson, old Georgie. Simpson, old Georgie, was the sort of man that he used to meet in the corridor, never seemed to be in a hurry, never seemed to have anything pressing, could always give him the latest cricket score. He could see Simpson, old Georgie, under-achieving and passed over and frightened witless of redundancy, wrestling not too hard on a matter told in confidence. Carter thought that so much now fell into place… A trust betrayed?… Well, Simpson's, old Georgie's, dilemma about betraying a trust hadn't gone the distance, hadn't stopped him snitching.

It was an old maxim, but true, that confidences didn't count for too much in the trade…

The Intelligence Officer fronting as Liaison had known that the opportunity would not come until the end of the meeting. At the break-up there would be coffee provided, and biscuits and juice, and the opportunity.

There was a working relationship now that civilized the meetings. Stiff, formal, but a relationship… The meetings were always in the police station at Tusilovic that was twelve kilometres into the occupied territory from the crossing point at Turanj. The relationship had prospered sufficiently for there to be a hot line from his office in Karlovac to the police station at Tusilovic, and a monthly meeting across a table. They never came to Karlovac… And it was usual, also, for the Intelligence Officer to meet Milan Stankovic at Tusilovic…

The Intelligence Officer, before permanent secondment to the military, had been chief salesman (export) for the timber factory at Karlovac. He was trained to read body language. The Serb was sullen, there had to be room for sport there.

More on the agenda concerning the electricity supply across the cease-fire line: deadlock. The sort of agenda item on which Stankovic would usually have shouted his opposition, hammered the table. The matter of the woman, Croatian-American, who had travelled from Chicago for her mother's funeral at Topusko, and been kept waiting three days in Zagreb with no permission for entry into Sector North granted, until after the burial and no explanation. The sort of matter on which Stankovic would usually have sneered contempt.

The Intelligence Officer anticipated sport.

They had been through the litany of cease-fire violations. A sentry, frozen and lone, looses off a single shot. A section, bored, responds with a mortar round. A platoon, angry, replies with an artillery piece. A company, furious, loads up an Organj multiple rocket launcher… The sort of litany on which Stankovic would usually shoot his mouth off.

There had to be good sport because Stankovic was sullen, head hanging.

The Intelligence Officer came round the table and he held the coffee cup in his hand. He eased himself onto the table, sitting casual, beside the big bowed shoulders of Milan Stankovic.

"Hello, Milan… Bit quiet today… How's Evica? My wife always tells me to ask after her… Managing, is she? I heard her school was short of books, but then you're short of everything… Must have been shit, through the winter, without the power…"

He watched the hands fidgeting and the body hunched, and the Serb's eyes avoided his own.

'… We're quite well on with the new co-operative building, out on the Ilovac road, good position and close to the Zagreb highway… Your farmers happy? You built a new co-operative? No? Well, maybe next year, maybe some time…"

There was clearly a personal burden there for the Intelligence Officer to scratch at. He probed, and sipped his coffee.

'… You know what people ask me, friends who know I come to the meetings, the ones who used to know you? What they ask is this. That Milan Stankovic, the clerk once but the big man now, what does he think his future is? I've an idea of the future, long-term, because nothing will be forgotten. What I tell my friends, the people who ask me, it may not happen in my lifetime nor in yours, the vengeance, but my son will come for your son because it will never be erased…"

He wondered if it was shame that he saw, or whether it was fear. He imagined his quiet voice as a knife between the blades of Milan Stankovic's shoulders.

'… I nearly forgot to say. I'd have kicked myself if I'd forgotten to say it. There are questions being asked about you, your name is mentioned. I suppose if you hadn't been in Belgrade then you would have been able to prevent it, but you were in Belgrade when they dug for the bodies of our wounded that were killed after Rosenovici fell. That was a mistake, you being away in Belgrade. I'm told they're filling a file on you, Milan… There was a bigger mistake…"

The Intelligence Officer was bent over Milan Stankovic. Good sport. He whispered the words into the ear of Milan Stankovic.

