The Perfect Soldier

by Hurley, Graham

  McFaul lay down again, careful not to disturb the sleeping shape beside him. Off and on, he’d been with Bennie for three years now, and the two of them shared a rapport that had been cemented in the minefields: Kuwait first, and then – after McFaul’s convalescence – the six difficult months they’d endured in the madness of Afghanistan. It was there that McFaul had first put it all together – the mines, the money, the victims – and it was there that he’d first truly understood the way the scam worked. The guys in the factories making the stuff and the guys in the suits flogging it like sweets, Dolly Mixtures from the First World, enough cheap high explosive to lasso an entire society and choke it half to death.

  McFaul shuddered, all too aware of the ache in his own leg, the price his own flesh had paid. In a curious way, though, none of that had mattered. Not until Afghanistan, not until he’d been up in the high pastures, up beyond Jaji. He’d found the little Afghan goat herd quite by accident, his body curled amongst the rocks. The trail of bloodstains, already brown, led up the mountain to the scorchmarks on the path where he’d lost his foot.

  The mine had been Russian, probably one of the little PFM-Is, and the boy had finally died from shock, and exposure, and loss of blood, in sight of his home village in the valley below. Another statistic for the men in the suits. Another tiny triumph for the guys who’d sell you area denial. Later, McFaul had met the family, learned the boy’s name, pledged himself to take whatever small revenge he could. The spilling of blood – his own, Mohammed’s – carried certain responsibilities. And one day, somehow, he knew he’d repay a little of the pain.

  One of the big 120-mm mortars fell nearby, a deafening blast that rocked the building overhead. For a moment or two the generator faltered, dimming the light even more, and McFaul felt a movement beside him. Bennie was sitting upright, staring at the wall opposite. McFaul laid a hand on his arm. Bennie looked at him.

  ‘Boss?’

  ‘It’s OK, mate. Fucker missed.’

  Bennie nodded, sleep compounding his confusion. Then he rubbed his eyes.

  ‘Meant to tell you,’ he mumbled.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That bird from MSF. Christianne. The nurse. She was looking for you earlier. Wanted a word.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Dunno.’ He yawned, lying down again. ‘Some kind of favour, I think.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  Molly awoke in the middle of the night, uncertain for a moment exactly where she was. She’d been dreaming about James. He was kneeling by some kind of pond or pool. It was very hot. The water was a strange colour, almost green, and he kept dipping his hands in it, cupping the liquid, offering it to her the way he’d sometimes come into the kitchen as a child, carrying trophies from the garden. His expression was childlike, too, the purest delight. I did this, he seemed to be telling her. Mine. My efforts. All my own work.

  Molly peered into the darkness, at last recognising the noise at the window. Since they’d gone to bed the wind had got up and now it was raining hard, the kind of rain that drove at the cottage across the bare, flat fields. One of the gutters beneath the big lime tree had become blocked with leaves and she could hear the water spilling over, splashing onto the flagstones below. She thought of James again by his pond, and she eased carefully out of bed, knowing that there was no possibility of getting back to sleep.

  Giles began to stir and for a moment she thought she’d woken him up. Then he grunted and rolled over and his breathing resumed the slow, steady rhythm that signalled deep sleep. They’d driven home in convoy from the marina. She’d prepared a simple supper and they’d gone to bed early, closer than they’d been for months. They’d even made love, tender, consolatory, Molly letting him make the running, fitting herself to him, responding gladly to his urgent need to please her. Afterwards, she’d told him how much she loved him, how much he mattered to her, sealing his lips with a single moistened fingertip. No more apologies, she’d whispered. No more tears.

  Downstairs, wrapped in Giles’s dressing gown, she plugged in the electric fire and made herself a pot of tea. James’s letters she kept in the chest of drawers beside the telephone. She pulled them out, a biggish bundle tucked into a Marks & Spencer plastic bag. Since Sunday, she’d wanted to read them again, to rejoin her son, but somehow there’d never been the time nor the space. With the wind howling around the cottage and the rest of the world asleep, now seemed the perfect moment.

