Checkpoint Read online

  Once dinner was ready, there was a moment of peace that made her forget the tension. The five members of the convoy sat on the ground around the fire. Vauthier always stayed slightly off to one side. Lionel passed a joint. Maud and Alex took a few puffs. Marc never touched it. Vauthier drank. Already during their first stopovers he had finished off the bottles of wine they had packed. Since reaching the Balkans he’d started on beer. It was the easiest thing to find. Every village had a supply.

  “Tomorrow morning,” announced Lionel, stretched out by the fire and leaning on his elbows, “we’ll come to the first checkpoint.”

  “Croats?”

  Vauthier had asked the question with an innocent expression on his face. But he was fiddling with the little gold ring in his right ear, and Maud had noticed this meant he was concentrating.

  “No,” answered Lionel, “Krajina Serbs.”

  “Army?”

  “Paramilitaries, more like.”

  “Logically, there should be Croats first,” insisted Vauthier. “If we come on Serbs, it means we’re not on the main road, the one through Tuzla, right?”

  Lionel didn’t really like going into details about the route. He kept the road maps to himself, in his truck, and issued instructions one day at a time, as if he wanted to avoid any discussion about the matter.

  “That’s right,” he conceded grudgingly. “We’ll head off to the right, through the south of the Krajina.”

  “What do you mean by the Krajina, actually?” asked Maud.

  Lionel felt more comfortable with general questions. This was an opportunity for him to show off his knowledge and act the leader.

  “It means edge, border. It’s the strip of territory that runs along the border to the west of Bosnia. It’s sparsely inhabited. The Serbs have thrown the Croats out of the region and they’re in control. But you’ll see, they’re peasants, with pitchforks and old guns. Nothing like what we’ll see farther on.”

  Lionel had been active in the NGO for three years. He had been on a mission to the Central African Republic, and on a first convoy to Bosnia six months earlier. In between he had worked at the association’s headquarters in Lyon. His experience gave him a certain self-assurance when he spoke, even though he was only twenty-four years old.

  “Their checkpoints are fairly laid-back. It will be good practice for later.”

  Vauthier took a long swig of beer from the bottle and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. Visibly he had other questions he wanted to ask. But Lionel did not leave him any time to interrupt.

  “Let me remind you how we have to behave, in case we get checked along the way,” he said.

  He’d almost finished his joint. Before continuing his presentation, he took a long drag on the damp butt, which was turning his fingers yellow.

  “All you have to say, if they ask, is that we are going to Kakanj, in central Bosnia. We have a permit from UNPROFOR to deliver aid to refugees. Our cargo? Food supplies, winter clothes, and medication. And even if they ask for one: no bribes. Is that clear?”

  He was trying to sound like a leader. But the two former soldiers could tell the difference. They’d had experience of true orders. Lionel’s curt tone did little to hide a certain lack of confidence.

  “And what if they want to search the trucks?” asked Maud.

  “We refuse!” said Alex.

  Lionel shrugged, and Alex noticed. This only increased his impatience.

  “What? You don’t agree?”

  “Of course not. If they want to search, they will search. How could we stop them?” said Lionel, looking at the sky.

  A crescent moon had risen, and wispy clouds drifted over it, driven by high-altitude winds.

  “I know these guys,” snapped Alex. “They’re loudmouths. But if we stand firm, I tell you, they won’t touch the trucks.”

  He and Marc had served for six months as peacekeepers in Bosnia the previous year. Marc was always gloomy and taciturn. Alex, on the other hand, clearly liked to talk about his experience. Maud found him pleasant, as well as attractive. He was sociable, and you could tell he liked to talk. But as soon as he opened his mouth Lionel would look up at him from under his brows, scowling.

  Lionel couldn’t stand it when Alex went on about his supposed experience in the field. To calm down he would take his plastic tobacco pouch from his pocket and roll another fat joint.

  “They won’t search us, I tell you,” said Lionel. “There is no reason for them to provoke an incident with aid workers. We’re too useful to them. To everyone. And if, by chance, we do happen to run into people who don’t play by the rules, well, then we’ll just let them get on with it, without resisting. Without provoking them, above all. No flexing any muscles. No trying to act clever. We don’t do anything that might make them suspect us of anything.”

  He rubbed his eyes, puffy from the smoke, with the weary air of a man overwhelmed by his responsibilities.

  “After all,” he concluded, “we have nothing to hide.”

  When he heard this, Alex glanced over at Marc then sat up straighter.

  “Maybe we should inform you—”

  It all happened in a flash. Maud noticed the little incident that followed, and she got the impression that Vauthier noticed, too. It was as if Marc was watching his teammate. When he heard what Alex was beginning to say, he gave a start and leapt to his feet. Maud understood that this was to interrupt him. And Alex did fall silent. At some point, of this she was sure, Marc had kicked him lightly in the back.

  “Come on, let’s get to bed,” said Marc.

  He went off, taking Alex with him.

  Lionel was relieved to see the conversation was over and that the two tough guys had beaten a retreat.

  “Goodnight!” he called. “Wake-up call at six.”

