His first job, he decided, was to talk to the High Commission, and find out what the hell was going on. For that he would need a telephone, and the roof seemed lamentably short of them.
He walked down to his room, listened at the door for a few moments to make sure no one was waiting inside, and then let himself in. The water was on and hot, so he treated himself to a shower and changed clothes before going downstairs. The lobby was empty, the telephone dead as a doornail. He would have to revisit the Atlantic.
From the lobby window the road outside also seemed devoid of people, as if it was a Sunday morning. But two guards were standing guard at the gates to the Legislative Assembly, and several more men in uniform were talking to each other just outside the doors. McGrath was about to step out into the street when the Carlton’s manager hurried out of the dining room to intercept him.
‘Mr McGrath,’ he said breathlessly. ‘I wanted to talk to you. To give you warning.’
‘What of?’ McGrath asked, surprised at such concern.
‘I remember your arrest at the hospital,’ the man said, as if in explanation.
‘Yes?’
‘They have let all the prisoners out,’ the manager explained.
‘They’ve what!’ McGrath exclaimed. ‘Why, for Christ’s sake?’
The manager shrugged. ‘To fight for them, of course. They’ve given them guns and driven them off somewhere. But I thought you should know. The man you arrested …’
‘Ah.’ Now he understood. ‘I understand. Thank you. I will be careful.’
‘Maybe you can arrest him again,’ the man said with a smile.
‘Maybe.’
The manager smiled and retreated into the bowels of the hotel. Still absorbing this new information, McGrath walked out through the terrace and down the side of the building to where he had parked the Ministry of Development jeep. He wondered if Sibou had heard the news. He would have to make sure she had.
He eased the jeep out into Independence Drive. The guards outside the Legislative Assembly stared at him, but neither did nor said any more. McGrath drove the hundred yards or so to where the side road cut through to Marina Parade and turned onto it. Halfway down he had to swerve to avoid two bodies lying in the middle of the road. He stopped the jeep, got out, and went back to look at them. Both were oldish men, and both had had their throats cut. More than a few hours ago, for the pools of blood had long since dried into a brown crust.
He went back to the jeep and drove on, turning right again onto Marina Parade, oblivious to the beauty of the trees that hung across the road. The crust of civilization was so thin, he thought. Take away the repressive hand of the law, and hey presto, there would be a queue of sickos waiting to prove that morality grew out of the barrel of a gun. Or the blade of a knife. Or whatever came to hand.
The Atlantic Hotel was an oasis of order. Black waiters in red shirts were still serving breakfast to fat Europeans, and smiling at them as if their lives depended on it. Or at least their tips. He must have got out on the wrong side of the roof this morning, McGrath told himself. The world seemed cast in shades of sourness.
Or maybe moving from slashed throats to croissant-guzzling tourists in under five minutes was a little too swift a transition. He got himself a cup of coffee and carried it through to the lobby.
At least the telephones were still working. He called the High Commission and drank most of the coffee while whoever it was that had answered went looking for Bill Myers.
‘Simon,’ a voice said eventually, ‘glad you’re still alive.’
‘Just about,’ McGrath said. ‘Banjul is getting a bit hairy. You know …’
‘Help is on the way,’ Myers interrupted him. ‘Senegalese Army should be arriving sometime today.’
‘Arriving where?’
‘No idea. But wherever it is, I don’t suppose it’ll take them long to clear this shower out.’
‘Maybe,’ McGrath said noncommittally. He supposed it was good news to him personally – instead of being arrested for shooting a rebel he would probably be given a medal. ‘Did you know they’ve emptied the prison?’ he asked Myers.
‘Oh shit, they haven’t.’
‘So I’m told. And armed the prisoners.’
‘That’s bad news. And the other thing is – we’ve got no idea what they’ve done with the old Government – it’s only Jawara who was out of the country. And then there’s the little matter of his family, too. It could still get very messy.’
‘Sounds like it. Anything you want me to do at this end.’
