The Fighting Man (1993) (58 page)

He relaxed from the stiffness of attention. A private funeral afterwards. He would be away as soon as was decent. The Country Attaché was waiting on him, back at the embassy, would be kicking his heels for a lift to Flores up in the Petén. It was slow going out of the base, and he was held up in the queue of the staff cars as the military police shouted and blew their whistles and waved their white-gloved hands to give priority for the ranking officers to join the traffic flow. There was a small crowd outside the base gates. The crowd stood with expressionless faces. He had his window down to get the cool light wind into the oven interior of the station wagon. They were just a rubbish crowd from the shanty town beside the garbage dump. It was, at first, a growl of a shout. He saw a man in the drab uniform of a fireman. The shout might have come from him. The shout grew, sneering and mocking the closed cars of the ranking officers. He saw an urchin street boy. The shout, building, was the name.

‘
Gord
, Gaspar . . .
Gord
, Gaspar . . .
Gord
, Gaspar . . .’

He threw open the door of the car. He piled into the crowd. The name beat in his ears. The face to the name was huge in his mind, what he had seen of the face below him, turning, then going into the trees. He had hold of the Fireman’s tunic. The face was never forgotten. The crowd was all around him. The name was with him each morning as he woke. The Street Boy stared him out.

He shouted, ‘He saved me, I saved him. Don’t fucking think I couldn’t have had him. He owes it all to me. I paid my debt. I don’t owe Gord anything. We’re level, me and Gordon Benjamin Brown. I turned away. He was dead without me helping him. Believe me, please, you have to believe me. I turned away to save him. I paid my debt . . .’

He was shouting into the silence around him as the military police pulled him back from the crowd.

He could no longer see the Fireman, nor the Street Boy.

It was only when Tom Schultz had reached La Aurora, met the Country Attaché, was changing into his flying gear, that he found that his wallet was gone from the inside pocket of his suit jacket.

He served, fast, an ace, and she was stretching and beaten. The lieutenant, codename Benedicto, had more time for tennis now. The game was not yet played long enough for him to have to manufacture the defeat, only the first set. He saw her pouted disappointment because she had not been into her stroke before the ball had passed her. He went to the back netting to retrieve a ball, to serve again. The court backed onto the car parking area that was set with trees and shrubs. He could see his own car, midnight blue, Peugeot 205 GTI. Her father had given him the car. The car shone in the morning sunshine. He bent to pick up the ball and when he straightened he saw the figure of the man beside his car, the back of the man, and the man walked away and the lieutenant did not see his face.

After they had been to the grave, each second Friday in the month, they went to the café in the Campeche quarter at the south end of the Old City and the radio played Deep South jazz.

They would talk of the war and talk of the march and talk of the battles at Playa Grande and Nebaj and at Santa Cruz del Quiché. Just the three of them, talking and tapping their feet and drumming their fingers to the jazz music. The Indians did not come with them to the café in the Campeche quarter.
He
was not mentioned when they talked of the war and the march and the battles. They did not feel the need to talk of him, as if he had never been amongst them. It was good coffee, and it could be made to last until the dregs were stone cold, and then they would peck in their pockets for small change and linger with a second cup until it was the middle of the day and the table was required for eating.

When the news came on, after the jazz music, it was time for them to leave. As the news bulletin started, the owner of the café was at their backs, no respect, barking for them to be gone. They stood and they drained the cups the final time. It was after the sugar harvest production figures, and after the feature on the record number of visiting Mexican tourists. Jorge heard the name. The radio was always turned loud to beat the coughing pandemonium of the old buses on the street. He heard the name of the colonel and he heard the detail of the funeral. He broke from them. He wanted only to be back in the dim loneliness of the apartment he had shared with his father. The radio told of the visit to Havana of the Polish trade minister and his promise to buy more bananas . . .

They parted.

The one drove a cab, and counted himself lucky to have that work, and the other swept the floors of a hospital.

He would see them in a month.

Jorge crossed the street and climbed the stairs. He went into the apartment. He switched on the fan and he pushed aside the plates on the table from his breakfast and from his meal the night before . . . his eyes misted.

A cockroach scurried on the tiled floor.

His eyes were filled with the tears . . . The man was in his mind, the man who was not talked of, as if he had never been amongst them.

A cockroach ran from him and was ignored.

Jorge went into the bedroom and he knelt. He knelt beside the big bed with the iron frame and the sunken mattress that was stripped of sheets. He knelt below the magazine photograph of the stern jowl face of Leonid Brezhnev and against his arm was the low table on which was the mounted photograph of the young men smiling and holding the automatic rifles.

‘. . . I will watch for you. Fire with fire . . . Take a fighting man . . .’

About the Author

Gerald Seymour spent fifteen years as an international television news reporter with ITN, covering Vietnam and the Middle East, and specialising in the subject of terrorism across the world. Seymour was on the streets of Londonderry on the afternoon of Bloody Sunday, and was a witness to the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.

Gerald Seymour is now a full-time writer, and six of his novels have been filmed for television in the UK and US. THE FIGHTING MAN is his fourteenth novel.

For more information about Gerald Seymour and his books, visit his Facebook page at

www.facebook.com/GeraldSeymourAuthor

Also By Gerald Seymour

Harry’s Game

The Glory Boys

Kingfisher

Red Fox

The Contract

Archangel

In Honour Bound

Field of Blood

A Song in the Morning

At Close Quarters

Home Run

Condition Black

The Journeyman Tailor

The Fighting Man

The Heart of Danger

Killing Ground

The Waiting Time

A Line in the Sand

Holding the Zero

The Untouchable

Traitor’s Kiss

The Unknown Soldier

Rat Run

The Walking Dead

Timebomb

The Collaborator

The Dealer and the Dead

A Deniable Death

The Outsiders

The Corporal’s Wife

Have You Read . . . ?

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HARRY’S GAME

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THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER

In the depths of the Arabian Desert, American and British counter-terrorism experts are desperately searching for one man. If they fail to find him, he will re-emerge in a teeming western city, carrying only a suitcase that will wreak havoc and devastation when detonated.

THE WAITING TIME

On a winter’s night at the height of the Cold War, in a small East German town, a young man is killed by the secret police. All the witnesses are terrorised into silence. But Tracey Barnes heard the shot that ended her lover’s life, and she will wait for as long as it takes until there arises the opportunity for revenge.