The Perfect Soldier (29 page)

McFaul’s finger hovered over the stop button, knowing they must be close. Domingos was halfway to the edge of the cleared strip. Very soon now, according to Bennie’s account, it would happen. McFaul looked up. Llewelyn was convulsing again, his body lifting on the mattress, twisting and turning, then slamming down, as if possessed. Both
women were bent over him, Molly beside his head, trying to calm him down.

‘Easy,’ she kept saying, ‘take it easy.’

McFaul watched for a moment longer then returned to the viewfinder. There was smoke and debris everywhere. As it cleared, the shot began to yo-yo in and out, Llewelyn not knowing what to do. With the shot at its widest, McFaul stopped the action, trying to orientate himself, trying to work out exactly where the explosion had taken place. Beyond the smoke, he could see the river bank, at least fifty metres away. Bennie had been right. No question about it. The mine had been triggered in the cleared strip.

McFaul pressed the play button again and the sequence rolled on, the shape of Domingos’s fallen body emerging from the smoke. As the smoke drifted away, the remains of his right leg were clearly visible, the blood glistening in the fierce sunshine. McFaul watched, horrified. He’d seen accidents like this before, men blown apart by foolishness or simple bad luck, but in real life it was somehow different. Terrifying, yes, but fragmentary as well, so many things happening at once, the brain fighting to keep up with the flood of images. This, though, was grotesque. The shot just went on and on, Domingos lying there, trying to get up then collapsing back again, helpless, not understanding what had happened.

McFaul glanced up again, aware that Llewelyn had calmed a little, wondering what kind of man could point a camera and carry on shooting when someone else was bleeding to death. What did it take? Guts? Professional dedication? A missing fuse or two? He returned to the viewfinder. Bennie had joined Domingos. He was kneeling beside him, gesturing desperately towards Llewelyn. Help me, Bennie seemed to be saying. For fuck’s sake help me do something. The shot
went on, perfect focus, perfect framing, and McFaul shook his head again, his finger finding the fast-forward button, knowing that his appetite for this kind of material was strictly limited. Guts and professional dedication were nothing but alibis. This was pornography, pure and simple. To do this for a living, you had to be sick.

He checked the footage, wondering what else could possibly be on the tape, his eyes returning to the viewfinder. For a moment or two, he was lost. Everything looked murky. Then faces appeared, and bandages, and wounds, hugely magnified by the zoom lens. The images wound past, each one compounding the effect of the last, then there were two men standing beside a table, the blur of teeth in a hacksaw blade, a ribbon of muscle shredding under a scalpel. The camera panned up and for a moment or two, recognising the face behind the screams, McFaul was too shocked to know quite what he felt. This man had tracked Domingos. He’d followed him to the hospital. He’d walked right in there, hungry for grief, and he’d put the full menu on tape. A la carte. Blood, and tissue, and sawn bone, and the agony of a man who, just now, McFaul would have gladly traded his life for.

McFaul stopped the video, sickened. Christianne was standing over him.

‘Where’s the jacket?’ she was saying.

‘What jacket?’

‘Llewelyn’s.’ She nodded towards the bed. ‘We’ve been through his bag. There’s nothing there. He may have tablets in his jacket.’

McFaul looked up at her, the camera in his lap, wondering whether trying to save Llewelyn’s life was really worth the effort. Then he shrugged and struggled to his feet. The jacket was outside, draped over a chair. He picked it up and returned to the bedroom. Llewelyn was moaning now, a new sound,
quieter, weaker. McFaul began to go through the pockets. In one he found some money and a book of matches. In another, a ball of Kleenex tissue. He looked in the inside pocket, pulling out a folded wad of paper. A line of text across the top sheet caught his eye. He flicked through the rest of the sheets, realising that they were copies. A telex message, he thought, with a complete set of carbons. He peered at the addressee.

‘Who’s Cunningham?’ he said aloud.

Molly turned round. She was sitting beside Llewelyn, holding his hand. His eyes were closed and he appeared to be deeply unconscious.

‘Robbie,’ she said, ‘from Terra Sancta.’

McFaul barely heard her. He was reading the telex. When he’d finished it, he looked at her, remembering the message that had come in from Luanda. The ambassador wanted to talk to Molly Jordan. Urgently.

