Heart of Danger

One.

The area for the digging was outlined by a rude rectangle of white tape. The rectangle was approximately ten metres by four metres, as measured out by the Professor's full strides. It had been easy to recognize the rectangle where they had dug because only weeds had grown in that disturbed corner of the field. Around the edge of the rectangle, heaped on the grass beyond the white tape, was the new boundary marker of piled muddy earth. Four policemen had done the digging at the Professor's direction. The long-handled spades with the wide blades were now tossed onto the low mud wall. The four policemen and the Professor knelt in the pit they had made. When they had started, their overalls had been pure white, they were now smeared in the grey-black mud of the field. There was no talking amongst the policemen and they responded only to the curt instructions of the Professor. Each could recognize that the light was starting to fall and would go quickly because the rain cloud was already below the level of the summit of the wooded hill that rose above the farmhouse. They had the one chance to excavate and exhume, and the chance would not come again, and they had brought no portable generator and no lights. It must be finished that afternoon. The rain spat on them, beat at their shoulders and their buttocks and at the backs of their knees. The rain made muddied pools in the pit around the bodies that were already retrieved. If the Professor had been working at home, if he had been called out by the Police Department's homicide team, then he would have been protected by a tent of stout tarpaulin. If the Professor had been working at home, crouched over the cadaver of a murder victim, then he would have had his own team with him, all expert, and there would have been no pressure of time. There was a way of doing things, there was a pattern of procedure, and he abided by the procedure because that was the bible to which he worked. He thought they were fine men, the four policemen with whom he uncovered the corpses, the tall young Canadian and the cheerful Frenchman and the droll balding Portuguese and the slim-wasted Kenyan, and they worked in silence to his abrupt instructions that were muffled through his face mask. Each time he looked up he saw that the rain cloud crept further down the wooded slope of the hill, and he saw that the lights burned brighter in the houses on the far side of the valley beyond the stream. If it had been possible to have erected a tent cover over the grave, if they could have worked at a slower speed, then they could have used the scalpels and the narrow brushes. The rain fell in the pit, destroyed his hopes of minute care. The policemen had learned from him, watched him and copied, and they scraped the clinging clay mud from the bodies with small trowels, the sort of trowels that his wife used in the garden back home in north Los Angeles. When they had taken as much mud from each body as was possible with the trowels, then they wiped the faces of the dead with the sodden cloths that he had brought. When he was satisfied that each face had been cleaned to the best of their ability, then the policemen would stand back and he would photograph the body in wide shot and then operate the automatic zoom on his pocket Nikon and photograph the face in close-up. There were nine bodies photographed in wide shot, nine faces captured in close-up, nine body bags zipped and lying close together beyond the earth wall around his white marker tape. The Professor used a clipboard of note paper that was covered by a clear plastic bag. He had made a small sketch map of the grave site, and had detailed each corpse before it was lifted to the body bag SSK9 wore around his throat a gold chain to which was attached a thin gold cross and an inscribed medallion. The left foot of SSK9 was gone, taken off at the ankle. The forehead of SSK9 showed the bullet hole, central. A single boot protruded from the mud layer alongside the indentation, now filling fast from the rain, from which they had taken SSK9. "OK, guys, should be the last one…" The Professor's voice was a growl. He kept his words brief and his voice low because that way he reckoned he was better able to prevent the bile spilling up from his throat. It was the smell that made him want to vomit. The face mask was a token against the smell of putrefaction. He had been told that the bodies were reckoned to have been buried in the month of December in the year of 1991, but the clay of the earth had been dense enough to keep out foxes and dogs from the grave and had slowed the process of decomposition. The Professor stood for a moment and tried to stretch his back to arch out the stiffness. Back from the pit and the tape and the low earth wall, back from the white painted jeeps of the United Nations Civilian Police, a small crowd watched. He had seen them gather during the course of the day. They watched and they made no sign. He had seen them come from the tight cluster of houses around