Heart of Danger

Thirteen.

His eyes saw only the white brightness of the light. There were excited shouts from in front of him and then all around. The light stripped him bare. He stood in the white brightness. He dared not move. If the fear, the panic, had not been frozen into him in that moment when the light caught him, then he might have tried to duck away or throw himself to the edge of the light, but the fear was in him and with the fear was blindness. The old woman had been behind him. She had been in the pit behind him when he had turned away. With the shouts, with the click of the safety catches, there was a sudden stifled scream, a man's hoarse pain. The light never left Penn. It was what he himself would have done, or what his instructors from far back would have told him to do. "Put the light down, sonny boy. Be close to the light but not on it, sonny boy. "Cause if they're going to put suppressive fire down, sonny boy, it'll be the light they go for…" That is what an instructor would have said, and he realized the angle of the light was low, as if it was on the ground. There was a hammer of shots behind him, semi-automatic on a rifle, and after the shots and the scream there was the sound, briefly, of ripping cloth. Penn did not dare to turn to see whether Katica Dubelj, old woman gone animal, old woman gone eighty years of her life, old woman who had never been on a surveillance or an evasion course, old woman not strong enough to go cross country, had made it clear through the thorn and wire in the hedge beyond the pit. There was a loaded pistol weighting the pocket of his coat. There were four grenades in his backpack. Penn did not dare to reach for either. Very slowly, so carefully that the movement should not be misunderstood, he stretched out his arms, kept his hands open, raised his arms.

He thought he was the prize. He heard behind him, after the bullet volley, nothing of pursuit. Fear seemed to numb the movement of his legs so that they were rigid scarecrow stilts, and to loosen the hold of his guts so that he wanted to piss, crap. The fear trembled the movement of his arms, up high and into surrender. His eyes bunked, uncontrolled, and the water from his eyes distorted the glare of the cone of light.

There was still shouting, but coming closer to him, moving closer and slowly because they could not know the fear that shackled him, as if he was still dangerous to them.

Only his mind was not frozen. In his mind the thoughts raced…

Ham hadn't talked of escape and evasion. The fat-faced little bastard hadn't talked about what to do… He had once been at a Territorial Army depot in Warrington, a marksman's rifle gone missing, a suspicion that it might have been sold to Protestant para militaries from Ulster which was enough to bring in Security Service involvement, and an Escape and Evasion pamphlet picked up off a book shelf. He had been waiting for them to wheel in the armourer, and he had flicked the pamphlet's pages, just from interest. He had read… the first moments of capture offered the maximum opportunity of escape, also offered the maximum opportunity of getting the old head blown off because of the high state of adrenaline of the captors… He had read that it took real guts, big bravery, to antagonize captors by going runabout. His hands were high above his head.

In his mind the thoughts cavorted,..

He was shit scared, frightened, and Dorrie Mowat had been here. Dorrie Mowat, the horrid young woman, had kicked one man in the privates, punched one man in the eyes, spat at the whole goddamn lot of them. Dorrie, the one that all who had touched had loved, had sat in the wet grass where he now stood in surrender, and her arms had been round the wounded man that she had chosen, and she had sat and waited while the bull dozer dug out the pit. She hadn't had the fear. A shape loomed at the edge of the cone of light.

In his mind the thoughts raced…

Jane in the small room, little Tom on her lap, with the television on: "And what's the point of you going there, what's anyone to gain from it?" Failed her. Mary in the kitchen and making the coffee: "I think she took a pleasure in hurting me… and, Mr. Penn, she was my daughter… and, Mr. Penn, her throat was slit and her skull was bludgeoned and she was finished off with a close-range shot… and, Mr. Penn, not even a rabid dog should be put to death with the cruelty shown to my Dorrie." Failed her. Basil holding court to Jim and Henry in the darts bar of the pub round the corner from the launderette: "You know what you are, Penn? You are a jam my bastard." Failed them. The old American Professor of Pathology: "Build a case, stack the evidence'… Maria who was a refugee: "She was an angel in her courage'… Alija who needed the operation to her eyes: "She could not protect herself because she had the wounded fighters to help'… Sylvia who was cloaked in the nervous collapse: "Does anybody care what happened to them, who did it, anybody?"… Failed them.

