Soldier N: Gambian Bluff

by David Monnery

  ‘There’s no way we could get any of the hostages out without raising the alarm,’ Wynwood said. ‘Especially children.’

  ‘I have an idea,’ Franklin said.

  ‘Go on,’ Caskey encouraged him.

  ‘I was talking to Sibou – to Dr Cham …’

  ‘I should think a lot of people have had that idea,’ Wynwood commented.

  Franklin ignored him. ‘She told me there’s another hospital about a quarter of a mile up the road from the Field Force depot. It’s called the Medical Research Centre, and it’s part-research establishment, part-hospital. It’s run with British Government money, and there are about five doctors from England working there. If we could get some of the hostages – say, Lady Chilel and her children – to pretend they were sick enough to need a doctor, then maybe the rebels would take them to the hospital …’

  ‘Why would they not just bring the doctor to the depot?’ Caskey asked.

  ‘The doctors could refuse. They’d have to be in on it.’

  ‘If they’re English doctors they probably drink like fish,’ Caskey conceded, ‘in which case Simon will probably know them all.’

  ‘Why would the rebels take the risk, though?’ Wynwood wanted to know.

  ‘It won’t seem like a risk,’ Franklin said. ‘This place is behind their lines, so they won’t be expecting any trouble.’

  ‘Makes sense,’ Wynwood agreed. ‘So all we’ve got to do is call Lady Chilel on the phone and get her to poison her children.’

  ‘All we have to do,’ Franklin explained patiently, ‘is get to within whispering distance of her and pass over a few laxatives.’

  ‘You mean someone will have to go over the wall?’ Caskey said. It was not really a question. ‘And the ideal candidate is you, Frankie,’ he said. ‘You’ll be less conspicuous than either of us.’

  ‘I thought he looked like an escaped prisoner the first time I saw him,’ Wynwood admitted.

  ‘Mr President,’ Caskey began. It had taken an hour and a half’s wait, but he had finally secured an audience with the man himself. ‘I presume you know what has been going on. We have trained sixty Senegalese troops for a surprise attack on the rebel camp, believing that it is the best way to secure the release of the hostages unharmed. But … well, not to beat around the bush, General N’Dor refuses to sanction the operation …’

  ‘I have no authority over General N’Dor’s troops,’ Jawara interjected.

  ‘No, I realize that. And we realize that the operation we planned is a no-go. But given that, we still believe that an attempt could and should be made as quickly as possible to free at least some of the hostages, in particular Lady Chilel and your children. We have another plan which we would like you to consider.’

  ‘This plan does not involve the use of Senegalese troops?’

  ‘No.’

  Jawara looked interested. ‘Then tell me what you intend,’ he said.

  Chapter 13

  The three men set out at three in the morning, and the moon was already riding high above the ocean as their jeep sped across the Denton Bridge. The men at the Senegalese checkpoints passed bleary eyes over their authorizations, and wearily waved them on. The walk across the broken ground to the golf course proved a lot easier by the full light of a risen moon.

  Down on the beach the sands were being shrunken by the incoming tide, but this time they planned to use the top of the cliffs for at least a part of their journey up the coastline. Phone calls to several of the hotels and embassies which were situated between the road and the sea had confirmed that a broken path did indeed exist, and would offer a way past any sentries on the beach itself.

  Predictably enough, there were none. As they skirted the stretch of beach where Wynwood and McGrath had done their Björn and Benny impersonation, only sea and empty sands were visible below. They passed by the foot of the path which led up into the tunnel of foliage where Franklin had shot dead the rebel. He was presumably still anchored beneath the waves, Franklin thought, and blacked out the mental picture which came to mind.

  Once installed in the restaurant’s covered terrace, the main gate of the Field Force depot filling the view through Caskey’s binoculars, the three men set out to construct a timetable for the patrols covering the inner and outer walls. They had an excellent map of the depot’s layout, copied from architectural drawings in the Ministry of the Interior’s files, and what they hoped was up to the minute information as to who was in which building at that precise time.

