The Perfect Soldier (44 page)

McFaul thought about the question now. The spilling of blood carried certain responsibilities. That’s what he’d wanted to say to Mohammed’s father. That’s what he’d tried to say to Celestina. An eye for an eye. A leg for a leg. A life for a life. He got to his feet again, looking at his watch, brooding.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The sauna of the Intercontinental Hotel is on the ground floor, tucked between the changing rooms for the outdoor swimming pool and the line of squash courts that flank the building to the east. Molly left her clothes in a locker in the changing room, wrapping a towel round herself. The attendant beside the plunge pool assured her that the sauna was nearly empty. One or two guests at the most. No hassle. No sweat. Molly thanked him, smiling dutifully at the joke, pulling open the heavy pine door. A fat bubble of hot air enveloped her at once, and she lifted her face, savouring the smell of resin, knowing that this decision of hers had been right. Something to take her mind off Kinshasa. Something to stop her thinking about Katilo, and the Chargé at the embassy, and the prospect of another night in this appalling city.

‘Hi …’

Molly looked round. The sauna was empty except for a man on the corner bench nearest the door. He had a yellow towel round his waist and one leg was missing below the knee, the stump dangling down over the edge of the wooden slats.

Molly reached at once for the door. McFaul looked amused.

‘Too hot for you?’

‘Not at all.’

‘Then stay.’ McFaul nodded at the empty benches. ‘No need to worry about me.’

‘It’s not that …’

‘No?’

‘No.’ Molly shook her head, still hesitating by the door. She eyed him a moment, then forced another smile, settling herself carefully on the adjacent bench. She liked McFaul but she didn’t understand him. The life he led seemed indescribably dangerous and the scars he carried slightly frightened her. McFaul was what happened when you got used to these awful mines. For him, they’d become a way of life.

McFaul reached for the scoop, splashing more water on the hot coals, and Molly felt the temperature rise at once, a thick woolly blanket of air, tightening around her. She was sweating already, leaning forward, her elbows on her knees, avoiding contact with the wall. McFaul had settled again. His forearms were dark from exposure to the sun but the pale white skin of the rest of his body was yellowed with bruising. The bruises were everywhere, down his ribcage, across the small of his back, and there were graze marks too, as if he’d been dragged across rough ground.

McFaul was cleaning the dirt from his fingernails. The silence between them unnerved Molly.

‘Those cassettes you’ve got,’ she said lightly. ‘What happens to them now?’

‘We take them back to the UK.’

‘We?’

‘Me,’ he glanced up, wiping his face with the back of his hand, ‘and you. If you’re interested.’

‘I’m not with you.’

‘There’s a programme to make. You could be part of all that.’

‘You mean Alma?’

McFaul shrugged.

‘Sure. Or whoever else.’

Molly looked at him a moment, uncertain. The film had begun with Todd Llewelyn. At Robbie’s invitation, Alma Bradley had stepped in. Now, McFaul was evidently thinking of a third party.

‘Who do you mean?’

‘I don’t know. I’m not an expert. Television? You tell me.’

‘But you want to see it through? This film? Whatever it is?’

‘Absolutely. No question.’

‘And Alma? The woman I told you about? In Luanda?’

‘She’s welcome. More than welcome. As long as—’ He broke off, frowning, studying his hands again.

‘As long as what?’

‘As long as she sees it the way we saw it, the way it happened. No more bullshit. No more dressing up. Katilo thinks we’re making some kind of PR film. Llewelyn wanted his name in fairy lights. And maybe your Alma friend’s got some angle too. I don’t want that, don’t need it. The stuff’s there, you’ve seen it, most of it, first-hand. Why don’t we just cut it all together? Tell it the way it was? Eh? I’m no film director but I don’t think we’re short of material, do you?’ He looked up, staring at her, the sweat pouring from his hairline, the veins in his temples raised and throbbing, and for the first time she realised that McFaul was no more immune to what had happened than she’d been. The last two weeks must have touched him, she thought. Deeply.

‘Not at all. I think you’ve been extraordinary. Doing what you’ve done.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yes.’ Molly nodded. ‘That night in Muengo when we
went to the bonfire. The night they slaughtered the cow. I don’t know how you did it, watched it. I just …’ She shook her head, one hand tightening the knot that secured the towel at the top of her breasts.

McFaul reached for the scoop again. The water hissed on the coals, evaporating immediately.

