فصل 12

CHAPTER TWELVE

Katy’s dream

She was in a boat on a lake. The sun was shining and there were small white clouds in the sky. She was sitting next to her mother at the back of the boat, trailing her hand in the cool water. Her father was rowing them across the lake with a smile on his face, his hat pushed back on his head. Katy was so happy to have him back again after all these years. She looked up into her mother’s face to see if she was happy too, but the woman next to her wasn’t her mother. It was Carla, laughing at her. She splashed some lake water in Katy’s face. Katy laughed back at her. ‘See,’ Carla said. ‘Look around you! We’re on a lake with sides, many sides. We have to tell all sides of our story.’ Katy looked around her. On one bank there was a city, on another the mountains, on another a beautiful park with music and sunshine.

‘No. There’s only one side,’ Katy’s father said, pushing his hat further back. ‘Only one side.’ She looked out of the boat and now, suddenly, it was true. The lake had become a sea and they were far from the shore. She was frightened. The water was grey and the clouds weren’t clouds any more. They were the bursts of gunfire in the air. It started to rain. ‘Father!’ she called. ‘Father, help! Get us back to the shore.’

Her father was rowing them across the sea. Except that it wasn’t her father now, it was Dragomir Milosevic, the general, and his laughter was cold and ugly. ‘All right,’ he said, resting on his oars as the boat rose and fell in the stormy sea. ‘I will help you, but you have to help me first.’

‘Of course,’ she said. She was really afraid now. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Help me kill them,’ he said, pointing to the shore. It was closer now and she could see people waving at her - Haris, Colin, Carlas friends Vlada and Imrana, Natasa and her children. They were all shouting at her in friendship. Then she heard a beautiful sound - music, the high notes of a saxophone coming across the water - and she saw Zeljko, the tall dark-haired Zeljko. He was playing just for her. And her father, who wasn’t really her father, but the general, said, ‘It is six o’clock. It is time to kill nobody.’ She looked over to her friends on the shore, but they had turned their backs. And the little boat was sinking and she was screaming, ‘No, no, don’t leave me, please don’t leave me!’ though whether she was shouting to the people on the shore or the person who wasn’t her father it was impossible to tell. The saxophone played on. And then she heard the sound of distant gunfire, only this time it was real and she woke up.

Katy had overslept and it was midday when she went downstairs. She was walking across the hotel lobby trying to get her dream out of her head, when she heard her name.

‘Katy! Katy Sullivan!’ It was Jack Hickton, the American mercenary. He was dressed in jeans and a dark T-shirt and was carrying a large rucksack. ‘You coming with me?’ he asked.

‘No, I… I don’t think…’ she started, remembering the decision she had made the night before.

‘Hey come on! Remember, I said I’d show you stuff. Think of the great story you’ll get out of it! Pulitzer prize at least!’

‘What do you do in the city?’ she shouted above the noise of the jeep’s engine as they roared through the streets.

‘Anything they ask me,’ he shouted back. ‘I mostly see if I can find any Bosnian soldiers.’

‘What happens when you do?’ she asked. She wanted to know how he would reply.

‘Well then,’ he laughed at her, ‘well then, I guess I have to try and kill them before they kill me.’

‘And have you?’ she asked.

‘Have I what?’

‘Killed any of them?’ she asked.

‘A few.’ Then seeing her face he said, ‘Hey lady, that’s what I do. That’s war. You sure you want to come with me?’

She nearly said no. But she was a reporter. This was real. She would be able to write about it: ‘My day with the mercenary’. She could mix it in with the piece about the guns on the hills.

And so, even though at the back of her mind she knew - just as she had last night - that she was getting in deeper than she wanted, she let her desire for a good story and a bit of excitement get the better of her anxiety.

Jack Hickton drove her round the city. He drove as fast and as crazily as Haris, only, she thought, better. In mid-afternoon he stopped the jeep. He got some sandwiches from his pack and offered her one. She ate it gratefully. He gave her a can of beer. It was hot. She drank it. He offered her some pills. ‘Uppers,’ he told her. ‘They help me concentrate. Keep me on my toes.’ But Katy had never been into drugs, so she said no. ‘Suit yourself,’ the soldier said, before swallowing three of the pills with his beer.

Later they left the jeep by the side of the road. ‘We have to go on foot from here,’ he told her. They started towards some buildings on the side of a hill. Before the war the area had been full of luxury homes and the occasional hotel. Now it was the same empty mess as the rest of the city.

They came to a tall building. ‘This used to be quite a good hotel,’ he said. ‘Not much of a place now, is it?’ They walked through the entrance. It was deserted. There was no glass in the windows, but there was glass on the floor mixed with papers and empty suitcases. There was no electricity, and so, in the heat of the late afternoon, they climbed the stairs. Ahead of Katy, the American almost ran and she followed him with difficulty, her breath coming in great gasps.

Finally he stopped. ‘I reckon this is far enough,’ he said. ‘The fifteenth floor.’ He was sweating and his large blue eyes were hard. His smile wasn’t friendly any more. It was cruel, like a crazy animal. She should have gone then. But still she didn’t. There was something so real about her day, and Jack Hickton would make such a terrific story. She was sure of it.

They went into a bedroom and he put down his rucksack. He looked out of the window, down onto the street, down onto a dirt track. He pointed to two little girls running, carrying a plastic can full of water.

Jack Hickton, professional soldier, animal-crazy with the drugs he’d taken - or maybe just mad-crazy anyway and she hadn’t noticed because she was after a good story - asked her which of the two little girls he should kill. And because it was a decision no human being should be asked to make, she refused to say, so he shot them both. He seemed to enjoy it. But for Katy it was the end of everything she’d ever believed in and she felt sick and angry and hopeless. But then, just as in her dream, she heard the high sad sound of a solo saxophone in the distance, calling out over the suffering city.