Read The Perfect Soldier Online
Authors: Graham Hurley
Christianne was halfway up the hall. Back in the bedroom, Molly watched her easing the dollar bills from Llewelyn’s grasp. She put the question again, already looking for Christianne’s cases. She remembered seeing them before. She thought they might be beside the wardrobe in the corner.
Christianne was shaking a thermometer. When the mercury had returned to normal, she slid it into Llewelyn’s mouth.
‘He’ll need a hospital bed,’ she said. ‘You should get someone to talk to Luanda before you arrive.’
*
After the soldiers had searched McFaul, finding the little video-cassette he’d buttoned into the pocket of his shirt, they pushed him back across the river. A line of waiting troops on the river bank watched curiously as McFaul splashed through the shallows towards them. The men behind him included the soldier with the broken teeth and McFaul had spent long enough in uniform to know what would happen next. With luck, they’d simply shoot him. The alternative could take far longer.
Out of the water, down by the camp, they marched him along the bank. Someone had thrown blankets over the bodies beside the torn remains of the dinghy. McFaul tried not to look at the carnage but when he paused for breath, trying to ease a searing pain in his leg, the soldiers kicked him onwards. Finally, beside an anthill, they pulled him to a halt. The men circled round, eyeing him the way you’d look at a good meal. The soldier with the broken teeth had taken his shirt off. Round his neck he wore a gold crucifix and McFaul fixed his eyes on it, knowing that was one of the ways you were supposed to cope. Shut your mind off, they always said. Concentrate on something real, something you can see. Prise away your mind from your body. Tell yourself it isn’t hurting.
The first blows took him by surprise. They came from nowhere, a savage explosion of pain in his kidneys. McFaul gasped, his elbows still tied behind his back, and he began to fall forward, his legs giving way. The soldier with the broken teeth took a tiny step backwards, measuring his distance, and a second before the darkness came McFaul saw the boot rising to meet him, still dimpled with water from the river.
*
The unmarked Hercules made two low passes over Muengo before banking steeply beyond the river and side-slipping into the tiny strip. Molly watched it from the front of the Terra Sancta Land Rover, Bennie wedged in beside her. The pilot touched down, throwing the props into reverse, and the big plane shuddered to a halt in a cloud of dust.
Before it began to move again, taxiing back towards them, Peterson was out of the Land Rover, striding towards the semi-circle of army trucks. There were knots of UNITA troops waiting beside the trucks, and as the plane approached they turned their backs, covering their ears against the high-pitched whine of the turbo-props. The plane came to a stop for a second time, the pilot cutting the engines, and the UNITA soldiers signalled impatiently at the cockpit, wanting the landing ramp at the rear to be lowered. Katilo’s price for the evacuation was a full consignment of supplies – food, fuel, alcohol, drugs – and Molly watched as the ramp finally came down and the soldiers clambered eagerly into the belly of the plane.
The men reappeared in seconds, bent double under huge sacks of rice. The army trucks bumped towards them across the grass, ribboned in black exhaust smoke. Bennie watched the men on the backs of the trucks sweating under the first sacks.
‘Thieving bastards,’ he muttered cheerfully.
Molly said nothing. She’d spent the last half-hour telling Peterson about Christianne. They had to go back and find her. There was no alternative. Alone in Muengo, she simply wouldn’t survive. Peterson had agreed, cursing the girl’s selfishness, and Molly had sensed that he somehow took her decision personally. He’d pledged to get Muengo’s aid community safely back to Luanda. His commitment to the evacuation was total. Christianne’s determination to stay was
the purest folly. By choosing to remain behind, she’d wrecked his plans.
Robbie Cunningham had joined Peterson now. Together, they were talking to one of the aircrew. The man was looking at his watch and Molly saw Robbie shrugging. Work at the back of the plane had slowed. A couple of the soldiers were levering the tops from a line of wooden boxes, and others were on their hands and knees beside the truck, investigating the contents of the boxes. Robbie went over to them, trying to start a conversation, but the soldiers ignored him and after a while he gave up. These were the guys in charge. Arguments could end with a bullet.
