Dead of Night

CHAPTER SEVEN

From the warehouse we headed north, passing over a small bridge that spanned a swollen river, the water rushing by so fast that little spumes of spray rose up as if a pod of whales had hidden themselves there. After the bridge we passed through another deserted village, the buildings closed and locked, and took refuge at the top of a small hillside park a couple of kilometers away from the warehouse. Here there were a set of picnic tables and a monument to a couple of past wars, plus a white flagpole that wasn’t flying anything.

There was a dirt path that was meant for walkers only, but our group wasn’t in the mood for conforming to such niceties so all four vehicles clambered their way up, led by the APC. It was late afternoon and I felt nervous and strangely tingly and alive when I stepped out of the Land Cruiser. I stripped off my helmet and the protective vest and threw them both back inside the vehicle. Karen said, ‘Don’t you think you should keep that stuff on?’

And I said, ‘If it stays on any longer, I’m going to die of heat stroke, and what’s the point then, right?’

Maybe I was too sharp for her, but I didn’t care. Some pine trees shaded the area of the war monument and Sanjay was leaning against it, cleaning his glasses with his handkerchief. The monument had been defaced with black paint and it looked as though someone had taken a hammer and chisel to some of the names, hacking them out. ‘Rewriting history,’ I said to Sanjay. ‘Just like the ancient Egyptians.’

‘Excuse me?’ he asked.

I gestured to the place on the monument where the bronze names had been hacked out. ‘When a Pharaoh passed on, his name—his cartouche—was cut in stone throughout the empire, to symbolize that his memory would last for ever. But sometimes dead pharaohs passed out of favor due to some religious or political struggle. So then their names would be gouged from the stone, to erase the memory that they had even existed.’

Sanjay looked at the stone he was leaning on. ‘So that’s what happened here. Rewrite history, destroy your enemies. They kill the living, bury their bodies, and then obliterate the names of their ancestors from the old stone. This is a blood-drenched country, you know that? Ever notice how many monuments and statues and plaques they have dedicated to their wars? Every village, every crossroad, every marketplace or town square has a monument to death.’ He put his glasses back on. ‘No wonder what happened here took place, with such a bloody people, after the spring bombings.’

I said, ‘Don’t throw stones.’

‘I’m sorry, what did you say?’

I looked at him calmly. ‘You and I both know the history of your own country, from the 1947 partition on, all the millions dead on both sides, up to and including the present day. There’s a saying: people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.’

Sanjay’s gaze back at me was just as calm. ‘Are you excusing what has happened here?’

‘No, I’m not. Just asking you to adopt some perspective.’

‘Young man, I’m not in the mood for lectures,’ he said.

“I don’t think I’m that young, and I wasn’t offering a lecture.’

‘Yes, you were. I come from a place with thousands of years of proud history, millennia of art and architecture and poetry that still sings to us… and you are from a frozen wasteland that offers hockey and beer. Grow up, why don’t you? And stop lecturing.’

‘Sure. One of these days.’

‘I won’t wait for you,’ Sanjay said dismissively. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, before you start yammering about Kashmir…’

He moved away from the stone and walked down to one of the Land Cruisers, while I looked again at the monument, which had listed the names of the sons and fathers from this village who had fought in the Second World War. I rubbed both hands through my sweaty scalp, thought of the hate and energy that it had taken to do this, to climb up this hill with hammer and chisel and try to obliterate the past because someone’s descendants had done something wrong, like feeding or sheltering some of the many people who had deserted the cities when the power had gone off. With all that had gone on in this country, making this final gesture of destroying the past seemed as dark and as despicable an act as spitting into an open grave.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t have raised my voice in defense of the people who lived here, for all I had just accomplished was to piss off a teammate, and that would matter more to me in the long run.

I reached out, touched the sharp edges of the monument, and went back to join the others.

Karen was talking to Peter about the warehouse. She said, ‘We didn’t have to run away like that, like scared rabbits. We had those Ukrainians. We had Charlie. Hell, a call from Jean-Paul to the regional headquarters could have gotten us some back-up. For all we know, that warehouse could have been holding some refugees. A hell of a thing, don’t you think, that we’d be running away from refugees?’

