Читать книгу Kara’s Game - Gordon Stevens - Страница 10

London was bleak. No snow or ice, just the incessant drizzle which marked the capital at this time of year.

Langdon’s schedule was even tighter than most days. Breakfast at six – full English, the way he liked to start each morning; briefings at the FCO, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, then the flight to Brussels for the 10.00 AM meeting of European Foreign Secretaries. And after that the rush home for a full day squeezed into late afternoon and evening.

When his driver delivered him to Whitehall there was still an hour of darkness left. His advisers, some of whom would accompany him to Brussels, were waiting in the room outside his own office, the aroma of fresh coffee hanging in the air. He led them through, settled in his favourite chair, accepted a coffee and began the briefing.

‘Bosnia.’ Because Bosnia would top the Brussels agenda, especially with the peace negotiations in Vienna seeming to report some progress.

They went through the overnights, plus the way Langdon should play whatever else the other Foreign Ministers might bring up.

One: the so-called ceasefire, even though it was in name only, and even though the UN had sought to play down violations in case they interfered with the Vienna talks.

Two: the state of siege in the Maglaj – Tesanj pocket and the reason for the UN pulling out the air strike at the last minute.

Three: the reporting of the siege by the press, mainly based on radio messages from the two towns pleading for help.

Four: the presence of the SAS in the area, the deaths of two SAS men and the wounding of two others. Plus the follow-up on how the FCO should play it vis-à-vis the press.

Langdon was in his mid-fifties but fit and tall, with dark hair just beginning to show the first streaks of silver. His background was representative of the new guard elbowing its way to the top at Westminster: Eton, Oxford, the City, twenty years in politics, the last fifteen in government, the last ten in the Cabinet, and the last three as Foreign Secretary.

Balkan Games, he thought. The Serbs, the Croats and the Muslims in one game. The Serbs and the West in another. London, Washington, Moscow and Paris in a third. The United Nations and the governments comprising the Security Council in a fourth, even the games within the UN itself.

And somewhere in the middle the people whom the UN was supposed to help. But if you allowed yourself to think like that then you lost the game before it was even started.

He closed the meeting and was driven to Heathrow.

The night had been long and cold, even in the ward, the occasional shell or mortar falling on the town. Kara had sat by the bed and held Jovan’s hands, told him his favourite stories as he drifted in and out of sleep.

It was seven o’clock in the morning. She was in the corridor, jerking in the half-world between sleep and fear.

‘Hello, Kara.’

She woke and looked up. Was laughing and crying, holding her husband and hugging him. ‘You made it,’ she was asking Adin, telling Adin. ‘You’re alive. You got the note.’

‘How’s Jovan?’ Adin held her tight, kissed her again and again. ‘Where is he, can I see him?’

They stood by Jovan’s bed, stayed an hour till the boy woke and saw his father, then they sat together in the corridor and shared the food, leaning against each other with their backs against the walls. It was going to be all right, she knew: Jovan had pulled through and Adin was alive.

‘Tell me what happened,’ Adin’s arm was round her. ‘Tell me how you got here.’

She told him, though her account at this stage was disjointed and apparently without logic. About how she had heard a scream in the night and thought it was him, how she helped the two injured men and how Finn and the others had come back. How they had carried Jovan to Tesanj and how they had given her their food when they had left.

The shells and mortars echoed outside.

The three of them would stay in Tesanj until Jovan recovered, they decided; then they would return to Maglaj but probably lock up the house, find a basement in the new town so they didn’t have to cross the bridge to get to the food. A basement on the far edge of town where they would be marginally safer.

They left the corridor and went back into the ward, hunched together again by Jovan’s bed and waited till he woke.

The shells and mortars were still falling.

Kara watched as Adin knelt by Jovan and talked and laughed with him, saw the moment Adin’s eyes drifted to the children in the other beds and realized how lucky they were as a family, how others had suffered. Jovan’s eyes closed again. They kissed him and began to return to the corridor. In the next bed a younger boy whimpered with pain; Kara stayed with him and held his hand, stroked his face and talked to him until his own mother came, then she went outside and sat with Adin.

