The Gun Seller

by Hugh Laurie

  She laughed, and the movement of it stretched her out until she was lying back, resting on her elbows.

  'On Dad's fiftieth birthday, Michael gave him a black queen, in a little wooden box. He cried. Weird, seeing your dad cry. But I think it just gave him so much pleasure to see us learn, and get strong, that he never wanted to lose the feeling of it. He wanted us to win.'

  And then, suddenly, the tears arrived in a huge wave, crashing over her and shaking her thin body until she could hardly breathe. I lay down and put my arms around her, squeezing her tight to shield her from everything.

  'It's all right,' I said. 'Everything is all right.'

  But of course it wasn't all right. Not by miles.

  Sixteen

  With skill she vibrates her eternal tongue,

  For ever most divinely in the wrong.

  EDWARD YOUNG

  There was a bomb scare on the flight out to Prague. No bomb, but lots of scare.

  We were just settling ourselves into our seats when the pilot's voice came over the intercom, telling us to deplane with all possible speed. No 'ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of British Airways,' or anything like that. Just get off the plane now.

  We hung around in a lilac-painted room, with ten fewer chairs than there were passengers and no music to play by, and you weren't allowed to smoke. I was, though. A uniformed woman with a lot of make-up told me to put it out, but I explained that I was asthmatic and the cigarette was a herbal dilation remedy I had to take whenever I was under stress. Everybody hated me for that, the smokers even more than the non-smokers.

  When we finally shuffled back on to the aircraft, we all looked under our seats, worried that the sniffer dog might have had a cold that day, and that somewhere there was a little black hold-all that all the searchers had missed.

  There once was a man who went to see a psychiatrist, crippled by a fear of flying. His phobia was based on the belief that there would be a bomb on any plane he boarded. The psychiatrist tried to shift the phobia but couldn't, so he sent his patient to a statistician. The statistician prodded a calculator and informed the man that the odds against there being a bomb on board the next flight he took were half a million to one. The man still wasn't happy, and sat there convinced that he'd be on that one plane out of half a million. So the statistician prodded the calculator again and said 'all right, would you feel safer if the odds were ten million to one against?' The man said, yes, of course he would. So the statistician said 'the odds against there being two, separate, unrelated bombs on board your next flight are exactly ten million to one against.' The man looked puzzled, and said 'that's all well and good, but how does it help me?' The statistician replied: 'It's very simple. You take a bomb on board with you.'

  I told this to a grey-suited businessman from Leicester, sitting in the seat next to me, but he didn't laugh at all. Instead, he called a stewardess and said he thought I had a bomb in my luggage. I had to tell the story again to the stewardess, and a third time to the co-pilot who came back and squatted at my feet with a scowl on his face. I'm never going to make polite conversation ever again.

  Perhaps I'd misjudged how people feel about bombs on aeroplanes. That's possible. A more likely explanation is that I was the only person on the flight who knew where the hoax bomb call had come from, and what it meant.

  It was the first, lumbering, scene-setting move of Operation Dead Wood.

  Prague airport is slightly smaller than the sign which says 'Prague Airport', at the front of the terminal building. The thumping Stalinist scale of it made me wonder whether the sign had been built before radio navigation, so that pilots could read it while still only half-way across the Atlantic.

  Inside, well, an airport is an airport is an airport. It doesn't matter where you are in the world, you have to have stone floors for the luggage trolleys, you have to have luggage trolleys, and you have to have glass cases displaying crocodile skin belts that no one will ever want to buy in a thousand years of civilisation.

  News of Czecho's escape from the Soviet maw hadn't reached the immigration officials, who sat in their glass boxes and re-fought the Cold War with every disgusted flick of their eyes from passport photograph to decadent imperialist standing before them. I was that imperialist, and I'd made the mistake of wearing a Hawaiian shirt, which, I suppose, emphasised my decadence. I'll know better next time. Except that maybe by next time, someone will have found the key to the glass boxes and told these poor buggers that they're now sharing cultural and economic floorspace with Euro-Disney. I decided to try and learn the Czech for 'missing you already'.

