Vagabond (39 page)

Dusty dropped them at the hotel. He would go now to the secure car park on the quai Vendeuvre to clean the interior of the minibus, hose the outside and empty the rubbish bags. And then? Desperate would have walked round the bassin Saint-Pierre, then cut up the venelle Maillard, by the plaque to the guillotined Charlotte Corday, to rue Basse and Le Dickens Bar to take a beer. He pushed through the door and regulars saw that their friend was not with him. Jaws seemed, momentarily, to slacken.

The hours he spent without Desperate were hard for Dusty. He felt his absence and feared for the future. Not a future that involved Hanne, despite his efforts at match-making. That night he would go into Desperate’s room on the top floor with a duster and glass-cleaning spray to polish the pictures that crowded the walls. The fear was based on where Desperate was now, the handling of an agent and the price to be paid. The first beer didn’t touch the sides so he had another.

The fear stayed with him.

A quartermaster had been married for eighteen years and his wife had borne him three kids, two girls and a boy. The wife and children lived in the family home, in Augher. The quartermaster was, to preserve his liberty, across the border in the Republic and had a bed-sit in Monaghan town. He controlled the weapons and explosives for the active-service units and was responsible for the hardware and the caches in which it was hidden. The quartermaster was lonely. There were plenty of women in Monaghan, other men’s wives and girlfriends, plenty of temptation. The quartermaster had fallen for a pretty girl who didn’t bother him with talk. His wife seldom came from Augher to Monaghan because she spent so much of her time caring for an aunt with chronic emphysema. The quartermaster visited his family occasionally, and was high on the list of wanted men.

All was well within the divided family until the aunt’s brother had gone to Monaghan to buy a new lawnmower – cheaper in the Republic. He had seen the quartermaster in a bar with ‘the painted floozy’ and had watched them kiss. Outraged, he had followed them to a terraced house on St Macartan’s.

An immediate response from the wife: she had driven to the barracks at Dungannon, had demanded to speak to an army intelligence officer and had recruited herself. A lovely lady, they all said. Demure, polite kids, an elephantine memory and a hatred of her husband. She knew so much.

Weapons were ‘jarked’, FRU-speak for disabled but left on site; others were fitted with homing beacons; cameras were laid in plastic logs on the approach to the caches.

She knew where her husband went, where the bunkers were that kept the kit dry.

Arrests were made in a dribble.

For Desperate and Dusty she was a prime and valued souree. A bank account was kept ticking over.

She wasn’t satisfied. The money was good, the kids had better clothes, but she hadn’t yet ‘put my foot on the bastard’s windpipe and stamped’.

Should the man be arrested and caged, or should he be left at liberty while his life was scrutinised? She could be a good laugh and, sometimes, a flirt. She was offered help to get to the mainland and take a new identity, but it would have meant leaving the sick aunt in Augher so it didn’t happen. Dusty remembered the day she had given Desperate her answer, grimaced at him and driven off. Desperate had said, ‘Too good to last. Never does. Always tears at the end.’ And it had been.

He asked for a last beer.

The fear Dusty had for Desperate was genuine: he had been called back and the undertow of the past was too strong to withstand. The old wounds were there to be reopened.

A night off for the tourists, a chance for them to ease away from history and wander the sites of Caen. Tomorrow would be a big day, but that evening they could relax. On offer for those who wished to walk would be the school where Charlotte Corday, killer of the revolutionary Marat, was educated. The grave of Matilda, diminutive wife of England’s William the Conqueror, could be visited at L’Abbaye aux Dames, in the church of St Gilles: she had been four feet two inches tall and had initially refused him – wouldn’t marry a ‘Bastard’ – but he had dragged her out onto the street from her father’s home and beaten her until she had accepted his proposal. They might also visit the flattened ruin of Le Vieux St Gilles, begun in the eighth century and a place of worship until the RAF had bombed Caen in 1944. They would have time to walk under the walls of the castle from which William had ruled Normandy. For those with a surfeit of culture there were restaurants close to the hotel, the Abracadabra, the Santa Lucia and the little Armenian place round the corner.

As they walked in the historic quarter they might find themselves on the rue Haute in front of a dark old stone building that was notable for exquisite carving of little flowers and sprigs of cherries. Had they seen it they would not have known about a room in the house where the walls were covered with pictures, that it was the refuge of a man troubled in his own way by war. Last, they might have seen their driver, thoughtful and subdued, walking home from Le Dickens Bar.

He checked his watch yet again. The house on the hill was ready for his guest.

Timofey Simonov understood the importance of friendship, and the repayment of debt. It was part of the creed of the
zeks
, the criminals behind the fences. A stranger had helped him and gained little from his effort. From the airfield he had met Mr Vik, old air force, Russian, with an understanding of an entrepreneur’s chances, blooming as the regime collapsed. Weapons were the new currency.

He’d have sluiced the toilets for work, and had the brigadier scrub them beside him. He had been brought inside an organisation. He had been trusted, the brigadier tucked away as baggage.

Weapons paid big-time, and old aircraft flew them where the rewards were richest. Never greedy, never critical. He was described as ‘a man who delivers’. At first he was always a pace behind Mr Vik, carrying the briefcase. He was with the bodyguards who were old Spetznaz, with front-line experience of killing in Chechnya. Later, he was sent on his own trip, with the brigadier. A giant stride for him . . .