‘You have to,’ he said savagely, ‘there’s no choice. It got us out of Muengo. That’s one thing. But I’d have done it anyway if I’d thought hard enough. People don’t know. They don’t have a clue. They think Africa’s one big basket case. They think they can solve it with raffles and rock concerts and appeals on telly. It never occurs to anyone there might be a reason these people are starving. You know about Angola? How rich it could be?’ He paused. ‘And you know where most of the money goes? Anyone ever tell you?’

Molly nodded. Rademeyer had told her on the plane, that first flight down to Muengo.

‘Arms?’ she suggested.

‘Yeah.’ McFaul was staring at her. ‘Guns, shells, mines, you name it. Both sides. Katilo’s lot. The government. They’re both at it. You know how much those clowns in Luanda spent last year? Buying stuff in?’ Molly frowned, trying to remember the figure. McFaul beat her to it. ‘Two billion dollars. Two
billion
. That’s money spent by a government that can’t feed its own people. A government that chops its kids off at the knees.’

Molly reached out for him, hearing the rage in his voice. His head was down again, his hands tightly knotted together, the bands of muscle in his forearms standing out. She’d rarely seen anyone so tense. No wonder he’d come for a sauna. A question had been nagging at her for days. She’d tried to think of ways of softening it but she knew now that there was no point.

‘Your own injuries,’ she said quietly. ‘What happened to your leg and your face. Is that why you’re so angry?’

McFaul’s head came up. He looked at her for a moment or two, a speculative expression on his face, as if he’d never considered the question before.

‘No,’ he shook his head, ‘not at all.’

‘Your friend told me about it. Bennie.’

‘Did he? Kuwait? All that?’

‘Yes. It must have been dreadful, ghastly.’

McFaul shrugged.

‘We were well paid. We knew the odds. It wasn’t the same at all. It wasn’t like this.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like here. Angola. Muengo …’ He paused. ‘Innocent people, decent people. Blokes like Domingos.’

‘Or James?’

‘Yeah,’ he nodded, ‘or James.’

Molly said nothing. It was the first time McFaul had betrayed the slightest sympathy for her dead son and she risked a smile, a small expression of gratitude. McFaul ducked his head, embarrassed. After a while, he looked up again. His voice was lower, contemplative, much of the anger gone. He sounded, if anything, resigned.

‘Do it commercially,’ he said, ‘and you lose your judgement. It’s like any other deal. Contracts. Deadlines. Penalty payments. You’re so keen on the money, you stop thinking. That’s why …’ He gestured at the remains of his leg, not bothering to finish the sentence.

Molly wanted to ask another question. There were parts of McFaul it was possible to touch. Just.

‘Does that make it easier?’

‘What?’

‘Knowing it was your fault? Or partly your fault?’

‘Sure,’ he nodded, ‘it was a mistake. And you only make it once. Either it kills you, or you end up like me.’ He looked down at his leg again. The stump was puckered, like the top of a peeled orange.

There was a long silence.

‘Bennie told me you were covering for someone else. He said it was his fault. Not yours.’

‘Makes no difference. With most blokes, it’s greed. That’s a weakness. I was just soft in the head. I should have shopped the guy, turned him in. That’s a weakness, too.’

‘Compassion?’

‘Bad judgement. The guy was a dickhead.’ He eyed her a moment. ‘I’m hopeless with people. Always get it wrong. Always have. Always will. Bennie tell you that, too?’

‘Yes,’ Molly smiled, ‘he did.’

‘Well, then …’ He ducked his head again, desperate to change the subject. There were firms working in Africa, he said, who were clearing minefields commercially. Same deal as Kuwait.

‘You mean in Angola?’

‘Not so far. Mozambique mainly.’

‘But isn’t that OK? Aren’t they the experts? The ones who’d know best?’

‘Oh sure, sure. But there’s a twist. Some of these firms are in the mines business already. They deal at both ends. They make the stuff, flog it, and then pop back a couple of years later and clean it all up. Isn’t that neat? Getting paid twice? Once for killing people? Maiming them? And then again when they’ve had enough?’ He shook his head, picking at a shred of loose skin on one of his fingers. ‘This game stinks, stinks. That’s why I’m keen on doing some kind of film. People should see for themselves. People should know.’

‘Will they ever show it?’

‘God knows. I hope so.’

‘And is that enough? Will people take any notice?’

McFaul was staring at her again, anger and surprise.

‘You think they won’t?’

‘I’m just asking the question.’ Molly frowned. ‘People get to see a lot nowadays.’

‘But you think it needs something else?’

‘I don’t know.’ Molly was looking at his leg again. ‘What else can you do?’