Bennie was rolling a cigarette. Before he’d left he’d given Christianne the key to the schoolhouse. She was to help herself to anything she wanted. The stuff was hers for the asking. Molly had thought of asking him what a twenty-nine-year-old French nurse would do with several tons of de-mining equipment but in the end she hadn’t bothered. Bennie’s world had narrowed to the prospect of a pint or two in his Aldershot local. What happened to anyone else no longer mattered.
Molly shuddered, thinking of McFaul again, where he might have got to, what could possibly have happened. He was a strange man, stranger than anyone else she’d ever met. There was a silence about him, a deadness, that unnerved her. Yet listening to Bennie’s stories, trying to imagine the life he’d led, she could understand only too well the scars he must be carrying. Not simply flesh and blood – his face, his legs – but inside, too.
Bennie began to laugh. A woman from the city was running across the airstrip. She had a child under each arm. They were stick-thin, their spindly legs trailing behind them. The aircrew were still deep in conversation with Peterson. The men turned to stare at her.
‘What’s she doing?’
‘She wants them to take the kids to Luanda. Fuck knows how she got past the road-block.’
Molly nodded. A line of rebel soldiers guarded the road to the airstrip. When the convoy had passed through, there were already dozens of women at the roadside, squatting in the dirt, surrounded by children. At the time Molly had wondered what they were after. Now she knew. Any escape route. Anything to spare the kids the days and nights to come.
‘What happens to them in Luanda?’
‘They beg. Like every other fucker.’
‘No parents? No relations?’
‘Bugger all. Literally. Poor little sods.’
Molly nodded again, pursuing the conversation no further. Talking to Bennie was one of the most depressing experiences she’d ever had, a glimpse of what happened if you always assumed the worst. Inside, where it mattered, the man had caved in. She thought of McFaul again, and Christianne, and she smiled. Strength, she thought. And guts. And a refusal to go along with the rest of the world. Maybe the girl had been right to stay. Maybe Muengo was where anyone half-decent belonged. No matter what the cost. No matter what the consequences.
Peterson was signalling to one of the rebel soldiers. The woman and her kids were disappearing into the belly of the plane. The soldier nodded and sauntered after them. Seconds later, he was driving them back down the ramp, the woman flailing at him with her fists. Molly could hear her screaming, rage not pain, and she got out of the Land Rover, determined to do something about it.
Peterson met her halfway.
‘They’ve been talking to the MSF people,’ he said at once. ‘On the radio.’
‘Who have?’
‘The aircrew. It seems Christianne has resigned.’
Molly stared at him. The woman with the two children was being marched back to the road-block at gunpoint. The soldiers involved were laughing.
‘Resigned? When?’
‘Yesterday. Through the Red Cross circuit.’ He paused, frowning. ‘Extraordinary no one mentioned it. I might have been able to change her mind.’
Molly was still watching the woman with the two kids. One of the soldiers was prodding her with his rifle, making her run. The kids were crying.
‘I doubt it,’ she said quietly.
McFaul was barely conscious when he heard the Hercules. Sprawled in the dirt, he tried to look up, shielding his eyes from the sun, waiting for the pain to resolve itself. For the moment, everything hurt. His hands began to explore his face, his fingers swollen and bruised where he’d tried to protect himself. The blood on his face had scabbed in the hot sun and when he tried to swallow, his tongue snagged jagged fragments of teeth, debris from the beating. The plane was louder now, almost overhead, and he lifted a limp arm, not knowing quite why. For a split-second, he felt a shadow pass then the whine of the turbo-props began to recede, and he lay still again, resigned to the heat and the pain. Ants, he thought vaguely. Everywhere.
Durability in a mine, comprising longevity and toughness, is a vital design objective. The mine must, above all, be waterproof to repel ground moisture, rain, dew, and snow. In alternative, extreme climes it may have to withstand great heat, or icy cold too. Whatever may be envisaged, the mine must not disintegrate or collapse and has to remain intact to function at the right moment.
L
T
.-C
OL
. C. E. E. S
LOAN
Mine Warfare on Land
Molly Jordan sat at a table outside the Café Arcadia, waiting for Robbie Cunningham. It was dark now, nearly eight o’clock, and across the water she could see the lights of the
Ilha
, the spit of land that enfolded Luanda’s lagoon. The
Ilha
was the playground for the city’s rich and poor, good pickings for the legions of homeless kids, smart beachside cafés for the journalists, and mercenaries, and
empresarios
who fed off Angola’s war. Molly had spent most of the afternoon there, listening to Larry Giddings’s dry analysis of exactly where the country had gone wrong. The foreigners are the real problem, he’d told her. Charter a couple of 747s, ship them all out, and the
povo
, the people, could start to organise themselves a few surprises. Like peace. And clean water. And an inflation rate a little lower than 2,500 per cent a year.