It was a new strip – he had seen it from behind the pilot’s shoulder on the descent – narrow and red, with undulations. The aircraft was an Antonov and that it stayed in the air from Europe, via Damascus and Khartoum, was a miracle: engines had cut, then restarted, the pressurisation was sporadic, and the landing gear was a mystery beyond the understanding of the in-flight engineer. They had been round four times looking for the strip, then had seen it. They had brought in twenty-five tons. The brigadier had been behind him in a bucket seat, but had often gone to the latrine while they bumped in turbulence.

Without the help of Ralph Exton, he would not have been there.

As they careered along the strip, the brakes came on and the aircraft juddered, leaving a plume of red dust behind them. Before it was enveloped, he had seen the village and a crowd. There had been Africans in combat fatigues – he had thought of the NCOs who drilled conscripts at Milovice: they’d have had heart failure at the sight of men in military kit, assault rifles dangling towards the dirt, and the wide eyes of drug or booze abuse. There had been civilians too, men, women and children, who had stood back, huddled close, and didn’t move. The pilot brought the aircraft to a halt, then made the sign of the cross over his once-white shirt. The engines were switched off.

The chief man appeared. No Mr Vik to greet him: that was left to young Timofey Simonov. He knew what to do: payment first, then the weapons. That was Mr Vik’s rule. There was a pilot, an engineer, the brigadier and himself. They each had rifles and grenades, and there were twenty-five tons of hardware in the cargo area. The chief man had enough medal strips on his chest for a full general. He had a typed inventory. Timofey understood that if he gave credit, he would never fly again, would be out on his ear. The pilot kept the tail ramp raised. Timofey said what he wanted, had enough French for it. Payment first, then weapons. The men below him were festooned with grenades, some had belts of machine-gun rounds draped over shoulders, and there were loaded RPG launchers.

He was surprised that the Mercedes had not yet returned.

He had called down, demanding the payment. There were enough weapons around the Antonov to start a medium-sized war, and the plane could not lift off again if it were under fire. That was the moment when he proved himself. He stood at the open side hatch and demanded payment first. He could have been gunned down, could have had a swarm of men scrambling past him into the aircraft and stripping out the cargo. He had felt a strange sense of calm.

And it had happened. Another man had been called forward, an ethnic Indian, with an attaché case. It was passed up. He’d taken it, opened it, and looked into the cloth bag it contained, had seen the dull faces of the uncut, unpolished diamonds. He had smiled.

That moment had been decisive in his life, which from then on had led him to success.

There had been a semi-hidden safe deposit box under the pilot’s seat. The cloth bag went into it. He had returned the case, and the pilot had again crossed himself. The hatch at the tail was lowered. A crocodile of men formed, not the ones in uniform but men from the village. The soldiers were in the cargo area, shifting the crates, but the village people had carried them. Ammunition was moved, with mortar bombs, grenades, light machine-guns and heavier versions. Timofey Simonov had little knowledge of which side in a civil war the sale would support, which faction would gain immediate advantage. He took satisfaction from the small dull stones stowed under the pilot’s seat. They would end up in the diamond quarter of Amsterdam, en route to rich women’s throats and fingers. A girl watched him.

He heard the car and the dogs stirred.

He remembered two people from far back in his life. There had been a poet at Perm 35, there for political crimes, who would stand at the fence and recite his work to the tundra – and there was the girl at the side of the dirt strip. Timofey saw her, he thought afterwards, only because he had the elevation of being at the forward hatch. She had been standing behind the local civilians and did not come forward to help with unloading the aircraft. When he saw her, she was alone. She wore flip-flops, and her shins and knees were reddened but not burned. She had on khaki drill shorts and a blouse with long sleeves in a quiet check. Fair hair protruded from under a woven sun hat, with dark glasses perched on top. Behind her there was a building of mud and wood and over the door a dual sign and two arrows: ‘Clinic’ and ‘School’, in French. He saw her very clearly: north European, twenty-two or -three, no rings on her fingers, no pendant round her neck, no earrings. He had not forgotten her expression. He assumed her to be an aid worker who had came to change the world, live rough for a few months and claim it as a ‘life-altering experience’.

When the weapons had been lifted out there would be two boxes of Johnnie Walker, a dozen litre bottles in each. The boys, when they had their new toys, fought better if fortified by the Red Label brand. Looking at her, he had thought this would not be a good place for her when the sun dipped. The booze would make them ‘difficult’. Kids flocked around her, thin legs and protruding bellies. Usually children smiled and waved but not that day: they took their cue from her. The look on her face was of contempt. Her target? Himself.

The crates had gone from the strip and a group of soldiers was at one of the cardboard boxes, but the chief man belted them away with a rifle butt. Her stare never wavered, and the contempt remained.

The engines caught, the propellers turned, and the chief man at the side broke off the beating and clumsily saluted. How could that girl exist there? The propellers spun, the dust rose under them and they taxied. He didn’t see her again. The pilot took off.

The dogs were barking and he heard the door close, then the call, ‘And how’s my old cocker?’

They hugged. He was held tightly to register long friendship. His coat had been taken, the warmth of the room played on his face, and he looked around at fine furniture and fine art – because the blighter had done well. A useful man to call a ‘friend’. They broke apart. ‘It’s wonderful to see you, Timofey.’

‘You are, Ralph, so welcome to my home. A good journey?’

‘Yes, with excellent conversation.’ He assumed the brigadier was hovering, waiting for instructions, but might already have been gestured away.

‘And all is well in your home?’

‘Home never changes, Timofey.’

He was led towards an inlaid mahogany table, with bottles, glasses and an ice bucket.

‘Not champagne, as I remember, Ralph.’

‘No champagne until a deal is signed, sealed and delivered. For now, a gin and tonic – fifty-fifty, plenty of tonic. Just my little joke, Timofey. It would go down a treat.’