THE HEART OF DANGER by Gerald Seymour Read Free Book Online

disappeared at the end of 1991, she was listed as
    missing. Last week I was informed that her body had been identified
    from the exhumation of a mass grave, in that part of Croatia that
    is
    now under Serb control. She had been dead for fifteen months, buried
    and hidden. I want to know what happened to her. I want to know
    how
    she died and why she died. She was my only daughter, Mr. Penn."
    30

    He
    interrupted, "Isn't this a job for ... ?" "You should let me finish, Mr. Penn .. . But since you raise it ... Shouldn't this be a job
    for
    the Foreign Office? Of course it should. Do you know anything about
    government departments, Mr. Penn? They're useless. That's a
    generalization and a true one. Good at cups of tea in a First
    Secretary's office, good at booking a hotel room, good at platitudes,
    and they don't give a damn, just some silly woman using up their day.
    I
    have been to Zagreb, Mr. Penn, I was there when Dorrie, my daughter,
    was missing, and I was there to bring her body home. I thought it
    was
    their job to help people like me, and I was wrong. Arnold is a good
    friend. Arnold gave me your name .. ." High excitement coursing,
    yesterday, when he had been told by Deirdre that Arnold Browne had
    left
    the message for him to call, immediately. He had sat in the cubbyhole
    area where Basil had given him the desk, and savoured the moments
    before he had picked up the telephone. All some mistake, a mistake
    to
    have let him go, and of course they wanted him back ... or .. . pretty
    bad cock-up, losing him, but the Service had plenty of scope for work
    by outsiders who were trusted and proven, nice little one for him,
    and
    of course he was not forgotten. And what brutal disappointment
    crushing him, yesterday, when he had dialled the direct-line number,
    spoken to Arnold bloody Browne, been told that a neighbour had a
    problem, needed a bit of uncomplicated ferreting, needed a good
    plodder
    was what the bloody man meant ... He ran his tongue over his lower
    lip.

    "What was it you wanted of me?"

    She had her handbag open and she had taken the ointment tube out.
    She
    didn't ask his permission. She squeezed the ointment onto her
    forefinger and reached forward and, casual, gentle, she smeared the
    salve onto the split of his lower lip.

    "I want you to go to Zagreb for me. I want to know how my Dorrie
    died,
    and why."

    He thought her so bloody vulnerable, she shouldn't have been there.
    31

    She
    shouldn't have been in the waiting room that doubled as clients'
    interview room in a shabby, God-awful, dreary little office. He told
    her that he would think on it overnight, that if he took it he would
    come down in the morning, if ... She gave him an address. He would
    think on it and consider it. He walked her out of the office and
    they
    passed Basil on the stairs, and the one-time CID man gave her the
    look-over of a bloody farmer evaluating livestock. They stood on
    the
    pavement outside the launderette.

    "Would you tell me .. . ?"

    "What?" he rasped.

    "Would you tell me what state he is in, the man who hit you this
    morning?"

    He saw the mischief dance in her eyes.

    Penn said, "I would have been done for assault. No, if I'd hit him like I know, then I'd have been done for murder. What state is he
    in?
    Probably pretty good, probably he's looking forward to getting pissed
    up in the pub this lunch time and telling the rest of the select lounge
    how he put one on me. I served the Process, but that's a small-beer
    victory .. ."

    Then the mischief was gone and she was serious. "I like winning,
    Mr.
    Penn, I expect to win ... I want to know how my daughter died, I want
    to know who killed her, I want to know why she was killed. I want
    to
    know."

    They had been at the roadblock an hour. They had sat in the jeep
    and
    smoked and talked together for an hour before they heard the coughing
    approach of the truck. The engine would go on the truck if it went
    on
    burning the bad diesel that the sanction busters