by Chris Ryan
After ten years in the SAS, everyone found it hard to find something else to do with their lives, something that held the same promise of danger, purpose and excitement. They were all searching, but only a few of them would find it.
Matt had been getting worried that Cooksley and Reid might not show up. By the time they arrived at 11.30 they'd already had a few beers in town. Matt got in a fresh round of drinks. Both men had changed little since the last time he had seen them: a few more hairs missing, and a few more lines etched into the skin. Cooksley was a slim, wiry man. At first sight you might think he was nervous: he stumbled over his words, and could seldom find the phrase he was looking for. But Matt knew he was only socially shy. In any other setting he had the heart of a lion. Reid was shorter, around five foot eight, with black hair and stocky shoulders. His eyes were almost black, his skin was drawn tight over the bone of his face, and his muscles were taut and lean. Cooksley was working in marketing for a company that made mobile phone accessories, and Reid said he was doing some bodyguarding for a rich American. Both men said they were doing fine. Glad to be free and finally making some money, said Reid flippantly, but behind the bar-room bravado Matt knew the truth was very different. They would not have been on Alison's list otherwise. Neither man would admit to it, but as the evening wore on Matt could tell it was there somewhere. Behind the broad smiles, the old war stories, the rounds of beer and the dirty jokes, there was a shadow: he could hear it in the tone of their voices. Some hidden trouble was eating away at each of them.
I can see it in them – and they can probably see it in me.
'To fallen comrades,' said Wattsie, raising his pint high.
Matt raised his glass and poured beer down his neck. There were days when you couldn't help wondering if the fallen were the lucky ones. 'To the survivors,' he said. They knew what he was talking about. Life in the Regiment was tough, but at least you had your comrades around you. On the outside, you walk alone.
'To the survivors,' echoed a dozen voices around the room.
SIX
The house was a 1950s semi, its white paint starting to fade. An Astra van was parked on the short gravel driveway. It stood on the outskirts of Pembridge, a village of five hundred people about ten miles north of Hereford, close to Shobdon private airfield. From the seat of his Porsche, Matt could see the kids' clothes on the washing line, fluttering in the wind blowing down from the Welsh hillsides. Judging by the size of the two romper suits, he'd guess they were about four and two.
Suburban family life, thought Matt. It suits some men, but not me. After I collect the two million, Gill and I are going to live somewhere hot and glamorous.
He stepped out of the Boxster, stretching his legs as he walked around the vehicle. In the distance he could see Cooksley walking down the lane, a newspaper and a pint of milk under his arm. A dog was with him, a Collie, barking and running ahead. The man's head was bowed, looking at the ground, following the curves of the pavement. His shoulders were sagging, and his eyes looked weary.
'Good to see you last night,' called Matt.
Cooksley looked up. 'You too, mate.'
Matt followed him into the house and accepted the offer of a cup of coffee. Sarah was spooning some milky porridge into the mouth of Danny, the younger of the two boys. Callum was running around waving a Monsters Inc toy. 'You a man,' he said, thrusting a green one-eyed Mikey into Matt's hands.
A smell of nappies and food filled the kitchen and the floor was covered with brightly coloured lumps of plastic. Sarah Cooksley looked tired and hassled, her eyes drooped and lines of exhaustion collected around her face. She had been a beauty when he had first seen her one night in a bar in Hereford. Matt had tried to chat her up himself, but she had thinned him out. It was a surprise when she started going out with Cooksley – she was obviously drawn to the silent, brooding type. Two years had passed since Matt had seen Sarah, but it could have been ten: her long brown hair had been cut into a short bob, her eyes had lost their sparkle and her skin its shine. She was still a beauty, Matt decided, but a troubled one. He knew nothing of her life, but he could tell it was a struggle. Daily existence was grinding her down.
'You haven't changed a bit,' she said, kissing Matt on the cheek. 'How's Gill?'
'She's fine,' Matt replied with a stab of guilt. 'Still in Marbella.'
Matt took the coffee Sarah made him, spent a few minutes play-fighting with Callum, then looked up towards Cooksley. 'Let's go for a walk,' he said. 'I need to talk to you.'
A path led away from the back of the house into the hills. The border between England and Wales lay somewhere close to here, stretching across the peaceful contours of the landscape. A few sheep were grazing in the fields. A light rain was falling, and Matt pulled the collar of his overcoat high up around his neck. The two men walked in silence. Matt wanted to put a safe distance between himself and the house before he began.
The things we are going to discuss are not for the wife and kids to hear.
He climbed over a stone wall, glad to have the chance to flex his muscles. He had drunk a skinful of beer the night before, and he had felt it when he'd woken up. The air would do him good, and so would the exercise.
'Things aren't OK, are they, Joe?' he said.
