it right to make it easy for them. '… Show you round the Transit Centre so that you can see our work here.' 'So sorry, but I don't think I've the time.' 'Always best to find time, Mr. Penn. Too easy to ignore if we don't find the time.'
'I should be away…' She thought that he looked a decent man. She said briskly, 'Won't take all day, Mr. Penn. There are 2,400 people here, Mr. Penn, and they have nothing, not even hope. It is important that I take visitors around the Transit Centre so that they are seen. Every visitor who is seen tells the people here that someone from outside has bothered to make the journey to visit them. It is a very little thing for you, Mr. Penn, an hour of your time, but it shows these people that you have an interest in them. If you lived here, Mr. Penn, you would be pleased to know that people from abroad showed an interest.'
'Thank you, yes, I'd like to.'
She thought he was a decent man because she thought he was ashamed that he had tried to run away… It was her regular tour, the same as for the delegations and the television crews. She showed him what she was proud of, the kindergarten for the small children, the little hairdresser's room, the scrubbed clean kitchens. She told him what it had been when she had started up the Transit Centre. She could not be sure what his level of interest was. She told him that in the last winter, when they had no fuel, no glass in the windows, it had been body heat that had sustained them. She told him of the drinking and the smoking and the drug abuse, and of the women whose menstrual cycle was blocked by stress, and of the children who ran wild, and of the men who had lost the reason to live. She thought she held his interest when he asked her how it was possible for her to cope, and she answered, as she always answered, that she could cope with the aloneness, but that the loneliness still hurt her.
It was at the end of the hour. She opened the door. The American was playing back a tape on the video.
'Not finished, Mr. Jones?'
He flushed. Never could help himself when she spoke to him. It was the warmth and the boldness in her voice that brought the blood flush to his face.
'Just another two or three, someone's gone to find them,' Marty said.
There was a man behind Ulrike. He saw the man in the blazer and the white shirt and the tie, and he saw the creases in the man's slacks. Never could know whether she laughed at him and there was always the tinkling brightness in her voice. He was told the name and the business of the man, and he grimaced as if he was indifferent. 'What I'm dealing with here is mass crime. I'm not talking about little incidents. Anywhere you hit a golf ball round here it'll get to land on a clandestine grave. I'm talking about major league. If I got sidetracked into graves where there were a dozen people, I'd just be wasting everyone's time. No offence, Mr. Penn.' It was instinctive, his dislike of the Englishman with Ulrike. He stood too close to her, and it was like he had her confidence. He had put down the Englishman and Marty thought he saw, just for the moment, impatience flash in her eyes, at her mouth. Just for the moment, and Ulrike was telling him that the Englishman had been interviewing a Muslim woman, and named her. He knew of the woman, hadn't bothered to get round to interviewing her, finding whether she had a 'snapshot' of an atrocity. 'Was she raped?' The Englishman, Penn, seemed to frown. 'I didn't ask her.' 'You always ask a woman here if she was raped. A statement on rape, sexual violation, a statement with audio or video, and the perpetrator's name, that can be evidence…' 'I didn't ask her.' The frown deepened. 'Wouldn't have thought so, seemed old…' 'Common mistake, mistake people make when they're not familiar with the ground here. They don't rape for sexual gratification, they rape to demean their enemy. Stick around and you'll get to know…' The Englishman said, 'It's not relevant for me to know.' He could have told him to go jerk himself. If Ulrike had not been there, he would have. His father, back in Anchorage and writing most months and working in the Brother Francis shelter for destitutes, didn't think Marty's work, far from home, relevant. And the grizzled old prospector, his friend Rudi, gold hunting seven hours' drive down the Pacific coast from Anchorage who wrote some months, he didn't understand what was relevant. And his tutor from the Law Faculty, University of California at Santa Barbara, in his last letter, hadn't connected as to how a favourite former student found it relevant to ferret for mass crime. Marty had told them all in his return letters that in a new world order it was critical for the international rule of law to be established. Had written them all in his return letters that ends didn't matter, catching and trying and hanging didn't matter, but means mattered, the process of law mattered. 'Don't let me keep you,' Marty said. 'If you can turn your back, and you can feel good, then you're a lucky guy.' He thought the Englishman soft shit and if Ulrike had not been there, in the doorway, he would have told him. 