A Breed of Heroes

by Alan Judd

  Charles came closer, having stood back while all this had happened. ‘I know that man.’

  ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘He’s a journalist called Beazely.’

  ‘Is he, by God? So he is. Seen him before. He looks drunk, poor chap. Blood on his head too. Shows you can’t be too careful.’ Beazely started to struggle and shout. They got him to his feet and propped him up against the side of the lorry. The blood came from a small cut on his forehead. ‘DTs,’ said Anthony. ‘Seen it before with other chaps. Never with a civvy though. First time with a civvy, would you believe. I say, I’ve got a very wet arse. Hope I haven’t disgraced myself, have I?’

  ‘You sat in a puddle.’

  ‘Did I? When?’

  ‘Just now. That one there.’

  ‘You might have said something, old boy. Little laissez-faire, if you don’t mind my saying so. Not very helpful.’

  Beazely clung to them both, apparently trying to say something. He kept repeating one word. ‘Sounds like arses,’ said Anthony. ‘Perhaps he’s got a wet one too. Ask him.’

  ‘I think it’s glasses. He’s probably lost them.’ They searched in the cab and found Beazely’s spectacles on the floor, with one lens broken. Putting them on had the effect of making him slightly less drunk and, if not coherent, at least again capable of a sort of speech. ‘Told him, told him,’ he was saying. ‘Told him couldn’t drive lorry. Couldn’t stop it. Lucky house in the way. Otherwise gone on.’

  ‘Told who what?’ asked Charles. ‘What did he want you to do?’

  ‘Move the stuff. Take it away. All the boxes. Your mate Chatsworth. Said you said I was to help him and Van Horne. Too pissed anyway. Can’t drive lorries. Then this stone hit me. Everything went black. Story here somewhere. Someone else’ll have to. Charlie write it. Tell me in the morning.’

  Charles had no wish for Beazely to go on in this vein. Fortunately, they were stopped by one of the soldiers who had had the initiative to look in the back of the lorry. ‘It’s stacked with weapons in there,’ he said. ‘Crates and crates of ’em.’

  In the back there were some twenty to thirty crates. One had been prised open and showed four Armalites, black and deadly-looking. Anthony turned to Beazely. ‘These all yours, old fellow?’

  Beazely shook his head. ‘Chatsworth.’

  Anthony turned to Charles. ‘Isn’t there a chap in the regiment –?’

  ‘Yes, Anthony, it’s the same one.’

  ‘Thought there was. Where is he now, I wonder?’

  Beazely half raised his hand in the direction of the monastery. ‘There somewhere. Running. Last saw him.’

  With some effort they got Beazely back into the cab and left one of the soldiers to guard the lorry while the other ran back to the Factory to get reinforcements from the standby platoon. Charles had an idea that the standby platoon for the night was Chatsworth’s. It took them some time to convince Beazely that he was safe to remain where he was and by the time they set off into the monastery it was clear that events had had a sobering effect upon Anthony. He adjusted his beret as best as he could and left Beazely clutching Moira Conn’s bag. ‘Delicate situation,’ he said to Charles. ‘Best just you and me.’

  The monastery itself was a high and imposing building, visible in the wet darkness only as a more solid block of dark. Between it and its surrounding wall was a gravel drive, a car park, grass and flower beds. Monks were rarely seen anyway, and on this night there was not even a light in the building. They were inside the gates and making for the main entrance when Charles saw a figure dart in front of a parked car ahead of them. He pulled Anthony’s sleeve and whispered, ‘There’s someone hiding over there.’

  ‘What’s that, old boy?’ Anthony had not lowered his voice. Charles whispered again and Anthony became suitably conspiratorial. ‘One of them, d’you think? Looking for his guns? Better not draw our own on sacred soil, not without provocation. Looks bad afterwards. Anyway, one always feels a bit awkward about this sort of thing, don’t you think? I mean guns and all that. End up feeling like some dreadful gangster. Let’s try and flush him out.’

