The Perfect Soldier (11 page)

The party in Muengo started at six. McFaul and Bennie had spent the afternoon checking and cleaning the de-mining gear at the schoolhouse. Domingos had turned up at the schoolhouse too, eager to help, but McFaul had given him the two plastic jerrycans and the keys to the Land Rover, telling him to ship home as much water as he could. If
Domingos and his family were to survive the siege, they’d need every drop they could lay their hands on. Domingos had driven back and forth all afternoon, filling and refilling the jerrycans, and McFaul had accompanied him back home on the last trip, carrying a sackful of tinned food he’d sorted out from their own supplies. If it came to an evacuation, Domingos would inherit everything at the schoolhouse but in the meantime McFaul was determined that he and his family shouldn’t go hungry.

Now, past seven o’clock, Christianne met McFaul at the door of the MSF house. Down the hall, McFaul could hear voices in the kitchen and he recognised the tall, greying figure of Tom Peterson. All afternoon there’d been rumours of an impending ceasefire. If anyone knew for sure, it would probably be the Terra Sancta man.

McFaul pushed a paper bag into Christianne’s hand. She was wearing another of Jordan’s shirts, blue denim this time, a declaration – McFaul assumed – that she still belonged to someone else. She took the bag, looked inside.

‘Is this gin?’ she said.

McFaul nodded.

‘Gordons.’ He grinned. ‘And Bennie’s brought some Scotch, too.’

He squeezed her arm and pushed on down the hall. The kitchen was crowded and McFaul made his way towards the far corner where François, the Swiss from the Red Cross, was locked in conversation with one of the Norwegian surgeons. The table beside them was piled with drink: bottles of Sancerre, tins of Portuguese and South African beer, and a big glass bowl brimming with some kind of fruit punch. McFaul gazed at it a moment, full of admiration. Fresh fruit had been unobtainable for weeks yet Christianne had managed to lay her hands on oranges, mango, bananas, even slices of
fresh pineapple. McFaul helped himself, aware of Peterson beside him.

‘How’s it been?’ he said, not looking up.

He hadn’t seen the Terra Sancta man since the first night in the Red Cross bunker. According to François, he had a billet with the UN mission.

‘Fine!’ Peterson was saying. ‘And it looks like Fernando’s cracked it.’

McFaul fished another piece of fruit from the punch bowl. Fernando was the UN rep, a fat, cheerful Portuguese from Beira.

‘UNITA playing ball?’ McFaul laughed.

‘Yep.’

‘You serious?’

‘So Fernando says. Their people in Huambo are promising a ceasefire and safe passage out. Dusk tonight to dusk tomorrow. I’ve been on the telex all day. Luanda are sending a Herc, subject to confirmation.’

‘ETA?’

‘Around noon, I hope.’ He touched McFaul lightly on the arm. ‘And once they go firm, you’ll be the first to know. I promise.’

McFaul nodded, sucking the punch from the wedge of orange. The punch tasted of rum and white wine and God knows what else.

‘So you’re taking Jordan home?’ he grunted. ‘Mission accomplished?’

‘Fingers crossed. Winchester have booked him onward on the Sabena flight. He should be back by …’ he frowned, ‘the weekend. Ties it all up rather nicely.’

‘Yeah,’ McFaul looked at him for the first time, ‘except he’s dead.’

The party went on for four hours. Christianne served
prawns and rice, as promised, and there were side dishes of cassava, beans and aid-supplied mashed potato. Around eight o’clock, Fernando appeared and announced that the ceasefire arrangements had been ratified by both sides. The Red Cross people in Luanda had confirmed a Hercules, and the plane would be landing at the local strip around eleven-thirty. There was room on board for every aid worker, and he passed round a photocopied sheet setting out the precise timetable for the evacuation. Wherever possible, transport and other equipment would be left in the hands of the local Angolans. Otherwise, the stuff would simply be abandoned. At the end of this impromptu speech, one of the women from the World Food Programme team raised her glass and proposed a toast, and the kitchen rang with cheers. Most of these people, McFaul thought, have been in Angola long enough to know when to beat a retreat. If the fighting intensified, and UNITA troops entered the city itself, there’d be every prospect of a bloodbath.

