by Andrew Brown
He made his way upstairs to the solitude of his office. Mrs Thebes (her first name might be Beryl, but he would never use it) wasn’t at work yet. Her tyranny was shared with the other associate professor in the department, Vikum Sharma. Vikum was on sabbatical, though, so Mrs Thebes was able to concentrate her iron-edged displeasure on Gabriel alone. Vikum tended to stutter and his natural lisp worsened when he had to address her; no doubt his eagerness at taking sabbatical was as much about a break from his secretary as from the rigours of departmental work. It was impossible to know whether Mrs Thebes was a raving right-wing nationalist or a party-carrying unionist. She rarely ventured an opinion that wasn’t scathing and regarded everyone who crossed her path with suspicious contempt. Her steel-grey hair remained undyed, set in an unshakeable mould that did not vary from day to day. She didn’t wear any discernible perfume – indeed, she didn’t appear to have any kind of human scent at all – and was seemingly unburdened by ablution needs. Her lunch was taken from one o’clock until exactly one forty-five every day, although not once had Gabriel encountered her anywhere on campus in that interval or seen her actually eat a morsel. But Mrs Thebes could organise anything: there was no person – no bureaucrat in local government, no telecom service provider, no corporate admin clerk – who could withstand the icy focus of her determination. Asking her to contact someone literally felt like letting a bull terrier off its leash, and Gabriel had to be discerning as to when the situation required her zealous attention and when not.
He passed her desk, a gleaming, empty space awaiting her arrival. He had a childish urge to smear the surface with something sticky. But she was living proof that the severity of the sanction could act as a deterrent; she was the example that the death-penalty advocates were seeking. Getting to work before her gave him a small thrill, though she would surely comment on it – ‘in early’ – as if he’d committed some indiscretion in doing so.
His own desk was a disaster of unopened internal mail and unread papers. Administration was not his strong point, he knew, but Mrs Thebes refused to indulge his weakness. ‘Morning’s mail is on your desk’ was more an accusation than a statement of assistance. He would make a start, opening the first envelope and pulling out the agenda for the next senate meeting, or the minutes of the funding/budget committee meeting, and then give up. The correspondence that interested him was immediately identifiable, the logo of the Annals of Botany embossed on the outside, or an overseas ‘return to sender’ stamp on the back. The rest was left to accumulate in a slowly toppling pile of discarded paperwork.
Gabriel moved his mouse to wake his desktop from its slumber. The screen burst into colour, a magnificent close-up of Arabidopsis taking up the space. He clicked on his email shortcut and briefly scrolled through the cluttered list of unread items in his inbox. Nothing grabbed his attention and he minimised the window, letting the floral photograph return.
One of his master’s students had given him a mug emblazoned with the phrase ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ in pink. This catchphrase from the war, resurrected by the prime minister at the time of the London bombings, had attained cult status, copied and manipulated in a thousand ways, printed on T-shirts, bags, mugs, fridge magnets. He’d seen ‘Keep Calm and Make a Cup of Tea’, ‘Keep Calm and Roll a Joint’ and the obtuse ‘Keep Calm and Have a Cupcake’, which Gabriel suspected wasn’t as benign as it first appeared. He had made the mistake of commenting positively about the phrase’s encapsulation of British resolve. His student had explained that it was in fact a statement about all that was wrong with the country, a mocking lament of isolation and alienation.
He touched his cheek. Stoicism was not the same as detachment. It was the product of strength and resolve. The qualities that would keep Britain great.
He leant back in his chair and tried to concentrate on the morning’s events. Had he been mugged? Attacked? What should he call it and should he even mention it? Everyone spoke about the ‘unrest’, expressed their disquiet at how the police were handling events, how violent the youth had become, tut-tutting about the looting. But they had all only ever witnessed it as clips on the evening news, the familiar scenes of washed-orange lights and dark figures running across rainy streets. Occasionally, there was an interview with a belligerent teenager or a police commissioner, but they just mouthed off the first threats or platitudes that came to them. Gabriel rarely listened. It could just as easily have been Birmingham. Or Mogadishu for that matter.
And now, while sipping his coffee on his way to university, on a placid Tuesday morning, it had suddenly included him.
