Checkpoint Read online

  But Lionel was furious.

  “Those two jerks are going to get us in trouble,” he grumbled as he drove. “We have to split them up.”

  A few miles farther along he parked the truck in a forest track and got out, in a foul mood. He motioned to the others to gather around him.

  “Maud is going to go behind with you, Alex. Marc, you’re coming with us.”

  “Why?”

  Marc knew very well what to expect but he wanted to force Lionel to give an explanation. Lionel did not take the bait.

  “Because.”

  The tension between the two men had been palpable from the start. Alex might be the one who talked back, but in fact it was Marc, with his habitual silence and enigmatic gaze, who made Lionel uncomfortable. This instinctive dislike, for no particular reason, had become patently obvious, and one of the two had to yield. No doubt Marc figured this was not the time to provoke a direct confrontation. He did as Lionel asked, but it was clear they hadn’t heard the last from him.

  “Whatever.”

  He went to get his backpack out of the cab of the truck he had been driving and tossed it into the other one. It took Maud a little longer to get her things together, then she climbed in next to Alex.

  The convoy set off again.

  In the lead cab the atmosphere was stifling. Lionel drove without taking his eyes off the road. Marc, his feet on the dashboard, was swaying back and forth, headphones on, listening to music on his Walkman. Even with the engine noise Johnny Cash was audible, wailing through the headphones.

  They drove through dreary countryside still draped in mist. There were not many villages in this part of the Krajina. From time to time they could see a destroyed house, with walls torn open by shells and scorched roof beams. They passed an ancient tractor pulling a hay wagon, going at a snail’s pace.

  Once he had calmed down, and at a time he chose, Lionel decided to have it out with Marc. Vauthier’s silent presence behind them was reassuring.

  Vauthier had made no secret of his dislike for the soldiers. He had told Lionel that he had been a conscientious objector. He claimed he’d spent two months in prison in Tarbes, because of some legionnaires on a binge who had tried to hit on the girl he was with. The story, like everything else he told them, could not be proven.

  But it was Marc whom the former courier disliked most of all. He never spoke to him, and his close-set little eyes would flash with animosity whenever he looked his way. Lionel could not understand the reason for his dislike but, under the circumstances, it meant Vauthier was a welcome ally who could be useful to him.

  “Stop your music for a minute.”

  “What?”

  “I asked you to stop your music,” shouted Lionel. “We have to talk.”

  Marc pulled off his headset.

  “Talk about what?”

  “Safety.”

  The other man gave an ironic smile.

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re not in the army anymore. You have to realize that. If they want to throw us in jail or even make off with everything we’ve got, there is no way to stop them. So at the checkpoints we keep a low profile. It’s absolutely vital, for our safety. You have to tell that to your buddy. You can think what you like about those guys. But they’re the ones who have the weapons, and we have to show them respect.”

  Marc smiled.

  “You really believe that?”

  “It’s part of our mission.”

  “All right, I’ll have a word with Alex. But don’t sweat it. We know those guys inside out. The only thing they understand is force. The more you act all quiet and nice, the more trouble they’ll make for you. We want to reach our destination just as much as you do. Maybe even more than you do, in fact.”

  He gave a strange smile as he said it, but Lionel saw only the boastfulness in his smile and didn’t take it any further. He would live to regret it bitterly. For now, however, he had decided above all not to lose his temper, just to get his message across.

  “We can talk about it when we get back—just come to a meeting at headquarters to share your point of view. But right now we have our instructions and we have to follow them. No fighting back or acting arrogant or provoking them. I’d like us to agree on that.”

  Behind them, Vauthier yawned noisily. Lionel was grateful to him. By manifesting his presence, he gave a certain weight to Lionel’s words, perhaps not the weight of authority, but at least that of the majority.

  “We’re going to have to go through quite a few checkpoints, and they won’t all be as smooth as this one. Not to mention that we can run into patrols at any time. We have to behave like all the other aid workers.”

  “The other aid workers!” echoed Marc scornfully.

  He seemed to have a preconceived and hardly flattering opinion of the profession.

  “Whether you like it or not, that’s what you are now.”

  Lionel refrained from adding: Why did you sign up if you have such a poor opinion of us? But he had no desire to question Marc about his commitment or establish any sort of complicity with him.

  They had discussed it at headquarters when Alex and Marc volunteered. The directors at La Tête d’Or had devoted an entire meeting to the topic, and Lionel had taken part. To some, the former soldiers’ motivations seemed suspicious, and they were of the opinion they ought not to be hired. But convoy drivers were in very short supply, and the human resources people said over and over that they could not afford to be picky. Finally, there was a vote, and the outcome was that if these guys wanted to join up, that was their business, after all. As long as they obeyed the rules, there was no need to go digging into their deeper intentions. This was not the time for Lionel to start acting more Catholic than the Pope.

  “All right,” concluded Marc, putting his headphones back on. “You’re the boss. But sooner or later you’ll see that I was right.”

  They had said what they had to say. Lionel reached up for the joint he had slipped behind his ear, like an old-time grocer with a pencil. He lit it and took a long inhalation. He was not altogether reassured, but for the time being the matter was settled.