The blow was at the back of the neck.

Failed them all… The blow was with the stock of a rifle, short swing.

And failed Jovic who had interpreted for him, and Ulrike who had touched his arm to make a talisman for him, and Ham who had given him the map… And failed himself.

He was pitched forward by the blow. They were all around him and the shadows of their bodies masked the cone of white light. He wondered if they would shoot him there, or whether they would take him some place else to kill him, and felt he did not have Dome's courage. He tried to cry out, beg mercy of them, but his voice was suffocated. The fear consumed him. When they had hit him some more times, when he had seen the grinning of cold faces, when he had smelled the foul close breath of them, then they searched him and found the pistol and they skewered his arms back and pulled the backpack off him, then they hit him with the rifle stocks some more.

Penn was pulled to his feet. He could hear the music from across the stream.

Penn (William), Five reject, failure… He was held tight and dragged towards the pin lights of the village across the stream.

They were through Glina.

The convoy was belting. It was not usual for the convoy manager in his Land-Rover to let the fifteen Seddys behind him sniff the wind and belt, but they were all pissed off and Benny who was driving three from the back supposed that the wound on the convoy manager's face had lost its numbness and would now hurt like hell.

Benny wasn't fussed. It did not matter to him that they had been off the main roads, into the ditches, up bloody awful rutted lanes. He'd done the runs into northern Iraq out of Turkey to resupply the Kurds in winter, grinding in low gear down tracks that had never seen a loaded Seddon Atkinson before. He made it his business to know the land, read up on his guidebooks and he wrote twice every week to his wife, Becky, to tell her where he had been and what he had seen. There wouldn't be much to write to Becky about Glina because they had belted through the pretty little town, but he'd think of something to say. He only wrote to Becky about the towns being pretty, never about the people being shit. It was not his way to frighten her, to tell her that most days he wore a pisspot on his head and a flak jacket of kevlar plates front and back across his body, and he didn't tell her that the doors of the cab were armour-reinforced, nor that he had sandbags under his seat as protection from mine blasts. On the main road and belting, perhaps forty-five minutes if they weren't messed again from the Turanj crossing, and the voice crackled on the radio in his cab.

"Guys, there's usually a roadblock between Glina and Vrgin-most. I don't want to spend half the night yammering with some defective on a roadblock. There's a right a few miles ahead, up to a village called Salika, I reckon we can get round the block, then back onto the main heave… OK, guys?"

They didn't have call signs, the drivers didn't like to play at military games. If they'd had call signs then all of them would have been Foxtrot Something, all F-word stuff. Call signs were for kids playing soldiers… The answers tripped over each other, and not many of them polite. And Benny's next letter to Becky would not tell her that his nerves were hacked jagged by driving in darkness on stone tracks through these shit awful villages, through these shit awful people.

Bad news that there would be another shit block to divert round.. .

He flicked the 'speak' switch. It was important to get a laugh because the nerves of all the drivers and the convoy manager would be as hacked jagged as his own.

"You know what Lily Tomlin said: "Things are going to get a lot worse before they get worse"…"

They brought him down to the bridge.

They had tied his wrists together, cutting hard, behind his back, and his ankles so that the bones chafed each other, and they had to drag him.