Chapter 2
RAF WADDINGTON AIR FORCE BASE, LINCOLNSHIRE, ENGLAND
The station’s operations room had been cleared of all personnel, save for three men who were watching the small video screen attentively. The first was the flight lieutenant, a former Tornado pilot, now assigned to 39 Squadron and the ministry of defence’s ISTAR programme. He was normally a talkative man, given to pranks and lewd jokes, but the presence of the two senior officers in the room kept him in quiet unease. Them and the trajectory set on the global positioning system on the screen.
The first senior officer stood, legs astride, behind him, watching the screen over his shoulder. Group Captain Frank Richards was a towering man with cropped sandy-coloured hair and a massive chest. He was notionally the mission coordinator for the flight, although protocol required that the coordinator not be an aircrew officer. There was also no forward air controller for the mission. Together this constituted a material deviation from the rules of engagement and would be considered irregular by the station commander, and subject to disciplinary measures, but for the presence of the third man in the room: Air Marshal George Bartholomew.
Bartholomew stood a little distance away from the other two, his hands clasped behind him, watching the GPS figures tick over at speed. RAF Waddington was the hub of ISTAR – the Royal Air Force’s Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance programme – and Air Marshal Bartholomew was its primary representative to the ministry of defence. He had even addressed cabinet directly when the first assets had been deployed to assist land-force commanders in Afghanistan to provide what was referred to as ‘pilot-commanded kinetic intervention for fleeing targets’, otherwise known as ‘drone strikes’. Cabinet designated it an urgent operational requirement and authorised significant spending; their only request was that the dreadful phraseology be changed.
Bartholomew was nearing retirement, an ageing soldier in an increasingly sophisticated military arena, where instructions were given not by shouting above the diesel throb of an armed vehicle and the rap of distant gunfire, but by tapping a keyboard or touch screen. His hair was thin and had greyed to an almost colourless white, forcing his ruddy and veined cheeks into stark contrast. Age and weather had left him with the appearance of a drunkard, while in fact he hardly drank at all. He secretly feared that his complexion undermined his authority, with junior officers mistaking him for a tiring inebriant.
‘Twelve minutes, sir,’ the flight lieutenant said, keeping his face close to the screen. ‘Should I inform Creech of our position, sir?’ Creech was the United States Air Force base in Nevada that linked with Waddington on the ISTAR programme.
‘They know.’ Bartholomew appreciated that the flight lieutenant felt uncomfortable with the change in operating procedure, but he still resented the junior officer’s question. Richards had already made it clear to him that the flight was a limited-access operation; the mere fact that the operations room had been cleared made this quite obvious. He was the tool, not the artisan, and his apparent failure to appreciate this annoyed the older man. It was as if the flight lieutenant felt the need to confirm the unorthodox nature of the undertaking at every turn. The air marshal needed no reminder.
‘I’ll be back in a moment,’ Bartholomew said, turning away and heading for the door. He placed his thumb on the security pad and heard the lock click back. He pushed the metal door open and p
aused in the corridor while he waited for it to close and automatically lock again.
The toilets were close by and mercifully empty. The stalls and urinals were all made of polished sheet metal, and even the toilet bowls and cisterns were crafted from glinting steel. Only the stained-pine seats softened the sterility.
This must be some designer’s impression of the military, Bartholomew thought as he lowered his trousers. It was reminiscent of the displays at the Tate Modern. What was wrong with regular British cement and enamel? As with so much in the military, functionality had given way to committee-bound decisions and appalling political correctness. It was bad enough that real soldiers had to billet alongside queers and lesbians. In fact, he grumbled to himself as he eased his body down, this excuse for a latrine had probably been designed by some homosexual in the recesses of the ministry of public works.
The seat was cold, which was a good start. There was nothing more off-putting than a seat still warm from its previous user. He started to strain and the sides of his thighs immediately tensed. Bartholomew suffered from intractable constipation. His general practitioner, Maurice, insisted that it was largely psychological, that he was somehow subconsciously ‘retaining’ because of his fear of exacerbating his haemorrhoids. Ten days earlier, Maurice had found two ‘medium-sized’ haemorrhoids – one partially exposed, he’d announced with what seemed to border on mirth. Bartholomew was in no position to respond, bent double with his underpants crumpled around his ankles. Dignity was something that seldom survived a visit to his general practitioner any more. Maurice had recommended surgery and Bartholomew had assented, although he knew in his heart that he would rather endure the discomfort.
