I emailed Nick, and spoke to him frequently, trying always to sound upbeat and positive. I clung onto his friendship and understanding, and tried to cherish the achievement of surviving the trip as a thing in itself. I left the negotiations to the production company and, when it became clear that we were not going to get a sale in London, I flew to Glasgow in search of solace.
Rachel was home from university, ensconced in her parents’ stone town house. Before I’d left for Liberia I’d felt the gap in age and experience between us – she was twenty-two, me thirty – but she was fun and sexy and ridiculously clever, and never let me take myself too seriously.
As soon as I saw her, I felt happy. It wasn’t possible to fake that. I breathed out a sigh of relief as she smiled and wrapped her arms around me at the airport. We sat in the taxi and her bright green eyes lit on my face. I wondered what she could see, what was there that I had missed in the mirror. Not much, I suspected, just something different from the boys her age at university. Perhaps she even loved me. She tucked a thick tress of dark hair behind her ear and leaned over to kiss me. Something flickered inside. I caught the taxi driver’s eye in the mirror and pulled away, smiling.
In Glasgow, though, as in London, my mind didn’t feel completely my own. Even walking down the street, hand in hand, was at times like being in a virtual shooting gallery. Intrusive thoughts flooded into my head without warning – transforming the pavement into an imagined battleground, pedestrians into casualties. I would buy a newspaper and find myself imagining what the old woman who served me would look like if a bullet opened up her forehead. I shook hands with people and wondered how I’d react if their legs were blown off at that moment; or what a machine gunner would do to the tourists in George Square. I could blink the images away, will the thoughts into obscurity – but they would return, sometimes within minutes. The brutality of what I conjured unnerved me. I told no one.
‘Are you all right, darling?’
She was wrapped up in a short, blue silk Chinese-print dressing gown. We were sitting on her sofa.
‘Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just I’m a bit out of sorts. You know, it’s weird coming home. It was such a long trip, so much longer than it was supposed to be, it’s just hard getting my head around being back here.’ I felt her weight shift against me. ‘But it’s good, I mean it’s great. It’s great to be here, with you, it’s just … I don’t know, I don’t know how to put this, really. I saw a lot of bad things. People being killed … worse than that …’
I could hear her breathing.
‘It’s just hard to have left it all behind, to have been there so recently, and then get on a plane and as if by magic, I’m here.’
She sat up straight and looked at me. Her hair was a mess, her face suddenly much younger.
‘But we’re okay, aren’t we? You still want to be with me?’
I smiled at her and tried to look reassuring, which ended up more like a grimace, and made her laugh. I wasn’t sure I could continue a conversation about what it had really been like – it seemed somehow wrong to talk about killing when we were alone, and trying to be happy.
‘Why didn’t you call me when you were away?’ She gave a theatrically exasperated grunt. ‘I nearly split up with you so many times. Everyone knew you were away, and weren’t calling me. It was awful.’
I had been too busy chasing my own demons to see it clearly until then: it had been hard for her, too. She was young and beautiful and gentle, and she wanted to have fun. She hadn’t signed up for this a year ago; it was unreasonable to expect her to want to now.
‘I’m sorry. I … It was a very unusual place to be.’
I put my hand to her face. Touching her smooth cheek made me uncomfortably aware of my skinny ribs and cracked skin.
‘Let’s not talk about it any more,’ she said.
I closed my eyes and saw the gutted green man, hovering in semi-darkness at the edge of my mind. Please, I begged him under my breath as Rachel covered my face with her hair, would you just fuck off and leave me alone.
I left after four days, all kisses and smiles and promises. There had been tears and arguments in cinemas and restaurants, but we were still lovers. I told her nothing of the battles that I fought in the street, in our bed, in my head. The fact that she accepted me as she found me, or at least appeared to, was all that mattered. At times she made me feel almost normal, which was as much as I could have hoped for from anyone.
