THE HEART OF DANGER (39 page)

trying .. . The car came forward, going faster, between the rubble

of

the fought-over village of Turanj.

She was apart from the militia checkpoint, and when the car reached

them the militia men pointed to her, and there were smiles on their

faces and she imagined they called her the 'silly bitch' or the 'daft

whore'.

The door of the car opened. She knew the Liaison Officer. He was

often at the meetings she attended at the Karlovac Municipality.

He came to her. Perhaps it was something in her face, but the smirk

was wiped off him.

"You have a problem, what is the problem?"

"Why is the British convoy late?"

"A difficulty down the road .. ."

Said breathily, "What difficulty?"

"A route interference, they have had to divert. Why do you ask?"

"What is the interference?"

"Some kids, mines, near to Slunj .. . Why do you ask?"

"No difficulty in the Glina area, nor near to Vrginmost?"

"It is the usual interference, and the Glina area is quieter than

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the

grave .. ."

"You are sure .. . ?"

"I am returning, Miss Schmidt, from the liaison meeting with the

people

from Glina Municipality. There is no difficulty in that area, the

difficulty is at Slunj. May I repeat, please, my question .. . Why

do

you ask?"

"It's not important."

It was only the first beating.

Starting with a slap, then punches, then kicks.

But he had not been burned.

It was the fire that the Headmaster dreaded. The flame would be the

worst.

He had known Milan Stankovic through all of the young man's life,

known

his mother and his father before they had gone to live in Belgrade.

The Headmaster had once liked Milan, when the boy was the basketball

star of the village school, when the young man had been the hero

performer of the Glina Municipality team. He had always had time

for

Milan Stankovic before the war .. .

All through that day he had lain in his cell and waited for Milan

Stankovic's return from the liaison meeting, and he had thought of

the

fire against his body ... It had been just slapping and punching and

kicking so far, and he had held the secret tight in his mind.

Only staccato questions, not an interrogation.

When the interrogation came, then there would be the fire against

his

skin .. . But he did not understand why Milan Stankovic had shown

no

appetite for hurting him, and he had seen between the slaps and

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punches

and kicks the confusion of the expressions of the postman and the

carpenter and the grave-digger, as if they also had not understood.

It was important to the Headmaster to keep his secret as long as it

was

possible for him to survive the pain.

The music from the hall in his school beat at the meshed grille high

in

the door of the cell.

' After the music, after they were drunk, they might come back to

the

cell with the fire ... He did not know how long he could protect his

secret, but by the night, by the time they were drunk, surely the

young

man would have turned away from the evil that was Rosenovici. It

was

his hope. "Run hard, young man," he murmured to the walls of the cell.

"Run hard so that I do not betray you .. ." She had offered him berries from her store that was under the rags of her bed, while they

waited. The berries were bullet-hard, dried through, and he estimated

they had been picked the last autumn from the dog rose brambles in

the

wood, and from the branches of thorn trees. They had waited an hour

in

the cave, as the shadows had fallen into darkness, for the Headmaster.

It was all in gestures because they had no language. He showed her

the

palms of his hands, rejecting the berries, then declining the root

section that she offered. The Headmaster had said he would come,

and

they had waited. And he knew as certainty that she did not have the

strength to come, across country, with him to the cease-fire line,

and

he did not have the language to persuade her, nor to tell her that

the

Headmaster must record her statement. Penn would have bet, high

stakes, that the Headmaster would return. After the first trumpet

call

of the big owl from a high tree down towards the valley, she wrapped

her shawl tighter around her face, she knotted the string more closely

around her overcoat, and she replaced the berries and the root in

her

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food store under the rags, and she stood. Penn smiled at her, to

reassure her, and did not know whether she saw his smile in the cave's

gloom. He had the pistol in the pocket of his coat and a spare

magazine, and he checked that the pistol was armed and on 'safety'.

He

felt a skein of worry, that the Headmaster had not come. It was

Katica

Dubelj's decision that they should wait no longer for the Headmaster.

She took his hand, as if she could reassure him. He was trained by

A

Branch of the Security Service, he carried a Browning 9mm automatic

pistol, there were four hand grenades in his backpack, and the

shrivelled-up woman, eighty plus years of life lived, reckoned he

needed her reassurance .. . Christ. She babbled words at him, and

the

only word that he caught was the name of "Dorrie'. Going back to

Dome's place, Dome's death .. . and he knew her only by the words

of

others who held the love, and by the photograph, and nothing before

in

his life had mattered so much as the truth of Dorrie Mowat's village,

Dorrie Mowat's killing. He would go from Rosenovici. He would not

return to the cave. It was the best time for him to say his thanks

to

her. He had his hands on her light shoulders and he kissed the old

woman softly, on her forehead, below the line of the stinking tight

shawl, and she pecked at his cheek, stretching up, with her dried

mouth

that had no teeth. The humility dug into him. He hoped that he would

never again feel the arrogance that was the trademark of a watcher

of A

Branch. He hoped that he would never again swagger in conceit ..

. She

laughed, guttural, and dragged him out of the cave. They went fast

down the narrowed track from the cave. All the time she held his

hand.