He imagined his newly formed aberrations as two bruised-looking grapes pulsating at the entrance to his anus, but he had never had the inclination to squat over a mirror to examine them. He knew that his retention only made matters worse, but he couldn’t seem to take control of his bowel movements. It was a source of endless frustration. He took enough Senokot to flush a mammoth’s intestine clean, but on a good day only managed to squeeze out a few kernels, like pushing out dried nuts. For the rest, he was left with a bloated stomach and waves of urgency that produced only flatulence. He attributed it to the prostate surgery he had had a year before, but in truth he had started suffering from constipation long before Maurice had first delved into his nether regions and let out a telling ‘oh-oh’ as his index finger slithered around inside.
Bartholomew squeezed again, and the muscles across his hips and inner thighs pulled uncomfortably. A fart reverberated in the metal stall. He pushed again but nothing further was forthcoming. He waited for a few moments, listening for any noise that might indicate that someone had heard his flatus. Then he stood up, rebuckling his neatly pressed trousers. He washed his hands with soap and warm water, despite the lack of success, keeping his eyes focused on the running water in an effort not to look at himself in the mirror. The photographs on his mantelpiece at home remembered a stern and solid-looking officer, perhaps not of the physical stature of Frank Richards, but fit and reasonably trim. After devoting nearly four decades of his life to the military, he hardly recognised himself any more – the loosening jowls and sagging skin around his chest, the liver spots on his legs. His libido had left him since the operation, not that Lilly had complained, or even mentioned it. It was almost as if they had accepted, without speaking, that physicality was beyond them. Poor old girl, he thought, not much of a life he had given her in the end. He hoped his discussions with the Saudis would change that, at least to afford them some comfort in retirement.
Nothing had changed in the operations room on his return. He wondered whether Richards had so much as blinked in the interim. The man seemed to be made of steel, or certainly portrayed himself in that way. He had seen combat as a young pilot in Afghanistan and then Syria and he was the embodiment of the RAF officer, with a square, clean-shaven jaw and unsmiling eyes. He gave the impression that weighty decisions rested on his shoulders eternally, even when his mind may have been quite blank. There was something annoying in his demeanour, a self-assured haughtiness suggesting that he regarded himself as a superior breed of soldier. In fact, Bartholomew viewed him as a useful but rather limited guard dog, a man he hoped he could rely on to fulfil his duties without too many questions. He was a physical presence rather than a participating strategist.
The room was surrounded with screens, green and red lights flicking on and off as the main server monitored a series of events around the world. Bartholomew was at his happiest in the operations room, although he seldom got here now. It provided confirmation that he still had a career, despite no longer being in the cockpit or toting an M16. Here, he could command an operation, isolated from the political boardrooms, the hushed conversations at the Club, the guarded interactions with the deputy minister. Here, he could be a soldier again. He had that same feeling of heightened seclusion on the bridge of HMS Illustrious during Operation Southern Watch monitoring the no-fly zone imposed on Iraq in 1991. It was a strangely contented feeling, surrounded by weaponry and super-technology, as if one’s mind was cleared of clutter, focused only on the simplicity of the task at hand. The hum of the machines was soothing, and decision-making was reduced to a series of numbers on a screen and the implementation of a higher plan.
‘Approaching target zone, sir,’ the young lieutenant said. ‘Reducing altitude to tactical. Weather is clear, sir.’
‘Leave off the aperture radar. Give me combined infrared and monochrome optical streams.’ Bartholomew moved closer to the screen, becoming aware of the flight lieutenant’s flashy aftershave. The screen flickered and then displayed a blurred black-and-white image. The flight lieutenant tapped the buttons in front of him and the image zoomed in. A series of dark shadows and brighter squares passed by, occasionally small structures and the strips of roads, like a child’s jigsaw puzzle, the pieces still scattered across the board. In monochrome, the landscape looked bleak and uninviting. Still, Bartholomew preferred working without colour. He had watched the colour feed from a Nimrod R1 over Bosnia during the Sarajevo strikes and had found the greenness of the fields distracting.
