The Fighting Man (1993) (56 page)

He climbed up into the Antonov cockpit. He eased the flying helmet down over the woollen cap. He pulled the scarf up from his throat to cover his lower face. He gave the signal. The chocks were pulled away from the wheels. He turned the key, had ignition. The noise rattled around him, growing. The propellers spun.

The pilot took the Antonov out to the end of the runway. She seemed to him to be running sweet.

He could see the line of the officers watching and waiting, and behind the officers and standing in the open mouth of the hangar were the ground crew technicians who had worked at the engines. The pilot built the power.

The Antonov lumbered down the runway, along the channel of the blazing lights, and lifted.

He took her out over the sea.

He set the course.

He stood on a straight chair. Percy Martins manipulated the hands of the wall clock, put them back to Central America time. He checked at his wrist and made the final adjustment to the clock. It was seven minutes after midnight, Central America time. He stood down from the chair and went to the window and pulled the strings that lifted the blind. A pleasant start to the day in London. He craned his neck, pushed his nose against the glass, and saw a tug boat pulling a convoy of rubbish waste barges on the river. He had slept rather well because the easy chair in his office was expensive and comfortable, a perk that he had bullied from Property (Internal). He shaved with the electric razor gained from duty free in Athens, and charged on expenses, and now the subject of nitpick inquiry by Accounts. He assumed that he had slept rather better than that fine young woman, probably curled on a sofa with a travelling rug wrapped around her. He paced, restless and excited. Always the way he felt when a live mission was running . . . Shouldn’t have been running, of course, no bloody authorization for sticking out his neck, but there were precious few on the Vauxhall Bridge Road, in the upper office suites of the building, who would dare play the heavy hand with Percy ‘Sniper’ Martins who had brought the head of a Palestinian killer to the Prime Minister’s table . . . And about the right time to interfere finally.

Never best to give people too much time to ferret on a minor request. Too much time was too much doubt, and added to too much cock-up. He dialled. He estimated that the night duty man who picked up the telephone, Ministry of Defence (Intelligence), would be going off shift within the hour, would get the message passed fast enough to ensure he was not late home.

‘Percy here . . . No, I have not yet died, and not yet been buried . . . Yes, I am alive and kicking hard. Small favour, Belize . . . Yes, Belize . . . Might be a flight coming across Belize airspace in three and a half to four hours’ time. Won’t have lights, won’t have markings, won’t respond to Belize control . . . Two favours, actually. Don’t scramble for it, don’t put the Harriers up, because its fuel will be on the edge and evasion will waste fuel. Second, do not inform our Yankee cousins of this flight, imperative you do not . . . Send it fast, there’s a good fellow . . . I’m so grateful.’

It was as much as he could do, more than he should have done. He thought of the young woman with the answerphone, wasted in Five. He thought of the young man that she seemed to love, lucky devil, and there was work for him in Six. If the Secret Intelligence Service were ever again to make a mark, regain a trifle of independence from the Yankee cousins, then it would be on the backs of such young women and such young men, directed on operations by ‘Sniper’, of course. Just the fellow, just the ticket, he sounded, Miss Parker’s Gord, for sniffing at the perimeter fences around the Ukrainian bases that held the nuclear warheads. The right sort of man to be up on the Turkish/Iranian border and supervising havoc in mullah-land. He’d march them into the Deputy Director General’s office, craven creature, thought a real day’s work was either sitting at a desk and studying altitude photographs with a magnifying glass or budget balancing with a calculator, and introduce them. He’d be back in harness . . . Blotted from his mind, unwelcome and unwanted, was the thought of close pursuit and an aircraft coming vulnerable to a landing strip. Fuck it and forget it . . . He
thought
he was secure in his employment whatever the outrage he caused on the upper-floor office suites of Vauxhall Bridge Road. The alternative to employment was compulsory redundancy, the voucher in the brown envelope, retirement to Motspur Park and the wife who ignored him and the son who rejected him. He would not go easy . . . It was the dream of directing field operations again that sustained Percy Martins.

