During long days, Rado was the men's only sight of movement in the fields to the front of them, their only source of interest. They bet on his survival as had the unit before them and the unit before that. The soldiers were little more than boys, from villages where their parents had farms and, far from home, they took comfort from the sight of Rado each day because he represented something familiar. His story was handed down on the day each unit was relieved…
On New Year's Day, nineteen months before, the fundamentalists had abandoned the village across the river and the livestock had been turned out to fend for themselves. Rado, then unnamed, was a recently castrated bull calf of Limousin stock. The dairy cows had died in trumpeting agony because they were not milked. The sheep had been scattered by a wolf pack.
Some had been hunted down and some had fled to the high woods behind the village. The chickens and geese had been the prey of foxes. The heifers, dominated by the one bull calf among them, had come down to the ford in the spring fifteen months before, when the river's pace slackened and its depth dropped. They would have scented the good new grass ahead of them and had crossed; each, in spo-radic and haphazard turn, had stepped on, disturbed or shifted a mine. Last summer all but three had been killed. They went back, these survivors, each evening to the byre over the river where a dog waited for them. The autumn had come, the river had risen, and the three heifers and the bull calf had been blocked from coming over. Then it was spring again, and they were back. They had returned for their daily feeding in the grass meadow in the first week in April. By the third week of April, after two dulled smoke-rising explosions, there had been only one heifer to walk beside the bull calf; lost, sad, mooning lovers. On the last day of April the ground had erupted in a mess of noise and upthrown turf sods, and the bull calf had been alone.
The story handed down to each successive unit occupying the bunkers flanking Ljut village was that the bull calf had stayed with the maimed heifer all that day, that it had steadily licked the heifer's head, hour after hour, had quietened her screams of agony, had stayed with her until death and release. Then, as the evening had come on, he had gone back to the ford and crossed to sleep alone.
Through May, June and July, into August, the daily return of Rado was watched by the troops, and he was given his name.
It was the familiar abbreviation of Radovan, the given name of their leader, Karadzic, to confer respect and admiration.
The sector was at peace, there was no fighting in the valley. On the orders of their sergeant, the soldiers manned the two bunkers every morning for the hour before and after dawn, and every evening from the hour before and after dusk. Then they had no duties other than cleaning the bunkers, their sleeping quarters and their weapons. Rado was the attraction.
The betting started at the time he was named.
In the grazing fields, among the weeds of the unploughed arable fields and between the fallen posts and sagging wires of the vineyard, lay the skeletal outlines of the heifers. Rado seemed not to notice the upturned weather-whitened ribcages. Occasionally, not more than once a day, he would raise his massive neck, throw his huge head high and bellow for company. He was doomed, all the soldiers knew it, and they bet on which hour, which day, which week, his great hoofs would wrench the trip-wire of a PROM mine, or brush the post holding a PMR3 mine, or drop his weight onto the squat antenna points of a PMA2 mine. He seemed immune, invulnerable, so they watched him, fascinated, from the high ground, and the bets were laid.
The sergeant was their bank and issued the betting slips. A thoughtful man, he had realized that unpayable debts between his soldiers would increase tension among them. He had ordered that all bets should be of not a pfennig more than a single German mark, the only currency they valued, and that no soldier could wager more than twice a day. He set the odds, collected the money, and left enough in a plastic sack to pay out a winner, using the profit margin to buy little luxuries in the market in the town – cigarettes, vegetables, cooking utensils, blankets.
Long, hot, fly-blown days followed one another.
While the soldiers slept, ate, smoked, read magazines or wrote to their homes, one man was always deputed as sentry, but his real job was to watch Rado.
There was a full-canopied ash tree between the grazing fields and the arable fields. It was ten minutes to two o'clock. The sentry in the bunker saw Rado rise from the tree's shade, first by extending his rear legs, then kneeling on his front legs before straightening them. His tail flicked his back to clear the flies.
He looked around him and sniffed. Perhaps he needed water from the river or to eat. Rado went slowly. The long grass was pushed aside by his lowered muscled belly, and flattened by his hoofs.
Each step he took, pressing with such weight on the ground, seemed deliberate and purposeful. The sentry watched, and the sound of the flies droned in his ears. Through the shimmer of the heat, Rado's progress, proud, strong and tall, was the only movement in the valley.
There was a flash of firelight… then a puff of grey chemical smoke… then the rush of the explosion…
The fire was gone, the grass and earth fell b a c k… the smoke started to d r i f t… then quiet and stillness.
The great beast keeled over. For a moment its four legs were upright, visible above the tall grass, then they were thrashing. The cry of the castrated bull rang out across the valley. The sentry was leaning against the hot metal of his machine-gun, his hands covering his eyes so that he could not see, but he could not shut out Rado's call for help. The tears flooded his face.
The others had heard the explosion, had broken from their meal or their siesta. The bunker filled with soldiers. He was pulled aside. From the earth floor of the bunker he saw the sergeant lock the butt of the machine-gun against his shoulder. In the sentry's mind was the desperate kicking of Rado's legs. A single shot for aiming, then the burst of fire and the bunker was filled with cordite stench and with the rattle of the ejected bullet cases. The weapon was made safe. The sentry dared to stand and look through the firing port.
There was nothing to see, no movement in the grass near the river.
He did not know it, none of them could have, but the bullets that ended the pain of the animal would be the last fired in the war over the fields of the valley.
'Hello, didn't expect to see you in here… I went for a walk. My room's too h o t… will you have a drink?'
Atkins had come in from the street, had gone to the atrium bar, bought a beer, and had seen him. It was still short of eleven o'clock and Mister was in his room. The bar of the eight-storey hotel was deserted except for them and a bored waiter. The Eagle sat, disconsolate as a reformed alcoholic, with a half-consumed orange juice in front of him. He was lonely, sad, and had been thinking of home, wrapped in the thoughts of the Chiddingfold house and the stables, of Mo and the girls.
'Fine as I am, thank you.'
'May I join you?'
'Be my guest.'
He knew little of Atkins, except that Mister valued him. It was the way of Mister that life and business should be boxed, kept apart. A policeman, over lunch, had once told him that the Irish terrorists used a cell system to cut off an information leak if one cell should be arrested. It was the same principle. He knew as little of Atkins as he did of the Mixer or the Eels or the Cards. The only one he knew, because he drew up the legal contracts for the deals, was the Cruncher who was dead. Atkins ripped off an anorak and a fleece then dumped them beside the chair. Low music played through loudspeakers.