The shells were still falling, sometimes far away, other times closer. Once you became accustomed to them, though, it was strange how you almost ignored them, almost lived with them.

‘Tell me again about Jim and Steve and the others,’ he said.

She had already told him once, now she went through it again in more detail. ‘I love you.’ She slipped her arm round him and kissed him. ‘I wish Finn and the others could have met you.’

It was mid-morning; the shells and mortars were closer now, she thought, almost subconsciously.

The Brussels meeting broke at twelve-thirty for a buffet lunch in an adjoining room. Langdon chose smoked salmon and mineral water, then spent fifteen minutes talking with the French Foreign Minister.

‘Update on Maglaj and Tesanj?’ he asked Nicholls as the meeting reconvened.

‘The situation in the Maglaj – Tesanj pocket remains at levels consistent with previous days,’ Nicholls told him wryly.

Langdon understood the UN-speak, and to show that he understood he laughed.

The stomach pains were gripping her. Perhaps she shouldn’t have eaten so much from the food packs, she thought, even though she had rationed it carefully; perhaps, because she was accustomed to the daily diet of beans and dry bread, she should have rationed it even more stringently. She heard the express train, then the sound as the shell landed. Even closer to the hospital this time, she thought.

The front line was bad, Adin told her, but the men were good and brave. They would definitely move to the new town, they decided, definitely find somewhere where they didn’t have to cross the bridge to reach the food kitchen. Love you, she thought again, told him again. They went to the ward and sat again with Jovan; returned to the corridor and sat against the wall. He didn’t know how afraid she had been when she and Jovan were alone and Jovan was falling ill, she told him; he didn’t know how much safer she felt now he was with her.

She heard the noise again and felt the shuddering, the whole world deafening her and the vibrations shaking her, the express trains coming in and the mortars suddenly whining around them.

‘Oh God.’ She heard someone screaming.

‘Oh no.’ Another voice. ‘They’re shelling the hospital.’

Another express train came in, then another, the whine of a mortar. Someone beside her was lying on the floor, pressing himself down to protect himself from the bombs and the debris. Kara was ignoring the noise and the explosion, was on her feet and running, Adin at her side. The smoke and dust billowed from the door of the ward and the sounds of children screaming came from inside. Another shell was coming in. She ignored it, ignored everything, and pushed into the room. The ceiling had collapsed, there were holes in the walls, and the beds and the children in them were buried under a layer of concrete and brick and plaster. She pulled at the rubble, tried to reach Jovan, more people suddenly beside her and more people trying to dig their children out. Mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, doctors and nurses.

‘Stop.’

She heard Adin’s voice and froze, almost involuntarily, still in shock.

They all stopped, all looked at him.

‘We have to be organized.’ His voice was calm. ‘We have to do this methodically. That’s the only way of saving the children.’ He took the arms of the woman digging in the rubble next to Kara and helped her step back. The woman had been standing on the leg of a child, Kara realized. ‘Doctors and nurses don’t dig,’ Adin ordered. Doctors and nurses are too important, because we can dig but we can’t do what they can once we’ve got our children out. ‘Three columns going in simultaneously. Make sure we don’t make anything collapse, make sure we’ve got the children in the first beds out before we move to the second.’

The doctors and nurses fell back and the men and women took their place, Kara among them. ‘Three lines behind the diggers to remove the rubble and pass the children out as we get them,’ Adin ordered. ‘Don’t worry, my son’s at the other end.’

The doctors and nurses were running, preparing the rooms which now passed as operating theatres, others hurrying from different parts of the hospital as the news spread. Adin took his place at the front of the line which would reach Jovan’s bed and began to dig, carefully and methodically, began to remove the debris and pass it back, began to burrow his way in towards the child on whom the woman had been standing.

You’re a good man, Adin, Kara thought again. You’re a great man. Please be alive, Jovan, please be okay.

‘Reached the first.’ Adin passed the tortured piece of metal that had once been part of a bed to the man behind him, and burrowed a little deeper. ‘She’s okay.’ His face was grimed with sweat and dust. ‘Passing her down now.’