‘No,’ Myers said after a brief pause, ‘just stay in touch. According to London there’s a rumour that Jawara has asked the PM for help. Who knows, she may even ask your old mob to lend a hand. So you may yet become indispensable.’
‘Thanks a bunch, Bill,’ McGrath said. ‘Remind me to send you my invoice for services rendered to the Crown.’
Myers laughed and hung up. McGrath put the receiver down and thought about what he had heard. The SAS in The Gambia – that would be one for the Regiment’s scrapbook. And if a hostage situation did develop …
It would be interesting, to say the least. For the moment, though, he had other things to worry about. Like Sibou Cham. He drove down Marina Parade to the hospital, and parked right outside the entrance. Soon, if not already, the rebels would be too busy worrying about the Senegalese to worry about him.
Once inside, he walked straight through towards her office, but an orderly barred his way at the threshold. Dr Cham was sleeping, and not to be disturbed. Dr Cham had not slept for two days, he added, in case the message had not got through.
‘OK,’ McGrath said. ‘I just want to leave her a message. But it’s important she gets it,’ he added firmly.
‘What’s so important?’ Sibou’s voice asked from inside the next room.
‘You wake her,’ the orderly said indignantly.
‘It’s OK, Cissé,’ Sibou said. ‘McGrath, come and tell me your important message.’
She was lying fully dressed on the treatment table, staring up at the ceiling. ‘They’ve opened up the prison,’ he said, watching for her reaction.
Her eyes closed once, and opened again. ‘He’s out,’ she said.
‘Yeah. So I thought maybe I would hang around here for a while, and keep you company.’
‘That …’ She stopped herself. ‘There’s no need,’ she said eventually. ‘He can’t get to me here …’
‘He did before.’
‘That was different. These days this place is swarming with armed men. I can’t get rid of them.’ She looked up at him. ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘but I’ll be careful. And so should you be. I think he has more of a grudge against you than against me.’
He shrugged. ‘OK. But I’ll drop by every now and then …’
‘Thanks,’ she said again.
He went back to the jeep, drove it back to the Carlton, and climbed back up to the roof, taking his binoculars with him. It was about twenty minutes later, soon after 10.30, that the first Mirage flew low over Banjul, shattering the calm and more than a few hopes.
Cecil Matheson walked up the gracefully curving staircase to his first-floor sanctum in the Foreign Office. It had taken the chauffeur an hour to bring him the mile across London from his Pimlico home, and the Times crossword was proving unusually stubborn. All in all, he felt frustrated, and ready to take it out on the first available scapegoat.
Unfortunately, his first call of the morning, which arrived before he had even had time to re-order his desk, was from the Prime Minister.
‘Cecil,’ she began, without so much as a ‘good morning’, ‘this business in The Gambia …’
‘Yes, Prime Minister,’ he said dutifully, wondering what the hell she was talking about. He had spent the previous day at home, watching the cricket and catching up between overs on the latest Argentinian claims to the Falklands. No one had thought to disturb him with news from The Gambia. Had the wretched little country left the Commonwealth, or ban
ned the English cricket team, or stopped buying British? Maybe her son Mark had got himself lost again on some transcontinental rally devised exclusively for the idiot offspring of prominent world leaders.
‘President Jawara called me late last night and asked if we could help,’ she said.
Help with what? Matheson was thinking, when his eyes made contact with the relevant report. ‘Exactly what does he have in mind?’ he asked, scanning through the sheet in front of him.
‘Just some military advice. The Senegalese are sending troops in this morning, but I think President Jawara would like some British help – The Gambia was a British colony, after all. And he was here in London for the Royal Wedding when it all happened.’
Matheson grunted to himself. According to the report he was reading, Jawara had been overthrown by an alliance of Marxist rebels and members of his own army. So he had had to ask for military help from his Senegalese neighbours. And now the crafty bastard wanted a counterbalance to his new allies. He did not want to clear out the criminals only to find that his house had been occupied by the police.
‘So I thought a small advisory group,’ the Prime Minister continued. ‘The SAS would seem best qualified. And be a good advertisement for the country.’
