body rocking gently with the motion of the skiff as he dozed. Khristo rowed on, riding the current, working the oars as rudders to keep the prow pointed east. It required all his attention, and the repetition of effort soon crept into the muscles between his shoulders and resolved into a sharp, persistent ache. It was hard labor-Andrej had been right about that-the spring flood toyed with the skiff, tried to spin it in eddies or knock it sideways with a quartering swell, but Khristo used the force of the water to his advantage. He knew the techniques in his bones, having learnt the job as a child. And he had gained strength when Andrej had shared white cheese and bread with him. He was astonished at what a little food could do for a man.
In the skiff, he was much closer to the water than he had been on the
The barge was close to the point where the Drava entered the Danube, near the town of Osijek, on the inside of a tight curve to the north. In the fading light he could see that it was a very old barge, half sunk in the water, half settled into the mud of the shoreline. There were white gouges in the wood at the stern-it was obviously something of a hazard to navigation, abandoned there long ago and never removed. An old man was sitting on the stern, fishing with a line on a pole and smoking a pipe. The barge’s former markings were still visible, whitewashed numerals that appeared to have faded into the rotted hull over time. A 825.
He closed his eyes for a moment, but when he opened them again it was still there. Someone had reached out for him. He took a deep breath and let it out very slowly. Resisted the urge to leap out of the boat then and there and swim wildly toward the barge.
In the bow, Andrej dozed on. He should be killed, Khristo thought. Because whatever cover story might be contrived at this point was going to be so thin that a light would shine through it. This close, the Czech automatic would do the job, and one more pistol shot on this river wasn’t going to make a difference to anybody. But he hadn’t the heart for it. The soldier’s life had been spared in battle, he did not deserve to be shot dead in his sleep a few score miles from home. Khristo waited until the barge was out of sight, scooped some water onto his face, then shipped oars.
Andrej woke up immediately. They were rotating slowly in the current, drifting toward the rocky profile of the near bank. “Can’t do it,” Khristo said sorrowfully, breathing hard, wiping his face. “Just can’t do it.”
The soldier rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “What?” he said.
“I tried,” Khristo said, and by way of explanation extended his blistered hand.
“You can manage,” Andrej said. “I saw you.”
Khristo shook his head apologetically.
“Very well,” the soldier said, his expression resolute and cheerful. “I shall take over the oars for an hour, then we’ll pull in for the night. That will fix you up, you’ll see, by the morning you’ll have your strength back.”
“No,” Khristo said. “It’s best that I go on by foot, out on the roads.”
“Nonsense. Stand up and we’ll trade places. Keep a lookout in the bow for your share of the work.”
“I cannot allow it,” Khristo said, putting the oars back in the water and guiding the skiff into the near bank, making a great show of hauling at the water.
“Don’t be a proud fool,” Andrej said. “We must all work together now, remember, and take up the slack where we are able. I am able.”
“Rowed halfway home by a legless man? Not me.” The bow skidded into the mud and Khristo hopped out, then pushed the boat back out into the water.
The soldier worked his way down the gunwales to the rowing seat. “To hell with you, then,” he said bitterly, rowing the skiff toward the middle of the river, chopping angrily at the water with his oars.
By the time Khristo worked his way back through the underbrush along the shore, the old man had lit a lantern. He clambered up on the barge and called out a greeting. The old man nodded in response, not bothering to turn around.
“Any luck?” Khristo asked.
“No,” the old man said, “not much.”
“Too bad.”
“Yes. There used to be pike here.”
“The markings on this barge-I used to have a friend whose boat had the same numerals. Quite a coincidence, no?”
The old man nodded that it was.
“I’d like to see him again, this friend,” Khristo said.
“Then I’ll take you there,” the old man said. He stood slowly, taking the line from the river and wiping the muck from it with thumb and forefinger, then kicked an old piece of canvas aside and, with his other hand, retrieved a Browning Automatic Rifle, the American BAR, much battered and obviously well used. “Your friend is my son,” he said, shouldering the heavy weapon, gripping it so that his finger was within the trigger guard. “You carry the lantern,” he said, “and go on ahead of me, so that he may have the pleasure of seeing his old friend arrive.”
They walked for a long time, climbing into an evergreen forest where the sharp smell of pine pitch hung in the evening air. This was the land called Syrmia, lying between the rivers Danube and Sava, the edge of the Slavonian mountain range that ran north into the Carpathians. The trail reminded Khristo of Cambras-a steep, winding approach with potential for ambush at every blind turn. His lantern sometimes showed him a gleam of reflected light at the edges of the path. Weapons, he thought. But these sentries did not challenge him or show themselves, simply passed him on silently, one to the next.
After an hour of hard climbing, the old man melted away and Khristo was alone in a clearing. He stood there patiently while, somewhere, a decision was made. Above him, an ancient fortress of weathered stone was built directly into the face of the mountain. There were hill forts scattered all across northern Yugoslavia, he knew, some of the sites already in use at the time of the Greeks and Romans and, the story went, never vacant for one day in all those centuries. From the top of the hill, the river would be visible for miles in both directions once daylight came.
At last, a silhouette moved toward him from the darkness, a man who walked with great difficulty, his weight shifting violently with every step. Khristo raised his lantern so that his face could be seen and the man advanced into the circle of its light. Perhaps it was Drazen Kulic, he thought, or perhaps not. This man wore the blue jacket of a Yugoslavian army officer over a torn black sweater. He walked with the aid of a stick in his right hand, his left arm dangling useless by his side, the hand cupped and dead. A black patch covered his left eye, and the skin on that side of his face was ridged and puckered all the way to the jawline, pulling the corner of his mouth into an ironic half smile. The man stared at him for a time, searching his face, then said, “Welcome to my house.”
“Drazen Kulic,” he answered formally, “I am honored to be your guest.”
They walked together through a pair of massive doors made of logs cross-braced with iron forgings, into a cavelike room with a fire that vented through a blackened hole in the ceiling. There were some thirty people in the room, half of them sprawled asleep in the shadows, the other half occupied with a variety of chores: loading belts and magazines, cleaning weapons, repairing kit and uniform. They spoke in low voices, merely glanced at him, and ignored him after that. The women had bound their hair in scarves and wore sweaters and heavy skirts, while the men were dressed in remnants of army uniforms. The room smelled of unwashed bodies and charred wood and the fragrant odor of gun oil. The sound of working bolts, metal on metal, formed a rhythmic undertone as the guns were reassembled after cleaning.
Kulic took him to a trestle table set against one wall, and an old woman appeared with two tin cans made over into cups and filled with home-brewed beer, a bowl of salt cabbage and a slab of corn-meal bread. Khristo used his knife to put pieces of cabbage on the bread.
Kulic raised his beer. “Long life,” he said.
Khristo drank. The taste was bitter and very good. “Long life,” he repeated. “And thanks to God for letting me see the signal on the barge. I could have missed it.”
The right side of Kulic’s mouth twisted up in a brief smile. “You have not changed, I see,” he said, “forever fretting over details.” He paused to drink. “At that bend in the river there is a cross-current, and if you do not see the barge you will hit it-though I take nothing away from God, as you can see.”
“How did it happen?”
“A mortar shell, in a graveyard in the Guadarrama, the mountains west of Madrid. I’d been a bad boy, and the