After the sauna, McFaul slept. When he awoke, it was nearly dark, the last of the sunset mirrored on the broad sweep of the Zaire river below the hotel window. He dressed slowly, pensive. When he descended in the lift to the hotel lobby, a note awaited him from Katilo. He was to take the camcorder up to his room. He was to leave it there with a note explaining how to make the thing work. The colonel’s plans for the evening had changed. He’d be back in the hotel by nine.

McFaul collected the camcorder and found his way to Katilo’s room. The room had been cleaned since the midday meeting. There was fresh fruit in a bowl on the coffee table, and a vase of flowers in an alcove above the long crescent of sofa. The curtains had been drawn over the tall picture windows and the top cover on the bed had been folded carefully down. Three champagne glasses stood on a silver tray beside the bed, and McFaul looked at them a moment. A note on the tray directed Katilo to the mini-bar, and McFaul opened it, finding three bottles of Krug nestling in buckets of ice-cubes. He closed the door, looking at the bed again. Three glasses. A bottle each.

The phone began to ring, trilling softly beside the bed. McFaul ignored it, positioning the camcorder on the edge
of the dressing-table. Katilo hadn’t specified why he wanted the camcorder but McFaul could guess at the kind of sequence he had in mind. The major international hotels were served by Kinshasa’s top call girls. For visiting businessmen crazy enough to risk AIDS, a couple of hundred dollars would buy an hour or two of à la carte sex. For Katilo, given his military status, the full menu was probably on the house. McFaul bent to the camcorder. Through the tiny viewfinder, he could see at least three-quarters of the bed. He moved it a little, first left, then right, wondering quite where Katilo preferred to perform. At length he settled on a shot that included the pillow and the waiting triangle of crisp white sheet.

The phone was still ringing. McFaul picked it up. It was Rademeyer.

‘Katilo there?’

‘No.’

‘No?’

McFaul explained about Katilo and his request for the camcorder. Rademeyer confirmed his suspicions.

‘Man’s insatiable.’ He laughed. ‘He keeps a scrapbook of photos. He’s talked me through them a couple of times.’ He asked McFaul if he could see a package Katilo had wanted delivered. Brown Jiffybag. Size of a paperback book. McFaul scanned the room.

‘No,’ he said, ‘can’t see it.’

‘Cupboards? Wardrobes? Tried them?’

McFaul began to search. Except for a Bible, the chest of drawers beside the mini-bar was empty. Across the room, behind the louvred doors, was a walk-in closet. McFaul limped towards it, skirting the huge bed. He was still looking for Rademeyer’s Jiffybag, when he spotted the trip-wire. He froze, motionless beside the bed. The trip-wire was at ankle-height, barely inches away, and his eyes followed it to the
wall. The mine was a Claymore, a container the size of a kid’s paintbox, taped above the skirting-board. On the outside, a line of raised letters read
FRONT TOWARDS ENEMY
. McFaul stepped slowly backwards. The other end of the trip-wire ran to a fixing point by the hinge of the door that led out to the balcony. Beyond the trip-wire, lay the closet.

McFaul circled carefully round the bed. Then he bent to the Claymore, making sure there were no funnies. It was easy to booby-trap a mine like this. Get it wrong, make a single mistake, and the seven hundred steel balls inside would tear him apart. Claymores were the mines you used to protect whole sections of men in the field. Anyone closer than a hundred metres was history.

Finding no booby-traps, McFaul knew he had to make the mine safe. In a leather pouch on his belt he carried a fold-up multi-tool. The multi-tool included a pair of wire cutters and he crouched beside the Claymore, holding the firing pin steady with one hand, cutting the trip-wire with the other. Then he got to his feet, unsteady for a second, suddenly aware of the sweat darkening the thin cotton shirt. Only Katilo would have been crazy enough to risk triggering a Claymore within the confines of a hotel bedroom. God knows what would have happened had the thing gone off.

Remembering Rademeyer, McFaul returned to the phone. When he told Rademeyer he couldn’t find the Jiffybag the South African cursed. He’d been planning to go out. Now he’d have to wait until Katilo returned. He gave McFaul his room number in case Katilo turned up, then rang off. McFaul was still looking at the closet. The door was half-open. Inside, there were clothes hanging on a rail and below the clothes was the cardboard box he’d seen earlier. McFaul replaced the phone and crossed the room again, examining the closet doors for more booby-traps. Finding nothing, he knelt beside
the box. Inside, plainly visible, were the land mines. McFaul frowned. There were maybe a dozen mines piled on top of each other, different types, none of them live. He could see the carrying caps, the small plastic screw-in blanks you removed before inserting the detonator. In all, the mines were worth no more than a couple of hundred dollars. Why go to the trouble of booby-trapping a dozen unfused mines? Why post a sentry as lethal as a Claymore?