They watched the screen in silence. They were tracking a road of sorts, but there was little moving on it. Occasionally, a patch of body heat generated by cattle clustered in enclosures, but otherwise there were few disturbances to the procession of muted greys. Then a few round shadows, a crisscrossing of paths like spiderwebs. A message started flashing across the bottom.
‘Target coming into range, sir,’ the flight lieutenant said unnecessarily. It was as if he was forcing his superiors to take responsibility at every step.
‘We can see that, Lieutenant,’ said Richards.
Bartholomew clenched the muscles in his jaw. ‘Acquire and engage.’
It was military speak for ‘do your job and don’t bother me’. Bartholomew felt a tickle across the inside of his rectum. His stomach made a low gurgle; the lieutenant’s right ear was almost exactly in line and he must have heard. Again the tickle, and a sudden urge to push. Bartholomew considered leaving, but he knew he wouldn’t make it back in time. He clenched his buttocks and rocked back on his heels.
‘Target vehicle has stopped, sir.’ The rectangular shape of a car moved across the screen and stopped next to a simple square shape, a residence of sorts. A dotted cross-hair had appeared directly in the middle of the grey outline of the vehicle. Perfectly in view. But before Bartholomew could give the authorisation, a small shape emerged from the residence and moved up to the side of the targeted object. The infrared depicted body heat. Someone had joined the target.
The flight lieutenant hesitated, unsure about how to proceed.
‘Engagement authorised, Flight Lieutenant.’ Frank Richards’s voice was deep and authoritative, filled also with some measure of disdain, whether for the pilot or the target, or both.
The centre of the screen flashed and then filled with a surging ring of shadow
. The infrared cut out automatically at the point of detonation in order to spare itself from the spike of light that followed the explosion. The target and square structure were engulfed by the rushing darkness and, for a moment, the entire screen seemed opaque. Then the fringes appeared once more, the centre replaced by a paler plume of dust and smoke. Bartholomew did not need to see anything more. The client would be satisfied.
‘Thank you, shut it down.’ Bartholomew nodded to Richards, who remained stony-faced. Perhaps the same toilet stall would be available, he thought as he hurried from the operations room.
Chapter 3
BRISTOL, SOUTH-WEST ENGLAND
Gabriel sat at his desk, immobilised by the neat pile of unopened correspondence and internal memoranda that Mrs Thebes had – no doubt with some relish – placed in front of his roller chair. He inserted a letter knife into the first envelope and slit it open like some delicate fish. He caught the flash of a photograph and groaned as he turned over the envelope. It was addressed to ‘The Pest Expert, Botany Department’ with a return address in Chipping Sodbury. Damn Mrs Thebes, he thought gloomily, pulling out an out-of-focus close-up of a mealybug-infested lemon tree belonging to a Mrs Pilkington.
The public assumed that, as a botanist, he enjoyed pottering around the garden as they did, sensible shoes and windbreakers properly adorned. They insisted on producing cuttings of roses dripping with aphids and scale for his remedial assessment. It was akin to asking your cardiac-surgeon friend to look at the wart on your toe. Botany and gardening are not the same thing. They aren’t even first cousins, he thought crossly. When he and Jane had first moved into Clifton, the gentrified old quarter at the top of the hill, he had been mildly interested in the diverse and unusual flora that covered the crags of the Avon River gorge. Bristol whitebeam, yellow rock roses and the unfortunately named Bristol onion were all endemic to the cliffs that rose from the muddy riverbanks below. It was assumed that he would be a passionate supporter of their preservation against the invading holm oaks that had spread even onto the steep slopes. In truth, Gabriel felt a twinge of loss on seeing the cut stumps and piled shavings that marked the passing of these grand trees, the ground bare around their bases. The oaks were ‘alien’ only in a historical sense. And, in any event, what could truly be declared original? Or whom? Certainly not the asphalt running paths or the Havana Coffee franchises that now littered Clifton Village, replete with foreigners.