He rang down to the front desk. Coffee, soonest, proper coffee.

The dogs had the scent trail.

They pounded on the scent foot marks, slobbering and snorting, hunting the trail.

The pair of bloodhounds had been flown in at the beginning of the evening from the headquarters of the Brigada de Investigaciones Especiales y Narcóticas, big beasts, the gift of the Spanish Guardia Civil, black-and-tan-coated beasts. Two bitches, each weighing more than ninety pounds, each able to follow a scent that was more than a hundred hours old.

They had come across the river. They had been brought to the place where the imprint of a half of a shoe’s heel had been found. The soldiers had stood back. The handlers had let the dogs circle the place. The scent had been found.

The handlers, experienced men, held the dogs on long leashes, and let them lead. The scent was made by men who had sweated hard, and left a good trail for the dogs to track. And easy for the dogs because the way that the men had gone was off the paths that were used by the people of the villages and forest people. One sweat scent for them to follow that was not confused. The pair of bloodhounds were the best, the passion of their handlers, young and strong dogs, and eager to please. The handlers slipped the dogs titbits of dried meat, and the dogs led them on and strained at the taut leashes. They had poor eyesight. Their world was a monochrome mess of shadows. They were at home in the blackness of the forest with their noses hovering above the ground on which men had struggled with heavy weights.

Behind the handlers were the troops of the Kaibil battalion. Slow going in the night forest and the dogs held back so that the troops could stay with them. It was past two. They used a compass to report back the direction that the dogs took them.

The generator gave the light to the lamp above the map.

Each time the call came, each time they gave the position, approximate because they had no landmarks in the night to relate to, Arturo made the crayon mark on the clear cellophane sheet over the map.

The line wavered. The line looped a village and skirted a cliff face and avoided cleared fields, but the line held. With his crayon he drew the first track of the line, joined the points.

Bad waiting. The camp on the roadside rested. A soldier coughed, a radio screamed in static transmission, a soldier tripped on a clattering rifle and swore, a jeep came and went. They were all waiting, and for him it was the worst. Past three . . . He would have them, find them, when the daylight came, if the dogs held the scent.

On the side of the landing strip away from the sleeping village, Gord gathered cut brush and light fallen branches. There was enough light from the crescent moon, barely, for him to see ahead and to see behind far enough to know where he had made the last heap of brush and branches, and under each of the heaps he forced what dried old grass he could find by touch.

He was near to the far end of the runway, had two more heaps to make, when she came to him.

She was quiet out of the darkness and she had drifted close to him before he started up. She was close to him, and her dog was beside her.

‘Can I help?’

He was brusque. ‘Anything that seems dry, scrub and brush and leaves and old grass . . .’

‘For the aircraft?’

Bleak. ‘There won’t be a London omnibus coming this way . . . Christ, I’m sorry . . . to guide in the aircraft, if it comes.’

‘You don’t have to be sorry, not after what you have done for us.’

Savage. ‘Are they still talking round the future?’

‘It is only talk.’

‘Shallow bloody talk. All right, fine, I had them wrong. I thought they were bigger . . .’

‘Not fair, and it is all they have. It is all that is left to them . . . At the block, Jorge would have charged. You turned him. You made the big speech, “empty gestures” and “small victories”. He would have charged their guns. You have to be fair, Gord . . . You have to have charity for those who don’t have your strength, your purpose. He’s honest and good and brave, Jorge is, so what does it matter if he’s
shallow
? What is he left with, what are any of us left with? Please, Gord, try to be fair . . .’

He bent and his fingers groped for the loose wood and for cut brush, and his hands swept up the leaves that had been blown down by the winds and rain, and under the cut brush and the loose wood he reached for dried old grass. He made a great armful and carried it back to the line that he had made. He put his boot on the newest heap and carefully pressed it down, feeling the give, not so hard that he broke the branches and made noise. He touched her wrist. The rough fingers found her smaller and stubbed fingers.

