Soldier N: Gambian Bluff

by David Monnery

  By five o’clock Caskey was well satisfied with the day’s work. He reckoned that these men were capable of doing the job that was required of them, and was pleased to find that both Wynwood and Franklin agreed with him. The problem, he already knew, would be persuading General N’Dor to let them try.

  Night had almost fallen by the time Franklin had washed all the dust out of his body and hair. He stood at the palace window rubbing himself with a large towel, watching the last vestiges of the tropical sunset being consumed by the darkness. Having put on his last set of clean clothes, he looked around the bathroom for something to wash the others with, thinking that in a palace there should be someone to do the laundry for him. ‘And just who did you have in mind, boy?’ he could hear his mother say.

  He smiled to himself and used the hand soap to wash out some underwear, socks and a T-shirt.

  Caskey had gone off to fill in McGrath on the day’s events, and God only knew what the two of them would be getting up to. Franklin would not put it past them to invade Senegal, replace the Government, and have the new lot recall N’Dor, just so they could lead the charge on the Field Force depot.

  And why not? Franklin asked himself.

  As for Wynwood, he had gone off to the Atlantic Hotel to try and ring his wife. An exercise which would probably take up all of his evening and half the night.

  Franklin rinsed out the washed clothes, hung them on the shower rail and went back to the window, wondering what to do. Who was he kidding? He had spoken to only two other people in The Gambia, and he had no desire to drop in on General N’Dor. Still, the thought of visiting the doctor made him unusually nervous.

  She probably would not be there, he decided, as he walked out through the palace gates and across the road to the hospital entrance. But she was, and even flashed him a quick smile over the heads of the half-dozen or so patients waiting for her attention. He settled down in the reception area to wait – something for which the Army had trained him well.

  After about fifteen minutes she suddenly appeared at his shoulder, and sat down beside him, smelling faintly of disinfectant. ‘I can’t talk for more than a moment,’ she said. ‘We seem to be having a busy evening, though …’

  ‘Can I help at all?’ he asked.

  She gave him a doubtful glance.

  ‘We each have an area of expertise,’ he said. ‘Mine’s medicine. I mean, I’m not a doctor, or anything, but I can do basic tasks …’

  ‘I never turn down offers of help,’ she said. ‘If you’re sure …?

  ‘A soldier’s life is nine-tenths boredom,’ he said. ‘I’d be happy to.’

  ‘You can read vital signs?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Then follow me.’

  For the next two hours he took temperatures, read pulses and checked blood pressures on all the new arrivals, and when required helped with the application of dressings. Most of the patients had the sort of complaints that a GP might have dealt with in England, but there were also several real emergency cases, like a woman who had just bloodily miscarried and a man who seemed to have had a mild stroke. The only evidence of the political emergency still in progress came from a man with a three-day-old bullet wound that had become infected.

  While he worked Franklin observed the way Sibou dealt with the patients, watched her rummage for drugs in an impossibly disorganized cupboard, and listened in on her end of conversations with other parts of the hospital. One of the latter would long stick in his mind: she was saying that yes, she knew there were no beds available, but that this new patient – the woman who had miscarried – had to have one, and that so-and-so, who was going to be released on the following day in any case, would just to have to spend the night in ‘the chair with arms’.

  It was gone nine o’clock when the last patient had been dealt with, and the concertina door pulled shut.

  ‘What happens between now and morning?’ Franklin asked. ‘If there’s an emergency?’

  ‘You mean, if an ambulance brings someone in from one of the villages?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes … oh, I see what you mean.’

  ‘If someone rich cuts his finger off by accident then he takes a taxi to his private doctor. He’d never use this hospital anyway. And in a country with no ambulances and not many telephones someone poor who can manage to get himself to this hospital in the middle of the night either lives just round the corner or probably doesn’t need treatment that badly. There are people here who can deal with the exceptions, but it only happens about twice a year.’

