Collecting myself, I walked to the head of the room, graciously greeting and smiling at these people that I’d known my whole life, and I felt a cool, calm detachment settle inside me. For once, I was in control; for once, they would listen to me; for once, I had something worth saying.
I gave the band leader a small sign, allowing the music to die away, then I picked up a silver spoon and tapped it against my glass, drawing all attention to me.
“Good evening,” I said. “It’s so lovely of you all to come and support our annual Hunt Ball. Especially this year, because in a break with tradition, the proceeds of the silent auction from your extremely generous gifts, won’t be going to the Dorsetshire Hunt. Our wonderful Master of Hunt, Teddy Throsgrove, has agreed to support a charity that has become very close to my heart.”
My smile dimmed and I spoke with a clarity and vehemence that surprised even me.
“Earlier this year, my dear father, Sir Reginald Forsythe, began his support of the landmine charity Halo Trust. I was fortunate enough to visit one of their operations in a remote area on the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan. I’d never heard of Nagorno Karabakh before I went and I couldn’t find it on a map a month after I’d been there…” laughter, “but … whilst there, I witnessed daily acts of bravery by women who earn an annual salary of less than a year’s membership to a club in Mayfair.”
At my nod, Sinclair began the slideshow behind my head: a photograph of our mountain compound, a sign warning of a minefield, the women in their body armour with tiredness etched on their faces, a set of mines encrusted in dirt ready to be destroyed, and then a live demolition that I’d shakily filmed with my smartphone—even here, the sound loud enough to make people jump, watching as the picture blurred with soil raining down in front of the camera.
“The operation in Nagorno was run by an extraordinary man, a former American Marine, Alan Clayton Williams. Although you won’t know his name, you will know him as the man who risked his life and lost a leg in the infamous Times Square Bombing, two years ago.”
A murmur of recognition rose into a swell around the room.
“I came to know Clay and his wife Zada very well, as I worked with them. The conditions were harsh, cold, and difficult. And those of you who’ve seen me sinking Singapore Slings at Annabel’s wouldn’t have recognized me sloshing around through six inches of mud to a concrete shower block…” a peel of laughter rang out. “But I did it. There may have been a few grumbles at first,” I took a deep breath, “but these small inconveniences were nothing compared to the heroism of my co-workers, the sheer dogged determination to make a better country for their children.” I paused. “It was humbling.”
I stared out at the sea of faces turned to me, and the annoyed glare of my father.
“And it’s for that reason that I’ve been honoured and delighted to share this special moment with you.”
I turned to the Master of Hunt, a short, round man, whose flushed face matched his scarlet coat. He beamed at me.
“Teddy, be a darling and tell all the lovely people how much our little Hunt Ball has raised.”
He stood next to me, sweating and avuncular, and cleared his throat.
“Thank you, Lady Arabella,” he said, bowing low and casting a quick glance at my cleavage. “It is my absolute honour and delight to announce…” and he rustled through three pockets before he found a scrawled piece of paper, “that this year’s Hunt Ball has raised £642,073 and 25 pence for the Halo Trust. I’m so glad my 25p could make a difference.”
Everyone laughed, then cheered as he reached for my right hand and placed a damp kiss on the back of it, and the invited reporters lit up the room with their camera flashes.
As the cheers died down, I held my glass up, catching the crowd’s attention.
“There was a second man on the Nagorno team—the bomb disposal officer, a man who trained the locals to neutralize explosive devices such as anti-tank mines and anti-personnel mines. Even though I have seen him at work, it is still impossible to comprehend the level of skill, bravery and coolness of action that is necessary. A man who daily put his life on the line, both as a member of the British Army and,” I took a deep breath, “as the man who neutralized the Times Square Bomb.”
Murmurs of surprise fell to shocked silence as I raised both hands.
“Yes, that information surprised me, too, when I found out. Here he was, famous around the world for an incomprehensible act of extraordinary heroism, and instead of doing speaking tours and making appearances on chat shows, he has continued his daily job of doing what none of us could do. He is a man who walks towards a bomb that he knows will kill him if he has a second’s lapse in concentration, a single moment of inattention. Every day, in harsh conditions, he takes on the trickiest challenges, the hard to access devices, the booby-traps deliberately designed to maim and kill the Ammunition Technical Officer, or ATO in the British Army.”
I took a breath as every eye was fixed on me.
“Yet he has remained anonymous until this moment—although people all around the world have wished to thank him for his heroism that day. This man deserves a medal, don’t you think?”
A roar of agreement and applause sprang up, echoing from the ancient stone walls.
“Well,” I said, as the roar died, “he didn’t get a medal. Instead, a great wrong has been done to this man. Whilst suffering from PTSD after over a decade of honourable service to our country, he was hounded from the British Army and given what is called an ‘administrative discharge’—to all intents and purposes as a way of brushing the problem under the carpet, gone and forgotten. It was a shameful way to treat a hero. It shames us all. A mean, shabby way to treat a hero—and I’m not the only one who thinks so.” I gave a soft sigh and placed my hand on my heart. “My own dear father, Sir Reginald, is making it his personal mission to ensure that this unconscionable wrong is righted, and this man, this incredible man, receives the acknowledgement of his bravery and sacrifice.”
