Kara’s Game. Gordon Stevens

speak English, Finn almost said; so how did someone like you end up in a place like Maglaj?

      My husband’s job, she would have told him.

      ‘Family?’ he asked instead.

      ‘Adin, my husband, is on the front line.’ She couldn’t remember whether or not she had told him. ‘The rest of his and my families are missing. Perhaps they’re dead, perhaps they’re refugees.’ The statement was a mix of accusation, anger and resignation. ‘The only one I know is still alive is my mother’s mother, my grandmother, who lives in Travnik.’

      ‘Travnik is a mixed town.’

      ‘Yes.’ She turned her head slightly, so she was looking at him. ‘She’s a Croat.’ Crazy world, she thought again, crazy war, crazy people. But only because someone else made us so.

      She pulled herself up and went into the ward, knelt by Jovan’s bed and stroked his face. ‘Told you everything would be all right,’ she whispered to him as he opened his eyes and tried to smile at her. ‘Told you we’d be okay.’

      Finn knelt beside her.

      ‘When will the war end?’ she asked him. ‘You’re a soldier, you should know. How are we going to win and how long will it take us?’

      He stared at her, stared at her son, stared at the shattered limbs and bodies of the other children. At the bed of the girl five metres away a woman doctor pulled the sheet over the still white face and turned away so that the parents would not see her cry.

      ‘You’ll never win,’ he told Kara. ‘Even if the war ends, which it has to sometime and in some way, you and your people are going to lose.’

      ‘What about the West and the United Nations?’ she asked. ‘They know we are in the right, they have already said so, so when will they help us, when will they intervene on our behalf?’

      ‘The West will never intervene on your behalf.’

      ‘But what about the Gulf? You intervened there. Waged war to save democracy in Kuwait.’

      ‘Kuwait and the Gulf War wasn’t about democracy. It was about protecting the West’s oil.’

      She looked at Jovan again, smiled at him again, watched as he slipped into sleep.

      ‘But what about people like me, what about fighters like Adin?’

      Even though he’s not really a fighter, even though all he does is lie in the mud and ice on the front line and wait to die and pray he’s not going to.

      Two beds away an orderly wrapped the body of the girl in a sheet and carried her gently away.

      ‘People like you and Adin will never win,’ Finn told Kara.

      ‘Why not?’

      He shrugged.

      ‘What about people like you?’ she asked.

      ‘People like me win because we have power, because of who we are and what we do. So people are afraid of us. Therefore we can win.’

      ‘What about if you don’t win?’

      ‘There’s a saying,’ he told her. Perhaps it was a poem, perhaps just a quotation – he couldn’t remember. Why complicate things, he asked himself; why allow himself to be drawn into this maze? ‘It isn’t the critic who counts; it isn’t the one who points out how the strong man stumbled or how the doer of deeds might have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena. Who, if he wins, knows the triumph of achievement. And who, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.’

      So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat, he might have added.

      So how do you win? she asked. What decides who wins?

      His regiment had a motto, he told her.

      What’s that, she asked him.

      Who Dares Wins.

      They left the ward and sat against the wall. The gloom in the corridor was deeper, colder.

      ‘So how can I win? The next time they bomb Maglaj or Tesanj or somewhere like it, and the West and the United Nations does nothing to stop it, what must I do and what must I have to make the West stop it?’

      What can my people do, she meant, what must my people have?

      ‘Power,’ Finn told her again. ‘The next time you must have something the West wants, or something which makes them afraid of you.’

      Outside it was dark and the buildings were like ghosts. He opened a food pack and made them each a tea, broke open a pack and gave her the fruit biscuits inside. In the room to the left someone was sobbing.

      ‘Why did you come back last night?’ She wrapped her fingers round the mug and tried to massage some warmth back into them.

      ‘Because I said I would.’

      ‘That doesn’t answer the question,’ she told him. ‘You were supposed to leave last night, so why didn’t you? Why did you come to the house? Why did you save little Jovan?’

      They went again into the ward, stood again by Jovan’s bed and watched him sleeping, went back again to the corridor and joined the others.

      ‘So now we’re even,’ Kara suggested. Because I saved yours and you saved mine.

      In the shadows to the right Steve watched without speaking.

      Yet you think you still owe – Kara looked at Finn. Because I saved two of yours and you only saved one of mine. But the one of mine was my only son, therefore I owe you more than you can ever imagine.

      ‘We came back because you’d done something for us,’ Finn told her. ‘You helped us even though you didn’t have to.’

      Therefore we still owe.

      ‘You’re leaving?’ she asked.

      ‘Yes.’ Because the United Nations have refused to sanction further air strikes. Because everyone else thinks we stayed behind to provide ground cover in case the opposition attacked as the chopper took Janner and Max out. Because we should have been out of here twelve hours ago. Because nobody else knows we’re still here.

      Perhaps the guilt was settling again, perhaps it hadn’t lifted.

      They went to the ward and stood by Jovan – Kara and the four men. Smiled at him and told him he was a good boy even though he was barely awake and would not have understood them anyway. Then they walked to the corridor and picked up their bergens.

      ‘Thanks, Jim.’ She shook each of their hands. ‘Thanks, Ken.’ Kissed each of them on the cheek as a sister would kiss them. ‘Thanks, Steve.’ Suddenly and spontaneously. ‘On behalf of little Jovan.’

      ‘Thanks, Kara,’ they told her. ‘On behalf of Janner and Max.’

      She smiled, wiped away the tears.

      ‘Thanks, Finn.’

      ‘Thanks, Kara.’

      ‘Ciao, Finn. See you again sometime.’

      ‘Sure, Kara. See you again.’

       4

      London was bleak. No snow or ice, just the incessant drizzle which marked the capital at this time of year.

      Langdon’s schedule was even tighter than most days. Breakfast at six – full English, the way he liked to start each morning; briefings at the FCO, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, then the flight to Brussels for the 10.00 AM meeting of European Foreign Secretaries. And after that the rush home for a full day squeezed into late afternoon and evening.

      When