  They did not have to go far because the figure came running towards them, making for the gate. ‘Don’t challenge,’ whispered Anthony. ‘Grab him first and introduce ourselves afterwards.’ A few seconds later Anthony flung himself upon the advancing figure with surprising zest, tackling high. Charles, recalling what he’d always understood to be good rugby practice, tackled low. There was a short, confused struggle. The man was on his back but still fighting. There was a lot of grunting from someone. Charles held both the man’s feet to his chest but one got free and caught him painfully in the mouth. He grabbed the flailing boot again and held on as tightly as he could. The other was quite inert. After a while he became aware of Anthony’s voice saying, ‘Let go, Thoroughgood, damn you! Let go!’

  Charles let go of Anthony’s boot, which was the one that had done the kicking, and found to his relief that the other belonged to the prisoner, who had given up the struggle. Then he noticed that it, too, was an Army boot and that it, too, had above it a pair of Army trousers. Then he recognised Van Horne. They all three got up and dusted themselves down in an embarrassed silence. ‘Thought you were one of them,’ said Anthony after a while.

  ‘Thought you were one of the monks, sir,’ said Van Horne. He was trembling and looked very pale. He seemed entirely bereft of his normal composure.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ said Charles. He was aware of sounding annoyed, and was not at all displeased by that. His lip hurt and there was a taste of blood in his mouth.

  Van Horne swallowed. ‘Helping Lieutenant Chatsworth, sir. Under orders, sir. He found a tunnel leading from one of our tunnels into the monastery and he found arms in the monastery which he said he knew were there all along but he didn’t know how to get them. I helped him get them out by bringing them up through the monastery. We were then to bring them back here and say we found them in some tunnel. I was under orders, sir: he told me, I couldn’t do anything else.’

  ‘What were you doing when we caught you?’ asked Charles.

  ‘I was getting out of it, sir. I was escaping. I was on my way back to tell you. We loaded the arms into the four-tonner but Beazely panicked or something and didn’t wait for us and drove off and crashed it and all the monks swarmed out.’

  Van Horne was so uncharacteristically abject that Charles felt embarrassed for him. ‘Where’s Chatsworth now?’ he asked, more gently.

  ‘Captured by monks, sir.’ There was a silence. ‘I got away but they got him.’

  Charles looked from Van Horne to Anthony, and back to Van Horne, but neither seemed about to laugh.

  ‘That’s a pretty poor show,’ said Anthony.

  ‘I was under orders, sir. I had to do what he told me.’

  ‘Not you. Mr Chatsworth. Does the regiment no good at all, this sort of thing. Monks. Can’t recall a precedent.’ It was clear that Anthony was deeply moved. He picked up his beret and shook it. ‘Well, we’d better see what we can do about rescuing him, hadn’t we? Go back to the Factory, Van Horne, and cope with any press interest. Just say that there’s a military operation under way and you can’t comment until it’s over. Charles, come with me. It helps to have two when negotiating.’ This was the new, decisive and sober Anthony. Charles followed him, dabbing at his lip with his handkerchief.

  If the monks were surprised at seeing two grubby officers with over-size berets, one with a bloody mouth, they did not show it. They were politely uncommunicative and kept the visitors waiting in the hall until the arrival of Father O’Rourke, who was in charge. Father O’Rourke was a wizened, wise-looking little man with bright blue eyes that were never still. The CO had met and clashed with him, and had told him openly that he did not trust him. He now gave the impression of one who, following the capture of Chatsworth, could be surprised by nothing but whose capacity for indignation and outrage was undiminished. He said calmly that he was very angry at
the military invasion of his monastery and that he was sure that the consequences of the action would be serious and widespread.

