Soldier K: Mission to Argentina

by David Monnery

  Wacko tried to move, almost cried out with pain, and seemed to lose consciousness again for just a few seconds. He felt really weird, he realized. Maybe some sort of drug had been pumped into him, or maybe it was just one of the consequences of being shot wherever it was he had been. The chest, he thought. He tried to examine his arm for needle marks but the room started to swim, and he had to close his eyes tight.

  The next time he awoke – whether minutes or hours later was impossible to tell – it was to hear voices. There were two men, either standing in the doorway or just outside. Wacko kept his eyes closed and tried to concentrate on what they were saying. One voice was soft and one rasping, like two instruments alternating solos in a piece of chamber music. They were talking about someone or something named Solanille, about someone or other looking everywhere, about a woman – a ‘mystery woman’.

  ‘And what is to be done with this one?’ the rasping voice asked. Wacko thought he could feel eyes glancing towards him.

  ‘Nothing,’ the soft voice said, causing Wacko to clench his fist in elation under the sheet. ‘The war is probably lost,’ the man said, his voice even softer than before, ‘and who knows how the people will react …’

  ‘But this is an Englishman. A terrorist. What do the people care about …’

  ‘You are being naïve, Carlos. If the people turn on the Junta then it will be a lottery for those of us in the security services. But one thing is certain – the cleaner our hands appear to be the more chance we shall have of keeping our positions. I do not want my name on some list the English Ambassador to the UN reads out, just when a new government in Buenos Aires is looking for scapegoats in the security services.’

  ‘I see what you mean,’ Carlos agreed.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘So we wait for the war to be over, one way or another.’

  ‘We hand him back to the Air Force, him and his friend from Rio Grande.’ The soft-voiced one grunted, apparently with amusement. ‘If by some miracle we win the war, then we can always ask for him back.’

  The voices went on, but Wacko, unable to hold his concentration any longer, drifted back into unconsciousness. The next time he awoke Hedge was sitting beside him, apparently dressed in pyjamas.

  ‘Welcome to St Gaucho’s,’ the big man said.

  The sun was high in the clear blue sky when Razor and Ben emerged from the trees and saw, half a mile below them, a line of widely spaced white posts laid across the vast, wild slope, fading into the distance.

  ‘It must be the border,’ Ben said.

  ‘Don’t see what else it could be,’ Razor agreed.

  There was no sign of troops, nor of any other humans. But for the line of white posts there was no sign that men had ever walked there before.

  They moved down cautiously, looking for any signs of a minefield, without really expecting to find any. At a point directly between two of the posts Razor took a large symbolic step. ‘One second you’re a soldier at war, the next you’re a tourist,’ he proclaimed.

  ‘Or an internee,’ Ben corrected him.

  ‘As long as there’s a hot meal involved,’ Razor said.

  They walked on, their steps a little lighter for having crossed the border, but it was another four hours before they came upon a rough track. They followed it down into an idyllic little valley, where a stream danced happily over stones beneath lovely cypresses, and a real road wound out of sight to left and right.

  Less than ten minutes had passed when a farmer responded to Razor’s optimistic thumb, and stopped to give them a lift. He chatted merrily about nothing in particular, but seemed entirely devoid of curiosity as to who they were. He also failed to shed any light on the outcome of the Cup Final.

  He drove them the five miles into Puerto Natales, a small town whose houses all seemed to be made of either wood or corrugated iron. At Razor’s request they were dropped outside the Post Office, which happened to face the town’s main square.

  Ben sat in the latter while Razor entered the former, and stretched his Spanish to the utmost in a long but ultimately successful attempt to make a reversed-charge telephone call to the British Embassy in Santiago.

  ‘Who shall I say is calling?’ the Chilean official asked.

  Trooper Wilkinson of the SAS,’ Razor told him. ‘We’re a sort of travelling show,’ he added helpfully.

