by Andy McNab
I’d liked Jerry immediately. There was something that set him apart from the two distinct camps of journalists I’d come across in Sarajevo – the manic, gung-ho kids who’d turned up from all over the world in the hope of making their name, and the establishment figures who rarely risked leaving the basement of the hotel.
The night I met him in Sarajevo, I was having a quiet beer at the bar of the Holiday Inn while waiting for another job. It was the only hotel still operating during the siege. I stayed there because it was where the media hung out, and I wanted to keep up my cover story.
Jerry was arguing with a group of newsmen. He’d just made it back from Serb-occupied territory while some of the people around him hadn’t made it further than the front door. They just went down into the basement each morning, climbed into a UN APC, and hitched a ride to HQ. There they’d pick up a press release, take it back to the hotel, pad it out with a few quotes – usually from other journalists – and file it as from the front line. Jerry was one of the few guys I’d seen who chased the real stories.
He’d broken away from the argument and come and sat next to me at the bar.
‘They got their heads up their asses, man.’ He took another swig of cat’s piss lager. ‘This isn’t one war – it’s hundreds.’
I looked shocked. ‘You mean there’s more to this than Serbs versus Muslims?’
For an American, he was quick on the uptake. His face lit up. ‘Just a little bit. I’ve heard there’s a Muslim-Croat thing going on, and Croat versus Serb. And as for Mostar . . .’ He let it hang. He was testing me.
It was my turn to smile. ‘Versus the rest of the south. Tuzla?’
‘Versus the rest of the north, man. Like I said, hundreds.’ He extended his hand. ‘Hi, I’m Jeral. You with the networks?’
We shook. ‘Nick Collins. Anyone with a chequebook.’
Over the next couple of bad beers I’d discovered that, although he looked like Omar Sharif’s kid brother, he was born and bred in the States and couldn’t have been more apple pie if he’d tried. And he was the only fluent Arab speaker I’d ever come across who’d never been anywhere near the Middle East. Come to that, he’d not even been out of New York state until he was nineteen. He spoke Arabic at home with his Yemeni parents and some Saturday classes at the mosque, but English at school and in the real world.
Art Works was like a library. Jerry leaned closer to keep the noise down. ‘Why you here? What’s your story?’
‘I was just passing and I saw the sign . . .’
There was a pause. Neither of us seemed to know what to say next. It had been nine years; as far as he knew I’d just been in Bosnia to take pictures, and that was how I wanted to keep it.
I was keen to get away from here and hoped he felt the same, but he just stood there, smiling at me. ‘What are you doing nowadays? Still clicking away?’
I shook my head. ‘That’s all changed, mate. I’ve been doing some advertising stuff until recently. Boring, but it paid the bills. Now I’m just taking a break. What about you? Any of these yours?’
‘Actually, they’re good, but not that good, apart from that one.’ He pointed over my shoulder at Zina. ‘And one other.’
Two of the Donna Karan gang stood behind us, wanting us to move on so they could tick Zina off in their catalogue. They looked us up and down, and one of them sniffed rather pointedly into her handkerchief.
Jerry had more contempt for them than he could hide. ‘Nick, come and have a look.’
‘I’ve got to go, mate, stuff to do.’
I needed to get away from him. He belonged to Nick Collins, not Nick Stone. But he wasn’t taking no for an answer. ‘Come on, two seconds. This is the other one I wish was mine. It’s going to be really famous one day.’
We walked back to ‘Chetnik Mama’. He scanned the image, his face alive with admiration.
A woman wandered past, fanning her face with her catalogue.
‘It’s one hell of a photograph. But that’s not what’s going to make this famous. It’s him.’ He tapped on the perspex where the man was helping the women in the background. ‘You know who this is? Go on, have a closer look.’
I moved in. It was Beardilocks, I was sure of it. Leaning forward, I studied his face, my eyes just inches from his. His pale skin was smooth, stretched over high cheekbones below deepset eyes. He needed to put on a bit of weight to fill out that shirt collar. What struck me most was that, even in the midst of all the death and destruction, his nails were perfectly manicured and his long dark beard neatly clipped.
