The hand of Lee Donkin slid into his pocket as his pace increased, as he came nearer to her, and he used his thumb to prise off the little leather sheath that covered the blade of the knife.
8 November 1936
This is the beginning. It is what I have come for.
Albacete is behind us. I have woken as if from a nightmare, and that was the barracks at Albacete.
It has been an incredible day and I have felt such pride at being here. I have little time to write because, free from the nightmare, I will need all the sleep tonight that it is possible to have. Tomorrow I–Daniel and Ralph with me–will fight and be tested.
We were brought in buses last night to Madrid–and with every mile further from Albacete our spirits rose, and there was much singing in many languages. Our turn came and Daniel led our bus in 'It's A Long Way To Tipperary', and by the third time round we had everyone, Poles, Germans and Italians, whistling with us and even trying the words. We had a few hours' sleep in a park, under clear skies.
This afternoon we were formed into squads–platoons and companies–and most of us were issued with rifles. They are old and French, from the Great War, and each man given one had ten rounds of ammunition. I do not understand why we did not have more military training at Albacete: instead our brains are bulging with political stuff from the commissars. I have a rifle and so does Ralph, but not Daniel. We were marched up a main road in Madrid, like Regent Street in London, that is called the Gran Via. It was incredible.
At first the pavements of the Gran Via were empty, except for long queues at bread shops, but as we marched up the middle of the road people emerged and waved to us, or clapped and cheered. I marched as best I could,, with my rifle on my shoulder, and felt such pride, and my good friends were either side of me, and there were near to two thousand of us. We were a magnificent sight, and those citizens of Madrid recognized the gesture we had made in coming to help them. A woman shouted–I know it because Ralph translated for me: 'It is better to die on your, feet than live on your knees.' And many yelled what we had heard when we first came to Spain: 'They shall not pass.'
Later, when we came to the top of the Gran Via, we heard very clearly the noise of the artillery barrage falling on the forward positions, and none of the three of us sang any more. It was so close and so deafening. There, the roadside was at first deserted, but people must have heard the stamp of our marching boots, and they appeared from barricaded doorways and cheered us with such enthusiasm, as if we were their saviours and would drive back Los Moros, the Moorish troops of the Army of Africa…Of course we, of the XIth International Brigade, will drive them back from the Caso di Campo.
As we reached the trenches, the second line, where we will spend the night, I asked Daniel how he would be able to fight if he did not have a rifle. He said, very calmly, 'Don't you be worrying about it, Cecil. I expect one of the brigadiers will drop one and I will pick it up.' At first I did not understand what he meant. Now I do. The shelling is continuous, but I am sure we will get used to it and will sleep.
I have seen wounded men carried back through our second line, and I try to look away. What I have seen is ghastly–it is better not to look at those men. Strange, but I feel more anxiety for Ralph and Daniel than for myself–enough of that!
Tomorrow we fight–I hope God will look after my brothers in arms, and me–and the day after tomorrow we are going to have a party!–Ralph and Daniel have promised it, because it will be my birthday.
Joker of the Pack He held the notebook in front of his eyes and lingered on each sentence, every pencilled word. Voices were in his ears, but Banks ignored them, and the card game…That morning, the Delta team had been, in the dawn light, down the motorway in convoy–with the sirens going and the motorcycles ahead–to Heathrow, to deposit the Minister for Reconstruction. They had waited with him until it was time for his flight to Amman, the first leg of his journey home to Baghdad.
The team–less the Royal and Diplomatic guys–were now in the canteen of the police station at Vincent Square, a usual watering-hole when they were stood down and killed time before the next briefing. The talk at the far end of the table, which slid past Banks, was of clothing kit, a tour of the business end of Downing Street organized by a Special Branch sergeant, and a new modification to the Heckler & Koch's telescopic sight…The only image of the morning that had lasted with Banks was the insistence of the Minister–going home to bloody Baghdad–that he should shake their hands individually, thank them one by one. God, and they weren't bullet-catchers: none of the Delta team would have chucked his body into the line of fire to save the poor bastard. The plane had barely started its taxiing run before they had been on their way back for the canteen, cards and chaff talk.
