The Fighting Man (1993)

by Seymour, Gerald

  He tracked the march.

  Benedicto held the high ground. He would scramble on the higher ground above the march, then creep with his binoculars to an escarpment or to a break where the big trees had been toppled by the gales, and he would study the march. He looked for the one man.

  He had seen the leader, the baby whore Ramírez, at a rest halt in the march, sitting in the middle of a mass of men, seen his face once and fleeting. He had seen the one who mopped his forehead in the photograph, and the one who shook the hand of the baby whore in another photograph.

  In the middle of the morning, while on the move and dragging the imbecile with him, he had seen the Englishman with the fire cart. He was not a sniper, did not have a sniper’s rifle, and the sight of the Englishman might have been too fast even for a trained marksman. He tracked the march and searched for the man who held a single flower in the photograph.

  He dragged the imbecile after him. He had the imbecile gagged tight across his mouth and he had the imbecile’s hands tied, knotted, and a length of rope to pull him forward.

  Pathetic, the imbecile, because he tried always to please . . .

  There was a place where Benedicto could see twenty-five paces of the march. It was as Arturo had told it him, and as he had seen at Playa Grande. A rabble mess of men splashing in mud and sliding, slipping, and carrying rifles and machine guns, and some loaded with mortar bombs, and some with rocket launchers hoisted on their shoulders. The gurgling was beside him. A rabble mess crowding forward without shape and discipline. The guttural croak beside him. The eyes of the imbecile begged at him, pathetic . . . He saw the man. The imbecile had identified the man. The man had broken from the column and the man’s hands were already ripping at his belt, and the man was pushing his way into undergrowth.

  Benedicto saw the head of the man who held the single flower in the photograph.

  He turned to the imbecile and his smile showed his gratitude because he did not wish to bring panic.

  He slit the throat, two strokes, of the imbecile who had no further use to him.

  Benedicto came down fast from the higher ground above the march.

  Sirloin steak meat, twelve-ounce cuts, had been liberated from the refrigerated cupboard of the officers’ kitchen in the garrison’s barracks. Rich meat that had never been affordable in the old quarter of Havana. He had his trousers round his ankles. He supported himself against a tree. He was shielded from the march track by undergrowth. His bowels burst. The wind dribbled from him. The blow from the boot caught him square in the back and he was pitched over and the body was over him and the hand was across his mouth and the knife was against his throat.

  ‘Go . . .’

  He had run from the jeep with the communications equipment, across the tarmac apron, run with the scribbled co-ordinates in his hand to the Huey bird.

  ‘You have the fix, you have the frequency. Go . . .’

  Always the same with a goddamn flier. Arturo had run as fast as his short muscled legs would take him from the jeep to the helicopter, and the flier first pulled out a new stick of gum, then slowly read the paper thrust at him. They were Israelis who had installed the receiver for the beacon signal into the American’s helicopter. The Israelis were the best, Arturo thought. The Israelis were the best because their help came without strings and with enthusiasm. The flier seemed again to scan the figures pencil-written on the paper, then he shrugged and he pulled a map from the pocket above his right knee. Arturo jabbed with his finger onto the map.

  ‘East of Xecoxol, west of the river. Go . . .’

  The flier put the map back in his pocket and dropped the paper wrapping and spat out the new gum. The flier took his pistol from his holster and checked the magazine. Arturo could not know whether it was dumb insolence or whether it was the routine of a flier. The flier waved him away and climbed loosely into the right-hand seat.

  The rotors thrashed.

  Arturo edged back. The helicopter flew.

  The rain beat against his face. He watched as the helicopter merged then disappeared into the mat of the cloud.

  ‘They have to eat, and the food has to be distributed with discipline . . .’

  Gord glowered at Jorge.

  ‘. . . It is his job to organize the food.’

  Jorge shifted on his feet, embarrassed. Harpo and Zeppo were crouched down beside the track and eating their own rations. Not salmon. Christ no, if it had been salmon he would have kicked the tin out of their hands.

  ‘I don’t know where he is.’

  ‘You should. And if you didn’t know it there is bloody chaos back there because the food is not being distributed with discipline . . .’

  Jorge shrugged.

  ‘. . . Without discipline we lose time. So, when you find him, will you, please, let him know that his job is to get people fed, not just to piss off with a hangover, will you?’

  Gord tramped back down the track. The cart and the wheelbarrow were pushed behind him. Not his bloody job to organize the food distribution at the midday rest halt. Back along the track there were cursing crowds of men scrabbling at the food boxes. If they did not have discipline . . . He was halfway back down the column, yelling for the men to form queues for the food distribution, when the helicopter came over them. Gord did not see the helicopter, only heard the thunder reverberate in the cloud cover as it swarmed over him and past him.

  It was good gear that the Israeli technicians had put into his Huey bird. It was good gear because it was state-of-the-art Made in the United States of America. It was better gear than had been placed in his Apache when he was flying the Gulf. It was what they always said, the army pilots, the good gear went first to Israel. They had the pick. Fucking Israel was top of the list when it came to the good gear and what was Made in the United States of America went second to his own armed forces. How did fucking Israel pay for the good gear? They paid with what was given them, dollars Made in the United States of America.

