Heart of Danger

Seventeen.

"Who is he?" "Some drone from the Stone Age." "What's he doing here?" "He comes in two days a month, he ferrets into files that weren't annotated at the time. He's supposed to get them into shape so they can go onto disk for Archive, only low-grade stuff. He was in Century way back, when there were carrier pigeons, one-time pads, when it was Boy Scouts time." Their voices murmured in Henry Carter's ears. "God, he stinks. Look there… Food grease. The wretched man's been eating in here. I suppose it's a sort of charity really, finding people like that a bit of work. Nothing that can be said to be useful?" "It's something about former Yugoslavia." "Out of which nothing good ever came." "It can't be important or they wouldn't have let him near it… I'm trying to remember what he did when he was here, certainly wasn't senior executive rank…" "Well, he's certainly noticeable now is it his socks? Extraordinary, really, there's a file that nobody is remotely interested in, and it gets dug out and worked all over, and then it's reburied on disk, and still nobody is remotely interested in it. Waste of time." Henry Carter, his head across his elbows on the desk, opened his eyes. He saw the day supervisor and a callow skinny young man that he assumed to be from In-House Management. The woman who was the day supervisor laughed, hollow. "Amazing, he's alive… Mr. Carter, you do not have permission to camp in here like a dosser. You do not have permission to eat hot fat-ridden food in Library." "So sorry." The young man said, "It's not exactly pleasant, Mr. Carter, for the people who work here to have a man who smells…"

Most times, Henry Carter would have grovelled a further apology. But he had been dreaming… Because he had been dreaming he did not offer a second apology. His voice rose.

"Not important? Of course not… A waste of time. Of course… You wouldn't have the faintest idea. It shouldn't have been asked of him. No human being in their right mind would have driven Penn back across that river. That river, it's what European history is stuffed solid with. It's a barrier, it's a demarcation line, beyond that river is the sort of danger and risk that you in your smug and complacent little lives would not comprehend. It's always the people who are smug and complacent who send young men across rivers, through minefields, into the heart of danger, and in their arrogance they never pause to consider the consequences. Now, if you will please excuse me I have work to get on with…"

They backed off.

None of the women at their consoles lifted their heads to stare at him.

They left him at his desk.

The memory of the dream was with him. It was a damnable dream, a nightmare. What he knew of those young men who pressed forward towards the heart of danger was that they were frightened of spitting back into the faces of those who urged them further down the road. They were compelled towards the brink of the precipice, dragged towards the edge. He seemed to have seen in his dream the young man going forward as a shadow shape in darkness, and he still saw Penn, and the image of Penn shut out the languid movement around him of the personnel of Library. He coughed some phlegm from his chest into the mess of his handkerchief, he had more bronchial problems now than ever before. God, and he needed to be out of London, needed to be on the old railway line at Tregaron, needed to be alone with the big kites manoeuvring above him… but not before the file was prepared, the matter was settled.

The day supervisor was a few paces behind him, stood back as if she were nervous that the 'old drone' still had enough teeth in his old mouth to bite.

There was the hissing of the air freshener aerosol.

He was drawn back towards the pain of the memories. The memories were of men who had trusted him. Johnny Donoghue, schoolteacher, persuaded to travel into East Germany, had trusted him. Mattie Furniss, pompous and decent, had trusted him… but the damned job took precedence over trust… Almost as if he wished that this young man, fleshing in the file, had trusted him. What they said, the old men of Century and the new men of Vauxhall Cross, was that there was no escape from the job, and never would be. He smelled the fragrance that fell around him. He seemed to feel, not just at his feet and in his shoes, but across the whole of his body, the cold damp of the great Kupa river. He led her up the bank. Penn held Ulrike's hand as he took her up the bank and beyond the line of the reeds. He did not hold her hand because he thought she was weak or because he thought she needed comfort. He held her hand so that he could dictate the speed of each step that she took, and so that he could communicate the need for absolute quiet. In the darkness, with the black depth of the river behind them, it seemed to him an age before he was satisfied and prepared to move forward. Perhaps it was two minutes, perhaps three, but he was crouched down and she was kneeling close to him and he held her hand and he could hear, just, the heave of her breathing. He could not hear the soft splash of the paddles any longer, and there was no sound from back across the river to tell him that Ham had successfully reached the other bank and had taken the inflatable out of the water and had dragged it to the hiding place among the scrub in the swamp ground… it was not good to think of the swamp ground on the other side of the river. To think of safe territory was facile, dangerous. Penn released Ulrike's hand. His fingers ran the length of her arm and across her neck and he touched the hair on her head and he brought her head close to him so that her ear was against his lips. He whispered, so quietly, into her ear that she was not to speak. On no account should she speak. To speak was to hazard them, no bloody way should she open her bloody mouth. Again, his hand took hers. They began to move forward. He did not want her too close to him so that she stumbled against him, nor so far back that she might lose contact with him and then hurry to regain it. He went the way he had gone before, and it had to be that way because Ham knew no other route. He led her across the path that was set back from the river's bank, and he groped down with his free hand so that he could find the single strand of wire and he made the circle of his thumb and forefinger around the wire and soon he had reopened the scratches in his hand. They went faster than he had gone the last time… She stepped on a twig which his own boots had missed, and he jerked her arm hard as if it were a capital sin to step on and break a twig when moving in the total darkness of a night forest.

