Reaper

by Hurley, Graham

  Now, Leeson thought about the American again, and the implications of this last conversation. Personally, he’d never had the least interest in immortality, preferring massive helpings of the here and now to any prospect of life after death. Nor had the realities of dying ever bothered him. On the contrary, it always seemed an utterly mundane business, no different – in essence – to any other function. You ate. You drank. You made love. You took a shit. And one day the whole Godforsaken routine came to an end.

  He’d watched his own father die, sitting at the bedside with his mother, holding her hand, trying to comfort her, wondering quite what his father made of it all. He’d had cancer of the liver. He was very thin, especially hollow around the eyes, permanently tired, but utterly cogent. Towards teatime, one afternoon, he’d yawned a couple of times, and peered at the clock on the bedside cabinet, and then laid his head on the pillow. “God, I’m bored,” he’d said, shutting his eyes. At this stage, his mother had left the room to prepare a little soup, and it was a good half-hour before anyone realized that the old man had died.

  So that was it. When your train was due to leave, they blew the whistle, and banged the doors shut, and that was it. No dramas. No bedside speeches. Nothing spectacular. Just an old man’s face on the pillow, the flesh tinged yellow, the eyes shut, the train gone. His father had played the scene well. He’d rather admired him for it.

  A door opened across the room and a doctor appeared. She was young, and serious, and her face told Leeson everything he wanted to know. She was preparing the ground. She sat down and put a foolscap pad on the desk in front of her. She looked uncomfortable. She cleared her throat. Leeson smiled at her.

  “Cancer,” he suggested, making it easier for her.

  She looked at him in surprise.

  “Yes,” she said. “How did you know?”

  “I didn’t. I guessed.”

  She nodded.

  “It’s skin cancer,” she said quickly, “not as serious as you might think.”

  “Oh?”

  “No.” She glanced down at the pad. “We call it Karposi’s Sarcoma. It’s very rare, but perfectly curable.”

  Leeson nodded, looking at her, thinking about it.

  “Is it catching?” he said. “Can you pass it on?”

  The doctor bit her lip a moment. Then she pulled the pad towards her and fumbled for a pen in the top pocket of her white coat.

  “This cough you had …”

  “Yes?”

  “Did it hurt at all? When you coughed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you get breathless?”

  “A little, yes.”

  She nodded, writing down the answers. She sucked the top of the pen. Then she looked up.

  “Have you had diarrhoea at all? Bad diarrhoea?” Leeson shook his head.

  “No,” he said.

  “How about thrush? Do you know what thrush is?”

  “No,” Leeson said again.

  She explained the condition quickly, a fungal infection in the mouth and throat. Leeson began to shake his head, but then he remembered a time, back at the end of the summer, when he’d awoken with a thick white coating on his tongue. It had tasted slightly metallic. It had stayed with him for nearly three weeks. At the time, he’d thought nothing of it. Now, he nodded.

  “Yes,” he said slowly, “last year.”

  The doctor nodded and bent to the pad again. Leeson watched her writing.

  “I asked you a question,’ he said. “I asked you if this … thing … was catching.”

  The doctor’s hand paused on the pad. She looked up. “We don’t know,” she said. “That’s the truth.”

  “But you’d have an idea?” He paused. “Or a name for it?”

  She nodded. “I told you,” she said, “Karposi’s Sarcoma.”

  “Does that cover it all? The cough? The white stuff?”

  She blinked at him, slightly discomfited by this strange man in the newly pressed suit, the eyes behind the glasses, his refusal to accept the normal reassurances. She shook her head.

  “No,” she said slowly, “it doesn’t.”

  Leeson smiled at her. “Gay plague?” he said. “Does that ring a bell?”

  She nodded. “It might,” she said, “if we knew what it was.”

  There was a long silence. She began to write again, checking her watch for the date. Leeson looked at her for a while, then cleared his throat.

  “You’ll have talked to the people in New York,” he said. “How’s my friend?”