  Vauthier, chewing on some gum, glanced over at the two soldiers with an expression of hatred. He never said a word to them, and he seemed to be nurturing a particularly spiteful grudge against them. He got up in turn and stamped out the fire with his black cowboy boots, the leather old and crazed.

  Alex and Marc had vanished into the tent they shared. Lionel went on sitting there for a moment to finish his butt. Then he joined Vauthier in the other tent. As for Maud, she slept in the bunk in the truck.

  She climbed into the cab and closed the door. Before getting undressed, she spent a few minutes gazing through the windshield at the landscape. A pale moonlight cast a bluish glow onto the moor. She thought of the nights she used to spend at her parents’ chalet in Haute Savoie, when the ground was covered with snow and she would get out of bed, wrapped in her blanket, to daydream on the wooden balcony. It was not nostalgia she felt, but rather an impression that her dreams from that time had taken shape. In all the futures they contained, there was this one, that was called her life. She had not imagined it like this; the toxic atmosphere of the mission was disappointing.

  But in spite of everything, she was happy.

  2

  October mornings were always hard, and now that they had gained in altitude, the damp air was mixed with cold. Those who had slept in tents were frozen, but at least the icy air was not such a shock when they first stuck their noses out. Whereas Maud, when she left the dry, overheated cab, started to shiver all over. She had put on the same clothes as the day before, and which she had hardly changed since their departure: jeans of a moldy green color, a thick wool plaid shirt, a beige fleece jacket, and hiking boots. It was not only for the needs of the mission that she dressed like that. She hated arousing looks of desire in strange men. Several years ago she had decided to cut her blond hair very short and to wear only coarse, shapeless clothes that did nothing for her. Her only exception to this rule was when she went to see her grandmother, who wanted her to look her prettiest, and Maud liked to make her happy. Sometimes, too, she would put on some makeup when she was at home alone, and s
he would dine with her cat in her maid’s room in Vincennes.

  That morning as she got dressed in her truck she was a long way from such fantasies. Yet, despite the cold and damp, half asleep as she was, she wished she could wear a light blouse with a short skirt and sandals.

  Vauthier, the fire man, had lit the gas stove. It did not burn properly and the saucepan full of water was blackened by the yellow flames licking at its sides. Alex was slicing the thick bread they had bought in a village the previous day. Lionel was sitting on a rock and rolling his first cigarette, his hands shaking.

  Only Marc, as was his habit, was shaving, bare-chested above a plastic basin. He had short, coarse black hair, and in the morning his face had the thick shadow of a beard. He had unrolled a khaki toilet kit equipped with a small mirror, which he had hung from a branch. Maud avoided looking at him. She didn’t like the tattoos on his arms, images of snakes and weapons.

  From time to time Vauthier shot Marc a nasty look. Vauthier never washed, so it was as if he saw the public ablutions of a muscular body as a provocation.

  All around, the grass was covered in frost. The night before, they had noticed a low stone house with a thatched roof a hundred yards further along. It looked like a sheepfold that was more or less abandoned. Now they saw it was inhabited when several poorly dressed children emerged in the sooty dawn light and stared at them from the top of a mound of earth.

  Without waiting to see the parents, who were not likely to be welcoming, they packed up their supplies and struck their tents. The fly sheets and groundsheets were soaked in cold dew. Before they left, Lionel called to the children and gave them a pot of jam. He was unsmiling, almost ill-tempered. As Maud observed him she wondered if he was acting out of compassion or simply in an effort to reinforce his reputation as an aid worker.

  It was always tricky to get the trucks started; they would cough and splutter. To be on the safe side, at night they parked them facing downhill in case they had to push-start them. When the engines finally got going, giving out dull banging sounds, they had to let them warm up for ten minutes or so if they didn’t want to stall. While they waited in their cabs, some of them fell asleep again.

  Pale sunshine was slanting low across the hills when at last they pulled away. It was Lionel’s turn to drive and Maud, on the seat next to him, rolled him a cigarette at his request. She always had trouble with it. She didn’t like to see Lionel playing with the irregular cylinder she had fashioned, studying it with an ironic smile before lighting it.

  The road was getting worse and worse, full of potholes for a start. Before long it was hardly paved at all, and the rare stretches of asphalt, rather than facilitating their progress, seemed like so many obstacles in addition to the stones and ruts. The trucks were struggling, particularly around the bends. Finally they reached a plateau and the road improved. They had been driving for roughly an hour when they passed the burnt-out carcass of a military vehicle, probably troop transport. The fire had charred the metal, and the chassis was twisted by an explosion. The wreck must have been there for some time already, because it was beginning to rust. Still, it was the first vestige of the fighting they had seen. The sight of the scorched vehicle made them suddenly aware they were entering into another geography, no longer a geography of maps but rather of History, the territory of war.

  Lionel, who had studied their itinerary before leaving, announced:

  “There’s a checkpoint, just over two kilometers from here.”

  They stopped for a few minutes to allow the other truck, which was falling behind, to catch up. They headed together toward the first roadblock.

  They saw it as they came out of a long bend, in an area full of thickets. The trees had already lost most of their leaves. The season was further along, at high altitude, and they could already feel the first signs of winter.