Molly reached for her coffee. She’d been back in Luanda for a couple of days now, fending off enquiries from the embassy. She’d been met at the airport as the ambassador had promised, a friendly young second secretary in a rumpled white suit, and when she’d politely turned down the offer of a lift back to town he’d taken her to one side and given her the TAP ticket and explained that the flight would be leaving at noon next day. TAP, he said, had a reputation for punctuality. It would be as well to check in early.
Molly had slipped the ticket into her bag, thanking him for the trouble he’d taken, telling him that she’d decided to
stay a little longer. There were matters she’d yet to attend to, loose ends she needed to tie up. When he pressed her for details, she’d declined to elaborate. She was, she pointed out, an independent woman. She had no deadlines to meet, no responsibilities to consider. Terra Sancta had guaranteed her board and lodging and what little money she had would doubtless see her through. The way she’d put it – firm, courteous, self-confident – had surprised her and when the young diplomat finally beat a retreat to the embassy Frontera parked in the sunshine outside, she’d felt an extraordinary sense of release. My life. My decisions. My future.
A waiter appeared and chased away the kids beside the pavement table. Robbie had warned her about the kids. Eating in the open air was a great idea but they’d be pestering you all night, offering to wash your car, or guard your moped, or help you finish the finger-shaped bread rolls that came with the steaming bowls of garlic-scented fish soup. Molly had been amused by the warning. Seven days in Muengo had revised her ideas about more or less everything, charity included, and she’d already distributed the scoops of rice abandoned on an adjoining table. Now, the waiter back inside the café, the kids were circling again. None of them looked older than nine. One had a paper plate balanced on his head. Another wore a long, heavy overcoat, several sizes too big. The rest were barefoot in ragged shorts and dirty T-shirts. One of the T-shirts sported a line of penguins, a motif Molly recognised from an old Mothercare catalogue, and through the tear beneath one armpit, Molly could count the child’s ribs.
Robbie arrived minutes later, sinking wearily into the empty chair beside her and ordering a beer. Since their return from Muengo, he’d been working non-stop, trying to dam a flood of telexes chattering out of Terra Sancta headquarters
in Winchester. Evidently the charity faced a crisis of its own in Angola. Their response to the country’s obvious needs had been judged inadequate. There was gossip amongst sister charities about poorly thought-out aid plans and lousy fieldwork, and employees spending half their days on the beach. The Angola operation was a fiasco and signing up to Todd Llewelyn’s little project hadn’t helped. Why on earth was a Third World charity funding television documentaries? Why was Terra Sancta more interested in screen time than fresh water and decent sanitation?
Robbie had done his best to shore up the charity’s local defences but he was beginning to lose faith in the organisation’s leadership, sensing that events in the UK were out of control. What made the situation especially awkward was the news that another British television crew were in town, a freelance unit headed by a woman called Alma Bradley. According to the Director fretting daily on the telex from Winchester, Ms Bradley might be contemplating a hatchet job on Terra Sancta. Robbie thought this unlikely but had spent most of the last twenty-four hours trying to find out. He knew Alma Bradley well, and he trusted her.
The waiter arrived with the beer. Molly settled for another coffee. Robbie lifted his glass and swallowed half the chilled Sagres in a single gulp. Then he reached inside his jacket and produced a thick fold of telex paper. He passed it across to Molly.
‘This is for you. I just picked it up from the Press Centre. God knows why it went there.’
Molly flattened the telex on the table, alarmed already. Telexes meant bad news. They’d found Giles. They’d stored him in some mortuary or other. They wanted her to fly back and identify his body. She peered at the lines of smudgy text, recognising the name at the bottom of the message. The
telex had came from Patrick Brogan, her solicitor back home, and as her eye returned to the head of the page, trying to make sense of the message, she found herself thinking back to the last time they’d met. Counting the days, it had only been a couple of weeks but the cluttered first-floor office on Frinton’s main street already seemed a world away, part of some other life.
