Heart of Danger Read online

  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.
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br />   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."