‘No.’ I pulled back from the frame. ‘Not a clue.’
‘Exactly. But one day you will. His face will be on as many T-shirts as Che Guevara’s. They wanted some of my stuff here, but fuck ’em, man. I’ve had two exhibitions of my own. I’ll let them have what I want, what I think is important. Not just some stuff to fill this wall or that.’
One of the staff, a woman with blonde hair over a black polo-neck, came over to us. ‘Could you please be quiet? Images like these deserve respect, you know.’
Jerry shook his head slowly in disbelief. ‘C’mon, Nick, you want fresh air?’
We walked outside into the sun. Jerry put on a pair of mirrored wraparounds. ‘By the way, Nick, you look shit. But it’s still good to see you, man. A beer for old times’ sake?’
We turned left, looking for somewhere. I’d have one beer and go.
‘You’re married, then.’ I nodded at the gold band on his finger.
The smile hit maximum wattage. ‘We just had a daughter. She’s three months old. Chloë. She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.’
I grinned back at him. ‘I guess she must take after her mother . . .’
‘Funny. You?’
I shook my head. I didn’t want to talk about Kelly. That was private stuff. Even Ezra only got the abridged version. The full story was the only thing I had that belonged just to me.
We went into a designer bar with low lights and leather settees. There were soon two Amstel Lights on the table between us, and the conversation continued. I found myself enjoying it. He wasn’t the sort of person I would normally get to know: he was a lot better than that.
He’d been just twenty-three when we met at the Holiday Inn. His plan had been simple enough. Fly to London, buy a Hi-8 video camera to join the 35mm his mother had bought him as a graduation present, then hitchhike to Bosnia and take pictures that told the truth. He was going to sell them, once he found out how. By the sound of it, he’d done both.
‘You cover the Gulf?’
‘You kidding? With skin this colour? The last thing I need is to get on the wrong end of some friendly fire . . .’
His big challenge now was how to balance work and family. I told him I wasn’t exactly the world’s leading expert on that, but knew it wasn’t going to get any simpler.
Jerry nodded. The three of them had moved from Buffalo less than a month ago, and Renee was nesting big-time. ‘Maybe another child next year, who knows?’ He went a bit dewy-eyed again. ‘Good things, Nick. Good things.’
He ordered another beer, and I heard myself doing so too. We got back to talking about the exhibition. ‘You know what?’ His voice wavered. ‘I’ve spent all my working life managing to block out the horrors I see through the lens so I can project my message through the image, but since Chloë everything’s changed. You know what I’m saying?’ He swallowed hard. ‘Like, the tragedy of that mother trying to protect her child, knowing that she herself had only seconds left to live. Hoping desperately that someone would look after it . . . Looking at my stuff, it takes on a new meaning now. What a waste . . .’ He took a long swig. ‘It’s all bullshit, isn’t it?’
I rubbed my hand into my hair again and wiped my face with it. I felt a sudden pain in the centre of my chest and hoped I wasn’t making it too obvious. I guessed I felt the way he looked; he brushed away a tear that fell slowly down one cheek. ‘You’re right, mate, it’s all bullshit.’
> He stood up with me. ‘Come home with me, come see Renee and Chloë. We’re not far.’
‘I’m sorry, I—’
He just wouldn’t give up. ‘Come on, my car’s just round the corner. I’d like to show you some of my work. It got a whole lot better since the last time we met.’
I hesitated as we reached the door.
‘Come on, man. Come home. I’ve told Renee a hundred times about that day . . . She’d never forgive me if I didn’t bring you back.’
Short of me pulling a knife on him, there was no way he was going to let me just walk away. ‘I make great coffee too.’ We set off through the door. ‘None of that Arabic crap.’
16
We headed out of DC towards Chevy Chase, along the main drag. Massachusetts Avenue took us past all the embassy buildings and eventually to row upon row of nondescript apartment buildings. By then he had finished telling me that Renee came from Buffalo, not far from Lackawanna, she was a freelance picture editor, and up until recently she’d stayed in her small apartment because he was always away. But soon after they married, Chloë came along and it was time to move. Why they were here in DC, he didn’t get to say.
