Kara’s Game. Gordon Stevens

‘Three columns going in simultaneously. Make sure we don’t make anything collapse, make sure we’ve got the children in the first beds out before we move to the second.’

      The doctors and nurses fell back and the men and women took their place, Kara among them. ‘Three lines behind the diggers to remove the rubble and pass the children out as we get them,’ Adin ordered. ‘Don’t worry, my son’s at the other end.’

      The doctors and nurses were running, preparing the rooms which now passed as operating theatres, others hurrying from different parts of the hospital as the news spread. Adin took his place at the front of the line which would reach Jovan’s bed and began to dig, carefully and methodically, began to remove the debris and pass it back, began to burrow his way in towards the child on whom the woman had been standing.

      You’re a good man, Adin, Kara thought again. You’re a great man. Please be alive, Jovan, please be okay.

      ‘Reached the first.’ Adin passed the tortured piece of metal that had once been part of a bed to the man behind him, and burrowed a little deeper. ‘She’s okay.’ His face was grimed with sweat and dust. ‘Passing her down now.’

      It’s okay, Jovan, he told his son; I’m here, I’m coming for you. Your mother’s waiting to take you in her arms again and the doctors and nurses are waiting to make you better.

      Three places down the line a man edged forward and looked at his daughter, followed the doctors and nurses as they rushed her away.

      It’s okay, Jovan, Kara willed her son. Your father’s coming for you, your father’s digging his way in to save you.

      ‘Second coming out.’ From the column on the left of the ward. ‘Injured. Get a doctor.’

      It’s okay, Jovan – it was like a drum in Adin’s head. Coming for you, Jovan. Coming to get you.

      Perhaps the shells and mortars were still coming in, perhaps not. Nobody cared, even listened.

      It’s okay, Jovan. Your father’s coming, your father will get to you.

      ‘Third child.’ They all knew by the tone of the voice, all watched as the broken remains were passed back.

      Almost there, Jovan, almost reached you. Adin worked methodically, telling people what to do, telling them to be careful, telling them what pieces of debris to move and what to leave in place. Telling those digging to change but never leaving his place at the front of his line.

      ‘Fourth child, okay.’

      Fifth and sixth.

      Hang on, Jovan, Kara willed her son. You’re all right, you’re bound to be all right. Your father’s coming. Just hang on till he gets to you.

      Seventh.

      Soon be your turn, Jovan, soon Adin will get you out.

      Adin was below the rubble, burrowing deeper, the top layer moving and someone shifting a beam, making sure it didn’t collapse the delicate fretwork below.

      ‘Eighth.’

      Kara heard Adin’s voice.

      Okay now, my son. Your father’s reached you as I told you he would, your father’s saved you because he always would.

      She could no longer hear the breathing of the diggers or the anxious whispers of the men and women around her, no longer heard anything.

      It’s all right now, Jovan. Your father’s hands are picking you up now, your father is saving you now.

      She saw Adin’s head, saw his body, saw the thin little bundle he held in his arms.

      Adin’s face was fixed and grey, eyes staring straight ahead and jaw locked. Slowly he stood and turned, looked at her, looked at the bundle in his arms. His face dissolved and the tears streamed down his face. ‘Sorry,’ he said to the man behind him. ‘Have to stop for a moment.’ He walked past the next digger, crying and shaking, still muttering that he was sorry, still apologizing that he could no longer work. Kara stepped forward and stood beside him, looked at the bundle in his arms and stroked the boy’s face, held Adin’s arm and allowed him to carry their son from the ward. A doctor was suddenly with them, a nurse helping. Carefully they took Jovan from Adin and laid him on one of the beds they had placed in the corridor, began examining him, gently but firmly, searched for a pulse, for a flicker of breath. Tried to breathe life into him, tried to inject life into him. Tried to make his heart beat and his lungs breathe.

      ‘Sorry.’ The doctor stood, did not know what to do, held Adin by his arm and thanked him for what he had done that day. Said he was sorry again.

      ‘There are others,’ Kara told the doctor and the nurse. ‘If you can no longer help Jovan, you can still help them.’ She knelt and lifted Jovan in her arms, stroked his cheek again and kissed him. Wanted to hold him for ever but gave him instead to his father.

      That afternoon they bathed him and laid him in a clean white sheet, placed him with the other children who had died that day, but did not leave him. Sat with him, as the other parents sat with their children, and talked with him for the last time, told him his favourite story and how the summer and the peace would soon come.

      That evening, after the dark of night had taken over from the grey of day, offering at least a degree of protection, they walked with the other parents and the doctors and nurses to the cemetery on the hill. As they approached the men finished digging the holes in the rock-hard soil of the winter. Small little holes, Kara thought, small little children.

      All so fast now, all so sudden.

      Goodbye, my little Jovan – she looked at him again, kissed him again, watched as Adin kissed him then folded the cloth over his face, gave their son back to her for the last time.

      They held him, lowered him into the grave, knelt in silence as the imam said the prayers they did not understand.

      Nothing else could happen now, she knew; nothing more could be visited upon them.

      They trickled the first soil on to the sheet and said goodbye. Then they returned to the hospital, sat in the corridor, and wept.

      

      The grey was coming up and the air was pinched with ice. In the village in the hills to the east of Maglaj, where the surrounding Serb forces withdrew to take their rest and recuperation, the sniper Valeschov left his billet and began the trudge through the snow.

      ‘Not today,’ his commanding officer told him. ‘You’re needed somewhere else.’

      ‘Where?’ Valeschov asked.

      ‘Tesanj.’

      

      London was cold, but at least it had stopped drizzling.

      So the Serbs had declared a ceasefire round the Maglaj – Tesanj pocket and he himself had put one across on the Opposition – Langdon sat in the inner sanctum of his office, an adviser on either side, and watched the recording of the early evening news bulletin: the reports from Vienna, his own performance in Brussels that afternoon, plus the live transmission from the House during the bulletin itself.

      The schedule that day had been even tighter than he had feared. Brussels had overrun, which had delayed his return to London, so that he had been unable to make his appearance in the House at the customary time. Which had meant that he had made his statement shortly after six. Eight minutes after, to be precise. Or bang in the middle of the BBC TV’s early evening news. So they had gone live on it. Prompted, of course, by the right word in the right ear that the Foreign Secretary had something of interest to say.

      So the Serbs had declared a ceasefire, he mused again. Notwithstanding that a ceasefire was already in place, of course. He reached for a sherry. But everything was notwithstanding nowadays.

      He should be able to grab a day and a half off this weekend – the thought was in the back of his mind. Even get down to the family home in the West Country. Hilary and Rob and little Sammi were back from Berlin