Back home there was still one person I was desperate to see. From London I drove down to the south coast of England, where the North Downs offer up a bird’s-eye view of the Channel.
‘Your mum isn’t half glad you’re back. She was a bit worried about you.’
My grandfather’s handsome face seemed like it hadn’t changed since I was a child. His high cheekbones and sweptback hair lent him a film-star quality, even when he was in tatty gardening clothes.
‘Bit lively, was it?’
I had to laugh at that.
‘Yeah, it was. Pretty lively – most of the time.’
‘Probably a bit different to what I was doing in the desert. The jungle plays havoc with everything. I expect your other grandad could have told you about that – he probably did, actually.’
There was not much love lost between my parents’ parents – but the two men had at least respected each other as soldiers.
Mum and Nan had left the room. We stood talking while a tray was loaded with cakes and coffee in the kitchen.
‘That reminds me,’ he continued, ‘up in the loft there are some papers, a diary I wrote in Egypt, in Tobruk. You might like to see it one day. There are some old photos, too, from Palestine and Libya.’
‘Were you allowed to do that?’
It was the first time he’d ever mentioned a diary. I knew immediately that ‘one day’ meant ‘after I’m dead’, otherwise he’d have been showing me already.
‘No,’ he laughed, ‘but I was careful with it.’
‘It was quite messy,’ I told him. ‘A lot of civilians got hurt. You can imagine it – no one has a bloody clue what they’re doing. Nick and I were practically running the show at one point, trying to get out. They couldn’t even set an ambush.’
‘You would have liked the desert,’ he said, softly. ‘It was straightforward. There were no civilians, no one except us and them. You could fire artillery all day long and know you were hitting either sand dunes or Germans. Of course,’ he chuckled, ‘there was the Afrika Korps. They could muck you about all right.’
I smiled at him. He’d had his left index finger crushed being ‘mucked about’ by them in Tobruk.
‘Sometimes I wish I could have done more, anything, actually. There were so many kids.’
I wanted to tell him about the girl with gangrene, but I couldn’t speak the words.
‘Where do you begin?’ I asked instead. ‘We didn’t even have any antibiotics.’
‘Neither did we!’ he replied.
I looked at him, and smiled. He had told me almost nothing about his war, but sixty years later it was as crisp to him as the day they’d sailed for Cairo. I wanted to talk, to open up and tell him how lost I was; but more than that I wanted him to see I was all right – that I had been to war, and survived. Neither of us spoke for a moment.
‘Yes,’ he repeated, after the pause. ‘You would have enjoyed my war.’
We faced each other. Then, nodding to the window, he concluded: ‘Joy’s done a smashing job with the roses this year. What do you make of this lot? Jolly hard work, I might add, shifting all that bloomin’ earth about.’
We walked out into the garden and admired the September roses. There were no bloody images, no traces of the jungle. My trip was over. The war was finally lifting.
10
BLOOD BROTHERS
The following week I had a message from Robert, the American writer with whom I’d gone to Sierra Leone the year before. We’d stayed in touch and I’d let him know by email about my ongoing
friendship with Cobus and the trip to Liberia. I called him back, curious to know what he was up to. He was now the star of his own television show – one episode of which (in Chechnya) had just fallen through.
He got straight to the point. He had called to ask if I could take him to rebel-held Liberia instead. Adrenaline surged through me. Go back?
The room was very quiet. Go back. Nick and I had discussed the possibility of a return trip in Conakry, but I hadn’t imagined that it would be only a matter of weeks before I was contemplating it again. I had barely recovered, I hadn’t sold the original film – but I was broke. I wanted a career in television; now I was being offered one and the responsibility that went with it. I took a deep breath.
‘Sure,’ I said, cautiously.
Calls would need to be made, paperwork got in order – and bribes paid. The line hummed as I grabbed a pen and paper. I felt nervous and excited.
‘The rebels don’t control much more than the area immediately around their HQ, but you can use my archive from the trip I’ve just done to liven it up.’