'Hey, Banksy, what you got?' He was with Cecil Darke, far away. 'Banksy , are you in this world or out of it?'
What he missed most was his inability to fashion a picture of Cecil Darke. He could not put a face or features to his great-uncle. Did not know whether he was tall, as David Banks was, whether he was well-built with broad shoulders, as David Banks was. Dark- or fair-haired, or shaven bare at Albacete, did not know. As a substitute, while he read, he imagined a short young fellow–fourteen years younger than himself–with a pale complexion, and probably a concave, shallow chest, with clothes or a uniform that hung on him as they had on the scarecrows Banks's father had erected on new-sown fields. There would have been thin shoulders, pulled back with pride, weighed down by the old French rifle as he'd gone up the Gran Via. But it was only Banks's imagination, a poor substitute for knowing.
'Anyone home, Banksy?'
He tried to think what he believed in. What would have made David Banks–a detective constable who had never gone for the sergeants' exam–travel to join someone else's war? Couldn't imagine it. What would have made David Banks–divorced from Mandy, resident in an Ealing bedsit–go into a secondary line and think about sleep under shellfire rather than the dawn when he would charge over open ground? Couldn't comprehend it.
'Banksy, don't mind me saying it, what's the matter with you?'
Perhaps they were bored with the merits of various brands of thermal socks, or the self-esteem that came from a Downing Street tour and access to the Cabinet room, or the added magnification of the latest gunsight…He closed the notebook and saw the printed, faded, gold-leaf name. He knew so little of the man whose name it had been, and who, in the morning, would face an enemy and fight.
'It's a diary Banks said quietly.
'What's so special about it–makes us not interesting enough?' Banks said, 'It was written by my great-uncle seventy years ago.'
'And…So…? The way it's been stuck in your hands it might be a Tablet brought down from the mountain.'
Trying hard to control his irritation, Banks said, 'My great-uncle, aged twenty-one, packed in his job in London and went to Spain for the Civil War. He was a volunteer in the International Brigades and–'
'One of the great losers, a fucking Commie?'
His head rose to face Deltas 6, 8, 9 and 11. 'He was not a Communist,' Banks said evenly, through his teeth. 'He was an idealist. There is a difference.'
They came at him as if in an avalanche, and boredom was gone. It was sport.
Delta 6: 'Come off it, they were all reds, Soviet-supplied and Soviet-funded, controlled by the Comintern, recruited by the Communist Party of Great Britain.'
Delta 8: 'Just a load of wankers interfering in another dog's fight.'
Delta 9: 'What you could say, your great-uncle was yesterday's terrorist–like any of those bastards from outside going into Iraq, exactly the same, to slot that Principal who's on his way home. What you reckon, Banksy?'
The notebook was in front of him, with its worn leather cover and its faded gold-printed name. At that moment, David Banks could have grinned and shrugged and even laughed–could have pushed himself up off the hard chair and asked who needed another coffee or tea, how many sugars, could have defused it. But the b
lood ran warm in him. He was tired to the point of exhaustion and his temper surged. 'You lot are talking right out of your arses.'
'Oh, that right, is it?' Sport over, conflict joined. 'That's not very pretty, Banksy.'
He was an Authorized Firearms Officer. He had been given the highest responsibility a policeman held: the right to carry a lethal weapon. He was not allowed the personal luxury of anger. But all that had gone clean out through the canteen's window. No apology, no backing off. Banks stared up at the ceiling, which was a mistake.
It was Delta 11 who saw the opportunity of advantage and took it. Beyond Banks's main eyeline, fast as a snake, Delta 11 came past two empty chairs, and had the notebook in his fist. Banks's reaction was a clawing grab at Delta li's sleeve, but he couldn't hold it. Delta 11 sank again on to his chair.