They made good time.

A lone dog barked at the farmhouse, and there was one small lamp burning in the outbuildings. All the while that they moved he held tight to her hand, controlling her. He had told Ham they would be in fast, there for the minimum time, out fast, and he should have the inflatable waiting. Ham had nodded. "Don't you worry on it. Piece of cake, squire."

They were past the farm, they were far behind the lines.

"Where do they come back to?"

He tried to back his head away, twist his neck away, but the interrogator's punch came too fast for his reaction. The punch caught him on the tip of his nose and his eyes watered.

They had been waiting for him at the old police station. Ham had done as he had been told to do, driven Ulrike's car to her apartment block, parked it, pushed her keys through her letter box and then walked back to the old police station, where they had been waiting.

"Where is the rendezvous on the river, when is the rendezvous?"

Her hand came up fast from beside the trouser pocket of her fatigues and took him behind the ear, jack-knifing his head forward, and as his head bucked her other hand with the clenched knuckles drove into his lips.

Two of the military police had been waiting for him when he had come back into the yard behind the old police station and they had taken his arms with no explanation, and marched him up the steps and into the room of the Intelligence Officer who fronted as Liaison. "Don't be boring, don't be slow to help yourself, don't believe that I won't hurt you." The interrogator hit, as if his head was a punch ball in a gymnasium, with the left-right combination, and each blow was harder and there was the first warm trickle of blood from his upper lip that ran sweet to his gums. The two military policemen had pushed him in through the door of the Intelligence Officer's room, and he had seen the First Secretary and tried to raise something of a cheerful smile to be met only by cold hostility, and the Intelligence Officer had gazed at him like he was reptile's dirt. He had seen the chill in the eyes of the interrogator. She wore fatigue uniform, baggy because it was too large for her smallness, and she had a heavy pistol holster belted to her wa sped waist. The woman had motioned him to the chair, and when he had sat on it, straight-backed, she had hit him the first time. "You can be a very sensible man, Ham, or you can be a silly man

… Where, when, is the rendezvous?" She punched straight into the fullness of his mouth, and the wide dulled gold of her wedding ring clipped the cap of his front tooth and broke it. He reckoned the interrogator was a pretty woman, but 'fanny' always looked good in uniform, always looked best with a webbing belt and a holster. She had no cosmetics and there was a great weariness at her bagged eyes, and her breasts were heavy in their fall into the fatigue tunic when she stretched her back after each blow, like they'd suckled children. He couldn't see the First Secretary because the bastard was behind him, and he couldn't see the Intelligence Officer because he was away to the right of him, and his right eye was already closing from the interrogator's blows. He could read her face, and her face was iced calm. From what he read in her face, the fanny was bloody tired, but she would go on hitting him until she dropped, and she wouldn't care if she rasped her fists, and she wouldn't care if she hurt him. He thought she was without mercy. He knew that sort of fanny, in the Defence Force, all the fucking same. All the same because they'd had a man killed somewhere on the fucking line, some time in the war, and they'd parked the kiddies with their mothers, and they'd put on the uniform, and they hated. There was no mercy from the fucking women. The women were the fucking worst. He had his hands up, tried to cover his face.

