The Reluctant Hero

by Michael Dobbs

  As soon as she had closed her door she lifted the phone and asked for four glasses to be brought to her room. She also ordered two meals, and a couple of DVDs – a comedy and a biopic, only recently released in the West and almost certainly counterfeit. While she waited, she began to pack her suitcases, all the time glancing at her watch. Harry had emphasized, timing would be everything.

  The room service took ten minutes longer to arrive than she had anticipated, on a trolley under the command of a youth with a lopsided grin. She jumped at his knock; she couldn’t suppress the tension building inside her. It was twelve minutes to seven by the time she began pushing the trolley, now complete with the bottles of Pshenichnaya, out of her own door and down the corridor towards Harry’s room. She had changed into one of her new sweaters, brightly coloured and filled with static electricity so it clung closely to her body, a fact which the guards couldn’t fail to notice. She smiled at them once more, broadly, full in their face; this time their eyes faltered, stumbling in distraction between her sweater and the bottles of vodka. They even helped her open Harry’s door.

  ‘Harry!’ she called out. ‘You feeling better?’

  A wan smile delivered from his bed suggested there had been some marginal improvement.

  ‘I’ve brought you dinner.’

  One of the guards even pushed the trolley into the

  room, saluting them both, his gaze lingering a little too long on Martha before he turned and left. As the door closed, Harry nodded in appreciation. ‘Ah, food.’ He nodded after the guard. ‘And I see you make a very good tart.’

  A couple of minutes later Martha was back in the corridor, carrying one of the bottles of vodka and three glasses. She set these down on a hallway table beside a vase of faded artificial flowers and, looking at the guards, held her thumb and finger an inch apart. They shook their heads in denial. Then she filled the glasses. The young men watched her as closely as if she was priming a bomb. She took one of the glasses for herself, and nodded for the guards to take the others. For a moment they hesitated, flustered, but she raised her glass to her lips. ‘To the revolution!’ she toasted, and drank. It tickled like butterflies on the way down, but about three seconds after reaching her stomach turned into a nest of squabbling polecats intent on testing their claws. Twenty years earlier, back in her white clapboard sorority house, she had downed buckets of tequila with salt and lemon chasers. She winced. God, she was out of practice.

  The guards glanced up and down the corridor, as though expecting the arrival of a punishment unit led by their dog-breath of a captain, but everything was silent, particularly now that Bowles and the others had left for the mountains. Their eyes were drawn back to the encouraging smile of Martha, and the vodka, which would have cost each of them a week’s wages. They wavered in indecision. It was bad manners to refuse a foreign guest, especially a woman, and this one was not only well connected but also particularly well constructed. The decision was made. Screw the captain, even better his wife. They drank.

  Fifty kilometres away, up in the mountains, Roddy Bowles was also raising his glass along with Bobby Malik, who was showing little of the Muslim orthodoxy he was prone to preach around his constituency and was well on his way to a state of alcoholic serenity. They were in a rough wooden chalet, more guest house than hotel, with huge log fires and subdued lighting – even here, beside the dam, the power supplies seemed stretched. The darkness and the warmth wrapped around them like a cocoon, an impression of comfort enhanced by the solid food they had eaten, and the ubiquitous vodka. Sydykov was there, too. It was he who poured.

  ‘Well, if you absolutely insist, perhaps one more,’ Malik said, affecting reluctance, settling in an armchair beside the fire.

  ‘But Mr Malik, in my country it is an insult not to finish the bottle. Please – relax. Enjoy a little Ta’argi hospitality.’

  ‘When in Rome,’ Bowles joined in, chortling, a throaty sound, as though coughing up his innocence. He raised his glass; the vodka was cold, as though it had slipped from a mountain top all the way down a glacier, and tasted of lemon.

  ‘It’s a pity your other colleagues could not join us,’ Sydykov said, refilling their glasses, ‘but at least it will allow us to make faster progress.’

  ‘Much faster progress,’ Bowles replied, arching an eyebrow in emphasis.

  ‘I shall be sorry in particular to see Mr Jones leave,’ Sydykov lied. ‘I think I would have enjoyed getting to know him.’

