The Perfect Soldier (2 page)

BOOK ONE

Counter-Measures

Once a designer has a concept for his mine, he must immediately consider how to include protection against general counter-measures to be used against it. The need to make a mine difficult to see, detect, and counter is a vital element in the design process, having a significant effect on the eventual form which the mine takes.

L
T
.-C
OL
. C. E. E. S
LOAN

Mine Warfare on Land

CHAPTER ONE

Molly Jordan awoke early, slipping out of bed, careful not to disturb her sleeping husband. Frost had crusted the grass in the shadows beyond the kitchen window, and she shivered in the cold dawn light, standing in her track suit by the sink, waiting for the kettle to boil. Friends of hers who also jogged first thing made a point of running on an empty stomach. They had complicated views about lactic acid and energy uptakes but for Molly none of it made any sense. Without a cup of tea, she was useless.

Half an hour later she was a mile down the lane, running easily, her breath clouding in the still morning air. The sky was an icy, cloudless blue, the sun still low over the gleaming wetlands that stretched away towards the North Sea. At the end of the lane there was a wooden picket gate, centuries old, and she slipped through it, the pitted iron of the latch cold to her touch, picking up her rhythm again, following the path around the first of the half-dozen fields she’d skirt before picking up another road and circling back towards the cottage.

She ran every morning now, a series of ever-longer loops around the village. Those same friends who’d so blinded her with science had also warned her about how addictive the running would become, and they’d been right. Already, this was the most precious hour of her day, a space that was exclusively hers, a privacy that was all the more complete
because it was fenced in by sheer physical effort. At first, her targets had been modest. A couple of miles with rests whenever she felt like it. But sooner than she’d dreamed possible she was lengthening her step, quickening her pace, drawing on the kind of depthless energy she couldn’t remember since childhood.

She’d begun running the day after James left for Africa. Now, just nine weeks later, she was managing six miles a morning. After Christmas, she’d try and ease it up to double figures. And by May, God willing, she’d be joining the others in Greenwich Park, warming up for her first London marathon. Plenty of women her age did it. At forty-seven, you could kid yourself that anything was possible.

She ran through a puddle, scattering shards of ice, thinking of Giles, back in bed. As ever, he’d made it easy for her. Whereas other husbands might have joked about delayed adolescence or wishful thinking, he’d taken a real interest. He never pretended to share her passion, and she wasn’t even sure if he understood why she did it, but he was supportive and proud of her and when she got back in the mornings, five minutes either side of eight o’clock, a fresh pot of tea was always brewing.

Lately, she knew, he’d been under more pressure than usual. He’d always worked in the City, an underwriter at Lloyd’s, but the last year or so it seemed that the place had been in a state of permanent crisis. The most sensational stuff had been in the papers – terrible problems with certain kinds of insurance, Lloyds Names facing huge losses – but whenever she’d brought the issue up, asking him exactly what had gone wrong, he’d told her not to worry. The issues were complex. Even the guys at the top were bemused. One way or another it would all sort itself out.

Something in his voice warned her not to push it any
further and so she hadn’t but recently she’d begun to wonder whether she shouldn’t insist on sharing just a little of his burden. His job, after all, had brought them everything they had – the cottage, Giles’s precious yacht, the surprise trips to Covent Garden and La Scala, the occasional holidays in the Far East – and she’d become increasingly aware of just how much she’d taken it all for granted. Marriage to Giles had been never less than perfect, the biggest duvet in the world. It had made her feel warm, and secure, and deeply happy. In a world that could be anything but kind, she knew she owed him everything.

When she got back to the cottage, Giles was sitting in his dressing gown at the kitchen table. The Sunday papers lay before him, unopened. He looked up as she came in. When she bent to kiss him, she realised he was crying. She stared at him for a moment, shocked, then put her arms around him. He was a tall, spare, bony man with a weathered, outdoor face and thinning ginger hair. She’d never seen him cry in her life. Her hand closed over his. His skin was icy to the touch.

‘What’s the matter?’ she said quietly. ‘What’s happened?’

He looked up at her. His eyes were bloodshot.

‘On Armistice Day,’ he said numbly. ‘Can you believe that?’