"You don't leave here, Ham, before I have the time and the place of the rendezvous. When, where…?"

Because he tried to protect his face, he did not see the short swing of the interrogator's boot. She kicked him hard, boot into his shin, toecap onto the bone of his leg. He cried out.

He didn't doubt her. He seemed to see himself bloodstained and screaming and cringing. He seemed to see the guys who had been behind in the open field amongst the trees. He seemed to see her with the knife bent over the guys who had been wounded and could not save themselves. All the goddamn same, fucking Serb bastards and fucking Croat bastards. He did not know how long it had been, whether he had been in the chair in the Intelligence Officer's room for half an hour or an hour. A goddamn awful pain in his leg. And Penn was nothing to him, goddamn nothing. He should come first, second, tenth, he should come ahead of goddamn Penn every fucking time. He owed Penn nothing.

"Come on, Ham, what's the time and what's the place?"

She had hold of his head. The interrogator's fingers and sharp nails seemed to be able to take a grip on the folds of the skin over his scalp, and she shook his head until he thought his mind would explode.

Dumb and stupid enough to let himself get hacked around, kicked around. He owed Penn nothing…

Ham told where he was to be waiting to take the inflatable across the Kupa river to collect Penn and the German woman and the eyewitness, and the prisoner.

The First Secretary said, "That's a good boy."

Ham told when he was to be beside the Kupa river to pick up Penn and the German woman and the eyewitness, and the prisoner.

The First Secretary said relieved, "That's a sensible boy."

"Will you, please, close your mouth."

But she didn't. He thought it was excitement, adrenaline, whatever unnamed chemicals were screwing about in her bloodstream, that made her need to talk. He supposed she was a town person and had to communicate, and he knew that he was a country person able to subsist on his own company. He didn't bloody well need to talk, she did… They had been on the move for ten hours before he had signalled the long halt. They had gone slow through the darkness and faster in the dawn light, and quickest when the sun had started to stream down through the thickening foliage above them. The sun was up now, throwing down gold shards, picking out and spotlighting the mulch floor of the forest.

"If we don't talk then you don't know why. It should be important to you, why. You must wish to know why I have come…"

"What I know is that sound carries in the forest. You think you are quiet, you are like a rhino…"

"What is a rhino?"

"God, a rhino moves like a double-decker…"

"What is a double-decker?"

"A rhinoceros is a very big, very fat, noisy animal. A double-decker is a two-floor, very big, very heavy, noisy bus…"

"I know what is a rhinoceros and what is a bus. How can you say I am like a rhinoceros and a bus?"

"God, Ulrike… will you say what you have to say, and then, please, be quiet."

"Don't you need to know why?"