McFaul folded the sheets of telex paper. Molly was bent over Llewelyn. At the mention of Giles’s name, she looked up.

‘He’s my husband,’ she said. ‘Why?’

Domingos died at 04.37 next morning. Christianne brought the news to McFaul in the schoolhouse. She’d been contacted by radio from the hospital and she thought it best to deliver it in person. McFaul thanked her, returning to the chair beneath the porch where he’d spent the night.

Dawn broke an hour later. McFaul woke Bennie and told him they were returning to the minefield beside the river. They needed the Ebinger, the protective gear, and a single bayonet. Nothing else. Bennie began to argue but McFaul walked away.

By half-past six, the sun up, they were parked on the
embankment overlooking the minefield. McFaul sat behind the wheel and smoked one of Bennie’s roll-ups. When Bennie tried asking him what they were doing there he told him to mind his own business. When he tried conversation, he ignored him.

McFaul finished the roll-up and got out of the Land Rover. He put on the protective gear and told Bennie to back the Rover sixty metres and turn it round. If anything happened, he was to take him straight to the hospital. Bennie did what he was told, parking the Rover and getting out.

McFaul began to scramble down the embankment, then stopped, his weight balanced on his left leg. He stood motionless for at least a minute, staring down, then he lowered himself very slowly, hugging the bank. The grass on the bank was tufty, growing in clumps, loose soil in between. McFaul unsheathed the bayonet and began to probe an area to his right. Bennie watched him working, bewildered now. They’d been up and down the embankment all yesterday afternoon. It was clean. He knew it was.

McFaul had found something. The bayonet was back in the sheath. He looked round, signalling to Bennie, retracing his steps to the road. When the two men met, McFaul showed him the mine. It was no bigger than a hockey puck, a mottled dark green. Bennie peered at it.

‘What’s that?’

McFaul’s head was up now. He was looking down the road, towards the rebel trenches.

‘Difesa,’ he said, ‘SB-33.’

It was mid-morning before McFaul found Tomas, the young officer he’d dealt with after the grenade incident. He was sitting behind a makeshift desk in a corner of the big bus
garage the army had commandeered for its Muengo headquarters. When McFaul asked him to step outside, away from the stares of the other men, he got up without a word. Outside, two soldiers were kicking a football against the wall of the garage. Tomas dismissed them with a wave, turning to ask McFaul about his wound. McFaul ignored the question.

‘I need a weapon,’ he said, nodding at the retreating soldiers. ‘Something like that.’

One of the soldiers had picked up his gun. It was an Armalite, a light carbine, standard American issue. The young officer looked surprised.

‘Why?’

‘Doesn’t matter.’ McFaul paused. ‘A couple of spare magazines, too.’

‘I can’t—’

‘Please.’ McFaul had stepped very close. ‘An M16 and a couple of mags. Then we’ll call it quits.’

‘Quits?’

McFaul touched his upper arm. The wound was still bandaged. Tomas nodded, understanding.

‘How long?’ he said. ‘How long do you want the gun for?’

McFaul shrugged.

‘Couple of days.’

‘You’ll bring it back?’

‘Of course.’

Tomas looked round, visibly uncomfortable. Aid workers never carried weapons. Staying unarmed was their best guarantee of protection. Why did this man want to risk all that? Why did he suddenly want to become a part of the war? He voiced the question, then repeated it, but McFaul just stared at him, a strange dead look on his face, a man for
whom conversation – questions and answers – had ceased to have any significance.

‘Your men nearly killed me,’ he said at last.

‘Is that why you want the gun?’

‘No, but that’s why you should give it to me.’ McFaul paused again. ‘You know Domingos?’

‘Of course.’

‘You know he works in the minefields?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you know how dangerous that is?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, he’s dead,’ McFaul said softly. ‘Domingos is dead.’ Tomas stared at him, his eyes wide.

‘A mine? You mean he got killed by a mine?’

McFaul looked away a moment. The soldiers had reached the corner of the building and one of them had stopped, openly curious.

‘Good question,’ McFaul said at last, taking Tomas by the elbow and steering him back towards the garage.