  She knelt in front of the fire and spread the letters around her. To her astonishment, James had written regularly, more than a dozen letters in all, and although the blue airmail envelopes had been arriving less frequently of late, each one still contained at least six pages of the awkward, backward-sloping scrawl that was unmistakably his. She reached for one of the letters now, a random choice, remembering the night she and Giles had driven him up to the airport. Even in the car, his excitement had been palpable, an almost physical thing. After three diligent years working for the local authority – a junior surveyor’s job in the Public Works department – he was at last breaking free and getting his hands on something that mattered. The night-school courses had paid off. He had the skills that Africa wanted. He’d even managed to persuade Terra Sancta to bend the rules about minimum age qualification and let him get out there early.

  At Heathrow, she and Giles had waved goodbye beside the queue for International Departures. He’d filed past the man who checked the tickets and he’d paused beside the big smoked-glass doors that led into the security area, glancing briefly back, raising a hand, nonchalant as ever. He’d been wearing jeans and his favourite hooped rugby-style shirt. Over his shoulder, he’d carried the bag Giles had given him as a going-away present. With his day-old crew cut and his carefree grin, he’d looked about twelve.

  Molly blinked. The letter on her lap had dissolved into a blur. She frowned, helping herself to tea, drawing Giles’s dressing gown more tightly around her. James and Africa, she told herself, had been made for each other. The fact that the place had also killed him was simply unfortunate. Given the opportunity again – six months in Angola, the chance to run his own programme, make his own decisions – she was sure he’d be back at the airport in a flash, offering them a final wave, turning on his heel and disappearing behind those hideous smoked-glass doors.

  She started the letter afresh. It had come from Muengo and it was dated early October. That meant he’d been in the place nearly a month. She turned the page, surprised again at how quickly he’d found his feet, impressed by the life he’d managed to make for himself. James had always hated depending on other people. Wherever he’d gone, he always seemed to have existed in a kind of bubble, insulated from the world outside. Nothing fazed him. Very little upset him. As long as he had his Walkman and his tapes and something half-decent to eat and drink, then he simply got on with the task in hand, not thinking too hard about other people, not thinking too much about anything but the next day’s schedule. In one sense it was a blessing, this tunnel vision of his, and in this respect he was a bit like Giles: solid, cheerful, thick-skinned to the point of arrogance. Like father like son, she thought ruefully, turning another page. Whether it was pollution risks in New Jersey or land mines in Angola, there simply wouldn’t be a problem.

  A phrase caught her eye, making her smile. James’s first task in Muengo involved laying on a water supply from the river. To do this he’d had to build something called an infiltration gallery. Molly hadn’t a clue what this might be but James had penned a detailed description, complete with diagrams. First he dug a hole near the river. Then he half-filled it with fragments of stone. Then he waited while the river found its way through the soil and into the hole. Once the hole was full, wrote James, it was dead simple to get the stuff away to a storage tank. All you’d need was a pump and a length of pipe and a tank at the other end. She looked at the phrase again, ‘dead simple’, hearing him saying it, picturing the expression on his face as he did so, impatient, even slightly amused. The
world of practical challenges – of nuts and bolts and flanges and grommets – had never held any fears for James. On the contrary, it had made him the person he’d become. Life, he’d recently told her, was a bit like his first motor bike. Stick the bits together in the right order, and it’ll probably work.

  She reached for another letter, a week or so later, looking for a particular photo. True to form, James’s hole by the river had been a triumph. Nearby, on a little mound of spoil, he’d installed a pump and the photo had recorded the moment when the pump had first spluttered into action. She found the photo at last, the kids crowding around the spout of water, their faces twisted up towards the camera, their sleek black bodies already soaking wet. The closest child was a little girl. The bright red shirt she was wearing was at least three sizes too big, hanging comically around her ankles, but the huge grin on her face told Molly everything she needed to know about what her son was doing in Africa. She turned the photo over. On the back, in careful capitals, James had written ‘MARIA’S FIRST SHOWER – FRIENDS FOR LIFE!!’

