Heart of Danger

Sixteen.

The pain beat against the bone behind his temples, and there were needle pricks behind his eyeballs, and there was a battering throb behind his ears. It had been a hell of a long time since Penn had been this hungover. The others were still asleep. He was padding, half-naked, round the room, moving without order, stumbling round the bed where Ulrike slept, hiking his feet over Ham's outstretched body. He should have been working to a system, should have cleared the bathroom first, then been to the wardrobe and had his shoes off the floor and his shirts and underwear and socks out of the drawers and his jackets and slacks off the hangers, and then he should have been gathering up everything that belonged to him from the shelf below the mirror including the two typed sheets that had gone for the fax transmission. But there was no system, the pain dictated that there was no order in his packing. Penn blundered around, collecting, forgetting, carrying, cursing the aftermath of the alcohol. He couldn't hold his bloody concentration, not at all. He had the case on the bed, and now he was emptying the case because the shoes and the plastic bag for his toothpaste and his shaving cream and razors were out of place, should always be shoes at the bottom and washing gear, and then the dirty clothes and then the clean clothes and then the folded trousers and then the jackets, and the whole bloody lot were out of order… Ulrike slept hard as he skirted the bed, and Ham slept deep as he stepped over his legs and that horrible bloody rifle, because both would have been awake through the night, watching for him. They were a holiday friendship, he knew, and they would be gone, belted out, when the big bird lifted off the tarmac at Zagreb airport. Ships that pass in the night, that sort of crap. They slept now because they had stayed awake through the night and watched his own sleep, and the thought of it, through the pain and the confusion of packing out of order, made Penn feel humility. He wouldn't see her again, nor would he chase after Ham's woman who had done a runner with her kiddie. But they had watched over him while he slept, a lonely woman and a small scumbag frightened because he hadn't a friend. He might tell Mary Braddock about them, because they were each in their way a part of his finding Dorrie's truth. Or then he might not get to see Mary Braddock. When he hadn't the pain in his head he could work it through whether he would see Mary Braddock, or whether it would just be the fuller report in a week's time and the full invoice of his charges, sent in the post by Recorded Delivery…

He had never been drunk incapable when he was a teenager living at home in the tied cottage, because that was the example of his mother and father, his mother taking only a sherry at Christmas and his father talking of it like it was a devil. He had been drunk incapable once when a clerk at the Home Office, and taken out to a party in the Catford flat of another clerk, and thinking afterwards that it might just have been because he was so bloody boring that they had spiked the drinks and had good sport out of him reeling and crashing and throwing up in the street; and ashamed. He had been drunk incapable once when with Five, and they had worked seven weeks on a surveillance before showing out on a shift change into the derelict van with the flat tyre that was parked up opposite the safe house, and the Irish target gone and lost, and the guys going down to the pub when the operation had been called off with heavy recrimination and an assistant deputy director general level inquest, and sleeping on the floor of the taxi home; and ashamed.

Now, he had no sense of achievement. There was no elation. It was just a report that he had written, as he had written previous reports that cut into the lives of the dead and the vanished and the criminal, as he would write further reports. He wanted out and he wanted home, and he wanted to sleep out of his system too much goddamn Scotch, and he wanted the bastard place behind him, and the fear, the shit, the pain. It was only a report… And the one chance was gone.

He had the shoes back at the bottom of the case, and the washing gear with them, and the underpants and the socks into the space between the shoes and the washing bag, and the dirtied clothes and the ones that he hadn't used. He was starting to fold the slacks and the jackets. The fatigues that he had worn into Sector North were on the floor near to where Ham lay stretched out, holding the bloody rifle like it was a baby's toy, and the fatigues weren't going with him, nor the boots that were under them, and he heard a brisk knock at the door.

Penn went round the bed and he stepped over Ham's legs.

The knock was repeated, impatiently. He opened the door of the hotel room.

Penn rocked.