They were off the track. He thought they might be an hour going fast, probably more than an hour, from the place where there were the bones and the cases and the bags. He felt so tired. He lay on his back and his head was crooked up against the backpack and she sat cross-legged beside him. His eyes were opening, closing, opening again, and he could see the excitement in her face, the adrenaline and the chemicals, and he thought that if he slept and she stayed awake then he would have lost control of her. He was frightened to lose control of her in case a dog came, in case a patrol came, in case a group of loggers came, in case… He had not told her about the skeletons of the refugees and their bags and their cases, and he did not know if he could bypass the place so that she would not see them. "It is not required for me to know why. I have told you that I am grateful that you have come. It does not help me to know. But you insist… So, tell me why, then be quiet." So serious: "You have to know why." Tell me." "It is about a future." Brutal, he said, "Not our future. We have no future." She hissed, peeved, "There is more than our future. There is the future of the principle." His eyes closed again, he forced them open. "I know nothing of principles." "Rubbish. You are not here without principles. You are a man of principle…" "Principles get people killed. That's not for me." "Silly, stupid man. Without principle you would have been on the aircraft, you would have been at your home. You sell yourself too cheap. You have principle, and you have anger…" "The anger is because you won't shut your mouth." "You have anger and principle, and they ride together, that is why I came." "Brilliant, thank you, good night. Lights out and silence, please…" And he could not push open his eyes. Eyes closed and the tiredness clinging in him. Typical of a bloody woman that there must be a bloody discussion… Just like at Five, just like the women graduates in General Intelligence Group. Why must the mountain be climbed? Analysis and thought and team discussion as to why the mountain must be climbed. Best to have a paper written on Aims and Objects for Climbing the Mountain, then have a subcommittee report on the paper to the full team. Penn was climbing the mountain because the bloody mountain was there. Penn was going up the bloody mountain because Mrs. Mary bloody Braddock was holding a bayonet, sharp as hell, against his backside for him to impale himself on if he should bloody well stop climbing the bloody mountain. Penn was crawling up the bloody scree slope of the mountain because she was there, Dorrie was at the top with the wind in her hair and the rain on her face and the mist about her, bloody laughing and mocking him… Ulrike was close to him. He sensed her bent over him. There was a garlic taste on her breath. Her fingers were smoothing the hair from his forehead… Because the bloody mountain was there, with Dorrie astride it. She said into his ear, "I understand that there is no future, and the future for us is not important, but the future of the principle is everything. If nobody speaks, if nobody calls out, if there is only silence, then there is a new dark age of barbarity…" He murmured, "Principles are not important. What is important, if we take Milan Stankovic, when we run with Milan Stankovic, then the wasps' nest is well stirred. It's shit-frightened running then, and when you're running it's not bloody principles that'll help you along. And if we try to take the eyewitness, she's old, slow, needing to be carried.. ." Maybe it was just the movement of her lips speaking into his ear, maybe she kissed his ear, but they had no future. The future was Jane, was Tom. It was not important whether he wanted it, or what he wanted. There was no future with Ulrike. "It is the difference between us and them, we have principle and they have only barbarism…" "Christ, Ulrike, principles don't stop bullets, can't blunt knives." Tenn '…?" "Yes." So tired, and slipping, and her lips breathing the words to his ear. Tenn, if you had him, if you have taken him, but you are blocked, and you cannot bring him out, would you kill him?" "I don't know." "You have to make an answer. Would you kill him as justice? Would you kill him as revenge, for what he did to the wounded?" "I don't know." "Kill him for what he did to Dorrie?" "I don't know." "You will remember what I told you… if he is begging you for his life, you will have to be cruel. Do you have it inside you, good and ordinary and decent man, to be cruel…?"

"Please, don't talk, please."

"I want to know what he is like. I want to see his face, hear his speech, watch him move. I want to know how he is different. He is married, he has a child, he is a leader of his people. I understand all of those things. I do not understand how he could have beaten the wounded and knifed them and shot them. I do not understand how he could have looked into the face of your Dorrie and beaten her and knifed her and shot her. I have to believe that I will find something of him that is different. If he is not different then we are all lost. I see only victims. I do not know those who make the victims. I see the results of their violence but I am not able to see the source of the violence. Penn, surely you don't believe that I came here only because I was afraid for you. Penn, I despise sentiment… There are 2,400 souls in the Transit Centre, and they do not even own hope, and their number is minimal in comparison with the greater number who have suffered. They deserve some, however small, act of retribution… Half a century ago it was my own country that bred the evil, and the evil was made by men and women that you would have passed in the street and thought no different from yourself. The evil must be isolated, stopped… If he is a good and ordinary and decent man then there is no hope for any of us, none, then it is indeed the beginning of that dark age. I have to pray that he is different…"

Penn slept.

"You will give me the wit to believe that you are not joking with me?"

"No, sir, I am most serious; would that it were a joke."

It was a part of the First Secretary's upbringing that he would address a more senior man with respect. And a lesson of his teenage years at Marlborough School, well learned, that evasion of a problem came back to haunt. He sat stiffly in the chair while the Director of Civilian Affairs paced, heaving on his cigar.

"He got himself out, and now he has gone back in?"

"That's what I am saying."

The smoke of the cigar spat from the Director's mouth. "You appreciate the implications of what you tell me?"

"It is because I appreciate them that I have come to you."

"I am not a highly educated man, just a fucking Paddy, I have a bad degree out of Dublin, Business Management crap, maybe I don't have the intellect for this job. Maybe a man with a greater intellect could do this job without having to spend fifteen, seventeen, hours a day stuck at this desk or sitting in on meetings with the most God-awful people Christ ever invented, maybe. I spend those hours every day trying to stamp out the nastiest brush fire Europe has seen in half a century. I hate this place, I hate its bestiality and its barbarity, its love of slitting the throats of old friends and former neighbours …"

"I understand, sir."

