boots, into their eyes. He didn't see Jane, he didn't see Mary… He saw Dorrie Mowat. He wondered if she watched him and laughed at him, wondered if she knew the love… God, and he had failed her. They picked him up with rough hands under his armpits, and they dragged him on over the bridge, and he heard the beat sound of the music from among the pin lights of the village. The sergeant came to her with his thermos of coffee. A good hour gone now since the sergeant had last tried to play the kind uncle, and get Ulrike on her way. She took the coffee, thanked him. She sipped the warmth of the coffee. The sergeant was defeated, knew it and did not seem to care. She was not moving. She was staying until the aid convoy came through. The convoy was eight hours late… She did not believe the sweet talk of the Liaison Officer who was long gone. Sweet talk seldom convinced Ulrike Schmidt. Sweet talk of happiness and friendship had lured her to the job with the organizing committee for her city's Olympic Games. Nineteen years old, waiting to go to university, taking the job of helping to get out the results for the swimming and the judo and the archery, joining the weeping girls with her own tears when the shadow stain of violence cut down the Israeli athletes. Sweet talk of progress in ending human misery had trapped her into United Nations work, the university discarded, and service in Lebanon and Cambodia, becoming a part of the cynical company that realized nothing changed through their efforts, little was made better. Sweet talk of love and marriage had brought her to the bed of an Australian army major in Phnom Penh, and there was the letter left casually on the dressing table of his quarters, and the photograph of the major's wife and four children in the drawer, under his uniform shirts.
Sweet talk in Geneva had told her that the refugees from Bosnia would be cleared through the Transit Centre inside four weeks because there were promises of resettlement from the governments of Europe. She dealt each day with hunger strikes, protests, trauma, because the governments lied.
Ulrike drained the beaker of coffee.
When the convoy came through then she would know, forget the sweet talk, that there was no alert up the broken road from Turanj, up beyond the machine-gun post, up behind the lines.
Silent prayer was not sweet talk.
He was the king, it was the court of Milan Stankovic.
He was back from the liaison meeting, back from the cell block at the headquarters of the TDF unit of his village. He had survived Evica's carped complaint. In his home, coming sullen to his kitchen, and facing the barb of Evica. Would he get himself together, because now he was shit… Would he hike himself up, because now he was pathetic… Listened to Evica. Heard her call him shit, rubbish, pathetic. Held out his arms for her and she had come to him, closed his arms on her and their little Marko had clung to his legs and the dog had bounded happily against his back. He was the king, the chief man, and he had held the warmth of Evica against him and felt the warmth of his little Marko against his thigh and his hip… It was the Canadian policeman who was shit, and the Political Officer, and the liaison man from Karlovac.
He was amongst his own and was loved.
He could not be touched. He had kissed the eyes and ears and mouth of Evica, and the head of his little Marko. He was beyond their reach, those who were shit, pathetic, rubbish. The king danced. The music was heat around him. The chief man drank. The shouts were about him. It had been the strength of his Evica that had liberated him, and the spit of her tongue.
He danced and he drank as if the death shroud was taken from him.