  The pen hesitated for a moment, then began to move again. She didn’t look up. “He’s dead,” she said quietly. “He died last night.”

  The newest member of the Foreign Office Planning Group was a young Third Secretary called Diane. Diane was one of Whitehall’s new-style diplomats, products from the provincial universities, first-class degrees, first-class brains, and an urge to confront the old certitudes. Small, neat, slightly shy, she’d met Leeson twice, once at a diplomatic reception, and once in a queue in the Foreign Office canteen. On both occasions, they’d talked for perhaps five minutes, and she’d been intrigued enough to enquire further. From what she could gather, he was clever, original, and a bit of a maverick. On all three counts, she rather liked him. He was, she told her best friend, a bit of welcome exotica.

  He phoned her about four in the afternoon. She was sitting at her desk, having trouble with a rock cake.

  “Diane …” he said, “it’s Francis Leeson. I’m at a restaurant called the Mandarin. It’s in Poland Street. I’d like you to come and meet me. Take a cab.”

  She was about to laugh, to protest, to tell him she was a third of the way through an important briefing paper, dead-lined for midnight, when he hung up. She gazed at the phone, still buzzing in her hand. Then she carefully blotted the ink on her handwritten draft, reached for her coat, and headed for the door.

  Ten minutes later, a cab dropped her outside the restaurant. Leeson was sitting at a table in the window. He was still wearing his coat, a thick black cashmere. He raised a hand to her, nodded a greeting, and got up as she stepped in through the door. She hung her handbag on the back of her chair. There were two glasses on the table, and a large flask of wine. The flask was nearly empty. She sat down. Leeson looked at her. The rest of the restaurant was empty. He didn’t seem remotely drunk.

  “Thank you for coming,” he said, sinking into his chair again, and tucking his coat around him. “It was kind of you.”

  She nodded, not knowing quite what to say. She unbuttoned her coat and crossed her hands on her lap, feeling faintly uncomfortable. Leeson leaned back in his chair. He made no attempt to offer her what remained of the wine. Instead, he took a thick sheaf of paper from his pocket and laid it carefully on the table between them. She glanced at it. There were two pages of type and what looked like a four-page photostat. The photostat had come from a magazine. Even upside down, she could see it was in Spanish. Leeson followed her eyes.

  “Do you read Spanish?”

  “A little.”

  “Well enough to understand?”

  “Depends. What is it?”

  Leeson showed her the article from Siete Días. She scanned it quickly, picking up the salient points, following the drift of the argument, upwind, to where it stopped.

  “The Malvinas,” she said, looking up.

  Leeson nodded. “Yes,” he said, “we owe them. And they know it. And soon they’re going to take them back.”

  He sat back in his chair, and she looked at the article again, wondering where all this could possibly lead, the empty restaurant, the distant waiter, half of Chinatown tramping home past the window outside. Leeson began to talk, utterly cogent, offering her his analysis, names and dates, key meetings, other excerpts from other magazines, the Brits throwing sand in the wheels at the UN, the Argentinians no longer hiding their impatience, the muted call for a military solution, and finally today’s little surprise: the C–130 criss-crossing East Falkland, sophist
icated photo-reconnaissance, a prelude to invasion.

  “You know what you’re saying,” she said. “That would mean war.”

  Leeson nodded. “Exactly.”

  “You think they’d do it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You think they will do it?”

  “Yes.”

  There was a long silence. Then the obvious question.

  “So why me?” she said. “Why this?”

  “Because it’s your job to get us off the hook,” he said. “The regular machine doesn’t work that way. We don’t expect it to. We’re too close to it all.” He shrugged. “We look for order, of course. Patterns. Coherence. A bit of sense. But mostly it’s bits and pieces. Business. Memos.” He smiled at her. “And the odd bottle or two.”

  There was another silence. He asked her if she’d like a drink. She said no. She looked him in the eye.

  “What we do is confidential,” she said, “you know that.”

  “Yes.”