She shook her head, confused now. The Armistice Day service started in the parish church at 10.45. As chairman of the local Poppy Appeal fund, Giles would be reading the lesson. He’d done it last year, too. Beautifully.

‘My love …’ She held him while he blew his nose. She could feel him shaking through the thin silk of the dressing gown. ‘What is it?’

She tried to ease his head round, coax an answer, but he stood up and pushed the chair away from the table, walking
across the kitchen, reaching blindly for the kettle. He held it under the tap but it was full already. She watched him for a moment then perched herself on the edge of the table, mopping the sweat from her face with a towel from the back of the chair. Giles was still holding the kettle, staring at the condensation on the window.

‘Someone phoned,’ he said at last.

‘Who?’

‘Someone from the aid people.’

For the first time, she began to understand.

‘You mean James’s people? Terra Sancta?’

‘Yes.’

‘About James?’

‘Yes.’

She was back on her feet now, the towel knotting in her hands.

‘And what did they say? Why did they phone?’

He shook his head, unable to answer, and she crossed the kitchen, taking the kettle away from him, turning him round, making him face her.

‘Giles, tell me. What did they say? Has he had an accident?’ He nodded, head down. ‘And has he been hurt?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is it worse than that? Worse than hurt?’

He lifted his head and stared at her for a long time. Then he began to shake again, the tears pouring down his face, all control gone. She held him tightly, sensing the worst already, thinking unaccountably of the puddle and the skidding shards of ice. The answer to her question, when it came, barely registered.

‘He’s dead,’ he whispered. ‘They told me James is dead.’

*

At Giles’s insistence, they still went to the Armistice Day service. St Michael’s, Thorpe-le-Soken, lies in the middle of the village, a sturdy brick-and-flint parish church surrounded by ivy-encrusted gravestones.

Molly and Giles were amongst the last to arrive. Inside, the church was full. Two seats were waiting for them in a pew near the front. Molly followed her husband up the blue-carpeted aisle, acknowledging the nods, and smiles, and odd whispered greetings. They knew these people. They’d lived amongst them most of their lives. Yet, in a way she didn’t understand, they’d already become strangers, faces from a life to which she felt she no longer belonged.

She knelt quietly beside her husband, aware of him sitting stiffly on the wooden pew. When she looked up at him, reaching for his hand, he barely acknowledged her. His face had become a mask, taut, emotionless, drained of all colour, and when the time came for him to mount the steps to the lectern and read the lesson, she barely recognised the voice, how thin it had become, and how uncertain.

‘To everything there is a season
…’ he read,
‘a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted.’

She let the phrases roll over her, utterly meaningless, utterly irrelevant. Their little craft had capsized, she knew it, and what mattered now was to cling on to the memories that would keep them both afloat. James as a child, the way he’d totter from one room to the next, always on the move, pushing the little wheeled cart his granny had given him. James paddling in the sea, that first year they’d taken the beach hut at Frinton, Giles in his straw hat and sandals squatting beside him, explaining how to skim stones. And James years later, tall, handsome, noisy, appearing at the door one glorious July morning, his arm around a girl called
Charlie. Charlie was extremely pretty. She had green nail varnish and a nose stud. James had announced they were off to Morocco.

‘… a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence and a time to speak. A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.’

Giles finished the lesson, paused a moment, then turned towards the altar and bowed his head before returning to the pew. Molly watched him, her vision a blur. The steps to the altar were flanked by the old men from the British Legion with their medals and their berets and their drooping flags. They stood erect, true believers, waiting for the bell to toll eleven o’clock. Giles had arranged for a bugler, a local boy, to sound the Last Post, and when the time came the youth stepped forward and lifted the bugle to his lips, signalling the end of the two minutes’ silence. As he did so, Molly felt a movement beside her. Giles fumbled for a handkerchief, doing his best to confect a heavy cold. Then he stepped out of the pew and hurried away towards the door at the back of the church. Molly listened to his footsteps on the flagstones, the hollow clang of the heavy iron latch, and as the last notes died in the big old church she closed her eyes, and bowed her head, utterly certain of what she must do. One of them, at least, must hang together, stay strong. It was the very least they owed their son.