  The Embassy answered immediately, as if they had been waiting for the call. Once Razor had explained his and Ben’s geographical and pecuniary situations, he was told to wait in the square until a man named Lawson came to collect the two of them. It might be several hours before he could get there, and perhaps not before morning. In the meantime, somewhat unrealistically, they should try not to attract any attention to themselves.

  Razor went back to Ben, and the two of them sat side by side on a bench, in their filthy Gore-tex jackets and camouflage trousers, staring at the statue of some Chilean general.

  ‘Fuck this for a laugh,’ Razor said after a few minutes. ‘Let’s try and change the Argie money, eat and drink ourselves into a stupor, find some nice girls and have a fucking ball.’

  ‘As long as we don’t attract any attention to ourselves,’ Ben said.

  ‘Goes without saying,’ Razor agreed.

  Docherty thought Isabel’s face looked anxious when he let himself back into the room. ‘There’s no sign of the opposition,’ he said quickly, and then noticed that she was wearing the sweater he had bought for her.

  ‘It seems to fit,’ he said. ‘Is the colour OK?’

  ‘It’s lovely,’ she said.

  He felt pleased.

  ‘But where have you been since?’ she asked.

  ‘Here and there. Exploring the town.’

  ‘Don’t … I mean, I’m not telling you what to do, but don’t you think it would be better if we stayed out of sight.’

  He took no offence. ‘Yes and no,’ he said. ‘I wanted to make sure the car was as out of sight as possible, without actually pushing it into the lake. And I always like to know where the back door is, so to speak, just in case someone comes knocking at the front.’ He grinned at her. ‘Other than that, yes, we should stay out of sight.’

  She sighed. ‘Point taken.’

  ‘Let me ask you a question,’ he said. ‘How long do you think it will be safe to stay here?’

  She took time to think about her answer, which was the one of the things he most liked about her. ‘Does anyone know we came this way?’

  ‘Not that I know of, but …’ He shrugged. ‘You never know when someone’s looking out through the lace curtains.’

  ‘If they’ve lost us, then I’d guess several days,’ she said, ‘but there’s no guarantee.’

  ‘Of course not. Another question: have you ever done any mountain hiking?’

  ‘Are you kidding?’ I grew up in Ushuaia. I climbed every mountain in the National Park before I was sixteen.’

  ‘Great. Well, this is the plan.’ He brought out the map he had copied, and outlined their escape route. ‘But you’ll need all the strength you can muster,’ he added. Somehow, going over it all with her had only emphasized how hard it might turn out to be.

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ she said, ‘I’ve always been strong as an ox.’

  ‘You don’t look like one.’

  She smiled. ‘Just give me one more day.’

  Mozza had spent the previous night camped in a convenient cave, just above the tree line on the northern slope of another range of miniature mountains. Puma tracks by the cave mouth had made him feel slightly ambivalent. While he would have loved to see one up close in the wild, he did not feel much like having to fight off an angry cat whose home he had stolen. Still, there were no recent droppings, and the two baked trout had been tasty enough to take his mind off everything else. He had slept like a child, perhaps in unconscious recognition of the rigours of the day to come.

  The mountains were less than 3500 feet high, he reckoned, but the top three hundred were wreat
hed in permanent snow, and they looked just like the Alps through the wrong end of a telescope. More to the point, since the range ran almost north to south, he had no choice but to cross it.

  Fortified at first light by another hot meal and drink, he was quickly on his way, climbing steadily up across the bare mountain towards the snowline. The temperature seemed to drop steadily despite the rising sun, and once he was into the snow his feet started to ache, and his eyes to blink. The going was not difficult, and he pressed on for the best part of another hour without ever seeming to be any nearer the summit, his vision assuming a pink hue which steadily darkened towards red.

  He forced himself to stop, eyes closed, feeling his feet turning into blocks of ice, fighting off a rising sense of panic. ‘Lynsey, Lynsey, Lynsey,’ he said to himself. He visualized her face at the door, the smile, the embrace. He then tried walking with the PNGs on, keeping his eyes dangerously closed on stretches that seemed straightforward.

