Intelligence Officer, from the shoes of the First Secretary and Marty Jones and Mary Braddock… She did not understand a word that was said by the old farmer, but there was a grim sadness on his face and she felt a release. They were all touched by Dorrie, her daughter. She felt her freedom.
'They were taken down the river, the great Mother held them. They could not go from the hold of the current at the centre of the river. The raft thing was lower in the water. He tried to kick a last time, but the strength was gone from him. Was his friend wounded? I think his friend was wounded because his friend had no use of his arms. They lost the raft thing. I saw him hold his friend up in the water, as if he supported him. He would not be able to save his friend, I could see that. If he had loosed his friend, given his friend to the great Mother, then perhaps, perhaps… I do not know… all the time he tried to help his friend. They went under. I saw them again and they were held in the current, and I knew it would not be long. Just their heads, for one moment I saw just their heads, and still he tried to protect him, his friend. I did not see them another time. Who was his friend that he would not leave? They were so small, they were against such power. I did not see them another time…'
They took the woman with them, and the old farmer was told that his wife's dressing gown and his greatcoat would be returned in the morning.
Later, the Intelligence Officer would use the field telephone to communicate a satisfactory situation to his enemy. Later, the First Secretary would send a three-line encoded message to the dishes on the roof of Vauxhall Cross. Later, Marty Jones would return to his converted freight container to dismantle a camp bed and unfasten a chain linked to a pair of handcuffs, and to arrange for ballistic tests to be made on a Makharov pistol.
Later, Mary Braddock would take her small suitcase to the airport.
Later, the shells would be taken from the artillery pieces that faced Karlovac and Sisak, and technicians would stand down the ground-to-ground missiles that could reach the southern suburbs of Zagreb.
Later, the troops of the Ustase bastards and the Partizan bastards would search the reed beds on their side of the Kupa river, and find nothing.
They went out into the bright moonlight and walked away from Dome's place, turned their backs on Dome's war.
EPILOGUE
He had tried three times to dial the number, and each time the telephone had given him an unobtainable tone. Henry Carter pushed himself up. He stretched. His hands were behind his neck and he arched his back and let out a short squeaked cry. He went to the desk nearest his own. No, she was not eating chocolate that morning. Yes, she wore a prim new blouse. She looked up at him, away from her screen, nervously. He smiled. He apologized. He said it had been disgraceful of him to have shocked her with that quite revolting photograph the morning before, and he was reaching into his wallet. He offered her a five-pound note and said it was for the dry- cleaning of her blouse, and if there was anything left over, then she should purchase some little trifle… God, what sort of little trifles did young women buy with the change from the dry-cleaning of a chocolate-stained blouse?… And he needed her help. The senior dragon was not in sight. Please, he needed to dial an out-of-London number, and couldn't seem to manage it. Of course the telephones could only be used for in-London calls, but there had to be a way. She knew the way. She put the five-pound banknote into her purse, and blushed, and told him what digits he should dial to obtain it, and he made a little joke about a nephew in Australia. She was gazing up at him, and his fingers rubbed, embarrassed, across his cheek stubble, and he should have taken the time to find that hidden razor, and should have brushed his teeth, and should have changed his socks… In her face, he thought he saw simple kindness. 'Has it been awful, Mr. Carter? It must have been a pretty awful file to have kept you here, all yesterday, all through the night. Is it something really sad…? Sorry, shouldn't have asked that, should I, I'm not need-to- know.'
He said quietly, 'Do you know, my dear, there was only one thing that I ever did well when I worked here. I was good at standing in safety on the right side of some of life's most hideous barricades, waiting for some poor devil to come back from the wrong side. I wish so much that I had been there, waiting, not able to intervene, but sharing… So kind of you to help me with the telephone.'
He sat on his desk. He dialled again.
He heard the clip of her voice.
He kept his silence.
Who was there? What did they have to say?
He heard the annoyance of her voice.
Would they, whoever they were, not waste her time? Who was it?
He put down the telephone, cut from his ear the growing anger of Mary Braddock, mother of Miss Dorothy Mowat. So tired now… It had all been such a long time ago. He had cut from his ear the authority, annoyance, confidence and anger of her voice.
A little while ago, only a few minutes, it had seemed important to speak to her, to tell her that an old desk warrior had bludgeoned a file into shape, made it ready for burial on a disk. He gathered up the papers of the file, the photographs and the maps, and his own crude plan of the two villages separated by the stream.
He walked across the open-plan space of Library to the day supervisor's position.
'Finished then, Mr. Carter?'
She was leafing through the material that would be transferred to the disk. She turned the typewritten pages, and the photographs of the grave site and the cadaver and of Bill Penn, and the maps, and his sketch plan, and there was that curl at her lip to indicate that in her opinion the material had not warranted the smelling socks and the stubble on his cheeks and the demands made of her staff. She came to the last page in the order he had assembled the material. He had written a heading in his own copperplate writing.
She read.
'They may be able to run but they can't hide.'
(L. Eagleburger, SOfS, USA)
Geneva/ Brussels airborne brief. 16.12.1992.
Eagleburger announces programme to prosecute war criminals in former Yugoslavia.
List below of those prosecuted by UN-sponsored tribunal:
But the sheet was blank.
She flushed. She wondered if he ridiculed her.
He intervened in her confusion, best dress smile, the one that he kept for Christmas and family.
'Assuming that somebody, some day, for some reason, should actually read the file, I thought they might be interested to know what was achieved in the two years after Mr. Eagleburger's brave words
… If only our masters would abstain from saying things they don't mean then life would be so much more bearable, don't you agree…? Thank you for the kindness of your staff. Whistling for the stars, ami
… Good day.'
He cleared his desk, packed away his empty thermos in his briefcase, and shrugged into his coat.
Quite chill that morning.
It was behind him, all of it. It was as if it had never happened, as if by conspiracy brave words became hollow and empty.
Quite a brisk wind off the old Thames catching him as he strode towards the station. All of it was behind a sentimental old desk warrior. His step was lively. Ahead of him was the short train journey, the quick change of clothes and socks, and the brushing of his teeth, a good shave with a new blade, then the drive to mid-Wales and the railway line at Tregaron, and the sight of the soaring freedom of the kites. Henry Carter thought that, after where he had been, he needed to find a place of freedom.
