by Andy McNab
Then I thought about all the insurance policies that were invalid because some selfish fucker had taken an overdose. If you’ve decided to do it, and you’re sane enough to stockpile painkillers or whatever, why not go out and do a couple of freefalls and just forget to dump the canopy on the third jump?
Worst of all was the effect on the kids they left behind. How could anyone be so selfish that they ignored the price their families had to pay? The guy on the TV, I wondered – had he got a wife, kids, parents, brothers, sisters? What if, like me, they’d watched the whole thing on TV?
If I took the easy way out, at least it’d make fuck-all difference to anyone else’s life.
But I wasn’t going to. I had other plans.
13
The sun was out at last, but I could still see my breath as I walked along Beach Street. It was ten to eleven and I was a couple of blocks south of the Library of Congress. That meant I’d have to slow down if I was going to be late. It was important for George to see everything was normal.
The other foot traffic eyed me as if I was driving at five miles an hour on the freeway. They rushed along in trainers with their office shoes in their bags, heads down and cellphones stuck to their ears so the world knew they were doing really important stuff. Everyone, men and women, seemed to be dressed in the same make of dark grey raincoat.
I sipped at the hole in the Starbucks lid. I didn’t want to drink it all before I got to Hot Black Inc. because that, too, wouldn’t be normal.
I reached the brick building in the centre of DC a couple of minutes before eleven. Dwarfed by modern, nondescript concrete blocks on either side of it, the Victorian original had been converted into office space long ago. Six or seven worn stone steps took me up to a pair of large glass doors and into the lobby. Calvin was waiting behind the desk. A huge black guy in a freshly laundered white shirt and immaculately pressed blue uniform, he’d either come with the building or was part of the Hot Black alias business cover, I never knew which. I went through the palaver of signing in, not having to show ID any more because me and Calvin had a sort of relationship going. I’d been in for quite a few meetings with George lately. But he still looked me up and down as usual, taking in my jeans, trainers and leather bomber jacket. ‘Dress-down Wednesday, is it, Mr Stone?’
‘Correct as ever, Calvin. The day after dress-down Tuesday, the day before dress-down Thursday.’
He laughed politely, as he had all the other times.
I rode the dark wood-panelled lift to the first floor, George’s part of the US intelligence jungle. I had no idea who really called the shots here: all I knew was that since I’d been working for George the apartment was taken care of, and I picked up eighty-two thousand dollars a year. As an employee of Hot Black Inc., advertising tractors or whatever it was I was supposed to be doing, I also received a social-security number and even filed tax returns. I was a real citizen, in theory as American as George. After so many years of being treated like shit by the Firm, it had felt good. I was still treated like shit, of course, but at least it was done with a great big American smile and a lot more money.
I checked Baby-G. Not late enough yet, so when the lift pinged open I waited a bit longer in the corridor, like one of the white alabaster statues set in little alcoves along the shiny black marble walls. The cleaners had been busy: the air was heavy with that morning office smell of spray polish and air-freshener.
At exactly five past I entered the smoked-glass doors into the empty reception area. Nothing had been touched since I’d first come here over a year ago: the large antique table that doubled as the front desk was still unmanned, the telephone still unconnected; the two long, red-velvet sofas still faced each other across a low glass coffee-table devoid of magazines and papers.
The main office doors were tall, black, shiny and very solid. I was still a couple of paces away when they were pulled open.
George stood on the threshold, looking me up and down. ‘You’re late. Haven’t you any other clothes? You’re supposed to be an executive.’
Before I could answer, he turned back into his oak-panelled office. I closed the door behind me and followed him. He hadn’t even taken his raincoat off. It wasn’t going to be a long comfy chat, then.
‘Sorry I’m late. It’s harder getting round the city, these days, with all the security.’
‘Leave earlier.’ He knew it was a lie. He sat down behind his desk and I took one of the two wooden chairs facing him. The fluorescent lights had at last been fitted with dimmers. George no longer had to worry that they were going to give him cancer.