  ‘Like the last few days.’

  ‘Fortunately we don’t have that many coups,’ she said, taking off her white coat and hanging it on the back of her office door. Underneath it she was wearing brightly tie-dyed African trousers and a dark-blue shirt.

  ‘I haven’t eaten,’ Franklin said. ‘Would you like …?’

  ‘I have my supper,’ she said, indicating a plastic box. But she did not feel like dispensing with his company, not for a while anyway. ‘I’ll share it with you,’ she said.

  ‘What, here?’

  ‘We can take it to the beach. It’s only a five-minute walk.’

  It took even less. The moon had not yet risen, and the horizon between sea and sky was black meeting black. The only light came from the stars, with the Milky Way hanging directly above them like a dim but particularly beautiful fluorescent tube.

  ‘Do you often come out here?’ he asked, as they sat down side by side in the sand, facing in the direction of the dark sea.

  ‘In the daytime. I bring my lunch out here when I can. After dark it’s not so safe any more.’

  ‘Was it ever?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said, surprised that he should ask. She handed him something which was similar in size and consistency to a vegetable samosa. ‘This was an incredibly peaceful country until recently,’ she said. ‘There was hardly any crime at all.’

  ‘What changed it?’ Franklin asked between bites. Whatever it was, it tasted good.

  ‘Who knows? Most of the world seems to be going the same way. Maybe it’s just that more people are aware of what they haven’t got, and can see no good reason why other people have. I don’t know … Frankie is your name, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s just a nickname. Worrell is my real name.’

  ‘Where do you come from, Worrell?’

  ‘Brixton. In south London.’

  ‘I know it. I was a medical student at Guy’s, near London Bridge.’ As she said it, she wondered what had made this man want to be a soldier. He seemed too gentle in some ways – in fact, if his work that evening was anything to go by, he would have made a fine doctor. She found herself wondering what his touch would be like, and scolded herself. This was just loneliness talking, a voice in her head said. Then let it talk, another replied.

  He broke the silence. ‘I want to ask why you came back here,’ he said, ‘but I think I know the answer.’

  ‘You do?’ She flashed a challenging smile in the darkness.

  ‘You can do more good here.’

  ‘Maybe that’s part of it,’ she said. ‘Maybe a big part. I guess I’d like to think so. But it’s not everything. I am a Gambian, an African. This is my home. It may not be a very rich or rewarding home in some ways, but it still feels like one. And in any case we can’t all be born in London or Paris.’

  ‘I was born in Jamaica,’ Franklin said.

  ‘Do you want to go back there?’ she asked.

  ‘I left it when I was three. England is my home.’

  ‘You don’t sound very enthusiastic.’

  ‘You’ve lived there – you know what it’s like.’

  ‘You mean the racism? I guess I’ve forgotten. Or maybe I was lucky. Medical students live in a world of their own, and they come in all colours. What about the Army? You seem to get on all right with the others …’

  ‘I only just met them, but yes, the Army’s OK, most of the time. How long have you known Simon McGrath?’

&nb
sp; ‘A couple of months. He saved me from an attack. Do you know the story?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I was in the hospital one evening, and this man came in with a knife. He came to steal drugs, but he was high on something and he made a spur-of-the-moment decision that he wanted me too.’ Her voice was almost playful, but Franklin could hear the tension beneath. ‘Well, he hit me a couple of times in the face, and started tearing off my clothes … there were patients watching, but he told them if they interfered he’d cut my throat. And he enjoyed the fact that they were watching. Simon came in at just the right moment, and simply took the knife away from the man. It was miraculous really. He just made it look so easy.’

  ‘What happened to the man?’

  ‘He was given five years in prison. But …’

  ‘Was he one of the men the rebels released?’

  ‘They released everyone, I think. Yes, he’s out there somewhere. And I can’t say it makes me feel very good,’ she added, grasping both arms around her knees and hugging herself.