Cooksley, he knew, was a man of few words, and most of those had only one syllable. He looked up at Matt, the surprise written on to his face. 'Who told you?'
'Five,' Matt answered.
Cooksley walked on, staring at the ground. 'We're out of that game, Matt,' he said. 'Our time is served.'
Matt shook his head. 'I'm back.' He turned to look at his friend. In Cooksley's eyes he could see something he had never seen before, not even in the treacherous, bandit-infested mountains of Kosovo: fear. 'They've told me to recruit four men,' he continued. 'Men who need money, who'll take a chance if they have to.'
'Bastards,' muttered Cooksley. 'I knew Five kept tabs on us all, but I didn't realise they had access to our medical records.'
'What is it, Joe? Are you ill?'
Cooksley walked on, striding across the open field. 'It's Callum and Danny, they have cystic fibrosis.'
Matt stopped in his tracks. 'Christ, I'm sorry. Is there anything you can do?'
'The doctors don't reckon so,' said Cooksley. 'It's incurable. Both of them are going to die.' He paused, looking down into the mud. 'Sarah's cracking up, I don't know how much longer she can stand it.' He looked around. 'You don't know what it's like, Matt. Think of the worst torture you can imagine, then multiply it by ten. And you still wouldn't even be close.'
Matt started walking again, pushing on through the field. 'If there was any treatment you'd get it on the National Health, wouldn't you? You wouldn't need extra money?'
He could hear Cooksley taking a deep breath, turning something over in his mind. 'There's a doctor in California called Peter Beelah. He's working on a gene therapy. It's completely experimental, and unregulated. Some people think you shouldn't even mess around with genetics. But if it's our only chance, we'll take it. The boys would have to be there for a year, getting treatment every day.'
'How much does it cost?'
'Half a million dollars,' he replied. 'Bugger it, Matt, I'm just an ex-soldier. I sell mobile phone accessories for some crappy little firm in Hereford. I'm making eighteen bloody grand a year, plus commission. But there never is any commission, because the product's rubbish and I'm a rubbish salesman. Where the hell am I ever supposed to get that kind of money?'
'I'm not here to sell you anything,' said Matt. 'You are your own man, and you make your own choices.' He started climbing over the wall they had reached, holding out an arm to help his friend across. He could tell from the way Joe held himself that he was desperate to hear more.
'It's one mission,' he continued. 'It will be illegal, and off the books, but we'll have help from Five, and there will never be any charges. It will take about a month. At the end, the pay-off will be more than enough to take care of both kids.'
Cooksley laughed bitterly. 'Where do I sign?'
Matt rested his hand on his friend's shoulder.
'If it would save my boys, I'd walk through hell,' said Cooksley sharply. 'With a smile on my face.'
Matt stepped into the dark room. A chink of light was shining through a half broken pane of glass, but there was nothing else to illuminate his path. He walked over a beer bottle, and an empty pizza carton. Kneeling down, he shook Reid on the shoulder. 'Wake up, man,' he said. 'We need to talk.'
Reid sat bolt upright, his expression angry, his fists clenched as if he were about to throw a punch. Instinctively Matt ducked away: he'd felt one of Reid's blows on his jaw before – they'd fallen out over a girl – and he'd promised himself never to take another one. He had a punch that would rock Mike Tyson.
Reid looked at Matt, blinked, then grinned. 'What the hell are you doing here?'
'Cooksley told me where to find you,' Matt replied. 'He said you'd be kipping down here for a couple of nights. Clean yourself up and let's go get some food. I want to talk to you.'
Reid struggled up from the mattress and walked towards the bathroom. He was still wearing the jeans and the sweatshirt he'd had on the night before, and Matt could still smell the beer on his breath. Matt looked around the room. He'd known some guys to doss down in some rough looking places for a few nights when they needed to and not let it get to them. But this was a hovel. A small house about five miles from the village, set amid a group of three agricultural buildings, it belonged to a farmer who owned apple estates along the Welsh borders. At harvest time, farmers like that bring in cheap labour to pick the fruit. This was where the labourers would sleep. There was one sofa, two mattresses on the floor, and what only the most optimistic estate agent could call a kitchen – a sink, a kettle and an electric ring encrusted with old baked beans. Paper was hanging loose from the walls, the single uncovered bulb hanging from the ceiling was broken, and a bucket in the corner was collecting the water that dripped through the roof. What Reid was doing here, Matt had no idea. But he could see why he was on Alison's list.
Dressed in a fresh pair of chinos, with his chin shaved and his hair combed, Reid didn't look particularly successful or prosperous, but at least he didn't look like a tramp. They drove in silence back to Hereford, parked the car, and headed towards Ascari's Cafe on West Street. Reid had hand-rolled a pair of cigarettes in the car and now he lit one, putting the other in his pocket. It was already nearly noon, but Ascari's served breakfast all day and it was the best fry-up in town. Greasy, protein-rich food was what they both needed. It would settle their minds, and then they could talk.