  Anthony now showed himself to be politic in a way that should have counted for more in the Army than it ever did. He expressed deep regret at the hot-headed and unauthorised action of an over-enthusiastic young officer, an ‘unfortunate young man’ in whom he had detected signs of stress only that day, and who would now be the subject of an enquiry. He then added that the only good thing to have come of the episode was that the ‘monastery dump’ had been found before it could be used by the Provisional IRA to kill people. Father O’Rourke, in denying that the monastery had had any knowledge of the arms, again stressed his sense of outrage and his conviction that the resulting publicity would be very bad for the perpetrators, and not the less so because they admitted to employing mentally unstable officers. Anthony accepted without hesitation that Father O’Rourke knew nothing of what his own monastery harboured in its vaults and speculated that if the monastery vaults were linked, however tenuously, to the Factory tunnels then the arms must almost certainly have come in from the outside. He hoped fervently that the resulting publicity would take account of this and would not implicate the monastery in any way with the storing of arms for the Provisional IRA, though he was, to be honest, more than a little pessimistic as to whether all sections of the community in Northern Ireland would see it like this. He further hoped that the Holy Mother Church would not be embarrassed by the publicity. Father O’Rourke shook his head and said that it was bound to be a bad business for everyone. Anthony said that at least the arms were out of the monastery now, almost as though they had never been in. Father O’Rourke sincerely wished they had not – if he had known about them and had known where to find Anthony he would certainly have told him. Anthony ventured to suggest that they had even been elsewhere. He was sure that it could so easily look as though they had been found in a tunnel beneath the Factory, which would solve everyone’s problems, though in order to substantiate this story the ‘unfortunate young man’s’ evidence could be crucial. Father O’Rourke wondered whether the unfortunate young man could be relied upon. Anthony was quite certain that he could. Father O’Rourke wondered whether it would be possible to do something about the monastery’s damaged gates. Anthony was quite certain that it would. Father O’Rourke thought it would be best if Anthony spoke to the young man in the privacy of the Factory, and added that he would be glad to be able to cast an eye over the copy of the press statement before it was issued.

  And so agreement was reached. Charles was half hoping they would be taken down to retrieve Chatsworth from a cell deep in the earth but he was brought to Father O’Rourke’s study by two large and grizzled monks. He looked ragged and dirty and a little smaller than usual. His face and hands were still partially blackened and his trousers were torn. He forced an uncertain grin on seeing Anthony and Charles, which became a dying grimace as Anthony said sharply to him, ‘Where’s your beret?’

  ‘Back in the Factory,’ said Chatsworth.

  ‘I’ll speak to you about that later.’

  The three of them left the monastery after courteous farewells between Anthony and Father O’Rourke. Charles noticed that Chatsworth was limping slightly. ‘Were the monks very rough with you?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, very,’ said Chatsworth seriously. ‘And they used bad language too. And they pinched my kukri.’

  ‘Before you had a chance to use it or after?’

  ‘Before, unfortunately. Otherwise I might have got away. I shall put in a complaint.’

  ‘You’ll do nothing at all,’ said Anthony. ‘Being captured by monks brings disgrace upon the regiment. You’ll do nothing to advertise it.’

  ‘But we got the arms, didn’t we?’

  ‘Only through the timely intervention of Thoroughgood and myself. It’s lucky for you that we both happened to be present and sober.’

  Chatsworth hobbled and skipped a little to keep up. ‘What’s going to happen to me, then? I was rather hoping for a medal.’

  ‘Quite the contrary. I haven’t decided yet, but you may lose your name.’

  Chatsworth was silent. To lose one’s name and to be referred to by everyone by one’s number was a punishment normally given only to Sandhurst cadets and recruits under training. Chatsworth looked worried beneath the polish. Shooting would at least have been honourable.

  The party was over when they got back to the Factory. The drink had run out and so the press had departed, though leaving one or two of their number as corpses on the ops room floor. There were a few Army casualties – ghostly survivors, it seemed, of some long-lost battle. Edward wandered about starkly staring, like one who had been too long in the wilderness, and was ignored by everyone. The body of Nigel Beale was said to be on view in the manhole in which the drink had been discovered. Half of Chatsworth’s platoon was missing, allegedly with Moira Conn. Beazely, remarkably sober considering his previous state though still not firing on all cylinders, as he put it, clutched her shoulder-bag. ‘Probably being rogered by the lot of them,’ he said. ‘She goes in for that now and again. It was the staff of the Europa last time. Good background stuff to this story but they won’t print stuff about other journalists. Have you ever noticed that? Dirt on everyone else but never journalists. S’pose we’re all clean-living. Any chance of some black coffee?’