  The roadblock was gray and brown, like the countryside. It was a distilled display of misery: two burnt-out Soviet-era cars were tipped on their sides to form an uneven barrier. Shelters had been built on either side with branches and old beams. Torn hay tarps were stretched between metal poles. Four men emerged from their makeshift guard posts. From a distance it was obvious they were hurrying to get dressed and trying to look threatening. Two of them were carrying machine guns while the other two were visibly more at ease with their pitchforks, brandishing them as if they were working in the fields.

  The trucks slowed down, and given that their usual speed was already very slow, they were almost at a walking pace. Yet the paramilitaries were agitated, and the two armed men stood in the middle of the road, raising their machine guns. Lionel slowed further still and stopped five yards from the roadblock. He rolled down his window and the cold air entered the cab. One of the militia came to stand on the driver’s side while the other, his weapon still pointed at the trucks, was walking around the convoy.

  The man who seemed to be in charge placed his head in the window of the truck. He was very young, with a beard, and his dark hair was uncombed. The small patch of skin that emerged from his beard was red, and his eyes were bloodshot. He was breathing noisily through his mouth. The smell of alcohol, mingled with whiffs of tobacco, invaded the cab. Practically leaning inside, he examined the cab. When he noticed Maud, she got the impression his gaze lingered on her. With her short hair and neutral clothing, she must initially have seemed hardly any different from Lionel, who had fine, almost feminine features, if you compared them with the paramilitaries’ rough looks. But the man had instantly realized she was a woman. Perhaps because she was overly sensitive, Maud saw an almost animal spark in the way his black eyes stared at her, and she looked away.

  “Pomoć!” said Lionel placidly.

  It was the magic word, one of the only ones they had been made to learn during the two-day training the association had given them in Lyon. It meant “aid” and it was the simplest, most comprehensible way for them to convey that they were relief workers.

  To show them his UN permits, Lionel began to reach toward the glove compartment. The paramilitary saw his gesture as threatening, and he kicked the side of the truck and aimed his weapon at Lionel at the same time. Then the man yanked the door open and motioned to everyone to get out. The other man must have done the same thing because once they were outside they found Alex and Marc standing next to their truck.

  The paramilitary grouped them together and made them stand to attention while his comrade lifted the tarps at the back of the vehicles and examined their cargo. The trucks were filled to the brim with crates and boxes, so that from outside all you could see was a wall of neatly piled parcels labeled with the name of the NGO, La Tête d’Or.

  “Dokument,” said the roadblock leader once his colleague had joined him.

  In these circumstances, dialogue was limited to exchanging the few words each party had at its disposal to fulfill its mission. Lionel, still watched by the soldier, climbed back into the truck, and this time he reached for the official papers. The paramilitary took the three sheets covered with signatures and stamps and stood looking at them for a long time.

  Maud was beginning to understand that this was a sort of theatrical display for two different audiences. The soldier wanted to show his strength to the foreigners under his control. But while he was focusing all his attention on documents he certainly could not read because they were written in English, he was also performing for his companions, to show them that he was indeed the boss. There was something comical about the scene and at the same time, there was only one sure conclusion: in the world they were about to enter, the only true subject, the ultimate motor of all behavior and all thought, was fear. You had to play along, and show you took the matter seriously, and by displaying an obvious fear of the boss, you would help him maintain the respect of his own troops. Lionel excelled at this role. He performed it calmly, and not at all obsequiously. He showed both a deep respect for authority and a total confidence i
n his own innocence. This was enough to reassure these men who knew nothing but constant threat and suspicion.

  As for the two former soldiers, they affected an ironic and laid-back attitude, which made the others wary and aggressive. Without realizing it, or perhaps without even caring, Alex in particular annoyed the paramilitaries. He stared at their rustic weapons with the withering smile of a specialist. As it was taking a while, he began whistling. Firmly planted on his legs, he seemed ready to charge at the slightest alarm. He made it a point of honor to show he was not afraid, and he stared at the little crew at the checkpoint as if they actually were potential adversaries whom he could easily overcome.

  Lionel was aware of this and tried to signal to him to calm down. The roadblock commander noticed. However thick he might seem, he was a keen observer, particularly when it came to danger. There was an uneasiness now, and the paramilitaries began talking among themselves. It was obvious that Alex had aroused their suspicions. Standing next to him, Marc had not said anything and even seemed a bit embarrassed by his companion’s behavior. But the two of them together, for the same reason that made Lionel immediately aware that they were former soldiers, made for a suspicious pair. Alex’s dark skin and frizzy hair only reinforced the paramilitaries’ wariness. One of them barked:

  “Passport!”

  This type of request was rare, once they had shown they were an aid convoy. Maud saw it as a confirmation that the Serbs, initially reassured by Lionel, now sensed there was something not quite right because of the other two.

  Fortunately the roadblock was isolated and they clearly had no convenient way of getting in touch with a higher authority, even supposing such an authority existed. The paramilitaries didn’t find anything wrong with their passports, so in the end they let the convoy go.