the leaping lights, searched for the shape of them. Evica Stankovic had seen, in that moment an hour before, the man leading, and the woman, and her husband who was called a murderer was dragged between them. The two military policemen were waiting on the platform of the station. They were tall men and their heads were above the mass of passengers, friends, relations, who crowded and waited for the instruction that they should board the train. 'What I don't understand…' 'Wrap it up, Freefall.' The First Secretary threaded through the crush, going towards the military policemen. Ham had spent the day, imprisoned without ceremony in the basement cellar of the First Secretary's villa on the high northern outskirts of Zagreb, among the firewood and the coal sacks with a thermos and a plate of sandwiches and a bucket. 'I don't understand
…' 'Never was your strong point, Freefall, understanding.' Ham was given into the custody of the military policemen and they looked at him with a savagery that stripped off his face the first trace of the cheeky smile. He was handcuffed to the younger of them. He was handed the envelope of travel documents and checked them awkwardly, one-handed. 'Why did you help me, why didn't you leave me with the bastards?' 'Now, don't dally, not in Budapest, not in Sofia, not in Istanbul. Just get yourself straight through to Yerevan. Frankly, if you survive that train journey then you'll come through any war intact, even Nagorny Karabakh's little scrap… Part of the code, Freefall. I don't like to leave colleagues dangling, not in mid-stream.' The announcement was made over the loudspeakers and the passengers surged to the train's doors. The cases were being passed up, and the knotted bundles, and the cardboard boxes reinforced with string. The older military policeman elbowed a way through, and Ham was pulled forward and the First Secretary trailed him. 'You think I let him down, Penn, you think I caved too bloody easy?' 'I'm having you met off the train at Istanbul, you'll be given the ticket for Yerevan. Armenia is the side to be on, Freefall. Keep your nose clean and your bottom wiped, and you can be quite a useful asset to us there. It would be very sad if you were silly, could have dangerous consequences for you… Of course you let him down, of course you caved too quickly. You're a coward, Freefall, but not an idiot, that pleasant lady would have killed you if you hadn't been a coward, and she would not have lost five minutes of sleep over it.' He was taken up the steep steps and the handcuff ring cut at the flesh of his wrist. He looked down onto the First Secretary, and the man was peering at his watch as though already bored. 'Where is he?' 'Somewhere behind that bloody line, stumbling forward… yes, with his prisoner… stumbling forward towards your promised rendezvous
… Enjoy Nagorny Karabakh.' The door slammed behind him. The handcuff jerked him towards the corridor of the carriage. He stood his ground, sod the buggers. There was the whistle's blast and the first shudder of the train lurching away. Ham shouted, 'Tell him it wasn't my fault. Tell him I wasn't to blame.' A faint reply, through the filthy window of the door. 'Goodbye, Freefall… If I see him, I'll tell him.' The train ground out of Zagreb station. Three passengers, Bosnian refugees, with all that they owned around them, were cleared from their seats by the military policemen. They would be with him until the Slovenian border, then the military policemen would free him, leave him. From Ljubljana he would go on alone into Austria, and at Vienna he would start the long journey, via Budapest and Sofia and Istanbul and Yerevan, to the war in Nagorny Karabakh, wherever the fuck that was. Of course it was not his fault, of course he was not to blame. Nothing in his life had ever been the fault of Sidney Ernest Hamilton. In the dropping light the train cleared the concrete outer suburbs of Zagreb. He was without blame. He reached with his free hand into his pocket for the carton of Marlboro cigarettes, and for his playing cards… She said it softly. '… He says that you have seen his wife. His wife is a fine woman. He says that you have seen his boy, and that I hurt his boy. His boy is a good son… Everything that he knows is in the village of Salika, and everything that he loves is there. He asks you, begs you, pleads with you…' He looked away from the wreckage of the man. He remembered the power of the man and the glory of him in the hall of the village's school, and his boots and fists. He could not make the link. She said it quietly. '… He says that his wife should have a husband, and his son should have a father… He says that he will swear to you, promise to you, on his mother's life, that he will never hold a gun again, will never fight again. He says that you are a man of honour, a person of courage, and that you will understand his weakness… He begs you to let him go back to his wife, he pleads with you to let him return to his son…' Her voice dripped in his ear. He stared again into the face of the broken man. The eyes of Milan Stankovic ran wet and his mouth dribbled saliva against the folded material of the gag. The man was pitiful. He could not make the link between the man who was laden with conceit and the man who grovelled for his freedom. The birds clattered in the branches above him and there was the panting of Ulrike's breath spurts and the moaning in Milan Stankovic's throat. 'I told you.' Her face and her eyes and her short bob-cut hair were close to him.