Peter said, ‘Yes, a hell of a thing. Here, want to see another hell of a thing?’

With that, he grabbed her upper arm and roughly pulled her to the rear of the mud-spattered Ukrainian APC, where two of the soldiers—neither of whom spoke English—were gathered around the rear hatchway. Peter pointed out something to her.

‘See? See that?’ he demanded.

Karen broke free from his grasp, strands of her hair falling free from underneath her blue helmet. ‘See what, you jerk?’

‘Look, right there,’ he said. ‘Here and there.’

I saw what Peter was pointing at. Two little dents, pock-holes about the size of the tip of a finger, where the dark green paint had flecked free. The two Ukrainians had fallen silent. Something cold and squishy was now roiling around in my chest.

‘Now do you see it, you silly woman?’ Peter said. ‘Impact sites, from gunshots. The Ukrainians heard them strike just as we were leaving the warehouse. A little farewell message from whoever was in there, in that warehouse you were so eager to search.’

Karen brushed her hair back, looked at me and Peter and the Ukrainians, and then stalked away to a stand of bushes near a metal and concrete barbecue pit. Peter looked at me and said bitterly, ‘Amateurs. Bloody fucking amateurs.’ Then he walked away as well. The Ukrainians started talking among themselves, and I went back to the Land Cruiser that held my rucksack.

I sat at a picnic table with Jean-Paul, who was calmly smoking another of his Gauloises. His eyes looked tired behind his black-rimmed glasses. We gazed at the three Land Cruisers parked in a triangle, with the Ukrainian APC positioned just a bit beyond, down the side of the hill so that it could provide covering fire. Jean-Paul took a long drag on his cigarette and said, ‘How are you doing, Samuel?’

‘I’m doing fine,’ I said. ‘The question is, how are we doing?’

‘Hmm,’ he said, and then fell quiet.

I went on. ‘The past couple of days have been lousy. I mean no disrespect, Jean-Paul, but what have we accomplished? From those two kids to the militiamen who came to the farm to the lousy intelligence that sent us to that schoolyard and then the warehouse… It seems like we’re being set up, or at least sent around in circles. We’re no closer to Site A than when we first came out here.’

‘True,’ he said, inhaling again.

‘Again, no disrespect, Jean-Paul, and I’m not trying to act like Peter, but it just doesn’t seem right. We’ve been lucky so far, but I don’t know how long this luck is going to last. This part of the countryside is supposed to have been pacified and it’s nowhere near that. Look at the warehouse, the paramilitaries back at the farm. This place isn’t pacified, and we all know it.’

He slowly nodded, took another puff at his cigarette. ‘Pacified. A good word. Decades after the bloodiest war in history and after setting up the UN, one would think that this planet would be pacified, would at least have peace, that people would eventually have learned to get along with each other. But we’re not even close to that dream, my friend Samuel. Can I tell you a secret?’

‘Certainly,’ I said.

Jean-Paul smiled faintly. ‘Not much of a secret, but here it goes. We’re losing, Samuel, and losing rather badly. What we’re doing here is probably pointless, at best.’

I felt like I had just heard the parish priest speak about the attractive qualities of a demon called Satan. ‘I disagree. That is one hell of a secret. Go on.’

A Gallic shrug, then he said, ‘Karen said something a day or two ago, about men with guns, and the heartbreak and terror they cause. A bit simplistic, but she had a point. There was a time some years ago when we could make a difference, could keep warring countries or factions or other groups of men with guns apart. That was the era of the copper phone line and the telegraph and black-and-white television. In those days we had the luxury of time.’

In the distance, over the horizon, I thought I heard the murmur of helicopters on patrol. Jean-Paul looked up with me and continued. ‘But then the world got wired, got connected, so that extremists in Idaho could communicate with their brethren in Berlin, so that mujahedin in Afghanistan could give real-time lectures to their comrades in the Philippines, and so that women-haters in Iran could get support from those in the United States who wanted to put women under the lash. All this connectivity, so that the brushfires and incidents and little wars could happen, right after another, sometimes in a planned fashion. We’re like a fire department in a small village that has one little fire engine, and we’re racing from blaze to blaze, trying to put the fires out, and being very, very lucky if we can just contain them. Well,’ he said, waving a hand to the village we had passed through, ‘our luck’s not holding.’

