that one man can take that fucking bastard out. Hot pursuit, going fast crosscountry, going covert with a prisoner. You've no chance… For Christ's sake, you know you've no fucking chance. Believe me, Penn, no chance…'
'It's not your worry.'
'Are you just thick…?'
'It's not your worry because I am not asking you.'
She was driving in the falling light on the wide road back down to Karlovac. She seemed to stiffen. Her lips moved, pale and thin lips without make-up, as if she tested something she would say out loud. She glanced across at him, away from the road.
'You don't have to be ashamed, Ham, because you are frightened. We are all frightened here, all of the time, not only you. You should just make available the weapons, the food, the method of crossing the river, the rendezvous on the way back…' 'Don't fucking tell me.. .' The headlights of the Volkswagen flared over the empty road ahead. 'You speak the truth, Ham, he has no chance if he is alone.' He knew his place in the great organization of Six. He knew his place, influence, authority, because his wife cared to remind him of it most weeks. There were occasional good days, when Georgie Simpson would let himself into his mock-Tudor semi-detached home in Carshalton, and pocket the latchkey, and sing out the news of his arrival, and be anxious to tell her of some minimal triumph achieved that day in the great organization of Six. His wife, on those evenings, would be sitting in front of the television, and she would recognize his minor elation, and diminish him. She could put him down when he was up, and she seldom bothered to try to lift him up when he was down. He replaced the secure telephone on its cradle. The central heating, blown along ducts from a main boiler unit, was still functioning, would be for another month. Most of those around him had discarded their cardigans or jackets, and Georgie Simpson shivered. Only little tasks were given him. If he carried out, flawlessly, those little tasks, then he could expect to hide in the corner and remain unobserved by those bloody people who now trawled through the building for dead wood that could be hacked from the body of Six. If he were to be forcibly retired, sent packing because he could not even be relied upon to fulfill the little tasks… He shivered. He felt the sweat cold on his body. He unlocked the drawer of his desk, took out the notebook where his sacred telephone numbers were written. Georgie Simpson thought of going home that evening to his wife, sitting in front of the television, and if he told her of a disaster, his disaster, then she would laugh back in his face. He dialled. 'Arnold, it's Georgie here… No, be a good chap… Past's past, let it go, please. Arnold, I beg you, please, listen… I've just had our field station, Zagreb, on… We have a problem, a huge problem…' The memorandum was in front of him. He cast his eye over it, slowly shook his head. Henry Carter had never thought greatly of Georgie Simpson. The memorandum of Simpson (Six) concerning his telephone conversation with Browne (Five). He thought it a pathetic little document, and all the self-serving was there of a panic-laden man who was attempting to pass on the parcel. No, Henry Carter did not think 'panic' too strong a word. He knew the way the place worked. He understood the culture of Six. It would not have changed in the years since he had left his own full-time employment in the old Century House. There was a child's grin on his face. Yes, Henry Carter could picture panic running a limited course, early on a spring afternoon some twenty-three months before, through the corridors above him. A man who should have been tied down, fastened tight, was free and going loose behind the lines. A man, who was a freelancer and an amateur, was behind the lines and beyond recall. A child's grin and a quiet chuckle, because panic would have been scampering down those 'corridors of inaction' above him, kicking down the doors into the 'offices of inactivity' above him. Clever men, the men who drew up clever plans, would have been cursing, swearing, twisting pencil stems, and passing on that parcel of responsibility. There was a new cup of coffee in front of him, the last that the night duty supervisor would bring him before the day shift came on in an hour's time. He knew his socks smelled, and he could feel the rude stubble on his chin. He thought that somewhere in the vast recesses of Babylon on Thames there would be a plastic razor that he could beg, but he did not know where he would ask for replacement socks. His chuckle was because he saw the clever men with their clever plans cursing and scampering in panic… He thought of the man running loose behind the lines, beyond recall. Lunatic, of course, but predictable. Too lethal and emotional a cocktail for a decent fellow to have rejected… It was usually the decent ones who could be inveigled to go behind the lines, beyond recall. He knew the scenario, of course he did, he had himself twisted the screw, manipulated young and decent men, and he was not proud of what he had done, and he hoped, quite fervently, as the dawn came up over the Thames, that Mrs. Mary Braddock was not proud. The night supervisor was locking away the small microwave in which the bacon for the sandwiches had been cooked, and a young woman from the shift was spraying that end of Library with an air cleanser, and the music