"What I am trying to do, with my piss-poor intellect, is create some sort of cease-fire so that the killing stops. Are you following me?"

"Very clearly."

"I have these war crimes groupies fucking about in my backyard. At the moment they are little more than a nuisance, but each day they're here, each day they dig their hole deeper, so their power of sabotage increases…"

"I appreciate that, sir."

"Let me tell you something, in confidence. Right now, this week, there is a meeting in Budapest between Croat bureaucrats and Serb bureaucrats. There is a meeting scheduled tomorrow in Detroit, out of the limelight, between a Croatian constitutional lawyer and a Serb with the same education. Two days ago, in Athens, there wound up a session involving Bosnian Muslims and Serbs… Thank Christ, those bloody journalists down in Sarajevo and Belgrade and Zagreb are too preoccupied with getting hero medals on the front lines, they don't know the half of what's being worked…"

The First Secretary knew of all three meetings, and disguised his knowledge. "Small mercies."

"Under the fucking carpet, we are working night and day for a cease-fire, and talk of war crimes tribunals is an obstruction. Shit, the Serbs have monsters in their ranks, but so do the Croats, so do the Bosnian Muslims. Everybody in this mess is guilty. If an alleged war criminal is kidnapped and brought out of Sector North then I can kiss goodbye to a cease-fire, most especially if they also bring out an eyewitness. Got me? For six months now I have oiled these bastards towards talking with each other… You know what, you should see them. Get a Croat and a Serb together in a quiet hotel with a bar, and you sure as hell wouldn't know they've been beating double shades of shit out of each other. They want a deal. They laugh together, drink together, probably go looking for tail together. They want out…"

"I wouldn't wish you to think that my government in any way condones the action of this freelancer, quite the opposite…"

"And who will believe you?"

There might have been a microphone in the room. Best to assume there were microphones recording the conversation. The First Secretary spoke softly. "Which is why I brought you the information, which is why we will do our damnedest to make certain no alleged war criminal is brought out from Sector North. I think we are running on the same rails. It won't happen…"

The face of the Director lightened, as if he were now amused. "But it was your Prime Minister who called for tribunals…"

"Should never pay too much attention to political ramblings."

"And this Penn, interfering fucking nobody, he's your man…"

The First Secretary was smiling. "Pity that he didn't stay home. I met him. Not very impressive, but he's been caught up in the emotion of the place. Capable in a technical sense, but not very bright. Capable enough, perhaps, to make it back to the Kupa river, but not bright enough to see the implications of his actions. If he takes his man then we'll hear about it… As you know better than me, the dust sheets will be coming off the artillery pieces and the cladding will be off the ground-to-ground missiles that can reach southern Zagreb. They might even get to loading up… I don't think they'd fire unless this wretched clerk from Salika village is actually out of their territory. Penn will not be allowed to cross the river with his prisoner, I thought you should know."

He saw the spreading astonishment crack the Director's face. "You'd see him go to the wall, your man?"

The First Secretary had served one tour, two years, in Dublin as a junior Six person covered by diplomatic status. He thought he knew the southern Irish. He thought they reckoned that the British were always totally devious, quite ruthless. Well…

"He's not our man."

Everything of note, everything sensitive to his work, Marty had locked away in the floor safe. He was checking his shopping list and beside him as he stood was the howl of the mains-powered electric drill. They were cheerful young guys, the two Swedish soldiers with the drill, perhaps carpenters or engine mechanics back home before their turn in the armed forces. When they had made the deep screw sockets in the floor they would fix down the metal ring that he had demanded. They did not ask him why he wanted a metal ring fastened to the floor of the converted freight container, and he would not have told them the reason for it. He checked his list, carefully typed out.

1 Bed (collapsible).

1 Sleeping bag, plus blanket.

Food: Bread, margarine, jam, sliced ham, sausage, milk

(3 lit res 1 Hotel room reservation (KD eyewitness).

1 Chain (4 metres).

2 Padlocks (2 keys each).

1 pair Handcuffs (2 keys).

