cradle-to-grave stuff. Penn felt like stale piss. He knew how to strip down and clean and reassemble a. 410 shotgun because that was what he had used around the hedges and fields and woods of the farm where his father drove a tractor. Now he felt inadequate. Penn knew how to strip and clean and reassemble a Browning 9mm automatic pistol because that was what he had been shown on the two-day firearms course organized for newcomers into A Branch. It was fourteen years since he had downed a pigeon with the shotgun, and it was seven years since the two-day firearms course. He asked if they had a Browning 9mm automatic pistol. The heavy man swivelled his chair. The telephone was down and the mobile was switched off. They seemed to strip him with their eyes. The heavy man dragged the keys from his pocket that were held to his waist belt by a thin chain, reached forward and unlocked the tall wall safe. He was spilling handguns onto the desk, pistols and revolvers, short-barrelled and long- barrelled, with or without silencer attachment, old and new. When it came, Penn recognized the Browning 9mm automatic pistol, no silencer. It was pushed towards him, like a toy. He lifted it from the table, held it. It felt strange in his hand, unfamiliar, and he tried to hide that. How many rounds of ammunition? He had fired four magazines on the two-day course. He said that he would like to take fifty rounds. Again the mocking. Two hundred US dollars for the Browning 9mm automatic pistol, one hundred US dollars for the magazines and the ammunition. And twenty-five US dollars each for four RG-42 fragmentation grenades that Ham said he should have. And fifteen US dollars for the olive-green backpack that was pulled off the floor, from among the rubbish. And ten US dollars for webbing and for a canteen and for a knife. And five US dollars for the boots. Penn peeled the American dollars off the wad in his wallet. The heavy man said that he liked to offer a discount, and the discount was five dollars. Penn didn't smile. Penn handed him the four hundred and twenty-five dollars. He stood his ground, waited on his receipt. He hitched one strap of the backpack over his blazer shoulder so that it hung loose against him. He stood in the doorway. 'Thank you, gentlemen. I hope you'll give me a good price when I bring them back.' Penn was halfway down the corridor between the boxes and crates before their laughter subsided. The nice girl, Penny, who showed some respect for him, brought back the backgrounder sheet she had typed for him. Henry Carter looked up, smiled at her the way that he thought young people liked to be smiled at. He thought she was a nice girl because he had worked with her father, a considerably long time ago, but he always made the point of asking after her father's health, just to remind her that he had pedigree. 'Still hard at it then, Mr. Carter?' He rested from his writing. 'Yes, it's rather an interesting one.' 'Very interesting, what I've just typed up for you. Will there be more for me to type up?' 'Tomorrow…' He grinned, then whispered, 'Dragon alert…' He could see over her shoulder, the return from tea break of the supervisor. The nice girl, Penny, scuttled away from him. The file was taking shape now, and he placed her typed work where he thought it relevant, near to the start. Good background, notwithstanding the arguable advantages of hindsight, he thought always useful, and the thin biography. Always useful to improve the understanding of a file. Well, if a future reader of the file did not comprehend the situation on the ground, and the prime player's personality, then it would not be easy to appreciate the quite dreadful hazard into which this young fellow proposed to walk. He read back what he had written.