She peered into the gloom. Late morning, closing on midday, and the curtains of the room were not drawn back. Mary peered past the shadow-dark figure that rocked in front of her. Yes, she had expected surprise, but the man could hardly stand, and the light from behind her in the corridor seemed to dazzle his eyes and he could not focus on her. She came into the room and with her heel she nudged the door back shut behind her. Only the light now from the bathroom, and the shadow-dark figure was backing away from her, away from the narrow strip of light from the bathroom. She came past the door and into the room. The smell in the room was foul, quite defeating the eau de toilette scent that she had sprayed at her throat and wrists in the taxi from the airport. On the plane and in the taxi from the airport, she had rehearsed what she would say to him, how she would be cool but goading, and what she had rehearsed was thrown from her mind. If she had wanted to she could not have controlled it, the sharp spasm of her anger.

"Good morning, Mr. Penn…"

No reply from him, and he was stumbling back further from the bathroom light as if to hide in the grey gloom of the room.

'… How are we, Mr. Penn?"

Just a growl of a response.

She was going forward into the centre of the room, coming closer to the bed that he skirted when she saw his case on the bed and the shape of the woman on the bed. The blouse of the woman was unbuttoned halfway down to her navel and she could see the sexless strength of the woman's brassiere and the white skin. "A little end-of-term party, Mr. Penn? Got demob happy, did we, Mr. Penn? Hit the bottle, did we, Mr. Penn…? The bottle and a bit of skirt, Mr. Penn?" "It's not what…" "What I think? You wouldn't have the faintest idea what I think, Mr. Penn. If you had had an idea then you would not have ignored my telephone calls to this hotel. You would not have bloody well abandoned me." "You wouldn't know…" "What it was like? Just a silly woman, Mr. Penn? A silly woman incapable of understanding? A woman to be fobbed off with a two-page fax?" The growl spluttered in his throat. She saw the gleam of his teeth and his words came haltingly. "She wasn't my daughter." "What the hell does that mean?" "She wasn't my daughter, and if she had been my daughter then she would not have been bad-mouthed to every stranger I could get my claws on." She laughed, shrill. "We make judgements now, do we, Mr. Penn? We know more than a mother does about her daughter, do we, Mr. Penn? Exactly what I need, wonderful…" And she was following him through the grey gloom of the room, and the woman on the bed stirred. He said to her, and the life had gone from his voice, and there was only a tiredness, "If it was just anger then you wouldn't have come, if it had just been anger then you would have stayed away. You came because of the guilt…" "Don't lecture me." "Because of the guilt, because of the shame, because she was your daughter and you didn't know her.. ." She was following him. She was drawn to him. Suddenly there was a startled grunt in the darkness ahead of her and she saw the heaped clothes that stank and the sudden movement of the body in front of her, and the rifle was coming up and the muzzle caught against her stocking at the knee.

'… It's fine, Ham, it's Dome's mother. It's Dorrie's mother who's come."

Perhaps it was the calm that had come to the voice now, perhaps it was the gentleness that tinged the voice. Perhaps it was the smell of the bodies and the damp of the clothes on the floor, perhaps it was the rifle and the emptied bottles. Perhaps it was the woman scowling from the bed and the man crouched down hostile on the floor, perhaps it was the suitcase that was packed. Perhaps it was the guilt. She spat it out.

"You were going home?"

"I was hired to write a report."

"Worth two pages, was she? Two pages and that's time to come home?"

"I have written a preliminary report, I will write a fuller report when I am home."

"And that is your idea of the end of it?"

"It's what I was hired to do, what I have done to the best of my ability."

"Enough, is it, just to write a report…?"

"It's what I was asked to do, hired to do."

She could not see into his face. The worst for Mary was the calmness in his voice. And with the calmness was the gentleness. She could remember her tears because of what Dorrie had done to her. She could remember when she had thrown things, saucepans, books, clothes, hurled them because of what Dorrie had done to her. She could remember Charles's accusations because of what Dorrie had done to her, and how she had gone sobbing up the stairs to beat her fists on the locked door because of what Dorrie had done to her. And the guilt roved in her…

Her voice rose. "So you walk out, you walk away?"

"I don't know what else I can do."