They came down to the bridge and they pitched him onto the planks and he fell onto his stomach and was trying to twist his head away so that his nose did not take the force of his fall. There was a rusted old hurricane lamp on the bridge that threw a good light from beside the sandbag position of the guards. It was then he saw for the first time the three men who had taken him. The one was thin and big, another had a heavy body and was taller, the last was slight and shallow in his build. They'd thrown him down, dropped him like the dead roebuck that a stalker and the keeper had shot in the long copse behind the tied cottage, and they had the same excitement of the stalker and the keeper, and all three had the weathered faces of the country, aged, and Penn knew the country was cruel… He was a specimen to be boasted of, and he heard words that were similar to "English' and to 'spy', and the old bastards were showing the young guards of the bridge his passport and the Browning 9mm automatic pistol and the spare magazines and the grenades. He did not see any more at the bridge. Penn tried to tuck down his head when the young guards at the bridge took their turn.

She hadn't flinched from the kicking… Dorrie had faced up… She had kicked them back, punched them back, shouted back… She had kept her pride, her goddamn courage. Dorrie Mowat, a horrid young woman, hadn't let them see her fear. He forced his eyes open. He looked into their faces as she had looked into their faces, into their boots, into their eyes. He didn't see Jane, he didn't see Mary… He saw Dorrie Mowat. He wondered if she watched him and laughed at him, wondered if she knew the love… God, and he had failed her. They picked him up with rough hands under his armpits, and they dragged him on over the bridge, and he heard the beat sound of the music from among the pin lights of the village. The sergeant came to her with his thermos of coffee. A good hour gone now since the sergeant had last tried to play the kind uncle, and get Ulrike on her way. She took the coffee, thanked him. She sipped the warmth of the coffee. The sergeant was defeated, knew it and did not seem to care. She was not moving. She was staying until the aid convoy came through. The convoy was eight hours late… She did not believe the sweet talk of the Liaison Officer who was long gone. Sweet talk seldom convinced Ulrike Schmidt. Sweet talk of happiness and friendship had lured her to the job with the organizing committee for her city's Olympic Games. Nineteen years old, waiting to go to university, taking the job of helping to get out the results for the swimming and the judo and the archery, joining the weeping girls with her own tears when the shadow stain of violence cut down the Israeli athletes. Sweet talk of progress in ending human misery had trapped her into United Nations work, the university discarded, and service in Lebanon and Cambodia, becoming a part of the cynical company that realized nothing changed through their efforts, little was made better. Sweet talk of love and marriage had brought her to the bed of an Australian army major in Phnom Penh, and there was the letter left casually on the dressing table of his quarters, and the photograph of the major's wife and four children in the drawer, under his uniform shirts.

Sweet talk in Geneva had told her that the refugees from Bosnia would be cleared through the Transit Centre inside four weeks because there were promises of resettlement from the governments of Europe. She dealt each day with hunger strikes, protests, trauma, because the governments lied.

Ulrike drained the beaker of coffee.

When the convoy came through then she would know, forget the sweet talk, that there was no alert up the broken road from Turanj, up beyond the machine-gun post, up behind the lines.

Silent prayer was not sweet talk.

He was the king, it was the court of Milan Stankovic.

He was back from the liaison meeting, back from the cell block at the headquarters of the TDF unit of his village. He had survived Evica's carped complaint. In his home, coming sullen to his kitchen, and facing the barb of Evica. Would he get himself together, because now he was shit… Would he hike himself up, because now he was pathetic… Listened to Evica. Heard her call him shit, rubbish, pathetic. Held out his arms for her and she had come to him, closed his arms on her and their little Marko had clung to his legs and the dog had bounded happily against his back. He was the king, the chief man, and he had held the warmth of Evica against him and felt the warmth of his little Marko against his thigh and his hip… It was the Canadian policeman who was shit, and the Political Officer, and the liaison man from Karlovac.

He was amongst his own and was loved.

He could not be touched. He had kissed the eyes and ears and mouth of Evica, and the head of his little Marko. He was beyond their reach, those who were shit, pathetic, rubbish. The king danced. The music was heat around him. The chief man drank. The shouts were about him. It had been the strength of his Evica that had liberated him, and the spit of her tongue.