  Sharif Sallah might have lied to them but Caskey doubted it. The rebel leaders might have decided to move everyone around once they knew of Sallah’s defection, but there was only one block of prison cells, and no other obvious place to keep the hostages. With any luck they would still be where Sallah said they were.

  Caskey wondered whether General N’Dor had suspected that they were planning something. Probably, he decided. If they had only wanted Sallah’s information for the mass assault contingency plan then it could have waited until the next morning, and N’Dor was not stupid. He just did not want white men leading black men into battle.

  ‘There’s the inside mob again,’ Wynwood whispered. He wrote the time down, made several calculations in the margins of the map, and turned to the other two. ‘Not counting the searchlight,’ he said, ‘there’s a four to five-minute window of opportunity along our wall. The next one begins at four-seventeen – which we couldn’t make. The one after that should be at four-thirty-one – which we can.’

  ‘Are they that regular?’ Caskey asked.

  ‘Within a couple of minutes, so far.’

  Caskey turned to Franklin. ‘All set?’

  ‘I can hardly wait.’

  Wynwood grinned at him. ‘At least if you get constipated you’ll have some laxatives with you,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Franklin said. ‘Whose crazy idea was this?’ he muttered to himself.

  ‘Good luck,’ Caskey said.

  ‘Thanks, boss,’ Franklin replied, and was gone, back down the passage to the beach and along behind several buildings to a point where he could approach the road, out of the sight of both the sentries on the gate and the men in the fire-station tower.

  He waited a full minute, checking for any movement that might have escaped their attention, and then silently loped across the road and into the shadows of the trees on the other side. He worked his way towards the depot, slipping across the entrance to the fire station, and stopped where he had planned, in the dark niche between the wall and a drunken-looking palm, some thirty yards from the corner of the Field Force depot.

  He looked at his watch – another two minutes and the outer patrol should be rounding the corner. The seconds ticked away, past the appointed time by ten, twenty … Then he could hear the footfalls above the breeze in the foliage, and the low murmur of conversation. The two men rounded the corner and walked away from him, the down-pointed barrels of their Kalashnikovs gleaming dully in the moonlight.

  Franklin moved forward carefully, more intent on silence than speed, and turned away from the road down the side of the outer wall, conscious that for the first time he was in danger of being picked out by the searchlight. Fortunately its current operator seemed intent on drawing lazy patterns across the area, rather than flashing from space to space in the manner of two nights before.

  The SAS man counted his paces as he went, and after one hundred and fifteen he stopped, arranged himself behind the trunk of a convenient tree, and waited again. After a minute or so the searchlight beam snaked past him, catching the top of the eight-foot wall, and then swiftly retraced its path, as if the operator had seen something. Franklin tried harder to make himself as thin as the trunk which shielded him, but it proved to be a false alarm. He took a deep breath and carried on waiting.

  The patrol on the inner wall were also later than the schedule dictated – almost a minute later. He listened to the sound of their feet grow and fade, gave himself another thirty seconds for luck, and th
en swung himself athletically up onto the top of the wall. He barely had time to drop down into the depot grounds before the searchlight beam swept past him once more.

  The building almost immediately in front of him was, according to the defector, a storeroom. The one behind it should be the barrack block which had been converted into police cells. Sallah had said it did not have exterior guards of its own, but Franklin took no chances, watching and listening from a position behind the corner of the storeroom for a good two minutes.

  The patrols apart, the camp seemed to be mostly asleep. He thought he saw a cigarette flare in the distant gloom, and definitely heard someone laugh away to his right, but the cell block seemed devoid of life. Franklin stepped out across the space, hoping that this did not mean the hostages had already been shot.

  The cell at the end was supposed to hold Lady Jawara and four of the President’s children. Sallah had not known whether it had a window, but the general opinion had been that it should have, and Franklin dearly hoped the general opinion was right.