"It was just empty words?"

"It was to write the report you requested."

"What the politicians said, what that American said, just empty.. .? Fine words or empty words?"

"You wanted a report, you have a report."

She stood her height. "Was it just empty words? Didn't they talk about a second Nuremberg, didn't they talk about war crimes'? Didn't they talk about a new world order where the guilty would be punished, where they'd be locked up and the key thrown away? Didn't they talk.. .?" The voice calm and gentle. Not the businesslike voice from the graveyard in the village. Not the brusque voice from the kitchen of the Manor House. "It's the sort of thing people say, politicians. It's not to be taken seriously." "You saw the man who killed her…" "I saw him." "You found the evidence of an eyewitness…" "I found the eyewitness." "You know where to go…" "I know where he is, and I know where to go for the eyewitness." She could not see into his face. She saw the grey shadow and the dark sockets of the eyes. "Do you think I am just a woman to be humoured? Do you think I am just a silly woman who is obsessional?" "I wrote my report." She said, hard, "If there is a will then there can be a prosecution… "Sources and Rationale of Territorial Jurisdiction" and "Offences Against the Person, Geneva Conventions" and "Treatment of the Wounded" and "Conflicts not of an International Character". If there is determination then there can be a prosecution…" "What do you want?" She said, brutally, "I want those empty words thrown back down their bloody throats. I want them to choke on those empty words. I want that man before a court, I want to hear your evidence against him

…" "What can I do?" She looked into his eyes, pitilessly. "Go back. Take him. Bring him. Bring him to where they cannot hide behind their empty words. Go… take… bring… Or are you going to walk out on me?" He turned away from her. He was at the window. His hands reached up to the curtains. And her voice died. The silence held the grey gloom of the room. Quite suddenly, the daylight was flooding the room, and the curtains were heaved back. It was the bruises on his face and the cuts and the scarring that she saw first. She gazed at him, and she felt shame. There was a weal on his throat, and on his chest deeper bruises and wider cuts and abrasions.

"I didn't know…"

"I will go back behind the lines and take him and bring him out. Will you please listen to me, Mrs. Braddock, will you please not interrupt me… I will bring him out, but not for you. You, Mrs. Braddock, are owed nothing… I don't think listening comes easily to you, I doubt you ever listened to your daughter, but then I am sure you are a busy woman and capable and resourceful, with many demands on your time. Does life always revolve around you? For Dome's sake I will bring him out, and for myself… Don't drop your head, Mrs. Braddock, and please don't offer me more money… And don't think the United Nations in their glory will stand and cheer, nor our embassy, nor the government here… I will bring him out because knowing and loving your daughter has been my privilege. I will bring him out."

The woman came off the bed, and she was tucking her blouse into the waist of her trousers, and then she was buttoning her blouse, and she seemed to look at Penn as if to satisfy herself that he had made up his mind. She did not question him, just checked him, and she was slipping from the bed and going for the telephone on the shelf beneath the mirror.

And the small man, the man who was crouched down on the floor with his rifle, shook his head like he heard something that he could not believe, and he said, "That, squire, is the biggest piece of fucking madness that I have heard. Just 'cause the cow winds you up, doesn't mean you fucking have to."

The woman was dialling a number.

She looked at the scars and bruises and cuts. "I didn't know."

He said simply, "We loved her, all who were touched by her came to love her. Your problem, Mrs. Braddock, is you knew nothing about that love."

