take them, the stupid puerile bastards and the malicious scavenging bitches, before they came to offer help, and she wondered whether Judy and Liz would have beaten them to the lamb cutlets. She was drawn back, a last time, to look at the photograph in her den room. Mary said, 'Darling, understand me, I am so sorry… and I am so proud.' She slipped out, carrying her bag and her coat, through the kitchen door, closing it carefully after her. She would drive away through the village, leave it behind her. Behind her would be the garden of the Manor House where she had that afternoon picked spring flowers for the lounge arrangements, and behind her would be the brick cottage with the climbing wisteria where the old widow with the varicose veins lived whom she had visited that afternoon, and behind her would be the smiling greeting of the butcher where she had bought her meat that afternoon, and her neighbours and her friends who had been a part of her life that afternoon. All behind her. There was a bitter wind on her face, a cleansing wind. When he had no audience then he hated to be alive. Sometimes the drink made Ham morose and self-pitying, and sometimes it made him loud and aggressive. He sat on the floor of the hotel room and the Dragunov rifle with the big telescopic sight was on the carpet near his stretched legs, and he held loose to the bottle's neck and the bottle was going down. He felt such morose self-pity because he was alone and they ignored him. They were on the wide bed. He could see Penn's head, and he might have been sleeping, and he might just have been lying still with his eyes closed, and he could see the fingers of the German woman playing smooth patterns on the skin of Penn's face. Penn was his nightmare. When he was alone, his nightmare was capture, and capture was torture. They always tortured the foreigners. He could see Penn's face, where her fingers made the patterns, and his face was the start of the torture. There were many nightmares for Ham, when he was alone… Torture was the worst but the fears, when he was alone, competed with torture. The small kid in the tower block, his father long gone, with the acne, bullied and rejected. His Karen holding tight to his Dawn and carrying the suitcase to the door of the married quarters house and wearing the bruise he had given her with his fist, and her not looking back as she walked to the taxi, and his bawling after her because he was rejected. His 'Sunray', commanding officer of 3rd Battalion, Parachute Regiment, reading the riot act at the depot in Aldershot, telling him it wouldn't go to court but that his services were no longer required, rejected. Him being told, the bastard sneering, that he didn't fit into the scene at Personal Security Ltd (Bodyguards), wasn't smart enough with the clients, didn't keep his mouth shut enough with the clients, going at the end of the week, rejected. His getting pissed up in the bunker at Osijek, and the crap guy Howard needling him because he had the photograph of his Karen and his Dawn, and the gun pulled to shut the bastard up, and the shot in the bunker blasting his ears and the blood on his body, and the other Internationals chucking him out and letting him know that they didn't want him when they headed for Bosnia, rejected. The nightmares of rejection pushed close to the worst nightmare, when he was alone… And the man on the bed with the woman, he was different. The man, Penn, listened to what he said, with no shitty sneers. The man on the bed thanked him. Penn didn't shout at him, didn't rubbish him. There hadn't been officers like Penn at 3 Para, hadn't been management like Penn at Personal Security Ltd (Bodyguards), hadn't been commanders like Penn in the Internationals. Penn listened, and Penn thanked him, no other bastard did. Because he was close to Penn, Ham felt safe from the nightmares… And he believed what Penn told him… believed that Penn would take the flight out in the afternoon, when he'd slept and sobered, and go find his Dawn and his Karen. He thought Penn the best man he ever knew… 'Have you any bloody idea what the time is?' Georgie Simpson said miserably, 'It's past one here…' 'And if you didn't know it, there is a time difference between London and Zagreb. I have 2.17, it is 2.17 in the morning.' He could hear, down the telephone line, a baby crying. 'I'm sorry… I was told to speak to you personally. They seemed to think it urgent. I was told it wasn't to go by telex…' 'So damned urgent that it couldn't wait till the morning?' He ignored sarcasm by habit. And Georgie Simpson had never been elevated to the responsibility of running a field station, and he had never ceased to wonder at the goddamn arrogance of field officers abroad, wearing a first secretary's cover. It was not the moment to let it be known that his own office, from which he had telephoned Zagreb at two-hour intervals from eleven o'clock the previous morning, had the heating off and was cold as the grave. 'You weren't in your office, and neither your secretary nor your wife knew when you were returning… I'm sorry…' 'We don't run by the clock here. I've actually been in Sector East, not that you'd know where that is. I've actually been in a quite bloody unpleasant area, not that you'd understand it… Well, what's so important?' 'Can we go to 'secure'…?' There were clicks on the line, a sharp bleep, then the voice level from Zagreb was at reduced volume. 