  She nodded, still not quite sure of herself, still missing a piece of this strange conversation. Leeson sensed it, hunched in his coat on the other side of the table. He leaned forward, very slowly, very carefully. He looked older than she somehow remembered, that last time, in the canteen queue.

  “In confidence?” he said.

  She looked at him, surprised, then nodded.

  “Of course,” she said.

  Leeson studied his hands for a moment. What he had to say might sound theatrical but in his heart he knew it was probably true. No real evidence. No proof. Just the deepest, and most instinctive, of convictions. He looked up.

  “I suspect I have a terminal disease,” he said. “The diagnosis is confusing but the outcome is quite clear. Under the circumstances, I felt I owed you five minutes of my precious time.” He smiled thinly. “And yours.”

  He sat back. She looked at him for a moment, and then said she was sorry. He shrugged the thought away, genuinely indifferent. She looked at him for a moment or two, making up her mind.

  “You’ll be relieved to know there is a plan,” she said at last.

  Leeson nodded. “I’m glad to hear it,” he said. “What does it comprise? Exactly?”

  She hesitated a moment, leaning in towards the table, lowering her voice.

  “A Task Force would be organized. It could put to sea in sixty hours. Possibly sooner.”

  “How many ships?”

  “A handful. To begin with. More later.”

  “Capital ships?”

  “At least two.”

  “Purpose?”

  “Deterrent.”

  “Big stick?”

  “Exactly. A public display. Television. Radio. The press. For Argentinian consumption.”

  Leeson nodded slowly. There was relief in his voice, but surprise as well. Organizing a Task Force wouldn’t be easy. Especially in a country where even the trains had trouble leaving on time. He frowned.

  “Who dreamed up this … plan?”

  “Our Lordships. The Naval Chiefs of Staff. They have no doubts that it’s viable.” She smiled. “In fact they’re rather proud of it.”

  “And the Cabinet?”

  “Officially …” she shrugged, “they welcome the provision. But then they would. Plans cost nothing. Paper’s cheap. As you know.”

  “And unofficially?”

  “They don’t give it much thought. They think Galtieri’s bluffing. They think he’s a reasonable man. At least they assume he is. Either way, they can’t see him rocking the boat. He’ll get the islands in the end. All he has to do is wait.”

  “For the Islanders to change their minds?”

  “Precisely.”

  “They won’t.”

  “I know they won’t,” she said. “And so does he.”

  There was a silence. Leeson ran a finger round the rim of his glass, then licked it. “So what happens next?” he said.

  “Galtieri will help himself.”

  “And?”

  “A war will start.”

  “And?”

  “And …?” She looked at him, conceding the point, a weary smile. “My sailors will get your politicians off the hook.”

  Leeson nodded slowly, returning the smile. “I think you’re right,” he said slowly. “Thank God for your sailors.”

  It was nearly six o’clock by the time Connolly got to Victoria Station. The trains from Gatwick had been delayed by a signals failure. Before he took another train out to Carshalton, he phoned Leeson. Maybe they could fix to meet.

  Leeson picked the phone up on the third ring. He sounded distant, a strangely hollow voice, not the usual drawl.

  “It’s me,” Connolly said. “How are you?”

  He heard Leeson laugh. “Fine,” he said, “under the circumstances.”

  There was another silence. A black woman with two kids was waiting patiently for the phone. Connolly looked at the meter. Ten pence left.

  “Listen,” he began, “we ought to meet …”

  “Come round.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes.”

  Connolly glanced at his watch. His mother was fussy about mealtimes. After eight o’clock, she’d be less than cheerful. He hadn’t seen her for nearly five months. Spending Christmas away hadn’t gone down well. He began to make his excuses, to suggest that they meet tomorrow, for lunch, but half-way through he realized it was pointless. Leeson had hung up.

  Connolly took a cab to Chiswick. Leeson opened the door at once. He smiled a welcome, standing aside as Connolly stepped in. At once, he noticed a difference about the place. It was clean. It smelled fresh. Someone had been tidying up.