CHAPTER NINE

McFaul left Muengo at dusk the following day. When Bennie asked him where he was going he said it didn’t much matter, and when Bennie looked pointedly at the Armalite carbine cradled in his left arm, McFaul simply shrugged and stepped out of the schoolhouse, carefully closing the door behind him. Deep down, he knew that Bennie was relieved not to be part of whatever his boss was planning. Domingos’s death had robbed him of the last of his courage. All that mattered now was safe passage back to the UK

Outside the schoolhouse, McFaul checked the lashings on the rubber dinghy and then stooped in the gathering darkness, hitching the trailer to the back of the Land Rover. With the Armalite beside him, he drove slowly out of the city, watching the trailer in the rear-view mirror, trying to minimise the bounces. Beside the river, a dirt track ran south towards the encircling UNITA lines. He’d swept the track himself, one of his first assignments, and it had been used every day since by people from Muengo. A kilometre short of UNITA territory, a low bluff beside the river offered cover and he pulled the Land Rover into a tight turn, using the last of the daylight to back into a narrow re-entrant, hidden from view.

McFaul stood for a moment beside the Land Rover, flexing his injured arm, running through the calculations in his head. Katilo’s camp was about five kilometres downstream.
Getting there on foot was out of the question. There were mines everywhere. But drifting downriver on the current, he should make it comfortably before daybreak. He’d lie up somewhere close, waiting for dawn. And when Katilo appeared, taking the bait he’d so carefully prepared, he’d spring the trap and kill him.

McFaul limped towards the river bank. The simplicity of the plan warmed him. Unlike so much of the life that he’d led, it was untainted by compromise or ambiguity. Killing Katilo might well lead to his own death but that was no longer of any consequence. Until yesterday, he’d thought that his years in the minefields had blunted his feelings. He’d thought he’d become immune to feelings of any kind. But he’d been wrong. Domingos’s death was one too many. The little man deserved revenge.

Beside the river, below the Land Rover, was an abandoned plastic jerrycan, riddled with bullet holes. McFaul up-ended it, sitting in the semi-darkness, cupping his hands to hide the flare of the match. He hadn’t smoked regularly since Afghanistan but somehow it felt suddenly right, a comfort, an adieu. Christianne had given him the cigarettes. They must have belonged to the boy Jordan, a South African brand, untipped.

McFaul drew the smoke deep into his lungs, removing a shred of tobacco from his tongue. His hands still carried the sweet, marzipan smell of C4, the explosive he’d been using to blow up the cache of defused mines. He’d spent most of the afternoon preparing the charges, checking off each mine from the master log he kept at the schoolhouse. In all, there’d been 374 mines, the harvest from seventeen weeks’ hard labour in the fields around Muengo. The mines came in all shapes and sizes, and looking down at them before he’d wired the detonators, McFaul had felt like an archaeologist reviewing his trophies after a successful dig.

He tipped back his head, expelling a thin blue plume of smoke, thinking of Katilo again and the brutal simplicity of the war he’d chosen to fight. To control the countryside, you needed to drive the peasants off the land and into the cities. Mines did that for you, limb by limb, village by village, at a price most armies would consider derisory. No wonder the man was obsessed by the things. No wonder he’d insisted on showing off his latest box of goodies.

McFaul’s hand strayed to the breast pocket of his shirt. He still had Llewelyn’s precious cassette, an hour’s worth of pictures that would tell any audience in the world why Katilo deserved an ugly end. Using mines at all was indefensible. Seeding them the way Katilo had done, luring a brave man to his death, was the sickest of jokes.

McFaul got to his feet, flicking the remains of his cigarette into the river. Blowing up the afternoon’s pile of defused mines was the last thing he’d done before leaving. The roar of the explosion had rolled across the shattered city, sending clouds of birds into the sky, drawing yelps of excitement from the knots of watching kids. Within seconds came anxious voices on the radio net. Had the ceasefire ended? Was this the start of some new bombardment? McFaul had listened for a moment, wondering whether he owed the world some explanation, then he’d turned on his heel, telling Bennie to check the smouldering crater for duds, no longer caring about the small print of this squalid little war.

