Kara’s Game. Gordon Stevens

some of whom would accompany him to Brussels, were waiting in the room outside his own office, the aroma of fresh coffee hanging in the air. He led them through, settled in his favourite chair, accepted a coffee and began the briefing.

      ‘Bosnia.’ Because Bosnia would top the Brussels agenda, especially with the peace negotiations in Vienna seeming to report some progress.

      They went through the overnights, plus the way Langdon should play whatever else the other Foreign Ministers might bring up.

      One: the so-called ceasefire, even though it was in name only, and even though the UN had sought to play down violations in case they interfered with the Vienna talks.

      Two: the state of siege in the Maglaj – Tesanj pocket and the reason for the UN pulling out the air strike at the last minute.

      Three: the reporting of the siege by the press, mainly based on radio messages from the two towns pleading for help.

      Four: the presence of the SAS in the area, the deaths of two SAS men and the wounding of two others. Plus the follow-up on how the FCO should play it vis-à-vis the press.

      Langdon was in his mid-fifties but fit and tall, with dark hair just beginning to show the first streaks of silver. His background was representative of the new guard elbowing its way to the top at Westminster: Eton, Oxford, the City, twenty years in politics, the last fifteen in government, the last ten in the Cabinet, and the last three as Foreign Secretary.

      Balkan Games, he thought. The Serbs, the Croats and the Muslims in one game. The Serbs and the West in another. London, Washington, Moscow and Paris in a third. The United Nations and the governments comprising the Security Council in a fourth, even the games within the UN itself.

      And somewhere in the middle the people whom the UN was supposed to help. But if you allowed yourself to think like that then you lost the game before it was even started.

      He closed the meeting and was driven to Heathrow.

      

      The night had been long and cold, even in the ward, the occasional shell or mortar falling on the town. Kara had sat by the bed and held Jovan’s hands, told him his favourite stories as he drifted in and out of sleep.

      It was seven o’clock in the morning. She was in the corridor, jerking in the half-world between sleep and fear.

      ‘Hello, Kara.’

      She woke and looked up. Was laughing and crying, holding her husband and hugging him. ‘You made it,’ she was asking Adin, telling Adin. ‘You’re alive. You got the note.’

      ‘How’s Jovan?’ Adin held her tight, kissed her again and again. ‘Where is he, can I see him?’

      They stood by Jovan’s bed, stayed an hour till the boy woke and saw his father, then they sat together in the corridor and shared the food, leaning against each other with their backs against the walls. It was going to be all right, she knew: Jovan had pulled through and Adin was alive.

      ‘Tell me what happened,’ Adin’s arm was round her. ‘Tell me how you got here.’

      She told him, though her account at this stage was disjointed and apparently without logic. About how she had heard a scream in the night and thought it was him, how she helped the two injured men and how Finn and the others had come back. How they had carried Jovan to Tesanj and how they had given her their food when they had left.

      The shells and mortars echoed outside.

      The three of them would stay in Tesanj until Jovan recovered, they decided; then they would return to Maglaj but probably lock up the house, find a basement in the new town so they didn’t have to cross the bridge to get to the food. A basement on the far edge of town where they would be marginally safer.

      They left the corridor and went back into the ward, hunched together again by Jovan’s bed and waited till he woke.

      The shells and mortars were still falling.

      Kara watched as Adin knelt by Jovan and talked and laughed with him, saw the moment Adin’s eyes drifted to the children in the other beds and realized how lucky they were as a family, how others had suffered. Jovan’s eyes closed again. They kissed him and began to return to the corridor. In the next bed a younger boy whimpered with pain; Kara stayed with him and held his hand, stroked his face and talked to him until his own mother came, then she went outside and sat with Adin.

      The shells were still falling, sometimes far away, other times closer. Once you became accustomed to them, though, it was strange how you almost ignored them, almost lived with them.

      ‘Tell me again about Jim and Steve and the others,’ he said.

      She had already told him once, now she went through it again in more detail. ‘I love you.’ She slipped her arm round him and kissed him. ‘I wish Finn and the others could have met you.’

      It was mid-morning; the shells and mortars were closer now, she thought, almost subconsciously.

      

      The Brussels meeting broke at twelve-thirty for a buffet lunch in an adjoining room. Langdon chose smoked salmon and mineral water, then spent fifteen minutes talking with the French Foreign Minister.

      ‘Update on Maglaj and Tesanj?’ he asked Nicholls as the meeting reconvened.

      ‘The situation in the Maglaj – Tesanj pocket remains at levels consistent with previous days,’ Nicholls told him wryly.

      Langdon understood the UN-speak, and to show that he understood he laughed.

      

      The stomach pains were gripping her. Perhaps she shouldn’t have eaten so much from the food packs, she thought, even though she had rationed it carefully; perhaps, because she was accustomed to the daily diet of beans and dry bread, she should have rationed it even more stringently. She heard the express train, then the sound as the shell landed. Even closer to the hospital this time, she thought.

      The front line was bad, Adin told her, but the men were good and brave. They would definitely move to the new town, they decided, definitely find somewhere where they didn’t have to cross the bridge to reach the food kitchen. Love you, she thought again, told him again. They went to the ward and sat again with Jovan; returned to the corridor and sat against the wall. He didn’t know how afraid she had been when she and Jovan were alone and Jovan was falling ill, she told him; he didn’t know how much safer she felt now he was with her.

      She heard the noise again and felt the shuddering, the whole world deafening her and the vibrations shaking her, the express trains coming in and the mortars suddenly whining around them.

      ‘Oh God.’ She heard someone screaming.

      ‘Oh no.’ Another voice. ‘They’re shelling the hospital.’

      Another express train came in, then another, the whine of a mortar. Someone beside her was lying on the floor, pressing himself down to protect himself from the bombs and the debris. Kara was ignoring the noise and the explosion, was on her feet and running, Adin at her side. The smoke and dust billowed from the door of the ward and the sounds of children screaming came from inside. Another shell was coming in. She ignored it, ignored everything, and pushed into the room. The ceiling had collapsed, there were holes in the walls, and the beds and the children in them were buried under a layer of concrete and brick and plaster. She pulled at the rubble, tried to reach Jovan, more people suddenly beside her and more people trying to dig their children out. Mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, doctors and nurses.

      ‘Stop.’

      She heard Adin’s voice and froze, almost involuntarily, still in shock.

      They all stopped, all looked at him.

      ‘We have to be organized.’ His voice was calm. ‘We have to do this methodically. That’s the only way of saving the children.’ He took the arms of the woman digging in the rubble next to Kara and helped her step back. The woman had been standing on the leg of a child, Kara realized. ‘Doctors