'I've just a report to write, then I'm gone. Nice to have met you, Mr. Jones.' He was late coming to his school because of the difficulty in shaving his bruised face. It was a slow walk to the school because the road from his house to the school was rutted, and the young men of Salika were too busy in their uniforms and with their guns to use their muscles to repair the road. A slow walk because he had no spectacles. His body hurt. Each place that he had been kicked and punched meant pain when he walked to the school. His wife had told him that he should not go. His wife had said their life in the village was finished. The village was his home, he had refused her. He had taken a new text that morning when he had started the walk from his home to his school. A Croat text, but that was not important to the Headmaster. The text, mouthed as he walked, was the command given, 326 years earlier, to Nikolica Bunic by the rulers of Dubrovnik when the man, the martyr, was sent to treat with the Pasha of Bosnia. He knew, by heart, the text. 'To violence you will reply by renunciation and sacrifice. Promise nothing, offer nothing, suffer everything. There you will meet a glorious death, here the land will be free. In case of difficulty, delay. Be united, reply that we are free men, that this tyranny and God will judge them.' Just to whisper the text to himself was hardship. The carpenter, Milo, watched him walk from the door of his home. The postman, Branko, watched him past the militia camp. The gravedigger, Stevo, leaned on his spade at the back of the church and could see him as he passed. Milan Stankovic went by him in his car, forced him to stumble to the side of the road where the weeds grew. The Headmaster went to his school.
He was late for the start of the day at his school. The children were gathered in the hall. He heard the singing, he knew the song. The children sang of the decision of Prince Lazar to commit the Serb army against the Turk, and fight at Kosovo…
There flew a falcon a grey bird, From the holy city, from Jerusalem And carried in its beak a swallow. 28 June 1389, and the lie of Serbian nobility. The anthem would not have been sung at school assembly if he had been present. The day, 28 June 1389, was captured by the extremists, the barbarians of the new order, by the killers and the murderers. The day, the nobility of defeat, was taken by the new order in Belgrade as an excuse for cruelty, for violence. There was glass in the upper part of the swing doors into the hall of his school. He could see her. She stood where he should have stood. He felt the betrayal…
But that was not a grey falcon, That was the holy man, Elijah: And he does not carry a swallow, He saw that Evica Stankovic stood in his place. Her arms were raised, swung to lead the heaven of his children's voices.
But a letter from the Mother of God…
'Stop.'
The Headmaster stood in the open doorway, sticking plaster across his face. 'Stop.'
The children turned to him. He saw her defiance. She dared him to step forward. He saw his children despised him. He saw the children of the carpenter and the gravedigger and the postman. He saw the grandchildren of the Priest. He saw the child of Milan Stankovic. He saw the freshness of the faces and their contempt. He turned in the doorway. He heard the shout behind him, forty children's voices, unbroken, in unison. 'It is better to die honest than to live in disgrace.' The Headmaster began the slow walk home. He had only his secret to sustain him, the knowledge of Katica Dubelj existing as an animal in the ruins of Rosenovici… He knew no longer how to use it. It had been done easily and smoothly, and Penn had recognized it. 'So, what are your future plans, Mr. Penn?' Jovic had introduced the officer as liaison. Jovic had said that he was a captain and liaised between the Croatian army, 2nd Bn, 110 (Karlovac) Brigade, and the UNPROFOR troops across in Sector North. Jovic claimed him as a friend. 'Just to pick up what help I can, captain, and to write a report,' Penn said. Jovic had said that the captain was his friend and had been with him at Sisak, when he had lost his arm. Only a report into the death of Miss Dorothy Mowat? 'Only her death, yes.' Not the specific situation in that part of Sector North where she died? 'How it happened, when it happened, pretty bland.' Why was the death of Miss Dorothy Mowat, when so many had died, so important? 'Rich mother, reckons she can buy anything.' A sensitive area, a sensitive situation, did he not know that? 'Just a report, just to let her mother sleep the better at night.' And who else would read his report? 'Shouldn't think anyone will, just her mother.' It was the gentle probing of an intelligence officer. Penn recognized it. He hoped his answers were ignorant, facile. He reckoned the Intelligence Officer was poorly trained. He would have done it differently himself, bored harder. He knew about digging into the recesses of a man's life because he