Molly looked up. Robbie was reading the front page of the
Jornal de Angola
.
‘Good news?’ he asked, not looking up.
Molly glanced at the telex again.
‘Who’s Vere Hallam?’
‘Tory MP. One of the Thames Valley constituencies. Can’t remember which.’ Robbie folded the paper and pushed it away. ‘Why?’
‘It seems he’s part of my husband’s syndicate. At Lloyd’s. Him and a couple of other MPs.’
‘Oh?’ Robbie was interested now, his hand outstretched for the telex. ‘May I?’
Molly hesitated. Before they’d left the UK, she’d confided a little about Giles’s problems at Lloyd’s. At the time, she’d felt relieved to share the news and Robbie had been immediately sympathetic, explaining how the Lloyd’s arrangements worked when syndicates went bust. The outlook, he’d said, wasn’t quite as bleak as it might have seemed. They’d have the house to live in plus the right to hang on to a fair whack of whatever Giles might be able to earn. Now, though, it seemed the situation had changed.
Molly passed across the telex. Robbie read it, shaking his head in disbelief.
‘Amazing,’ he said at last.
‘What is?’
‘This.’ He tapped the telex. ‘Extraordinary.’
‘Why?’
‘That New Jersey firm you were telling me about. The arms lot. Some witnesses have come forward, ex-employees. They’re suing the company for negligence. Some of them have developed tumours. The Lloyd’s people think there may be grounds to contest liability on the pollution claim. So they’ve decided to fight.’
Molly retrieved the telex. The company in New Jersey was called Rossiter.
‘So?’ She looked up. ‘What will that mean?’
‘You’re off the hook. For now, at least. No big claim. No immediate liability. No bankruptcy.’ He grinned, recharging his glass with beer. ‘And no need for three by-elections, either.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Your three MPs. If they’re declared bankrupt, they have to resign their seats. Bit sticky at the moment. Given the state of the polls.’
Molly looked at him for a moment, uncertain. Patrick, in the telex, was talking about the prospect of lengthy litigation. At the end, he seemed as cheerful as Robbie. ‘So it’s good news at last,’ he’d written. ‘Fingers crossed for Giles.’
‘Do we get to keep …’ Molly hesitated, ‘everything?’
‘For now,’ Robbie nodded, ‘absolutely.’
‘And later?’
‘Depends on what happens in the US courts. I imagine it could get worse, legal costs, all that. But your people might win and then you wouldn’t lose a bean. Who knows?’
Molly looked away. The kids were still there, faces in the darkness peering into the pool of light. The one with the overcoat had acquired half a loaf of bread and he was tearing it to pieces, passing bits round. Molly watched him a moment, remembering the mothers with their children the
morning they’d left Muengo. Some of these kids would be refugees from the country, orphaned by the war. They’d have arrived at the airport aboard some returning aid flight and they’d have been left to fend for themselves. No parents. No possessions. Nowhere to lie their heads except the street. Molly watched them a moment longer, then folded the telex and slipped it into her bag, ashamed.
‘Did you find your journalist friend?’ she asked, changing the subject.
Robbie sipped at the beer.
‘Yes. She was at the Press Centre. That’s why I went.’
‘And is she really a problem? Is she …’ Molly shrugged, ‘hostile?’
‘Not so far. She wants to do a film about the diamonds. She’s trying to get to the north, to the mines, like everybody else.’
Robbie broke off, asking the waiter for a menu, then leaned forward across the table, picking up the story. Angola, he explained, was potentially rich. In the north, she had oil and diamonds. The oil paid for the government’s share of the war, plus the fleets of new Mercedes that cruised between Luanda’s ministries, while the diamonds funded Savimbi’s UNITA army.
‘They own the diamonds? UNITA?’
‘They control the area where they’re mined. Place called Cafunfo, up in Lunda Norte. Most of the gems go across the border into Zaire. The blokes earn a fortune.’
‘Which blokes?’
‘Miners. Smugglers. UNITA. The industry’s controlled by De Beers. They pay the earth to keep the diamonds off the open market.’
Molly was looking at the kids again. One of them was on his hands and knees, picking up the bigger crumbs.
‘How much?’