His hand was laid on Evica's hand. Just for the moment she allowed his hand on her hand. She took her hand from under his. Milan's hand lay on the kitchen table. He drummed his fingers, he looked into her face. She did not criticize him with her eyes because the log bin beside the stove was not filled. She did not criticize him because he had sat at the table rereading old newspapers through the whole of the morning while she had been with Marko at the school. She did not criticize him because he had not risen from their bed before she had gone with Marko to the school, had not been to the store in the village to see if there was fresh bread, had not swept the floor of the kitchen. Evica pushed the last logs of the bin onto the fading fire of the stove. She did not criticize him because she had to go out into the shed behind the kitchen door to get potatoes and beetroot, and she was wearing her washed and ironed blouse and her neat skirt that were appropriate for the acting headmistress of Salika's village school, and she took the emptied log bin with her. Her face, when he had laid his hand on hers, was without expression. He could not know from looking at her face whether she was ashamed of him, whether she was frightened for him, whether she loathed him. The body of the dog was pressed against the kitchen door as if waiting for the mistress to come, as if the master were no longer of importance. They had been married more than a dozen years ago, when he was the basketball star of the Glina Municipality and she the prettiest girl in Salika village, and he did not know her. The boy, his Marko, came to him, sat on his lap, sturdy weight on his upper thighs, and he thought that perhaps the boy had been crying as his mother had walked him home from morning school, and there were the scars of fighting on the boy's face. She came back into the kitchen. She was carrying the log bin, filled, and a cardboard box of potatoes and beetroot, and he could see the stain of dried mud on her blouse, and the strain of her arm muscles because the logs were damp and still heavy. And he could see, near to the broadest of the smears of dried mud, the place on the waist of her blouse where she had stitched a short L-shaped rent in the material. She did not criticize him because it was impossible now to buy new clothes. She did not criticize him because she could no longer go to the shops in Karlovac and Sisak. She did not criticize him as if he were responsible, as if it were personal to him, for the war. She had dumped the bin. He held tight to his son. She was tipping potatoes and beetroot into the bowl in her sink for washing and peeling and cutting. She knew of the death of the Headmaster, and she would know of the killing of Katica Dubelj, she had translated the accusation of the stranger who had come to their village… and he did not know what she thought. It had rained hard in the night. Through the window he could see the cloud on the hill above the village across the river. Her back was to him. She worked methodically over the sink.

Milan said, "Because the stream is in spate it cannot be today, and I do not think it can be tomorrow, but when the pace of the stream is settled then I will take Marko to fish. Far up the stream, up past where they graze the sheep, where they plough, there is a good pool. I saw trout there. We will dig some worms, we will bring you back a trout…"

He laughed out loud and he cuddled the boy who was heavy on his upper thighs, and the weight of Marko tautened the belt at his waist and dragged the bulk of the holster into the flesh of his hip and he would always wear the holster now, and she did not turn to face him, and he did not know what she thought.

He was waiting for them at the entrance to the barracks.

Marty signed them in, and the Swedish sentries issued, lazily, visitor's permits for Ulrike and the Englishman and for the mercenary and for the tall woman with them who was elegant and beautiful.

He showed Ulrike where she could park the car.

Marty walked them from the parking lot to the freight container.

He took them inside the freight container, and he apologized for the wet mud on the vinyl flooring, and he shut down his screen and he tidied away the papers on his desk, and he said he would make coffee for them. If she had given him more warning with her telephone call requesting a meeting, then he would have gone out of the Ilka barracks and bought flowers for Ulrike Schmidt. He was filling the kettle, finding the mugs, getting the milk carton from the small fridge, looking in his cupboard for sugar.

The elegant woman, the Englishwoman, came right at him. "Mr. Jones, you are a war crimes investigator…?"

And Marty hadn't even gotten round to establishing who had milk and who had sugar.

"That's correct, ma'am."

"You are here to prepare cases against war criminals with a view to eventual prosecution?"

"Correct again, ma'am."

"What progress are you making, Mr. Jones?"

"Precious little, ma'am."

"Why are you making precious little progress?"

He grimaced. "Do you have all day…?"

"Please, Mr. Jones, just explain."

"It depends, ma'am, on why you want to know it."