  After what seemed an age he reached the top of the pass. Taking off the PNGs he could see, far in the distance and way down below, another large lake stretching away into the haze.

  It was almost noon. He took another two biscuits and two more squares of chocolate, promised himself a cup of tea beneath the snowline, and started down. His feet were now sending out severe shooting pains, but somehow he knew the worst was over.

  An hour later the snow gave way to alpine meadow, and he followed an icy stream down a steep, winding valley towards the occasionally visible lake. There was no wood for making a fire, but once out of the snow his feet had held their own, and he was confident he could reach the water before the sun disappeared behind him.

  He was still some way from the lake when the noise started percolating into his consciousness. It grew steadily in volume as he approached, a sound somewhere between braying and squawking, like a football crowd full of angry donkeys.

  It was only when he turned the last corner of the valley that he saw the source: hundreds upon hundreds of penguins were spread across the beach, walking up and down, apparently talking to each other.

  They hardly seemed to notice his arrival. He turned the corner of the cliff, and found he had underestimated their numbers. There seemed to be thousands of them, spread as far as he could see up the lakeside beach, all honking up a storm.

  Except that penguins only lived by the sea, he reminded himself. He had read it in Hannah’s book of animals before he left. And if this was the sea then he was in Chile. He sniffed at the cold air to make sure, and smelt the salt. He was safe. He would be going home.

  Docherty was woken by church bells the following morning, and decided that the chair he had slept in must have been engineered by a sadist. Every muscle in his body seemed stiff.

  Isabel seemed much stronger for a good night’s sleep, and the two of them had breakfast together in the almost empty hotel dining-room. Rosa continued to treat them as though they were favoured relatives, which perhaps had something to do with Isabel’s fictional guidebook. In any case, her non-stop chatter about herself, the hotel and the town revealed no new cause for alarm.

  Docherty spent most of the day spending MI6’s money. He had been half afraid the camping shop would be closed, but as if engaged in a desperate effort to squeeze the last drop from the tourist trade, its doors were defiantly open. He purchased a tent, sleeping bags, footwear for Isabel, a pack for carrying it all – and everything else they would need for several days’ hiking in subarctic conditions.

  All day he kept an eye out for any sign of trouble, but the town seemed as becalmed as the waters of its lake. Newspaper headlines suggested great victories in the Malvinas, but to judge from the locals’ faces they believed it as little as Docherty did.

  Isabel stayed in the hotel, gathering her strength and letting her mind wander. If they got away, then where would she go? What would she do? What did she make of this man?

  They ate dinner in the dining-room, and he talked about the months he had spent in Mexico. She found herself wondering more and more why this man did what he did, and then she remembered how and who he had been during that long night in Rio Gallegos. Some people, she thought, just do what they do because they know how good they are at doing it.

  Back upstairs he did all but the last-minute packing, ramming more into the backpack than she would have thought possible. When he had finished, it seemed to weighed a ton, but was apparently half the weight he usually carried.

  ‘We’re ready,’ he said, as much to himself as her. ‘And the more sleep we get, the better,’ he added.

  ‘I think you should sleep in the bed tonight,’ she said.

  ‘OK,’ he said.

  ‘I mean with me,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, making sure the door was locked. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll keep my distance.’

  She was silent for a moment. Then she stepped across to meet him, and put her two hands on his shoulder, and kissed him softly on the lips. ‘I mean, I want us to make love,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t have to be now. I just wanted to tell you.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said.

  ‘If you want to,’ she added.

  ‘I’ve wanted to since the first moment I saw you in that hotel lobby,’ he said. ‘But you’re not properly mended yet …’

  ‘Oh, I can manage,’ she said, easing her good arm around his neck. They kissed, first gently, then with a slowly growing passion that neither had known for many years.

  ‘I shall need some help undressing,’ she said.