  Molly read through the letters, still not bothering to sort them into any kind of order, happy to dip into this new life James had led. There’d been moments of special achievement, duly recorded and passed on. To dig the trench for the water pipes, he’d managed to locate an excavator, a big yellow digger that featured in at least four photos. The digger and the driver had cost Terra Sancta $400 a day but he’d saved weeks of manual labour and got the water to the distribution point in record time. This had won James what he called ‘a herogram’ from Terra Sancta’s regional office, and in the letter he’d reproduced the text in full. ‘Terrific news about Stage One. Expect your pipeline in Luanda soonest. Press on with the good work.’

  This pat on the back had obviously pleased James no end but there’d been bleaker moments, too. James, typically, hadn’t made much of these but there’d clearly been friction in Muengo with someone on the military side. This person, whoever he was, seemed to have responsibility for clearing the minefields. One of his jobs was to brief newcomers on what to look out for, where not to go, and James had evidently been less than receptive. ‘Bloke’s got a problem,’ he’d written, ‘I think he thinks we’re all cretins. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. Don’t do the other. I told him he ought to try local government. Right up his street!’ Molly pondered the likely exchange. Mines had never meant anything to her but for the last forty-eight hours she’d thought of little else. Big mines. Small mines. Green mines. Blue mines. Even mines with little cartoon faces that rose from the soil and ghosted through her dreams. In reality, she hadn’t a clue what they did, how they worked, and whenever James had mentioned them he’d never gone into detail. It seemed they were just there, semi-permanent, part of the landscape, as inescapable as the weather or the passage of the seasons. It was obvious now that James should have listened to the man in Muengo, but it was typical that he hadn’t. James, like his father, always knew best.

  Molly looked up, hearing the wind tugging at a loose tile on the garage roof, wondering how on earth she was going to get to Angola. Reading his letters again had given her glimpses of his life out there, scenes from a film she’d only half-seen. What she needed now was the rest of the story, the whole plot. To understand exactly what had happened – the friendships he’d formed, the work he’d done – would be to share with him those last few weeks of his life. As a mother, it was surely the least she owed herself.

  Her eye returned to the last of the letters. James had been writing about a girl he’d met, a French nurse called Christianne. As ever, he’d included a photo. The girl had a soft, oval face dusted with freckles and framed by a mass of auburn curls. Her head was tilted slightly to one side and her smile reminded Molly of moments from her own youth. It spoke of the excitement of a new relationship, of possibilities yet unexplored. It was very James to have found someone so striking and from his letter he sounded more than keen. Christianne, it seemed, spoke perfect English. She worked for an organisation called Médecins Sans Frontières. There were several other girls with her, and where they lived they had crates and crates of incredibly classy white wine. The girls were evidently planning a party. They’d asked James to fix up the music. At the end of the letter, he was musing aloud about getting Christianne to England one day. Then, typically, something else had occurred to him. ‘Help,’ he’d written, ‘post goes in the morning and I haven’t sorted out the blokes’ rice rations. Eduardo’ll go bananas. Got to rush. Boa noite.’

  Molly folded the letter and reached for the switch on the electric fire. Only last week, she’d gone to a bookshop and looked up the phrase. It was Portuguese. It meant ‘good night’.

  Robbie Cunningham was still in bed unwrapping his birthday presents when the phone rang. Liz fetched the mobile from the kitchen. The alarm clock on the bedside table read 07.54.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Westerby here. Do you have a pen?’

  Robbie wedged the mobile to his ear, reaching down for his satchel, wondering why on earth the Director should be phoning so early. At the Terra Sancta headquarters in Winchester, he still kept university hours, turning up at his desk around ten. Now he sounded brisk, even excited.

  ‘Colchester,’ he was saying, ‘you know the town at all?’

  ‘Yes. We went that way on Sunday. En route to the Jordans’ place.’

  ‘Good. There’s a hotel in the High Street. The Blue Boar. Got that?’

  Robbie grunted an affirmative, scribbling down the name. The Director was talking about Llewelyn. Apparently he’d be waiting in the lounge bar at half-past twelve. Robbie was to meet him there.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I want you to do the introductions.’

