فصل 10

CHAPTER TEN

Roadblock

Inside Haris’s old Ford there was an air of tension as the Montenegrin drove rapidly through the afternoon streets. At one point they saw a middle-aged couple running along the pavement. As they passed the man fell, though whether he’d been shot was impossible to say.

‘Shouldn’t we…?’ Katy started to ask. But she’d been in Sarajevo a few weeks now, and the question died on her lips. They sped past. As Katy looked back she saw the woman on her knees beside the fallen man. She would never find out who they were or what happened to them.

At a checkpoint outside the city Serb soldiers looked at their documents. They asked Haris some questions which Katy, Carla and Alberto couldn’t understand. Haris’s answers were softer than usual, more urgent.

But they were waved through after a few minutes and they headed in the direction of the hills. As soon as they’d driven round a corner, out of sight of the checkpoint, Carla laughed. ‘Well done, Haris,’ she said, slapping him on the back. ‘I hope that wasn’t too difficult.’

‘Difficult! That was not difficult. Difficult is now,’ he said, looking round at her. ‘I wish I did not agree to this plan for you. I have bad feeling in my stomach.’ He patted himself dramatically, all the time staring at Carla with troubled eyes.

They drove on in silence. To her surprise, and perhaps because of the previous night in the bar, Katy felt sleepy, and before she could do anything about it, her eyes were closed and she was asleep.

‘Haris! Look out!’ Alberto was shouting in panic from the front seat, before screaming something in Italian. Katy was suddenly wide awake. Alberto was reaching over to the steering wheel, trying to pull it towards him.

‘What are you doing?’ Haris shouted. But when he too saw the truck coming towards them he pulled at the steering wheel. Somehow, they just missed having an accident that would probably have killed them all.

‘Mamma mia!’ Alberto said and crossed himself. Katy felt sweat running down beneath her T-shirt.

‘Hey, Haris,’ Carla laughed nervously, ‘please be careful. We don’t want to be killed even before we get there.’

‘I tell you,’ he replied, clearly offended by the criticism of his passengers. ‘It is going to be a bad day.’

They turned off the main road and started the climb upwards. For the next forty-five minutes the journey was uneventful. There was almost no traffic on the roads as they climbed out of the valley of Sarajevo. Once an army vehicle passed them, but it was green, not the white of the peacekeeping force. ‘Serbs,’ Alberto said, pointing at it. But the vehicle didn’t stop or try to stop them.

They passed burnt-out cars and farm buildings and gradually, as they got higher and higher, stopped talking. Katy knew that the others were just as nervous as she was. She thought of the journalists that had been killed and started to wish that she hadn’t agreed to this crazy scheme. But then she reminded herself that she was a journalist too, that this was what she was supposed to be doing and what

Caryl Jones would want her to do. Yes, she was nervous, but she was also excited by the thought of danger and of the story she was going to write.

They came round a corner and Haris put his foot on the brake. He swore. At least that’s what it sounded like.

‘This is it,’ Alberto said quietly.

In front of them the road was blocked by two army trucks and about twenty soldiers carrying rifles, pistols, machine guns and knives. They were standing across the road, waiting.

Haris switched off the engine. They sat there, wondering what was going to happen. Katy felt her heart beating in her chest. She looked at the others and saw the worried looks on their faces. She realised that she was afraid.

Within two minutes the car was surrounded. One of the soldiers, a young man of about seventeen or eighteen, no more than a boy really, opened the driver’s door and pulled Haris out of the car. As he did so he saw the women inside and whistled. He called to his friends. When they saw Katy and Carla they laughed. In no time at all they’d dragged the two reporters and Alberto from the car as well.

‘Stay calm,’ Carla said out of the corner of her mouth. Katy thought of telling her not to be silly, that she’d never felt less calm in her life, but she didn’t. She was too scared to speak.

They stood in a line against the car, two men and two women. Katy looked across at Haris, but he refused to look back. He must have known that the slightest move, the slightest wrong look, might get them killed.

The soldiers stood back, their guns at the ready. Katy felt defenceless and rather foolish. She suddenly remembered Colin’s disapproval and feared that he’d been right.

One of the soldiers pushed his gun into Haris’s stomach and shouted at him in a threatening voice. Haris knelt down. He put his hands up and started to talk, fast, urgently. He looked in the direction of the journalists and talked even faster. He pointed at them, and the soldier hit him across the face.

‘Stop that!’ Katy said in a determined voice, which surprised her. ‘Leave Haris alone. We’re journalists. Press,’ she explained, pointing to the card which hung from her neck. She hadn’t meant to speak.

‘Don’t be silly,’ Carla said quietly. ‘Don’t say anything.’