  He homed in on the growing whine in his ear of the beacon’s signal. Tom could not see the ground, couldn’t see the goddamn hills, nor the goddamn trees, but the beacon pulled him forward. When the beacon whine was continuous, piercing, when the good gear told him that he was directly overhead the signal, he started to flutter down. Going slow, metre by metre, searching the wrapping cloud mass for trees and rock faces.

  The curtain around him broke. The good gear had brought him down through the trees into a cleared space that was a hundred metres across.

  The skids bumped onto rock. He saw the body. There was the red slash at the throat of the body. He saw the gag in the mouth and the twine on the wrists. The box for the beacon signal, small and black-painted with a stubbed chrome aerial, was beside the body. He kept the rotors going, he was staring around fast beyond where the body lay and then he was aware of the distant scrape of the hatch door behind him. They came in fast.

  There was the blurred figure dressed in black and the rope trailed behind him, and then there was the clumsy movement of the pinioned man. Tom was twisted in his seat, straining the tension of his harness, gazing into the fear of the pinioned man. The man had the European look and he had shaved recently, perhaps the day before, but the stubble was grey on his face. Fear in his eyes above the tightness of the gag on his mouth, a laundered uniform from an army barracks with the rank insignia cut off, stumbling in tiredness to lever himself through the hatch and dragged by the rope. He saw the crow’s foot lines at the sides of the eyes, exhaustion. He saw the scrawny thinness of the throat, endurance. He remembered the hospital ward. It was to remember the burned soldiers that he had been taken to the hospital ward. Tom felt no pity for the enemy, stripped of potency. He remembered the flame thrower . . .

  Tom lifted the Huey bird out of the clearing. He thought that the prisoner, bound and gagged and in fear, had no call on his sympathy.

  Most had been fed, some had not. The march had lost an hour of daylight. Gord drove them on.

  The truth was, P
ercy Martins enjoyed arriving at the new building before the day’s first light had breached the darkness on the Thames. There was, of course, a car to bring him from the suburbs of south-west London. He felt a sense of power and a sense of belonging and a sense of importance, when he clattered his iron-tipped shoes along empty corridors. A few lights burned in the offices occupied by the night shift personnel, but before the crush came to work he was able to settle in his desk chair and dream of what had been . . . A feeble place now, Six, and losing out on Treasury funding to the new people from Five. A pitiful place where the computers dominated and field work was devastated. What he said to his wife, when he had the bloody woman sat down at her needlework and listening, was that if they had had more field work and less computer work tasked to Baghdad, if they had had Percy Martins running the show down there, then they wouldn’t have been caught with their trousers round their knees when little Johnny Saddam had walked into Kuwait . . . She didn’t listen well, his bloody wife.

  One of the front desk men brought her to his office.

  ‘Coffee, yes? Be a good chap, two good coffees, not that machine rubbish . . .’

  He felt the front desk men respected him.

  She was a fine-looking young woman, just damned tired. He thought the front desk people respected him for a drop of style, and that was in short enough supply in the new Six. A grand-looking young woman and she had driven through the night from Scotland to make the meeting. Hobbes, creepy bugger from Five, had to drive through the night from SW1, two miles maximum and was late. Sod Hobbes . . . He enjoyed working with youth.

  ‘I’m Parker.’

  ‘But I’m Percy, and I’m sure you have another name, or is familiarity not allowed these days at Five?’

  ‘It’s Cathy . . .’

  He gave her the old-fashioned charm. He eased her into a chair. He hung up her anorak coat and saw the strong muscles bulging the short sleeves of her blouse.

  ‘I take it, Cathy, that you have not spent an entire career at Five pushing paper round a desk . . .’

  Matter-of-fact. ‘Northern Ireland, handling informers. They said I was put at risk, shipped me home.’

  ‘Field work?’

  ‘Ditches, hedges, hides, that sort of nonsense . . .’

  There was small talk about roadworks on the M6 and M40, what delays she had hit coming south, until the coffee came. Foul coffee from the machine and a grin that was pure insolence from the front desk man.

  The door closed. He had clean paper in front of him and a sharpened pencil.

  ‘Right, Cathy, let’s have it. Brown, Gordon Benjamin. I have to know about him.’

  He strained to hear her voice. ‘To pass to Langley?’

  ‘Correct, to pass to the Agency.’

  ‘The better to have him killed?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘And that’s what we want?’

  Percy Martins eased back in his chair. Her eyes gazed back at him. Very firm eyes, he thought. God, what he would have given for a daughter such as this fine young woman, exchanged her any day of the week for the insipid little creature, his son, still studying biochemistry for a PhD, still workshy.

  ‘Doesn’t really matter what we want. It’s what the Americans want that is important. We are still at the top table, only just, hanging onto the table with our fingernails. What is our best chance of staying on top table? It is to perform whatever contortions the Americans ask of us. We grovel and they throw crumbs. I don’t like it but I know when I have to bob my head. We have pigmy influence in the modern world. The “Special Relationship” is a notion of self-importance dreamed up by our political masters, it counts for nothing across the water, we are not equals and we do what we are told to do. That way we get the crumbs thrown us . . . The Americans right now, the price for crumbs, want the information that will help them kill Brown, Gordon Benjamin, so that they can better protect that quite disgusting regime in Guatemala. That is their policy objective, and we will help them achieve it. Can we start?’

