The Gun Seller

by Hugh Laurie

  Woolf sat back in his chair and wiped some sweat from his forehead.

  'Mr Woolf,' I saidy 'I realise it must be strange for you, being here in England. I realise that we must strike you as a nation of hicks, who only got hot and cold running water the day before you flew in, but even so, I have to tell you that I've heard a lot of this before.'

  'Just listen, will you?' said Sarah, and I jumped slightly at the anger in her voice. When I looked at her, she just stared back at me, her lips pressed tightly together.

  'Did you ever hear of the Stoltoi Bluff?' said Woolf.

  I turned back to him.

  'The Stoltoi... no, I don't believe so.'

  'Doesn't matter,' he said. 'Anatoly Stoltoi was a Red Army General. Chief-of-Staff under Khrushchev. Spent his whole career convincing the US that the Russians had thirty times as many rockets as they had. That was his job. His life's work.'

  'Well it worked, didn't it?'

  'For us, yeah.'

  'Us being ... ?'

  'Pentagon knew it was bullshit from start to finish. Knew it. But that didn't stop them using it to justify the biggest arms build-up the world has ever seen.'

  Maybe it was the wine, but I felt I was being awfully slow to get the point of all this.

  'Right,' I said. 'Well let's do something about it, shall we? Now, where did I leave my time-machine? Oh I know, next Wednesday.'

  Sarah made a slight hissing noise and looked away from the table, and maybe she was right - maybe I was being flippant - but for God's sake, where were we going with all this?

  Woolf closed his eyes for a moment, gathering some patience from somewhere.

  'What would you say,' he said slowly, 'the arms industry needs more than anything else?'

  I scratched my head dutifully.

  'Customers?'

  'War,' said Woolf. 'Conflict. Trouble.'

  Well, here we go, I thought. Here comes the theory.

  'I've got it,' I said. 'You're trying to tell me that the Gulf War was started by arms manufacturers?' Honestly, I was being as polite as I could.

  Woolf didn't answer. He just sat there, with his head slightly tilted to one side, watching me and wondering if he'd got the wrong man after all. I didn't even have to wonder.

  'No, seriously,' I said. 'Is that what you're telling me? I mean, I really want to know what you think. I want to know what this is all about.'

  'You saw the footage they showed on TV?' said Sarah, while Woolf just kept on watching. 'Smart bombs, Patriot missile systems, all that stuff?'

  'I saw it,' I said.

  'The makers of those weapons, Thomas, are using that footage in promotional videos at arms fairs around the world. People dying, and they're using the stuff for commercials. It's obscene.'

  'Right,' I said. 'Agreed. The world is a pretty terrible place, and we'd all much rather live on Saturn. How does this affect me, specifically?'

  As the Woolfs traded some meaningful looks, I tried desperately to conceal the enormous pity I now felt for the pair of them. Obviously, they had embarked on some ghastly conspiracy theory which would, in all probability, consume the best years of their lives with the cutting-out of articles from newspapers, and the attending of seminars on the subject of grassy knolls, and nothing I could say would divert them from their chosen course. The best thing would be to slip them a couple of quid towards their sellotape costs and be on my way.

  I was thinking hard, trying to phrase a decent excuse for leaving, when I realised that Woolf had been tugging at his briefcase - and now he had it open and was pulling out a handful of ten-by-eight glossy photographs.

  He passed the top one to me, so I took it.

  It was a picture of a helicopter in flight. I couldn't judge its size, but it was nothing like any type I had seen or heard of. It had two main rotors, running a couple of feet apart off a single mast, and there was no tail rotor. The fuselage looked short compared to the main body, and there were no identifying letters anywhere. It was painted black.

  I looked at Woolf for an explanation, but he simply handed me the next photograph. This one had been taken from above, so it showed a background, and what surprised me was that it was urban. The same aircraft, or one like it, was hovering between a pair of faceless tower blocks, and I could see that the machine was definitely small, possibly a single-seater.

