The Fighting Man (1993) (44 page)

‘It’s Cathy . . .’

He gave her the old-fashioned charm. He eased her into a chair. He hung up her anorak coat and saw the strong muscles bulging the short sleeves of her blouse.

‘I take it, Cathy, that you have not spent an entire career at Five pushing paper round a desk . . .’

Matter-of-fact. ‘Northern Ireland, handling informers. They said I was put at risk, shipped me home.’

‘Field work?’

‘Ditches, hedges, hides, that sort of nonsense . . .’

There was small talk about roadworks on the M6 and M40, what delays she had hit coming south, until the coffee came. Foul coffee from the machine and a grin that was pure insolence from the front desk man.

The door closed. He had clean paper in front of him and a sharpened pencil.

‘Right, Cathy, let’s have it. Brown, Gordon Benjamin. I have to know about him.’

He strained to hear her voice. ‘To pass to Langley?’

‘Correct, to pass to the Agency.’

‘The better to have him killed?’

‘Correct.’

‘And that’s what we want?’

Percy Martins eased back in his chair. Her eyes gazed back at him. Very firm eyes, he thought. God, what he would have given for a daughter such as this fine young woman, exchanged her any day of the week for the insipid little creature, his son, still studying biochemistry for a PhD, still workshy.

‘Doesn’t really matter what we want. It’s what the Americans want that is important. We are still at the top table, only just, hanging onto the table with our fingernails. What is our best chance of staying on top table? It is to perform whatever contortions the Americans ask of us. We grovel and they throw crumbs. I don’t like it but I know when I have to bob my head. We have pigmy influence in the modern world. The “Special Relationship” is a notion of self-importance dreamed up by our political masters, it counts for nothing across the water, we are not equals and we do what we are told to do. That way we get the crumbs thrown us . . . The Americans right now, the price for crumbs, want the information that will help them
kill
Brown, Gordon Benjamin, so that they can better protect that quite disgusting regime in Guatemala. That is their policy objective, and we will help them achieve it. Can we start?’

She talked. He scribbled a full note. She talked of a Land Rover operating behind the lines and deep in Iraq, of a unit commander who risked the lives of the men under his command that an American helicopter pilot should be rescued. He had never learned shorthand, he wrote fast. She talked of the Shia city of Karbala that had risen up in revolt against the regime of Baghdad and which now faced the counterstrike in response to the folly of believing the politicians of the coalition, and of the unit commander who had attempted to build a defensive perimeter for them. He did not interrupt. She talked of the radio message that had ordered the unit commander out of Karbala, and his sullen fury and his shame. The light was growing outside his closed windows, and there was the rattle of voices in the corridor as the building livened. She talked of the anger of the unit commander, and of the confrontation with an American ranking officer, ‘Bullshit . . .’ He laughed out loud, the belly laugh caught in his throat but he saw no expression of amusement on her face, so serious. She talked of the obstinacy of the unit commander, and his refusal to apologize, and of the complaint lodged, and the virus of the insult spreading higher in the command chain, and the sacking of the unit commander. He grunted his understanding, the pieces of the puzzle slotting. She talked of a salmon farm that was for sale and a man, alone, searching for a reason in living, yearning for involvement, wanting to belong. He flipped onto the fourth sheet of notepad. She talked of the arrival at a Scottish loch hotel of three Guatemalan Indians and the display of the photographs and of the end of the searching and wanting and yearning.

‘Summarize, please.’

‘I wouldn’t want it to sound comic-strip . . .’

There was a slow wan smile. Her eyes blinked. He guessed it was difficult for her to be awake. A rather serious young woman.

‘. . . I wouldn’t want to sound facile. He’s bull-in-a-china-shop material. He sets his mind and he goes for something. You can’t buy him off because the going’s hard. You see, it’s the obstinacy, he doesn’t know when to back off. He’d be going for Guatemala City and it’ll take thick walls to stop him. When it gets ridiculous, when it’s stacked, he’ll keep going. If he believes in something then it consumes him. His tactic is the charge. Makes him into a bit of an idiot, but he’s not . . .’

Percy Martins felt the cold of the morning around him. ‘I think I have the picture.’

‘Will that be all?’

She stood.

‘You have been very helpful . . .’

He helped her into her anorak and walked her to the door.

‘. . . Let us hope our American friends are truly grateful when they get down to the business of blowing him away. I think you’ve got me into his mind . . .’

She stared back at him. To Percy Martins she was suddenly vulnerable, a small girl. ‘I should be able to get into his mind, I used to sleep with him.’

He gagged. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘No call for an apology. He was with the regiment when I was first in Belfast. He was running my field security escort. I suppose he felt protective of me, and I suppose I felt dependent on him. He came and stayed at my flat in London after we’d finished there, wasn’t for long. I chucked him out. My phone number, I imagine you do the same, I let the answerphone take all the calls. I never called him back and I returned his letters unopened. I expect you’d find that pretty bitchy. Where I work they reckon that emotional entanglements get in the way of the fucking job.’

‘Would you like me to let you know what spills from this?’

‘That would be very kind.’ She laughed and the life was gone from her eyes. ‘Yes, I should know whether or not I’ve helped to kill him . . . The fucking job always wins, doesn’t it?’

Percy Martins walked her to the lift and took her down to the front hall, and signed the exit chit. He was glad Hobbes had overslept, cut the meeting. It was a fresh morning. It would be black night across the time zone in Guatemala, and he wondered what the weather was there, whether it helped Brown, Gordon Benjamin. He felt the draught of the air off the Thames as she shouldered into the swing doors.

He took the lift back to his floor. His secretary would be in within a quarter of an hour to make decent coffee, about all she was capable of, and then he would start to compose the message for Langley.