SECTOR NORTH
(Situation as of April/ May 1993.) Sources: Newspapers, Field Station (Zagreb), Field Station (Belgrade), United Nations Monitors (SIS personnel), FCO digest. Sector North represents that area closest to Zagreb, administered by local paramilitary Serb forces. An armed camp. All aspects of civilian life are governed by Territorial Defence Force (TDF). No central government, power rests with local warlords. Local warlords exercise power of life and death over few remaining Croat civilians (elderly), and over their own people. Male population has been mobilized into TDF. Patrols and roadblocks manned at night. Large areas of afforestation have been mined. High state of alert amongst all sections of population fed by local radio (Petrinja and Knin), constant reports of vigilance required against Croat spies and saboteurs. Croat S-F (Special Forces) efforts at penetration for intelligence gathering have most generally ended in failure, even when utilizing personnel formerly familiar with topography. Use of high ground with visibility for defence positions and strong points In addition to TDF forces there is a major commitment by former JNA (Yugoslav National Army) on the ground. Under forest cover there are sufficient armoured vehicles to punch through to Zagreb, also substantive artillery and missile positions. Location of JNA and TDF forces made next to impossible by restrictions on UNPROFOR movement inside Sector North. Both paranoid that UNPROFOR provides intelligence to Croats, hence severe curtailment on movement. That movement restricted to a few main roads; all access to front line area is denied. Security Council tasking cannot be fulfilled by UNPROFOR units. UNPROFOR HQ logistics officer (Canadian): 'Our operations in Sector North have virtually ceased to have any meaning. No respect now exists for the blue flag. It is impossible to function.' TDF personnel frequently drunk, always hostile. No dissent in Sector North to authority of warlords. To complain is to be beaten, killed, expelled. Local population characterized by extreme brutality and hardness, a historical legacy. Were buffer population implanted by Hapsburg empire to block Ottoman expansion succeeded. Topography is rolling hills, heavily wooded, small villages surrounded by farms, few roads. Offers potential for incursion by trained S-F, but difficulties as listed above mitigate severely against non-skilled personnel. Summary: A man trap for the uninitiated. Area of extreme danger. He had the words of the file, and the photographs, and in the morning he would have the large- scale map. The light was slackening outside. He understood. He would not have claimed any particular credit for his understanding, but he felt the events were within his experience. Been there, done it, seen it, hadn't he? No, not to this squalid little corner, not to this exact place, but he had been to other armed and fortified front lines, and he had pushed young men, with quite a firm shove, into such man traps of suspicion and hostility. It was because he understood that the memories seeped back. So many yean before… He did not think these young men, dull and ordinary and boring, went because they were brave. He thought they went because of their fear of personal failure… Old men such as Henry Carter, senior men, experienced men, men who had never done it themselves, went to these front lines that were armed and fortified and gave a young chap a pretty firm shove, then went back to a hotel or a safe house villa to hang around, stooge around, wait to see if they made it out of Iraq or East Germany or Czechoslovakia or Iran… An awfully long time ago. But they were all sharp in his mind, all the young men. All of them dragged to the cliff edge. Extraordinary, but they all seemed to go willingly. He stood, stretched. He took the fax message that he had written earlier to the supervisor. He asked for it to be sent, and he believed that his smile was gracious. The memories came close. Too often the memories that would be carried to the grave hustled into the mind of the old desk warrior. Standing on the safe side of the fence with the minefields and the tripwires and the self-firing guns, and hearing the explosions and the shrill German shouts, seeing Johnny Donoghue leave the young woman who was living and her father who was dead, watching Johnny climb the bucking bloody wire. The memories, standing and seeing and watching, were not erased. Sharpest of the memories, neatly condensed for an addendum to his file, was the late supper of cold cuts of meat and spiced cheese and gassy beer, served by an impatient landlord in the Helmstedt hotel. Johnny, lovely young man, bottling his emotion in silence. Such dignity… and he had been on the safe side and did not know how to communicate with Johnny, and the two of them toying with the food… he felt so humble. In the morning they had caught the flight from Hanover back to Heathrow, parted with a limp handshake. Before the next Christmas he had sent a card to Johnny, but it was not replied to. He had never again seen Johnny, lovely young man. He had used him, and the memories, damn them, did not mist. Back at his desk, he thought of the place, Sector North, as a man trap They were in a wood. It was the middle of the day and the sun dappled down through the early leaves on the birches. Ham had quit the bullshit. Penn asked questions about his Karen and his Dawn. There was a softness in Ham's voice and he'd lost the obscenities and the swagger. It was later that Ham had gotten round to talking about the rudiments, what could be told in a couple of hours, of survival movement behind enemy lines. There was a cordon around the village, as tight a line as the men from Salika could draw. Eighteen of them made the line, covering with their guns the open fields around the village. It was like a rabbit shoot. Eighteen men to watch the fields between Rosenovici and the stream and the road and the woods on the higher ground. They had whistles, and each man in the cordon line, when he was in the position given him, blasted his arrival. Some had the new AK47 assault rifles and some had the hunting rifles with the long accuracy barrels that had been handed down from their fathers, and some had shotguns. Branko, the postman, waited on the road that led to Rosenovici from the bridge for all the whistle blasts. With him were his constant companions: the gravedigger, Stevo, and the carpenter, Milo. They were the dogs that would go in and flush the rabbit, and the postman chuckled, some goddamn rabbit, some goddamn claws on that rabbit, and he looked slyly across at the carpenter and the raw lines on the carpenter's cheeks. It was a bright morning, good for sport. He heard Milan's shout. Milan was on the high ground above the village. They went forward, three of them, with the dog bounding ahead. He could see Milan, past the tower of the church that was broken, and Branko waved his