The rains were over, and a new offensive planned. It could take two or even three months to get back in.
‘When do you want to go?’
His answer stopped me dead.
‘Immediately.’
In true Liberian style, ‘immediately’ took four weeks.
Getting Nick on board was the easy part. I called him as soon as I’d put the phone down with Robert.
‘That’s great news, man,’ was his instant reaction. Apart from the straightforward offer of work, I suspected he wanted to get back to Liberia to discuss the diamond business with the rebels – and I would be paying him to go. Working with me was actually about to earn him some money. After we’d wrapped up our call, I dialled the LURD national chairman’s number in Conakry.
‘Sekou? It’s James …’ The line was ominously silent. ‘I’ve got some people who’d like to meet you, who’d like to come to Voinjama. They’re good people. It’s for a television programme.’
Finally, the line exploded with his strangely emphasised English.
‘Jay, whe’ you comin’ back here? I’ bee’ lon’ time nah,’ he shouted.
But what he wanted to know, more than anything else, was whether Nick would be joining me.
Next I called Robert’s New York director, Jonathan Stack, who would be overseeing the project, to work out the details: we’d go in for a couple of weeks, Jonathan included; introduce Robert to the rebels; do some interviews, and get some fighting on tape. What we didn’t film then, we’d fill in with the hours of fire-fights I’d already shot.
It felt strange that only weeks previously I had never shot any film for television and now I was hiring myself out as a producer and cameraman to an Oscar-nominated director. No one seemed to question my credentials. I asked Jonathan what credit I would get. I didn’t want to risk my life again simply to make someone else look good.
‘The writer’s the star – but you’ll get your moment on camera, too,’ Jonathan reassured me. ‘You’ll definitely get some face time. Don’t worry.’
I insisted on other controls. It was agreed that sensitive information about the role of Guinea would not be broadcast until I agreed. There was one other condition: Nick’s position on the project was non-negotiable.
Jonathan sounded delighted at the prospect of being accompanied by a Special Forces chaperone.
‘You know, to be honest, I’m not in great shape.’ There was a pause while he considered the implications of that statement, and then: ‘And I had some work done on my leg recently … so, you know, the idea of walking for a hundred miles … well, that’s not really a good idea.’
His manner was nervous, urgent and almost comic. He professed a long-standing interest in Africa – telling me that many of his films were about the lives of African-Americans. I began to explain about the conditions I’d faced with Nick, the fighting, the lack of food.
‘Wow, okay,’ he cut across me. ‘Tell me – you know, cut to the chase – what’s the worst thing that could happen?’
‘You could be killed in an ambush. If we’re in combat, if we film combat, you have a high chance of being seriously injured.’
‘Okay, well, that wouldn’t be good. And this guy Nick,’ Jonathan wanted to know, ‘will he help us avoid getting killed or maimed?’
‘Yes.’
And that was the simple truth. I explained that Nick’s being there had made the difference between life and death for me. He would be armed, and was a highly trained medic.
‘Okay, he’s hired!’ I could hear Jonathan’s sigh of relief across the Atlantic. ‘Hey, anyway, I come from a Jewish background, so, you know, I grew up with weird tribal dynamics.’
That Jonathan was more than a little anxious was no bad thing. His ironic humour and acute sense of self-preservation were ideal attributes for working in Liberia – no matter how hard he might be limping on that wounded knee. Humility was a good tool for survival.
I broke the news to Mum that evening.
‘I’m going back, it’s definite. As soon as the visas are ready I’ll fly from here down to Jo’burg to hook up with Nick. He’s coming with me.’
‘Oh, Jamo.’ Disappointment flickered in her eyes. ‘You’ve hardly recovered, you’re still …’
She was right, of course. ‘Hardly recovered’ was quite an understatement. I was still dogged by violent images on a daily basis, and the scabies sores that had spread across my body were only just going into remission.
