THE HEART OF DANGER (56 page)

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

332

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

Eighteen.

She ran fast down the lane of the village, punishing herself, carrying

the weight of her son.

336

She had pulled her coat from the hook on the door, she had left the

dog

in the kitchen, she had swept the food cooking in the pots off the

stove. Fleetingly, she saw the Priest sitting bowed at his window

table with the oil lamp lit and the chessboard laid out. She saw

the

wife of the Headmaster sitting hunched near to the barred window.

She ran through the stillness of the village, in the greying light,

past the garage where gasoline used to be sold before the war and

the

sanctions, past the shop where food could be bought before the war

and

the sanctions. She ran through the silence of the village, her feet

clattering the quiet.

She ran until she no longer had the strength to carry her son, and

then

she dragged him, his stumbling feet slipping in the potholes of the

lane. She came to the building, used now by the Territorial Defence

Force of Salika village, that had been filled with agricultural

stores

before the war and the sanctions. She went across the yard and past

the barns where the big agricultural plant was kept, idle because

it

was impossible to obtain spare machinery parts and tyres and fuel.

She

burst into the office area. She saw the guns of the killers, and

the

playing cards, and the bottles heaped on the table of the office area.

She was the acting headmistress of the school, and she was the woman

who had been to university in Belgrade, and she saw the dislike of

her

in the faces of the killers.

They stared up at her from the chairs around the table that was heaped

with their guns and their playing cards and their bottles.

Evica said in not more than a whisper, "Milan .. . Milan has been

taken

.. . Milan is captured .. ."

She looked into each of their faces, Branko's, Stevo's, Milo's, and

she

had never hidden that she despised each of them equally.

337

Evica did not plead. "You have to search for him .. . you have to

find

him .. . you have to bring him back to me .. ."

There was the stink of their bodies, and the smoke of their

cigarettes,

and the stench of the alcohol. She held Marko tight against her.

And

there had been first their amusement at the superior bitch fighting

for

breath, then the fuddled confusion of the drink, then they were

listening.

Evica would not beg. "Search, because he had gone fishing .. . find him, gone fishing with Marko .. . taken across the river .. ."

From the postman, "By whom .. . ?"

"I can't know."

From the gravedigger, "Who took him .. . ?"

"I was not there."

From the carpenter, "Why .. . ?"

"I do not know .. . you have to find him .. . Marko was there .. ."

The hand of the chief of the irregulars snaked out. A rough and

calloused and large hand. The hand snatched at the shoulder of her

son's anorak, and the boy was pulled from her. For a moment, she

tried

to hold the boy. She saw fear in the face of her son, and she could

not protect him. The boy was dragged to the table, her grip on him

was

broken. And the time was rushing, and the darkness was closing.

Rough and guttural questions, small and frightened answers .. . They

had gone fishing. They were fishing the big pool up the valley.

There

was no one near to them while they were fishing ... She watched, and