  He thought about putting an arm around her, but decided not to. ‘I’m not surprised,’ he murmured, and tried to think of another subject.

  ‘Shall we walk for a bit?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah, why not.’

  She led the way down to the water’s edge, and they walked along beside it in the direction of the Atlantic Hotel beach. The two boys from that morning came into his mind, and he told her the history of the entire encounter, right up to his over-generous donation. ‘I thought afterwards it was a bad thing to do, but …’

  ‘A pen is better,’ she said, but the look on her face seemed to say that he had done the right thing.

  ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I …’

  ‘Could I kiss you?’ he asked suddenly, surprising even himself.

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ she said, and turned into his arms, laying both of hers across his shoulders and turning her face up to his. In the dim light her loveliness almost took his breath away, and as they kissed the absurd notion went through his mind that he had finally come home.

  The kiss stretched out, feeding their mutual hunger for company, sex, love, each other. Franklin felt himself hardening, and for the first time since he was sixteen felt embarrassed by it. He tried to pull himself gently away, but she dropped her hands to his haunches and pulled him back.

  And then they were kneeling in front of each other and removing their shirts, kissing some more, and finally sinking onto the sand and kicking their trousers away.

  Chapter 12

  General N’Dor arrived fifteen minutes early at the Senegalese Embassy in Cameron Street, lit a cigarette and began pacing up and down the carpeted room. He never seemed to get a moment to himself at the military HQ in Serekunda, and he felt the need of some space to think in. The Embassy staff, unlike his own, seemed prepared to leave him alone.

  He was not looking forward to another conversation with Comrade Jabang. ‘Never take responsibility for something without first securing the necessary control,’ he recited to himself. Where had his memory dragged that up from?

  It was certainly pertinent. Here he was, with the responsibility for bringing these negotiations to a successful conclusion, but none of the necessary control. On the contrary, he was being given contradictory ‘advice’ from all over the place. The Gambian President, not surprisingly, wanted him to be patient, to take no risks with the hostages. Meanwhile his own Government was being pressured by the French, who in turn were probably being urged on by the British, to do something. The European tourists had been deprived of their European comforts for a few more days than they had expected, and wanted to go home. After all he had the famous SAS at his disposal, so why not use them? They had got the hostages out at the Iranian Embassy in London. All but one of them, anyway.

  N’Dor asked himself whether he was being unreasonable. The thought of two white men leading sixty black Senegalese into battle seemed so redolent of the past, such an insult to his country, that he found it hard to consider the matter in a purely practical manner. But there were other, less emotional reasons for opposing the Englishmen’s plan. This was not London, there had not been three hundred armed men in the Iranian Embassy, and one of them had not been the Prime Minister’s wife. Such an assault simply left too much to chance.

  He told himself he had to keep an open mind. There probably was no course of action which did not carry serious risks. He simply had to keep a cool head, listen and evaluate.

  N’Dor stubbed out his cigarette with a feeling of having reached some sort of conclusion.

  The illusion lasted through the arrival of Caskey and the Vice-President, and almost a minute into their meeting. Then the Vice-President announced that he had brought with him the President’s counter-offer to the terrorists. Provided that they laid down their arms and returned the hostages unharmed, the President promised a maximum of five years in prison for all former members of the Field Force. He was also prepared to agree a secret deal whereby the twelve members of the Revolutionary Council would be flown into permanent exile.

  ‘Divide and rule,’ Caskey murmured to himself. Jawara must have been educated in England.

  ‘What is your opinion, Major?’ N’Dor asked him.

  ‘It’s hard to say without more information about who we’re dealing with. As I said yesterday, my instinct is that they’re bluffing. In which case, offering them less makes sense. But, General, your people must have talked to the envoy who was rescued at the radio station – I forget his name. What were his opinions of the rebels?’

  ‘His name is Mustapha Diop,’ N’Dor said. ‘And it was Colonel Ka who spoke to him.’