As ever, he was dressed under his raincoat in a button-down shirt and corduroy jacket. Today he even had a pin through his chunky cotton tie. I wondered if he was Donald Rumsfeld’s secret twin brother. All he lacked was the rimless glasses.
He nodded at the Starbucks in my hand. ‘You still drinking that crap?’
It almost felt reassuring. ‘Yep, two dollars seventy-eight.’
He watched with disgust as I knocked back the dregs. They were cold, but I’d wanted to save some just to annoy him.
He wasn’t in the mood for beating about the bush. He never was.
I cleared my throat. ‘George, I’ve thought about what you’ve been saying this last week or so. But I don’t care about the war any more. I don’t care what you think you’ve done for me – I earned it. I’m not coming back to work.’
He sat back in his chair, elbows resting on the arms and his fingers steepled in front of his mouth. Whatever he was thinking about, his face didn’t give it away. The right index finger jumped away from the rest and pointed at me. ‘You think you’re ready for that world out there, son?’
‘Yeah, I do. I also think that the therapy is bullshit. All of this is bullshit. I’ve had enough.’
The finger rejoined the others. ‘You’re the one with all the bright ideas.’
I shrugged. ‘I was wrong: I’m ready. I’ve got over it. I’m going to buy a bike that works for once, and maybe get to see some of my new country.’
He pursed his lips behind the fingertips. ‘You were hurting after Kelly was killed, son, and quite understandably so. A loss like that – a child. Must be a lonely time for you right now. It’s going to be a while before you’re back on your feet.’
‘George, you hearing me? I’ve been telling you for fucking weeks now but it doesn’t seem to register. That’s it. No more. I’m finished.’
He leaned forward, fingers still together, elbows on the desk. ‘No need for profanity, son. What if I said you can’t leave? You know too much. That makes you a liability. What would you expect me to do about that? Motorcycles can be dangerous things, Nick.’
I stood up, leaving the cup on the carpet. ‘You can’t threaten me any more. What have I got to lose? Kelly’s dead, remember? My whole world fits in two carry-ons. What you going to do? Rip up my favourite sweatshirt?’
‘How about you coming back to work? I think you’re ready, don’t you?’
I turned to leave. ‘I’ll get out the apartment today, if you want. It’s in shit state, anyway.’
‘Keep the apartment. Use it to do some thinking in.’ George was as calm as ever. ‘This isn’t how the story ends, son, believe me. You’re just lonely right now. You’ll get over it.’
14
I sat staring vacantly at the Metro map above the head of the woman opposite, who was doing the same at the map above me. There was the smell of old margarine which had nothing to do with the train. I looked around, and suddenly realized it must be coming from me.
George was right. I was a liability now, and he would never make an idle threat. Fuck it, so what? If he wanted me dead it would happen, I had no control over that. All I could do was get on with what I wanted to do – and that was to get as far away as possible from being treated like a lump of shit. As bad as it was only having Kelly in my head now, it had sort of set me free. They couldn’t use her to threaten me any more. It was going to be a different
sort of life now. I’d watched the re-runs of Easy Rider.
Dupont Circle was a few stops further on. Did Ezra know I hadn’t told him the truth about going to Bang Bang Bosnia? There were a whole load of things I’d either told various levels of lies about or withheld from him completely. Like my decision to bin the job, or that today’s session had been the last I was ever going to attend.
It made me wonder if shrinks just let you spout your bullshit, but have a good laugh behind your back at your self-delusion. Or maybe they did it over coffee and a sticky bun at shrink reunions in Vienna.
And then I thought: Why not go? It wasn’t as if I had anything else to do, and I’d got a few hours to kill before the Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt.
The carriage was about a quarter full, mainly families with tourist maps and digital cameras hanging round their necks. The kids looked excited, the mums and dads content. Shit, this was all I needed. George was right. I was lonely. But what he and Ezra didn’t appreciate was that I always had been, until Kelly had come along. Work – first in the infantry, then the SAS, then this shit – had seemed to fill the hole, but it never really did. It just helped me cut away from that feeling of exclusion I’d hated so much as a kid.