the church on the far side of the stream. There were women in the crowd, the old in black and the young in bright coats; there were children with ravaged mature faces, holding an unnatural quiet; there were men in the crowd, some wearing the drab clothes of farm work, some in poor-fitting damp uniforms, some armed with shotguns and automatic rifles. He wondered what they thought, the crowd that had come across the stream to watch the excavation of the grave. His eyes wandered. He looked from the field and on down the lane where the grass had grown across the old tractor ruts and on towards the ruin of the village and on to the church tower where the upper stonework that would have housed the bell had been taken away by tank or artillery fire. He wondered what they thought. He turned to stare back at the crowd… The Canadian murmured, "Don't make eye contact with them, Professor. Always smile at them, keep the smile glued." The Kenyan muttered, "We want to get it wrapped and we want to get the shit out. Don't expect to be loved…" He thought them fine young men. He was in his seventieth year. He had taken two months of unpaid leave from the hospital in north Los Angeles where he headed the Department of Pathology. Back home, those who had been his contemporaries through medical school had long retired to the beach houses of Santa Monica and Santa Barbara. He thought them fools. Dear to his heart was the charity Physicians for Human Rights. And dearer to him than the charity was the knowledge that his Abigail, in the forty-fifth year of their marriage, held a pride in her husband for taking himself off to Croatia for two months. He'd tell her about the Canadian and the Frenchman and the Portuguese and the Kenyan, great young guys who could chide, gently, a vague old man who let his eyes wander. He had the one day at the grave, and the day was nearly done. "Sorry, guys." The Kenyan was out of the pit and had gone to where the mine detector lay in shelter alongside the wheel of a jeep. He jumped back into the pit and ran the machine over the last part of the earth, beyond the protruding leg. It was the fourth time that the mine detector had been used to sweep the site. They were all in the pit again. The crowd who watched from the edge of the field would only have seen their shoulders and their buttocks, and the trowels of dripping mud that were tossed from the pit to the earth wall. It would be the last body. The growing gloom brought a new pace to their work. An army boot, a leg in disintegrating camouflage fatigues, a hand that wore a cheap and dulled ring, a wrist-watch, an arm that was bent crazily because the central bone had been broken. The Professor was scraping for the skull. The Portuguese policeman tapped at his shoulder, asked for his attention. He turned. He saw the small trainer shoe revealed alongside the second boot. His wife, Abigail, liked to tell him that he was a tough old goat of a man, that his humour when dealing with the dead was black as night, gas chamber mirth. He gagged. He felt the emotion swell in him because he had not expected to find a woman's body in the grave. Sure, he could handle female cadavers when he was out with the Police Department homicide unit, but he had not expected a woman's body, not here… They were entwined, the camouflage trousers and the blue jeans. They were locked together, the camouflage tunic arms and the grey windcheater arms. They were against each other, the skull of a young man and the skull of a young woman. The Canadian crouched above them and held a flashlight with the beam directed down… He would have liked to have stood his full height and shouted to the crowd to come close, the women and the children and the men with their guns, he would have liked to have invited them to see the bodies of the young man and woman who were entwined, and he wondered how many of them who waited in the rain would have known what would be found. The chest of the young man was wrapped in stained bandages. The Professor understood. All of the bodies of the men showed the marks of combat wounds, bullet holes, shrapnel gouges, field amputations. They had been the wounded. It had been a shit little war in a shit little corner of Europe and the wounded had gotten themselves left behind when the fit guys had run out on them. He looked down into the swollen and decayed face of the young woman. His own daughter was forty-one years old, his own granddaughter was nineteen years old. His own daughter had said he was an idiot to involve himself in a shit little war, and his own granddaughter had asked him, the night before he had flown, to tell her why this shit little war was worth caring about. He could go cold. It was useful to go cold when he was looking into a young woman's face where the putrefaction had started, but not gone so far as to hide the killing wounds. There was a bullet entry wound in what remained of the fair hair above the right ear. There was a knife wound at the throat that had cut deep through muscles. There