The conversations only got harder. Rachel’s tone was both indignant and dignified when I spoke to her that evening.
‘James, am I ever going to spend any bloody time with you?’
It seemed like a fair question. She was more disappointed in me than angry. I didn’t blame her. I was about the least appealing prospect of a boyfriend imaginable.
‘I’m sorry’ was all I could manage by way of explanation. I promised her that when I came home we would go away together. I would make it up to her, somehow.
The truth was I wanted the war, and another adventure with Nick, more than I wanted a safe life at home – more than I wanted her.
A week later, after I had first flown to South Africa to finalise, at last, the first sale of my original material with a local current affairs series called Special Assignment, and hook up with Nick, I landed back in Conakry. A few days later Nick and I drove out to the airport to meet Robert and Jonathan. Robert was as I remembered him: tall and angular, with a greying, bushy handlebar moustache. He’d brought along a mountain of camping kit, cameras and ‘adventure gadgets’ ranging from flashy folding knives and alcohol hand-sterilising gel, to sophisticated tiny cameras and a portable music player – complete with noise-cancelling headphones. Jonathan, meanwhile, had not been exaggerating about his physical condition. They stood out a mile from their fellow passengers heading for the arrivals building.
‘Is it always this hot?’ Jonathan asked.
Ten paces off the aircraft and he was drenched, as I had been when I first arrived.
‘Good to meet you, too,’ I replied, ‘and yes, it is. I’m afraid today is quite mild. It gets worse.’
Somewhere on the other side of the apron the whine of a propeller engine sputtering into life filled the air.
‘And who are these guys?’ Robert wanted to know, tilting his head towards the Guinean soldiers who had accompanied us onto the runway.
‘Red Berets. They’re the presidential guard. Nice people to do business with, and friends with the rebels. Basically, they’re the only reason we’re not all under arrest. All our visas are endorsed by the president himself. I’ll explain back at the hotel.’
I introduced Nick to the Americans. Jonathan practically hugged him.
‘Man, it’s great to meet you. Thanks for coming to get us.’
‘You know Cobus from Executive Outcomes?’ Robert wanted to know.
‘Ja,’ Nick confirmed, looking at me. �
��He put me and Mr Brabazon in touch.’
Nick smiled at no one in particular.
‘It’s been non-stop fun ever since, eh?’ I reminded him, guiding my party towards the VIP entrance.
Four months before I’d nosed my way through the airport in fear of arrest or deportation: now I had my own retinue of local hard men to open doors for me. Before long we were all heading to the familiar embrace of the Petit Bateau hotel.
En route I explained that while Nick and I had waited in Conakry, the rebels had tried to hit me up for increasingly large sums of money. In the end we’d settled on $1,500, only this time I had handed the money to a LURD spokesman called Hanson Williams, who’d then taken me straight to Aicha Conneh herself – the LURD national chairman’s wife, and the president of Guinea’s spiritual adviser.
Wrapped up in a bright kaftan and ruffled headdress, she’d cut a powerful, engaging figure. Ensconced behind a desk in a cramped back room of the LURD rebel headquarters in Conakry, she took my money from Hanson and counted out the Benjamins in front of us. We exchanged pleasantries in French, and shook hands. I was the first European journalist, possibly the only journalist, to have met her. I explained to the Americans that in the car back to the hotel, the almost-sober presidential driver, Bengura, had confided to me in French.
‘Madam is very powerful,’ he’d said. ‘If she wants you to disappear, you will not be found. Even if you are a government minister.’
I’d slipped him a packet of Marlboro and thanked him for his counsel.
Nick, meanwhile, had been doing business directly with the chairman, Sekou. We’d arrived at an unspoken understanding: I would not join his diamond venture, nor discuss it with anyone else. In fact, I would turn a blind eye to it. My rationale was simple – no Nick, no access. Besides, he had helped me way beyond what anyone could have expected and so I would ask very few questions about his deal with the rebels.
My Friend The Mercenary Page 19