A little later, Fernando gone, the dancing began. By now McFaul was sitting on the floor in the hall, his back against the wall, a half-empty bottle of Sancerre between his knees. Couples walked to and fro from the kitchen, joining the sway of tightly packed bodies in one of the darkened front bedrooms. The music they were playing – late sixties, early seventies – stirred memories in McFaul but he preferred the comforts of the ’88 Sancerre to Diana Ross and the Supremes. He was singing along to ‘Baby Love’ for the third time, his head nodding on his chest, when he felt a hand on his arm. He opened one eye. Christianne was bent over him, her face shadowed by the heavy auburn curls. It took him a second or two to realise how drunk she was.

‘Why outside?’ he protested. ‘I’m happy here. It’s OK.’

‘Please,’ she said urgently. ‘Please.’

McFaul looked at her a moment, then shrugged and allowed himself to be pulled upright. She led him down the hall and out into the darkness. Someone whistled and clapped their hands in mock-applause before the door shut behind them. McFaul still had the bottle. He offered it to Christianne. She shook her head. They began to cross the road and almost at once Christianne lost her footing amongst a pile of rubble. McFaul leaned down, helping her to her feet.

‘You’ll miss all this,’ he said, ‘after tomorrow.’

‘I’m not going,’ she said at once. ‘Not me.’

McFaul glanced across at her face in the darkness. Her head was tilted back, her eyes on the stars.

‘Nice punch,’ he said drily. ‘Nice party.’

‘I’m serious. You don’t believe me, do you?’

‘No.’

‘So OK,’ she shrugged, ‘don’t.’

They walked a little further. Now and again, bodies stirred in the shadows. The people who lived here didn’t have two-way radios, weren’t up with the latest news, didn’t know about the promised ceasefire. They relied instead on gossip and their own grim intuitions, and by and large they were right. McFaul kicked at a shredded plastic bag, ghosting softly across the road.

‘Why?’ he said at last. ‘Why stay?’

Christianne caught his arm, a gesture at once clumsy and intimate.

‘You were in the hospital today,’ she said. ‘You saw how it is there.’

‘Yeah, but …’ McFaul shrugged. He’d met her there as they’d arranged. The hospital was a makeshift affair, occupying two floors of a half-derelict apartment block near the river. James Jordan occupied most of the hospital’s only fridge, a big Russian model the size of a wardrobe, and
carrying the bulky plastic bag over the wounded, broken bodies that covered every available inch of floor hadn’t been easy. Christianne had managed to lay hands on a supermarket trolley and wheeling the body bag away from the hospital, towards the waiting Land Rover, McFaul had fought the urge to be physically sick. The place had stunk. Blue polythene over the empty window frames kept the worst of the flies at bay but the result was a heavy, airless fug with an almost liquid quality, a pungent cheesiness that lodged at the back of the throat. The stench had reminded McFaul of similar places in Afghanistan. Then, the problem had been bombing strikes and the sheer numbers of dead. Now, according to Christianne, the dead were lucky.

‘We have no drugs,’ she said, ‘and no rehydrates, either.’

McFaul nodded. Earlier, he’d been talking to the Norwegian surgeon and he’d said exactly the same. McFaul had asked him why he wasn’t back at the hospital, saving lives, and he’d shrugged, waving the question away. Once things became this bad, he’d said, surgery made little difference. You might set a bone, or suture a wound, or stop a haemorrhage, but the guy would probably die of a cross-infection anyway. Hopeless, he’d said. Damn, fucking hopeless.

‘What about water?’ McFaul enquired.

Christianne was singing now, ‘Hey Jude’, making up the words as she went along. She stopped and pulled a face.

‘No good,’ she said. ‘The water’s no good. Yuk. Terrible.…’

‘So what would …’ McFaul frowned, ‘your boyfriend have done about that? Would he have stayed too? Like you?’

‘Yes, for sure. We talked about it. Many times. He loved this place. He thought he could do so much.’

‘Yeah, I gathered.’

‘And he did do a lot. More than you think.’

‘Sure. Just a shame he never listened.’

Christianne staggered again in the darkness, falling heavily, and when McFaul helped her up she was crying.

‘You OK?’

‘It’s nothing.
Merde
…’ She rubbed her knee.

‘What happened?’

She looked at him a moment then shook her head, turning round and beginning to hobble back towards the party, the distant pulse of Tamla Motown in the warm darkness. McFaul caught her up.

‘Listen …’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. That was out of order. Comes from getting shitfaced.’

She stopped and looked at him again, her upturned face level with McFaul’s chin.

‘Tell me it stops hurting,’ she said quietly. ‘Please tell me that.’