He scrambled to keep up with her skipping short stride. They came

nearer to the high tree where the big owl shouted. Gaps in the tree

trunks, and Penn saw the small pin lights of the village across the

stream. The wind was coming into the trees, and Penn heard the murmur

of music from the village across the stream. She went quickly and

pulled him clumsily after her. It was the movement of a scavenging

vixen fox. When they were out of the wood, she used the overgrown

hedge at the side of the field, scurried close to the spread hazel

and

the thorn. Stopping and scenting and seeming to sniff for danger,

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and

going on. No shadows now. The gold from the sun gone grey behind

the

trees above Rosenovici. She never lost her grip of him .. . He

grinned

to himself. First she had felt the need to reassure him, now she

did

not trust him to move silently in darkness. They went by the corner

of

the field, not stopping. A sharp thought .. . where was the

Headmaster, why was the Headmaster not with them? .. . Sharp,

because

she hurried him past the black pit of the dug grave. She stopped,

suddenly, and he cannoned into her back, and she turned, only a slight

outline in the darkness, and her finger jabbed at him, as if she

criticized the child she led, as if bloody Penn knew nothing of covert

movement. She waited, the vixen fox, at the broken gate at the end

of

the lane, and listened to the night. He heard only the bleating music

and the grind of a swinging door and the creaking movement of fallen

rafters. Penn was led to her house. He was taken into the house,

through the open and hanging door. She was miming what she had seen.

She stood at the window at the front of her house, and she pushed

her

head against the shards of the broken glass, identified what had been

her viewpoint. Penn was not yet accustomed to the dark of the

interior

before he was pulled again and his feet crunched the glass and he

cursed, and she hissed her complaint. She took him back out into

the

lane. Now she loosed his hand. He stood in front of Katica Dubelj's house and he watched, squinting to see, the mime act of the

eyewitness.

She was the guards, and she seemed to kick some forward, and to beat

others as with the stock of a rifle. She was the walking wounded,

and

she seemed to carry some, and she seemed to drag others. She spoke

the

name, she was Dorrie Mowat, and she seemed to support two heavy men,

and her arms were out, and she seemed to buckle under the weight of

the

men, and she seemed to turn once and aim a kick back behind her. She

took his hand again. She walked Penn back through the fallen gate

and

into the field. They slithered together on the wet of the grass and

the weeds, and across the tyre ruts left by the jeeps. Penn was led

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to

the edge of the pit. She made the mime again. She was the guards,

and

she moved to take their places in a half circle facing the pit, and

she

seemed to aim down towards the ground. She was the wounded, sitting.

She was the wounded, lying. She said the name, and she was Dorrie

Mowat, and she seemed to crouch down on one knee and her arms were

outstretched as if she held the shoulders of two men against her small

body, and her mouth moved as if she shouted a defiance. She was the

bulldozer and she growled and she jerked up her arms as she walked

the

length of the pit, and she seemed to throw back the pit's earth. He

watched, and he would forget nothing. He would not forget that

Dorrie

and the wounded men had watched the bulldozer gouge out their grave.

She scrambled across the earth wall and down into the pit. He could

barely see her, the black-grey shadow shape against the black-grey

earth of the pit. The music, across the stream, was a frenzy. She

lay

in the mud at the bottom of the pit. She was the wounded and waiting.

She stood. She made the knife thrust and she made the chopping blow

of

a hammer .. . She moved, a pace. She seemed to stand above the next

of

the wounded, waiting, and she thrust with the knife and chopped with

the hammer .. . another pace .. another.. . Penn forced himself to

watch. Dorrie had been the last in the line, Dorrie and the boy that

she loved. He had to watch Katica Dubelj, because it was what he

had

come for. She was a guard, she was a man from the village where the

music played across the stream. She seemed to try to pull them apart,

Dorrie and her boy, and she recoiled back and held her eyes as if

extended fingers had been punched into them. She spoke the name. The

whisper. "Milan Stankovic." She went crab fast to the near end of the

pit, and her hand was first at her face to show the length of the

beard. "Milan Stankovic." She was Milan Stankovic, and she seemed to

hold a pistol in her hand. Stopping, aiming, the pistol hand

kicking,

a pace .. . stopping, aiming, the pistol hand kicking, a pace .. .

This

was hard for Penn to watch, Milan Stankovic working methodically down

the line and fetching the last life from the wounded who had been

stabbed and bludgeoned .. . Stopping, aiming, the pistol hand

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kicking,

a pace .. . She did not hurry herself, she made each movement as she

had seen it, she was the eyewitness .. . Stopping, aiming, the pistol

hand kicking, a pace .. . Going closer to Dorrie Mowat and her boy.

She seemed to stand above them, then reach down as if to break the

hold, and then she seemed to double away and clutch her hands at her

groin as if that was where the kick had gone. She was reeling back.

She was reaching for the knife and slashing. She was reaching for

the

hammer and crashing it down. She was aiming the pistol. The pistol hand kicked twice. She whispered the name, "Milan Stankovic."

He turned away.

It was what he had come to find .. .

The power of the light seared into Perm's face.

Thirteen.

His eyes saw only the white brightness of the light. There were

excited shouts from in front of him and then all around. The light

stripped him bare. He stood in the white brightness. He dared not

move. If the fear, the panic, had not been frozen into him in that

moment when the light caught him, then he might have tried to duck