His last job had been covering the anti-government violence in Venezuela. ‘I got some great shots of protesters going toe to toe with National Guard. You see them in Newsweek?’
We turned left alongside one of the apartment buildings, then down a ramp and into the underground lot. He closed down the engine, and turned to face me.
‘Don’t you want to stay at home now, Jerry? I mean, if I had a child right now I think it would stop me bouncing along to wherever the shit’s hitting the fan.’
Rather than answering, he fiddled with a set of keys as we walked to the elevator. ‘Security,’ he said. ‘You need to unlock a lock just to get to the lock in this place.’ He had a little trouble with what key went into the elevator, but at last we were on our way up.
‘Just one floor.’ Jerry was beaming like a Jehovah’s Witness who’d just added a brand new member to his congregation. ‘Hope she’s in. We normally take Chloë to the park about now.’ He turned towards me. ‘Nick . . .’ His voice dropped. ‘I never really got round to thanking you once we got back to Sarajevo. I’ve replayed it in my head so many times. I just want to say—’
I put my hand up to stop him. ‘Whoa, it’s OK. It was a long time ago. Don’t worry about it.’ I didn’t want to go into all that stuff right now. Better to let it stay in its box.
He was a little disappointed, but nodded all the same. ‘Thanks anyway. I just wanted to tell you, that’s all.’
The elevator stopped and Jerry played with his keys as we headed towards the apartment.
The white-walled corridor was lined with good grey carpet. The place was spotless. Most of the inhabitants probably worked in the embassies we’d driven past.
The moment he pushed the key into the door of 107, I was hit by the smell of fresh paint. He pointed along the passage. ‘No stroller. Coffee? We’ll go in the lounge. Too many fumes everywhere else. Sorry about the mess. You know how it is with moving.’
I didn’t really. I hadn’t been lying to George: my whole life fitted into two carry-ons.
The doors to two bedrooms were open on the right. Each had just a mattress on the floor, and piles of boxes and clothes.
The lounge was stark white. No curtains yet, but a TV, VCR and music centre with red illuminated LEDs. It didn’t look as if they were planning to keep the old carpet: it was covered with fresh paint stains. Everything else was baby stuff, changing mats, nappy bags and the smell of talcum powder. In the corner stood a blue carrycot on a stand, a plastic mobile with stars and teddy bears above it.
I could see a parade of pictures of all three of them along the mantelpiece. There were even a couple of Polaroids of Chloë on her own, looking very blue and wrinkly. The normal thing proud parents did, I supposed. The pictures were probably the first thing they’d unpacked.
He opened a box containing reams of contact sheets and photographs, all carefully protected in plastic sleeves.
‘You’ve been busy.’
‘And then some. See what you think.’
He went into the kitchen, leaving me to it.
Jerry really had come a long way since the days he carried his mum’s birthday present round his neck. He’d covered everything from the wars in Ethiopia and the refugee camps in Gaza to the Pope weeping in what looked like a South American slum.
Jerry clattered away in the kitchen as I held contact sheet after contact sheet up to the light.
When the serving hatch opened and a tray of percolated coffee and mugs appeared, I held up a laminated front page of the New York Times. ‘This Sudan picture one of yours?’
A tiny starving girl, no more than a bag of bones really, hunched naked in the dirt. Behind her, watching her every move, stood a vulture. It wasn’t just the picture that was fucked up. Beside it was an ad for a multi-thousand-dollar Cartier watch.
Jerry leaned through the hatch. ‘I wish. It’s one of Kevin Carter’s. He’s dead now. He won a Pulitzer for it.’
As I stood to collect the tray, a key turned in the lock.
‘They’re back.’ For the first time, he sounded just a little bit anxious.
I let him get on with family stuff and went over to the sofa, dumping the brew on a packing case. I could see into the corridor.
Renee wore jeans and a long, thick, hairy nylon coat, a sort of bluey-green colour. She shushed him as he went to kiss her. Chloë was asleep. As Jerry started to unstrap the baby from the stroller, she shrugged off the coat and came towards me. Her smile broadened but she kept her voice low. ‘Well, hello!’ She had a happy, homely face on a small skinny body. Her brown hair was gathered at the neck, and she wasn’t wearing makeup. ‘I’m Renee.’ She held out her hand. It was soft and stained with paint.
