Protocol dictates container accommodation as suitable for your work…' The Ethiopian man in the Civilian Affairs Office (Deputy Director) was contemptuous. 'You people, your job, your end game it pisses' me off, Mr. Jones. If I put it bluntly then perhaps you'll understand me better…' The Irish man in the Civilian Affairs Office (Director) kept a pleasant smile and spat through his teeth. It had taken Marty all morning to get that far. He had been shuffled up the ladder, and with each put-down he could have tossed in the towel and gone back to the ovenlike container on the far side of the parade ground at the Ilica barracks. But not that morning, no sir… There was a big photograph on the wall of the office of the Director of Civilian Affairs. The photograph was labelled as 'Co. Cork Where God comes to Holiday'. The Director liked to show the photograph to his visitors, show them where he was reared and where his parents still lived. Marty thought the seascape of cliffs and the Atlantic was second-rate compared to the mountains and fiords of Alaska. He had not come to talk about Co. Cork, he had come to demand better accommodation for his work than a pressure cooker steaming goddamn freight container. He had been told outside by the willowy German secretary to the Director that there was no possibility of entry without an appointment, and when the meeting inside had broken he had simply elbowed his way inside, sat down, challenged for attention. '… You, your work, Mr. Jones, is an obstruction to what we attempt to achieve.' 'I want a proper room. I am integral to the United Nations' effort in former Yugoslavia. I want decent accommodation.' While he had waited outside there had been a multinational bicker in the English language between the secretaries with German, Swiss French, Scandinavian and Indian accents, about desk space. He had filed an affidavit the last evening, from an eyewitness, who had seen prisoners of the Serbs beheaded by a chain-saw. Rome was not built in a day, that sort of crap, but sure as hell the UN empire was putting in a spirited challenge. He had transferred to disk the statement, the last evening, of an eyewitness who had seen a man castrated after a cable had been tied between a motorcycle and his scrotum, and the motorcycle had been ridden away, and the man had died from blood loss. The secretaries had air conditioning and they had window light. His work was pissed on. The goddamn secretaries were looked after and he was not. 'I am a busy man, Mr. Jones, so do me the favour of bugging out of here and going back to your quite adequate work area.'
'A dog couldn't work in there.'
But he was an Anchorage boy. Anchorage bred them stubborn. What he had learned from twenty-two months in New York, turning round paper on member nations' subscription debts, and what he had learned in Zagreb had given him a deep-running hostility to the fast-created empire. They had the good apartments, and the good allowances, and the good life, while Marty Jones survived in a stinking hot goddamn oven.
'Maybe a dog would be doing something more useful than your war crimes shit. Let me tell you a few facts of life, young man. War crimes talk is just a sedative for the poor punters outside of here who've joined the 'Can't We Do Something Brigade'. There will be no war crimes tribunal. You may want to jerk yourself off each night at the thought of Milosevic, Karadic, Mladic, Arkan or Seselj, standing in the dock without a tie or a belt or shoe laces it won't happen. Like it or not, and don't patronize me by thinking I like it, it c? nnot happen because I need those bastards, and all the rest of the grubby little murderers that walk this godforsaken corner of earth. I need them to sign a peace treaty for Bosnia, then a peace treaty for occupied Croatia, and I'm not going to get them to sign if there's a sniff of handcuffs in the wind…'
'Then you give the world over to anarchy, intolerable anarchy.'
'I need a lesson from you? Where have you been? You have been fucking nowhere. Peace between Egypt and Israel if the Brit buggers were still hammering for Begin to be tried for terrorism, for Sadat to be tried for making war? Peace in Namibia if half the South African Defence Force were to be wheeled in front of a court on genocide charges? I know reality because I have faced reality…'
'Your argument is morally bankrupt.'
He faced the big, gross-set Irishman. He would screw him down, screw him down hard, if the opportunity ever came his way. Screw him down so that he screamed.
'And your office is a converted freight container, so fuck off back there…'
Marty went back in the sunlight across the parade ground, back to his video and audio tapes and his computer disks.
The gravedigger, Stevo, had been on the expedition to the church at Glina, but it was not personal to him.
It was personal to Milan Stankovic and the postman, Branko, and the carpenter, Milo, but not to him because no one from his family had died in the fire of the church.
