had worked in the positive vetting team that cleared personnel for work at the Atomic Weapons Establishment, Aldermaston. Trust no one, believe in no one, that was any intelligence officer's maxim, and he guessed that Jovic would have telephoned ahead and engineered the meeting so that Penn, enigma, would be checked over.
And his report would not be used as a start point for a war crime investigation? 'Good God, no…'
The gentle probing of the Intelligence Officer, Liaison, was done during the tour of the cease-fire line. The village of Turanj was across the Korana river near to where it joined with the Kupa river east of Karlovac. Not a house undamaged, every building hit by multiple machine-gun bullets and by tank fire, and artillery shells. The officer said, for the benefit of his visitor, that it was where the Serbs had been held, where their advance had been stopped. He was told of the battle, close-quarters fighting. He listened and looked around him. An old woman was picking at burned roof timbers in the yard behind what had been her home. They were past the defensive machine- gun nests. They walked in the village of Turanj as if it were a museum, but the old woman searching in her yard told him of present reality. The front wall was off the food shop. The roof was off the scorched interior of the repair garage. Flowers grew in overgrown front gardens, and the blossom was on the magnolia and the apple trees. He was shown the co-operative building, and he was told not to go past it because he would then be in the field of vision of the snipers, and the cease-fire was variable. A cold place and quiet.
The officer said, 'In war itself there is an excitement, in combat there is an elation. Most men, you ask them, and if they give their secret answer, tell you that war, combat, should not be missed… But the war goes by. I know nothing more degrading than a former battlefield where there are no bodies, where there is no noise. The war passes by and the excitement is quickly forgotten. Only the vandalism of the war is left. It is the worst place you can be, Mr. Penn, an old fighting ground, with just the ghosts.'
A cat saw him, was bent low and scurrying, but took the time to turn and spit at him. The poles that had carried the telephone wires were down. 'Would it be the same in Rosenovici?' 'Why do you ask?' 'Just trying to get the picture…' 'It would not be the same,' the officer said. 'Here the buildings are destroyed by war. In Rosenovici a few buildings would have been destroyed by war, the rest would have been destroyed by placed explosives. Here there is a chance to rebuild, one day. In Rosenovici there would be no chance to rebuild because nothing is left. In Rosenovici, villages like it, they went as far as bulldozing the graveyard. Here, there is still feeble life. In Rosenovici there is only the memory of death…' Penn thought he was being tested. He looked away. He stared up and beyond the jagged and broken roofs of Turanj and he could see the first line of trees. The officer anticipated him. '… It is where their guns are. They will be following you, through telescopic sights, maybe if they are bored they will shoot at you.' 'I am just here to make a report.' He played ignorant. Penn walked back down the road, like getting his head shot off was no part of making a report. They drove away in the officer's car. They went back past the machine-gun positions and the soldiers waved to them, they went across the bridge over the Korana river and Penn saw, moored at the bank, two grey-coloured inflatables. He didn't like to look hard because frequently the officer slung a fast glance at him to see whether it was a trained eye or a rubber necker eye that examined the front line. There were tank obstacle teeth beside the road into Karlovac, and more defence positions, and there was the emptiness. They drove on, past the officer's headquarters in a new building where all the windows were taped against artillery blast. They climbed a winding road. They were above the town. On the summit of the hill was a fortress tower. They left the car. They walked along a path and in the grass beside the path were teenagers, cuddling and messing about and smoking. They looked out. The town was in front of them.
Beyond the town were the rivers, winding to their meeting point.
Beyond the meeting point of the Korana and the Kupa rivers was the green carpet of the forest.
Beyond the forest was the blue haze line of the high ground.
The officer said, 'The high ground is the Petrova Gora, dense woodland, rock cliffs, sheer valleys. It is special to the Serb people because it was in the Petrova Gora that Tito had a field hospital for his Partizans, in the war with the Germans. The German army made many incursions into the Petrova Gora but they were never able to find the hospital. The failure was a source of frustration, that is why the Germans killed many of the people in the villages at the edge of the Petrova Gora. If you were to be there, Mr. Penn, which is impossible, then they would lie and tell you that it was Croatian people, fascists fighting alongside the Germans, who were responsible for the killings. Through the lies they justify what they have done, now, to villages such as Rosenovici…'
Penn had his hand across his forehead. He shaded his eyes. He thought he could see twenty miles, maybe more. Such peace. It was where Dorrie had been, Dome's place. It was like the place of his childhood, where he had been before the exams and the application forms, and work in London. Peace and beauty. He strained to see better.
The officer said, 'I am correct, you see nothing that threatens? The front line between here and Sisak is the Kupa river. It is seventy kilometres in length. Across there, on their side, where you see nothing, are minefields and strong points and defended villages. Across there, they have 300 guns that can flatten Karlo-vac and Sisak in a day. Across there, aimed at Zagreb are medium-range missile launchers. One day, I hope, we can take our territory back, but not today and not tomorrow. You see, Mr. Penn, it is important to us that, today and tomorrow, we do not anger them, across there. It is of strategic importance for the future of Croatia, military and economic, that the bastards, across there, are not antagonized…'
'Who did it?'
'Did what?'
'Who killed Dorrie Mowat?'
'It is important?'
'For my report, yes.'
The officer smiled. Jovic was behind them, silent. Penn and the officer stood together and stared out across the Kupa river and the forest and towards the high ground. The sun beat at Penn.
'They do not scatter evidence, they do not leave eyewitnesses. I do not know.'
'Who would have given the order?'
'Probably the commander of the militia. Perhaps the commander of the militia in the village close to Rosenovici…'
'What is his name?'
'I used to know him, not as a friend, but I knew him. My wife is a teacher and knew his wife. Why do you need the name?'
'For my report?'
'You can make up a name, take a telephone directory. Just for a report, for a mother who lost a daughter, you can invent a name. Why not?'
He had been led, subtly, to the trap. He had underestimated the quality of the Intelligence Officer. Perhaps a graduate would not have sprung the trap, not one of the young bloody graduates of the General Intelligence Group. He stumbled.
'Pick a name out of the air, why not?'
A light murmur of laughter from the officer. 'He is Milan Stankovic. I see him at my liaison meetings, I used to play basketball against him. The militia in the attack on Rosenovici was commanded by Milan Stankovic.'
'What will happen to him?'
'I saw him last month, at the liaison meeting. We talked about the electricity supply. They have our territory but they do not have power. We have lost our territory but we have power. Last month, he did not seem like a man afraid, but then the liaison meeting is always behind their lines. Today, tomorrow, nothing will happen to Milan Stankovic.'
Penn said, 'I will put that in my report.'
On that night of the week it would have been usual for the Priest to have gone to the Headmaster's house and, by candlelight, played chess.
He had not made apologies, he had not given notice of his absence to the Headmaster, he had gone instead to the home of Milan Stankovic.
He was a quiet man and through the adult part of his seventy-four years he had seldom offered an opinion that he had not first known would fall on approving ears. Capable of intrigue but incapable of confrontation, he lived out the last years of his life in the intellectual backwater that was the village of Salika. He knew every man and every woman and every child in the village of Salika, but his only friend was the Headmaster with whom on that night he should have played chess and taken a glass of brandy weakened with water that would have lasted him