'Right, let's have a look–let's see what the Commie's got to say for himself.'
It had begun as a lark, then gone serious.
Banks was up–his chair fell back behind him–along the length of the table and his right hand snatched at the back of Delta li's neck while the left dived for the notebook. His left wrist, with his watch on it, brushed Delta li's earlobe, and the little metal angle holding the strap in place nicked the flesh. Banks had the notebook in his hand as the first drop of blood hit the table. Only a nick, just a scratch, but there was blood on the table. He spun on his heel and went back to his chair at the end of the table. Then he could have apologized, and maybe thrown his handkerchief to Delta ii.
Banks said, 'Actually, my great-uncle was an idealist and prepared to make sacrifices for those ideals, a brave and principled man.'
Delta 9 mocked, 'And what would make him any different from the foreign suicide-bombers in Iraq and their "sacrifices"? Come on, I'm listening, Banksy.'
Without thinking, without weighing, Banks spat back, 'It's perfectly possible that such men there are brave and principled, and though I don't agree–'
For a moment the silence hung, and the enormity of his statement, which contradicted the culture of Protection Officers, billowed in him. He saw their huddle re-form, and he heard, wafting low towards him, the debate resume on whether useful thermal socks could be bought for less than twenty pounds–and he was shut out.
Regret was not in David Banks's nature, or humility. And his great-uncle, Cecil Darke, had made no compromises.
He dropped the notebook into his jacket pocket, and went to sit at a far table–where there was no blood from a nicked ear–away from the clatter of conversation.
Chapter4
Thursday, Day 8
He used the Isosceles stance, and fired.
About all that David Banks knew of the ancient Greek language was 'Isosceles', and most of what he knew about geometry was of a triangle with two sides of equal length. He felt the jolt of the mechanism's recoil, and from the side of his eye saw the cartridge case discharged. His feet were apart and his toes level; his knees were slightly bent and his arms were punched out; his back was straight; the triangle was from his head to his fists holding the pistol and back to his belt. He realized immediately that his shot would be rated poor, as were most of those he had fired before–counted the trigger squeezes and knew his magazine was exhausted.
He shouted, 'Out.' He went down on to one knee, because the training dictated that a marksman should reduce the size of the target he offered when he was taken from the equation, and was slipping out the empty magazine and replacing it with a loaded one. Around him he heard a chorus of similar yells: 'Out.' Then the clicks, metal scraping on metal, as the others and he worked the safety catches forward. He stood and was breathing hard; he shouldn't have been.
He was apart from the rest, as if outside a tribal fence, not invited in and not making the effort to approach them. Maybe the instructors who oversaw them, or the invigilators who checked the target sheets and awarded the marks for 'pass' or 'fail', had been told that he was beyond the pale as far as the rest of the Delta team were concerned, or maybe they hadn't noticed.
An instructor came to him, not to the others. They were rated as 'pass', but if an instructor came straight up to a marksman it indicated 'fail'. Must have been three years since he had last been confronted by an instructor, wearing an expression of puzzlement and disappointment, to be told that his score was below the forty-two points out of fifty that were required.
'You been out on the piss last night, Banksy? Trouble is, you're giving me a problem.' The voice was quietly confidential, but the others would have known. 'My problem is that I cannot fudge the score. You're not just one down, you're seven. I can't remember you having had difficulty before–well not in the last three years. You're on thirty-five. You'll have to repeat it after the Alley work–sorry and all that.'
He heard, and was meant to, a staged whisper from the knot of the tribe and thought it was Delta 7. 'Not on the piss, more likely worrying about the survival of a 'rather brave and principled man' and therefore screwing up.'