He would fight dirty. He would fight as dirtily as was required to assure he came out on top of whatever shit pile was to be contested. He would most certainly not allow a little dirt to lie between himself and the city’s garbage dump. The blast of the helicopter filled the small room behind the hangar, cut out the whimpering of the bitch. The bird hit, lurched, steadied, came to rest. Colonel Arturo pressed his nose against the grime of the window’s glass. The hatch door of the bird was dragged open. His view was distorted by the rain streams on the glass. He peered to see. The lieutenant dropped down. It was the strategy on which he laid his career and his life. The bitch cried out behind him and he heard the punch smack that silenced her. The lieutenant pulled the shape down. He saw the shambling figure.

The short gesture, momentary, Arturo punched the air.

Like a creature brought from the deep water of the dark sea, the man who was bound and gagged. Like a creature issued from a pit only in night cover, the man who was led by a rope towards the building. A gaunt face and hollowed eyes and a sunken throat . . . It was ridiculous. Incredible to believe that a man like this, pulled by the rope, could threaten the life of the state.

He went to the doorway and he kissed the lieutenant, codename Benedicto, on both cheeks.

The creature was pulled into the room.

The bitch was suspended by her ankles from the iron beam across the ceiling. Her floral skirt was hanging to cover her chest. The tips of the tresses of her auburn hair fell just short of the floor. The bitch moaned.

The lieutenant casually took a rifle from a soldier. He held the barrel tight in both hands. With a short jabbing swing, using his strength, he hit the creature on the ankle with the shoulder butt of the rifle. The creature screamed, sank to the floor of the room.

Arturo said cheerfully, ‘Welcome, my friend, welcome on your return to Guatemala City. Eleven years, I believe. You enjoyed your journey, excellent that at last you could ride after the many days of walking. A surprise, my friend . . . Perhaps after eleven years you do not recognize her, your daughter . . .’

Fifteen minutes later the Huey bird was airborne.

Percy Martins took the signal to the basement for encoding and transmission.

‘Priority? Yes, I should think so. Put a first class stamp on it . . .’

Secret Intelligence Service to Central Intelligence Agency.

Little brother to big brother. Poor cousin to rich cousin. How to stop a good man and kill a good man. Of course it was bloody priority.

Gord glanced down, irritated, at his watch. It was one hour and twenty-five minutes since he had first heard the helicopter and again no sight of it. The engine noise seemed to pass high over him and then the cloud ensured that the rattle sound was gone. It was as if the security of his territory were invaded, as an animal in the rain forest would tremble when it first started at the whine of a chainsaw. They were going well now. They had a good track and the space between the trees for a man to march and hold his arms directly out from his shoulders. There was climbing and there was descent, but the track had a good rock base. He thought the time was slipping . . .

Groucho came past him.

Groucho was going fast and hobbling and putting his left-side weight on a rough-cut stick.

Gord caught Groucho’s shoulder.

‘Where the hell have you been?’

Groucho had tucked his head away from Gord, turned his face from him. ‘I fell.’

‘The midday feeding, it was a shambles.’

A muttered answer. ‘I went to crap in the rocks and I slipped.’

The Archaeologist laughed and the Street Boy sniggered and the Fireman grinned. The Canadian took the weight of Groucho to support him, and the Priest knelt beside Groucho and pulled up the leg of his trouser and pushed down the sock. Gord saw the bruised colouring and the broken skin.

Gord said, ‘I am sorry, I apologize . . . Do you want to be carried?’

‘No.’

‘I can get people to carry you . . .’

‘I make my own way.’

They moved on. Groucho was ahead of them and distancing himself from them, stumbling and heaving his way back up towards the front of the march. He thought the man had
guts
. He rated him. Groucho was too far ahead to have heard him. Pointless to call out to him, gone too far forward. Only an hour before Alex had told him that a baby had been born on the march. Back amongst the women and the children, where Alex Pitt walked, there was now a swaddled child with less than half a day of a life lived, and a mother was carried on a litter. He would like to have told Groucho . . . it had been Groucho who had recited him the poem,

‘. . . and I see

at the end of the line

happy children!

only happy!

they appear

they rise

like a sun of butterflies

after the tropical cloud burst.’

He was remembering the poem.

The Archaeologist said to Gord, ‘Heh, you know what’s different? You know what’s changed? It’s not raining . . .’

He could have been belted in the pit of his stomach. He realized it, the truth of it. The puddle on the track ahead was smooth and unbroken.

The Canadian said, ‘Too right and, hell, I never noticed it, gotten like an old shirt, what you’re used to. Gord, the rain’s stopped . . .’

Gord surged on, tongue whipping those ahead of him forward, faster.

‘I do it my way.’

Tom faced the colonel.

Arturo said, ‘You tell them to stop fucking me, and to stop complaining, and to do what they are paid to do.’

‘Aircrew, you’ll learn, do not respond to insults, nor to flag-waving shit . . . They like to be asked whether it is possible . . .’

‘Just get them in the air . . .’

Tom said, ‘My way, and you keep your mouth tight shut.’

Tom led. Into the helicopter pilots’ Ready Room. There were half a dozen of them in there. They wore well-cut flying suits, surplus stock Made in the United States of America, but they had their own shoulder shields sewn on, an eagle falling on prey with the hook beak readied and the talons outstretched. He walked through the film of cigarette smoke. Some shuffled the pages of magazines, ignored him. Some sipped at their coffee beakers, ignored him. He walked to the far wall and he sat himself easily on the table where the magazines were and the coffee machine. Arturo was by the door, facing him, arms folded, watching him.