Marty signed them in, and the Swedish sentries issued, lazily, visitor's permits for Ulrike and the Englishman and for the mercenary and for the tall woman with them who was elegant and beautiful.
He showed Ulrike where she could park the car.
Marty walked them from the parking lot to the freight container.
He took them inside the freight container, and he apologized for the wet mud on the vinyl flooring, and he shut down his screen and he tidied away the papers on his desk, and he said he would make coffee for them. If she had given him more warning with her telephone call requesting a meeting, then he would have gone out of the Ilka barracks and bought flowers for Ulrike Schmidt. He was filling the kettle, finding the mugs, getting the milk carton from the small fridge, looking in his cupboard for sugar.
The elegant woman, the Englishwoman, came right at him. 'Mr. Jones, you are a war crimes investigator…?'
And Marty hadn't even gotten round to establishing who had milk and who had sugar.
'That's correct, ma'am.'
'You are here to prepare cases against war criminals with a view to eventual prosecution?'
'Correct again, ma'am.'
'What progress are you making, Mr. Jones?'
'Precious little, ma'am.'
'Why are you making precious little progress?'
He grimaced. 'Do you have all day…?'
'Please, Mr. Jones, just explain.'
'It depends, ma'am, on why you want to know it.'
The Englishwoman took from her handbag two sheets of faxed paper, and she passed them to Marty. He began to read. The kettle was starting to blow, but Ulrike made that her job. He read the synopsis of a killing. Ulrike spooned the coffee into the five mugs and they talked among themselves about milk and about portions of sugar. He was reading the brief text of eyewitnesses and the Englishwoman's eyes never left him as he read. He was reading the material that crossed his desk each day, that was recorded on his camcorder, that was held on his audio tapes. There were photographs pinned to the interior walls of the freight container, bad atrocity photographs, and the Englishman stared at them coldly and Ulrike ignored them, and once the mercenary made a joke of them, but the Englishwoman seemed not to see them. She watched him as he shifted from the first sheet to the second, as he weighed the names, as he drank it in. He thought of telling the Englishwoman, telling her how many thousands of civilians had died in former Yugoslavia, how many of the ethnic minorities had been cleansed, how many 'concentration camps' existed, how many homes had been burned, how many acts of criminality had been perpetrated against the defenceless. When he finished his reading he could have told her that in the catalogue of bestiality the 'incident' at the village of Rosenovici was minimal. Those that trusted him, those who were the eyewitnesses and who provided his 'snapshot' experiences were hungry and tired and traumatized, they no longer possessed the spark of action. She was smartly dressed, like a big oil man wife. She had fine skin, like a woman who was cared for with money. He supposed she believed it her right to jump to the head of any queue he made for the priorities of his catalogue of bestiality. He handed her back the two sheets of paper.
'I make little progress, ma'am, because my work is perceived to be an obstacle to eventual peace…'
'Please, plain language.'
'The worst bastards, excuse me, run the show. The thinking in New York, the thinking in Geneva, the thinking at UNPROFOR across the parade ground from my kennel, is that the worst bastards have to be kept sweet so as they'll put their illiterate scrawl on whatever appeasement document ends this crap session. Plain language, I'm a goddamn leper here. Plain language, I am obstructed, short-funded, blocked. Plain language, I'm pissing into the wind…'
'And that's good enough for you?'
But he wasn't angry. He didn't flare. She did not seem to be insulting him. 'I do what I can, ma'am.'
'Did the killing of the wounded from Rosenovici, and the murder of my daughter, constitute a war crime?'
'Yes.'
'Does the material here in abbreviated form, provided by Mr. Penn, constitute evidence of a war crime?'
'Yes, but…'
'But what?'
'It's good to meet you, good to make you coffee, it's good to learn about your daughter, but…'
'But what, Mr. Jones?'
'But it's hollow talk, it's academic, it's wasting your time and my time because the accused is not within jurisdiction. Put simply, the guy's the other side of the line.'
'And if…'
'It's where it stops, the line. I'm sorry.'
Suddenly feeling tired, tired because it was a dream. A dream was a man in handcuffs, a man who was confronted with evidence. The dream was a man who flinched when confronted with the cold paper of testimony. The dream was always with him.
'Mr. Penn is going over that line. I've his promise. He's going to take him and bring him back, across that line. So in the plainest language, have you the balls to handle it…?'
'You bring him, I'll screw him down. My word to you, I'll give it my best. My word, I'll not back off.'
And Marty knew that he had lost her, lost the German woman. He knew that he had lost her to Penn. He was crushed. If he had gone more often to the Transit Centre, if he had gone more often and taken flowers, if he had pushed and shoved and heaved, if… He thought that he had lost what he cared for the most. He searched again for confirmation.
Marty looked into Penn's face, at the bruises and the scars.
'As long as you know, ma'am, what you're asking that man to do.. .'
First he had watched the outer door of the concourse. He had sat where he could see the door, taken a magazine and relaxed.
Later he had gone to stand near to the queue waiting to have their tickets and baggage processed, and when the queue had thinned he had gone to the desk and asked, in decent local language, for a fast look at the passenger list.
Now he used a telephone from which he could still see the check-in, while the announcement of the flight's closing beat in his ears, and he rang the hotel in central Zagreb and spoke to an idiot, and the idiot confirmed that Penn, William, had checked out, paid up and gone.
The First Secretary hurried from the concourse and outside he heard the distant rumble of a jet airliner gathering speed on the runway. It was a talent of his that he could control his fury, but he trembled in the knowledge of a failure that must be reported, immediately, to London.
'I'll go because I've said I'll go.'
Ham said, 'I told you, it's just fucking dumb.'
'I'll do it because I've said I'll do it.'
'You never go back, not when you've been bounced. On your own, no chance, not second time at it.'
'It's what I've said I'll do.'
The German woman was driving. She was very quiet. She had her eyes on the road and her hands tight on the wheel. Ham was sitting beside her and he had the rifle down between his legs and he was twisted awkwardly so that he could face Penn who was stretched across the width of the back seat. He knew where it was going. It was 'Freefall' Hamilton's lifetime skill that he could deflect the big decision, and he thought this time round that deflection was fucking out the window. He squirmed because the bullshit stakes were finished.
Ham blurted, 'Don't think I'm going with you…'
'Hadn't asked you, wasn't going to ask you.'
'Don't think I'm going in there with you, don't think I'll be there watching your arse. I'm not going in there with you, and that means you can't fucking go…'
'I was never asking you.'
'You go back in there and you're dead meat. Just say, just suppose, that you make it in there… Just say that you find the bastard, just suppose you take him… Do you think, when the balloon goes up, and sure as hell it will,