McFaul bent his head, putting his arm round her.

‘It does,’ he said, ‘believe me.’

‘You know that? For sure?’

‘Yes,’ he nodded, ‘I do.’

‘So after …’ she touched the scars on his lower face, ‘how long did it take?’

McFaul said nothing for a while.

‘Getting blown up’s nothing,’ he said at last. ‘Getting blown up’s easy. I’d settle for that any day.’

‘You would?’

‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘That’s doctors and hospitals. Easy pain. It’s the other sort fucks you up.’

‘
Comment
?’ Christianne’s eyes were wide now.

McFaul shrugged. Since he’d left the Falklands he’d done his best to wall it all away. Gill. The marriage. The night he’d nearly killed her. Putting your trust in anyone else could be the worst investment you’d ever make. Yet without it, you
were nothing. Explain that, he thought, stroking the girl’s hair, thinking about Jordan again, back in the schoolhouse, the big leak-proof body bag safely folded into the freezer chest. He hadn’t yet bothered to mention it to Bennie and if they were shipping out tomorrow there’d be no point.

Christianne had her arms round him now, eager for more comfort. He bent his head, his mouth to her ear, telling her what she wanted to hear, that no pain lasted for ever, that the deepest wounds would heal. She nodded, grateful, and they’d started walking again when McFaul saw a flash on the horizon, way out in the darkness. For a moment he thought it was lightning. Then it happened again and again, the boom of the big guns rolling across the city towards them, not mortars this time but artillery, big field pieces, the real thing. For a moment McFaul did nothing, transfixed, then he was running, his arms round the girl, back towards the MSF house as the first shells landed and the ground began to shake beneath their feet.

Todd Llewelyn was at home in Bayswater when he got the call he’d been expecting. The night editor at the
Sunday Mirror
had been a colleague from way back when both men were subs on the old London
Evening News
. The
Mirror
man, as ever, was in a rush.

‘We got a tip today about a Lloyd’s bloke,’ he said. ‘Giles Jordan. Anything to do with you?’

Llewelyn took his time, reaching for the remote control, turning down the volume on the television.

‘Who?’ he said at last.

‘Giles Jordan. He’s an underwriter. His syndicate’s gone bust and there’s word he’s lost his nipper, too. Blown up somewhere. That sound about right?’

‘Could be.’ Llewelyn yawned. ‘Why?’

‘Because you’re supposed to be doing some film for People’s. With this bloke’s missus. In darkest Africa. True or false?’

Llewelyn’s smile widened.

‘True,’ he said, ‘and exclusive, I’m afraid.’

‘Yeah, but only on telly. Nothing to stop us taking first dip, is there? Lloyd’s man loses all?’

Llewelyn thought about the headline for a moment or two. He’d have preferred something a little less tabloid but he was in no position to quibble.

He glanced at his watch. The weekend was still five days away.

‘Is this for Sunday?’

‘Probably.’

‘Why don’t you hold off? Until we get back?’

There was a brief silence on the phone. Then the night editor came back. He sounded suspicious.

‘What are you offering?’

Llewelyn shrugged.

‘Photos. Quotes from the locals. Nice colour piece.’

‘And who writes it?’

‘I do.’

‘But what about People’s?’

Llewelyn reached for the remote control again, switching channels.

‘They’ll love it.’ He smiled again. ‘Should get the punters nicely tuned in.’

Molly Jordan didn’t find the note until nearly midnight. The interview abandoned, she’d let Robbie Cunningham drive her home. He’d been kindness itself, apologising for the
distress they’d caused her, telling her that Llewelyn had been way over the top. In her heart she agreed with him but the decision to do the wretched thing had been hers in the first place and the fault – if there was a fault – was therefore her own. Put yourself in a position like that, she told herself, and you should expect the odd bruise.

At the cottage, she’d insisted on making Robbie tea before he drove back to London and he’d stayed for nearly an hour. The more she got to know him, the more she liked him and when he asked at the end whether she still wanted to go to Africa, she hesitated.

‘Will you be coming?’ she’d asked at length.

‘Yes. For sure.’

‘And will he … will it be like that again?’

‘No,’ Robbie had shaken his head, ‘definitely not.’

She’d nodded, trusting him, telling him again how important it was for her to get there, and after he’d gone she’d telephoned Alice, Patrick’s wife, and driven over to Frinton. With the daylight fading, and no sign of Giles, the last place she wanted to be was the cottage.