Anderson Alison - Checkpoint

The Dream Maker

The Red Collar

God created men, Sam Colt made them equal.

Central Bosnia, 1995

M arc stopped the truck, with no explanation.
Give me the binoculars.
Maud took them out of the glove compartment and handed them over. He got out and stood at the edge of the road. She watched as he stared for a long time at the horizon.

Suppressing her pain, she managed to sit up and wipe the condensation from the windshield. From where they had stopped you could see a vast panorama, and if the weather had been better, they might have been able to see all the way to the Adriatic. With the falling snow they could still see most of the high plateau they had crossed. Without binoculars Maud could make out only a white expanse for miles around. Sometimes the road dipped into a hollow, and then it rose up again. They were stopped on a high point. To the south, the ruined towers of a medieval castle stood out against a leaden cloud filled with snow. Marc came back and tossed the binoculars onto the dashboard. More tense than ever, he turned the key in the ignition.

What did you see?

Theyve been through here.

Maud didnt say anything. She could hear the spite in his voice. She was angry with herself for being injured and unable to drive. If their pursuers were able to take turns driving, Marc on his own would not be able to keep up the pace. He was certainly aware of this and must have been evaluating the consequences of their failure: the inevitable confrontation, the discovery of the cargo, perhaps even death.

Maud tried to move but it was hopeless. As soon as she held out her arms, she felt the pain in her back, so sharp she wanted to cry out.

How far ahead are we, do you reckon?

Barely six hours.

What can we do?

He didnt answer and this angered her. As if she didnt matter. He seemed so hostile she could not help but recall what she had thought during the night. When it came to action, he was alone. It was the hidden side of his strength, the rules of the game in his world.

Maud felt like crying, and was annoyed with herself.

They drove in silence for almost an hour. Suddenly Marc stopped the truck again. He gave no explanation and without a word he went back out onto the road. First she saw him squat down in front of the cab and touch the frozen ground. Then he went out of sight, around the back. When he returned, he was covered in snow. It was coming down hard now, and in the space of a few minutes the windshield was covered in a white film.

Marc switched on the wipers and the landscape reappeared. It was then that Maud then saw the narrow track leading off to the left. It was covered in snow and she had not seen it initially. It was surely because of this track that Marc had stopped the truck at that particular place.

Do you want to go up that way?

He didnt need to answer. He had already turned the wheels to the left and was heading that way. The track was fairly steep for a few yards and the truck struggled. Then it rose more evenly. It was certainly a dead end, leading to a field or a barn.

Do you think the snow will cover our tracks? Is that what you went to check?

He merely nodded.

Then suddenly the track seemed to fade away. They were surrounded by whiteness and there was no indication of where they should go. Unfortunately they had not gone far enough from the main road to stop. Marc got back out and walked through the snow to try to determine whether it was possible to drive farther up. Maud saw him disappear behind a hedge that the snowflakes were covering in white pom-poms.

She was at her wits end, filled with a sort of rage, and she did not know whether it stemmed from despair, anger, or shame. She felt as if she had been making the wrong choices for a long time; perhaps she had always been making the wrong choices. She should never have followed this man, should never have made an exception for him to the caution that had always protected her from humiliation and suffering. And now she was here, injured, betrayed, cast adrift. She screamed.

Her long cry, initially shrill, then fading to a deeper note, gave her some relief. She tried again, but it wasnt natural anymore. She felt self-conscious. Her determination was coming back, if not her strength. She would not give in so easily.

Not long thereafter, Marc reappeared. At first he was only a shadow in the white shadow of whirling snow. Then she saw him, covered in snow, and he opened the door.

Did you find a way through?

As he did not answer, she ignored the pain that was searing through her back, and slapped him.

T his was the time in the truck that Maud liked best. The autumn evening was gently coming on; the cool air did not yet oblige them to roll up the windows. The Bakelite steering wheel was so wide you had to spread your arms to turn it. It transmitted the vibrations from the engine, and when she drove uphill Maud felt as if she were clinging to the neck of an enormous beast.

They had left Lyon ten days earlier. One day had followed another, each one much like the next, despite the variation in the landscapes. After the Mont Blanc tunnel they had driven through the Aosta Valley, then followed the plain of the Po down in its entire length. The late autumn gave a certain luminosity to everything far in the distance and emphasized the little black arrows of cypress trees against a deep blue sky. After Trieste the landscape became more mountainous, the colors drab. When they reached Croatia, Maud hoped they would stop in Zagreb. Before leaving, she had read a guidebook from the 1960s that her parents had bought when they went to Dalmatia on their honeymoon. She wanted to see Saint Marks Square and the medieval buildings. But they drove around the outside of the city without going into the center and she kept her disappointment to herself. In Italy, Lionel had put her abruptly in her place when she asked to stop off in Bergamo. Were aid workers, not tourists. He was in charge of the mission and he never missed an opportunity to remind her of the fact. The humanitarian organization in Lyon, La Tte dOr (which got its name from the park nearby), had put him in charge of the convoy. And there, in Bosnia, the war was waiting for them.

Maud took her turn driving just like the boys. They had stopped joking about her driving already long before. It had been enough for Lionel to scrape the corner of a house in Italy and make a yard-long tear in the tarp for the men to stop talking tough. Maud might drive more slowly, but she was steady and cautious. The fifteen-ton truck did not risk a thing when she was behind the wheel, and the others knew this.

On the bunk behind her Vauthier was asleep. From time to time he gave a snort. The others all used their first names but he preferred to go by his last name. He even referred to himself as fat Vauthier, no doubt to dispose them favorably to him. He wasnt really fat, and you could see more muscle than flab emerging from his grimy T-shirt. But he had a large square head, framed by ginger sideburns, and a flat nose, which gave him a countrified look that clashed with Maud and Lionels student allure. He had introduced himself as a Parisian courier, convalescing after a traffic accident. They didnt really believe what he told them. But one thing was sure: he was much older than the others. Lionel thought he must be forty, and Maud, all of twenty-one, thought he was really old.

Lionel was rolling a cigarette in the front seat, not speaking. The cab smelled of fuel and dirty motor oil. Maud considered herself lucky all the same, because she was driving the lead truck and at least they didnt have to inhale the blue exhaust from their other vehicle. They were both secondhand trucks, roughly the same model, which La Tte dOr had bought on the cheap. They were nearing the end of their useful life, worn out by generations of delivery drivers who had not treated them kindly.