THE HEART OF DANGER (16 page)

"Revenge

killing is useless. It is necessary to find truth, then justice ..

."

The man coughed thick phlegm to his lips. Penn had been told by Jovic

that it was the ministry office for accumulating evidence on war

crimes. They had sat a long hour before they were ushered from the

corridor and into an office. He had tried conversation to kill the

time and failed. "It is necessary to have meticulous preparation

86

of

evidence. I am determined we will not move outside legality. If,

when, it comes to trials, it would be catastrophe for a prosecution

to

collapse on technicality .. ." The man talked as if to an audience and

the smoke eddied in the wisps of his beard. An hour in the corridor,

and now half an hour as the working of the office was portrayed. Penn

wrote his notes carefully. He could not complain at Jovic's

translation, steady and at a good pace. He had the name of the man,

and his title and the notes made good reading. The pity was that

the

notes were rubbish, they didn't matter. He had tried to steer the

conversation, twice, and twice had been ignored because this was

prepared speech time for visitors, and visitors were supposed to duck

their heads in respect. A secretary had put her head round the door,

grimaced at the man. Penn knew the form. The speech would end.

Handshakes, farewells, and the man would be sweeping out of the office

to a new appointment. "I work in conjunction with the United Nations Human Rights Committee and Amnesty International .. ." "Rosenovici, in

the Municipality of Glina." Penn said it loud. "I receive no money from my own government .. ." "There was a battle in December of 1991

for the village of Rosenovici, in the Municipality of Glina." Penn battered on. "The material I gather will go to the United Nations

Commission for the Prosecution of War Criminals .. ." "You are a busy

man, I am a busy man .. ." Penn saw that Jovic queried him and his eyebrow was lifted in trifled amusement. '.. . I am not interested in

war crimes. I am not concerned with the prosecution, or freedom,

of

war criminals. I want to know what happened in Rosenovici in

December

of 1991 when Miss Dorothy Mowat was murdered. I apologize, but that

is

all I am interested in." He saw the annoyance furrow the head of

the

man. "The greatest human rights abuse in Europe for fifty years,

you

are not concerned?" "I want to know what happened in Rosenovici in December in 1991 when Miss Dorothy Mowat died. Point .. ." He saw the

sneer creep over the man's mouth. "You cross the great continent

of

Europe, You visit our poor and humble country. You arrive late after

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the war in which my poor and humble country has fought for its very

survival. You come when the finest of our young people have made

the

ultimate sacrifice of their lives, after our old men have been

tortured, disembowelled, after our old women have been beaten, raped,

after our children have been slaughtered .. . But you want only to

know

how a young Englishwoman was killed .. . You are not concerned with

law

and justice, but with making a report .. ." Penn said evenly, "I have

been paid to make a report on the circumstances of Miss Dorothy

Mowat's

death." The sneer played wide. "And she was precious, and the thousands who have died were without value? To make her so precious,

was she a queen?" There was the scrape of Jovic's chair beside him.

It was the end of the interview. Penn stood. He felt so damned

tired.

It had been time wasted, as time had been wasted at the embassy. Penn

said, "From what I heard, what I was told, she was a pig of a woman."

"There's no goddamn hot water ..." Marty stood in the door and shouted

in frustration. The towel was loose at his waist. '.. . I want

goddamn hot water."

"There is no hot water."

"Heh, smart man, I am not a fool. I know there is no hot water. I want my shower, I want hot water. I pay for hot water .. ."

"There is no hot water. There will be hot water for your shower in the

morning."

The doctor sat at the bare wood table and his study books were in

front

of him. The evening had come and the light was poor in the room,

but

the doctor had not switched on the electricity nor had he switched

on

the immersion that heated water for the shower.

The American yelled, "Damn it, I pay for hot water. It's part of

the

rental that I can go take a shower, and not in the morning. I want

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..

."

And Marty let it go. He let it go for his own survival. If he did

not

let it go, if he kept shouting about the need for hot water for his

shower then he would get the big story, again. The big story was

Vukovar. Not that Marty Jones did not think the story should be told,

just that he knew the story of each day, each night, each hour, of

Vukovar, because the doctor had told him it. The doctor had been

in

the hospital through the siege of Vukovar. Marty paid $175 a week,

$700 each calendar month, for his room and for the shared use of the

sitting room and the kitchen and the bathroom, and the rental was

supposed to include hot water, each evening, for a shower. He let

it

go ... and the doctor should not have been studying close print

without

the electricity, and he let that go. The doctor was paying his way

through the college for surgeons and he was keeping his mother,

widowed

in Vukovar, and his nephews, orphaned in Vukovar, and he was keeping

the family of his close friend, killed in the hospital at Vukovar

when

the 250kg cluster bombs fell. He knew it all because he had been

told

it. It was not easy for an American, employed out of Geneva by the

United Nations Human Rights Committee, to find good accommodation

in

Zagreb. It was damn near impossible, on the allowances paid him,

to

find anything that was a personal apartment with its own front door.