'You told me to be cruel.'
'And it is hard for you to be cruel.'
'It is hard.'
'Because you do not see the evil in him.'
'I cannot make the link between what he was, what he did, and what he is now, pathetic.'
She was so strong. He could see that she did not waver, and that she had no doubt.
Ulrike said, 'It is what they are all like, it was the same long ago, and it is the same now… It was the same long ago in my country, when the men and women who had committed acts of evil were stripped of that power and put in the cells to await trial, and left in the cells to await execution, and when they were taken to the scaffold some had dignity and some were pitiful… they could not be recognized for what they had been, what they had done…'
Penn hissed, 'Don't worry, don't bloody worry your pretty head, because I will try to be cruel.'
He went on. Penn led. It came to him again, the instinct… He thought they might be a mile from the farm with the outbuildings where the troops were billeted. Twice he looked behind him, long and hard, and his eyes that were drifting with tiredness saw only the swaying trunks of the trees and the spreading shadows. He thought that the worst would begin after the farmhouse where the troops were billeted, and the worst would be all the way to the Kupa river and he still could not escape the instinct that they were followed in their flight.
There was no minute taken of the meeting, no stenographer present, no tape recorder in use. The room allocated for the meeting was on the third floor of the Ministry of Defence building with windows that looked down onto the central courtyard where the lights now burned bright. The room was the office of a senior civil servant, young and Harvard-trained.
'It will be done with discretion. There will be Special Forces, of the Black Hawk unit, under the direct command of the Intelligence Officer of 2nd Bn, 110 (Karlovac) Brigade. They are to be given no help, the German woman and the Englishman, in crossing the Kupa river. They are in charge of their own destiny. Under no circumstances, none, will they be permitted to bring Milan Stankovic across the river. From what I hear, if Stankovic crosses then Karlovac and Sisak will be shelled, Zagreb will be attacked by missiles. There can be no misunderstandings in this matter.' The First Secretary leaned forward, elbows on the table. 'No misunderstandings… because if Stankovic comes across and into your jurisdiction then international opinion would demand your own dark corners be examined, your own psychopaths be arraigned, and that would never do.' Parked in the courtyard below was the Mercedes of UN PRO-FOR's Director of Civilian Affairs. 'The meetings that we are brokering, from what I hear from my sources on the other side, will be immediately curtailed if a Serbian is kidnapped and brought before a war crimes tribunal. Gestures are unimportant. It cannot be allowed to happen. Gestures are trivial and cost lives. A substantial window for peace would have been closed.' The First Secretary swung back in his chair. 'And we must not block the path to the appeasement of violence, good God, no. Peace in our time, peace at any price. Why not…? And you should know, what I now realize, she was a very fine young woman, Miss Dorothy Mowat, and such a shame that her murderer, by our hand, should walk free… If you'll excuse me… It's my job to be on that bloody river bank tonight.' He had made four telephone calls and all had been deflected. Four separate times he had dialled the number of the old police station, the number of the 2nd Bn, 110 (Karlovac) Brigade. He had asked, in turn of the duty officer and the commanding officer and the liaison officer and the adjutant, if he could be hooked through to Hamilton, Sidney Ernest, on a matter of importance. Four times asked to wait no problem four times asked the business of the call personal four times asked his name mumbled and unintelligible four times told that Hamilton was not available to come to the telephone and asked again for the nature of the business and the repetition of his name.
Marty Jones was not easily unsettled, less often now that he had been in Croatia and Bosnia for close to a year. But now apprehension crawled in him. Dusk was coming to the parade ground beyond his converted freight container… Hell, he was not going to take goddamn crap from them… After the fourth deflection, Marty telephoned Mary Braddock, told her he was coming soonest to collect her, that she should have warm clothes.
He did not know the place of the rendezvous on the bank of the Kupa river, and Ham should have rung him. He felt a bad night was taking shape.