"Time I was getting on, time I was back in Karlovac. Not too bad there because we've got power. Please tell Evica that my wife wanted to be remembered to her… They're asking questions, filling a file. Killing the English girl, Milan, that was a serious mistake…"

They talked quietly in the guardroom. They sat away from the scratched steel door of the cell.

Branko, passing his cigarettes: "It was the same bag in the police jeep… the same bag, white plastic, as was in the Dubelj hag's home. The goddamn bastards brought more food."

Milo, stubbing his own cigarette, taking another: "It wasn't that fucker's hands. You saw his nails, I saw his nails. Wasn't his bastard nails, was a woman's."

Stevo, striking the match: "We go back tonight, skip the music shit, we go back tonight until we find her, until she comes back down into that pig place…"

They smoked, they flicked their hands of playing cards on the table, they ignored the man behind the steel door of the cell, they waited for the return of Milan Stankovic.

She had come back to the crossing point at Turanj.

She had again left the Transit Centre and driven to the crossing point and parked her car, and waited. The convoy of the aid lorries, returning empty, should have been through an hour before. If the convoy had left Knin promptly and made good time, then it might have been through an hour and a half before. She stared up the road from where the Croat militia stood, and the light had started to dip. She looked up the hill, up beyond the small san gar of whitewashed sandbags where the troops of the Nigerian battalion had their machine gun, up towards the defence positions of the Serb militia, where their flag flew, and on the hill, greying in the low light, would be their trenches and their strong points and their mortars and artillery. Each time she glanced down at her watch and realized the convoy was delayed, then the fear tripped in her. If the convoy was late then it would be because of a security alert… if there was a security alert it would be because of a discovered infiltration… if there was a discovered infiltration it would be because Penn was hunted… Each time she looked at her watch the ratchet of her fear turned. If nobody did anything, if everybody just wrung their hands, if nobody acted, if everybody said that action was impossible, then the camps of the Neuengamme Ring could be built again, then the wickedness could come again. She saw the car come slowly to the far checkpoint and stop… If the big men of the chancelleries and ministries did nothing, then only the little men could try to halt the wickedness… The car came on from the far checkpoint and stopped again at the NigBatt san gar.. . Penn was the little man and was alone, and behind the lines, and trying… The car came forward, going faster, between the rubble of the fought-over village of Turanj.

She was apart from the militia checkpoint, and when the car reached them the militia men pointed to her, and there were smiles on their faces and she imagined they called her the 'silly bitch' or the 'daft whore'.

The door of the car opened. She knew the Liaison Officer. He was often at the meetings she attended at the Karlovac Municipality.

He came to her. Perhaps it was something in her face, but the smirk was wiped off him.

"You have a problem, what is the problem?"

"Why is the British convoy late?"

"A difficulty down the road…"

Said breathily, "What difficulty?"

"A route interference, they have had to divert. Why do you ask?"

"What is the interference?"

"Some kids, mines, near to Slunj… Why do you ask?"

"No difficulty in the Glina area, nor near to Vrginmost?"

"It is the usual interference, and the Glina area is quieter than the grave…"

"You are sure…?"

"I am returning, Miss Schmidt, from the liaison meeting with the people from Glina Municipality. There is no difficulty in that area, the difficulty is at Slunj. May I repeat, please, my question… Why do you ask?"

"It's not important."

It was only the first beating.

Starting with a slap, then punches, then kicks.

But he had not been burned.

It was the fire that the Headmaster dreaded. The flame would be the worst.

He had known Milan Stankovic through all of the young man's life, known his mother and his father before they had gone to live in Belgrade.

The Headmaster had once liked Milan, when the boy was the basketball star of the village school, when the young man had been the hero performer of the Glina Municipality team. He had always had time for Milan Stankovic before the war…

All through that day he had lain in his cell and waited for Milan Stankovic's return from the liaison meeting, and he had thought of the fire against his body… It had been just slapping and punching and kicking so far, and he had held the secret tight in his mind.

