release until her mother knew what happened to her, who killed her. They were throwing money at it because they'd cash coming out of their ears. 'Just go there, Mr. Penn, and write a bloody report, and then we can forget little Miss Dorrie who was an awkward bitch', it was something like that…' Benny listened. Sometimes the voice behind him stopped, when the radio came on, when the convoy manager had some crap to tell them from up front. He drove carefully, and the whole of the convoy was going fast. '… And I came here, and it was all lies that had been said about her. Perhaps, at home, she had just been a bloody nuisance, perhaps she was just a bloody cuckoo child in a second marriage, perhaps she just got in the way, perhaps she didn't start to live until she was at Rosenovici… I came here to pocket the money and write a report, good bromide stuff, a few names and a few quotes, good money. You know how it is, Mr. Stein, when you're sucked into something, it's like you're being pulled towards a cliff. Why did this one killing in one village matter? Can't answer it… Best I can do, it's something about that young woman. I learned about her, each time I was told about her then I was pushed closer to that bloody cliff.. .' Grabbing for the telephone, whirring the handle of the field set that linked to the Glina military, hearing the deathly response of silence… Milan pushed it aside so that it fell useless to the concrete floor. He turned to the radio set that was the back-up, that sometimes functioned. When they had powered out of that God-awful village then the cab radios had gone ape shit Each driver, and the convoy manager, wanting to know what the fuck was going on, what was the shooting. Benny hadn't given them a laugh, hadn't given them anything until right at the end of the exchanges. He'd waited to the end, then pressed his 'speak' switch, and he just said he'd seen nothing, because they'd have kicked him half to death if they'd known. Benny listened. '… She was just brilliant. I don't think I'm just some mooning bloody sheep. She was incredible. It wasn't just that she stayed with the wounded because she loved one boy. You see, Mr. Stein, Dorrie could have carried out one boy. She was a tough little thing, made of barbed wire. She could have put one boy on her shoulder and she would have stood a good to middle chance of hiking him into the woods and finding a hole in their lines, but that would have been walking out on the other boys. She was just brilliant because she gave all of them her courage. I was dragged to that cliff, dragged over that cliff… I looked him in the face, I looked into the face of the man who used a knife on her, the man who shot her. It was like she'd given me the courage, like she was with me, to look into his face and not be afraid… I don't suppose that makes much sense, Mr. Stein.' Benny said, 'I was going to chuck you out.' 'Because the shit's in the fan, because they'll be waiting at the crossing point…?' 'Because I'm not supposed to get involved.' 'I reckon if I laid up for a couple of days, rested, then I reckon I could swim the river…' 'Like hell you could,' Benny snapped, short. 'There's a rendezvous tomorrow night, where there's going to be a boat, but I'm off line for the pick-up, I don't have a map for the location, but I reckon I could swim the river…' He hadn't used his pencil torch from the dashboard, not since right at the beginning. From what Benny had seen, when he'd used the torch, the guy wouldn't make it to halfway, not against the current of the Kupa river. The rest of the drivers would kill him if they knew. 'You won't be swimming. You'll be staying bloody put… we'll see what's there, at the crossing point…' It was so slow for Milan to make the radio link with Glina militia. The man who knew the radio was away back at the greenhouse in Dragon's garden, and the procedure for transmission was written up in scrawl on the wall above the set. And an imbecile at the other end when he had made the contact. '… And it's a spy you lost? In Salika village, you lost a spy? What would a spy want with Salika village? A foreign spy…?' A bored man, sitting the night watch on the radio in the Glina barracks, nursing a bottle, and at last there was amusement for him. 'A foreign spy has come to Salika village, that centre of military secrecy? Should they know in Belgrade that a foreign spy chose to visit Salika village…?'
Losing the minutes. Could not tell a bored man sitting the night watch on the radio at Glina barracks about a grave, about an investigator with evidence, about a young woman who had not shown fear.
Milan shouted, 'If the crossing point is not closed, if the convoy is not searched, I will come for you, my friend, and I will flay the skin off your face…'
When the alarm clamoured for the Close Support platoon, Ham was on his bed in the dormitory quarters, and reading his best magazine. His mother sent it him, not often because most times the old cow forgot. Nagorno Karabakh, wherever the fuck it was, seemed the right place, and there were guys already there, but then there was also an article with photographs of guys who had made it down to Tbilisi, wherever the fuck that was… The alarm shifted him.