The Englishwoman took from her handbag two sheets of faxed paper, and she passed them to Marty. He began to read. The kettle was starting to blow, but Ulrike made that her job. He read the synopsis of a killing. Ulrike spooned the coffee into the five mugs and they talked among themselves about milk and about portions of sugar. He was reading the brief text of eyewitnesses and the Englishwoman's eyes never left him as he read. He was reading the material that crossed his desk each day, that was recorded on his camcorder, that was held on his audio tapes. There were photographs pinned to the interior walls of the freight container, bad atrocity photographs, and the Englishman stared at them coldly and Ulrike ignored them, and once the mercenary made a joke of them, but the Englishwoman seemed not to see them. She watched him as he shifted from the first sheet to the second, as he weighed the names, as he drank it in. He thought of telling the Englishwoman, telling her how many thousands of civilians had died in former Yugoslavia, how many of the ethnic minorities had been cleansed, how many 'concentration camps' existed, how many homes had been burned, how many acts of criminality had been perpetrated against the defenceless. When he finished his reading he could have told her that in the catalogue of bestiality the 'incident' at the village of Rosenovici was minimal. Those that trusted him, those who were the eyewitnesses and who provided his 'snapshot' experiences were hungry and tired and traumatized, they no longer possessed the spark of action. She was smartly dressed, like a big oil man wife. She had fine skin, like a woman who was cared for with money. He supposed she believed it her right to jump to the head of any queue he made for the priorities of his catalogue of bestiality. He handed her back the two sheets of paper.

"I make little progress, ma'am, because my work is perceived to be an obstacle to eventual peace…"

"Please, plain language."

"The worst bastards, excuse me, run the show. The thinking in New York, the thinking in Geneva, the thinking at UNPROFOR across the parade ground from my kennel, is that the worst bastards have to be kept sweet so as they'll put their illiterate scrawl on whatever appeasement document ends this crap session. Plain language, I'm a goddamn leper here. Plain language, I am obstructed, short-funded, blocked. Plain language, I'm pissing into the wind…"

"And that's good enough for you?"

But he wasn't angry. He didn't flare. She did not seem to be insulting him. "I do what I can, ma'am."

"Did the killing of the wounded from Rosenovici, and the murder of my daughter, constitute a war crime?"

"Yes."

"Does the material here in abbreviated form, provided by Mr. Penn, constitute evidence of a war crime?"

"Yes, but…"

"But what?"

"It's good to meet you, good to make you coffee, it's good to learn about your daughter, but…"

"But what, Mr. Jones?"

"But it's hollow talk, it's academic, it's wasting your time and my time because the accused is not within jurisdiction. Put simply, the guy's the other side of the line."

"And if…"

"It's where it stops, the line. I'm sorry."

Suddenly feeling tired, tired because it was a dream. A dream was a man in handcuffs, a man who was confronted with evidence. The dream was a man who flinched when confronted with the cold paper of testimony. The dream was always with him.

"Mr. Penn is going over that line. I've his promise. He's going to take him and bring him back, across that line. So in the plainest language, have you the balls to handle it…?"

"You bring him, I'll screw him down. My word to you, I'll give it my best. My word, I'll not back off."

And Marty knew that he had lost her, lost the German woman. He knew that he had lost her to Penn. He was crushed. If he had gone more often to the Transit Centre, if he had gone more often and taken flowers, if he had pushed and shoved and heaved, if… He thought that he had lost what he cared for the most. He searched again for confirmation.

Marty looked into Penn's face, at the bruises and the scars.

"As long as you know, ma'am, what you're asking that man to do.. ."

First he had watched the outer door of the concourse. He had sat where he could see the door, taken a magazine and relaxed.

Later he had gone to stand near to the queue waiting to have their tickets and baggage processed, and when the queue had thinned he had gone to the desk and asked, in decent local language, for a fast look at the passenger list.

Now he used a telephone from which he could still see the check-in, while the announcement of the flight's closing beat in his ears, and he rang the hotel in central Zagreb and spoke to an idiot, and the idiot confirmed that Penn, William, had checked out, paid up and gone.

The First Secretary hurried from the concourse and outside he heard the distant rumble of a jet airliner gathering speed on the runway. It was a talent of his that he could control his fury, but he trembled in the knowledge of a failure that must be reported, immediately, to London.

"I'll go because I've said I'll go."

Ham said, "I told you, it's just fucking dumb."

"I'll do it because I've said I'll do it."