  3

  Maud could understand Lionel’s decision, but she was furious at having to change trucks. She had been driving the other one ever since they had left Lyon and she’d gotten used to it. She liked the sound of its engine, she knew its weaknesses and had found little tricks to tame the old beast. For example, when she had to shift from second to third, the gearbox cracked because the synchronization was busted. But she had managed to find the right running speed so that it would go into gear without a problem. She had grown used to her sagging bunk and she knew how to nestle in comfortably. Now everything seemed different in the new cab, poorly laid out, uncomfortable. She didn’t like the smell of cheap deodorant that permeated the fabric in the curtains and seats; she even preferred the smell of old motor oil and tobacco that belonged to the other cab.

  She knew herself well enough to realize she had a tendency to personalize objects and decors, and to create bonds of antipathy or love with them as if they were alive. But she would rather die than admit to being in love with the truck she had just left behind. She merely went into a silent funk, and scowled at the road as she drove.

  Sitting beside her, Alex was tactful enough not to ask any questions and to respect her silence. After they had gone a few miles, she began to be aware of his presence. After all, it wasn’t his fault. She felt it was unfair to blame him if she was annoyed.

  She turned and gave him a smile. She didn’t share Lionel’s dislike. She figured their new cohabitation would at least allow her to become better acquainted with this sturdy kid, who had something elegant about him. She decided to break the silence.

  “I’ll bet the sparks are flying up front. They must be having a stormy discussion.”

  Alex smiled bac
k.

  “Good thing Vauthier is there to act as referee,” she added.

  “What exactly is Lionel not happy with, where we’re concerned?”

  “He thinks you’re still acting like soldiers, and you haven’t grasped the rules of how an aid worker is supposed to behave.”

  Alex shook his head. He was still a bit wary. After all, since the departure, no one had said a word to him, except for practical reasons. All the way from Lyon to here, he hadn’t had a real conversation on his own with anyone other than Marc.

  “That’s just a typical civilian reaction. Putting all soldiers in the same bag. Marc is my buddy but we’re very different. And when we were in the army, it was even more obvious.”

  “Were you in the same unit?”

  “Yeah, we were peacekeepers in the same battalion of engineers. But that doesn’t mean anything. He’s a career soldier and I was just drafted in.”

  Even at headquarters, no one had asked them about their military background. Maud knew nothing at all about that world, but she realized that there, too, like elsewhere, there must be profound differences.

  “You didn’t have the same rank?”

  “He was a sergeant and I was a private. But that’s not the most important thing. Rank is just what you see, but then there’s all the rest.”

  “All the rest?”

  “Mentality, habits. For a career soldier, a conscript like me is sort of like a civilian in uniform. An intern, in a way. They look down on us.”

  “It didn’t stop you from becoming friends.”

  “No, because in his way Marc is special. What’s more, he didn’t like it much in the army.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s hard to explain. He didn’t get along with his superiors, and that’s why he eventually left. He’s fairly generous person, you know. I think all of you have got the wrong idea about him.”

  Maud was beginning to feel more at ease. She was glad to have a companion who could speak naturally. She was relieved not to have to put up with Lionel’s silent spells; increasingly he had his head in the clouds, and he preferred his joints to any other company. And besides, now there were just the two of them, and she could no longer feel Vauthier’s indiscreet gaze bearing down on her from behind.

  “What were you doing before you were called up?”

  “Nothing, hanging out in a technical college.”

  “Whereabouts?”

  “Grenoble.”

  “Are you from there?”

  Maud thought he would tell her about his tropical origins and she was surprised by his answer.

  “Yeah, I was born in a little mountain village in the massif of Trièves, can you picture it on the map?”

  “It’s near Chartreuse, over by Mont Aiguille, around there somewhere?”

  She had gone cross-country skiing in the region once with her parents, when she was ten years old.

  “Precisely.”

  She was dying to know how a child of color had ended up in a remote Alpine village. But he seemed to think it was perfectly natural, and she didn’t dare ask.

  “I suppose you don’t really think I look like a mountain dweller, is that it?”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  Alex was smiling. He seemed to think it was funny and, visibly, he was fine with the topic.

  “My father is from Guadeloupe. He was orphaned at a very young age and he came to France to live with an uncle in Grenoble. He married my mother, who came from Reunion Island, and he had to start working right away. He was doing one small job after another. One day he found work as a milk quality control inspector in the mountains and he stayed.”

  “I see.”

  “He gets up every morning at five, my old man, to go around the farms and collect samples of milk. It’s a hard job and doesn’t pay well. So my parents wanted me to get an education. Unfortunately, I’m no good at it. I have trouble reading, and they didn’t treat it when I was small. I mix up letters, you know what that is?”

  “You’re dyslexic.”

  “I’ll let you say it, because I’ve never been able to pronounce the word right.”

  They both laughed. Maud realized that this was the first time since she’d left France. Yet she loved joking around with her girlfriends, and sometimes at home she could go into a fit of laughter all by herself.