He danced and he drank as if the death shroud was taken from him.

The king danced with the queen. Space was made for them in the centre of the hall of the school. There were shrill shouting faces around them, and the clapping of a hundred hands about them. She was so lovely, his queen, and dancing wild with him and her full skirt sweeping high on her thighs as he led her. The loveliest girl in the village, now the loveliest woman in Salika. As he danced, wild, the folk dance of the Serb people, so the hands of the men who acknowledged him as king reached out with glasses of brandy. As he danced, he drank. He felt he had found freedom. He was the power of his people, the glory of his village. Spinning with the dance, the skirt of Evica climbing, the music faster, the clapping louder, the brandy spilling from his lips, Milan knew he was the king. Coming to the climax of the music and his feet were stamping and Evica's feet were gliding, and the clapping hammering in him. He was free… and when the music had climaxed, and when he had drunk again, then he would sing. He was the king… They came through the door of the hall. They were dragging the man. They brought the man to him, through the parted crowd around him that had gone to silence. And the music died. Milan stared down at the man who lay prone on the floor. He saw a man who was trussed at the wrists and ankles. The man was dressed in filthy wet fatigues, mud-smeared. The man gazed back up at him. The face of the man was blood-spattered. Branko was dropping onto the floor, noisy clatter, a heavy pistol and then four grenades, rolling loud. Milo was shaking out onto the boards of the floor a backpack, socks and underpants and a thick sweater and spare magazines for the pistol, and old bread, and an envelope of brown paper. Stevo threw the passport down onto the floor. The postman and the carpenter and the gravedigger smiled their pride. Around him were the people of the village, all watching him. He bent down. He looked at the passport. The passport was British, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. He reached for the envelope. He stood and took a sheaf of photographs from the envelope. The man with the blood on his face gazed up at him. Evica was beside him… Like a blow hitting him, Milan saw the face. The face that he had known, and the knife wound.

The gasp of Evica beside him.

The face swollen in putrefaction, but with the bludgeon wound on the forehead.

The face that he recognized, and the bullet wound above the ear.

And they were all watching him because he was their king, and the fear twisted in him and could not be shown. The freedom was gone, the liberty was lost, and the brandy was beating in him. Trying to focus on the face on the floor and the face in the photographs. The face of the man on the floor gazing back at him, and the face of the woman in the photograph, and blood on the faces that merged. He unhooked the clasp knife from his belt, threw it to the carpenter. The twine at the ankles and at the wrists was cut… she had not been bound. Evica held the photographs and shivered. It was what was expected of the king. Branko and Stevo lifted the man up, and he stood in front of Milan and swayed. Milan should not show fear, not in front of those who admired and worshipped the king, and she had not shown fear…

A short arm blow, as hard as he could punch, he hit the stomach of the man.

The man staggered, went down, was on his knees.

The man stood again. Milan did not see the fear, and she had not shown fear…

He threw the man into the crowd around him, for their pleasure.

They were crawling into the village.

Benny reckoned they were going slowly because they had missed the turn. He reckoned they should have taken the left turn before they were into the village. He knew it was a Serb village because the roofs were on the houses and the church had a tower and what looked like the school wasn't a burned shell.

The convoy manager, Benny reckoned, had screwed up and was crawling because he knew it, and it was long odds against tiptoeing away when they had to turn round and back up, a Land-Rover and fifteen Seddon Atkinson lorries.

It was strange, Benny thought, that they could pitch up in this lost forgotten corner of pretend civilization and not have half a hundred people coming out the woodwork to know their business. Peculiar… The convoy manager, up ahead, had started the turn and back-up routine… It looked, dark quiet, a hell of a bad place to be lost, a hell of a good place to be shot of. The lorries were manoeuvring, like leviathans, and at present no bugger with an AK's safety off and armed coming out of the houses to ask their business.

Benny waited his turn to manoeuvre.

Penn heard, just, the shout. The shout was an order.