He told the Swedish soldiers that they should close the door when they had finished fastening the ring in the floor. The ring would hold a padlock, the padlock would hold a chain, the chain would hold a second padlock, the second padlock would hold a pair of handcuffs, the pair of handcuffs would hold a war criminal. Marty Jones had told anyone who would listen since he had come to Zagreb that it was the means that were important, not the end. He reckoned himself entitled to change his mind. He said to the Swedes that he would be out for the rest of the afternoon, gone shopping.

The sun was lowering behind the trees, edging for the summit crest of the hillside. The woodland that blanketed the long valley steamed from the heat of the day, and now there was the first freshness from the coming of the evening.

They were past the skeletons, un cared for and untouched since he had last seen them, and he had watched the control settle on Ulrike's face as if the refugees shot down were not a part of her business. The way she had gone by the skeletons told him of her strength… So small, so fragile, so bloody strong… He had pointed down to the swaddled bodies of the babies and Ulrike had not flinched, and he had felt the tears welling in his eyes.

He no longer held her hand. He felt his trust for her. Down from the trees, below in the width of the valley, he could hear the drive of two tractor engines, but the tractors and the fields were still masked from them by the thickness of the trees' foliage.

When they came to the minefield, to the needle lengths of wire rising up through the leaf carpet, he broke the rule that he had made for himself. He spoke. He told her of the cat, and he swayed his hips to show the way that the cat had eased itself against the antennae of the mines, just for a moment of lightness, almost of clowning. Then he caught a grip on himself… This was no bloody place to go clowning. But if they didn't laugh they would cry, and if they cried they would be broken… They pushed on.

She went easily. She could have been on a forest ramble. Ulrike would know the reality because she took in the refugees. She would know they were moving into the eye of the storm.

The stream was silver and black between the trees.

They stopped still. They stood against a wide oak's trunk and they could see beyond the stream to the orchard blossoms and the smoke wreath above the chimneys of Salika. Gold light fell on the valley. They saw two old tractors moving in the fields across the stream. The one spread manure and the other ploughed. And across the stream they saw a man and a child walking away from the village and Penn shuddered. He did not need to tell her… Milan Stankovic held the child's hand and he carried on his shoulder two fishing rods and a landing net.

Milan and the child were coming away from the village and were walking on the far bank of the stream past the silver spate water towards a dark slow pool.

They had a plan.

The plan dictated that, first, they should find the eyewitness.

He estimated the village was a mile from the pool and the tractors were half a mile from Milan Stankovic and his boy.

Ulrike understood the dilemma. She said, "You must have the eyewitness first. You must."

"It is our opportunity."

"The eyewitness is evidence. Evidence is necessary.

"We get the eyewitness…" As if she were speaking to a juvenile. "They have not even begun… They will be there when we want them to be there… Penn, you have to be cruel."

He was looking at the child who skipped along beside his father and he could faintly hear the excited squeals of the child who held his father's hand.

They went back into the depth of the trees, where the trunks were set closer. He looked twice into her face to see if the sight of the target man had changed her, if the sight of the child with the target man disturbed her, and he saw nothing but a chilled and steadfast determination. They pushed on. They moved now in short rushes. He would select a big tree ahead, and he would go fast to it and hug against it, and she would come to him, and they would wait, would listen, and he would choose the next tree. He recognized that he made more noise than she did, that his feet were heavier and his footfall clumsier. He could see the jagged rooftops of Rosenovici…

Back to Dome's place, back again into Dorrie's war… He could see through the trees the broken tower of the church, and he could see the lane that led to Katica Dubelj's hovel home. He caught at Ulrike's arm when she came light-stepped to him, and his hand was across his mouth to demand her silence and he pointed to the grey-black smear of the earth among the weeds in the corner of the field… and he seemed to hear again the horrid young woman, laughing at him, mocking him. It was a madness, and it was for her, and her laughter clamoured in his mind.