I hoped the fumes cancelled out the stench of margarine I carried around with me, and put on a big smile of my own. ‘I know, he’s told me all about you.’ It was a corny thing to say, but I didn’t know what else you did in these situations. ‘I’m Nick.’
‘I know all about you, too. The guy who saved Jerry’s life in Bosnia.’
She led me proudly over to the carrycot as Jerry gently placed the baby in it and disappeared back into the kitchen. ‘And this is Chloë.’ I looked down but couldn’t see much. She had a woolly hat on and was up to her ears in duvet.
The pain in my chest had disappeared as we drove here. Now it was replaced by a different feeling. Maybe it was jealousy. They had everything I thought I wanted.
It seemed time to whisper a few of the right noises. ‘Aww – she’s beautiful, isn’t she?’
Renee leaned into the carrycot, her eyes fixed on the sleeping face. ‘Isn’t she just?’
We settled down with the coffee and she apologized for the mess. ‘We keep meaning to get a table.’
I thought I’d better make an effort before I took the first opportunity to get through that front door and out of there. I gestured towards the packing case and smiled. ‘Last place I moved into, I had one of those. I got to rather like it.’
Jerry joined us with another mug.
‘So what do you think of DC?’ I said. ‘A bit different from Buffalo . . .’
‘It’s fine.’ She didn’t sound too convinced. ‘Maybe in another month or two we’ll get sorted out, and Jerry will get the job he’s after at the Post.’
She passed me a black coffee. Her lip had started to quiver. I sensed there was tension in the air. ‘But he’s going off on one more crazy trip before that . . .’
Jerry was doing his best not to look her in the eye.
Whatever was going on here, I wanted nothing to do with it. This was my opportunity. ‘I’m sorry.’ I tried a sip and put the mug down. The coffee was too hot. ‘I really should be going. I was a bit tight for time anyway when I bumped into Jerry.’
He had other ideas. ‘Come on, Nick, stay a little long
er. Chloë will be awake soon and maybe we could all go for something to eat.’
‘No, really, I—’
Renee looked up at me. ‘We’ve made you feel uncomfortable.’
‘No, no. Not at all.’ I hoped I sounded more convincing to them than I did to myself. ‘But I do have to go. I was only popping into the gallery for five minutes. I’ll get the Metro, it’s fine.’ I didn’t have a clue where the Metro was, but it didn’t really matter.
Jerry tapped me on the arm. ‘Least I can do is walk you to the station.’
There was no avoiding it: I didn’t want to stand there all day arguing. I said my goodbyes to Renee and we left the flat.
Jerry was all apologetic in the lift. ‘I’m so sorry about that. Things have been pretty vexed with the move . . .’
I nodded, not wanting to get involved. Their domestic stuff didn’t interest me.
‘Renee is right,’ he carried on. ‘I’ve got responsibilities now. I will go and work for the Post.’ He paused, looking slightly sheepish. ‘It’s just that I haven’t quite got around to applying for the job yet. There’s one last thing I’ve got to do before I shoot beauty pageants for the rest of my life.’
I smiled at the thought of him bobbing around at a beauty pageant trying to project a message through the image.
The lift stopped in the lobby. We walked out on to the street and turned left. Jerry seemed to know where he was going. He was looking a bit more relaxed. ‘Listen, Nick. I know you don’t want to hear this, but I really want to thank you for what you did for me in ’ninety-four. I was young, I didn’t have a clue what was going on, it was a total fuck-up. If those Serb fucks—’
I chose my words more carefully this time, to make sure he drew a line under it. ‘I’m just glad that you’re alive and happy, you’ve got a great family and things have worked out all right.’
‘I know it, but still – I’ve got this one last thing to do.’ He had that Jehovah’s Witness look again. ‘In Iraq.’
‘Iraq?’
‘It’s just one final picture. The shot of my life. Remember the guy—’