  “So I failed my exams and eventually they stopped deferring me. That’s when I went off to do my military service.”

  Alex spoke calmly; Maud liked his voice. From the beginning she’d been stuck with the team on the other truck. She’d misjudged him. So in the end it was a good thing that Lionel had broken down the barrier and mixed up the team.

  “Were you the one who wanted to go to Bosnia with the UN?”

  “Yes, I volunteered right away after my training. They had posted me to these barracks in Moulins and I was just moping around there. I had passed all my permits—automobile, motorcycle, truck—and that took some time, but afterwards it was routine, just chores. I was wasting my time. I wanted to see the world.”

  Maud could relate to that. She’d spent two years in law school because her father was a notary. He had encouraged her brother to take over the practice, but it had never occurred to him that she might be able to. In the end, her brother had decided he would rather be a math teacher. And she told herself she was up to the challenge: she could take over her father’s practice. But she couldn’t imagine spending her whole life in the same place. In the end, she’d dropped it all to become an aid worker. The context was different, but her reaction had been the same as Alex’s.

  “Did they send you here right away?”

  “We had special military training for two months. Then they put blue helmets on us and shoved us onto a convoy headed for Kakanj. Central Bosnia, it’s a harsh place. Snow everywhere, mountains. It reminded me of where I grew up. I was very happy there.”

  The lead truck had pulled further ahead, and when they caught up, it was stopped at a checkpoint.

  “We’re not far from the enclave of Bihać,” said Alex. “They’re Muslims there. But from what I understood, Lionel doesn’t want us to go through there. We’re going to make a detour, by the south.”

  The checkpoint was manned by paramilitaries in full uniform. It was much better organized than the previous one. There was a lot of traffic, given the proximity of the town. They crossed the road leading to the enclave, and saw a number of aid convoys. Ahead of them, a dozen or so semitrailers from the UNHCR were waiting. The paramilitaries were checking papers and summarily inspecting the trucks. It was all more professional, more normal. They didn’t have to get out of the cab, and they went through without incident.

  “There’s a French battalion in Bihać,” said Alex.

  And they did pass several jeeps transporting peacekeepers with their blue helmets. On their sleeves you could see the UNPROFOR badge, and small French tricolors. Before long they were out in the country again. The road was following a river with gray waters. All the factories along the river had been destroyed. The low sky made the place feel gloomy.

  The tension eased and they began talking again. Maud had let Alex take the wheel at the last checkpoint. She found some chewing gum in the glove compartment. The taste of mint in her mouth reminded her that she hadn’t brushed her teeth in three days.

  “What is Kakanj like, since you’ve been there?”

  “A filthy place. A Croatian enclave surrounded by Muslims, who in turn are surrounded by Serbs. In other places the fighting has drawn fairly homogeneous lines between the zones, but in Kakanj it’s impossible. The populations are too mixed up. The atmosphere is really tense.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “We were protecting the coal mine.”

  Now that she wasn’t driving, Maud could look at Alex while they ta
lked. She got the impression that he had hesitated before answering her last question. He was no longer as natural and relaxed, as if a trap lay hidden in the subject.

  “Is it important, this mine?”

  “Bosnia has no energy resources other than coal. They have enormous mines. Initially it was an open-pit mine. And you can see it; the hillside is completely caved in. But now they mine underground, so there are miles of tunnels.”

  He was increasingly animated as he spoke about it, and she couldn’t understand why he put so much enthusiasm into his description.

  “Are they still mining, even during the war?”

  “No. Everything has come to a halt. You should see it: huge factories, all black, completely silent, the conveyor belts have stopped, the ovens are cold. I can imagine that when it was going full blast it must have been a sight to see. But now it’s completely dead. A sort of postapocalyptic movie set.”

  “So why did they send peacekeepers there?”

  “For a start, so that the factories would not be destroyed. And then to make sure the pumps kept on working.”

  “The pumps?”

  “The underground tunnels can flood, so there are pumps continually sucking out the water. If they stop working, the tunnels will flood, and that will be it. Once a mine gets flooded, there’s no getting it back.”

  Maud could see that her companion was particularly interested in the topic. But she still couldn’t see why. He was talking about important things, but why was he so passionate? Why did he feel so personally involved?

  “So, was it your job to keep the pumps going?”

  For a moment she feared he might think she was being ironic. But he didn’t pause, and continued his train of thought.

  “Among other things. Above all, just by being there, we were protecting the site and the people inside.”

  “And where are the refugees that we’re going to help?”

  It was odd they had not brought the subject up earlier. Maud had tried to question Lionel, but he either didn’t know or wouldn’t say. At headquarters, they had simply been told they must take supplies, clothing, and medication to refugees who were in a camp. And the machine had been set in motion. All the talk was of the cargo, the makeup of the team, permits. Now that they were nearing their goal, other questions arose, at least for Maud, questions that had to do with the people they were about to meet and help. Ever since they had begun to see wretched peasants and dirty, shabbily clothed children with runny noses along the roadside, she had begun to care about the people they were going to help, about their lives, their living conditions, their stories.