  ‘Monsieur Diop seems unable to make up his mind about them,’ Ka said drily. ‘They took him on a ride around Banjul to show him how much support their revolution had, and there was no one on the streets. He laughed when he told me the story. But it was not happy laughter, you understand. I think they frightened him a lot. Not so much with their threats, but because he never knew what they would do next. He seems to think they didn’t know themselves, but from what we’ve seen I’m not sure he is correct in that. He is very concerned about his wife and children, of course.’

  ‘Not much help there,’ Caskey said. ‘There is one thing we should ask for,’ he went on, ‘an expression of good faith on their part. The release of the children would seem a reasonable request in the circumstances.’

  ‘I am sure the President would wish such a request to be made,’ the Vice-President agreed.

  ‘A good idea,’ N’Dor said, thinking of his own children back in Dakar.

  ‘It is almost eleven o’clock,’ Ka said, looking at his watch.

  N’Dor reached for the telephone, thinking that Jawara’s offer had at least removed some of the responsibility from his own shoulders. If the rebels responded by shooting the Gambian President’s wife, then no one could blame the Senegalese Army.

  The phone rang several times before Jabang picked it up. ‘You are early,’ he said in response to N’Dor’s good morning.

  ‘I will call again,’ N’Dor said shortly.

  ‘No, it doesn’t matter.’ There was a momentary pause. ‘Do you have the President’s answer to our ultimatum?’

  ‘We were not aware that it was an ultimatum,’ N’Dor said. Jabang sounded on edge this morning, which was hardly a good sign. ‘We consider this a negotiating process,’ he added, ‘a bargaining process without a fixed time limit.’

  ‘We are in no hurry,’ Jabang said, more coolly. ‘Call it what you like. What is the answer?’

  ‘The answer to the first demand is no, as it always is in a bargaining process,’ N’Dor said calmly. ‘But …’

  ‘We are not discussing the purchase of a piece of cloth,’ Jabang interjected coldly.

  ‘Of course not. There are many lives at stake – those of the hostages you hold, yourselves and your men, my own men. I am not treating this m
atter lightly, Mr Jabang.’

  There was silence at the other end.

  N’Dor decided to continue. ‘President Jawara is prepared to allow the twelve members of your Council free passage out of the country, and a maximum term of five years’ imprisonment for all former members of the Field Force. All this depends on the unconditional surrender of all weapons and the absolute safety of the hostages. We would also like you to demonstrate your good faith by releasing all the children under the age of fourteen.’

  The silence at the other end continued for what seemed an age, but was probably no more than fifteen seconds. ‘I will call you back in an hour,’ Jabang said, and hung up.

  McGrath had spent the morning nursing a hangover and continuing his reluctant readjustment to civilian life. On the previous day, while the three current members of the SAS had been introducing the Senegalese to the joys of continuation training, he had been trying to gather information on how much damage had been wreaked on The Gambia’s infrastructure by a week of political turmoil.

  Not a lot, apparently. There might be well over a thousand dead according to the latest unofficial reckoning, but only two bridges and one electricity line were down. Another triumph for underdevelopment, he thought sourly.

  His thoughts slipped back to two nights before, and the reconnaissance mission behind the rebel lines. It might have been a thousand times as dangerous as sitting behind a desk, but it had not felt half so much like work. He shook his head, which turned out to be a mistake.

  ‘More coffee,’ he muttered to himself, and was busy spooning Nescafé into a chipped mug when Jobo Camara came through the office door.

  ‘Wasn’t expecting you until next week,’ McGrath said.

  ‘I’m not here to work,’ Jobo said with a grin. ‘But my shoulder is OK, and I will be in tomorrow. Today is just a social visit – I came to see how the English hero of the radio station is doing.’

  ‘I’ve become a legend in my own time, have I?’ McGrath asked wryly.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Jobo told him, ‘there are no plans for a statue. Not yet, anyway.’