The king danced with the queen. Space was made for them in the centre of the hall of the school. There were shrill shouting faces around them, and the clapping of a hundred hands about them. She was so lovely, his queen, and dancing wild with him and her full skirt sweeping high on her thighs as he led her. The loveliest girl in the village, now the loveliest woman in Salika. As he danced, wild, the folk dance of the Serb people, so the hands of the men who acknowledged him as king reached out with glasses of brandy. As he danced, he drank. He felt he had found freedom. He was the power of his people, the glory of his village. Spinning with the dance, the skirt of Evica climbing, the music faster, the clapping louder, the brandy spilling from his lips, Milan knew he was the king. Coming to the climax of the music and his feet were stamping and Evica's feet were gliding, and the clapping hammering in him. He was free… and when the music had climaxed, and when he had drunk again, then he would sing. He was the king… They came through the door of the hall. They were dragging the man. They brought the man to him, through the parted crowd around him that had gone to silence. And the music died. Milan stared down at the man who lay prone on the floor. He saw a man who was trussed at the wrists and ankles. The man was dressed in filthy wet fatigues, mud-smeared. The man gazed back up at him. The face of the man was blood-spattered. Branko was dropping onto the floor, noisy clatter, a heavy pistol and then four grenades, rolling loud. Milo was shaking out onto the boards of the floor a backpack, socks and underpants and a thick sweater and spare magazines for the pistol, and old bread, and an envelope of brown paper. Stevo threw the passport down onto the floor. The postman and the carpenter and the gravedigger smiled their pride. Around him were the people of the village, all watching him. He bent down. He looked at the passport. The passport was British, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. He reached for the envelope. He stood and took a sheaf of photographs from the envelope. The man with the blood on his face gazed up at him. Evica was beside him… Like a blow hitting him, Milan saw the face. The face that he had known, and the knife wound.
The gasp of Evica beside him.
The face swollen in putrefaction, but with the bludgeon wound on the forehead.
The face that he recognized, and the bullet wound above the ear.
And they were all watching him because he was their king, and the fear twisted in him and could not be shown. The freedom was gone, the liberty was lost, and the brandy was beating in him. Trying to focus on the face on the floor and the face in the photographs. The face of the man on the floor gazing back at him, and the face of the woman in the photograph, and blood on the faces that merged. He unhooked the clasp knife from his belt, threw it to the carpenter. The twine at the ankles and at the wrists was cut… she had not been bound. Evica held the photographs and shivered. It was what was expected of the king. Branko and Stevo lifted the man up, and he stood in front of Milan and swayed. Milan should not show fear, not in front of those who admired and worshipped the king, and she had not shown fear…
A short arm blow, as hard as he could punch, he hit the stomach of the man.
The man staggered, went down, was on his knees.
The man stood again. Milan did not see the fear, and she had not shown fear…
He threw the man into the crowd around him, for their pleasure.
They were crawling into the village.
Benny reckoned they were going slowly because they had missed the turn. He reckoned they should have taken the left turn before they were into the village. He knew it was a Serb village because the roofs were on the houses and the church had a tower and what looked like the school wasn't a burned shell.
The convoy manager, Benny reckoned, had screwed up and was crawling because he knew it, and it was long odds against tiptoeing away when they had to turn round and back up, a Land-Rover and fifteen Seddon Atkinson lorries.
It was strange, Benny thought, that they could pitch up in this lost forgotten corner of pretend civilization and not have half a hundred people coming out the woodwork to know their business. Peculiar… The convoy manager, up ahead, had started the turn and back-up routine… It looked, dark quiet, a hell of a bad place to be lost, a hell of a good place to be shot of. The lorries were manoeuvring, like leviathans, and at present no bugger with an AK's safety off and armed coming out of the houses to ask their business.
Benny waited his turn to manoeuvre.
Penn heard, just, the shout. The shout was an order.
The last of the kicks went into him, into the small of his back, and the last of the women's nails clawed at his face, and the last of the punches went to his unprotected stomach.
The pain ran rivers in his body. The shout was a command. He tried, hard, to keep his eyes open because that seemed important. He lay on the floor and the boards were wet with his blood and his spittle and his urine. Six would have done courses on Resistance to Interrogation, Five didn't… any rate, not for his level of A Branch non- graduate. In a circle around him were the heavy laced shoes of the men and the light slide-on shoes of the women and on some of the shoes were dulled stains… not a course for his level of A Branch non-graduate, but maybe for the top grade, super fucking experts who went to Belfast. It was a hallucination for Penn, kicked, clawed, punched, to be thinking of courses for Resistance to Interrogation for top-graders who went to Belfast, but the hallucination swamped him.. . There was a woman in Gower Street and he'd been down a queue for the coffee machines when she'd been at the head, she'd been pointed to and he'd been told that the Proves had trapped her in some God-