  I changed some money and went outside to hail a taxi. It was a cool evening, and the broad, Stalinist puddles in the car-park, splashing blue and grey reflections of the newly-built neon advertisements around the sky, made it seem even cooler. I rounded the corner of the terminal building and the wind bounded up to greet me, licking at my face with diesel-flavoured rain and then skipping playfully around my shins, tugging at my trousers. I stood there for a moment, soaking up the strangeness of the place, heavily conscious that I had, in all kinds of ways, gone from one state to another.

  I found a cab eventually, and told the driver in fluent English that I wanted Wenceslas Square. This request, I now know, is phonically identical to the Czech phrase for 'I am an air-brained tourist, please take everything I have'. The car was a Tatra, and the driver was a bastard; he drove fast and well, humming happily to himself, like a man who's just won the pools.

  It was one of the most beautiful sights I've ever seen in any city. Wenceslas Square is not a square at all, but a double avenue, running down a slope from the massive National Museum which overlooks it. Even if I'd known nothing of the place, I would have felt that this was important. History ancient and modern had happened in large dollops over this half-mile of grey and yellow stone, and it had left a smell. L'Air Du Temps de Praha. Prague Springs, Summers, Winters and Autumns had come and gone, and would probably come again.

  When the driver told me how much money he wanted, I had to spend a few minutes explaining that I didn't actually want to buy the cab, I just wanted to settle up for the fifteen minutes I'd spent in it. He told me that it was a limousine service, or at least he said 'limousine' and shrugged a lot, and after a while agreed to reduce his demands to the merely astronomical. I hefted my bag and started to walk.

  The Americans had told me to find my own digs, and the only sure way to look like a man who's spent a long time looking for somewhere to stay is to spend a long time looking for somewhere to stay. So I settled into a comfortable march and did Prague One, which is the central district of the old city, in about two hours. Twenty-six churches, fourteen galleries and museums, an opera house - where the boy Mozart had staged his first-ever performance of Don Giovanni - eight theatres, and a McDonald's. One of the above had a fifty-yard queue outside it.

  I stopped in a few bars to soak up some ambience, which came in tall, straight glasses with 'Budweiser' written on the side, and watched to see how the modern Czech walks, talks, dresses and disports himself. Most of the waiters assumed I was German, which was a fair enough mistake to make considering the city was heaving with them. They travelled in groups of twelve, with back-packs and huge thighs, and strung themselves out across the street when they walked. But then of course, for most Germans, Prague is only a few hours away by fast tank, so it's hardly surprising that they treat the place like the end of their garden.

  I had a plate of boiled pork and dumplings in a cafe by the river and, on the advice of a Welsh couple at the next table, took a stroll across the Charles Bridge. Mr and Mrs Welsh had assured me that it was a spectacular construction, but thanks to the thousand buskers draped over every yard of parapet, all of them singing Dylan songs, I never saw any of it.

  I found lodgings eventually at the Zlata Praha, a tatty boarding-house on the hill near the castle. The landlady gave me a choice between a big dirty room or a small clean one, and I chose the big dirty one, thinking I
could clean it myself. After she'd gone I realised how silly that was. I've never even cleaned my own flat.

  I unpacked my things, lay down on the bed and smoked. I thought about Sarah, and her father, and Barnes. I thought about my own parents, and Ronnie, and helicopters and motorcycles and Germans and McDonald's hamburgers.

  I thought about a lot of things.

  I woke at eight, and listened to the sounds of the city hauling itself up and taking itself to work. The only unfamiliar noise came from the trams, clattering and hissing their way across cobbled streets and over the bridges. I wondered whether I should stay with the Hawaiian shirt or not.

  By nine o'clock I was in the town square, being pestered by a short man with a moustache offering me a tour of the city by horse-drawn carriage. I was supposed to be swayed by the quaint authenticity of his conveyance, but on casual inspection it looked to me extremely like the bottom-half of a Mini Moke, with the engine taken out and shafts for the horse where the headlights used to be. I said no thank you a dozen times, and fuck off once.