‘Alma says five hundred million pounds. And that’s just last year’s figure.’ Robbie laughed. ‘It’s a wonderful story if you can get at it.’
‘So what’s stopping her? Why’s she still here? In Luanda?’
‘She’s waiting for a permit. The government control everything. An individual journalist might be able to sneak himself up north but she’s got a proper camera crew, couple of blokes, lots of equipment. You know …’ he grinned again, ‘the real thing. Not Mickey Mouse. Like our absent friend.’
Molly nodded, knowing exactly what he meant. The last time she’d seen Todd Llewelyn was at the airport the day they’d flown in from Muengo. He’d been stretchered off the Hercules and driven into Luanda on the back of a flat-bed truck. As far as Molly knew, he’d be spending the week at the Americo Boavida hospital, but when Robbie had mentioned her TAP reservation, wondering whether Llewelyn might take her place on the Lisbon flight, she’d volunteered the ticket at once. Llewelyn’s need, she’d insisted, was greater than hers. He belonged back in England, between crisp white sheets. They could make a fuss of him there. He’d be better in no time. It had fallen to Robbie to make the arrangements, and Llewelyn had left at noon next day aboard the big TAP jumbo. According to Robbie, he’d been less than grateful, insisting that his camcorder and his video rushes fly with him. Robbie hadn’t a clue where to find either and had told him so, and before he’d left the plane at Luanda airport, he’d at last had an opportunity to settle one or two personal scores. The Portuguese steward in charge of the flight had accompanied him to the head of the aircraft steps.
‘Senhor Llewelyn says he’s a big television star.’ The steward had looked quizzical. ‘No?’
Robbie had smiled, stepping off the plane, shaking his head.
‘Delirium,’ he’d explained. ‘He told me yesterday he was a brain surgeon.’
Now, Robbie was ordering a meal. Molly asked for fish. He chose a steak. The waiter chased off the kids again and then retired to the restaurant. Robbie leaned back, savouring the last of the beer, musing aloud about what might await Alma Bradley if she ever made it to the diamond mines. Apparently the place was completely lawless, a time warp, a glimpse of the way it must have been in the gold-rush days. Living conditions were primitive. Everyone carried a gun. Men died in arguments over cans of beer. Yet the lure of a fortune was always there, a handful of gems that could feed a man’s family for the rest of his life. Robbie shook his head, musing aloud about the kind of film Alma wanted to put together. She was a class operator. She knew exactly what she wanted and she had an enormous talent for getting through doors that no one else could unlock.
‘You think she’ll talk them into it?’
‘She might. She wants it badly enough.’
‘How long has she been trying?’
‘Here? In Luanda?’ Robbie frowned. ‘Too long. That’s the problem. You arrive with a crew and then you sit and wait for the ministry to make up its mind. Without a permit, you’re stuffed. And every day’s costing you money.’
‘So what happens if they say no?’
‘She’ll look for another film. She’ll have to. She has no option. And then …’ Robbie ran his finger around the top of the open bottle, ‘God only knows.’
‘You think she might …’ Molly shrugged, ‘try your lot?’
‘Sure,’ he nodded, ‘it’s possible.’ He paused. ‘Or she could bid for a big political interview. Dos Santos, the president,
even Savimbi if she could get hold of him, but it’s not really her style. She likes getting in amongst the small print. That’s what she’s good at and that’s what people like.’ He sighed. ‘We talked about Terra Sancta tonight. She’d heard the rumours. I told her it was bullshit.’
‘Did she believe you?’
‘No, but that doesn’t matter. She doesn’t believe anyone.’
‘Does she know about Llewelyn? What we’ve been up to?’
‘No. She’d heard some rumour about Llewelyn flying out to Africa but that’s as far as it got. She said she didn’t believe it. She said he’d never be able to cope.’
‘She’s right. He couldn’t.’
Robbie nodded, visibly brightening, and picked up the empty bottle in a silent toast. Far away, Molly could hear the whump-whump of one of the big army helicopters, and the noise grew and grew until the machine appeared overhead, a fat black shadow hanging in the night sky. Searchlights on the nose criss-crossed on the water and the helicopter dipped low over the lagoon before turning away towards the distant glow of the docks. Robbie was watching it, his head tipped back, his body slumped in the chair, the smile gone.