The last of the kicks went into him, into the small of his back, and the last of the women's nails clawed at his face, and the last of the punches went to his unprotected stomach.

The pain ran rivers in his body. The shout was a command. He tried, hard, to keep his eyes open because that seemed important. He lay on the floor and the boards were wet with his blood and his spittle and his urine. Six would have done courses on Resistance to Interrogation, Five didn't… any rate, not for his level of A Branch non-graduate. In a circle around him were the heavy laced shoes of the men and the light slide-on shoes of the women and on some of the shoes were dulled stains… not a course for his level of A Branch non-graduate, but maybe for the top grade, super fucking experts who went to Belfast. It was a hallucination for Penn, kicked, clawed, punched, to be thinking of courses for Resistance to Interrogation for top-graders who went to Belfast, but the hallucination swamped him.. . There was a woman in Gower Street and he'd been down a queue for the coffee machines when she'd been at the head, she'd been pointed to and he'd been told that the Proves had trapped her in some God-awful pub, no back-up present, and she'd fought her way out, just a slip of a woman with rusted gold hair and a flat chest and rounded shoulders, who had taken her coffee and walked slowly back to her office like she was a bored woman, not a top-grader…

The big man, the voice of command, the one who had swayed when he had seen the photograph, the one who had hit him first, broke the cordon circle. The big man came towering towards him.

Penn blinked up and tried to retain the focus of his vision… couldn't break the hallucination. There were two women in his mind. Both top-graders… The woman with the rust-gold hair, bored in London, in the coffee queue, who had the courage to fight clear of a killer enemy… and the woman with the cropped hair, the mischief smile in her photograph, who had the courage to bury her fear when the killer enemy closed. He was so wanting to be brave. Bravery might just be survival, or it might just be dignity, or it might just make the fucking knife and the fucking bludgeon and the fucking pistol shot fucking easier… The hallucination rode him. Talking in the open-plan office area of A Branch, chattering idly about the hostages in Lebanon, and the big mouth, graduate 2.2 Reading, claiming that he would have gone for escape; and the simpering mouth, graduate 2.1 Warwick, whining that she would have gone for a runner; and Penn, non-graduate, trying to contribute quietly that an escape attempt took more courage than anything, and being ignored… and just the idle chatter of a hallucination in a quiet hour of a London office because fucking escape was not on the reality agenda… The big man pulled him up.

The big man had a loose beard grown free across his face, not trimmed. Between the matt of the beard growth, the tongue of the big man wiped his full lips. Above the growth of the beard were the eyes, evasive. The face, the eyes and the mouth, as Penn saw it, were empty of passion.

The woman beside the big man held the photographs outside the envelope, as if she did not wish again to look at them. She wore a bright full skirt, flower-patterned, and an ironed white blouse that was simple, and there were sweat streaks in her hair at her forehead.

Penn stood and hoped that he would find the courage.

The question was put to him. The woman interpreted the question.

"Who are you?"

Trying to speak strongly. "I am William Penn. I am a British citizen."

The answer was repeated by the woman to the big man. A second question. "Are you a mercenary from the Ustase scum?"

Trying to stare into those evasive eyes… "I have no connection with the Croatian army."

"A lie. You wear the uniform of the Ustase scum."

"I bought the camouflage uniform on the black market in Karlovac."

The big man made the question. The woman interpreted the question. She spoke formal taught English. "What was the mission?"

Penn heard it, the revving of heavy engines behind him. No one moved around him. They hung silently on the questions put by the big man and the answers given by the woman beside him. Could not know where it would lead him, where it would take him, but knew the importance of bold talk…

"The village of Rosenovici, across the stream, was taken in December of 1991. There were wounded men in the village who were sheltered in a cellar during the final attack on the village…"

"What has that to do with a mercenary?"