Only staccato questions, not an interrogation.

When the interrogation came, then there would be the fire against his skin… But he did not understand why Milan Stankovic had shown no appetite for hurting him, and he had seen between the slaps and punches and kicks the confusion of the expressions of the postman and the carpenter and the grave-digger, as if they also had not understood.

It was important to the Headmaster to keep his secret as long as it was possible for him to survive the pain.

The music from the hall in his school beat at the meshed grille high in the door of the cell.

' After the music, after they were drunk, they might come back to the cell with the fire… He did not know how long he could protect his secret, but by the night, by the time they were drunk, surely the young man would have turned away from the evil that was Rosenovici. It was his hope. "Run hard, young man," he murmured to the walls of the cell. "Run hard so that I do not betray you…" She had offered him berries from her store that was under the rags of her bed, while they waited. The berries were bullet-hard, dried through, and he estimated they had been picked the last autumn from the dog rose brambles in the wood, and from the branches of thorn trees. They had waited an hour in the cave, as the shadows had fallen into darkness, for the Headmaster. It was all in gestures because they had no language. He showed her the palms of his hands, rejecting the berries, then declining the root section that she offered. The Headmaster had said he would come, and they had waited. And he knew as certainty that she did not have the strength to come, across country, with him to the cease-fire line, and he did not have the language to persuade her, nor to tell her that the Headmaster must record her statement. Penn would have bet, high stakes, that the Headmaster would return. After the first trumpet call of the big owl from a high tree down towards the valley, she wrapped her shawl tighter around her face, she knotted the string more closely around her overcoat, and she replaced the berries and the root in her food store under the rags, and she stood. Penn smiled at her, to reassure her, and did not know whether she saw his smile in the cave's gloom. He had the pistol in the pocket of his coat and a spare magazine, and he checked that the pistol was armed and on 'safety'. He felt a skein of worry, that the Headmaster had not come. It was Katica Dubelj's decision that they should wait no longer for the Headmaster. She took his hand, as if she could reassure him. He was trained by A Branch of the Security Service, he carried a Browning 9mm automatic pistol, there were four hand grenades in his backpack, and the shrivelled-up woman, eighty plus years of life lived, reckoned he needed her reassurance… Christ. She babbled words at him, and the only word that he caught was the name of "Dorrie'. Going back to Dome's place, Dome's death… and he knew her only by the words of others who held the love, and by the photograph, and nothing before in his life had mattered so much as the truth of Dorrie Mowat's village, Dorrie Mowat's killing. He would go from Rosenovici. He would not return to the cave. It was the best time for him to say his thanks to her. He had his hands on her light shoulders and he kissed the old woman softly, on her forehead, below the line of the stinking tight shawl, and she pecked at his cheek, stretching up, with her dried mouth that had no teeth. The humility dug into him. He hoped that he would never again feel the arrogance that was the trademark of a watcher of A Branch. He hoped that he would never again swagger in conceit… She laughed, guttural, and dragged him out of the cave. They went fast down the narrowed track from the cave. All the time she held his hand. He scrambled to keep up with her skipping short stride. They came nearer to the high tree where the big owl shouted. Gaps in the tree trunks, and Penn saw the small pin lights of the village across the stream. The wind was coming into the trees, and Penn heard the murmur of music from the village across the stream. She went quickly and pulled him clumsily after her. It was the movement of a scavenging vixen fox. When they were out of the wood, she used the overgrown hedge at the side of the field, scurried close to the spread hazel and the thorn. Stopping and scenting and seeming to sniff for danger, and going on. No shadows now. The gold from the sun gone grey behind the trees above Rosenovici. She never lost her grip of him… He grinned to himself. First she had felt the need to reassure him, now she did not trust him to move silently in darkness. They went by the corner of the field, not stopping. A sharp thought… where was the Headmaster, why was the Headmaster not with them?