The crowd ate it up as dozens of guests pulled out their mobile phones to record this touching moment, and I stared at my father’s granite face, knowing that fury bubbled under the surface. I also knew that I’d checkmated him in public. There was no way he could back out of this now. I raised my glass and blew him a kiss. “I love you, Daddy. And it’s time to let the world know of all your tireless, behind-the-scenes work to right this terrible wrong.”
I held out to my hand to my father as he came towards me, perfectly playing the part of grandee who hadn’t wanted a jot of publicity.
Yeah, right.
I turned to the front again, holding on to my father’s hand to force him into the limelight.
“Disgraced, discharged from the Army, unrecognized, unrewarded—is this how Britannia treats her heroes? I say no! No! A thousand times no!”
A great roar of ‘noes’ filled the room, and I knew that I’d got them.
“My dear friends, I know in your hearts that you agree with us and wish to make amends on behalf of our country. We can make a difference, and we will make a difference. It starts here, today, right now. My dear father and I are starting a petition that we will take to the government—we will force them to see the error of their ways. I’m so proud that the first name on that petition will be my father’s.”
I forced myself to ignore the thought that James was going to want to kill me when he found out.
I handed my father a fountain pen and a sheet of paper, and more camera flashes caught the moment as thunderous applause and cheers echoed through the vaulted ceilings.
Keeping the smile pinned to his face must have been painful for him, and I enjoyed every millisecond of his discomfort.
The second name was mine, and soon the petition was being passed around the room, which was full of a complement of peers of the realm. The petition would be hard to ignore after this.
But I hadn’t finished yet. I was intent on outing James for the hero I knew him to be.
&
nbsp; “So, Honourable friends, ladies and gentlemen, please raise your glasses in a toast to the bravest man I have ever had the honour to meet…”
And at my nod, Sinclair pressed the mouse to advance the slide to the last photograph.
In it, with a backdrop of the silent mountains behind him, was James, his beautiful face in sharp relief, a smudge of dirt across one cheekbone as he stood with an anti-tank mine in his hands.
It was stark and beautiful and the sense of his loneliness and isolation bled from the picture.
I turned to the audience.
“Staff Sergeant James Spears.”
More thunderous applause and the camera flashes went berserk.
My father walked towards me, a warm smile on his cold face as he embraced me.
“Well played, Arabella,” he whispered into my ear as he kissed my cheek. “I’ll see you in my study later.”
He squeezed the tops of my arms, almost hard enough to be painful.
“I look forward to it,” I smiled back, ice in my eyes.
Had I seen a gleam of approval in his expression? No, probably just the light of combat.
He backed away as a stream of reporters surrounded me, a hundred questions bubbling as they thrust phones in my face to record my pearls of wisdom.
I told them everything that I knew about James: everything that I’d seen for myself and everything that Clay and Zada had told me. James, the man himself had said the least of all, but I was prepared to fill in the blanks for his sake. But not just for his sake—for the silent, unacknowledged heroism of all the men and women who worked in mud and blood to neutralize bombs and make the world a safer place.
Resolve hardened inside me, but I had a small twinge of concern that James might not want his life turned upside down again or plagued by my conscience, but I’d convinced myself that it was the right thing to do—and there was no backing down now.
Talking about Amira was harder, but again I told the journalists what a hero she’d been, how much in love they’d been, and how tragic the outcome of that love. I talked about how touched my father had been and how important he thought it was to right the wrong done to James. They couldn’t get enough of it, crowding him with questions that he answered solemnly and with heartfelt sincerity, the old fraud.
Several of the reporters phoned in copy to their newspapers and online news sites there and then.
By morning, the story would be worldwide. The Halo Trust would be thanking me—but not my father and not, I suspected, James. I’d just have to wait and see.
After the reporters had finished, so many of the guests came to congratulate me, to bask for a few seconds in my reflected glory, that it was hours before I could get to my father’s study. For once, I wasn’t afraid.
“Well, Arabella,” he said as I serenely sat before him, the thick oak desk a welcome barricade between us. “It’s been an interesting evening.”
“Yes, hasn’t it?” I replied cheerfully. “Thank you so much for your support in such a noble cause.”
He shed the relaxed pose as easily as a snake sheds its skin.
“You think you can fuck me over and get away with it?”
I smiled grimly. I’d learned from the best. Once I knew how to fight, it was something to look forward to.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Daddy. Those people out there think you’re a hero. I’ve done more for your public image in one night than an entire team of PR specialists could ever do. You should be thanking me.”
His cheeks darkened with anger.
“Get out!”
I stood up slowly, relishing the moment when I’d finally beaten my father.
“Gladly,” I smiled. “Goodnight, Daddy.”
James
THE AIR QUIVERED with heat, and even though everything was covered in a thin layer of dust, the colours of Africa were vibrant and warm. The vast canyons, steel cities and wide, lush valleys; the wealth, the poverty, and acres and acres of minefields. Three decades of civil war had ended 17 years ago, but its legacy survived in the form of millions of landmines that maimed or killed thousands every year: welcome to twenty-first century Angola.