  ‘That I very much doubt,’ Bowles muttered, his voice dripping in scorn. He held up his glass, inspecting its contents by the light of the fire as if they held the answer to all things. ‘You know, wherever that man goes he has the uncanny knack of leaving a long trail of trouble behind him. Bull in a china shop, as we say.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘The man still thinks he’s in the SAS.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘The SAS. The Special Air Service. It’s one of our wilder military units. He was an officer. Didn’t you know?’

  ‘No,’ Sydykov said, his glass pausing halfway to his lips. ‘We knew so very little about Mr Jones. We were expecting Mr McKenzie.’

  ‘See what I mean?’ Bowles said, turning to Malik. ‘Harry Jumped-up Jones. Nothing but trouble.’

  He tried to pass off the remark with a lighthearted chuckle, but a log on the fire spat in confirmation.

  ‘I had no idea . . . that Mr Jones was a soldier,’ Sydykov said softly.

  ‘Well, that was twenty years ago. But he’s the type that doesn’t seem able to leave it behind – you know the sort. Best time of their lives, all that stuff and nonsense. Gloryhunters, really.’ Bowles knew he was going too far, and glanced at Malik, but the younger man didn’t seem ready to contest the point, rolling the glass between his palms and staring into the fire.

  It wasn’t often Bowles could relax like this, let his hair down, be totally frank, and the smoky atmosphere encouraged informality. The vodka helped, too. ‘Jones has been lucky, managed to help the Queen out of a bit of a scrape during the State Opening of our Parliament a couple of years ago. Got himself a George Cross for his pains – not that he really deserved it, just happened to be in the right place at the appropriate time, if you ask me. Ended up killing a man, though. A rough bugger, is Harry Jones, ’scuse my French. Unpredictable. Unreliable. Unelectable, too, in my book, and goodness only knows how he manages to hang on. Frankly, as head of this little delegation of ours, I didn’t want him with us in the first place, and I’ll be as relieved as a dog at a lamppost when I know he’s aboard the plane and on his way back home.’

  He sat back, feeling better for his outburst, as though he had purged himself of a secret that had long been bothering him. He drained his glass and let his head sink into the back of the chair, enjoying the moment. He was startled to see Sydykov rising to his feet.

  ‘Mr Bowles, please forgive me for just a moment,’ the security man apologized. ‘I have just remembered. I have to make an urgent telephone call.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The DVDs were pirate copies, fuzzy, inferior, the artwork on the sleeve run off on a photocopier, the sound emerging as though through a sock, but it gave Harry and Martha cover while they talked.

  ‘You look different,’ he said, as they huddled close together on the bed, backs against the pillows.

  ‘How?’

  ‘I miss the dressing gown.’

  ‘Keep your mind on the job, Jones,’ she said, but a reluctant smile turned up the corners of her mouth. The vodka had had its effect.

  ‘A soldier’s perks. Before the hour of battle. Alcohol and sex,’ he suggested.

  ‘In my experience, that’s what every man regards as his perks, whatever the circumstances,’ she countered.

  He turned on his elbow to look at her from close quarters, his tone no longer flippant. ‘Your experience, Martha. What’s it been?’

  She flustered, discomforted by such a direct question, but perhaps it was
another of those soldier’s perks before the hour of battle, the right to dig for the truth. ‘My experience? Like most women. Too broad,’ she replied.

  ‘Then why are you doing this?’ he asked softly.

  She hesitated, studying her knees. ‘I’m not entirely sure. It’s a question I’ve been asking myself.’

  ‘Doubts?’

  ‘No, not that, it’s . . .’ She seemed to be on the point of a conclusion before habit drew her back behind her defences. ‘Anyway, what about you? You gave me all that bullshit about friendship and loyalty.’

  ‘No bullshit.’

  ‘But it’s not just that, is it? This sort of thing keeps happening to you, Harry, putting your neck on the line, finding trouble. You go looking for it. It’s as though you’re always testing yourself, having to prove yourself to others.’

  So, she’d noticed. Not so much a stranger, after all.

  ‘Something in me, I guess,’ he replied. ‘From my father. He was a tough bastard – at times too damned tough.’

