THE HEART OF DANGER Read Free

knowledge that his Abigail, in the forty-fifth year
    of
    their marriage, held a pride in her husband for taking himself off
    to
    Croatia for two months. He'd tell her about the Canadian and the
    Frenchman and the Portuguese and the Kenyan, great young guys who
    could
    chide, gently, a vague old man who let his eyes wander. He had the
    one
    day at the grave, and the day was nearly done. "Sorry, guys." The Kenyan was out of the pit and had gone to where the mine detector
    lay
    in shelter alongside the wheel of a jeep. He jumped back into the
    pit
    and ran the machine over the last part of the earth, beyond the
    protruding leg. It was the fourth time that the mine detector had
    been
    used to sweep the site. They were all in the pit again. The crowd
    who
    watched from the edge of the field would only have seen their
    shoulders
    and their buttocks, and the trowels of dripping mud that were tossed
    from the pit to the earth wall. It would be the last body. The
    growing gloom brought a new pace to their work. An army boot, a leg
    in
    disintegrating camouflage fatigues, a hand that wore a cheap and
    dulled
    ring, a wrist-watch, an arm that was bent crazily because the central
    bone had been broken. The Professor was scraping for the skull. The
    Portuguese policeman tapped at his shoulder, asked for his attention.
    He turned. He saw the small trainer shoe revealed alongside the
    second
    boot. His wife, Abigail, liked to tell him that he was a tough old
    goat of a man, that his humour when dealing with the dead was black
    8

    as
    night, gas chamber mirth. He gagged. He felt the emotion swell in
    him
    because he had not expected to find a woman's body in the grave.
    Sure,
    he could handle female cadavers when he was out with the Police
    Department homicide unit, but he had not expected a woman's body,
    not
    here .. . They were entwined, the camouflage trousers and the blue
    jeans. They were locked together, the camouflage tunic arms and the
    grey windcheater arms. They were against each other, the skull of
    a
    young man and the skull of a young woman. The Canadian crouched above
    them and held a flashlight with the beam directed down ... He would
    have liked to have stood his full height and shouted to the crowd
    to
    come close, the women and the children and the men with their guns,
    he
    would have liked to have invited them to see the bodies of the young
    man and woman who were entwined, and he wondered how many of them
    who
    waited in the rain would have known what would be found. The chest
    of
    the young man was wrapped in stained bandages. The Professor
    understood. All of the bodies of the men showed the marks of combat
    wounds, bullet holes, shrapnel gouges, field amputations. They had
    been the wounded. It had been a shit little war in a shit little
    corner of Europe and the wounded had gotten themselves left behind
    when
    the fit guys had run out on them. He looked down into the swollen
    and
    decayed face of the young woman. His own daughter was forty-one years
    old, his own granddaughter was nineteen years old. His own daughter
    had said he was an idiot to involve himself in a shit little war,
    and
    his own granddaughter had asked him, the night before he had flown,
    to
    tell her why this shit little war was worth caring about. He could
    go
    cold. It was useful to go cold when he was looking into a young
    woman's face where the putrefaction had started, but not gone so far
    as
    to hide the killing wounds. There was a bullet entry wound in what
    remained of the fair hair above the right ear. There was a knife
    wound
    at the throat that had cut deep through muscles. There was a bludgeon
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    wound across the bridge of the nose and the lower part of the forehead.
    They were all killing wounds. "Sorry to hurry you, Professor .. ."
    the Canadian pleaded. "We ought to get the hell out .. ." He realized
    then that all the light he had been working to had been from the torch
    held by the Canadian. The Kenyan brought two body bags