The Fighting Man (1993) (6 page)

The bodies were carried into the open plaza in front of the whitewashed church. A Civil Patroller was at each end of the long and bent poles, taking the weight on his shoulder.

Ten years earlier Colonel Arturo, then a major, had commanded the assault company of the Kaibiles that had taken the former village of Acul.

The ankles and the wrists of the two
subversivos
had been knotted together with rope, and the poles had been threaded under them so that the bodies hung down and swayed in the motion of the carrying and the heads that were mud-smeared and bloodstained rolled with the movement.

Colonel Arturo had been decorated by the President of the Republic for the assault on the former village of Acul. He wore the ribbon of the medal, with others, on his camouflage combat tunic.

The bodies were dropped in front of him. He told the captain that all the villagers should be brought to the plaza, compulsory. He said that the bodies should be stripped naked. It was necessary to make a show.

He had heard, that morning, of the death of the old whore Ramírez in the communist nest that was Havana. He had thought it would be of interest to him to see for himself how the news was accepted in the village . . . A hard battle it had been, casualties in his company, and the old whore Ramírez had organized good defence lines . . . it had been the air strike that had finished the resistance . . . no prisoners surviving . . . he could remember how he had cursed when he had found finally that the old whore Ramírez was not amongst the men herded into the church of the former village of Acul . . . there had been the smell when the fire had taken hold in the church, the smell was still with him.

He could see across the plaza that the priest had come to stand and watch him, challenge him, surrounded by women and condemning him with silence. He hated the priests. The villagers were pushed forward by the Civil Patrollers. They should come close to the bodies, spit upon them, laugh at them. Because the bodies were naked he could see the way that the ribcages jutted. They were starved up there in the mountains. Colonel Arturo knew all the textbooks, he knew about denying the fish the freedom of the sea.

Colonel Arturo stood on a wooden box. He was protected by the guns of his escort.

‘They are the kind of scum that destroys your crops or steals what you have grown. They bring violence to your village. They make life bad for you. Show what you think of them . . .’

He stared out at their faces. Dirty sub-human faces. There were pigs and dogs searching for food scraps among the homes behind the crowd. Expressionless faces gazing back at him. He saw the defiance of the priest. When the order was shouted to them, then more of the villagers came forward in file and ritually spat upon the bodies. He asked the captain, low voice. What would they think of the death of the old whore Ramírez? The captain shrugged. How would he know? Who would tell him? Colonel Arturo felt a small sense of failure and that was rare for him.

Later the bodies would be taken down to near the river and buried. They would be buried not from respect, but in shallow graves that were far enough down for the dogs and pigs to be unable to maul the remains.

His failure was that he had learned nothing of what they thought of the death of a man in Old Havana.

And he thought that he would learn nothing more in the two hours that he would be in the Model Village before the helicopter returned to ferry him back to Guatemala City.

They would be late for their table and that didn’t please him.

Benny had sat at the bar for more than twenty minutes now, was well down on his second gin, knew none of the older men around him, and had little to do but fidget and wait. Benny came to London twice a year from the Adventure Training School in mid-Wales that he owned with the bank manager, and each time that he came he alternated with Sebastian in paying for lunch at their mutual watering hole. It was a place that was not mentioned outside the company of members, an address that was never written down and a telephone number that was unrecorded. They were mostly old-timers who gathered in the middle of the day at the Special Forces Club, veterans nostalgic for the North African campaign or the Malayan Emergency . . . Sebastian was sitting near the window, huddled with a chappie who looked short of a bath and a shave and a haircut and a visit to a tailor. Benny had come in, prompt to the minute for the schedule, seen Sebastian in company and been casually waved away. Strange bloody company that Sebastian was standing him up for, and the chappie even had a plastic dustbin bag, that was filled and knotted at the top, under his legs. He glanced at the barman, gestured with his eyes towards the man with Sebastian, and there was a wry smile, and then a raised thumb that said, No call for panic, vetting is positive. He relaxed, eavesdropped on haphazard conversation. Silly of him, to have considered that an ‘undesirable’ would have made it across the doormat in the hall. The talk around Benny was the same as half a year before, and half a year before that. The talk didn’t change . . . What should be done in Ulster. What should not be done in Bosnia. What should have been done in Iraq. What had been done in the Falklands . . . About bloody time. Sebastian on his feet, and shaking the chappie’s hand, and seeming to wish him well. Benny turned to the barman, ordered the Campari soda that was Sebastian’s drink. Too right, about bloody time. He saw the chappie shamble out through the door.

‘Sorry about that.’

‘Charitable work? Bringing tramps in off the street?’ Benny grinned.

‘Actually, no. I don’t suppose you knew who it was . . . ?’

‘I pass.’

Sebastian, whom Benny thought quite the funniest man that he knew, had no humour just then. Rather bloody stern-faced. ‘After your time, but before I came out. Poor smell it left at the time. If he hadn’t been so pig-headed . . .’

Benny queried, ‘Not the fellow who . . . ?’

‘ “Bullshit Brown”, the very same. Not much of a label for a guy to be lumbered with. “Bullshit”. I don’t mind it being known, but I fought that geriatric committee here to keep his membership . . .’

‘I heard it didn’t have to happen.’

Sebastian, retired fourteen months back with the substantive rank of major, now a security adviser to any sheik or emir or prince with a hefty enough cheque book, snorted. ‘All he had to do was apologize, grovel for a few minutes, would have been forgotten. Obstinate beggar, he wouldn’t. Did you know that he was even in for a medal, gallantry, not the “stand and stare” brigade. The citation was torn up. To put it mildly, he wasn’t well used.’

