Twilight Page 8

  “Right,” he said. “So that means whoever lived here got a fair amount of warning and bailed out, probably heading east or up north, to the border, before the refugee streams got here and the locals started shooting. So what got left behind got stolen and burned by either the refugees or the townies. Sad enough, but I don’t consider that a war crime. Site A, where two hundred-plus people from a refugee column got disappeared over a weekend, that’s a war crime. Not a burned-out block of shitty houses.”

  I said sharply, “I can see why you joined the UN, Peter. You’ve got one hell of a humanitarian streak inside you.”

  The back of his neck got bright red. “Bugger off, youngster,” he said softly. “I was working the East End for the Metropolitan Police before you learned to wank off. I’ve seen bodies pulled from the Thames, swollen up and ready to burst. I’ve seen women and children burned and stabbed and bludgeoned, lying dead in flats where the rats thought they owned the place. That there is crimes, what’s done against females and kids and innocent men. Property is property. So bloody what? It gets burned or destroyed, it’s nothing. Rebuild, rebuy, go on somewhere else. At least you’re alive. This shit here doesn’t impress me. Site A impresses me, and if our Froggy leader doesn’t stop wasting time we’re never going to find it and a fair number of criminals are going to be set free from The Hague before the week is out.”

  The road descended some and then ran by the side of a river. Across the river were open fields and a tent city, with the dark green and white canvas of the tents stretching for what seemed to be a kilometer at least. Flags were fluttering from some poles stuck in the dirt across the river but we couldn’t see what nationality they represented. Some of the white tents, though, had big red crosses on their roofs.

  “There,” Peter said, motioning with a free hand. “That’s where we’ll find Site A. By going in there and talking to people in the area, people who had a hand in the rounding-up and the killing and burying. You can bet not all of them have fled the neighborhood. Some of them are right over there, feeding and sleeping on the world’s generosity, while we make do with half-arsed tips and stories.”

  I was trying to think of what to say when the column ahead of us braked and slowed. We headed to the second inspection site.

  PAST THE SMALL neighborhood of homes this site was part of an industrial facility of some sort, dominated by a large brick warehouse with small windows that was three stories tall. Graffiti scrawled on the side in white paint said RED RULES! Two other buildings, wood-framed, had been burned to a collection of rubble, scorched beams and black shingles. We pulled into a poorly paved parking lot on the other side of which were six trailers for tractor-trailer trucks. All of them were burned and split open. Still wearing our vests and helmets, we got out and looked at the warehouse. It seemed to be fairly intact. Jean-Paul, shaking his head, had his laptop and data gear on the hood of one of the Land Cruisers.

  “This site matches what was sent us,” he said, looking up at the red-brick building. “But I don’t know …”

  Karen and Miriam stood together, looking as well, their arms folded. Beyond the land that belonged to the warehouse was a chainlink fence and a wood. The APC stood to the side of the Land Cruisers, its engine rumbling. The APC commander came out of the hatch, stumbled a bit on the lip of the opening, and came over to Jean-Paul. My hands felt itchy. Sanjay and Peter were talking to each other and I didn’t like the feel of the whole thing. The air felt like the heaviness you get just before a thunderstorm roars through, when the air is thick and moves slowly and there’s a sense of force in the air, an electrical force ready to be unleashed.

  The Ukrainian commander shook his head after talking with Jean-Paul and went back to his APC. Then Charlie came over to Jean-Paul, his M-16 slung across his back. “Sorry to tell you this, Jean-Paul, but you can’t be going in that warehouse,” he said.

  “And why’s that?”

  Charlie gave him a look like he was saying, Are you so dumb that you can’t see it? He went on, “Jean-Paul, that place is an ambush waiting to happen. Old warehouse like that, no power, lots of corridors and rooms and doors. You could place tripwires, motion detectors, even cut holes in the flooring and cover it with tar paper so you’d fall in. Man, it would take a platoon of Marines and three or four more UN teams like yours before I’d even think of going into a place like that.”

  Jean-Paul said stubbornly, “We have intelligence. We have information that there are bodies in that warehouse.”

  “Maybe so, but you’re not going in,” Charlie said.

  “This team is under my command.”

  “And the security and safety of this team are my responsibility,” Charlie went on calmly. “You know that, just as well as I do, and I’m not going to get your people hurt or killed. Call for backup, call for reinforcements, I don’t care, but that place is too big and spooky for me to let you guys go in.”

  By now the others had joined in and Jean-Paul’s face was reddening up, like he was ready to let loose a good one. But there was a clang! as a side hatch of the Ukrainian APC came open and its commander strode back. He had a piece of paper in his right hand and said, “Monsieur, if you please, I have message for you.”

  Jean-Paul was surprised. “A message for me? Through your comm net?”

  “Please, message,” the Ukrainian soldier insisted. “Look at right now, please.”

  I looked over Jean-Paul’s shoulder as he read the message, which was handwritten in block letters and which caused my legs to start trembling:

  MONSIEUR UN—

  OUR THERMAL DEVICE IN TANK SHOWS MANY

  BODIES IN BUILDING.

  BODIES ALIVE, NOT DEAD.

  WE LEAVE NOW.

  Karen put her hand to her face as Jean-Paul folded the piece of paper and said quietly, “We don’t do anything drastic. We just move away, quietly and smoothly. Don’t raise your voices, don’t stare at the warehouse. Just get in the vehicles and get out.”

  We all did just that. I couldn’t help myself, though, and I did spare a look at the warehouse. Its windows seemed to mock us all, this little group of international visitors, ready to go in and do good. The building seemed haunted—possessed, even—and I thought of that message again from the Ukrainian APC commander. Bodies alive, not dead. We leave now. We sure as hell do. I’d been spooked when Charlie had talked about the booby traps that could be in that dark building—tripwires and concealed holes in the flooring—and the thought of men with guns and knives, just waiting for us to clamber inside, full of earnestness and good intentions, with them ready to tear us apart, made me want to stand behind Charlie and ask for his help.

  But Charlie was busy, his eyes flickering back and forth, looking at the entrance, at the many blackened windows. I got inside our Land Cruiser with Peter and Miriam, and then everybody else was in the other Land Cruisers as well, with Charlie bringing up the rear, being the last one in. Peter was muttering something and his face was mottled red and white, and Miriam seemed to hunker down in the front seat as though she was trying to present a smaller target. All three Land Cruisers backed out of the parking lot, their reverse gears making a high-pitched whining that made my teeth ache, and then the APC backed away as well, all its hatches clamped shut, the turret with the grenade launcher and machine gun moving from side to side like a hunting dog looking for a scent.

  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 forever. 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 backup. 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?”