  ‘Who with?’

  ‘Mrs Jordan. I phoned her five minutes ago. I said you’d pick her up and take her to lunch. She’ll be ready by twelve. Apparently it’s only half an hour from her place.’

  Robbie frowned. Llewelyn had been on to him twice in the last twenty-four hours, trying to get him to arrange a meet with James Jordan’s mother, but both times Robbie had said he was too busy. Now, it seemed he had no choice.

  ‘But why?’ he said again. ‘Why the meeting?’

  ‘We’re taking her to Angola.’

  ‘Who’s taking her?’

  ‘You are. With Todd Llewelyn.’

  ‘But I thought we agreed that—’

  Robbie broke off, unable to interrupt the Director’s flow. Llewelyn, he said, had been talking to some of his media contacts. The new People’s Channel were mounting a major series about the Third World. They were looking for good stories at what Llewelyn called ‘the sharp end’. They wanted new angles, some fresh way of establishing the realities of the aid business. James Jordan, it seemed, had caught their imagination.

  ‘But he’s dead,’ Robbie pointed out.

  ‘Exactly. It’s a perfect focus. For them and for us.’

  ‘Who says?’

  ‘Todd. He’s extremely bullish. We’ve been discussing our profile and he thinks this could be the breakthrough. He’s promising an hour of national television. He understands our reservations, naturally, but he says we’re looking a gift horse in the mouth and I must say I agree. Apart from anything else, we can’t afford to be left out of this thing. A series without us would be a disaster. We’d disappear without trace.’

  ‘But the boy’s dead,’ Robbie said again. ‘As far as I know, he wandered into a minefield and got himself killed. Is that something we want to be part of? Sending young kids to their graves?’

  There was a brief silence. Then the Director was back again. He was beginning to sound irritated.

  ‘You’re supposed to understand the importance of all this,’ he said. ‘It’s part of your job description, public relations.’

  ‘This isn’t PR,’ Robbie said at once. ‘PR’s something you can control, or at least try to. This could go anywhere. Todd Llewelyn’s a journalist. He doesn’t work for us.’

  ‘U
ntrue. He’s on a modest retainer.’

  ‘Enough to buy him? Body and soul?’ Robbie broke off, knowing that he’d gone too far. Arguing about concepts like PR was one thing. Questioning the Director’s personal judgement was quite another. At this rate he’d be celebrating the first day of his twenty-sixth year by looking for a new job. He began to apologise but the Director broke in again.

  ‘No, you’re right,’ he said. ‘Absolutely right.’

  ‘I am?’

  ‘Yes. Of course there are dangers. Of course we have to be careful. That’s why I want you there. Llewelyn still has a big following and I have no doubt that he can do us a great deal of good. But we have to keep an eye on him. He can be rather … ah … tabloid. Do you follow me?’

  Robbie nodded, depressed already. Over the years, he’d kept half an eye on Todd Llewelyn’s TV career, the kind of line he took, his fascination with trauma and personal tragedy. In Robbie’s opinion, the man was an animal, a predator, interested only in the red meat of other people’s suffering.

  ‘You want me to mind him? Is that it?’

  ‘Yes, exactly. I have his word that he won’t embarrass us. He knows about our wind-down strategy in Angola and he’s promised to steer well clear. In any case, I doubt whether you’ll be getting much further than Luanda. Muengo’s under siege, as you know.’

  ‘So what happens to the boy’s body?’

  ‘Peterson came through during the night. He’s expecting a ceasefire. He’ll fly the body out.’ He paused. ‘I’m sure Luanda will give Todd everything he needs. I’ve told him you know the place inside out. He’s after a bit of local colour. You know the way these people work.’

  Robbie said nothing, thinking about the Angolan capital. In Luanda, local colour was a polite phrase for civic breakdown: pot-holed roads, 1,000 per cent inflation, and mountains of rotting garbage. He thought of Mrs Jordan, the impact the place would make on her. To cope with all that, she’d have to be very strong indeed.