Ignatieff - Charlie Johnson in the Flames

PENGUIN CANADA

CHARLIE JOHNSON IN THE FLAMES

MICHAEL IGNATIEFF is internationally renowned both as a commentator on moral, ethical and political issues and as a novelist. His novel Scar Tissue was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1993, and his non-fiction works include a biography of Isaiah Berlin and four books on ethnic war and intervention: Blood and Belonging, The Warriors Honour, Virtual War and Empire Lite: Nation-Building in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. His most recent work is The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror. He is the Carr professor and director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

Also by Michael Ignatieff

Fiction

Asya

Scar Tissue

Non Fiction

A Just Measure of Pain: The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution, 175080

Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Classical Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment

The Needs of Strangers

The Russian Album

Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism

Isaiah Berlin: A Life

The Warriors Honour: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience

Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond

The Rights Revolution

Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry

Empire Lite: Nation-Building in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan

The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror

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First published in a Viking Canada hardcover by Penguin Group (Canada),

a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc., 2003

Published in this edition, 2004

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (WEB)

Copyright Michael Ignatieff, 2003

Love in Vain, written by Robert Johnson 1990 Lehsem II, LLC/Claud L. Johnson. Used by permission.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Publishers note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Manufactured in Canada.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Ignatieff, Michael

Charlie Johnson in the flames / Michael Ignatieff.

ISBN 0-14-301596-6

1. Kosovo (Serbia)HistoryCivil War, 1998-1999Fiction.

I. Title.

PS8567.G63C43 2004 C813.54 C2004-903914-8

British Library Cataloguing in Publication data available

American Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data available

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For Suzanna Zsohar

who believed in him until I did

ONE

W hen Charlie saw the helicopter, he was sure everything was going to be all right. It settled down in the stubble-bare, garbage-strewn field by the edge of the refugee tents, and it came down so close he had to shield her face with his hands from the cloud of dust and refuse thrown up by the blades. It made Charlie feel young again, like Danang in 71, to see the pair of medics in the open door unsnap their belts, sling out the stretcher and break into a low crouching run beneath the rotors. They had their helmets on, two young American faces behind flip-down glasses, and the 6th Navy flashes on their shoulders. It was ridiculous, Charlie knew, but there he was, tears in his eyes, at the thought that they were safe in the arms of the empire.

They knelt beside her and one checked the drip that Jacek had been holding above her, giving him the thumbs-up for his work, while the other assessed her vital signs, fingers on the vein in the throat, eyes on the watch, followed by a quick glance, unreadable behind the shades, to his buddy. Then he pulled back the dressing across the top of her back and gave the wound a look of expressionless assessment. They didnt bother with Charlies hands, bandaged up so that he felt like a kid in mittens four sizes too big. It was great how fast they were, how they concentrated on the essentials, how they lifted her on to the stretcher with that practised combination of moves, one two three, which turned care into procedure. Then they were running low for the chopper, with Charlie flapping behind, his hands held out in front of him and Jacek half holding Charlie so he wouldnt lose his balance.

They fixed a radio helmet on Charlies head because he couldnt do it himself, and they strapped him in, next to the stretcher, and the medic made a No sign to Jacek who looked desolate but stood back, crouched low and turned away. As they lifted off, the stretcher locked in place by the door and Charlie in the jump-seat beside it, all he could do was wave his panda hands at Jacek below, diminishing and turning, as the helicopter gained height, his lanky blond hair flying about in the rotor chop, alone in the field.

All through the long night, she had moaned and moved her head from side to side, but now she was silent and her eyes were shut. He supposed that she was no longer in pain, that her capacity for pain had been seared away. One medic had pulled back the singed cotton material of her dress from an undamaged section of her left arm and was giving her an injection. Another pulled out Jaceks drip and fitted a new one. The clear fluid rose, delivering salts and glucose into her veins.

Out on the field he hadnt noticed, but inside the helicopter it became apparent that she didnt smell good. It was a complex aroma of womanhood, sweat, urine and the sweetness of singed meat. They couldnt clean her up en route, and there was nothing to say that they werent already saying on the radio back to base. Over the headphones he could hear the chatter and drew comfort from their military voices: female, twenty to twenty-five, civilian, third degree on twenty-five per cent, no further estimate of injury until examination, then the vital signs, a bunch of numbers for pulse rate and blood pressure that didnt mean anything to Charlie, and some more traffic about preparations for her arrival. It all felt good: they were waiting for her, Navy trauma specialists in a gleaming white theatre.