‘But what we’re doing—you can’t mean it when you said we’re not making a difference, that what we’re doing is pointless.’

Jean-Paul leaned to the right and gently nudged me. ‘My dear young man, what difference are we making, eh? Tell me the truth: what are we doing?’

‘We’re documenting war crimes,’ I said. ‘Preserving evidence, for use in future trials. To show others that, even when something criminal happens in a nation like this, there are consequences.’

‘Are we preventing any bloodshed?’

‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Maybe the fact that we’re here, collecting evidence, will prevent future outbreaks.’

‘Aaahh, yes,’ he said. ‘The old argument. Used in Kampuchea, in Rwanda, the Congo, Sierra Leone, Fiji and now here. The world community did nothing and let the bodies pile up. And when the shooting and the hacking is complete, now we will go in and count the dead and feed the living, and try to track down the criminals. And how much bloodshed has been avoided, how many lives have been saved by this process of ours?’

‘Who knows?’ I said stubbornly. ‘But something still has to be done.’

‘Indeed, you are correct, something must still be done,’ Jean-Paul said, smiling, tapping the ash from his cigarette onto the ground. ‘That’s what I thought, back when I was your age. That I would do something important. I was a lawyer in a small village in the south of France, and I thought I should do more besides prepare land-deed transfers and wills for elderly widows. I had a hunger to see the world, to do more. The curse of the French, you know. We feel we have to share our superiority with everyone.’ He laughed and even I smiled along. It was good to see him laugh, especially after the days we had been having.

He continued. ‘Like you, I think, my father is one who—’

‘Please,’ I said. ‘I really don’t want to bring my father into this.’

Jean-Paul eyed me coolly. ‘You must not continue to blame him for what happened in Mogadishu. It was not his fault.’

‘He was in command. Everything in his command was his responsibility. Including the deaths that occurred. Sorry, Jean-Paul, it was his fault. So can we drop the matter, all right?’

‘Very well,’ he said, rubbing his hands together, keeping the cigarette held at the ends of his fingers. ‘I will talk, then, about my father. A tall, dour man who married my mother when he was in his fifties. He was a lawyer as well, but he always kept quiet concerning what he had done as a young man, before he started his own practice. Only after he passed on did I learn the truth about what my father did as a lawyer. You see, Samuel, during a certain time in the 1940s he was employed by the French government in a small city just north of our village, a place called Vichy.’

‘Oh,’ I said.

‘Yes, “oh”,’ Jean-Paul said. ‘He was young and had no real power, but what little power he had aided the Nazis and their Gestapo to round up Jews in the south of France and send them to places like Treblinka and Auschwitz and Theresienstadt. That was what my father did. When I learned that, within a week I had quit my position and applied to the UN in Geneva. So here I am.’

‘You and me and everybody else,’ I said. ‘Your village -where is it?’

‘Ah, it is in Provence, a place of warmth and beauty and fine food and wine. A place where even today you can see monuments from the Roman Empire. The arenas, the memorial arches, the old roads.’

The sound of the helicopters grew louder and I scanned the horizon, still not seeing a thing. Routine patrol, perhaps. One hoped.

‘I was there once, on a college trip,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry to say that I think the food was overrated, except for the desserts. But the landscapes were amazing.’

‘Ah, of course, quite beautiful, like this land we are in now,’ Jean-Paul said. ‘But this place is still bloody, with lots of bloody memories. The early colonists. The French and Indian wars. The Civil War. So forth and so on. And my memories begin with relics of the ancient Romans. Ironic, isn’t it, that we owe so much to the Romans and their concepts of law and government. The Senate, the voice of the people, ideas and ideals handed down over thousands of years. But the Romans also gave us their legacy of slavery, of conquering other nations, of killing your enemies for sport in the arena. An odd balance, when we cherish the good and try to overlook the bad.’

He finished his cigarette, dropped it to the ground and ground it out with his heel. ‘And while we try to balance this, even to this day, the barbarians are out there, beyond the gates, beyond the pale, preparing their weapons, preparing to kill us all. Samuel, my apologies.’