They came to the path that climbed the hill slope behind the village that had died. He could have turned then, when he came to the path. He saw the worn mess of the path, mud stamped by boots. He remembered how the path had been, covered in fallen and undisturbed leaves. At that point he could have gone back into the wood. He went at the side of the path. He came to the mouth of the cave where the grass was broken, where the boots had gathered. He took the small torch from the backpack side pouch. Ulrike's hand was on his arm, holding tight to him, as if to give him courage. He stood in the entrance of the cave. He shone the torch beam forward and from the dark recess twin lights, amber, blazed back at him. The beam found the cat, wide-eyed, crouched on the rag bundle, snarling at the light. He saw the parchment skin of the face of Katica Dubelj and he saw the darkened slashes of the knives' work. He saw the cat was across her stomach and past the cat's tail were the spindle-thin legs of Katica Dubelj and the long black material of her dress was forced up to her waist and he saw the white death of the skin of her thighs. He swung the light away, away from the cat who guarded her. He reeled out of the cave. Ulrike held him. "It is what they always do. They violate old women. They rape old women. Perhaps you are responsible, Penn." "Don't…" "Every time, for the rest of your life, that you take a woman to your bed… Perhaps it was you that led them to her, Penn." "Don't say that…" "Every time you take a woman to your bed, for warmth and for love, you will remember her… It is what you have to live with here, Penn, your responsibility." "Don't let me hear you say that…" "Because you are not man enough to hear it? It's not boys' games… It is about survival… It is about the code of living that you believe in… You do not have an eyewitness, so you have to take him and you have to make him convict himself. Are you strong enough to make him convict himself?

"I have to be…"

"And he has the child with him… Are you strong enough?"

She had walked the city all of the afternoon, not shopping and not window gazing, but a restless striding, as if walking the streets was an escape from the isolation of her hotel room.

Dog-tired, her feet killing, Mary Braddock found a cafe on the Trg Bana Jelacica, a table to herself. A cappuccino was brought to her.

It was, none of it, fair.

Not fair of Charles to shout down the telephone at her, "God, Mary, do you understand what you've done…"

Not fair of the earnest young American investigator to challenge her, "As long as you know, ma'am, what you're asking that man to do.. ."

Not fair of Penn to tell her simply, "I doubt you ever listened to your daughter…"

Nothing was fair. It was what any mother would have done… Suddenly they came around her. They were noisy, bouncing with humour. They didn't ask her if they could take the rest of the table. She sat huddled amongst the young students. They ignored her. They were squashed close to her and they had their study books on the table and one tried to read what she thought was poetry and there was happy mocking from her friends. She drank the dregs of her coffee. And amongst them there was a pale and gaunt-faced young man with cropped blond hair, and the young man was struggling to lift an unmounted canvas from a wide bag. She saw that he struggled because he used his left hand only, and she saw the way that the right sleeve of his jacket hung empty. The work on the canvas, violent and bold and crude, showed a young woman crucified, and the cross had fallen in filth. And their laughter was around her, and she was not a part of them, and their babble at the merit of the work… It was not fair, because she craved to be included…

They were her Dome's people, damn her.

It was a warm spring evening. A long valley, and the trees from the woodland threw broad bold shadows on the grassland. It was an idyllic setting. A father inserted a fishing hook into a writhing worm and cast the line into the hidden darkness of a slow pool, and handed the rod to his child son. It was a place of calm, of peace. They had worked the plan through when they had still been in the tree line of the wood, how they would shatter the evening, break the idyll, crack the calm and the peace. They had talked it through coldly, and Penn had said what he would do, and Ulrike had agreed the plan. He took off his trousers, and she unzipped her jeans and kicked them off over her boots, and there was no shyness between them, nor any humour. It was a small part of the plan that it would be better for them when they crossed the stream to keep their trousers dry. It was part of the plan, methodical and point by point, that it would be better for them when they fled with the prisoner to have dry trousers. They heard the excited squeal of the child and saw him arc his rod up, but there was no fish. It was a good moment for Penn to go. He saw the father bent over the grass and the man, Milan Stankovic, the man who was the killer of Dorrie Mowat, would be searching in a tin or a jar for a fresh worm to thread onto the hook. Penn had such confidence in her, he did not feel the need to look back at her for reassurance. He left the tree line, and as he ran across the weeded and untended grassland of the field towards the stream, he could see the hunched low-set shoulders of the man and the child. He took a line towards a mess of fallen willows that were up the valley from the deep pool where they fished. He was running blind, because all of his attention was on the lowered shoulders of the man and the child, and the skin of his shins and thighs was nicked by the old thistles of the field that had not been worked since the fall of Rosenovici, since the death of Dorrie Mowat… He saw the man straighten, and the child was pointing to where the fish had taken the worm and was trying to wrestle the rod back from his father so that he might cast again more quickly. Penn had dived to the ground, fallen among nettles that pricked at the bared skin of his legs. He was crawling towards the bushes of willow.