It’s okay, Jovan, he told his son; I’m here, I’m coming for you. Your mother’s waiting to take you in her arms again and the doctors and nurses are waiting to make you better.

Three places down the line a man edged forward and looked at his daughter, followed the doctors and nurses as they rushed her away.

It’s okay, Jovan, Kara willed her son. Your father’s coming for you, your father’s digging his way in to save you.

‘Second coming out.’ From the column on the left of the ward. ‘Injured. Get a doctor.’

It’s okay, Jovan – it was like a drum in Adin’s head. Coming for you, Jovan. Coming to get you.

Perhaps the shells and mortars were still coming in, perhaps not. Nobody cared, even listened.

It’s okay, Jovan. Your father’s coming, your father will get to you.

‘Third child.’ They all knew by the tone of the voice, all watched as the broken remains were passed back.

Almost there, Jovan, almost reached you. Adin worked methodically, telling people what to do, telling them to be careful, telling them what pieces of debris to move and what to leave in place. Telling those digging to change but never leaving his place at the front of his line.

‘Fourth child, okay.’

Fifth and sixth.

Hang on, Jovan, Kara willed her son. You’re all right, you’re bound to be all right. Your father’s coming. Just hang on till he gets to you.

Seventh.

Soon be your turn, Jovan, soon Adin will get you out.

Adin was below the rubble, burrowing deeper, the top layer moving and someone shifting a beam, making sure it didn’t collapse the delicate fretwork below.

‘Eighth.’

Kara heard Adin’s voice.

Okay now, my son. Your father’s reached you as I told you he would, your father’s saved you because he always would.

She could no longer hear the breathing of the diggers or the anxious whispers of the men and women around her, no longer heard anything.

It’s all right now, Jovan. Your father’s hands are picking you up now, your father is saving you now.

She saw Adin’s head, saw his body, saw the thin little bundle he held in his arms.

Adin’s face was fixed and grey, eyes staring straight ahead and jaw locked. Slowly he stood and turned, looked at her, looked at the bundle in his arms. His face dissolved and the tears streamed down his face. ‘Sorry,’ he said to the man behind him. ‘Have to stop for a moment.’ He walked past the next digger, crying and shaking, still muttering that he was sorry, still apologizing that he could no longer work. Kara stepped forward and stood beside him, looked at the bundle in his arms and stroked the boy’s face, held Adin’s arm and allowed him to carry their son from the ward. A doctor was suddenly with them, a nurse helping. Carefully they took Jovan from Adin and laid him on one of the beds they had placed in the corridor, began examining him, gently but firmly, searched for a pulse, for a flicker of breath. Tried to breathe life into him, tried to inject life into him. Tried to make his heart beat and his lungs breathe.

‘Sorry.’ The doctor stood, did not know what to do, held Adin by his arm and thanked him for what he had done that day. Said he was sorry again.

‘There are others,’ Kara told the doctor and the nurse. ‘If you can no longer help Jovan, you can still help them.’ She knelt and lifted Jovan in her arms, stroked his cheek again and kissed him. Wanted to hold him for ever but gave him instead to his father.

That afternoon they bathed him and laid him in a clean white sheet, placed him with the other children who had died that day, but did not leave him. Sat with him, as the other parents sat with their children, and talked with him for the last time, told him his favourite story and how the summer and the peace would soon come.

That evening, after the dark of night had taken over from the grey of day, offering at least a degree of protection, they walked with the other parents and the doctors and nurses to the cemetery on the hill. As they approached the men finished digging the holes in the rock-hard soil of the winter. Small little holes, Kara thought, small little children.

All so fast now, all so sudden.

Goodbye, my little Jovan – she looked at him again, kissed him again, watched as Adin kissed him then folded the cloth over his face, gave their son back to her for the last time.

They held him, lowered him into the grave, knelt in silence as the imam said the prayers they did not understand.

Nothing else could happen now, she knew; nothing more could be visited upon them.