… Sharp, because she hurried him past the black pit of the dug grave. She stopped, suddenly, and he cannoned into her back, and she turned, only a slight outline in the darkness, and her finger jabbed at him, as if she criticized the child she led, as if bloody Penn knew nothing of covert movement. She waited, the vixen fox, at the broken gate at the end of the lane, and listened to the night. He heard only the bleating music and the grind of a swinging door and the creaking movement of fallen rafters. Penn was led to her house. He was taken into the house, through the open and hanging door. She was miming what she had seen. She stood at the window at the front of her house, and she pushed her head against the shards of the broken glass, identified what had been her viewpoint. Penn was not yet accustomed to the dark of the interior before he was pulled again and his feet crunched the glass and he cursed, and she hissed her complaint. She took him back out into the lane. Now she loosed his hand. He stood in front of Katica Dubelj's house and he watched, squinting to see, the mime act of the eyewitness. She was the guards, and she seemed to kick some forward, and to beat others as with the stock of a rifle. She was the walking wounded, and she seemed to carry some, and she seemed to drag others. She spoke the name, she was Dorrie Mowat, and she seemed to support two heavy men, and her arms were out, and she seemed to buckle under the weight of the men, and she seemed to turn once and aim a kick back behind her. She took his hand again. She walked Penn back through the fallen gate and into the field. They slithered together on the wet of the grass and the weeds, and across the tyre ruts left by the jeeps. Penn was led to the edge of the pit. She made the mime again. She was the guards, and she moved to take their places in a half circle facing the pit, and she seemed to aim down towards the ground. She was the wounded, sitting. She was the wounded, lying. She said the name, and she was Dorrie Mowat, and she seemed to crouch down on one knee and her arms were outstretched as if she held the shoulders of two men against her small body, and her mouth moved as if she shouted a defiance. She was the bulldozer and she growled and she jerked up her arms as she walked the length of the pit, and she seemed to throw back the pit's earth. He watched, and he would forget nothing. He would not forget that Dorrie and the wounded men had watched the bulldozer gouge out their grave. She scrambled across the earth wall and down into the pit. He could barely see her, the black-grey shadow shape against the black-grey earth of the pit. The music, across the stream, was a frenzy. She lay in the mud at the bottom of the pit. She was the wounded and waiting. She stood. She made the knife thrust and she made the chopping blow of a hammer… She moved, a pace. She seemed to stand above the next of the wounded, waiting, and she thrust with the knife and chopped with the hammer.. . another pace.. another… Penn forced himself to watch. Dorrie had been the last in the line, Dorrie and the boy that she loved. He had to watch Katica Dubelj, because it was what he had come for. She was a guard, she was a man from the village where the music played across the stream. She seemed to try to pull them apart, Dorrie and her boy, and she recoiled back and held her eyes as if extended fingers had been punched into them. She spoke the name. The whisper. "Milan Stankovic." She went crab fast to the near end of the pit, and her hand was first at her face to show the length of the beard. "Milan Stankovic." She was Milan Stankovic, and she seemed to hold a pistol in her hand. Stopping, aiming, the pistol hand kicking, a pace… stopping, aiming, the pistol hand kicking, a pace… This was hard for Penn to watch, Milan Stankovic working methodically down the line and fetching the last life from the wounded who had been stabbed and bludgeoned… Stopping, aiming, the pistol hand kicking, a pace… She did not hurry herself, she made each movement as she had seen it, she was the eyewitness… Stopping, aiming, the pistol hand kicking, a pace… Going closer to Dorrie Mowat and her boy. She seemed to stand above them, then reach down as if to break the hold, and then she seemed to double away and clutch her hands at her groin as if that was where the kick had gone. She was reeling back. She was reaching for the knife and slashing. She was reaching for the hammer and crashing it down. She was aiming the pistol. The pistol hand kicked twice. She whispered the name, "Milan Stankovic."

He turned away.

It was what he had come to find…

The power of the light seared into Perm's face.