Heart of Danger

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