was a bludgeon wound across the bridge of the nose and the lower part of the forehead. They were all killing wounds. "Sorry to hurry you, Professor …" the Canadian pleaded. "We ought to get the hell out…" He realized then that all the light he had been working to had been from the torch held by the Canadian. The Kenyan brought two body bags forward. He took his photographs, and made the necessary notes, and nodded his head to tell them that he was satisfied. They prised the stinking corpse of the young man apart from the stinking corpse of the young woman. It was when they lifted the body of the young woman out of the pit that the Professor felt the bulk of the money bag. The bag was under her windcheater, sweater and T-shirt. He delayed them while his rubber-gloved fingers struggled with the bag's clip fastening that was against the small of her back. He put the bag into the pocket pouch on the leg of his overalls. Bent under the weight of them, they loaded the eleven body-bags through the tail doors of the two Cherokee jeeps. They drove away. When they turned to reach the lane, as the rain pattered on the windscreen, beaten away by the wipers, the Professor saw that the crowd had broken and now meandered away towards the houses and the lights across the stream. Off the lane, in the ruined village, the Cherokee swerved to avoid a rusted and burned-out car, and then again to go past a collapsed farm cart; it was only when they were on the metal led road, going towards Glina and the Sisak crossing point through the front line, that the Professor asked the Canadian for the loan of the light. He opened the money bag. He took out an empty purse and a single sodden traveller's cheque to the value of twenty US dollars, and the passport. He squinted tired eyes at the passport, at the nationality and the name. He took his handkerchief and wiped the discoloured photograph. He wondered what she had been doing there, caught in a shit little war in a shit little corner of Europe. The engines were cut. There was a moment of quiet, before the scuffled stampede as the passengers surged for the cabin door. She sat three rows from the far end of the cabin. She stayed in her seat as it had been suggested to her that she should. She was tall, did not fit easily into the tourist accommodation but the senior purser on the flight had, in kindness, arranged that neither of the seats beside her should be taken. She had the look and the elegance of a woman who was used to being noticed, as she had been by the other passengers, dark hair well cut and short, careful cosmetics, a string of pearls at her throat that were real, and confident dress. She wore a titian-coloured blouse and a deep-green skirt that had the length to cover her bent knees and its hem was over the upper part of her well-shined boots. Several of the salesmen on the flight, those who had been away from home the longest, had looked at her, wondered what her business had been in that dismal city they were so relieved to be gone from. The cabin was clearing, the canned music was now supreme, but she seemed not to hear the forced cheerfulness of the Viennese waltz that drove her fellow passengers towards the immigration desks and the baggage carousel and the Customs quiz. She ignored the movement around her, she leafed the pages of Vogue magazine. A small man, one of the last to go, bulged his stomach near to the diamond stud in her ear as he reached to lift down a shopping bag from the compartment above her head, and when he breathed an apology she seemed not to hear him. She gave the appearance of being quite engrossed in the colour advertisements that her eyes flitted over. She was a sham. The purser thought she was just brave. She was still turning the pages of the magazine when the hostess came up the empty aisle of the cabin. The cleaners were following, whistling and laughing and grabbing paper debris from the floor and from the backs of the vacated seats. She smiled up at the hostess and began to collect her possessions that were discarded over the empty seats beside her. A handbag, an overnight grip, a raincoat, a packet of cigarettes and a slim gold lighter, a spectacle case, and a patterned headscarf, and a single red rose of which the bloom was not quite opened and the stem was wrapped in tinfoil. She craned forward and looked through the porthole window and saw the low grey cloud and the puddles on the tarmac and made a small joke about the weather. The hostess offered a hand in help and her eyes showed her sympathy. Again the smile, as if the concern of the hostess were quite unnecessary, out of place and not required, and she stood and shrugged into her raincoat. She looked behind her, once and briefly, to make sure she had left nothing. She laid the scarf over her head, then loosely knotted it under her chin. She had the rose. It was a small gesture, but she laid her hand quickly on the hostess's sun-coloured arm, to show her gratitude. She could cope, no problem, but the concern was appreciated.