  There was a window, though it was not the one he had imagined. It occurred to him that he had been expecting a space with bars across it, like a jail window in a Western. He had only to pull out a stick of dynamite, light it from his cheroot, throw it through the bars and grin at the camera. Which film was that in? One of Clint Eastwood’s … He smiled to himself in the gloom and examined the real window. It had horizontal bars across the outside, slatted glass shutters on the inside, and a mosquito screen full of holes in between the two. Inside he could hear someone snoring.

  He took out his knife and used it to beat a gentle tattoo on the slatted glass. Thinking he heard someone stir he chanced a loud whisper of ‘come to the window’, but no one came. He tried a little louder with the knife, praying that anyone outside would think it was something caught in the wind.

  ‘Who is it?’ a frightened voice asked. One of the children.

  ‘A friend,’ Franklin whispered. ‘Come to the window so that I can talk to you,’ he went on. ‘But be very quiet.’

  The child came into view – a little girl of no more than five, her lovely large eyes brimming with apprehension and curiosity.

  ‘I have come from your father,’ Franklin said softly, ‘to give a message to your mother. Can you wake her up for me?’

  The girl examined his face, as if she was searching for honesty. ‘My father is the President,’ she said.

  ‘I know,’ he told her. ‘I have a message from him for your mother. Can you wake her up?’

  ‘OK,’ she said, and disappeared again.

  Franklin could hear the child talking to someone, heard someone else groan and mutter angrily, then a loud ‘sssshhhh’, followed by ‘don’t you sssshhhh me, girl!’ The child’s voice started again, and half a minute later the face of Lady Child Jawara appeared in front of Franklin. ‘Who are you and what is all this?’ she asked in a haughty whisper.

  ‘I am a British soldier,’ Franklin said. ‘Here’s a letter from your husband to prove that I’m genuine.’ He passed it through the window. ‘Read it after I’m gone – I don’t have much time. First thing tomorrow morning we want you to ask them to let your children see a doctor – Dr Greenwell at the Medical Research Centre up the road. Tell the people in charge here that he’s their usual doctor. He will refuse to come here, so then you must demand that yourself and the children be taken up there to see him. Under guard, of course. Then leave the rest to us.’ He fished in his pocket for the vial of pills. ‘These will give you all diarrhoea and a slight fever,’ he said, ‘without doing you any permanent harm.’

  ‘After five days of rice and water we already have diarrhoea,’ she said, then shook her head as if unable to quite believe what was going on.

  ‘Any questions?’ he asked, looking at his watch. He had two minutes to get back across the wall.

  She thought for a good ten seconds. ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘See you in the morning, then,’ he said and turned away. The coast seemed to be clear, and he slipped back across the open space between the cell block and the storeroom.

  Suddenly a voice called out a challenge. Franklin sank down onto his haunches and searched the darkness for its owner. Whoever it was, he neither repeated the question nor seemed to be moving. He might just be standing there, waiting to see if Franklin would give himself away.

  He waited, conscious that seconds were ticking, and that the inside patrol could arrive at any moment.

  The voice cursed, and a cigarette end arced across the darkness, landing some six feet from Franklin. Footsteps faded into the distance.

  The SAS man moved as fast and as silently as he could to the wall, and was just swinging himself up when he heard the sounds of an approaching patrol. His instinct told him it was the one inside the wall, but he had no sooner reached the top than it became obvious that instinct had played him false. The two men of the outer patrol were ambling towards him, deep in conversation.

  Franklin lay stretched out along the top of the wall, wishing he could become as thin as one of those cartoon characters who had just been run over by a steamroller.

  At some punchline the guards snorted with laughter, almost directly under Franklin’s perch, stopping momentarily before walking on towards the road. The SAS man found himself offering heartfelt thanks to whatever it was that had amused them. And then, incongruously, he remembered making love on the beach with Sibou Cham. Not now, boy, he told himself. He lowered himself quietly to the ground and followed the patrol towards the road. Ten minutes later he was rejoining Wynwood and Caskey, and giving a mute thumbs-up to the latter’s raised eyebrow.

