ACV's 1 Operation Black Gold (38 page)

‘So you think my moments blind panic helped a little do you?’

‘More than you’ll ever realise, bottoms up.’

‘Prost.’

‘Oh before I forget.’  He produced an envelope.  ‘From a grateful Prime Minister.’  I’d been promoted to full Lt.’

‘Christ, this is a bit fast.’

‘He also asked me to convey his gratitude personally.’

‘Aye, and if it had gone the other way he would have been the first to throw away the key.’

‘The way of the world old boy, your presence is also required in the mess tonight.’

‘Stuff that.’

He laughed.  ‘It isn’t a request; it’s an order from your commanding officer.’

‘It’s no like him to advertise something like this.’

‘The subject is strictly verboten.  We are only going to celebrate your promotion.  I almost had to fight him for the pleasure of presenting you with your second pip he can be quite formidable.’

I found myself grinning.  ‘How did you get the better of him?’

He was grinning now.  ‘I threatened to bug his bedroom and play the tape back at the next general meeting.’

I roared with laughter.  ‘I was still lucky though and that’s unusual for me.  I think I’d better be a damned sight more careful from now on.’

‘Oh I don’t know, my father once said, if a man’s doing the job he’s meant to luck doesn’t even come into it, it’s just part of his normal daily routine.’

‘He may have a point, smart bastard your father.’

‘Yes, I always thought so.’

Buff came stomping into the office.  ‘What the hell are ye up to now Murison?’  I showed him my notification of promotion.  He snorted and tossed it onto the table.  ‘Ah plonk.’  He grabbed the bottle and took a long draught; it was banged back down accompanied by a bloody great belch.  ‘Congratulations, but I’m still no saluting ye.’  He stomped off on his merry way with a big grin on his chops.  ‘Hey, Murison’s on the beer’s boys, some silly fucker’s just given him a second pip.’

They came and went like a squall at sea leaving the bottle empty and my ears still ringing from the slagging  

‘How did it go with the psychiatrist lady,’ I asked tentatively.

‘Quite well actually.’

‘How’s her sessions going and don’t tell me you haven’t bugged the place.’

‘You seem to have found my weakness.’  He grinned.

‘I don’t want details, just, well you know.’

‘I understand.’

‘The doctors only now beginning to get to the heart of the matter.  She seems to be responding quite well to the treatment, but the doctor is being cautious.  How are you two getting on these days?’

‘We’re not.’  I explained how relations had become strained since the day the SAS had been here and why.

Just them the subject of our discussion arrived.  ‘Come in my dear, have you heard, Jim’s been promoted’

‘Really,’ she looked me up and down in disgust.  ‘Do they know they’ve promoted a murderer?’  She’d been causing a lot of tension with that kind of comment lately.

We ignored it.  ‘Lady Flora’s coming over tomorrow and would love to see you.  Eight o’clock.’’

She smiled.  ‘That would be nice.’

CHAPTER 38

Samantha was a little late reaching General Pearson; her appointment with the doctor had over run.  She was shown into his study but there was no sign of Lady McDonald.  Andrew kissed her on the cheek and bade her sit.

‘Is Lady Flora in the drawing room?’

‘I have to confess Samantha Flora isn’t here at all.  It was a ruse on my part to get you here on your own’

‘Why?’

‘For a start, I didn’t want Jim to find out the real reason I asked you here.’

‘If you’re going to talk about him I’m leaving.’  She stood.

‘Sit down girl.’

She sat surprised at the tone of his voice.  He’d never raised it to her before.  ‘This isn’t just about him; it’s also about the rest of those men.  Your bitterness at him is eating away at them too.  Their moral will suffer and erode their effectiveness and that Samantha could cost lives and I’m damned if I will permit it.’

‘I’m sorry sir.’  She was white faced and shaken.  That was enough of the rough stuff.  He had her full attention.

‘No Samantha not Sir not tonight; I have never been able to have children and have always looked upon you as the daughter I would have liked.’

She flushed with pleasure even smiled a little.  ‘I have always regarded you as someone special Sir.’

‘Andrew, tonight call me Andrew.’

‘OK Andrew.’

‘That’s better because tonight I wanted to talk to you as a friend.  Now listen very carefully, you cannot repeat anything that is said here tonight.  Most of it is of the highest secrecy and will never be available to the general public.  It’s only because of the love I hold for you as a friend that I’m doing this at all.  Can you take that on board?’

‘Yes Andrew.’

‘Good, now I believe your latent hostility stems from the belief that Jim slaughtered helpless men on the field of battle, is that correct?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘Well let me show you these.’  He opened a drawer and removed a pile of folders placing them before her.  ‘I’ve marked the pages and passages you need to read.’

‘What are they?’

‘Rebel battle reports you should find them interesting.’ 

He let her read for a while.  She went from folder to folder quickly reading the highlighted passages.  ‘Well, what do they say?’

‘They’re almost all the same.’

He pointed to one, ‘read out that one.’

‘It just says the enemy conducted a fighting withdraw under covering fire from a machine gun.  I don’t understand; there’s nothing about a massacre here.’

‘Because there wasn’t one; at least not from their point of view.  These men were battle seasoned troops, to them nothing untoward happened on that battlefield, nothing.  It was something they’d done themselves a hundred times before they advanced or retreated.  It is a very unpleasant task Samantha.  A thing green troop’s find shocking, but a thing seasoned troops do as a matter of course, a part of their daily routine as it were.’

‘That’s terrible.’

‘But necessary.’  He waved a hand at the heavily laden bookshelves that surrounded them.  ‘I can show you hundreds of literary accounts to prove what I’ve just told you and hundreds of others that tells you of the consequence of you don’t.’

‘That won’t be necessary Andrew, I trust you.’