They were ahead of the buses, it was usual for Milan to have a car when he needed it, and the fuel to go with it. Before the war, before the rise of Milan, they would all have been on the buses for the annual journey to the church at Glina. Since the war, the gravedigger had not been able to make the particular long journey that was personal to him. His own mother and father had been murdered in the Crveni Krst concentration camp that had been sited at Nis, near to Belgrade. He knew that Milan, and he was grateful that Milan had tried, had last year attempted to arrange the long journey for him, but there had been shelling on the road that week, near to Brcko, and all traffic had been halted. His father had died in the big breakout, 12 February 1942, from the camp at Nis, machine-gunned against the wall by the Croat Ustase guards, and his mother had died at the hands of the Croat Ustase killing squads on the hill called Bubanj that was near to Nis where a thousand were killed each day, and they were buried now, together, amongst the trees on the hill called Bubanj.
The buses would be far behind them now, and the old Mercedes with in excess of 150,000 kilometres on the clock powered them home. He knew it was not the ceremony at the ruin of the church that affected Milan. It was not the ceremony and the prayer and the singing of the anthem and the reciting of the poem of the Battle of Kosovo that left Milan sullen and quiet, because he had been that way for too many days since the digging in the field at the end of the lane in Rosenovici.
And the others in the car had taken the bastard mood from Milan Stankovic.
And because it was not personal to him, where they had been, the gravedigger, Stevo, thought it right to break that bastard mood. He leaned forward. The radio in the car played, faint and r distorted, and the singer was Simonida with the one-string gusla to back her. He tapped Milan's shoulder. 'Milan, I love you… Milan, if you were dead, I would dig the best hole for you… Milan, why are you now such a miserable bastard…?' The gravedigger thought he could break the mood with mischief. '… Milan, you are a miserable bastard, you are a miserable bastard to be with. If you want me to, Milan, I will go and dig a hole, as deep as I can dig it, so that I have to chuck the earth up over my shoulder, and you can go and lie in the hole and I will chuck the earth back on top of you, and that might cure you of being such a miserable bastard…' He had reached forward, and his fingers worked at Milan's shoulders, like he used to see the postman's fingers, Branko's, at Milan's shoulders when he loosened him before a big match of basketball. '… Milan, you are a miserable bastard to be with, and you make everyone else a miserable bastard. Look at us, we are all miserable because you are a miserable bastard…' And the man pulled himself forward, and broke the grave-digger's hold on his shoulders. And he thought he could play Milan because he had the sort of black humour that would make Milan laugh. The gravedigger was on the crest, and he could not see Milan's face. If he had seen it he might have sat back into the seat, let the springs tickle his arse, but he could not see it. 'You know why you are such a miserable bastard, Milan? You are a miserable bastard because you are scared…' The gravedigger could not see Milan's face, and he could not see his hands. '… You are Scared. Have been scared since that old American came and farted over at Rosenovici. Why are you scared? Then he saw Milan's face. He saw the erupted anger. He saw the hands and he saw the pistol. The face was against his, bright red and flushed. One hand coming past his eyes and locking into his old straggled hair and pulling his head forward. One hand holding the pistol and driving it through his teeth, grating them, until the foresight ground against the roof of his mouth. And he had seen Milan kill, and he could not doubt that Milan would kill. And he had seen a bastard Ustase killed by a bullet fired from a pistol deep in the mouth, and seen the crown of the head, where the hair was thinning, lift off. And the postman had swerved the car, gone half into a ditch and come out, and the carpenter cowered away against the far window of the back of the car.
And the anger was gone. The foresight of the pistol scraped the roof of the gravedigger's mouth and against his teeth and nicked at his lip. And the smile was there, as if Milan was saying that he was not scared.
Stevo's mouth was raw agony and he could feel, already, the wet of his trousers at the crutch. He did not tell Milan that he thought he lied with his smile. He squirmed in the wetness that he sat in.
Laughing. 'We should go get the hag in Rosenovici. Lie up for her, like it was wild pig we were lying up for. Milan, you miserable bastard, you should be with us…'
But the shoulders had ducked down, and he could not see the face, whether it still smiled, whether it was