Other demining teams that I’d been briefed by had unanimously described my current deployment as ‘the armpit of the world’ or ‘least-wanted assignment’.
But this complex, damaged and beautiful country spoke to me. Here, I could slowly begin to heal; here, I could start again. If I was honest with myself—a new habit that I wasn’t yet fully on board with—my reawakening had started 4,000 miles away on a remote mountainside encased in snow and ice, but it was continuing here.
The first two months after Bel left with her bastard father had been brutal. Every day, I’d been tempted to take a drink or three, something to blot out the seeds of hope that she’d given me during those few days in Yerevan.
Clay and Zada had stuck with me, taking me back to the US with them when they were on leave because they didn’t trust me go back to London alone. They were probably right about that.
Instead, I’d gone to California with them and met Amira’s family again. They’d taken me into their home and shown me her year books and all the family photographs from childhood upwards, and finally, I’d made my peace with her death.
I think a lot of that had to do with the quiet dignity of her parents. They’d shown me that there are other ways to grieve, other ways to respect the dead that wasn’t through anger and self-destruction. Amira had known that. Of course she had. She’d told me from the start—she wanted to do good. That’s how she planned to cope with her own grieving for the loss of her brother.
It was fucked up in so many ways that it had led to her death in Syria.
And now we were in Angola on the west coast of Africa, a long way south of the Equator, living in a dangerous land where the people were still trying to come to terms with a civil war that had torn the country apart. Even 17 years later, old wounds were hard to heal.
Today had been a long, tough day. My team of de-miners were exhausted but motivated by the fact that more land had been cleared, more lives saved.
Arriving back, I signed them off and headed to the back of the truck to check that all the equipment was in good working order for tomorrow—a job that I didn’t entrust to anyone else.
My clothes were sweat-stained and white salt marks ringed my baseball cap.
I was still checking the inventory when our local Mr. Fix-it, whose parents named Yamba Asha after a famous Angolan footballer, came limping up to me.
He’d lost his left leg in a landmine incident when he was a kid. He said that he’d never got along with his prosthetic and preferred crutches. He’d been a lucky find for us, knowing exactly how to oil the wheels of cooperation.
“Senhor James! Boss wants to see you bad!”
“Yeah, okay. I’m on my way over there now. Obrigado.”
“No worries!” he grinned.
I wondered what had got Clay wound up. He didn’t usually send Yamba to hurry me along.
Still, I went at the same careful pace, checking that all the equipment was put away correctly before heading to the command hut.
Clay looked up as soon as I walked in, his expression hard to read.
“Dude, you’re back! Thank, fu— I mean, fudge.”
My hands were still encrusted with dirt from the day’s Task and I was too tired to play games. I stared tiredly at Clay, wondering what planet he was on and whether it was nice this time of year.
“Yep, 27 anti-tank mines, 13 PMAs, no casualties, no issues—destroyed with a nice little firework display. I’ll start the report and…”
He waved a hand.
“Do it later. I’ve had HQ ringing the phone off of the fudging hook all day. They want to talk to you, bro.”
“Are they bringing in the Casspir de-miner truck we requested two months ago?”
The Casspir was a steel-armoured demining vehicle, with a V-shaped hull to deflect a bomb blast, and could be
driven over minefields. Great on wide, flat ground, but it still required trained personnel to check the ground after, in my opinion. But it definitely saved time.
“Because,” I continued, “the field next to ours has fucking thousands of anti-tank mines. I’m thinking it was one where the Cubans used a mine-laying machine, so…”
“No, listen!
“Is it about Yad?”
I knew that the sniper had died from his injuries and that Yad had been arrested, but investigations were still on-going in Nagorno. Neither us expected that any action would be ever be taken against that evil bastard and he’d probably be released any day now.
“Shut the fudge up will you! Nah, man! It’s good news!” He rubbed his forehead. “Potentially good news—eh, you’ll have to decide for yourself.”
What the hell did that mean?
He swivelled his laptop screen around to face me, and a two-inch high headline stood out.
TIMES SQUARE BOMB HERO NAMED
My eyes widened, the tiredness vanishing in an instant.
I bent down to read the rest of the story as my heart hammered, filled with the kind of adrenaline that flows when it’s time for fight or flight.
It was all there in black and white: my name, Clay’s, Amira’s, even Zada’s.
All of it, for the world to see.
And it ended with a call to action for people to sign a petition to reverse my ‘dishonourable discharge’ as they wrongly called it, and even asked for me to be awarded a medal.
I started to ask how the hell the Press had got ahold of the story after so long. But as I scanned to the end of the story, I answered my own question.
“Arabella.”
Clay nodded gravely.
“It says her old man is behind it, but I guess we both know better. They’re doing cartwheels over at Halo Trust HQ; they say their fundraising page has been blowing up with donations—over a quarter of a million spondoolies since the story broke this morning which is amazing and…” he paused. “How do you feel about it?”
“Pissed off,” I said, turning on my heel and heading to my room.
Bombshell - Jane Harvey-Berrick Page 20