'Give it me.. .' Georgie Simpson gave the name of William Penn, described the nature of his assignment, spoke of Security Service meddling… 'I met him. I gave him a useless start point. He came to see me. I told him to let the dead sleep. I told him to go away.' He felt he held the high ground, felt more cheerful. 'Didn't listen to you, I'm afraid. Pity that you've been out of touch. If you'd been in touch then you'd know of events in Sector North… We think he'll be back in Zagreb by now … Get him on the first plane, will you?' 'Yes.' And it was not Georgie Simpson's business to concern himself with Penn. Not for him to consider the effect of his telephone call, on 'secure', to Zagreb. He was just the Joe who passed on messages from an unheated office in the small hours of the night. But curiosity stirred in him. 'You said that you'd met him?' 'I did, does it matter… Personally, I regard it as late for conversation…' 'I just wondered about him… I mean, what on earth did he do it for?' 'I am actually rather tired.. . They're a bit pathetic, these sort of people. Dig into their lives and you'll find angst… are you following me? They're failures, and they're looking for a way back. Myself, if I needed to up the dose of self-respect then I hope, dear God, that I could find an easier way than trekking into Sector North. It's a bad hook to be caught with because there are likely to be tears at the end of the line… Don't ever bloody well ring me at this time again.' 'My apologies to your wife. Sorry I woke the baby…' Ulrike thought the squat little man in the uniform that was a size too large, on the floor with the long-barrelled rifle beside his legs, was like a guard dog. Sitting without speaking, sitting and always watching. The mercenary did not matter to her. She lay on the bed beside Penn and she stroked his face and his chest where she had unbuttoned the front of his shirt. Long enough it had taken, holy Christ, for her to follow her mother's message. Ulrike Schmidt's mother told a story of a friend. The friend lived at Rosenheim, on the autobahn and the train route from Munich to Salzburg, so it was easy for her mother to travel to see her, and to update the story. Her mother's friend made preparations for each stage of her life… at chess speed. The education that would present her with maximum earning capability, the husband who would be a rock for her, the holidays that would relax and divert her, the home that would be pleasant and convenient for her. Her mother's friend could no longer find a private bank to employ her, and was locked in a loveless marriage, and had been food poisoned the last winter in Mombasa, and the home was mortgaged to the bank as collateral to her husband's failing business. And the friend, her mother said, stuck stubbornly to the principle that everything must be planned for. And it was rubbish … All the planning, all the preparation, that had sifted through job opportunities, weighed the young suitors, agonized over brochures to the sun, toured housing developments, was rubbish. Her mother said, coded for Ulrike each time she flew from Zagreb to Munich for the weekend, that her friend had never known the freedom of impulse.
She lay on her side. Some of the night he had been awake, but he was sleeping now. She lay on her side, her head held up by her crooked arm, and she watched over the peace of his sleep, and her fingers moved gently over the bared ribcage that showed the colouring of bruises. It was her impulse… Her mother's marriage had been impulse. Few would have looked at the harrowed man, her father, mourning the death of a loved one in the bombing of Magdeburg, and inconsolable, a teacher without a school. Her mother's impulse had brought long love, long happiness… She would tell her mother about Penn when she next flew to Munich for the weekend. She could see the two faces in the photograph frame on the bedside table, the young woman with thin lips and the baby without hair. But it was her impulse to protect the man who had walked alone into Sector North… not love, because she did not know love. Love was beyond her experience
… It was attraction and it was interest and it was fascination. She wanted to protect him, lie close to him, and in the loneliness of her life his sleeping body seemed to bring a comfort to her. And by protecting him, she thought she might show him her gratitude. He deserved her gratitude. He had done what she craved to do and was not able to, he had confronted the bastards of the uniforms and the guns, a tiny gesture, maybe, but few others did it. What she wanted, what she could not have, was to make happiness for him, to take him from the bed and march him into the old city and hear the music throb and take him in her arms and dance, dance wildly, dance till the dawn came. What she wanted was to dance with him and laugh with him and wear a flower that he had given her… but he slept and she protected him… And the morning would come too soon, and the aircraft would scream from the runway, and Penn would be gone back with his cuts and bruises to the young woman with the thin lips and the baby without hair.
He had walked into Sector North just to write a report, and the report was gone… And she had never met another man in her life who would have walked into Sector North just to establish the truth that was necessary for a report.
