Warlight(55)

“Viola,” he repeats, as if bemused when she first brings up the name. And because Viola is a fictitious name he helps compose a fictional portrait for the interrogators.

“Viola is modest,” he says.

“Where is she from?”

“From farming country, I believe.”

“Where?”

“Not sure.” He needs to recapture ground, having perhaps given away too much. “South London?”

“But you said ‘farming country.’ Essex? Wessex?”

“Oh, you know Hardy….Who else do you read?” he asks.

“We know her signature style on the airwaves. But the one time we intercepted her voice we thought she had a coastal accent we cannot quite place.”

“South London, I believe,” he reiterates.

“No, we know it is not that. We have specialists. When did you take on that accent you have?”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“Have you always had that way of speaking? A self-made man? Is the difference between you and Viola then to do with class? Because she does not sound like you, does she?”

“Look, I hardly know the woman at all.”

“Beautiful?”

He laughs. “I suppose so. A few moles on her neck.”

“How much younger than you, do you think?”

“I don’t know her age.”

“Do you know Denmark Hill? An Oliver Strachey? Long-Flew Knife?”

He is quiet. Surprised.

“Do you know how many of our people were killed by the Communist Partisans—your new allies—in the foibe massacres near Trieste? How many hundreds died there—buried in the sinkholes…do you think?”

He says nothing.

“Or in my uncle’s village?”

It is hot and he is glad when they turn all the lights off for a while. The woman continues speaking in the dark.

“So you don’t know what happened there, in that village? My uncle’s village. Population four hundred. Now ninety. Nearly all of them killed in one night. A child witnessed it, she was awake, and when she spoke of it a day later the Partisans took her out and killed her too.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“The woman who calls herself Viola was the radio link between your people and the Partisans. She told them where to go that night. And other locations—Rajina Suma and Gakova. She provided them with information, the mileage from the sea, the blocked exits, how to enter.”

“Whoever she is,” he says, “she would have just been passing on instructions. She would not have known what was going to happen. She may not even know what happened.”

“Perhaps, but hers is the only name we have. Not a general or an officer, just her code name, Viola. No other name.”

“What happened in those villages?” Felon asks in the dark, though he knows the answer.

The large arc light is turned on.

“You know what we call it now? ‘Bloody autumn.’ When you threw your support behind the Partisans to crush the Germans, we were all—Croats, Serbs, Hungarians, Italians—categorized by you as Fascists, and German sympathizers. Ordinary people were now criminals of war. Some of us had been your allies, now we were the enemy. A shift of wind in London, some political whisper, so everything changed. Our villages were turned into ground. There’s no evidence of them now. People were lined up in front of common graves, bound with wire so they couldn’t run. Old feuds now an excuse for murder. Other villages also erased. In Sivac. In Adorjan. The Partisans always circling closer to Trieste, until they could drive us into the city, where there would be more annihilation. Italians, Slovenes, Yugoslavs. All of them. All of us.”

Felon asks, “What was the name of that first village? Your uncle’s village?”

“It no longer has a name.”



Rose and the soldier were moving fast over the rough terrain, wet from the constant river crossings, hurrying to reach the location before it got dark, uncertain where exactly it was. Just a few more valleys, she thought, and she told the soldier that. Everything was in flux. They could not carry a shortwave radio, only the hastily made identity papers they had been given. The man beside her had a gun. They were searching for a hill, a hut at its base, and they eventually saw the structure an hour later.

Their arrival surprised the ones who were there. When Rose and the soldier entered the hut, shivering, their clothes wet, she saw Felon, looking immaculate, fully dry. He was wordless for a moment, then annoyed. “What are you doing…?”

She waved the question away as if to postpone it. She saw another man and a woman, and they stepped towards her, she knew them. There was a kit bag at Felon’s feet and he gestured with almost comic aloofness, as if providing clothing was his only role in being there. “Use whatever you want, I suppose,” he said. “Get dry.” And he walked out. They divided the clothes between the two of them. A heavy shirt was taken by the soldier. She took a pair of pyjamas and what she knew was Felon’s Harris Tweed jacket. She had often seen him wear it in London.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked again when she came outside.

“They’ve taken control of the airwaves, so there’s radio silence. You could not be reached. So I came myself. They’ve been tracking our communiqués. They know where you are. I’ve been sent to tell you you have to get out.”