скачать книгу бесплатно
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.’