‘Excuse me—apologies for what?’ I asked,

‘Apologies for giving you a lecture as if you were a schoolboy. No more lectures today.’ Jean-Paul stood up and said, ‘You are right. We have done nothing these past days but go in circles, and each time we have been in the line of fire, in some sort of danger. No longer. This afternoon, we will—’

We both turned at the sound of an engine revving up, and I saw a black cloud of diesel smoke rise up from the Ukrainian APC. The rear hatch was open and the APC commander was waving frantically at Jean-Paul, who trotted down the hill with me following right behind him. The Ukrainian shouted over the noise of the APC engine: ‘Monsieur, so sorry, but we must leave! Two of our comrades, they are under fire, some distance away. We must go help!’

Jean-Paul yelled back, ‘But we need you here, we need—’

The Ukrainian smiled and gave a thumbs-up, as if he couldn’t hear or didn’t care what Jean-Paul was saying. He ducked back into the APC and slammed the hatch shut. Jean-Paul cursed in French, leaned over and pounded his fists against the APC’s side, but the engine revved up again and the armored vehicle bounced its way down the hillside, its fat black tires sinking into the soft soil and grass. Jean-Paul stood there, fists now at his side, and slowly the other people in our team came over, not saying a word. It felt horribly vulnerable up there on the hill, and I knew that if probing or curious eyes were looking us over they’d just seen our main line of defense leave. I thought Charlie was wonderful and superb in what he had done for us, but he was just one man. Just one man with weapons, against the entire countryside.

Jean-Paul turned to us and said, ‘Samuel?’

‘Yes?’

‘Please be so kind as to put on your vest and helmet. All right?’

‘Certainly,’ I said, glad that he wasn’t raising his voice, wasn’t expressing disappointment, though Karen—still clad in her own helmet and vest—smiled with satisfaction at seeing me rebuked.

‘Messieurs et medames,’ Jean-Paul said. ‘We are finished here for the day. We are going to head back whence we came, and we’re not going any further into this area without better support.’

Karen, Miriam and Sanjay were smiling, and Peter said, ‘Where are we headed, then?’

Jean-Paul said, ‘I think we all agree that the motel from a couple of days ago was in a safe place. That’s where we will return. And we will not leave it until we have better assistance. When we get to the motel, I will be in contact with the Commissioner’s field office. Peter, is that agreeable to you?’

I wondered why Jean-Paul had asked Peter’s opinion about anything. Maybe he was seeking reassurance, maybe he was just trying to confuse Peter. If so, he was succeeding.

‘Agreeable?’ Peter asked. ‘It sure as hell is agreeable.’

Jean-Paul folded his arms. ‘But you know that it puts us behind in our quest for Site A.’

Peter grinned. ‘Hell, Jean-Paul, I said I wanted to find Site A. I sure as hell don’t want to become part of Site A.’

That caused some smiles among us—with one notable exception: our borrowed Marine, Charlie. He had his M-16 slung over his back and was looking down the hill at the slowly dissipating cloud of dust that had been left behind by the APC rattling away from us. He shook his head.

‘Damn Ukrainians,’ he said.

Packing up took only a few minutes and with the Land Crusiers’ engines idling Jean-Paul gathered us together and said, ‘Charlie and I will take the lead. This will be a straight sprint, driving as fast as we can to get back to the motel. I’ve radioed ahead and there’ll be a contingent of Peter’s countrymen waiting for us.’

‘Paratroopers?’ Peter asked.

‘The same,’ Jean-Paul said.

Peter grinned, and for once I didn’t mind that mocking smile. ‘How fucking brilliant. Best news I’ve heard all day.’

Jean-Paul said, ‘We drive fast and we drive safe. We don’t stop for anyone. I don’t care if we even see some young lads holding up a sign, eh, that says, “This Way to Site A.” We just go on and make our way back to the motel.’

He looked at each of us individually. ‘I know you are disappointed. I know you are frightened. But you’re a good crew, and I am happy to be with you. And one more thing. I was told that the power will be back on tonight at the motel. So. Hot showers—does that sound good?’

Karen said, ‘It sounds excellent, Jean-Paul.’

‘Bien,’ Jean-Paul said. ‘We go now.’