  Two hours later Jabang was sitting outside his room, staring blankly up at the mosaic of foliage above his head, dimly aware of the birds singing around him. He had not slept well, and the thought of Sallah’s betrayal was still like an ache in his heart. I’d like to wake up now, he told himself, and discover that this has all been a bad dream.

  Mansa Nouma, one of the younger men whom he had once thought of as his disciples, suddenly appeared beside him on the verandah. ‘Lady Jawara is demanding to see you,’ Nouma said apologetically.

  Jabang looked at his watch. ‘At this hour?’ he asked disbelievingly.

  ‘She says her children are dying, and need a doctor.’

  Jabang grunted in amusement. ‘A likely story.’

  ‘I thought, since the Council may decide on releasing the children …’ the young man said hesitantly.

  ‘What’s this?’ Taal said, coming onto the verandah.

  Nouma repeated himself.

  ‘Let’s go and see,’ Taal suggested.

  They threaded their way between the various barracks to the cell block, and in through the open front doors. At the end of the central corridor a shouting match was already in progress, between two men in Field Force uniform and the redoubtable figure of Lady Jawara.

  ‘My children could be dying,’ she shouted, catching sight of Jabang and turning the full force of her wrath on him, ‘and these idiots who call you leader say they cannot see a doctor. What kind of men are you that take out your hatred on children? What kind of a revolution did you think you were going to have here, eh? I thought better of you, Mamadou Jabang. Not much better, but better than this. Using children as a shield.’ The last words she spat out contemptuously.

  Jabang refused to take the bait. ‘So you think your children are dying,’ he said unsympathetically. ‘A third of the children born in the villages don’t live to see their fifth birthday. But I don’t suppose that comes up very often in palace conversation.’

  ‘Is that a reason to punish my children?’ she asked.

  Jabang stood there looking at the ground, torn between his lifelong anger and his better self.

  ‘Come in and see them,’ Lady Jawara said simply. ‘Please.’

  The two leaders followed her into the cell, and were immediately set back on their heels by the stench. Two pails seemed almost brimful of diarrhoea.
On the floor, two to each mattress, four pale children were laid out.

  ‘Is this how you want your revolution to be remembered?’ she asked them quietly.

  Jabang turned on his heel and walked back out of the cell.

  Taal caught up with him. ‘We can’t bargain with dead children,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ Jabang agreed. ‘We’ve got a doctor here, haven’t we?’

  ‘Not at the moment,’ Nouma told them. ‘Two were brought here from the tourist hotels when we had all the casualties, but they’ve both disappeared since. In any case she wants to see their usual doctor at the Medical Research Centre up the road. An Englishman. She says either he can come here or she will carry the children up to the Centre herself.’

  Jabang sighed. ‘An Englishman,’ he murmured to himself. ‘I suppose an outsider might be preferable. Call the Centre and tell – what’s his name?’ he asked her.

  ‘Dr Greenwell.’

  ‘Tell him … no … let me think.’ Did they want outside eyes inside the camp? Did they have anything to hide? No … And then it suddenly occurred to him that it might all be a trick to get someone in, to spy out the land for a possible assault.

  He turned to Nouma once more. ‘You can escort Lady Jawara and the children to the Research Centre,’ he said. ‘Take a couple of men with you,’ he added. ‘And be sure to have everyone back here by eleven.’ That was when he was due to speak to the Senegalese commander again.

  ‘Thank you,’ Lady Jawara said quietly.

  He gave her an ironic bow.

  Some four hundred yards to the south, on the Fajara road, the Medical Research Centre had roughly the same number of buildings as the Field Force depot, but in an area about five times as large. Modern one-storey cream and white buildings were arranged around large areas of open grass, with cultivated flowerbeds marking the boundaries between them. It made Franklin think of the TV series The Jewel in the Crown. This, he thought, was what the British Empire had looked like.

  He was sitting out in front of the building which housed the two wards comprising the hospital section of the research centre. He was wearing a doctor’s white coat and stethoscope, listening to a flock of crows cawing in the trees around him, and keeping watch on the distant entrance for any sign of the expected visitors.