"You never go back, not when you've been bounced. On your own, no chance, not second time at it."

"It's what I've said I'll do."

The German woman was driving. She was very quiet. She had her eyes on the road and her hands tight on the wheel. Ham was sitting beside her and he had the rifle down between his legs and he was twisted awkwardly so that he could face Penn who was stretched across the width of the back seat. He knew where it was going. It was "Freefall' Hamilton's lifetime skill that he could deflect the big decision, and he thought this time round that deflection was fucking out the window. He squirmed because the bullshit stakes were finished.

Ham blurted, "Don't think I'm going with you…"

"Hadn't asked you, wasn't going to ask you."

"Don't think I'm going in there with you, don't think I'll be there watching your arse. I'm not going in there with you, and that means you can't fucking go…"

"I was never asking you."

"You go back in there and you're dead meat. Just say, just suppose, that you make it in there… Just say that you find the bastard, just suppose you take him… Do you think, when the balloon goes up, and sure as hell it will, that one man can take that fucking bastard out. Hot pursuit, going fast crosscountry, going covert with a prisoner. You've no chance… For Christ's sake, you know you've no fucking chance. Believe me, Penn, no chance…"

"It's not your worry."

"Are you just thick…?"

"It's not your worry because I am not asking you."

She was driving in the falling light on the wide road back down to Karlovac. She seemed to stiffen. Her lips moved, pale and thin lips without make-up, as if she tested something she would say out loud. She glanced across at him, away from the road.