They trickled the first soil on to the sheet and said goodbye. Then they returned to the hospital, sat in the corridor, and wept.

The grey was coming up and the air was pinched with ice. In the village in the hills to the east of Maglaj, where the surrounding Serb forces withdrew to take their rest and recuperation, the sniper Valeschov left his billet and began the trudge through the snow.

‘Not today,’ his commanding officer told him. ‘You’re needed somewhere else.’

‘Where?’ Valeschov asked.

‘Tesanj.’

London was cold, but at least it had stopped drizzling.

So the Serbs had declared a ceasefire round the Maglaj – Tesanj pocket and he himself had put one across on the Opposition – Langdon sat in the inner sanctum of his office, an adviser on either side, and watched the recording of the early evening news bulletin: the reports from Vienna, his own performance in Brussels that afternoon, plus the live transmission from the House during the bulletin itself.

The schedule that day had been even tighter than he had feared. Brussels had overrun, which had delayed his return to London, so that he had been unable to make his appearance in the House at the customary time. Which had meant that he had made his statement shortly after six. Eight minutes after, to be precise. Or bang in the middle of the BBC TV’s early evening news. So they had gone live on it. Prompted, of course, by the right word in the right ear that the Foreign Secretary had something of interest to say.

So the Serbs had declared a ceasefire, he mused again. Notwithstanding that a ceasefire was already in place, of course. He reached for a sherry. But everything was notwithstanding nowadays.

He should be able to grab a day and a half off this weekend – the thought was in the back of his mind. Even get down to the family home in the West Country. Hilary and Rob and little Sammi were back from Berlin for a flying visit, and he and his wife saw too little of their daughter and granddaughter nowadays.

He sipped the sherry and watched the news bites from Vienna.

‘I think we have a way forward,’ the Bosnian-Serb spokesman told the TV cameras.

‘The latest ceasefire might well give cause for optimism,’ one of the West’s negotiators told the press.

Quite nicely worded, one of Langdon’s advisers commented. Almost gets round the problem of the ceasefire that wasn’t. Almost but not quite.

‘What about the UN refusal to launch an air strike at Maglaj?’ one of the BBC team asked.

‘You could say that the UN decision led to the situation we’re able to report today.’

The report switched to Langdon leaving the Brussels meeting.

‘If the UN and the West had taken firmer action earlier, perhaps the conflict might not have escalated to the present situation?’

‘Perhaps yes, perhaps no,’ he had replied. ‘It’s always easy to be wise, or at least wiser, with hindsight.’

‘What about the reports of a hospital being shelled in Tesanj?’

Langdon had nodded, as if sharing the reporter’s concern. ‘We have received reports of this … At present we’re still trying to get confirmation.’

Wrong time to say that first reports suggested that children had been among the dead, he and his advisers had decided. Wrong time also to take away from the impact of the surprise he had in store at Westminster.

Pity about the kids, of course, but kids were always the victims. And victims were an inevitable price of practically everything.

The bulletin went back to the studio, then live to the House. He leaned forward and paid closer attention.

The Speaker was calling him; he was rising from the front bench and taking his position at the dispatch box.

‘There has been a breach of the original ceasefire, especially in the area of the Maglaj – Tesanj pocket.’ He glanced at the advisers and nodded his approval of the wording they had chosen for him. ‘The renegotiation of the ceasefire, however, is to be welcomed.’

Why not an air strike – the intervention from the Opposition front bench had been predictable. Why not more direct military intervention?

‘The decision whether or not to launch an air strike is the sole prerogative of the United Nations.’ His delivery emphasized the point. ‘It is not the responsibility of Her Majesty’s Government.’

He had held up his hand at this point, stopped the heckling from the other side of the House.

‘What is the responsibility of Her Majesty’s Government is not only to ensure that its commitment to the United Nations Protection Force is fulfilled, but also to ensure the safety of the British contingent in UNPROFOR.’

One British life is a life too many, the Opposition knew he was going to say, and prepared its response. Why not a more positive position on Bosnia, he knew they would throw at him.