The worm was in the water. They were both of them watching the line.

Penn hesitated when he reached the willows' cover.

There was a high bank to the stream, cut deep by the winter's flow, where the willow branches fell into the water. Penn looked up into the closing dusk and he saw far away that the tractors were retreating towards the dulled blossom of the orchards and the climbing smoke of the village. It was so quiet… He slid down the bank. He dropped into the pressure power of the current. It was shallow water above the pool, going quickly. They were both of them, man and child, rapt and staring into the dark water in front of them. It was the chance that he must take. His body was bent so that the water broke against his chest as he took chopped strides on the smoothed big stones of the stream's bed. He made the crossing. He came to the far bank and grabbed at a root and dribbled the stream's water from his mouth.

Penn came up the bank.

He lay in the grass and he felt for the soaked fine rope that was a part of the plan, and for the torn cloth strip from the tail of his shirt.

He was forty yards, perhaps fifty, along the bank of the stream from the man and the child.

There was a shout.

The happiness of the child gave a moment of opportunity to Penn.

He was behind them, going cat quick, closing on them.

The rod was arched above them. They were both clinging to the rod, and the child was yelling and the father was trying to calm him.

He had the opportunity.

Penn came on them. When he was close, when he was a stride away from them, the father turned. When his hand was raised for the blow, Milan Stankovic saw him. When he had the heel of his hand high, the killer of Dorrie Mowat gazed at him in bewilderment. Penn hit him. Penn hit the neck of Milan Stankovic, defenceless because his hands were still clasping the rod, above the shoulder and below the ear. It was not a blow that would have felled a readied man, but Milan Stankovic was in bewilderment, and his hands came off the rod and he went down. So fast… The man on the grass of the field, and Penn rolling him onto his stomach and driving his knee down into the man's back, and snatching clear the pistol at his waist, and dragging up his right arm as if to break the socket at the shoulder. The child held the curved and quivering rod, and for that moment did not understand. He saw Ulrike break the cover of the trees and she was running, whitened legs pumping, to the far bank of the stream. He had the noose on the wet rope around Milan Stankovic's right wrist, and then he was pulling the left arm back to meet the right wrist, and binding the wrists together. It was about advantage… and the advantage of surprise diminished. Milan Stankovic shouted in his fear, and he heaved with his hips, his buttocks, to throw off Penn. With the fear was recognition… It was the struggle of the animal that senses, in fear, the open doorway of the abattoir. She was coming dripping along the stream's bank, hurrying to him, and the child had thrown down the rod. They came together at Penn, Ulrike and the child.

He pulled Milan Stankovic upright.

The child clung to his father's legs.

He hit Milan Stankovic hard across the back of the skull with the barrel of the pistol, to hurt and to stun.

The child beat at Penn with small clenched fists.

Penn had one hand on the roped wrists of Milan Stankovic, and the other hand held the pistol under the chin of the man who had killed Dorrie Mowat, and he was trying to propel Milan Stankovic away and back towards the fast spate waters above the pool, and he could not move him because the child held at his father's legs and punched and kicked at his father's attacker. Ulrike was there. Penn saw the cold in her eyes. Ulrike had said that he would have to be cruel. She caught the child, she broke the child's grip. She threw the child down, viciously, onto the grass of the field.

Penn and Ulrike ran on the bank to the upper end of the pool, and they had the weight of Milan Stankovic between them. They scrambled him down the bank, and into the flow of the stream. He slumped once between them, his feet slipping, and he was doused over his head and was spluttering water when they pulled him up. Just before they reached the tree line Penn swung to look behind him. He saw the rod sliding away into the pool. Ulrike, amongst the trees, retrieved the backpack. He saw the child running, demented, across the empty fields and back towards the village and the smoke and the blossom dull in the dusk. Evica shook him, shook her Marko. She shook him hard to kill the hysteria in her son, and then she held him against her until the panted sobbing subsided, until he could tell her.