'… The wounded men were taken from the cellar after the fall of the village. They were taken to a field, they were sat in the field, laid out in the field, while a bulldozer dug…"

The interruption. The woman had translated in a quiet voice while he talked, and the circle craned for her words.

"What has that to do with…?"

'… While a bulldozer dug a grave pit. The wounded men were then killed with knives, and were bludgeoned, and were shot, and they were buried…"

"What has that…?"

'… They were buried in a mass grave in the corner of the field …"

"What…?"

'… Buried in the mass grave in the corner of the field was a young woman. The young woman was not wounded in the battle for the village. She had chosen to stay with the wounded. She had chosen to be with them at the end. She was not a fighter, she had no guilt. She was butchered in the pit dug by the bulldozer "Why was she important… ?" Staring all the time into the face of the big man, and the eyes above the matt of the beard darting away, and the tongue in the midst of the beard sliding on dried lips. '… She was English, and that is why I came. She was not Serbian and not Croatian and not Muslim. She was not a part of the quarrel. She was English and her name was Dorrie

…" Staring into the face, and hearing the drip of the translation. He had spoken the name and there was a little gasp and a small murmur in the circle around him. He was trying to hold the pain and the tremble, trying to ape the mischief moments of Dorrie Mowat. '… Her name was Dorrie Mowat, and there was no cause for her killing. It was cowards' work killing Dorrie Mowat." "Who sent you?" "I was sent by the mother of Dorrie Mowat. I came to find how Dorrie Mowat died. I came so that I could tell her mother how she died, in a pit. And I came so that I could tell her mother who killed her, the name of the man, the man who was responsible…" Penn felt the moment of power. He heard the engines of big vehicles away behind the door. No one moved in the circle around him. He didn't know where it would lead, couldn't know… "Who knew her? Who knew Dorrie Mowat?" He heard the echoing ring of his voice. The woman interpreted. "Who met her when she lived in Rosenovici before the fight, before she was butchered?" He turned from the shifting eyes, from the licked lips. It was all a fraud. "Did you know her…?" It was a fraud because it was pretence that he held the high ground, when he held fucking nothing

… He searched the faces. An old man, a young man, a teenage girl… It was a sham act. "You, did you know her…?" He searched the faces, challenged them, and they would not meet him. He ranged over the faces of the circle.

"Who met her…?"

He reached the woman who held the photographs, who interpreted the questions and answers. She dropped her head.

"I met her."

Penn whispered, "Why did you meet her?"

"I met her so that I could talk English with her. I met her before the fight for the village so that I could better my language of English."

Penn said, "I came so that I could tell Dorrie's mother the name of the man who killed her daughter, so that she would know the name of that man. I came to prepare a report for Dorrie's mother, I came to find the evidence against that man…"

He saw the fingers of the woman twisting on the photographs, tearing them and she did not notice.

"What was the name?"

The wall around him was of shame. He had won his dignity, as Dorrie had claimed hers. He had stamped his death warrant, and fuck them. The circle about him was of guilt. She would be laughing at him, laughing loud, from her mischief face. Dignity was won… Somewhere he heard the roar of lorry engines pulling away… Fuck them, because they couldn't hurt him, if he had his dignity, they could only kill him. It was Penn's moment. It was, to him, as if he were alone with the big man facing him. It was as if all else was suppressed, as if each other person in the circle held no importance. It was a handsome face, a leader's strong, good face.

"I have the evidence for my report that Dorrie Mowat was killed by …"

Penn heard the voice of the woman who interpreted.

'… Was murdered by Milan Stankovic."

And in front of him the face flushed in anger, and the fists caught at him.

Penn shouted, "His name is Milan Stankovic."