Now? I was back to feeling like a kid again. I had the same feeling every time I lay on the settee in the early hours of the morning, watching people on TV having relationships, families doing family stuff. Even the Simpsons shared something that I didn’t have.
I felt the same now as I had as a ten-year-old, bunking on the Underground all day to keep out of the rain, putting off going home and getting a beating from my stepdad just because the arsehole enjoyed doing it. It didn’t even get better if my mum saw him punching the shit out of me. She would simply deny it had ever happened and buy me a Mars bar.
What had hurt most was not having other kids to play with. I was the free-school-dinners, odd-socks-and-Oxfam-clothes kid. I used to spend days on my own just walking around, checking the coin returns in phone-boxes, waiting for when I was old enough to leave home without the Social coming looking for me.
Now I was back to square one. No work, no Kelly, and I’d closed the door on the only person I’d had to talk to, an ancient shrink with a helmet for hair. Anyone who’d ever come remotely close to being a friend had fucked me over or was dead. I looked down at Baby-G and played the break-dancer. At least now I had put a smile in my day.
I came out at Dupont Circle and wandered around trying to find the exhibition. This was supposed to be the gay area for DC, but all I saw were groups of Somalians and students from the university. In the end, I stumbled across it. Art Works had once been an upscale shop. Posters across the glass frontage advertised the show; I could see bright lights through the gaps between them, and a very hip-looking clientele studying wall-loads of photographs.
I pushed the door and went inside. One or two heads glanced in my direction. Very soon the main topic for the chattering classes of Dupont Circle was going to be the strong smell of margarine.
I counted maybe fifteen people, all looking as if the only clothes shops they knew were Donna Karan or Ralph Lauren. Everyone had what looked like an expensive catalogue in their hands. I thought I’d give that one a miss: I only had enough on me for teabags and a few jars of Branston.
No one was chatting. The loudest sound came from the air-conditioning unit that blew hot air down at me as I walked through the door. At a counter to the right, a woman dressed entirely in black was standing by a display of merchandise. Duplicates of some of the pictures were for sale. If you couldn’t afford the originals, you could take home a not-so-cheap souvenir. It made no sense to me. Who would buy it? There was nothing comforting about these photos. Bang Bang Bosnia was a collection of shots too honest to have made it into the Sunday supplements.
Immediately in front of me I saw black-and-whites of men dangling from trees after being hanged, drawn and quartered. Dogs pulling meat from the bones of a human corpse. A group of Serb infantry looking like they’d come straight from the siege of Stalingrad, swathed in white sheets for camouflage as they fought from building to building in the snow. The faces were gaunt, covered with grime, blood and bum-fluff. The eyes had the same haunted, hollow stare of frontline soldiers from the Somme to Da Nang.
I wondered about the kind of people who came to look at this sort of stuff. Suffering sold as art. It felt voyeuristic, almost perverted. What the fuck had Ezra been on? This wasn’t going to help me. Why would I want to see this shit? I felt myself getting angrier the deeper I walked into the gallery. But I couldn’t stop myself looking.
Art Works’ walls and ceiling were brilliant white. Small halogen lights played on each photograph, caption and price tag. I walked down the first pier of frames giving each picture a cursory glance. Villages getting burnt to the ground. Armoured vehicles driving over bodies. Some of the killing done by Serbs, some by Muslims or Croats. It didn’t matter in Bosnia: everyone just slaughtered everyone else.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe if more people did come and look at this stuff close up, they’d stop thinking of war as a PlayStation game.
The second pier was simply entitled ‘Children’. I wondered if this was what Ezra had wanted me to look at. I studied the first black-and-white, ten-by-eight plate under its perspex frame. A young woman, probably in her early twenties, held a baby in her arms. She was lying in the snow and mud at the base of a tree beside a road. It was obvious she’d been shot. There were bloodstained strike marks all over her, and splashes against the bark. Her eyes were wide open. She’d probably been sitting against the tree at the time she got hit.