  ‘You, too?’

  The heat that had crept into Harry’s voice was as nothing compared to the pain that suddenly flooded into hers. She had to gasp for breath, the room went cold. She lowered her head in embarrassment, and in shame.

  ‘My father was rich,’ he continued slowly, giving her time to recover, ‘some would say excessively so. A bit of a financial gangster. He worked hard and played hard. Too hard. When I was a kid he told me there were no rules and gave me no limits. He let me live the high life. It was guilt, I guess, for the way he had treated my mother. I look back and I remember room service all the way, everything first class. Holidays. Parties. Sports tickets. And women. He took care of that, too, when I was still only sixteen. Then I grew up and he decided my childhood was over, so he dumped me. Forced me to stand on my own feet.’

  ‘You hated him?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, not really, except about Mum. I loved him, most of the time. I just didn’t respect him very much.’ He took a deep breath, as though he had run a long way. ‘And you, Martha?’

  ‘I hope he’s rotting in hell, where he belongs,’ she whispered. The words came like old dust escaping from an opened coffin. ‘He wasn’t interested in me standing on my own feet. He wanted me on my back.’

  ‘You serious?’ And as he looked into her eyes, a door opened, just a fraction, but enough to allow him to peer inside and catch a glimpse of things that were hidden deep away. He saw a different woman, lonely, cautious, pitifully damaged, one who had more in common with him than he cared to admit. ‘So that’s why . . .’ As soon as he had uttered them, he bit the words back, but it was too late.They both knew what was in his mind.

  ‘What?’ she demanded defensively.

  He shook his head.

  ‘Why I’m a professional man-hater. Is that it?’ Her tone was suddenly bitter, full of resentment, as it so often had been.

  ‘Martha, I have no right to judge . . .’

  ‘From the age of ten until I was seventeen, Harry. While you were on your yachts and . . .’ The hazel eyes were melting with resentment. Why the devil should he have had it so easy? ‘Until I found another man to run away with. He was almost as old as my father, and barely any better. In the years since, none of the bastards have been. As far as I’m concerned, they should all burn!’

  ‘You know that’s not true.’

  ‘What? You expect me to be fair? Offer some smug homily about give-and-fucking-take? With my legs up in the air? Turn over, girl, and take it?’

  ‘No, not at all . . .’

  ‘Alcohol and sex. A soldier’s perks,’ she sneered.

  ‘Look, Martha, I was wondering. When we get back to London—’

  ‘If we get back,’ she snapped.

  ‘Maybe we could spend a little time together?’

  She snorted in mockery. ‘You think I’m a charity job?’

  ‘Get to know each other better,’ he said, softly, doggedly, like rain falling on a fire. He saw her dig her nails deep into her palms, trying to regain control. God, she was a fighter, with one whole half of humanity, of course, but most of all with herself. He watched while the battle within slowly subsided.

  ‘That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?’ she said eventually. ‘Getting to know ourselves better. Testing ourselves. Finding out who we really are.’

  ‘I don’t understand . . .’

  ‘Don’t try to kid me that you’re doing this for friendship, or from a sense of duty, Harry. At the end of the day, this is really just about you. It’s who you are, something in you that never looks for the easy route, always takes that extra step no matter what the consequences for others. Because if you stop, you think you’ll die, something inside you will suffocate, like a shark that can’t swim. This isn’t about Zac, for God’s sake. It’s about you.’

  Her words hurt. They should have been easier to deflect, to ignore, but he hadn’t looked at things like that before. ‘Perhaps you’re right. Maybe you understand me better than I do myself,’ he said sadly.

  ‘How the hell can I understand you when I’m so Godawful at understanding even me?’ she cried out, determined to contradict him at every turn. Yet now her anger with him was washing away in tears of selfrecrimination. No matter how she might try, there were some things she had never been able to deny. Her life was her own fault. As much as she frequently blamed others, she always blamed herself. Her head sank down to his shoulder.

  ‘That’s why I wondered,’ he said gently, ‘when we’re back home . . .’

  She wiped her tears on his shirt, looked up into his eyes, very close. ‘I’d like to, Harry, more than you can imagine. But I don’t think it would work, you and me.’

