The Dealer and the Dead by Gerald Seymour Page B

treachery.’
    Andrija made no contribution. He had taken no part on that long-ago evening of decision-taking. He had not been there to speak for or against the purchase of wire-guided anti-tank missiles. He had been in a culvert drain that ran under a track that went into the corn. There had been a bare, open strip, perhaps because the seed had been diseased when that batch was planted, to which he could slide on his stomach from the culvert to gain a clear view of the enemy lines some two hundred metres away. He had dropped an officer, a medical orderly and a stretcher-bearer. Such was the fear he caused in the enemy that the bodies were left to the elements … On his way back into the village he had used a sharp flint to scratch three more lines on the wooden butt of the rifle.
    His wife had organised the collection of valuables that the teacher had demanded. Andrija’s opinion had not been required then either. In the darkness, men and women had come to hisback door. He had seen the little items of jewellery and heard the clatter of rings as they were pulled from fingers and dropped on to the table. There had been envelopes that contained house deeds. His wife, Maria, had not thanked those who gave what they had – all that was precious to them – just tipped it into a shopping bag, which the teacher had taken, the next day, along the Cornfield Road.
    Would the delivery of forty or fifty 9K11 Malyutka – the Little Baby – have made any difference to the outcome of the battle? Would the anti-tank weapons have held up the enemy’s advance on the village indefinitely? Would they have kept the
Kukuruzni Put
open for another two weeks, or a month? Andrija’s eyes roved the room. He noted who spoke and who did not: Petar and Tomislav had said nothing, and they had lost sons; neither had Josip.
    ‘We will find Harvey Gillot. When we search for him, he cannot hide,’ Maria said.
    It was a small-wattage bulb, and shadows riddled his kitchen. Andrija knew what would be decided.
    ‘He should know of our agony and be punished for it.’ The Widow sniffed. She was the judge who passed sentence on a man, condemned him.
    ‘He will be found, will suffer, and be killed – and he will know why.’ Maria was panting a little, as she once had when she touched him and he her.
    The chorus chimed agreement, thirty men and five women. All except Josip had fought for the village; all had suffered loss, as Andrija had. He could not picture the man, Harvey Gillot, could not have guessed at his features.
    Mladen returned them to reality: ‘How? We are here. Where do we go? I think he is British, but I have never been to Britain. We have to consider if—’
    Andrija’s wife, Maria, slapped her hand on the table. ‘We will pay for a man.’
    The Widow ran her tongue over dried, cracked lips, withered by the summer sun. ‘We will buy a man.’
    Andrija watched their leader’s face, saw hesitation. It was, of course, inevitable that this course would be chosen and that none would speak against it. Since the start of the siege, the women had been most ferocious in their hatred of the enemy, the first to denounce traitors and accuse others of betrayal. They were merciless. Not one wounded man from the enemy’s ranks had survived a night abandoned by his colleagues in no man’s land in front of the village’s guns. The women had gone out with knives and ended the whimpering of conscript casualties. Who would deny them? At that moment, he almost sympathised with the leader’s dilemma: who do you pay? Where do you buy?
    Josip spoke. ‘I know who you should pay.’
    Harvey Gillot came home late. It was a tedious journey from Heathrow but the location suited him. The Isle of Portland, on the coast of Dorset, ticked his boxes. As usual, he had done the return leg in a devious and roundabout way: Tbilisi to Frankfurt, a change of aircraft and carrier to LHR, the shuttle bus to Reading, then the train to Weymouth and the long-stay car park