Now, back on his feet beside the Land Rover, he knew he’d been right. The time for talking was over. These guys would be killing each other for years to come. You could see it in their faces, the government troops inside the city, the UNITA guys out in the bush. There was a madness about them, a limitless potential for rage and brutality. That’s what the salesmen fed on. That’s what kept the mines coming, thousands and thousands of them, not just here in Angola
but all over the Third World. Fighting the tide made fuck all difference. At its heart, the thing was evil. And evil, once recognised, compelled a choice.

McFaul began to rummage in the holdall he’d packed earlier. Beside the plastic flasks of chlorinated water, he could feel the shape of the bomb he’d lashed together, the sharp-edged contours of the nails and shards of broken glass he’d taped around the slab of C4 he’d saved from the afternoon’s demolition job. Two pounds of the stuff was way over the top. It would cut Katilo in half. The thought brought a smile to McFaul’s face and he zipped up the holdall again, pocketing the spare magazines for the Armalite Tomas had reluctantly given to him. He’d said nothing about his intentions to the young officer. If this thing worked the way he’d planned it, he’d know soon enough.

Molly Jordan spent the evening in the Red Cross bunker, wedged between a 56-pound sack of rice and the table where François bent to the big HF radio. She’d been trying all day to get through to the British embassy in Luanda but whenever contact was established there was always more important business to transact. No one had yet bothered to brief her, partly she suspected because no one knew for certain what was happening, but the conversations she’d overheard and the messages she’d seen scribbled on the corners of notepads suggested that an evacuation was once again imminent. Something had happened way up the chain of command. Some kind of deadline had been imposed, hours rather than days, and the people in charge were talking of getting everyone out by noon. After that, as far as she could gather, Muengo was in danger of renewed bombardment.

François, the tireless Swiss who manned the Red Cross
radio, leaned back from the set. His fingers were blue from the crudely inked carbons he used to circulate incoming messages by hand. He gestured towards the radio.

‘They’re calling us now.’

‘Who?’

‘Your embassy. In Luanda.’

François muttered an acknowledgement into the lip mike then took off his earphones and passed them to Molly. By the time she’d put them on he was halfway up the wooden steps that led to the bunker’s only working closet.

Molly fingered the tiny microphone. She could hear a thin voice, heavily accented, calling her name.

‘Hello?’ she said, feeling slightly foolish. ‘Over …’

The voice faded, then returned. She was to wait. There was someone to talk to her. Molly was still asking for a name when another voice came on, stronger this time. Through the crackle of static she recognised the ambassador she’d met in Luanda. She began to colour at once, feeling the blood flooding her face. She wasn’t supposed to be here. She was supposed to be back on the coast, killing time, waiting for the body of her dead son.

The ambassador was asking her how things were.

‘Chaotic,’ she heard herself saying, ‘everyone rushing around. I’m afraid I’m not much use.’

She heard the ambassador chuckling, a gentle admonition, and she pictured him behind the desk in the office where they’d met. Behind him on the wall was a framed photograph of the Queen with one of her dogs and she’d been surprised by its informality.

‘I’m afraid there’s no news,’ the ambassador was saying. ‘I wish I had something definite to tell you.’

Molly cursed herself. The telex still lay on the corner of the desk. She’d read it so many times it had ceased to have
any meaning. Giles’s beloved yacht reported missing.
Molly Jay
gone. No sign of a body.

‘Any wreckage?’ she said numbly.

‘Not that I know of.’

‘Are they still looking?’

‘I assume so.’

‘He had a radio beacon, a little tiny thing.’

‘So I gather. That’s how they found the life-raft, according to the reports I’ve …’

The ambassador’s voice battled briefly with a burst of static and lost. A few seconds later, contact re-established, he was talking about flights to Europe. Molly was booked through to London via Lisbon. He’d taken the liberty of talking to TAP, the Portuguese airline with the next available departure, and they’d agreed to accept the return half of her Sabena ticket. His advice was to leave Luanda as soon as she could.

Molly nodded, her mind quite blank. She’d been anticipating this conversation all day, the news it might bring, the difference it might make. In the event, she’d learned nothing. People were dying in Angola in their thousands. Her own spot of bother – a son dead and buried, a husband lost at sea – simply turned her into a logistical footnote, the umpteenth item on some list or other.

The ambassador was promising transport from the airport once she got to Luanda. With Terra Sancta under pressure, he might even be able to manage temporary accommodation at the embassy. Molly managed a smile at last, pushing the telex away. This time he’s leaving nothing to chance, she thought. Tucked up inside the embassy, her travelling days would be over.