  The kettle was found and coffee was made for several. It was drunk from the same various containers as had served for the party. Charles told Beazely what had happened in the monastery. ‘This’ll make the story of the year,’ said Beazely. ‘I’ll leave out the drink, of course. We can make Chatsworth a national hero if you like.’

  ‘No,’ said Charles, ‘I’ll do this story.’

  Beazely waved his hand. ‘Don’t worry, sport, don’t worry. I can handle this one myself. For once in my life I was the man on the spot. Anyway, it’s a big story. Needs a professional.’

  Charles was tired enough not to be worried by niceties, whch had never really seemed appropriate with Beazely anyway. ‘It’s our story. We’ll handle it. I’ll write your report.’

  ‘Now come on, Charlie, that’s not how we do business, you and me. Fair’s fair, all by agreement, you know –’

  ‘D’you want to live?’ Beazely stopped speaking. ‘Because if you do you’ll do it my way. It’s Chatsworth, you see. He’s mad. You’ve seen that for yourself. Well, he’s convinced you betrayed him to the monks. No argument can shift him. You know what he’s like. And he’s got a knife. All he wants is anonymity, a chance to do good in secret. If you do this story and blow it up all over the place he’ll kill you. We can’t hold him back for ever. He’s an unguided missile. I’ll do a story which does you credit and doesn’t mention him. How about that?’

  Ultimately any appeal to Beazely’s sense of self-preservation could be guaranteed to work. He argued but in the end the thought of being stalked for the rest of his life by a vengeful and murderous Chatsworth was more powerful than his pride. He was already convinced of Chatsworth’s madness and had been threatened by him once that evening when he had at first refused to drive the lorry. Chatsworth had tapped the kukri in its sheath and remarked that he never drew it without drawing blood.

  Charles had to write three accounts of the incident that night. Van Horne had disappeared and, anyway, it would have been unwise to get him to help. One account was for the Brigade Commander, ghost-written on behalf of Anthony, which stated that the arms had been discovered in a tunnel connected with the Factory tunnels and which left vague the actual point where they had been found while implying that it was somewhere under the road. He then did a press statement which elaborated on this by saying that the Army had been moving the arms secretly after dark in order to avoid provoking trouble in the area of the monastery on a Sunday. The ploy had gone wrong when the driver of the lorry had been struck by a stone and had crashed his lorry outside the monastery gates. For Beazely he wrote a more dramatic account, beginning,
‘For seven hours I sweated in a rat-infested, booby-trapped IRA tunnel helping soldiers remove crates of deadly Armalites from under the noses of the terrorists. I was part of a specialist “digger” unit . . .’

  The story was in time for the late morning editions. Beazely was content, the rest of the press happy, Anthony very pleased. He lit a cigar and drank black coffee. ‘Good night’s work, old boy. We can pat ourselves on the back, you and I. Spot of shut-eye now, I think. Advise the same for you.’

  Charles returned to the sleeping area and stepped carefully over the blissfully unconscious Moore. What he saw next was Chatsworth squatting like a despondent Job amidst the ruins of the bunk. It was utterly smashed. Bits of cardboard and wood lay scattered all over the floor. Kit belonging to both of them was strewn everywhere. Only the sheet of corrugated iron was intact. ‘What happened?’ asked Charles.

  Chatsworth looked up slowly, like a man rudely recalled from contemplation of eternal mysteries. ‘Don’t you know?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That bird, the journalist. Moira.’

  ‘Did she do all this?’

  ‘She wasn’t alone.’

  Charles recalled the rumour of Chatsworth’s assignation with her. ‘What have you done to her?’

  ‘Me? Nothing. It was what she did with half my platoon. She was supposed to meet me here but I was still with those bloody monks.’ He looked again at the devastation surrounding him. They spoke in undertones to avoid waking Moore. ‘It took me nearly a week to build. I’ll never be able to get the materials for another. I had to pinch them all as it was. And now she’s gone off in Henry Sandy’s ambulance.’