Benny called for another gin, and a second Campari soda. ‘So, what was the germ of the heart to heart?’

‘Bit bloody odd really . . .’

‘What?’

‘Came to me because I used to be in Belize, last posting, well you know that . . . I was up on the Guatemala border. Mossies, malaria, the shits day and night, awful place. He wanted to talk about Guatemala . . .’

They ordered. They would be called when the table was ready.

‘What the hell for, Guatemala?’

Sebastian grimaced. ‘Wanted a run-down, capability of the Guatemalan armed forces.’

‘And . . . ?’

‘I gave it him . . . best fighting outfit in Central America, probably better than anything in Latin America. Very tough, quite ruthless, heavy motivation. We took them seriously enough when we thought they might come into Belize. Not that well equipped, but just ruthless. I did my best to warn him off. You see, he wasn’t chattering about going out there and advising, lecturing, the government forces. Too bloody easy for “Bullshit”. He was talking about joining up with some guerrilla group. I gave it him straight, I said he was out of his tiny mind . . . They really are very good, the Guatemalans, and arrogant. They’ve just about won their little war and they got that far with no American help, hence conceit. I warned him, but I don’t think he was listening by then. It’s the problem of “Bullshit’s” life, never knew when to step back. I told him that the Guatemalan army would mince any little group with holes in their trousers. He told me to listen to the radio . . .’

Their table was ready. A waiter gestured for them to follow him.

Benny drained his glass, spluttered on the gin. ‘It was true, wasn’t it? Brown told that Yank jerk he was talking bullshit?’

‘Too true, but brigadier generals don’t exactly like that sort of chat . . . So, how’s the old world treating you?’

‘Can’t complain . . .’

They headed for the dining room.

‘. . . poor old Brown.’

‘Forget him. If he goes into Guatemala, within a month he’ll be dead. Worse than dead would be captured. Best to forget him. I’d give him a month, maximum, not a week or a day or an hour longer. If he’s lucky, dead . . .’

The helicopter that had swooped low over the former village was long gone.

The high grass that had been beaten down by the rotors stood erect again.

The former village was a place of sadness and avoided by the Ixil people now housed in the Model Village of Acul. Ten years since the battle, and the grass had grown high, and the weed had flourished, and the small maize fields that had been worked by the women were lost to sight. The remnants of the former village would have been clearer from the air, but at ground level, if a man had tried to push his way through the vegetation, there would have been little to see that showed what had once been home for a thousand people. The roads of the village, where the pigs had grubbed along with the dogs and hens and ducks and turkeys, were gone under the undergrowth’s advance. The plaza in the heart of the former village, where the men had played the marimba on fiesta evenings, was buried by dense green foliage.

The soldiers and the Civil Patrollers would have chased away the people if they had tried to come back to the former village.

It was not necessary . . .

The church, that had been of white adobe, remained, high outer walls rising above the sprouting trees and bushes of flowers and steepling grass. The roof was gone but the tower that had held the bell was still in place. The outer walls and the tower, daubed each year in white under the supervision of the Father from the Jesuit order, were stained black from the fire that had destroyed the church. Nearby, close to the back entrance, visible neither from the ground nor the air, was the head of the well. It was because of the well, and what it held, that the men and women who had survived the battle of ten years before would not return to their former village. It was into the well that the burned bodies from the church had been tipped. The well shaft was dug too deep for the living to retrieve the dead, and the soldiers anyway would not have permitted it.

Across the open space from the scorched front facade of the church was the shape of a compact building that had been constructed of concrete blocks around an inner courtyard. The building had been destroyed by explosives and the vines that were alive with a mass of rich red flowers obscured most of the inner and outer walls. The building had been the general purpose and hardware store to the former village of Acul, once the home of a
Ladino
of mixed race, and of his wife who was trained in nursing, and of his daughter, and of his son who was Rodolfo Jorge Ramírez. Where the walls could be seen, below the height of where the windows had been, the spatter of the bullet marks was visible. The building had been the last strongpoint in the former village.

Surrounding the village, where they would have been seen by the passenger in the low-flying helicopter, were the defence ditches, now bedded with green . . . Only one path still led to the former village, and it came close to the defence ditches on the south side. The path was clearly trodden but seemed to end abruptly in the wilderness growth. Overgrown now and overwhelmed were the old graves. On one grave, covered over by the grass and undergrowth, fresh-picked flowers had been placed, and when those died more flowers would be brought, and laid where they would be seen neither from the ground nor the air.

A place of death, and of memories.

A place of silence after the low-flying helicopter had powered away, a place of close-kept secrets.

Gord paid off the taxi and walked into the terminal.

Before looking for them he went into the lavatories and again rinsed the rawness of his knuckles in a basin filled with water as hot as he could bear it. An hour earlier he had scrubbed his fists in the toilets of a pub in central London.

He wiped his hands, winced at the keen pain.

They had told him of the man they had been to see in London, and how they had been mocked. They had told him, phrasing with care the story, of the sneers of the man who sold mercenary contracts. They had told him of the way they had been called back, dogs to heel, to be given a name and an address. Gord understood. Another bastard having fun with them, and getting amusement from sending the flotsam trio on the goose chase to Scotland, and them taking the train north because it was the last chance to avoid failure. They had told him enough . . . He had gone to the office of a man who placed mercenaries where there was a bid and a percentage . . . It was nineteen months since the dismissed colour sergeant of 2 Para had tracked him and propositioned him and been told to go put his tongue up his arse. Gord understood. They had been sent to Scotland because the man had been certain enough that they would have been sent packing, double fast. Big laugh . . . He had smashed the office, spilled and mixed the files, and he had beaten the face of the one-time colour sergeant and taken the grin from it.