‘It’s kind of you to take the trouble,’ she said, ‘but I expect I’ll find somewhere.’

The ambassador signed off with another chuckle, wishing her luck, and Molly was still debating what to do about the electronic howling in her ears when someone clattered down the wooden steps beside her. She glanced up, recognising the face. McFaul’s friend, she thought. The one who’d been so graphic about James.

Bennie was swaying slightly, the T-shirt beneath his jacket blotched with sweat.

‘Lost the boss,’ he said simply. ‘Can’t find him anywhere.’

McFaul drifted slowly down the river, flat on his back in the bottom of the dinghy. He could sense the water beneath him, and when he turned his head and lay his cheek flat against the thick rubber floor, it felt cool and alive. Now and again, he peered over the sides of the dinghy, trying to judge the speed of the current, but downstream from Muengo the stream was wide, nearly a hundred metres in places, and it was impossible to make out where the water ended and the river bank began. Low cloud veiled the moon and in the warm darkness he felt caged in a world of his own. Soon, he knew he’d have to start edging towards the further bank. There was a wooden paddle clipped to the transom and in any case the water was shallow enough for him to slip overboard and tow the dinghy inshore. He needed time for a decent recce, time to dig himself in. Then, at last, he could settle Domingos’s debt.

McFaul lay back again, thinking of Celestina. He’d left a wad of dollars for her. The money was doubtless more than anyone in Muengo had ever seen but just now it was probably useless. What could money buy when the man you loved was dead? How could you comfort your children when their father would never be home again? McFaul closed his eyes,
smelling the damp, swampy breath of the river, knowing again that this journey was long overdue. The time for excuses, for telling himself that nothing could be done, was over. He felt for his watch, peering at the luminous dial. 02.20. This time of year, the sky began to lighten around five. By four, at the latest, he should be in position.

Bennie sat on his camp-bed, his head in his hands. He’d been describing the pictures Llewelyn had shot. McFaul had made him watch them and he hadn’t spared Molly any of the details. The way the surgeons had dealt with Domingos’s leg. The noise the hand-drill made, grinding through the bone.

Molly was sitting cross-legged on the floor, her back against the wooden partition. The last of Global’s beer had left her feeling slightly light-headed, and she was only half-listening to Bennie. I gave him the radio beacon for Christmas, she kept thinking. I wrapped it up and put it in a stocking at the foot of the bed and even then it hadn’t saved his life. Was it a kind death? Drowning? Or was it violent? Would he survive long? In November seas? Or was it so cold you just slipped into unconsciousness? She chased the questions around her head, trying hard not to imagine his body, washed up on some foreign beach, making the news for a day or two, just like his son. She’d read somewhere that bodies bloated in the water and she remembered footage from a D-Day film she’d seen, dead soldiers parcelled in khaki, bumping around in the Normandy shallows. The waste of it all. The telegrams. The funerals. The endless grief. She shuddered, thinking suddenly of the cottage back in Thorpele-Soken. The place would be cold and empty. The threat of bankruptcy would be as real as ever and she’d have to sit
down and sort out her life. Sell up. Move away. Whatever. She’d hate it. She knew she would. Anything would be better than that.

She shut her eyes, forcing herself to listen to Bennie. He was mumbling about McFaul again, how strange he’d been all day. Detached. Out of touch. Off the planet. Bennie’s trailing fingers found the empty bottle of vodka beside the bed. He picked it up and looked at it then let it fall again, cursing softly.

‘My fault,’ he said at length.

‘What is?’

‘Him disappearing like that.’ He paused. ‘Domingos. The TV geezer. Every fucking thing. I should have waited. Muggins gets it wrong. Again.’ He shook his head, choked with self-pity, trying to focus on the stump of candle in the saucer between them. ‘You got kids at all? Only it would be nice to see them again. Know what I mean? This place? Jesus …’ He gestured vaguely towards the line of family snaps Blu-Tacked to the wall above the bed and Molly fought the urge to compete, comparing the wreckage of her own life to Bennie’s maudlin ramblings. Nice to have kids at all, she thought. Nice to have someone to go home to.