‘You know the one thing that really surprised me was where he found the presence of mind to clear the battle field of potential danger before he lost any of his friends; but the more I get to know him the less surprised I become.’

‘But why where they there in the first place?’

‘You mean you don’t know?’

‘No.’

‘Oh dear.’ 

So he started at the beginning using everything he could find to explain the political and military situation at the time.  He even dug up an old map he used to fill in their positions and that of the enemy.  It was only then she began to understand the enormity of the task those few men had undertaken.  When he had finished she looked a little bewildered.  ‘Now I’d like you to read this, it’s a summary of the political and social events after and as a direct result of the battle of Bertrovich.’  He went and made her a cup of tea and she sipped it quietly.  The only sound the turning of the pages.

She didn’t have to read it all to see where it was leading.  Closing it, she handed it back shaking her head.  ‘This wasn’t what they set out to do, surely their only intentions that day, was to save their own lives or at least, that of the battalion.’

‘You would think so wouldn’t you?’  He handed over another folder.  ‘This is the transcript of the interview Jim had with General Morris.  The General switched his tape off of course, you will see why, but I was next door with another tape recorder fed off the same microphone.  The General himself never knew about it.’

She soon found herself laughing.  ‘Oh my God he didn’t say that, did he?’

‘He certainly did.’

‘That’s terrible.’  She finished reading it and he handed her another.  ‘This is the transcript from a meeting between General Morris and the rebel leader a few days later.  I’ve highlighted the piece you might find interesting.’

She read on and became confused.  ‘Are you sure this isn’t a copy of that one.’

‘Positive.’  He could see the light begin to dawn in her eyes.

‘But this is…’  She grabbed back the other folder and compared the two.  ‘He went and did what Jim told him to, and it worked didn’t it.’

‘It certainly did.’

‘He stole Jim’s ideas.’

‘Now, now Samantha, every good officer is capable of listening to their subordinates and acting on good advice.’  She thought she detected a touch of sarcasm in his voice.  ‘While you’re pondering that, I’ll give you these.’

‘What are they?’

‘This stack of folders represents their work and contributions to charities.’

‘There’s a lot of it.’

‘Yes and I’m not even sure if that’s all of it.’

‘They never mention any of this.’

‘They don’t, do they.  I had to dig bloody deep to get that.’

‘Why did you?’

‘The Prime Minister ordered me to.’

‘Why?’

‘Because of this.’  He produced a handful of discs.

‘What are they?’

‘A personal account of their battle of Bertrovich, a thank you as it were to Brigadier D’Ord and captain Muckle for their faith in them.  I overheard them planning their evening in the officer’s mess, deduced the purpose of it and bugged them.’

‘Why?’

He shrugged.  ‘I was there to remember and I was very close to Bertrovich.  It’s quite possible they saved my life too.  Apart from that I just wanted to know.’

‘But why did you take it to the Prime Minister?’

‘An old promise I made to him years ago.  We were all involved in the aftermath.  When the rebel leader was elected to power, he hightailed it across here.  So impressed was he, he modelled not only his army on ours but his economy too.  He also used to spend hours talking about the battle that ended the war.’

‘That must have put Mr. Grey in a bit of a spot.’

‘It certainly did, all he could do was sit and agree with the man.  At the end of the day, he was as mystified and eager to find out what really happened as the rest of us.  He made me promise to tell him if I ever found out.’

‘You mean if he was in our out of office?’

‘Yes.’

‘So what did he do with all this information?’

‘He judged them.’

She gasped in surprise.  ‘What did he say?’

‘I believe his words were; any debt they may have owed to society has been replayed a hundred fold and by themselves.  A remarkable group of men one and all.’  It was a mind-blowing revelation to her.  He caught her while she was still reeling.  ‘Now do you agree with me that between them they’ve probably saved thousands of lives?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good, now let me tell you about a couple of hundred thousand more.’  He related to her the events of the previous week culminating in the return of the army.  ‘So how do you feel being responsible for the safe return of our armed forces?’

‘I want to hide.’

‘Now, now Samantha, it wouldn’t be the first time the fate of a country had swung in the balance over a young woman’s chastity.’

‘Andrew,’ she admonished.

‘I’ll admit it’s probably a thousand years or so since the last time.  I wonder if they’ll make a great epic about it in the years to come.  Anthony and Cleopatra, James and Samantha.  I could write the script.’

‘Don’t you dare you tease.’  They laughed together.

‘Now is there anything else you’d like to know about all this?’

‘Could I possibly listen to the discs?’

‘Of course.’  He put them into a player.  ‘I’ll leave you to it.  I’ll be in the drawing room when you’re finished.’

She woke him some hours later.  He stretched and yawned.  ‘Oh excuse me I must have dropped off.  Did you listen to the whole lot?’

‘Almost.’

He could see she’d been crying at some point.  She followed him back to the study where he retrieved the discs and put them into a small box.  There was a grinding noise.  ‘I should have done that a long time ago, I’m glad I didn’t now.’

‘Is that the only copy?’

‘Yes, it’s a story that will be never heard again.’

She sat for a while deep in thought.  ‘What do I do now, Andrew?’

‘Whatever you want my dear.’

‘How can I apologise to them?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, I’m sure you’ll think of something.  Women, I’ve found have an extremely annoying habit of finding an excuse for almost everything.  Why don’t you go home and sleep on it.’

‘OK.’  He escorted her to the door.  She kissed him on the cheek.  ‘Thank you for everything.’

He flushed with pleasure.  ‘Think nothing of it my dear girl; it’s what we old men are here for.  Oh, before I forget, could you deliver these for me please?’  There were two letters; one to Jim marked TOP SECRET, the other-to Abie.

‘Of course I will, good night Andrew.’

‘Good night Samantha.’