This particular execution had been carried out by Muslims. In the background was a group of women, some with small bundles of belongings, being helped on to a truck by a man. Somebody had painted a white arrow on the bark just above the blood splash, and daubed the words ‘Chetnik Mama’. It was hard enough wondering why they’d shot her, let alone stopped to paint a message. What was even worse was that the Muslims hadn’t killed the baby: hypothermia had. I kept my eyes on the girl, staring into her eyes for clues. Had she stayed conscious just long enough for her to know her kid was going to die as soon as the frost arrived that night?
I rubbed a hand into my scalp and smelt it, wondering if the mother had been able to smell her child’s hair while taking her last breaths.
I moved down the aisle, drawn to a particular plate four or five shots along. A drab image, with a flash of red in it.
I stood in front of it and couldn’t decide if I should laugh or burst into tears. It was Zina, smiling at the camera, her arms out as she showed off her new jacket while walking along a mud track with a group of older women. Everything else was grey – the sky, the buildings behind her, even the old women and their clothes. But not her: she was a splash of colour and her eyes were bright as they looked into the lens, perhaps smiling at her own reflection.
The caption simply said: ‘The Poppy’. The photographer was Finnish.
Her full name was Zina Osmanovich, and the picture had been taken on her fifteenth birthday. Two days later she was grabbed by Serbs, it said, along with the rest of her village, and killed while trying to escape.
Fifteen. I glanced down at Baby-G.
I tried not to, but couldn’t stop myself looking back and staring into her eyes. The last time I’d seen them they were dull and glazed like those of a dead fish, her mutilated body covered in mud. Tears started to well.
It had been nine years. What the fuck was wrong with me? I wanted to move, and yet I didn’t. In the end I just stood and gazed at her. I thought about her life and Kelly’s. How would things have turned out for them both? Would they have got married? Had kids of their own?
I should have done something. They would both have been alive still if it wasn’t for me . . .
What? What could I have done?
I felt a hand on my arm.
‘I’m not surprised you can’t tear yourself away from it,’ a voice behind me s
aid. ‘She’s beautiful, isn’t she?’ There was a sigh. ‘What I’d give to have taken a shot like that . . . Wouldn’t you, Nick Collins?’
15
I spun round to find myself face to face with a grinning, clean-shaven Arab, who had the whitest teeth this side of the Oscar ceremony.
‘Jeral!’ I shook my head with surprise and what I hoped looked like delight. Pointless pretending I wasn’t who he thought I was: we’d spent too long together in Bosnia.
We shook hands. His face was still creased in a huge smile. ‘It’s been a few years, hasn’t it?’
Jerry still had a touch of Omar Sharif about him, even though he’d put on a few pounds. There were specks of paint in his hair and over his watch, as if he’d been having an argument with a roller. ‘You haven’t changed a bit, mate.’ I glanced at the holes in his faded black jeans, and the black shirt that had obviously been ironed with a cold mess-tin. ‘And neither has your kit . . .’
He rubbed the thinning patch on his head ruefully before giving me the once-over. He looked as if he wanted to say I hadn’t changed either, but couldn’t quite bring himself to tell that big a lie. In the end he just rubbed his head again and his expression became more serious. ‘By the way, I’m Jerry now. Arabic names haven’t gone down too well around here since 9/11. And things in Lackawanna don’t help . . .’
He came from a steel town in upstate New York that had become part of the rust belt. His parents had been among the hundreds who’d emigrated from the Yemen to work in the factories, but were probably now existing on welfare. Lackawanna had been in the news quite a lot in recent weeks. Six Yemeni-Americans who’d been arrested for attending an al-Qaeda training camp in 2001 came from there – the first Made-in-the-USA Islamic extremists. If I had, I’d have changed my name too.