  They walked through to the sitting room. Leeson waved Connolly into a chair. Connolly looked round. The room had recently been redecorated, a quiet regency stripe, not unpleasant. Connolly offered his compliments. Leeson shrugged.

  “The agent organized it,” he said, “not my doing.”

  “Agent?”

  “I was going to rent the place out.”

  “Of course.” Connolly frowned. “So what’s the matter? Have you changed your mind?”

  Leeson said nothing for a moment, then told Connolly about the Washington job, the news he’d received that morning, his career hitting the buffers with a jolt. He limited himself to the facts. No bitterness. No self-pity. Just another awkward day at the office. Quite possibly his last. Connolly was appalled.

  “So where do you go from here?” he said. “What happens next?”

  Leeson smiled thinly and disappeared into the kitchen. He returned with a bottle of red wine and a corkscrew. He uncorked the bottle and poured the wine into two thin-stemmed glasses. Connolly tasted the wine. It was Rioja. Leeson was sitting across from him, his favourite armchair. He cupped the wineglass in his hand, saying nothing at first, gazing down at it, then he cleared his throat and began to tell Connolly about the visit to the clinic, his twenty-odd minutes with the woman in the white coat, what she’d said, what it might mean. When he’d finished, he looked across at Connolly.

  “They don’t know what’s wrong,” Connolly said. “It could be some virus.”

  “Of course.”

  “And they’ll treat you for it.”

  “Yes.”

  “Get you better again.”

  “Yes.”

  “Get rid of the rash.”

  “Hmm …”

  Connolly looked at him, slightly irritated by his deadpan tone of voice. “You don’t believe me?” He paused. “Is that what you’re trying to say?”

  Leeson smiled, one finger circling the top of his glass. “What I’m trying to say,” he said slowly, “is sorry.”

  Connolly shrugged again. He was glad Leeson had been to the clinic. It was, after all, his idea. But his own tests had all been negative. Nothing wrong at all.

  “What are you sorry for?” he said.

  “For putting you …” Leeson frowned, searching for the word, “at risk.”

  “But I’m not at ris
k.”

  “No.” He smiled again. “Let’s hope you’re not.”

  “You think I am?”

  Connolly looked up. Leeson was watching him, perfectly still in the chair, and for the first time he began to feel worried.

  “My American friend is dead,” Leeson said at last, “and he had exactly the same symptoms as me.”

  “But you said you’ve got better.”

  “I have. I feel better. Much better.”

  “Then you’re cured. You’ve got over it. It’s gone away.”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “Who?”

  “My American friend. When he first phoned me.”

  “And?”

  “It came back again.” He paused. “He had other friends … lovers, out on the west coast …” He paused again. “Evidently two of them are dead as well.”

  Connolly looked at him for a long moment, beginning to understand. Then he closed his eyes. “Oh, shit,” he said softly.

  They sat in silence for a while, listening to the low hiss of the gas fire. Then Leeson changed the subject and told Connolly again about the letter he’d received, the abrupt withdrawal of the Washington job. He mused on the irony of it all, a single day putting paid to his career, and leaving a large question mark over the rest of his natural life. He’d had fresh news about the Falklands, though, and that had offered some modest consolation.

  Connolly listened to him, trying to forget his own anxieties, letting the wine envelop him. The room was warm, and somehow friendlier than he ever remembered. Leeson, too, seemed a changed man. The old acid, the old mockery, had gone. In its place – within the space of a handful of hours – was an odd, slightly wistful, detachment, an acceptance of the facts that displaced any other emotion. He didn’t seem angry, or bitter, or even afraid. On the contrary, Connolly had rarely seen him so benign, so sympathetic. The wine in the glass at his elbow was barely touched. For the first time, their conversation appeared to be leading somewhere other than bed. The man was sorry, and he meant it, and he wanted – if possible – to make amends. Not to put the clock back, to pretend somehow that nothing had ever happened. But to shift the relationship onto a new basis. Simple friendship.