  The third photograph was a much closer shot, and showed the helicopter on the ground. Whatever else it was, it was definitely military, because there was a mess of very nasty-looking kit hanging from the armaments rack that ran through the fuselage behind the cabin. Hydra 70mm rockets, Hellfire air-to-ground missiles, .50 calibre machine guns, and heaps more besides. This was a big toy, for big boys.

  'Where did you get these?' I said.

  Woolf shook his head.

  That's not important.'

  'Well, I think it is important,' I said. 'I have the very strong feeling, Mr Woolf, that you ought not to have these photographs.'

  Woolf tilted his head back, as if he was finally starting to lose patience with me.

  'It doesn't matter where they came from,' he said. 'What matters is the subject. This is a very important aircraft, Mr Lang. Believe me. Very, very important.'

  I believed him. Why wouldn't I?

  'The Pentagon's LH programme,' said Woolf, 'has been running for twelve years now, trying to find a replacement for the Cobras and Super-Cobras the USAAF and the Marine Corps have been using since the Vietnam War.'

  'LH?' I said, tentatively.

  'Light helicopter,' Sarah answered, with an 'imagine not knowing that' expression. Woolf senior pressed on.

  'This aircraft is a response to that programme. It's a product of the Mackie Corporation of America, and is designed for use in counter-insurgency operations. Terrorism. The market for it, outside of the Pentagon's procurement, is among police and militia forces around the world. But at two-and-a-half million dollars each, they're going to be hard to shift.'

  'Yes,' I said. 'I can see that.' I glanced at the pictures again and scrabbled for something intelligent to say. 'Why the two rotors? Looks a bit complicated.' I caught them looking at each other, but couldn't tell you what the look meant.

  'You don't know anything about helicopters, do you?' said Woolf, eventually.

  I shrugged.

  'They're noisy,' I said. 'They crash a lot. That's about it.'

  'They're slow,' said Sarah. 'Slow, and therefore vulnerable on a battlefield. The modern attack helicopter can travel at around two-hundred-and-fifty miles an hour.'

  I was about to say that that sounded pretty slippy to me, when she continued: 'A modern fighter airplane will cover a mile in four seconds.'

  Without summoning a waiter and asking for a pencil and paper, there was not the remotest chance of my working out whether this was faster or slower than two hundred and fifty miles an hour, so I just nodded and let her carry on.

  'What limits the speed of a conventional helicopter,' she said slowly, sensing my discomfort, 'is the single rotor.'

  'Naturally,' I said, and settled back in my seat for Sarah's impressively expert lecture. A lot of what she had to say passed comfortably over my head, but the gist of it, if I've got it right, seemed to be as follows:

  The cross-section of a helicopter blade, according to Sarah, is more or less the same as the wing of an aeroplane. Its shape creates a pressure differential in the air passing over its upper and lower surfaces, producing a consequent lift. It differs from an aeroplane wing, however, in that when a helicopter moves forward, air starts passing over the blade that's coming forward faster than it passes over the blade that's going backwards. This produces unequal lift on the two sides of the helicopter, and the faster it goes, the more unequal the lift becomes. Eventually the 'retreating' blade stops producing any lift at all, and the helicopter flips on to its back and drops out of the sky. This, according to Sarah, was a negative aspect.

  'What the Mackie people did was put two rotors on a coaxial shaft
, spinning in opposite directions. Equal lift on both sides, possibility of nearly twice the speed. Also, no torque reaction, so no need for a tail rotor. Smaller, faster, more manoeuvrable. It's likely this machine will be capable of over four hundred miles an hour.'

  I nodded slowly, trying to show that I was impressed, but not that impressed.

  'Well, fine,' I said. 'But the Javelin surface-to-air missile will do damn near a thousand miles an hour.' Sarah stared back at me. How dare I challenge her on this technical stuff? 'What I mean is,' I said, 'things haven't changed that much. It's still a helicopter, and it can still be shot down. It's not invincible.'

  Sarah closed her eyes for a second, wondering how to phrase this so that an idiot could understand.

  'If the SAM operator is good,' she said, 'and he's trained, and he's ready, then he has a chance. One chance only. But the point of this machine is that the target will have no time to prepare. It'll be down his throat while he's still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.' She stared at me hard. Now have you got it? 'Believe me, Mr Lang,' she continued, punishing me for my insolence, 'this is the next generation of military helicopter.' She nodded towards the photographs.