‘Thank you, thank you for being with us.’

She said lightly, ‘Did I have the choice?’

‘Thank you for your charity and your kindness and your love.’

‘Speeches are the killer, silly boy. I don’t need speeches.’

‘When they had you . . .’

‘Leave it, Gord.’

‘When you were at Playa Grande . . .’

‘Please, no.’

‘When they held you at Playa Grande, when the interrogator had you . . .’

‘It is gone, it is behind. I survived.’

‘What did you learn of him, the interrogator?’

He heard the sharp breath drawn in. Her fingers were tight on his hand.

‘Does it matter, what happened before . . . ? It was evil. It was wrong because it was not in anger. If you hurt someone and you are cold, if it is just work and routine to hurt someone and then to kill them, that to me is evil. I could not see him at first because the light was always in my face and he was behind the light. He had a beautiful voice. A clean and gentle voice. A soothing voice, lovely, and each time that he drew breath then he hit me. That was the evil, the beauty of the voice and the way he hit me. When the attack started, when they came shouting for him, when they opened the door of the cell, then I saw his face. It was their mistake that I saw his face. He was a young man, younger than you. He had eyes that were green-blue and deep. He had hit me and punched me and not a hair on his head was disturbed, and he had a moustache that could have been drawn by one pen stroke. Before they opened the cell door, before the light came on him, they called his name from the corridor . . . I was supposed to tell people who are in danger to have courage. I had no courage. He broke the courage in me. If you hadn’t come, Gord, I would have told him everything that he wanted to know, I would have betrayed the people I loved . . . You called him Groucho, funny name, funny man, and he tried to tell you about the fear, and you shot him because he bent to the fear, as I would have bent to the fear. Would you have shot me, Gord . . . ? Would you have shot me, and justified it as
necessary
? Think of them, Gord, those that had the courage to join you, and then the courage to leave you and go home to be with their family, the Fireman, to be with their people, the Priest, to be with their friends, the little Street Boy. He will come for them, Gord, with his sweet silk voice . . . I don’t want to talk of it ever again . . . They called his name, his name was Benedicto . . . Where there is no evil, if there is such a place, I want to find it . . .’

He kissed her, gently, brushed his lips on her forehead.

It was past four. He ruffled the neck of her dog.

Gord made the last heap of brush and branches and dried old grass.

The Antonov came straight in over the Cays.

If his navigation was correct then he was headed over Long Coco Cay. The pilot thought he had seen the white surf of Gladden Spit in the moon darkness, but it was difficult for him to be certain, navigating alone and flying Echo Foxtrot alone. If he was right then the light ahead, intermittent, was the lamp on the Bugle Cays, and after the Bugle Cays would be Harvest Cay and then the Belize shoreline north of Rocky Point South. It was a chance that the pilot took, to cross Belize, but it saved him fuel. It was a chance because they had the Harrier jets at Belize and they had the big radar dishes and they had the links with the fuck
yanquis
. He was low down on the water, and when he went by the lamp on the Bugle Cays then he would be at level height with the top of the tower. If he found the strip, if he could put down, if there was no ground fire, if they were there, then the going back would be easier because he thought that the Englishman would help him with the navigation.

By the pilot’s estimate, he was on schedule.

The call came through. The radio was distorted. Hard for Arturo to hear the location message against the beat of the generator.

So tired. He wrote down the message. The tiredness ached in him. The map in front of him was blurred. He should have been sleeping, it should have been a lieutenant who monitored the radio, but a lieutenant might have let him sleep. He peered down onto the map. The symbols of the map and the contour lines rose to him and fell back. He ground the nails of his fingers into the palms of his hands. He squeezed the tiredness from his eyes. He made the mark.