‘Yes, I’m sure they could undertake such a task,’ Matheson agreed. The previous year’s breaking of the Iranian Embassy siege had been efficient enough. Almost awesomely so. Yet it had not exactly quelled some doubts, particularly among the opposition, as to the Regiment’s cut-throat methods. Over the five years of the SAS’s deployment in Northern Ireland there had been rather a lot of fatal accidents involving terrorist suspects.
‘Very well,’ the Prime Minister was saying. ‘I’ll leave it with you to contact Hereford. Tell them we definitely want to offer the President some help, but it’s up to them to suggest exactly what. You can arrange the necessary liaison with the Gambians.’
‘Certainly …’ Matheson started to say, but she had hung up. He made a face at the phone and read through the report properly. Reading between the lines, he doubted whether the Senegalese would have much trouble re-establishing Jawara’s authority. But the large number of tourists did suggest an unpleasantly serious risk of hostages being taken. It could all become a bit of a mare’s nest, he thought. Perhaps the SAS was not such a bad idea, after all.
First, though, he had better go through all the necessary international courtesies. The French first, he thought, and asked his secretary to connect him with his opposite number in the Quai d’Orsay. René Bonnard was one of God’s more acceptable Frenchmen – on occasion Matheson even suspected he had a moral code. It was probably just a trick of the light.
‘René’ he said warmly, once the connection had been established. ‘I’d just like a few words about the Gambian situation,’ he went on, fighting the usual losing battle with his French.
‘Let us speak English,’ Bonnard said. Pride in one’s language was one thing, but it was just too painful listening to Matheson’s version of it. ‘I hope you don’t think we’re treading on your feet …’
‘No, no, not at all. The treaty between Senegal and The Gambia was there for just such an eventuality. We have no problem with Senegalese intervention, quite the contrary. I’m calling to let you know that we shall in all probability be sending a small team of our own – and at Jawara’s request, of course …’
‘Of course,’ Bonnard agreed wryly. ‘Hedging his bets – is that the English phrase?’
Matheson laughed. ‘Indeed it is.’
‘Well, we will be happy to offer any assistance we can. I assume Jawara will set up any necessary liaison facilities between the Senegalese military and your men, but if we can do anything …’
‘Since the Senegalese were trained by your people, it might be useful for our men to get some idea of who they’ll be dealing with – the quality of the ally, so to speak …’
‘I’m sure that can be arranged,’ Bonnard agreed. ‘At the moment I don’t imagine there’s any chance of your boys flying direct to Banjul, so they’d have to come through Paris anyway, en route to Dakar. I could set up a meeting at Charles de Gaulle easily enough.’
‘Thank you, René. I’ll be in touch.’ Matheson replaced the phone, asked his secretary to get him the State Department, and sipped at the coffee which had just appeared on his desk. Tadeusz Lubanski was a very different proposition from René Bonnard. A ‘tad obnoxious’ as some Foreign Office wit had dubbed him.
The buzzer announced the call had been put through. ‘Good morning, Mr Lubanski,’ Matheson announced brightly. The reply was a sound between a grunt and groan. Matheson smiled to himself. ‘Sorry to wake you up’, he went on, with the modicum of sincerity he could muster, ‘but we’re considering some military action, and I assume you would wish to be consulted before the fact, rather than after.’
‘What are you going to do, Cecil? Invade China?’
‘No, nor any other part of south-east Asia,’ Matheson rejoined. ‘We’re just sending a few advisers to The Gambia – you know where that is?’
‘Africa, by any chance?’ Lubanski asked sarcastically.
‘There’s been a coup …’
‘We do notice these things, Cecil.’
‘Ah, of course. Well, the Senegalese Army is going in to put things back together and we’re just sending in a few of our own men to lend them a helping hand.’
‘Very commendable,’ Lubanski said drily.
‘So, the United States Government has no objections?’
‘No, Cecil, I think I can say with some certainty that we don’t. If you and the French want to play golden oldies down Africa way, then be our guests. Wear your pith helmets with pride.’