She was led by the hostess down the length of the aisle to the cabin door.

The pilot, coming from the cockpit, ducked his head to her in embarrassment.

The purser shook her hand, said something into his chest that she could not understand, but she smiled back at him warmly, the sham smile.

There was an official from the Airport Authority at the hatch of the aircraft. She thought that he had probably done it before. He had no smile for her and no handshake, and no anodyne small talk. He took her grip bag. He unlocked an outside door at the start of the extended tunnel from the aircraft and gestured that she should follow him. The rain and the wind caught her, trapped her skirt against her thighs and billowed her raincoat. She followed him down the steep staircase, skipping the last step onto the apron. The handlers had already started to unload the baggage from the cargo hatch, and they took the suitcases and string-tied cardboard boxes from the hatch and threw them carelessly onto the open trailer. There was a young woman from Customs edging towards her, unsure, and pushing the documentation under her nose. She signed with the pen she was offered and the ink ran as the rain dripped on the paper. Two men in black suits, the one working his jaw round spent chewing gum and the other cradling in the palm of his hand a dead briar pipe, waited statuejstill beside the hearse. There were no more suitcases, no more cardboard boxes coming from the hatch. The men from the hearse moved forward as if to a signal. She heard the noise of the scraping from inside the cargo hold.

The coffin was of grey sheet metal and it was heavy and awkward to manoeuvre in the confined space.

The pipe was pocketed, the chewing gum was spat out.

The coffin was lifted clear. She stepped forward. She laid the single rose on the coffin's lid beside the documentation that was fastened to it with adhesive tape. The wind seemed to come fiercer off the tarmac and she walked beside the coffin with her fingers steadying the rose until they were sheltered by the length of the hearse. The back door closed on the coffin and she could see her rose through the rain-blurred windows. It was driven away.

Was she being met? No, she had her own car… Did she need a lift? Yes, that would be very kind, to the long-stay car park…

Mary Braddock had brought her daughter, her Dorrie, home.

"I said we could go out and get something in a pub. I said I'd have a go at knocking something up. She wouldn't hear of it. Said something about being too tired to go out, and something about me needing a proper meal. She was into her kitchen and putting it all together."

"She's so strong, she's a grand woman."

"Sorry, Arnold, but it's a facade. It was all over her face, she'd been weeping, the poor darling, all the way home. I couldn't go with her, you see. Well, you know that… The contract is eleven million sterling, it's got to be in day after tomorrow. She said, anyway, quite definite, that she was going and going alone. Damn the little bitch… I married Mary, not her bloody daughter… You'll have another?"

Charles Braddock's hideaway, what he called his 'snug', was at the bottom right corner of the acre of garden behind the Manor House. The Manor House, Elizabethan brick and good timber, was hidden from them except for the tall chimneys by a succession of screens provided by the old azaleas and rhododendrons, and a yew hedge, and the wooden frame that supported honeysuckle and climbing roses, and the flint stone wall of the vegetable garden. Under the big bare branches of the oak and beech trees that separated the garden from a farmer's fields, he had designed, then built, the wooden hut that was his hideaway.

There was power in the hut for a small fridge, and space for a small cabinet. He came to his 'snug' to read, meditate on problems at work, sleep through weekend summer afternoons, and curse. Alongside the hut was the boundary fence to his neighbour's smaller garden, and set in the fence alongside the cage for compost and grass cuttings was a stout stile that provided his neighbour access to the ice and Scotch and gin. It was the way of things that when Arnold climbed heavily over the stile and took the offered plastic cup Charles Braddock would do much, most, of the talking.

"She wasn't easy…"

"God, and that classifies as understatement. She was hopeless, impossible…"

"And dead, Charles."

"Are you going to read me the lecture? Mustn't speak ill, that sort of stuff? If she hadn't been Mary's girl I tell you what, I would have said "bloody good riddance". I would have said…"

"Best you don't, Charles. Not many medals to be won there. I think we all know what sort of young person was Dorrie. Thank you…"

Charles Braddock passed the refilled plastic cup. It was always plastic cups that were used in the 'snug', no washing up afterwards, and a bin bag in the corner for the throwaways. He valued Arnold. He thought of him as sensible and logical and calm. Probably, he used Arnold. Senior partner in the practice, major architectural projects, country-hopping for business, taking home before tax a minimum of 300,000 a year, he found from Arnold a patience and an understanding. God, the man knew just about every secret in the life of Charles Braddock and his second wife, Mary… But then Arnold was good with secrets.

And it was secrets that paid him a salary considerably less than fifteen per cent of Charles's gross. They talked about Charles's work, interminably, and about Charles's domestic scene, often. Charles knew the exact nature of Arnold's job, and it was off limits and his family was not mentioned. They stood in the front of the hut, huddled in their overcoats straight from the day's work in London and the 6.17 train from the capital. Charles knew that Arnold was always on the 6.17 down to the Surrey and Sussex border village, and he had made the big effort to be on the same train and home early.