  'Right,' I said. 'Okay. Well then, they must be jolly pleased.'

  'They are, Thomas,' said Woolf. 'They are very, very pleased with this machine. Right now, the guys at Mackie have only one problem.'

  Somebody obviously had to say 'which is?'

  'Which is?' I said.

  'Nobody at the Pentagon believes it will work.'

  I pondered for a while.

  'Well can't they ask for a test ride? Take it round the block a few times?'

  Woolf took a deep breath, and I sensed that, at long last, we were approaching the main business of the evening.

  'What will sell this machine,' he said slowly, 'to the Pentagon, and to fifty other air forces around the world, is the sight of it in action against a major terrorist operation.'

  'Right,' I said. 'You mean they've got to wait for a Munich Olympics to come along?'

  Woolf took his time, drawing out the punchline for all it was worth.

  'No, I don't mean that, Mr Lang,' he said. 'I mean they're going to make a Munich Olympics come along.'

  'Why are you telling me all this?'

  We were on to the coffee now, and the photographs were back in their folder.

  'I mean, if you're right,' I said, 'and personally I'm stuck in the middle of that "if" with a flat tyre and no spare - but if you're right, what do you plan to do about it? Write to the Washington Post} Esther Rantzen? What?'

  Both the Woolfs had gone very quiet, and I wasn't absolutely sure why. Perhaps they'd thought that just laying out the theory was going to be enough - that as soon as I heard it, I'd be up on my feet, sharpening the butter dish and shouting death to arms manufacturers - but for me it wasn't anything like enough. How could it be?

  'Do you think of yourself as a good man, Thomas?'

  This was from Woolf, but he still wasn't looking at me.

  'No, I don't,' I said.

  Sarah looked up.

  'Then what?'

  'I think of myself as a tall man,' I said. 'As a poor man. A man with a full stomach. A man with a motorcycle.' I paused, and felt her eyes on me. 'I don't know what you mean by "good".'

  'I guess we mean on the side of the angels,' said Woolf.

  'There are no angels,' I said quickly. 'I'm sorry, but there aren't.'

  There was a lull, while Woolf nodded his head slowly as if conceding that, yes, that was a point of view, it just happened to be a massively disappointing one, and then Sarah sighed and got to her feet.

  'Excuse me,' she said.

  Woolf and I scrabbled at our chairs, but Sarah was halfway across the restaurant floor before we'd managed to get any meaningful standing-up done. She drifted over to a waiter, whispered something to him, then nodded at his reply and headed towards an archway at the back of the room.

  Thomas,' said Woolf. 'Let me put it this way. Some bad people are getting ready to do some bad things. We have a chance of stopping them. Are you going to help us?' He paused. And kept on pausing.

  'Look, the question still stands,' I said. 'What are you planning to do? Just tell me. What's wrong with the press? Or the police? Or the CIA? I mean come on, we'll get a phone book and some coins and sort this out.'

  Woolf shook his head in irritation, and rapped his knuckles on the table.

  'You haven't been listening to me, Thomas,' he said. 'I'm talking about interests here. The biggest interests in the world. Capital. You don't take on capital with a telephone and a couple of polite letters to your Congressman.'

  I stood up, swaying slightly from the effect of the wine. Or the talk.

  'You leaving?' said Woolf, without lifting his head.

  'Maybe,' I said. 'Maybe.' I didn't really know what I was going to do. 'But I'm going to the lavatory first.' And that's certainly what I meant to do at that moment, because I was confused, and because I find porcelain helps me think.

  I walked slowly across the restaurant towards the archway, my brain rattling with all kinds of badly-stowed personal items which may fall out and injure a fellow passenger - and what was I doing even thinking about take-off, and runways, and the beginnings of long journeys? I had to get out of this, and get out quickly. Just handling those photographs had been stupid enough.

  I turned into the archway, and saw that Sarah was standing in an alcove by a pay phone. She had her back to me, and her head was tipped forward, until it was almost resting against the wall. I stood there for a moment, watching her neck, and her hair, and her shoulders, and yes, all right, I believe I may have glanced at her bottom.