But Katy had started now, and she walked forward, pulling the press card from around her neck and holding it in front of her. ‘We’re press, journalists. We’ve come to report the Serb side of the war. Press!’ she said again, desperately, as the boy soldier came towards her. Suddenly he pulled a pistol from his belt and held it against her head. She froze. This was it. He was going to shoot her. Now she was really, really frightened. Her legs were shaking. She didn’t dare to turn her head. She tried to catch Carla’s eye, but her Italian friend was looking away. The boy soldier was shouting in her ear, making ugly cruel sounds, words that she couldn’t understand. His voice was getting louder and louder, higher and higher. ‘Any second now,’ she thought, ‘any second now he’s going to pull the trigger.’ She could feel the pistol against her head.

Behind her she could hear Haris’s voice, arguing, desperate. Now Carla was speaking, first in English and then in Italian. Katy heard the words ‘press’ and ‘journalist’ many times in both languages. Out of the corner of her eye she saw two soldiers drag Carla forward.

Time seemed to go very slowly then. She saw Carla slap one of the soldiers round the face and watched in horror as he used his rifle to punch her in the stomach in reply. Katy felt the boy soldier next to her, the one with the pistol, tense in anger. She thought she could feel his finger tighten on the trigger.

She was certain that now, this minute, she was going to die, and she was furious at the stupid senseless waste of her life. She was terrified that they were going to do something terrible to Carla too, and because she couldn’t see behind her, she had no idea what was happening to Haris and Alberto. She closed her eyes.

She heard a machine gun firing and the noise of a vehicle. She waited for the pain, waited for the feeling of death. But nothing happened. Then the boy soldier gasped and moved away from her. The pistol was no longer pressing into the side of her head. She opened her eyes.

An army jeep had pulled up next to the line of soldiers. A man in uniform holding an AK-47 jumped out and walked towards them. All the soldiers had stopped laughing. They weren’t looking at the journalists any more. This man was obviously the officer in command.

He shouted something at the soldiers standing next to Carla and Katy and within seconds the men had lowered their guns and run back to the others. As if in a dream Katy watched their faces. They looked unhappy, guilty, like schoolboys caught doing something wrong, she thought. Then, the moment the officer stopped talking, all the soldiers ran to the two trucks and climbed in. The two vehicles turned round and waited with their engines running, facing up the hill towards the Serb positions. The officer came up to them and touched his cap with his right hand. He had dark weather-beaten skin, bright brown eyes and a thick moustache.

‘I must apologise,’ he said, looking from one to another of the frightened group. ‘This was not the way to treat people like yourselves. You’ - he looked from one to the other until he was looking directly at Carla - ‘must be Mrs Bosisio. We have been expecting you. My General says hello and wishes to welcome you. My men…’ he pointed back to the two trucks, ‘they are very young, very inexperienced.’

‘Yes,’ Carla exploded, ‘and dangerous!’

‘I am terribly sorry. It will not happen again,’ said the officer in perfect English. ‘The men will be punished. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Captain Borisav Popovic. I have come to meet you and take you up to our positions.’ Katy looked at Carla and Alberto, and then at Haris, who was wiping the blood from his mouth where the soldier had hit him. She wondered if she looked as frightened as they did. ‘Do we go on?’ she asked. Alberto looked questioningly at Carla.

‘Yes. I say we go with Capain Popovic here,’ Carla said to them all. She was obviously still in pain from the blow to her stomach. ‘We came to see the Serb positions. It would be silly to turn back now just because of a minor incident.’

‘Minor incident!’ Katy replied. ‘That was a minor incident?’

‘I think the lady is quite right,’ Captain Popovic said, indicating Carla. ‘There is no point in turning back because some of my men were a bit - how shall we say - confused. Let me accompany you up to see General Dragomir Milosevic.’

‘You’ll come with us and guarantee our safety?’ Carla asked.

‘Of course. You have my word as a Serb officer and a true lover of my country,’ he replied.

‘Then we go on,’ Carla said in a firm voice, without consulting the others. ‘Come on, let’s get back into the car.’

A few minutes later they followed Captain Popovic’s jeep as it moved up the road. Behind them the two army trucks full of soldiers pulled out and followed the journalists’ car.

‘God, that was scary,’ Katy said, looking back at the trucks behind them. She was shaking uncontrollably.

‘No. It was not scary,’ Haris called from the front. ‘Painful yes, scary no.’

‘Nonsense!’ Carla laughed. ‘It was scary all right. And it hurt!’ she said, rubbing her stomach where the soldier had hit her.

‘Yes, it hurt bad,’ Haris said, ‘and I think for a moment it is “Goodbye, Katy.’”

‘Me too,’ Katy joined in. ‘I’m still shaking.’

‘Yes. But what do we do now?’ Alberto turned back to them.

‘Do?’ Katy asked in surprise. ‘Do? We follow this Popovic fellow up to see General Milosevic. For our interviews, newspaper and TV. That’s what we’ve come for. We won’t get this opportunity again.’

If anybody did want to turn back they said nothing. In front of them was Popovic in his jeep. Behind them were two trucks of inexperienced Serb soldiers. Katy opened her window to let the air flow through the car. ‘I’m a survivor!’ she told herself. ‘I survived, even though for a minute we were in terrible danger.’ She suddenly felt strong and confident. Nothing could go wrong now.