They unloaded their pistols, handed over the live magazines, pulled on waterproof trousers and oiled jackets, tugged their caps low on their foreheads and walked in the rain to what was called, at the range, Hogan's Alley. It was the time for simunition, plastic bullets fired from pistols with their tips holding fractional quantities of red and black paint. The bullets would spatter a marking of the hit point, but would not break a man's skin. New magazines and pairs of eye-protectors were handed out. The way the team formed up in a queue to go down the Alley, Banks was left at the end and would shoot last. In front of him he could see a tiny nick–sandwiched between a coat's collar and the side of a cap–on an earlobe…Too bloody obstinate to apologize, not that there was anything to apologize for. Shooting in the Alley did not count in the areas of 'pass' and 'fail', but doing badly would be noted by the instructors and go on his report.
The Alley was designed to beat the 'complacency syndrome'. It was an open-air corridor flanked by imitation house fronts built of plywood and paint-daubed, with doors and open windows. It was designed as nearly as possible to replicate the 'real thing'. Between the house fronts were beaten-up cars, most without tyres. The Alley was where a marksman, an Authorized Firearms Officer, tested his reactions; no one could order him when to fire–it was his decision and his responsibility if he fouled up and a mistake, in the 'big and nasty world out there', brought a charge of murder down on his shoulders. A senior instructor stood back and had a console in front of him under a clear plastic sheet that kept the rain off the switches; cables led from it across the grass and the mud to either side of the Alley. The way to avoid a mistake was not to fire, never to fire, unless his own life was threatened and not his Principal's, but the Alley showed up that lack of determination.
He waited his turn. Where he stood, at the tail of the queue, he could not see the shapes, human figures of cardboard, that would appear in windows, doorways and from behind the cars. Judges were walked up the Alley, and magistrates, and those sour-faced bastards from the Independent Police Complaints Commission who investigated every fatal shooting by a police officer. A few learned the difficulties of making the nano-second decision on whether to shoot or not, but most didn't…and that was why David Banks was there. His self-regard demanded it. It was what he did well, his purpose in life–until that morning when he'd shot like an idiot. Daft, but the ongoing shit with Mandy…their loathing of each other after the divorce was finalized, the word being passed to him that she was shagging a uniform sergeant from West End Central, the acrimony over the division of wedding presents and their old household's contents, his firm-held belief that the estate agent had colluded with her to mark down his split on the sale of the Wandsworth terraced house and her screaming denial. . The shit with Mandy had never, in eight separate shooting assessments, caused him to fail.
Reading the diary had. Last night, lying on his unmade bed, with the plastic trays of the microwaved meal for one–vegetable curry, the only one left in the freezer,, and pilau rice–on the carpet bes
ide his pillow, he had been into combat on the fields of the Caso di Campo. He had heard machine-gun fire, artillery fire, tank fire and mortar fire, and he had learned that one-third–Cecil Darke's estimate–of the XIth International Brigade were dead or wounded when the dusk had mercifully covered the open ground. His great-uncle had come through the day, as had the friends who were his brothers. On the bed, Banks had lived it–the atrocity of the wounds, the agony of the deaths, the naked fear and the collapsed relief of those who were not hurt or dead on that foreign field. Bloody hell! What was a nicked earlobe when set against those casualties, dead and injured? The only soldiers he had met, men who were combat-trained, were those from Hereford–Special Forces guys–quiet as the grave, focused, trained and easy on their feet. But he did not know the man, without military experience, who had led him by the hand, through a notebook's pages, to the Caso di Campo and hell.
His turn, and the instructor waved him forward.
The Alley opened ahead of him.
No brothers beside him, no brigade around him, he started his walk and his hand was close to the pancake holster under his opened coat, and the rain slid down from the peak of his cap. OK, OK, a target was expected: he had the Glock out of the holster, and the sweat or the rain made his hand wet and his grip loose. His heart pounded. Anyone who'd said, 'Only an exercise, my old mucker, doesn't matter', was talking shit. He was a third of the way in and the silence surged. They would all be watching, their eyes needling into his back…Then–
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