‘I have to tell the House …’ his voice was sombre now ‘… and it is right and proper that the House is the first to know, that there have been a number of British casualties during an incident in the Maglaj – Tesanj pocket.’

Even now, even on television, he could sense the sudden tension, the moment the mood in the chamber swung in his favour.

‘It is my sad duty this afternoon to inform the House that, in a reconnaissance operation ordered by UNPROFOR, and acting in their role as authorized military observers, two members of the Special Air Service have been killed in an incident near the town of Maglaj, and two others seriously injured. The injured men have been flown home and we are in negotiation to retrieve the bodies of the two others.’

Of course it wasn’t quite news; of course the press had been sniffing at the rumour. But he had done what he always did: got his retaliation in first, so that it was the others, rather than himself, who were now on the defensive.

‘I have nothing further to say.’

And then he had sat down. And no one, not even the Opposition front bench, had moved even a finger to ask him another question.

Tesanj was spread below him.

Most people were still keeping away from the areas known to be exposed to rifle fire, those that didn’t still darting furtively between doorways. A few hours of peace, then they’d come out, though.

Valeschov shifted his position slightly and studied the town, fixed in his mind the streets and the places they would be entering and leaving and where, therefore, they would be exposed to him. The food centres, of course, the radio station, the hospital.

All night, after they had returned from the graveyard on the hillside, Kara and Adin had slumped together in the corridor, occasionally talking, though not often, most of the time staring into the black and trying to struggle back from the abyss which engulfed them.

A nurse brought them tea, a mug each, made sure their hands were firmly gripping the handles, sat with them without speaking before she was needed elsewhere.

Perhaps they should have begun the journey back to Maglaj last night, after they had laid little Jovan to rest; perhaps it was right that they had delayed till this morning. There was, after all, a ceasefire, and the shells and mortars had stopped.

They finished the tea, fastened the backpack Adin had brought with him, and began to leave. Thanked the doctors and nurses who were on duty, and asked for their thanks to be passed to those who were resting. Then they left the hospital and stepped into the cold, shuffled rather than walked down the street.

An old couple leaving the hospital – Valeschov targeted them through the crosswires. At least a couple who looked old, but nowadays you couldn’t tell. Range four hundred metres, wind speed not enough to worry about. He followed them, played with them, as they walked down the street. But played with them without them knowing, and that was the problem.

Interesting job, being a sniper, gave you such power. Plus the decision of life and death over them, almost like being God, really. Like being the emperor in the old Roman games, thumb up or thumb down. But for you to have that power people needed to at least know you were there. Only then were they afraid, and that was what gave you the power.

And that was the problem today.

The old couple, for example. Hadn’t been his enemies before the conflict and wouldn’t be after. But they weren’t afraid of him, because they didn’t know he was there. And that irked. He didn’t need to kill them, perhaps didn’t even want to kill them. This morning, anyway, because last night he’d eaten well and slept better than he’d done for days. But unless they knew he was there they weren’t playing the game. Nobody was. And there was only one way people could be persuaded to play the game.

‘You want to see Jovan before we leave?’ Adin suggested. ‘You want to say goodbye to him, tell him we’ll be back?’

Because we will be back, because we’ll never leave him.

They were tight together, holding and supporting each other.

‘Yes,’ Kara told him. ‘I’d like to see Jovan before we leave.’

‘Me, too.’ Adin tried to smile.

The man or the woman, Valeschov wondered. It was like tossing a coin at the start of a football match, see who decided which way they’d play. Nothing personal, of course. Just part of the game. And the one thing he liked was the game. So after he’d killed them, or at least killed one of them, everybody would know he was there. And after that people would play the game again. He moved the rifle slightly, swung from the man to the woman then back to the man. The woman, he decided, and swung back again.

Kara heard the shout and turned. The doctor was standing in the doorway, his white coat flapping slightly and his hand raised to them. ‘Good luck.’

The man – Valeschov changed his mind. He swung the Dragunov and squeezed the trigger.

‘Thank you,’ Kara began to say and heard the crack, flinched and turned. Adin was falling backwards slightly, his fingers clutched at his chest and the pain and fear and bewilderment frozen on his face.