What's happened? Matt asked himself as they walked through the street. She'd been working as a waitress by night and studying to be a beautician during the day when Reid met her, and Matt had first met her at a squadron Christmas party. Way out of your league, they'd told Reid. This was a woman who didn't need to study beauty, she was already there. But, Matt admitted later, they were jealous as well. Jane was the best-looking woman any of them had ever been out with. Tall, with dark hair and strong cheekbones, she held herself like a princess. Reid had fallen hard, and never so much as looked at another girl after that. So what's happened? Matt wondered. Reid and Jane lived just down the road from Cooksley in Pembridge. They had a lovely house, two kids, Eddie and Chloe. Matt had been with him in Bosnia when Eddie was born, and he'd never seen anyone so happy. When he got the camcorder film from Jane of Eddie taking his first steps, he risked being RTUd by breaking into a UN warehouse to steal the batteries to get the camcorder working. He risked his career just to watch a baby waddling across the floor.
So what's he doing sleeping in a farm labourers' barn five miles from his family? How do our lives get so tangled up?
A plate of eggs, bacon, sausages, beans, black pudding and chips landed in front of him. Matt pitched some ketchup on the side of the plate, and loaded the first forkful of sausage into his mouth. 'You've got a lovely wife, and two nice kids,' he said. 'What are you doing kipping down in a place like that?'
'Sometimes the breaks go with you, sometimes against you.'
'But Jane, the kids – you haven't split with them have you?'
Reid put down the fork, a piece of bacon still hanging from it. 'Leave Jane? Are you joking?' He paused, put the food into his mouth and chewed slowly. 'Sometimes I think I love her too much.'
For a moment Matt found himself thinking about Gill, wondering what she might be doing.
'So, this loving her too much,' he said, 'you express it by walking a couple of miles down the road and sleeping in a hovel? Christ, we should have let the Kosovans finish you off when they had the chance.'
'You don't understand.'
'Tell me then.'
'I lost my job,' said Reid. 'I had some work body-guarding a French guy, paid quite well. I lost that, and we ran up some debts. Then I got some work for some South Africans, but they buggered off without paying me, so that was even worse. We were getting more and more behind with the mortgage, taking out loans just to pay for the kids' shoes. Then I get a job looking after a Columbian guy in London, but it fell through after two days. I haven't worked for a month, and I haven't earned any proper money for six months.'
We're all the same, thought Matt. Trying to keep some woman happy. We just have different ways of going about it.
'You told Jane you still had the job, and you were dossing down in the barn, right?'
'You know the kind of woman Jane is,' Reid said. He turned to his cup of tea, stirring in two sugars. 'She's a princess. She expects a man to be able to go out and earn a living and support her and the kids. I can't go home and look her in the eye and say that I'm not able to do that.'
Matt didn't know what to say. 'Sooner or later, you've got to level with her.'
Reid shrugged. 'Maybe something will turn up,' he said sourly.
Matt paused. 'It just did,' he said.
Reid looked up towards him, a question-mark in his eyes.
'There's a job,' said Matt, lowering his tone. 'For Five. Off the books, unofficial, but we get training and gear. At the end, a big pay-off.'
Matt watched him closely. He had seen Reid in many different situations: under fire, showing incredible bravery and determination; in a funk of cold fear when he lost his nerve; drunk out of his brain on cheap beer; sighing over pictures of his children on a cold, lonely and distant battlefield. But he had never seen the look he saw in his eyes now: hope, mixed with relief. 'How much?'
We listen in different ways. Some of us want to know who we hit. Some of us how dangerous it is. And some of us just want to know how much.
'Enough,' said Matt. 'You could get your princess a new tiara, yourself a new car, and still never have to work again.'
'And you're in charge?'
Matt shook his head. 'Five are in charge,' he replied. 'They just started with me.'
Reid took his hand-rolled cigarette from his pocket, slipped it between his lips, and searched around for a light. 'One question,' he said. 'Who handles the money? I don't mind doing a job for Five, but I wouldn't want their thieving hands on my cash.'
Matt nodded. 'A friend of mine,' he said. 'Five don't know it yet, but we bring along our own boy for that end of the deal.'
Reid drained the last of his mug of tea, glanced towards the window, then looked back at Matt. 'Well, if it's good enough for you ... I can't face going back to Jane and telling her we might lose the house. Christ, we might have to go and live at her mum's.'
You look at people you grew up with, the first thing you notice is how they've aged, Matt realised as he shook Damien by the hand. Then it hits you. If they've aged, so have you. 'You're looking good,' said Matt.