was already gone. Another damn morning was coming. She was unpacking in her room. It was a better hotel than the one she had used on her two previous visits to Zagreb. She was on a floor above the room from which she had hunted out Penn, and there was a good vista from the window that went away past the hospital with the big red cross painted on the white background over the tiles, and over the wide street that was laced with tram tracks, on towards the formidable floodlit public buildings of the Viennese style of a century before. When the telephone rang she was ferrying her clothes from her opened case to the wardrobe. She went to the telephone with the framed photograph of her Dorrie beside it. Her husband's voice hacked anger at her. '… Do you know what you are doing? You are interfering, you are interfering and meddling. I have had Arnold bloody Browne into my house, as if I were some sort of criminal, as if I were responsible for you. You are interfering with policy, you are meddling in matters, damn it, matters beyond your pitiful understanding… And don't you think you owe me some sort of bloody apology? Do you know what you did to me, and my guests? You made a bloody fool of me… Did you stop and think what you were doing to me, humiliating me… You sent that man back, that's what Arnold bloody Browne is saying, always have to get your own bloody way, don't you? That man was close to getting himself killed first time around, his luck and a deal of guts from other people saved his life. But you couldn't let it go, had to send him back again… God, Mary, do you understand what you've done… ?' She put the telephone down on him. She sat in the chair. She stared at the photograph of her Dorrie, such an old photograph because the child was laughing. He sat on his son's bed. He was cold from the night air. There was no heating in the house outside the kitchen, and no electricity that evening. The oil lamp threw a feeble yellow light into his son's room from the timbered landing. Milan told his Marko that the night was clear with no sign of rain. He did not tell his son that he had walked out into the village that evening, after the darkness had come. Did not tell him that he had walked as far as the headquarters building of the TDF, and that he had gone inside and into the room that had been his office since his election by acclamation as leader. He did not tell his son that Branko was in his chair and sitting at his desk and working through a new duty roster for the sentries on the bridge to Rosenovici and on the roadblock to Vrginmost, and it was the leader who made the roster for the sentries. He did not tell his son that Stevo was deep in negotiation with the chief of the irregulars and handing over money for the supply of diesel, and it was the leader who controlled the fuel resource for the village. He did not tell his son that Milo was talking with others of the irregulars for the acquisition of more of the heavy. 50-calibre machine guns and more grenades for the RPG-7s that were stored in the concrete-lined armoury, and it was the leader who had charge of the armoury. He did not tell his son that he had been ignored by the irregulars, and by the gravedigger and the postman and the carpenter. Milan held the boy's hand. 'If there is no more rain, if the stream has gone down, then tomorrow afternoon may be good for fishing.' Ham took them across. She could see nothing around her beyond the white swirl of the water where he dipped the paddle. Penn was in front of her, settled across the forward angle of the inflatable, not speaking, and Ham was behind her and grunting at the exertion of propelling the craft into the strong current of the river. Ulrike thought that she understood what was ahead… she should have known. The refugees who came by bus to the Turanj crossing point had been through what was ahead. What was ahead was enough to traumatize and crush and terrorize. The inflatable staggered against the current's power. Her father was in her mind. She had been twelve years old when he had first talked of it to her, opened the chapter of his life that was closed away before. Her father was a pacifist teacher and had stayed silent for self-preservation, and the tears had run thick on her father's face as he had explained the call of survival, for he had known who was taken to the cells and who was interrogated and who was eliminated, he had known the evil and stayed silent. It had been with her all through her life, from the age of twelve, that if a man or woman stayed silent then the time would come in later age when the tears would roll helplessly on the face, witness to shame. Her father would have understood why she rode the inflatable against the current into the width of the Kupa river. She did not wish to cry when she was old. And her father had told her, her twelve years old, and him sitting beside her and holding her and weeping, that after the surrender he had found work as an interpreter for the British Control Commission. It had been part of his work to translate in the courts that arraigned and sentenced the war criminals. The night before the execution of a sentence, by hanging, her father had been taken to the condemned cell of the deputy commander of a camp in the Neuengamme Ring, and it had been her father's job that night to interpret for the British gaolers the last letter written by the deputy