  'Hi,' I said, stupidly.

  She spun round, and for the tiniest instant I thought I saw real fear in her face - of what, I hadn't the slightest idea - and then she smiled and replaced the receiver.

  'So,' she said, taking a pace towards me. 'You on the team?'

  We looked at each other for a while, and then I smiled back, and shrugged, and started to say the word 'well', which is what I always do when I'm stuck for words. And you'll find, if you try this at home, that to form the 'w' sound, you have to pucker your lips into a kind of pout - very similar in shape to the one you'd use for whistling, say. Or, perhaps, even kissing.

  She kissed me.

  She kissed me.

  What I mean is, I was standing there, lips puckered, brain puckered, and she just stepped up and threw her tongue into my mouth. For a moment, I thought maybe she'd tripped on a floorboard and stuck out her tongue as a reflex - but that didn't seem very likely somehow, and anyway, once she'd got her balance back, wouldn't she have put her tongue away again?

  No, she was definitely kissing me. Just like in the movies. Just like not in my life. For a couple of seconds I was too surprised, and too out of practice, to know what to do about it, because it had been a very long time since something like this had happened to me. In fact, if I remember correctly, I was an olive-picker in the reign of Rameses III when it did, and I'm not sure how I dealt with it then.

  She tasted of toothpaste, and wine, and perfume, and heaven on a nice day.

  'You on the team?' she said again, and I realised from the clarity of her words that at some point she must have taken her tongue back, although I could still feel it, in my mouth, on my lips, and I knew that I'd always be able to feel it. I opened my eyes.

  She was standing there, looking up at me, and yes, it was definitely her. It wasn't a waiter, or a hatstand.

  'Well,' I said.

  We were back at the table, and Woolf was signing his name on a credit card slip, and perhaps some other things were happening in the world too, but I'm not sure.

  'Thanks for the supper,' I said, like a robot.

  Woolf waved his hand at me and grinned.

  'My pleasure, Tom,' he said.

  He was pleased I'd said yes. Yes as in yes, I'd think about it.

  Precisely what I was to th
ink about, nobody seemed able to say exactly, but it was enough to satisfy Woolf, and for the time being we all had our reasons for feeling good. I picked up the folder and started leafing through the photographs again, one by one.

  Small, fast, and violent.

  Sarah was pleased too, I think, although she was now behaving as if nothing much had happened besides a decent meal and a bit of a chat about the new times.

  Violent, fast and small.

  Perhaps, underneath all that composure, there was a seething maelstrom of emotion, and she was only keeping a lid on it because her father was sitting there.

  Small, fast, and violent.

  I stopped thinking about Sarah.

  As each image of this nasty-looking device passed before my eyes, I seemed to feel myself gradually waking up from something, or somewhere. To something or somewhere else. It sounds fanciful, I know, but the starkness of this machine -its ugliness, its stripped-down efficiency, its sheer pitilessness - seemed to seep from the paper into my hands, cooling my blood. Perhaps Woolf sensed what I was feeling.

  'It has no official name,' he said, gesturing towards the pictures. 'But it's temporarily designated as an Urban Control and Law-enforcement Aircraft.'

  'UCLA,' I said, pointlessly.

  'You spell too?' said Sarah, with a kind of almost smile.

  'Hence the working name given to this prototype,' said Woolf.

  'Which is?'

  Neither of them answered, so I looked up, and saw that Woolf was waiting until I met his gaze.

  'The Graduate,' he said.

  Seven

  One hair of a woman can draw more

  than a hundred pair of oxen.

  JAMES HOWELL

  I swung the Kawasaki along Victoria Embankment just for the hell of it. To clear its pipes and mine.

  I hadn't told the Woolfs about the phone call to my flat and the nasty American voice at the other end. 'Graduate studies' could have meant anything - graduate studies, even - and the caller could have been anybody. When you're dealing with conspiracy theorists - and kiss or no kiss, that's definitely what I was dealing with - there's no point in feeding them extra coincidences to get excited about.