No … she was screaming, no sound coming out. Please God, no.

Adin was already crumpled on the ground. She crouched beside him, held his head in one arm and the hands clutching his chest with the other.

The doctor ran – away from the safety of the door and down the street. Sniper, someone shouted at him and grabbed him into a doorway. ‘It’s all right,’ Kara was whispering to Adin, to herself. ‘The doctor’s coming, soon you’ll be okay.’ He was trying to push her away, trying to tell her to seek shelter. She was pulling him, dragging him across the ice towards a doorway. Someone grabbed her and pulled her inside, someone else hauling Adin behind her and slamming the door shut as the sniper aimed again. The room was dark and cold, the people inside staring at her. The doctor came in through a door at the back and knelt down, pulled Adin’s coat open and checked the entry area in the chest, then nodded to the others to move Kara from the room. She was screaming, protesting; they held her and dragged her out. Only then did the doctor turn Adin over and take off his pack. The back of the coat was shredded and oozing thick blood where the bullet had exited. Christ what a mess, someone whispered. Still a pulse – the doctor checked. ‘Help me get him to the hospital.’ Three of them lifted Adin, and squeezed through the door at the rear, ran through the side streets – two holding his arms and one his legs – and into a door at the side of the hospital.

Kara ran with them, followed them through the door and down the corridor, heard them shouting for people to get out of the way. They turned left then left again, into an operating theatre. The doctor was already giving instructions and a nurse was cutting through Adin’s clothing, more doctors and nurses arriving. One of them took Kara by the shoulder and led her away, closed the door behind her and sat with her. Isn’t this the man who led the digging for the children? another asked. Didn’t he lose his son yesterday?

Stay alive, Kara prayed. The panic swept over her in waves: the cold and the fear and the sudden abyss.

Pulse, the first doctor pleaded; come on, where are you? Not much they could do about the wound anyway, they all knew, hardly anything they could do to counter the internal damage. Doesn’t matter, the doctor whispered to himself. I can do it, we can do it. Come on, my friend, he urged Adin. For Chrissake come on. No pulse – he was still checking for it. Perhaps there hadn’t been anyway, perhaps he’d felt it because he wanted to. Perhaps the pulse he’d felt was the last draining of Adin’s blood from his body.

Don’t leave me, my dear precious husband. Don’t leave me ever, but don’t leave me at the moment I need you the most.

Come on, the doctor was still saying, almost shouting. Don’t die. You haven’t died. You’re okay, you’re going to be okay. For Christ’s sake don’t give up, don’t stop your heart beating or your lungs breathing. For God’s sake help me to help you.

Not you, my wonderful Adin. Not you who was such a good father, such a great man. Not you who gave so much to so many. Who loved the flowers in spring and the snow in winter.

A nurse was still tying the lead surgeon’s face mask, the man bent over Adin. Slowly he stepped back from the operating table, peeled off his gloves, and shook his head.

When they carried Adin Isak to the hillside that night the moon was barely rising over the trees, the dark was as cold as ever, and the hole was already dug. Thin and shallow, because the soil was frozen hard and the men had difficulty breaking it open. Perhaps there’s always a hole, Kara thought; perhaps they’re always ready because there are always bodies to bury.

‘I’d like my husband to lie with his son,’ she told the men who accompanied her. For some reason there was no imam. Perhaps he was elsewhere, perhaps he himself had been killed.

They nodded their understanding and carried the body to the place where she and Adin had knelt the night before, then they laid it down and began to remove the soil from the small grave on the crest of the hill. When they came to the shroud containing Jovan’s body Kara lifted it out and held it while the men made the hole bigger. Then she kissed Adin goodbye and helped lay him in the hole, then Jovan, the father’s arm round the boy, as if they were lying together in the summer fields and looking up at the cloudless blue of the sky.

The moon was above her now, and the night was colder.

She sprinkled the soil back in, carefully and gently, then stood back and waited till the men had filled the hole, placed the wooden memorial at the head, and left her.