  ‘You said we were alike.’

  ‘Too much so. Doing things our own way.’

  ‘Too selfish, you mean? In too much of a hurry? We could maybe learn to slow down a bit.’

  ‘Slow down? I can’t, Harry.’

  ‘Why the hell not?’

  ‘I’m thirty-eight. Divorced. No kids. You work it out.’

  ‘Well, hare and tortoise time, then. You know, need to take it easy in order to get to the finishing line first.’

  She nestled back into her pillows, her eyes focused on something a million miles away. ‘I don’t think I can do that, Harry. I can’t forgive, you see. I’m just too bloody angry all the time.’

  ‘We could talk about it, maybe? Later?’

  She sucked in a deep breath. ‘We need to think about now,’ she said, glancing at the bedside clock, moving from one reality to another and slamming the door behind her. The moment was over.

  He took her hand, knotting his fingers through hers and massaging them tenderly. ‘OK, Martha Riley, one step at a time. But there’s one thing you must promise me.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Thanks to you I don’t know any more whether I’m trying to save Zac or simply save myself. But whatever happens to Zac and me – what ever happens’ – he picked out the words with great care – ‘you’ll be on that plane tomorrow morning. No excuses.’

  Her fingers tightened around his. The blue neon figures on the clock insisted that the night was moving towards ten. They had barely eight hours.

  Martha stepped back out into the corridor again. She had recovered her composure – a necessary tool for a woman in politics – and she smiled in conspiratorial fashion at the young guards, who were now relaxed, a gentle flush covering their cheeks. One was leaning idly against the wall, the other sitting on the floor, smoking. The glasses were near at hand, the bottle almost done.

  She passed them by, disappearing into her own room. Five minutes later she reappeared, changed into her dressing gown. It had been tied clumsily, too loosely for decency. She beckoned towards the guards. ‘Come here, you two total losers, and see what Mama’s got for you.’

  They shook their heads dumbly, not a snatch of English between them. She waved her hand again, more urgently; they looked at each other i
n uncertainty. They might not understand her words but they read much in her gesture, and imagined more. The guard who was propping up the wall sauntered over. She beckoned him to her bathroom. He took a tentative step forward, then another. She was leaning over the basin, her gown cascading down, revealing much and suggesting still more, while she struggled with her tap. It responded with a reluctant dribble. It had been like that ever since she’d arrived, the management had offered their sincere regrets but absolutely no form of practical assistance. She twisted it one way, then the other, before turning to the guard. ‘Hello, there, are you from Jerksville, like the rest of them?’

  He nodded enthusiastically.

  ‘So can you help me, you useless, bad-ass bogeyman?’

  The other guard had now joined them, his caution overwhelmed by curiosity as he peered over his colleague’s shoulder, and the pantomime began. She leaned over the basin, they stared; she turned the tap, they muttered to each other in appreciation; she turned it off and pointed helplessly. Then the performance was repeated. One of the guards started fiddling with the tap himself while the other made a suggestion in Russian that Martha sensed was profoundly vulgar. The guard laughed. So did she. They inched closer. She began to fear she’d overdone the exposed flesh.

  ‘Alcohol and sex, you primitive bastards,’ she said with bravado, trying to appear amused. ‘What the hell, you really are all the fucking same.’

  They roared.

  Then, on cue and much to her relief, the solid figure of Sid Proffit appeared in the doorway. ‘Hullo there, Martha. You finished packing?’

  The guards jumped back in alarm.

  ‘These bellboys of yours, are they ready to take the cases down?’ Proffit bawled.

  The pantomime in the bathroom broke up in confusion.

  By which time, behind their backs, Harry had slipped out of the hotel and was on his way.

  The temperature had dropped several degrees since Harry had last been outside. He would have preferred snow, large, overblown flakes that would have given him cover, but instead the night was clear. The world had become a monochrome print, like an engraving from Oliver Twist, a place of black and grey, and shadows, and fears. He passed the monument to Lenin with its rotting plinth; moonlight bounced off the monster’s skeletal head while his outstretched arm pointed towards the stars, yet the eyes seemed to follow Harry’s every step. He hurried on.