"Is there anything I can do, or say?"

"She doesn't know how Dorrie died, in the middle of a war zone. She doesn't know what the wretched girl was doing there, in a village that was fought through. She doesn't know what happened. She says that she's the right to know… You know Mary, it'll nag and fret and worry with her. The bitch, living, damn near ruined our marriage, now the bitch, dead…"

"I'd like to speak to Mary."

The cups were finished, thrown into the plastic bag. The Scotch was placed back in the cabinet. The light was switched off and the door of the hut slammed and locked. They hurried in the dark along the path of slab paving that wound around the azaleas and rhododendrons and under the wooden frame and past the vegetable garden wall. Charles was a big man, sixteen stones, and his neighbour was slighter and barely filled out his high-street coat. They ran as best they could through the rain and towards the kitchen door. They came to the long thrown light from the kitchen window.

His wife was sitting at the wide refectory table in front of the Aga cooker.

Charles Braddock cursed. "The bloody girl, dead, and hurting worse …"

His wife had her head in her hands.

"She's the right to know," Arnold said quietly. "I promise that I'll do what I can."

His wife shook in her sobbing.

The journey had taken all of the day and all of the night.

It had taken all of the day because the tyres of the car had been bald and the front left had punctured on the road between Belgrade and Bijeljina, and it had been at pistol point that they had persuaded the owner of the garage in Bijeljina to replace it. And the rear left had gone between Derventa and Miskovci which was a bad place and close to the front line, and not even a pistol had won a replacement tyre from the garage in Miskovci because there were none, and they had had to wait while the puncture slash was repaired.

It had taken all of the night because, after the punctures, in darkness, the car had run out of gasoline on the road between Banja Luka and Prijedor, under the Losina mountain of the Kozara range, and the youngest of them had walked to Prijedor to the barracks, and taken four hours for it. No tyres and a shortage of gasoline, the bastard sanctions, and dawn before the car had reached the bridge over the Una river which was the crossing point from Bosnia, and they had reached Dvor.

Always the rain. The whole of the journey in rain, and uncomfortable in the Mercedes of the man from Knin because there were three of them on the bench seat in the front and four of them crammed onto the back seat.