  She talked. He scribbled a full note. She talked of a Land Rover operating behind the lines and deep in Iraq, of a unit commander who risked the lives of the men under his command that an American helicopter pilot should be rescued. He had never learned shorthand, he wrote fast. She talked of the Shia city of Karbala that had risen up in revolt against the regime of Baghdad and which now faced the counterstrike in response to the folly of believing the politicians of the coalition, and of the unit commander who had attempted to build a defensive perimeter for them. He did not interrupt. She talked of the radio message that had ordered the unit commander out of Karbala, and his sullen fury and his shame. The light was growing outside his closed windows, and there was the rattle of voices in the corridor as the building livened. She talked of the anger of the unit commander, and of the confrontation with an American ranking officer, ‘Bullshit . . .’ He laughed out loud, the belly laugh caught in his throat but he saw no expression of amusement on her face, so serious. She talked of the obstinacy of the unit commander, and his refusal to apologize, and of the complaint lodged, and the virus of the insult spreading higher in the command chain, and the sacking of the unit commander. He grunted his understanding, the pieces of the puzzle slotting. She talked of a salmon farm that was for sale and a man, alone, searching for a reason in living, yearning for involvement, wanting to belong. He flipped onto the fourth sheet of notepad. She talked of the arrival at a Scottish loch hotel of three Guatemalan Indians and the display of the photographs and of the end of the searching and wanting and yearning.

  ‘Summarize, please.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want it to sound comic-strip . . .’

  There was a slow wan smile. Her eyes blinked. He guessed it was difficult for her to be awake. A rather serious young woman.

  ‘. . . I wouldn’t want to sound facile. He’s bull-in-a-china-shop material. He sets his mind and he goes for something. You can’t buy him off because the going’s hard. You see, it’s the obstinacy, he doesn’t know when to back off. He’d be going for Guatemala City and it’ll take thick walls to stop him. When it gets ridiculous, when it’s stacked, he’ll keep going. If he believes in something then it consumes him. His tactic is the charge. Makes him into a bit of an idiot, but he’s not . . .’

  Percy Martins felt the cold of the morning around him. ‘I think I have the picture.’

  ‘Will that be all?’

  She stood.

  ‘You have been very helpful . . .’

  He helped her into her anorak and walked her to the door.

  ‘. . . Let us hope our American friends are truly grateful when they get down to the business of blowing him away. I think you’ve got me into his mind . . .’

  She stared back at him. To Percy Martins she was suddenly vulnerable, a small girl. ‘I should be able to get into his mind, I used to sleep with him.’

  He gagged. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘No call for an apology. He was with the regiment when I was first in Belfast. He was running my field security escort. I suppose he felt protective of me, and I suppose I felt dependent on him. He came and stayed at my flat in London after we’d finished there, wasn’t for long. I chucked him out. My phone number, I imagine you do the same, I let the answerphone take all the calls. I never called him back and I returned his letters unopened. I expect you’d find that pretty bitchy. Where I work they reckon that emotional entanglements get in the way of the fucking job.’

  ‘Would you like me to let you know what spills from this?’

  ‘That would be very kind.’ She laughed and the life was gone from her eyes. ‘Yes, I should know whether or not I’ve helped to kill him . . . The fucking job always wins, doesn’t it?’

  Percy Martins walked her to the lift and took her down to the front hall, and signed the exit chit. He was glad Hobbes had overslept, cut the meeting. It was a fresh morning. It would be black night across the time zone in Guatemala, and he wondered what the weather was there, whether it hel
ped Brown, Gordon Benjamin. He felt the draught of the air off the Thames as she shouldered into the swing doors.

  He took the lift back to his floor. His secretary would be in within a quarter of an hour to make decent coffee, about all she was capable of, and then he would start to compose the message for Langley.

  He would fight dirty. He would fight as dirtily as was required to assure he came out on top of whatever shit pile was to be contested. He would most certainly not allow a little dirt to lie between himself and the city’s garbage dump. The blast of the helicopter filled the small room behind the hangar, cut out the whimpering of the bitch. The bird hit, lurched, steadied, came to rest. Colonel Arturo pressed his nose against the grime of the window’s glass. The hatch door of the bird was dragged open. His view was distorted by the rain streams on the glass. He peered to see. The lieutenant dropped down. It was the strategy on which he laid his career and his life. The bitch cried out behind him and he heard the punch smack that silenced her. The lieutenant pulled the shape down. He saw the shambling figure.

  The short gesture, momentary, Arturo punched the air.

  Like a creature brought from the deep water of the dark sea, the man who was bound and gagged. Like a creature issued from a pit only in night cover, the man who was led by a rope towards the building. A gaunt face and hollowed eyes and a sunken throat . . . It was ridiculous. Incredible to believe that a man like this, pulled by the rope, could threaten the life of the state.