  I was looking for a cafe with Coca-Cola umbrellas over its tables. That was what they'd said. Tom, when you get there, you'll see a cafe with Coca-Cola shades over the tables. What they hadn't said, or hadn't realised, was that the Coca-Cola rep had been quite fantastically conscientious around these parts, unloading his umbrellas on twenty or so establishments in a hundred yard radius of the square. The Camel Cigarettes rep had only scored twice, so he was presumably dead in a ditch somewhere while the Coca-Cola man was receiving brass plaques and a personalised car-parking space at headquarters in Atlanta.

  I found it after twenty minutes. The Nicholas. Two pounds for a cup of coffee.

  They'd told me to go indoors, but it was a beautiful morning and I felt like not doing what I was told, so I sat outside with a view of the square and the passing Germans. I ordered coffee, and as I did so I saw two men emerge from the cafe and sit down at a nearby table. They were both young and fit-looking, and both wore sunglasses. Neither of them looked in my direction. They'd probably been inside for an hour, getting themselves nicely positioned for the meeting, and I'd gone and spoilt everything.

  Excellent.

  I adjusted the position of my chair and closed my eyes for a while, letting the sun get in amongst the crow's feet.

  'Master,' said a voice, 'a rare and special pleasure.'

  I looked round and saw a figure in a brown raincoat squinting down at me.

  This seat taken?' said Solomon. He sat in it without waiting for an answer.

  I stared at him.

  'Hello, David,' I said eventually.

  I knocked a cigarette out of its packet while he signalled a waiter. I glanced over at the two Sunglasses, but they were looking as far away from me as possible every time I turned.

  'Kava, prosim,' said Solomon, in what seemed like a pretty handy accent. He turned to me. 'Good coffee, terrible food.

  That's what I've been putting on my postcards.'

  'It's not you,' I said.

  'Isn't it? Who is it then?'

  I kept on staring. It was all most unexpected.

  'Let me put it this way,' I said. 'Is it you?'

  'Do you mean is it me sitting here, or is it me you're supposed to be meeting?'

  'David.'

  'It's both, sir.' Solomon leaned back to let the waiter unload the coffee. He took a sip and smacked his lips with approval. 'I have the honour to be acting as trainer for the duration of your stay in this territory. I trust you will find the relationship a profitable one.'

  I nodded my head in the direction of the Sunglasses.

  'They with you?'

  'That's the idea, master. Not one that they like very much, but that's all right.'

  'American?'

  He nodded.

  'As apple pie. This operation is very, very joint. Much jointer than we've had it for a long time, as a matter of fact.

  A good thing, all in all.'

  I thought for a while.

  'But why didn't they tell me?' I said. 'I mean, they knew I knew you, so why didn't they tell me?'

  He shrugged.

  'Are we not but teeth on the cogs of a gigantic machine, sir?'

  Well, quite.

  Of course, I wanted to ask Solomon everything.

  I wanted to take him right back to the beginning - to reconstruct all that we knew about Barnes, and O'Neal, and Murdah, and Dead Wood and Graduate Studies - so that between us we'd be able to triangulate some kind of position in this mess, and perhaps even plot a course out of it.

  But there were reasons why I couldn't. Big, strapping reasons that stuck their hands up at the back of the class and wriggled about in their seats, forcing me to listen to them. If I told him what I thought I knew, Solomon would either do the right thing or the wrong thing. The right thing would, very possibly, get Sarah and me killed, and, very certainly, wouldn't stop what was coming. It might postpone it, get it replayed on another pitch at another time, but it wouldn't stop it. The wrong thing didn't bear thinking about. Because the wrong thing would mean that Solomon was on the other team, and when you come right down to it, nobody knows anybody.