Men around him, the circle broken, hands grabbing him. He saw the face the last time, the anger flush in the matt of the beard, and the woman who had interpreted was sobbing. He kicked and he struggled, and he was forced towards the door of the hall. He had his fucking dignity. He bit at the hands that held him. His fucking dignity, what Dorrie had had. He writhed with them as they pushed him through the door, into the night. The lorry in the line was starting to roll. The line of the lorry lights speared the darkness of the village and the lorry was in front of him, beginning to move. The opening of the door of the hall flushed the inside light onto the Union flag on the lorry's door. Only two men were able to hold him as they came through the tight space of the doorway. Penn saw the small round startled face. He bit the hand on his arm. He elbowed into a stomach. It was his chance. He broke free. There was black darkness beyond the lorry. Penn yelled, "Kill your lights." The one chance only. The lights died. Night darkness around him. He ran. The darkness was his friend. He threw himself under the moving wheels of the lorry, and rolled. He didn't know what the hell happened, but he had killed the lights. Just the glow of the dashboard in the cab and the fluorescent buttons of his radio. He was nudging the lorry forward. The far door of the cab came open and there was a quick blast of night air. There were hands groping by his shins and ankles, and something, Benny didn't know what, was thrown from the cab floor. It hit the wooden fence across the road, clattered in the dark. There was weight across his legs and panting, wriggling movement. Something else, Benny didn't know what, was thrown from the door of the cab, and that seemed to go further and it hit glass across the width of the road, perhaps a greenhouse, perhaps a cold frame. The door closed quietly on the cab, and the weight came over him and prised into the gap behind his seat and the passenger seat. There were men running round the Seddy, going across the road towards where something had hit the wooden fence, and something else had smashed a glass surface. There was shooting, he could see the gun flashes in the big side mirror of the Seddy, could see the fireflies of the bullets going towards the fence and where the glass pane had been broken… and all the lorries were hammering it now, because of the shooting. The lorries swerved, each in their turn, for the road they should have taken. Benny was cool. He didn't favour panic. The radio in his cab was a jabber of voices, all calling for the convoy to get the hell out, get the distance in. There was the sharp panted breathing behind him, and Benny realized the man stank. He was in cruise gear and they were doing good speed, and the village was behind him, and the sound of shooting was fading. He was cool, no panic, and he could think well. Benny reckoned it to be about, give or take a bit, twenty-five minutes to the crossing point at Turanj… and he was in deep shit, deepest without a bloody bottom. Because the first rule, aid convoy driving, is don't get involved, but the yell had been English. The second rule is not to take sides, but the shout had been English and desperate. All the rules, up to one hundred and one bloody rules, said the aid convoy system went through the window if the drivers weren't, all the way, impartial, but the cry of "Kill the lights' had been English. What he had done was get involved, take sides. And what he'd done, when they hit the crossing point at Turanj … if back in that black village they'd gotten their act together, raised the radio, lifted the telephone, sent a fast bloody pigeon… what he'd done was to hazard the whole of the aid convoy programme. People survived because the aid convoys went through without getting involved. People would starve if the aid convoys were banned because the drivers had taken sides. People depended on the aid convoys crossing the lines, impartial… Perhaps, Benny thought, before they were at the crossing point at Turanj, he'd just chuck him out, push him clear. In the convoy queue, spearing the night with its lights, the Seddy hammered forward, going sweet. Benny unhooked the pencil torch from the dashboard clip. He shone the light around his feet.

"Now then, my old cocker, you have just lost me my sandwich box, that my Becky gave me and you have just lost me my fire extinguisher, and I am not allowed to drive without a fire extinguisher in the cab and I'm thinking you should do the decent thing and, please, close the door after you…"

Benny shone the torch behind him, into the gap behind his seat and the passenger seat. He turned to look fast behind him. In the narrow beam, Benny saw the blood on the face and the cuts and the bruises. Back to the road. He thought he had seen the face of a man who was softened for death. He twisted again. Benny saw the stubble growth that dammed the blood, and the eyes that squinted between the puffed bruising, and the swollen split lips. He dragged down the switch of his torch, and again the cab was in darkness.

"You are, my old cocker, a heap of trouble…"