He was snatching webbing kit, going for the Dragunov marksman's rifle that was his personal weapon when Close Support platoon was on 'immediate', buttoning the flies on his camouflage trousers, running for the stairs of the old police station.
And no fucker in the lit yard taking the trouble to explain to him why the alarm had gone. He heard, among the bloody yelling, there was heavy radio traffic on the other side, there was a guy running on the other side, there was some sort of flap at the crossing point, something about a bloody convoy… It was all to do with their radio traffic, on the other side.
He was in the lead jeep going down sharp to Turanj. He thought about Penn, crazy guy.
They were slowing.
The convoy manager was saying, distorted, in the cab, 'I'm hooked into their radio. There's a problem, but I can't make sense of what it is, probably just that we're so delayed… They're saying they need to search the lorries. You know the form, guys, that we are not supposed to allow UN vehicles to be searched…'
He lay behind Benny Stein's seat and the passenger seat. He had a rug that covered some of his body. He heard the sharp whistle of Benny Stein's breath and heard him mutter an obscenity. Going down through the gears, crawling. The voice was saying, 'What I'm thinking, guys, is that the laws of the game might just get bent a bit. If the choice is between bending or sitting here for the rest of the night high on principle, and since we've not any loose women from Knin on board… OK, guys?' Penn said, 'I'll do a runner, which door?' The answer was very quiet, so calm. 'What I'm seeing on my side is a big jerk with an ugly machine gun. And on the other side, three jerks with rifles, and what I'm seeing further up front doesn't get better.' Penn said, 'I'm sorry, I mean that.' 'Bit late, my old cocker… They've stopped ahead. We're all closing up.' So helpless. It had all been for nothing. For nothing he had found the Headmaster praying in a grave. They were inching forward. For nothing he had found Katica Dubelj, eyewitness. He waited for the grinding of the brakes. For nothing he had found Milan Stankovic, war criminal. 'What are you going to do?' 'They're opening up the cabs ahead, my top cat's letting them in. You know what Oscar Wilde said? He said, 'In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.' Give it a go.' Penn was looking into Benny Stein's face, and it was calm as if he was taking the kids out for a Sunday afternoon ride. Going very slow, and swinging the big wheel so that the lorry went out of the line that was pulling up, then straightening the wheel. Penn saw the hands go to the gear lever, then to the ignition, and the engine slurped to quiet. A silence around Penn, and the gentle rocking of the cab going forward. The pace of the lorry quickened. Benny Stein was winding down his door window. 'Time to see if old Oscar had it right…' They were rolling faster. Penn heard the first yell, and Benny Stein had his head out of his door window and was howling it into the night. The brakes… The brakes gone… No control because the goddamn brakes had gone. Going down the incline through Turanj. Penn saw the white sides of the freight lorries slipping by, quicker. All the time Benny Stein was yelling that his brakes had gone, and waving every miserable mother out of the road. Going by the Land-Rover, and Benny Stein was turning, side of his mouth, muttering about 'Shit or bust', saying they'd shoot or they'd laugh. They hit the checkpoint. The cab of the lorry clipped the corner of the sandbag wall. He had his head down and he had his hands over his head, and he would have said, and reckoned he'd not lied, that Benny Stein had twisted the wheel the necessary fraction to take out the corner of the sandbags. The cab lurched, and Penn bounced, and he thought there was a popping of tyres, as if there had been a chain with spikes on the road. They were waiting for the shooting, or the laughing. They went clean through the UN barrier, broke the pole across the road. And the cab pitched worse, and he felt the tyres shredding, and all the time Benny Stein was yelling himself hoarse that the brakes had gone. The lorry jerked and he saw the wall loom against the cab's passenger side window, and that slowed it, and Penn saw Benny Stein's hand furtively slip to the brake handle, and he saw his foot pump the brake pedal, but gently so that the ripped tyres did not scream. They came to rest. Penn croaked, 'That, Mr. Stein, was style…' 'Get out. You told a good story.' 'I said that I was sorry
…' 'It was because you talked a good story. Get lost.' Benny Stein's hand, fleshy, reached and caught at Penn's collar, and he was dragged through the gap between the seats, and shoved out of the open door. He lay in the road beside the ribboned front tyre. The door above him was scraped. The fender in front of him was dented deep. 'Thank you,' Penn called back up at the slammed door of the cab. He crawled to the side of the road, to the heaped rubble of a collapsed house. Benny had jumped down from the cab and was striding towards the broken pole of the United Nations block, and the wrecked sandbags of the Serb block. So tired, and all the pain was back