"You don't have to be ashamed, Ham, because you are frightened. We are all frightened here, all of the time, not only you. You should just make available the weapons, the food, the method of crossing the river, the rendezvous on the way back…" "Don't fucking tell me.. ." The headlights of the Volkswagen flared over the empty road ahead. "You speak the truth, Ham, he has no chance if he is alone." He knew his place in the great organization of Six. He knew his place, influence, authority, because his wife cared to remind him of it most weeks. There were occasional good days, when Georgie Simpson would let himself into his mock-Tudor semi-detached home in Carshalton, and pocket the latchkey, and sing out the news of his arrival, and be anxious to tell her of some minimal triumph achieved that day in the great organization of Six. His wife, on those evenings, would be sitting in front of the television, and she would recognize his minor elation, and diminish him. She could put him down when he was up, and she seldom bothered to try to lift him up when he was down. He replaced the secure telephone on its cradle. The central heating, blown along ducts from a main boiler unit, was still functioning, would be for another month. Most of those around him had discarded their cardigans or jackets, and Georgie Simpson shivered. Only little tasks were given him. If he carried out, flawlessly, those little tasks, then he could expect to hide in the corner and remain unobserved by those bloody people who now trawled through the building for dead wood that could be hacked from the body of Six. If he were to be forcibly retired, sent packing because he could not even be relied upon to fulfill the little tasks… He shivered. He felt the sweat cold on his body. He unlocked the drawer of his desk, took out the notebook where his sacred telephone numbers were written. Georgie Simpson thought of going home that evening to his wife, sitting in front of the television, and if he told her of a disaster, his disaster, then she would laugh back in his face. He dialled. "Arnold, it's Georgie here… No, be a good chap… Past's past, let it go, please. Arnold, I beg you, please, listen… I've just had our field station, Zagreb, on… We have a problem, a huge problem…" The memorandum was in front of him. He cast his eye over it, slowly shook his head. Henry Carter had never thought greatly of Georgie Simpson. The memorandum of Simpson (Six) concerning his telephone conversation with Browne (Five). He thought it a pathetic little document, and all the self-serving was there of a panic-laden man who was attempting to pass on the parcel. No, Henry Carter did not think 'panic' too strong a word. He knew the way the place worked. He understood the culture of Six. It would not have changed in the years since he had left his own full-time employment in the old Century House. There was a child's grin on his face. Yes, Henry Carter could picture panic running a limited course, early on a spring afternoon some twenty-three months before, through the corridors above him. A man who should have been tied down, fastened tight, was free and going loose behind the lines. A man, who was a freelancer and an amateur, was behind the lines and beyond recall. A child's grin and a quiet chuckle, because panic would have been scampering down those 'corridors of inaction' above him, kicking down the doors into the 'offices of inactivity' above him. Clever men, the men who drew up clever plans, would have been cursing, swearing, twisting pencil stems, and passing on that parcel of responsibility. There was a new cup of coffee in front of him, the last that the night duty supervisor would bring him before the day shift came on in an hour's time. He knew his socks smelled, and he could feel the rude stubble on his chin. He thought that somewhere in the vast recesses of Babylon on Thames there would be a plastic razor that he could beg, but he did not know where he would ask for replacement socks. His chuckle was because he saw the clever men with their clever plans cursing and scampering in panic… He thought of the man running loose behind the lines, beyond recall. Lunatic, of course, but predictable. Too lethal and emotional a cocktail for a decent fellow to have rejected… It was usually the decent ones who could be inveigled to go behind the lines, beyond recall. He knew the scenario, of course he did, he had himself twisted the screw, manipulated young and decent men, and he was not proud of what he had done, and he hoped, quite fervently, as the dawn came up over the Thames, that Mrs. Mary Braddock was not proud. The night supervisor was locking away the small microwave in which the bacon for the sandwiches had been cooked, and a young woman from the shift was spraying that end of Library with an air cleanser, and the music was already gone. Another damn morning was coming. She was unpacking in her room. It was a better hotel than the one she had used on her two previous visits to Zagreb. She was on a floor above the room from which she had hunted out Penn, and there was a good vista from the window that went away past the hospital with the big red cross painted on the white background over the tiles, and over the wide street that was laced with tram tracks, on towards the formidable floodlit public buildings of the Viennese style of a century before. When the telephone rang she was ferrying her clothes from her opened case to the wardrobe. She went to the telephone with the framed photograph of her Dorrie beside it. Her husband's voice hacked anger at her. '… Do you know what you are doing? You are interfering, you are interfering and meddling. I have had Arnold bloody Browne into my house, as if I were some sort of criminal, as if I were responsible for you. You are interfering with policy, you are meddling in matters, damn it, matters beyond your pitiful understanding… And don't you think you owe me some sort of bloody apology? Do you know what you did to me, and my guests? You made a bloody fool of me… Did you stop and think what you were doing to me, humiliating me… You sent that man back, that's what Arnold bloody Browne is saying, always have to get your own bloody way, don't you? That man was close to getting himself killed first time around, his luck and a deal of guts from other people saved his life. But you couldn't let it go, had to send him back again… God, Mary, do you understand what you've done… ?" She put the telephone down on him. She sat in the chair. She stared at the photograph of her Dorrie, such an old photograph because the child was laughing. He sat on his son's bed. He was cold from the night air. There was no heating in the house outside the kitchen, and no electricity that evening. The oil lamp threw a feeble yellow light into his son's room from the timbered landing. Milan told his Marko that the night was clear with no sign of rain. He did not tell his son that he had walked out into the village that evening, after the darkness had come. Did not tell him that he had walked as far as the headquarters building of the TDF, and that he had gone inside and into the room that had been his office since his election by acclamation as leader. He did not tell his son that Branko was in his chair and sitting at his desk and working through a new duty roster for the sentries on the bridge to Rosenovici and on the roadblock to Vrginmost, and it was the leader who made the roster for the sentries. He did not tell his son that Stevo was deep in negotiation with the chief of the irregulars and handing over money for the supply of diesel, and it was the leader who controlled the fuel resource for the village. He did not tell his son that Milo was talking with others of the irregulars for the acquisition of more of the heavy. 50-calibre machine guns and more grenades for the RPG-7s that were stored in the concrete-lined armoury, and it was the leader who had charge of the armoury. He did not tell his son that he had been ignored by the irregulars, and by the gravedigger and the postman and the carpenter. Milan held the boy's hand. "If there is no more rain, if the stream has gone down, then tomorrow afternoon may be good for fishing." Ham took them across. She could see nothing around her beyond the white swirl of the water where he dipped the paddle. Penn was in front of her, settled across the forward angle of the inflatable, not speaking, and Ham was behind her and grunting at the exertion of propelling the craft into the strong current of the river. Ulrike thought that she understood what was ahead… she should have known. The refugees who came by bus to the Turanj crossing point had been through what was ahead. What was ahead was enough to traumatize and crush and terrorize. The inflatable staggered against the current's power. Her father was in her mind. She had been twelve years old when he had first talked of it to her, opened the chapter of his life that was closed away before. Her father was a pacifist teacher and had stayed silent for self-preservation, and the tears had run thick on her father's face as he had explained the call of survival, for he had known who was taken to the cells and who was interrogated and who was eliminated, he had known the evil and stayed silent. It had been with her all through her life, from the age of twelve, that if a man or woman stayed silent then the time would come in later age when the tears would roll helplessly on the face, witness to shame. Her father would have understood why she rode the inflatable against the current into the width of the Kupa river. She did not wish to cry when she was old. And her father had told her, her twelve years old, and him sitting beside her and holding her and weeping, that after the surrender he had found work as an interpreter for the British Control Commission. It had been part of his work to translate in the courts that arraigned and sentenced the war criminals. The night before the execution of a sentence, by hanging, her father had been taken to the condemned cell of the deputy commander of a camp in the Neuengamme Ring, and it had been her father's job that night to interpret for the British gaolers the last letter written by the deputy commander to his wife, and the wife would receive the letter several hours after the hanging. And her father had said to her, through his tears, that it was a sweet and literate letter, not the ravings of a beast, but a letter searching for dignity from a man who was frightened. She leaned forward. Her hands groped past the backpack given by Ham. Her hands found Penn's. She held tight to his hands. She whispered, "There is something you must know. Perhaps you already know it. Something that is important…"

