James Lovegrove - The Age Of Odin (4 page)

"Again, dunno. But like I said, and this is the main point: for a lot of money."

"How much?" I hated myself for asking it. Hated myself for feeling a scintilla of interest in what Abortion was saying. Not just interest. Stronger than that. Eagerness.

"Couple of grand a week."

"No fucking way."

"That's what I was told."

"Who by?"

"Bloke. Customer. Not a regular. Don't see him often. But he's ex-army too. The Regiment."

"Which regiment?"

"
The
Regiment."

"SAS."

"So he says. Well, not so much says as hints. You don't say 'The Regiment' unless you're referring to
The
Regiment, do you?"

"Or unless you're a prize bullshit artist. The SAS I've met don't speak about it at all. That's how you know they're SAS."

"Look, this fella's kosher, I'm sure of it. He acts like an SAS guy acts, all hard and gruff and a bit psycho. And the other day he came round to my place to buy an ounce of black, and we were just having a little test of it, you see, a little sample taste, and he let slip about these people, the Valhalla Mission. He read about them in a comment posted on some ex-servicemen's forum, which linked to a blog entry. It's a word of mouth thing, apparently. The blogger didn't put down much more than I've told you, a few lines about the job offer plus a location, how to get to wherever it is they're recruiting. Somewhere way up north, some castle or what-have-you. SAS guy said he was thinking about going there himself. Bit short of the readies, he said."

"What, he left the Regiment and didn't manage to wangle himself a fat juicy publishing contract? How's that possible?"

"Funnily enough, he said he'd written a book about his Spec Ops experiences and he showed it to a literary agent but the agent told him the SAS memoir market's all but dried up."

"Who Dares Loses. My heart bleeds. Another one?"

I bought him a fresh Scrumpy Jack and a Theakston's Old Peculier for myself. My second pint of the night, and my last. I never took it further than the two, not any more. That was my limit. Exceeding it led to trouble. Anger. Flare-ups. Punches. Bruises. Police. Holding cells. Cautions. I'd been down that road too many times. I'd even done a short stint at Her Majesty's pleasure. Never again. The pleasure had been all hers.

"What d'you reckon, then?" Abortion asked. He was Devon born and after a drink or two his West Country burr always got thicker. The "r" of his "reckon" dragged while the "ck" in the middle all but vanished.

"I
rrre'un
," I said, "that blogger's pulling everyone's leg. Two grand a week? For washed-up non-coms like us?"

"The impression I got is they're not too fussy."

"They'd have to not be. I mean, there's me with eighty per cent hearing loss in one ear and a titanium plate in my skull, and there's you with your, well, habit. We're hardly what you'd call prime soldiering material. They'd have to be pretty desperate to take us on, and if their standards are that low then what sane person would want to sign up with them anyway?"

"Do you miss it?" said Abortion. It sounded like a non sequitur but wasn't.

"The army? What's to miss? Low pay. Appalling housing. Getting shouted at all the time. Getting shot at. Going round the world to visit the dingiest shitholes there are, putting your life on the line fighting a war some nob-end in Whitehall thinks is a good idea but no one else does, saddled with shoddy uniforms and shonky kit that doesn't work properly half the time..."

"That's a yes, then."

He had me bang to rights. "You know I miss it. Every fucking day. I'd give anything to pull on a uniform again, pick up an assault rifle and get out there again, mixing it up with the bad guys."

"You can't explain it to civilians, can you?" Abortion said. "They just don't get it. Having your mates around you the whole time. Ripping the piss out of each other at every opportunity but knowing you trust these people with your life. Being part of a unit, feeling part of something that's big and strong and organised. Like being a member of the best gang ever and no one's going to mess with you. You don't have that in civvy street, that sense of belonging. Here, everyone fucks everyone else over. It's all about yourself. Me, me, me. What can
I
get? What can
I
grab? Never happens in the army."

"I always used to think it's like being at school again but being a grown-up at the same time," I said. "All the benefits of school - order, schedule, hierarchy, someone cooking your meals for you - with none of the bollocks. Rules and regulations that keep things in line but don't interfere with you having a good time. And even the combat... Shit, you don't get a rush like that anywhere else. Fucking hairy-arse scary while it's happening, but afterwards - woo-hoo! And I speak as someone who got blown up by a fucking IED."

"Yeah, if
that
couldn't put you off enjoying active service, what could?"

"Well, it's like they say. If you can't take a joke..."

Abortion chimed in: "...you shouldn't have volunteered."

"So you think this is on the level, this Valhalla Mission whatnot?" I said.

Aborted teetered his hand in the air. "You can't know 'til you've tried. Suck it and see. But two grand a week's nothing to sneeze at. And the minimum contract term is three months."

I did some mental arithmetic. Twenty-five-thousand-odd quid. What could I do with that?

Actually, the question was what
couldn't
I do?

Clear the backlog I owed Gen, for starters. The Child Support Agency was chasing me up for arrears of near on ten K, the total sum I'd "neglected" to hand over during my more difficult periods after the divorce, plus interest. I'd have my rent on the flat sorted for a few months in advance. I'd even have enough left over to take a decent holiday, go somewhere nice, find one of the few warm spots on the planet down near the equator and catch some rays.

But it wasn't even about the money, I knew that.

It was about a second chance. To do what I did best. To do the only thing I really knew how to do.

When I got home I did a web search for "Valhalla Mission" to see if anything came up. Not one worthwhile hit other than the blog entry Abortion had talked about. Same with "Asgard Hall," the name of the castle the blogger mentioned. Nothing of any use. I assumed, if it even existed, it was some old crumbling pile that used to be called something else and new owners had taken it over and rechristened it.