Outside, the service over, Molly picked her way through the departing congregation, moving from group to group, exchanging greetings, kissing cheeks, explaining that Giles had a stomach upset, giving not the slightest indication that anything else might be wrong. Soon enough, she knew, she’d have to share the news about James. Then there’d be people at her door, voices on the phone, letters on the mat, a swamp of consolation. But for now, she didn’t want any of that. She
wanted time. She wanted privacy. Today, for just a few brief hours, James belonged to no one else but her.

She walked home alone, refusing the offer of a lift. In the lane outside the cottage a car was parked, a battered Ford Escort. Curious, she peered inside. Open on the back seat was a road atlas and a scribbled set of instructions. Strangers, she thought. Up from London.

She let herself into the cottage. A man and a woman were sitting at the kitchen table. They each had a cup of coffee and the woman was reading the back page of the
Sunday Telegraph
. As soon as they saw her, they both stood up.

Molly looked blank.

‘Can I help you …?’ she began.

The man stepped forward. He was young, mid-twenties, with a round, pink face and a tiny pair of thick pebble glasses. Under the Berghaus anorak she could see a hand-knitted sweater and a denim shirt, open at the neck.

‘Your husband let us in …’ the young man was saying. ‘He’s gone upstairs.’

‘Is he all right?’

The couple exchanged glances. The girl was a year or two younger than her companion. She had medium-length blonde hair and a warm smile. She held out her hand.

‘My name’s Liz,’ she said, ‘and this is Robbie. He works for Terra Sancta.’

Robbie nodded, offering his own handshake.

‘I’ve come to say how sorry we are. If there’s anything—’ He broke off, glancing towards the open door that led to the stairs. ‘I think your husband’s in a bit of a state. Understandably, of course. Maybe you want to …’

Molly found herself shaking her head.

‘No,’ she said, beginning to unbutton her coat, inviting
them both to sit down again. They did so, the girl eyeing the pile of discarded running gear beside the Aga.

‘Who does the jogging?’ she said brightly.

‘Me.’

‘Really …?’ She lapsed back into silence, pursuing the thought no further. Robbie cleared his throat, visibly uncomfortable.

‘We drove down as soon as we heard,’ he said at last. ‘Mrs Jordan, it’s awful news. I can’t …’ He made a circling gesture with his hands. ‘It’s just …’

Molly was at the Aga now, testing the temperature of the kettle, marvelling at her own composure.

‘You know what happened?’ she said.

‘No, not really, not the details.’

‘But you can tell me something, surely …’ She turned round. ‘People don’t just die.’

‘No, of course not.’

‘Then …’ she paused, concentrating on pouring the hot water over the coffee grounds, ‘tell me whatever you know.’

The girl looked at Robbie. Robbie shifted in his seat. Molly joined them at the table.

‘Africa’s full of mines,’ he said at last. ‘You probably knew that.’

‘Yes,’ Molly nodded, ‘James mentioned them. In his letters.’

‘Yes, well …’ Robbie frowned, ‘it seems he stood on one.’

‘And it killed him?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid it did.’

Molly lifted the cup to her lips, saying nothing. Somehow she’d assumed that James had died in some kind of road accident. God knows, it might even have been his fault. He’d always driven like a maniac. But this was very different. Getting killed by a mine was an act of someone else’s violence. She studied Robbie over the rim of the cup.

‘So was he killed outright?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Did it kill him at once? This mine? Bang? Just like that? Or did he … did it … take longer?’

‘I’m …’ Robbie hesitated. ‘Mrs Jordan, in all honesty I can’t say.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I don’t know. Communications with Angola aren’t all they could be. So far we’ve just got the bare bones.’ He bit his lip at once, colouring at the phrase. Molly barely noticed.

‘This mine … where did it come from? Who …’ she shrugged, ‘left it there in the first place?’

‘Again, I’m sorry, I don’t know.’

‘But you will, you will know, someone’ll tell you, surely.’

‘Yes, oh yes.’ Robbie was nodding now, vigorous, positive. ‘And as soon as I hear anything, I’ll be back, I promise. In the meantime, we just came to say … you know …’

Molly sipped at the coffee, her eyes not leaving his face.

‘Tell me what you do,’ she said, ‘in this organisation of yours.’

‘I’m the press officer. I deal with the media.’

‘And Liz?’