‘Thank you,’ Matheson said coldly.
‘You’re welcome. Now I’m going back to sleep.’ There was a click as the line went dead.
‘Bastard,’ Matheson muttered. He took another gulp of coffee and asked for a number in Hereford.
Lieutenant-Colonel Bryan Weighell was sitting in his office at the Stirling Lines barracks of 22 SAS Regiment, thinking about his three children. Now that his ex-wife, Linda, had announced her imminent wedding to the idiot barrister he wondered what would happen to his relationship with Helen, Jenny and Stephen. As it was now, he only saw them for a few hours each Sunday, and presumably their moving to London would make things even more difficult. He supposed he could drive down from Hereford each weekend, but it would not be the same. He would always have to be out with them, at cinemas or zoos or McDonald’s. And they would have new schools, new friends, new interests. And a new father.
He himself would become a more distant figure, and not just in miles. Maybe they had known him long enough for something to stick, something which could be brought back to life when they grew up, yet he was not at all sure of it. Helen, the eldest, was only twelve.
It was all profoundly depressing.
Like the state of the world, come to that. The Royal Wedding had been celebrated against a backdrop of cities torn by rioting, soaring unemployment, a new cold war. Something was up shit creek in the state of Denmark, Weighell told himself. Even his beloved SAS had been reduced to doing the dirty work in Northern Ireland. Shooting teenage joyriders in Armagh was not how he had seen the future of the Regiment.
Maybe he should take an early discharge and get a consultancy job – it would not be difficult. Maybe one in London to be near the kids. Or maybe one abroad, somewhere the kids could come and stay with him. A week of real contact would probably be worth a lot more than regular trips to McDonald’s. And Linda would let them come, for she was determined to be civilized about it all.
Weighell glared savagely out of the window at the sunlit yard, half-wishing she had given him more real justification for anger.
The telephone rang.
‘Lieutenant-Colonel Weighell?’ a vaguely familiar voice asked him.
‘Speaking.’
‘I’m Cecil Matheson. Junior Minister at the Foreign
Office …’
Now Weighell recognized the voice. A tall, smarmy-looking man who always seemed to be staring down his nose at TV interviewers. Not that most of the interviewers deserved any better …
‘The Prime Minister has asked me to call you,’ Matheson was saying. ‘Are you aware of what’s been happening in The Gambia over the last two days?’ he asked.
‘Can’t say I am.’
‘It’s on the front page of this morning’s Times’, Matheson said curtly, neglecting to add that he had missed it himself in his eagerness to get to the crossword.
‘I haven’t seen the paper yet,’ Weighell said, reaching across for the tabloid on his desk, and finding its front page devoted to the ins and outs, to coin a phrase, of the Royal Honeymoon.
Matheson briefly outlined the events of the previous forty-eight hours in The Gambia, and recounted the gist of his conversations with the Prime Minister and René Bonnard. ‘She wants to know if you can – and I quote – make yourselves useful down there.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Advising the Senegalese, advising Jawara and his government.’
‘Do the Senegalese want advice?’
‘Probably not. But Jawara obviously wants some sort of counterbalance to them. You know what these situations are like.’
‘Unfortunately. But why’s the PM going along?’
‘General goodwill. Fellow member of the Commonwealth, etc. Plus she has a fondness for … well …’
‘Sticking her oar in?’
‘You could put it that way. And she has a great admiration for your regiment,’ Matheson added, wondering whether he had allowed himself to become a little too obviously disloyal. ‘After the Princes Gate siege she thinks you can do miracles,’ he added, reverting to his usual tone of disdainful detachment.
Weighell thought for a moment. ‘Let me get this straight,’ he said. ‘You want us to send a small party to The Gambia to act as advisers to the President …’
‘Two or three men, to offer help where help is needed.’
‘Including military action?’
‘We’ll have to consider that if and when the need arises. The role will be essentially advisory. A hostage situation may develop, in which case your experience will no doubt be invaluable to whoever’s in charge.’
Soldier N: Gambian Bluff Page 7