Of course I had huge doubts and misgivings about the whole enterprise. It all seemed unspeakably dodgy. A hoax, even. We'd rock up at this place and either there'd be no one there or a camera crew would be waiting and it'd turn out to be some reality TV stunt or a game show or what-have-you. I had no desire to be an ordinary person bumped up overnight to celebrity class and be made a public laughing-stock and whipping boy, however much dosh was being dangled in front of me. I didn't want to be famous for fifteen minutes or even fifteen fifteen seconds. Those stories never ended well.

But if it was legit...

Well, obviously it wasn't legit. This was someone recruiting for a private army. This sounded like mercenary or private security work, and very much at the iffy end of that particular scale. Proper "risk management" agencies operated out of swanky offices in Mayfair and were run by ex-Sandhurst Ruperts with tight haircuts and tailored suits. They advertised properly; they didn't wait for word of mouth to bring in employees. They also didn't hire blokes like me who were technically disabled, who'd been invalided out. They liked their meat to be in tiptop condition, ace fighting machines with a thirst for blood and a barrel-scraping of scruples.

Whereas for the Valhalla Mission, the blogger wrote, "clean history and health are not a priority." In other words, we don't care, we'll take anyone. Like Abortion had said, not too fussy.

So the alarm bells were well and truly ding-a-linging in the back of my head, but it was surprisingly easy to ignore them. There was more involved here than me just clearing my debts with Gen and removing that rather large bone of contention from our relationship (if it could even be called a relationship any more). No doubt about it, if I paid that money off there was every chance I'd get my visitation rights to Cody restored. I'd be able to see my son again, take him out, go to the park and the pictures with him, re-establish myself in his life as his dad, actually get to know him and allow him to get to know me so's he could learn that I was more than just a voice on the phone he was obliged to talk to every now and then.

That was one hell of an incentive.

But to be a soldier once more - that was the really
big
, shiny, orange carrot.

So I phoned up Abortion and I said, "Let's do it."

And he said, "I knew I could count on you, Gid."

And I said, "This could be the biggest mistake I've ever made."

And he said, "Mistakes are just opportunities in disguise."

And I said, "What fortune cookie did you get that from?"

And he said, "It's not wisdom to mock the wise."

And I said, "But clocking smartarses round the earhole is."

And he said, "Wednesday. We'll go next Wednesday."

And I said, "I think I can sort my affairs out by Wednesday," knowing that my affairs wouldn't take much sorting out beyond asking for time off at Tony's Totally Toner and getting a neighbour to go in and water my spider plant while I was away. And I didn't even care if Tony said no or my spider plant died. I'd still go.

And Wednesday came around, and it was Wednesday now, and recalling Abortion's remark - "Mistakes are just opportunities in disguise" - as we trudged through the snow storm, I couldn't help but think,
You couldn't be much wronger, mate
.

Two miles? Three miles?

Distances were hard to judge. So was speed. So was time. In the midst of that whirling whiteness you couldn't be sure of anything. How long had we been walking? How fast? How far? No idea, no idea, no idea. The snow baffled your senses and your instincts. It seemed to leech all certainty out of you and replace it with cold emptiness. It made you as blank as it made the landscape. There was so much of it coming down that the night sky scarcely seemed black any more; it was just one huge tumbling curtain of snow. Snow everywhere. White everywhere. Inside and out.

"Can't be much further," Abortion kept saying, over and over, like some Buddhist chant. "Can't be much further. Surely can't be."

But maybe we had passed it, I thought. The landmark. The giant-alike rocks. Maybe we'd blundered straight by, missing it in the storm, and Asgard Hall was behind us now, and we were staggering onward into nothingness, with the pure resolve of idiots. They'd find us tomorrow frozen stiff beside the road, buried to the waist in snow, conjoined statues of men, a work of sculpture with the title
The Triumph Of Desperation Over Logic
.

And then, lo and behold, there it was.

At first neither of us could quite believe our snow-stung eyes. It loomed before us, and it was almost too perfect, too obvious. Hulking great rocks protruding up, so sheer-sided and sharp that the snow could not easily settle on them. Huge, too, some of them, black spires and hillocks dotted across a shallow valley. A natural formation, had to be, but together they described a distinct shape. There the brow, there the nose, there the hands, there the knees. A supine, slumbering giant. The valley was his bed, and he filled it from end to end, and the snow, which according to cliché was always a blanket,
was
a blanket. It draped him smoothly, covering all but the bits that poked out.

It was a remarkable sight, and Abortion let out a whoop of joy, of vindication, while I grimaced a smile and felt, if nothing else, we were going to survive this ordeal after all, even though we didn't really deserve to.

Shortly after we spotted the giant we came across a turnoff, a track that ran perpendicular from the road, down into the valley. We took it, and crossed the sleeping giant's midriff, and climbed the slope on the other side, and found ourselves entering dense pine forest.

The track bored straight through the trees, and was broad and clear to see, for a while.

Then it narrowed and became winding. Either that or in the darkness we mislaid it. The tree trunks seemed to close in on us. We threaded between them, convinced we were still going the right way, or convinced enough at any rate, but in our heart of hearts far from sure. The grinding pain inside me was beginning to wear me down. My brain said I could carry on but my body was arguing otherwise. Each step was becoming a supreme effort, an act of teeth-gritting willpower.

Finally Abortion halted. "I hate to say this," he said, "but I think we're going to have to retrace our steps. Find the track again."

"I hate to say this," I said, "but I don't know if I can."

"We can't just keep going forward if it's only going to get us more lost."

"Mentally, I can't go back. It would be too much to take."

"Corporal Coxall..."

"Don't try that."

"Corp, we are turning back. That's an order."