No break in the rain, but the bitter angry mood of Milan Stankovic had lessened as they approached Glina. Coming closer to home, coming closer to the fields, farms, villages, woods, hills that were his place. The policeman was to be dropped at Glina, he would be next after the policeman, and then the car would head on south for Knin. And when he had been let off then, see if he cared, they could have four punctures, and they could have a dry tank, and they could walk ten kilometres for new tyres and new gasoline… The policeman insisted they stopped, all of them, in Glina. They banged up the cafe on the main street, by the bridge, and they hit the brandy. He was close to home, and the brandy was good. Banter and laughter in the car and talk of the meeting in Belgrade, and the hotel into which they had been put, and the fine sheets in the hotel, and the bar in which nothing was paid. And good speeches for them in Belgrade, and the hall full for each of the five days. Speeches of the Serb nation, and the Serb victory, and the Serb future, and nothing about the bastard sanctions and no tyres to be had and no gasoline… They took the Bovic road beyond Glina and they came into the village that was his home and his place. He wanted the big Mercedes to be seen in Salika, and he wanted to be seen with the big men from Knin. He took his time at the door of the Mercedes, punching shoulders through the opened window and slapping cheeks and clasping hands. There would be enough in Salika who would see that Milan Stankovic was the friend of the big men from the government in Knin, and those that did not see it would be told. He walked home. He wore his suit, his best suit that was usual for weddings in the village, the suit that had been right for the speeches in Belgrade, and he carried a small suitcase and slung on his shoulder was his AK47 assault rifle with the metal stock folded back. The brandy was in him and he smiled and waved and called out his greeting to those who were already out in the street of Salika, his home, and it puzzled him, through the alcohol, that none came forward to him. When he was near to the river, when he turned into the narrow lane beside the wire farm fencing that led to his home, he called the name of his son and smiled. The boy was running to him. Heh, the little ape, and not out of his pyjamas, barefoot and running in the mud of the lane. The boy, his boy, Marko, six years old, was running to him and jumping at him. He dropped his small case and he held the boy and hugged him, and the boy was chirping excitement, and the head of his boy was against the barrel of the AK47. He carried his Marko the last metres to his house and the mud from his Marko's feet was wiped against the jacket of his best suit. And the German shepherd was leaping at him, paws beating at him and the back of Marko and catching in the webbing belt from which the rifle hung. She came to him, his Evica, crisp in the blue linen dress in which she went to work, school teaching and they were all together on the step of his house. His home, his place, his safety. His boy hugged him and his wife kissed him and his dog whimpered pleasure. He climbed the stairs. The bed in their room, the room that looked away from the village and over the valley and the stream, was not made, and he could see from the bed that his Marko had slept the night waiting for him with his Evica. He threw down the case, and unhooked the AK47 assault rifle from his shoulder. He started to strip out of his suit with the mud marks and his white shirt with the mud smears. They were behind him. He was telling her fast, the brandy warm in him, fast and with pride, of how he had been in a group that Milosevic had spoken to, more than ten minutes. And he had talked with Seselj, the Red Duke, one to one for at least a quarter of an hour. And he had been congratulated, personally, by Kertesz who was Chief of Intelligence. And he had shaken the hand of Bokan who commanded the White Eagles. '… All of the big men were there, and I was there." He bent to the floor. He wore only his socks, vest and underpants. He unfastened his case. He rummaged amongst his used clothes for the parcels, for the blouse and the plastic toy pistol, that he had bought in Belgrade with American dollars. His Evica said, flat, "I tried to telephone you, it was impossible…" Milan grimaced. Of course the telephone did not work between the village of Salika and Belgrade. The telephone did not work, often, between the village and Glina, nor between the village and Petrinja, not to Vojnic, nor to Vrginmost; of course it was not possible to reach Belgrade. He gave the wrapped parcel to his Marko. He watched the boy rip at the thin paper. "I tried to telephone you to tell you that they had come." Marko had the plastic pistol free and made the noise of firing and whooped his excitement. He gave his Evica her parcel. She took it and was gazing into his face, and he could see her fear. Confused, tired, and the wash of the early brandy still in him, Milan did it for her, and took the paper from the blouse, and held it in front of her and against her shoulders and her chest. She pushed him away. She ignored the blouse and went to the window. Her back and her head and her neck were in shadow. "It was the day after you had gone that they came and dug for them." He held the blouse limp against his leg. He went to her and stood behind her. He looked out through the window and over her shoulder. He looked across the fence at the end of his garden, where she grew their vegetables, and across the field where the grass was greening in the spring rain, and across the stream that was swollen from the winter's snow. He looked into the village of Rosenovici. He saw the scattered homes that had been burned and the tower of the church that had been hit with shell fire and the roof of the school that was a skeleton of wood beams. He knew where he should look. On down the distant lane and he could make out, faintly, the new tyre marks in the grass that covered the old tractor ruts. At the end of the lane, where it went into the field, was the rough rectangle of disturbed black-grey earth. "We did not know, without you, what to do. They dug for them and they took them away." Arnold Browne closed the file. He thought he might have met the man, once or possibly twice, when he had been briefing F Branch recruits long ago, or in that short period of a few months when he had headed 1(D) section of A Branch. He thought he recognized the likeness but the file photograph was poor and thirteen years old. From what he remembered, he was quite an alert and resourceful young fellow. In his opinion, and professional suicide to voice it, there should have been room in Five for men like that. He looked up and noted that the door to the outer office was closed. He had what his wife described, without sympathy, as a siege mentality to his work now. He pushed the file away across his empty desk, empty because little of substance in the affairs of the Security Service these days came his way. He reached for his direct-line telephone, dialled, and spoke quietly so that his voice would not carry through the prefabricated walls of his office and the closed door. He valued his neighbour's friendship, something that excited him about the power of decision that no longer came his way. "Charles, it's Arnold… Can't speak much. Mary, she most definitely has the right to know. There's a man who was once on our books… If Mary wanted someone to peck around a bit then I've a telephone number… I'll have all the details tomorrow for her, and I'll mark his card meantime… Yes, I would recommend him."