He

lodged with the doctor, it was the best he could get. And if Marty

Jones complained that, again, there was no hot water for his shower

then he would get the story of the amputations carried out with a

firewood saw, and the casualty wounds cleaned with boiled rainwater,

and the surgery patients kept warm by a woman's hair dryer, and the

fatals stacked in the yard because it was too dangerous to go bury

them

and there were no coffins and the pigs and dogs running wild and going

for them ... He didn't need the stories, not when he was scratchy

and

hot and at the end of his day. "Right, no shower. No shower and

no

problem .. ." He went back to the bathroom. He turned the water

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tap

and sponged soap under his armpits. The doctor called to him,

"Marty,

did you have a good day ... ?" He shuddered under the cold water.

It

was hard to have a good day in the converted freight container that

had

been dumped on the corner of the parade square of the barracks on

Ilica, his work place. It would be a good day tomorrow when he drove

the jeep down to Karlovac and got to talk with the new arrivals from

some village in the Prijedor Municipality. But the best days for

Marty

Jones were indeed when he sat in the converted freight container,

where

the sun cooked the interior, where he had his computer. The best

days

were when he scanned the memory of the computer through what he called

his 'snapshots'. These were his interviews with refugees, now from

Bosnia, earlier from Croatia. The pick of the best days was when

he

scanned the memory with the trace, when he hacked through to a

recurring name. The name might be that of an officer in the former

JNA, or it might be the name of a local policeman, or a mayor's name,

or the name of a man who had come through from civilian life to take

a

position of command in the militia, or the name of a warlord like

Arkan

or Seselj. The interviews in the memory were always recorded either

by

audio or video tape, and because he was a lawyer by training, Marty

knew what was necessary as evidence. The best days were when he found

the traces, when a name recurred, when a name gathered evidence. It

was what he was paid to do, to prepare cases and accumulate evidence.

The close friend of the doctor had been butchered after the fall of

Vukovar when the wounded had been given by the regular army to the

militia, when the grave had been dug at Ovcara, when the wounded had

been shot. There was a named man, there were good traces, there was

evidence of the order being given for a war crime.

"Getting there, not too bad a day .. ."

He tore the message pages into many pieces.

Two message pages, telephoned from England, from Mrs. Mary

Braddock,

requiring him to call back.

90

He tore them up, dropped them into the rubbish bin in the bathroom,

and

let himself out of the hotel room.

No way that he was going to jump to her, no bloody way that he was

going to be on the end of her string. She would wait until he was

ready to report, and she could sweat, fret, whatever, until he was

ready .. . And he had little to report. He could have reported a

failed meeting with a First Secretary at the embassy, and a failed

meeting with an official from an out-of-reality office believing that

the cavalry would come, one sweet day, and take the bad guys off to

the

thorn bush tree where the rope hung .. . Jovic had said that he would

fix something for the morning. What would he fix for the morning?

It

was not often that Penn felt loneliness, but he felt it here after

two

wasted days, which was why he had snatched the offer of a few drinks

with some friends of the interpreter.

Jovic was waiting outside, as if the hotel was dross. They walked

in

the darkness away from the hotel.

"I don't know yet, but something, I have to make some more calls.

You

worry too much, and there will be something .. ."

"Now, see here .. ."

"You want to do it yourself? You're free. You make your own

programme, just tell me what time, what place, and you arrange it

.. ."

But then Bill Penn was not a graduate, didn't have the bloody

intellect, and had been heaved. Bill Penn was not material for

General

Intelligence Group. Bill Penn was clerk grade, executive officer

grade, pathetic grade, with need of a nanny to hold his hand tight.

Bill Penn was the jam my bastard' who had londed the big fat one,

and

who was out of his depth, and who shpuld have stayed on debt collection

and rummaging through dustbins and Service of Legal Process and

surveillance tailing of a jerk who didn't know he was watched. Two

days had been wasted, and he had nothing to report. "Do what you

can,"

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Penn said. The streets were bright and full. The windows lit the

young faces gazing at the heaped goods from old Europe. The best

of

London and Paris and Rome and Frankfurt brazened in front of the wide

teenage eyes. Cameras and computers, furs and fridges, Scotch and

silks, all there and piled high in the windows on Trg Bana Jelacica.

Perhaps Jovic read him. "An illusion," the artist said. "We have nothing but independence. Old men say that independence is

important.

Myself, I prefer to have two arms, no war, and I prefer to paint rather

than trail round with an innocent. You are goddamn patronizing, Mr.

Penn .. . Surprise, surprise, they have nice goods in their shops.

They are affluent .. . Innocence to me is shit. Innocence means that

you did not bother to find out before you came .. . Right, Mr. Penn,

understand our truth. We have no work, we have inflation, we have

no

factory production, but our shops are full and so you congratulate

us.

Who has money, Mr. Penn, to go to the shops? Profiteers? Black

marketeers? Pimps, spivs, crooks? Anything can now be bought in

our

independent nation state .. . What do you want, Mr. Penn? If you

want

a woman, you can buy her. If you want a gun, you can buy it. If

you

want a life, Mr. Penn, you can buy it. You would be surprised, in

your innocence, at how cheap comes a woman or a gun or a life .. ."

They had reached the club. The music battered out onto the pavement.

And the lights strobed from the doorway and fell on the anger of

Jovic's face, and he thrust the stump of his arm into Penn's face.

'.. . But you would not be interested in the price of a woman or

a gun

or a life. I apologize for forgetting your interests .. . Would you

feel everyone who died here was a pig? Was it only Miss Dorothy Mowat