He hissed for her to be quiet.

She pressed. "To you, now, he is an animal. When you have him, when he is taken, he will be weak, he will be human. You must not soften then, Penn, when he is weak, when he pleads… I am sorry, Penn, but then you will have to be cruel…"

His hand, freed from hers, was across her mouth. The sounds were the slight splashing of the paddle and the wash of the river current against the side of the inflatable. His hand dropped from her mouth. She eased back from him.

"If you are weak then you betray so many. You walk for those who are dead, and for the dispossessed, the tortured. It will be, for you, difficult to be cruel…"

She could see the dark high outline of the steep bank ahead. It had seemed important to her to tell him. Behind was the greater darkness, only a single light to see, far down river from where they had launched the inflatable. Perhaps it was why she had come, to give him the edge of cruelty… She had seen the convoys of UNPROFOR troops going through the Turanj crossing point and heading for Bosnia in their personnel carriers, she had seen the vapour trails of the American jets as they arced in the skies for their threatening flights over Bosnia, she had seen on the satellite television the politicians talk about the sanction of war crimes tribunals for Bosnia, and nothing happened, the misery continued, nothing changed. The darkness was around her, the blackness of the bank was ahead of her.

Ulrike whispered, "It is left to the small people to do something …"

He slapped her face, quite sharp, stinging her. Her anger surged a moment, then lapsed. He slapped her, she thought, to give her the reality. The reality was danger. She bobbed her head as if in apology, and he would not have seen it. He would believe he was responsible for her.

The front of the inflatable hit the bank, then sidled into the broken reeds. He threw the backpack up the bank, and then she felt her arm taken roughly. He dragged her forward, had firm hold of her, then pitched her off the inflatable. She was in the void. Her fingers clawed into wet mud and her feet splashed in the water among the reeds, and his hands were at her hips and heaving her higher. She scrambled up the bank, fists and knees and toes. She heard the murmur of voices behind her, the time of the pick-up, and the place of the rendezvous. He jumped and he fell half onto her and his weight beat the breath from her chest. His hand scraped up across the fatigue jacket and found a grip by her armpit, and he pulled her up to the top of the bank.

She heard the soft wash of the paddle in the water, fading.