  ‘Look no further,’ Docherty said mildly, caressing her hair. She carefully straightened her arms, allowing him to pull the sweater and T-shirt up over her head, and he managed to unfasten the bra with an ease which was unique in his experience.

  He leaned down to kiss her breasts, noticing the faded scars of burns across them, and felt an intermingling of desire and pity which almost choked him.

  She pulled him back up. ‘They’re old scars,’ she said softly, and applied her fingers to his belt buckle.

  After making love they lay talking in the large bed, half-conscious of the growing silence around them as hotel and town went to sleep.

  ‘Tell me about you,’ she said. ‘You know all about me.’

  ‘No I don’t,’ he said. ‘I know you were a revolutionary, and you were captured and tortured, and your family managed to get you out of the country somehow. And that you agreed to work for MI6 because of your hatred for the Junta. But none of that prepared me for who you are.’

  ‘So who am I?’ she asked wryly.

  ‘You’re someone who couldn’t shoot the man who sent you to the torturers …’

  ‘I know. I could kill that man at the door, who I had never seen in my life before, but I couldn’t kill Solanille.’

  ‘Your finger could have pulled the trigger. Your head knew how to give the order. Your heart just didn’t want it done.’ He smiled. ‘In the films they always say that’s what separates us from them.’

  ‘In the films they still believe in good and evil.’

  ‘And so do you.’

  She smiled. ‘Yes, I do. Outside myself I do.’

  ‘And you make love like an angel,’ he added, running his fingers through her hair and feeling himself beginning to stir once more.

  ‘You’re changing the subject,’ she said. ‘And you still haven’t told me anything about yourself.’

  ‘It’s a sad story,’ he said.

  ‘It can’t be that sad.’

  ‘Why not? Do you think …’

  ‘Because you make love like an angel too,’ she interrupted him, running her hand down his stomach. ‘You can tell me the sad story later,’ she said.

  An hour before dawn they left the hotel, walked swiftly down to the lake and along to the small motor boat Docherty had selected for their journey. A crescent moon hung in the sky, casting a thin light across the waters, but there were no witnesses to watch their departure. Docherty rowed them out into the lake and past the first headla
nd, only engaging the outboard motor when they were about half a mile from the town.

  The darkness began to dissipate, and then suddenly, or so it seemed, the snowy peaks of the mountains ahead were ignited by the still invisible sun, and seemed to burn with white fire.

  Through the morning they passed down the blue-green lake, the wall of the southern Andes drawing ever nearer. They turned south where the lake divided, the shimmering wall of the Moreno Glacier visible in the distance, the cracking of its ice highly audible across the water. Just before noon Docherty grounded the boat in a shallow cove on the lake’s south-western shore. He disembarked Isabel, himself and the pack, and then shoved the now-floating boat back out into the lake. For a moment it sat stationary on the water and then, as if called by its unfortunate owner in Calafate, started drifting back the way they had come.

  Once Docherty had checked the map the two fugitives started slowly climbing the valley behind the cove, Isabel ahead, the laden SAS man behind. She looked strong, he thought, and he hoped to God she was.

  That night they pitched their tent a good way above the lake, and discovered that Docherty had chosen the sleeping bags well – once unzipped they could be united to make a double.

  The next day they resumed their climb, moving no faster than Isabel could easily manage, and stopping well before dark to set up camp as efficiently as the conditions warranted. Then they cooked, talked, made love and slept. The rest of the world had been left with the drifting boat below.

  The following day was much the same. The sky stayed clear and the temperature dropped, but now they were more than halfway to their goal. And sure enough, soon after midday they crested what proved to be the final ridge, and found themselves looking down a long valley running into the west. They were standing on the border.

  ‘Out of one fascist dictatorship and into another,’ Isabel said cheerfully.

  And out of one life and into another, she dared herself to hope.

  Epilogue

  The crew of the Sea King managed to sustain themselves for nine days in the Chilean wilderness, and only decided to hand themselves over to the authorities when a party of local trekkers blundered into their camp.