Which we did.

I sat in front this time, next to Peter. Miriam made as if to protest and I said, ‘Please, Miriam. You’re safer in the rear, with the gear and the supplies.’

‘I don’t like it,’ she said. ‘I don’t like being treated as though I’m weak and—’

‘Oh, shut up, will you?’ Peter said. ‘Or I’ll sit in the back and you both can sit in the front. We’ve got to get moving before it gets dark.’

So we bounced down the hillside, seat belts secure, our helmeted heads striking the roof of the Land Cruiser. Peter laughed maniacally as we reached pavement and started speeding west, heading back to that motel, the precious dumpy little motel that had seemed so dreary a couple of days ago and was now scrubbed and cleaned in our minds to make a little slice of paradise.

‘Oh, this is it, this is fine,’ Peter said, grinning widely, handling the steering wheel with aplomb. ‘None of this putt-putting along. We’re making time, friends, we’re making good time, and there’s hot showers tonight!’

‘Real beds,’ I said, actually enjoying Peter’s exuberance. ‘Real beds with mattresses.’

Miriam laughed as well. ‘Electric lights. I do love electric lights.’

We stayed close behind the lead Toyota, with Karen and Sanjay keeping close behind us. I looked at the sun heading towards the horizon, saw a line of low-lying clouds moving in. It would be twilight soon, and then dark, but if we were lucky we’d be back at the motel, in the comforting presence of British paras, before the sun completely disappeared. The road went through the small village, past a town green with a monument to a past war—and I pledged then to apologize to Sanjay when the moment arrived—and past stores and buildings, their windows either broken or covered up by old plywood boards. Scraps of paper and cardboard blew by as the lead Toyota, driven by Jean-Paul and with Charlie riding shotgun, powered ahead.

When we were through the village, Peter exhaled loudly and said, ‘OK, that was good. No snipers, nobody outdoors. Hate small towns like that. Plenty of hiding places. One last thing, we go like a fucking bat out of hell past that warehouse, and we’ll be free and clear. Just you see.’

I laughed. Miriam squeezed my shoulder and said, ‘What’s so funny?’

‘Just thinking about when I was in high school, sneaking out before the day was over,’ I said. ‘Couple of us would pile into someone’s car and then drive out of the school parking lot. Other kids who would try it got caught, and we figured that was because they moved too slowly. We’d drive fast and bounce over the speed bumps, and because we moved quick we made it out without being caught.’

Miriam squeezed my shoulder again and Peter said, ‘Speed, that’s what it takes, speed, and— Bugger!’

The tail lights ahead of us flashed red. Peter slammed on the brakes, slewed us to the right, and there was a bang! as the third Land Cruiser clipped our rear. Our vehicle bumped up and down, grinding to a halt as Miriam yelped and I said, ‘What the hell—’

The lead Land Cruiser was making a bumpy U-turn and the driver’s-side window was down, Jean-Paul waving at us frantically. Charlie was leaning through his window, the M-16 poking out alongside his head. Peter swore, backed up, looked over and saw the third Toyota, its front right fender and headlight smashed, backing down the road. He yelled out after Sanjay, ‘Fucking wog, can’t you fucking drive?’

Miriam was saying something, trying to calm Peter down, I think, but the third Toyota was now turning around, leaving us, as Peter rocked us up and out of a shallow drainage ditch that had almost trapped us. On both sides of the road was flat pastureland, one small factor in our favor because we had a clear view all around and could see that no one was coming toward us.

I swiveled my head and saw what had happened, where it had all started.

Just ahead was the small bridge that spanned a river, one we had crossed just a couple of hours before. But now it was blocked. Someone had parked a yellow school bus directly across the road, blocking both lanes of the bridge, and the tires were flattened. I knew there was no way we could get through that mess, especially if the people who had moved it were still around, of which there was a pretty good chance. Peter slammed on the brakes, backed us up and made a quick turn. I turned and said, ‘Miriam, duck down, right now.’

Much to my surprise, she did just that. I tasted something salty, wiped at my lip, and saw blood. I winced as the pain started.

‘Speed,’ Peter muttered, punching the accelerator to the floor. ‘Bloody speed.’