  So, for the time being, I shut up and listened while Solomon ran over the fine print on how I was expected to pass the next forty-eight hours. He spoke fast but calmly, and we covered a lot of ground in ninety minutes, thanks to him not having to say 'this is real important' every other sentence, as the Americans had done.

  The Sunglasses drank Coke.

  I had the afternoon to myself, and as it looked like being the last one I'd get for a while, I wasted it extravagantly. I drank wine, read old newspapers, listened to an open-air performance of some Mahler, and generally sported myself as a gentleman of leisure.

  I met a French woman in a bar who said she worked for a computer software company, and I asked her if she'd have sex with me. She just shrugged, Frenchly, which I took to mean no.

  Eight o'clock was the appointed hour, so I dawdled in a cafe until ten past, pushing another helping of boiled pork and dumplings around the plate and smoking immoderately. I paid the bill and walked out into the cool evening, at last feeling my pulse shake itself up at the prospect of action.

  I knew I had no reason to feel good. I knew that the job was almost impossible, that the road ahead was long, rocky, and had very few petrol stations, and that my chances of making three score years and ten had dropped through the floor.

  But, for whatever reason, good is what I felt.

  Solomon was waiting for me at the rendezvous with one of the Sunglasses. One of the pairs of sunglasses, I mean. Although of course he wasn't wearing sunglasses now, it being dark, so I quickly had to concoct a new name for him. After a few moments thought, I came up with No Sunglasses. I think there may be a touch of Cree Indian in me.

  I apologised for being late, and Solomon smiled and said I wasn't, which was irritating, and then all three of us climbed into a dirty, grey diesel Mercedes, with No Sunglasses at the wheel, and set off on the main road out of the east of the city.

  After half-an-hour we'd cleared the outskirts of Prague, and the road had narrowed to two fastish lanes, which we took at an easy pace. Just about the worst way to fuck up a covert operation on foreign soil is to get a speeding ticket, and No Sunglasses seemed to have learnt this lesson well enough. Solomon and I passed the occasional remark about the countryside, how green it was, how parts of it looked a bit like Wales - although I'm not sure if either of us had ever been there - but otherwise we didn't talk much. Instead, we drew pictures on the steamed-up rear windows while Europe unfolded outside, Solomon doing flowers and me doing happy faces.

  After an hour the signs started showing for Brno, which never looks right written down, and never sounds right said, either, but I knew we weren't going that far. We turned north towards Kostelec, and then almost immediately east again, on an even narrower road, with no signs at all. Which just about summed things up.

  We wound through a few
miles of black pine forest, and then No Sunglasses went on to side-lights, which cut our speed down. After a few miles of that, he doused the lights altogether, and told me to put out my cigarette because it was 'fucking with his night vision'.

  And then, all of a sudden, we were there.

  They'd been keeping him in the basement of a farm house. For how long, I couldn't tell -1 only knew that it wasn't going to be for much longer. He was about my age, about my height, probably had been about my weight before they'd stopped feeding him. They said his name was Ricky, and that he came from Minnesota. They didn't say that he was scared out of his wits and wanted to go back to Minnesota as soon as he could, because they didn't have to. It was in his eyes, as clearly as anything has ever been in anyone's eyes.

  Ricky had dropped out at the age of seventeen. Dropped out of school, dropped out of his family, dropped out of just about everything that a young man can drop out of - but then, pretty soon, he'd dropped into some other things, alternative things, and they'd made him feel better about himself. For a while, anyway.

  Ricky felt a lot worse about himself at this moment; most probably because he'd managed to get himself into one of those situations where you're naked in the cellar of a strange building, in a strange country, with strangers staring at you, some of whom have obviously been hurting you for a while, and others of whom are just waiting to take their turn. Flickering across the back of Ricky's mind, I knew, were images from a thousand films, in which the hero, trussed-up in the same predicament, throws back his head with an insolent sneer and tells his tormentors to go screw themselves. And Ricky had sat in the dark," along with millions of other teenage boys, and duly absorbed the lesson that this is how men are supposed to behave in adversity. They endure, first of all; then they avenge.