The snow was falling again.

From a pocket she took a pencil, and added Adin’s name to the one already on the wood.

Thirty-six hours ago she had everything to live for, she thought. She had a husband and a son, and Jovan was going to live and Adin was alive and well and at her side.

Perhaps she should take the road to Maglaj tonight, perhaps she should wait till morning as she and Adin had waited till morning. But then perhaps the sniper would be waiting for her. Not that it mattered any more or that she cared any longer.

‘Goodbye, my husband. Goodbye, my son.’

She left the graveyard on the hillside and took the road to Maglaj. Her hands were frozen and she could no longer feel her feet. Sometime in the next hours she met a convoy coming the other way – men leading horses carrying wounded and injured to the hospital in Tesanj. Sometime, she was not sure when, she passed the turning and the track – hardly wide enough for goats – over the hill called Bandera. Sometime just after the light came up, she descended from the hills and entered Maglaj.

At ten, an hour before the food kitchen opened, she joined the line already forming outside; at eleven she shuffled in front of the vats containing the beans.

‘I’m sorry, I’ve just come back from the hospital at Tesanj and I don’t have a bowl.’

One of the women serving the beans shrugged, as if the problem was not hers.

‘Did Adin find you?’ another asked. ‘Where’s Jovan?’

‘Adin and Jovan are dead.’

The second woman gave her her own bowl and poured the beans for her, broke the bread for her and led her to a corner where she might be warm. At least where she might be less cold. When she finished the soup Kara thanked the woman, returned the bowl to her, and went outside.

I saw you running across the bridge the other day – the Canadian MacFarlane remembered her, even though in some ways he barely recognized her now. Her face was ashen, her eyes were dead, and she crossed the bridge slowly, almost numbly, as if she was immune to the sniper who might be waiting for her in the hills; as if she was challenging him to shoot her.

The bridge was behind her. She walked in a trance through the rubble of what had once been the old town, and climbed the hill to the house. Stood still and looked at it. Began to cry.

The roof had been blown apart and the walls were sagging, the windows and doors gaping open and the snow falling in.

She went through the garden and pushed her way into what had once been the kitchen. At least she would be able to live here, she told herself, at least this part of the house would be secure.

The furniture was wrecked and ice hung from the ceiling, the holes gaping in it.

She was aware of the cold again now, not aware of her physical actions. Slowly she searched through the rubble, found the tin in which she and Adin kept any deutschmarks they had been able to save; found the photograph of Adin and Jovan which had stood on the dresser, found the remnants of one of the food packs Finn had left them.

She could go to the new town, find a space in a basement and sit there for the rest of the war, sit there for the rest of her life. Her thoughts were as numb and automatic as her movements. Or she could make her way to Travnik, seek out her mother’s mother, her own grandmother, and stay with her. Except that Travnik was thirty kilometres from Zenica, and Zenica was nearly fifty kilometres from Maglaj and two front lines away – one from the Muslim pocket of Maglaj – Tesanj into the surrounding Serb/Croat-controlled countryside, and the second back into the Muslim-held land to the south. But the front lines at the points where she would have to cross might not be active, might not be carefully guarded, might not be mined. Or they might be.

Not that it mattered. Not that anything mattered any more.

She packed the handful of items in a bag, left the house and walked down through the old town and back across the bridge. Either she had been doing things more slowly than she had imagined, or it was getting dark earlier.

The doctor was in the doorway of the medical centre. Sorry about Jovan and Adin, she said; where was Kara going, she asked. Travnik, Kara told her, I have a grandmother who lives there.

The town was a ghost, the doctor thought, Kara was a ghost. Already gone, already finished. Not on her way to join her grandmother in Travnik, because Travnik was eighty kilometres away through two sets of front lines. Kara was on her way to join her husband and her son.

Good luck, she told Kara. God go with you.

Kara thanked her, left Maglaj, and took the road back towards Tesanj. A quarter way along it, just after the light had faded and the night had closed in, she left the road and began the climb up through the snow and ice to the hill called Bandera and the first of the front lines.