The Perfect Soldier

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘There won’t be a next time,’ he said. ‘Not from here, anyway.’

  McFaul was back at the schoolhouse by early afternoon, stepping in from the sunshine, aware at once that something was wrong. The place had been wrecked, everything wooden stripped from the schoolroom. The door jambs had gone, the window frames, even some of the floorboards. Gone, too, were the desks and chairs where the students had once sat. In their place, strewn everywhere, were items from the crates of equipment Bennie had readied for the evacuation flight. In the event, Katilo had refused permission for the equipment to leave Muengo, and now McFaul understood why.

  He knelt amongst the debris, trying to make a mental inventory, trying to remember exactly what Bennie had packed. The Ebingers had gone for sure, the $2,000 state-of-the-art detectors that would signal even the tiniest trace of metal, buried in the earth. Then there were the survey toolkits, and prismatic compasses, and the big HF radio that had been so temperamental. Both GPS locators had gone too, the priceless navigational kit that used satellites to give you a spot-on terrestrial fix. The stuff that was left was largely domestic – blankets, cooking gear, a couple of tropical tents – and McFaul began to rummage amongst it, struck by another thought.

  Christianne had appeared from the dormitory. She stood in the open doorway, framed by the bare brickwork. The soldiers, she told him, had arrived at noon. They’d come on Katilo’s orders. They’d only been interested in the de-mining equipment, plus anything wooden they could lay their hands on. Next door, where she and McFaul slept, they hadn’t touched a thing.

  McFaul was still on his hands and knees amongst the litter of pots and pans. Eventually, he looked up.

  ‘The laptops?’ he enquired. ‘The disks?’

  Christianne nodded.

  ‘Those, too.’

  ‘They took them both? The disks as well?’

  ‘Yes.’

  McFaul slumped back against the wall. The little laptop computers contained all the data they’d amassed over the last five months. Every waking hour of the Muengo operation, every mine, every cleared metre of earth, was recorded in the laptops and on the disks. Bennie should at least have sorted out the disks. Even after Katilo prohibited the shipping of equipment, he should have taken them. He could have slipped them into a pocket. He could have given them to one of the aircrew. But he hadn’t. He’d just left them, along with everything else. McFaul knew that. He’d checked, only yesterday, spotting them through the slats in one of the crates, wrapped in polythene and taped to one of the laptops. The data was also stored in the laptops’ memory but that made no difference because now the laptops had disappeared as well.

  Unforgivable, he thought. Absolutely one hundred per cent fucking unforgivable.

  Christianne knelt beside him. All McFaul could do was shake his head. Five months. Three hundred and seventy-four lifted mines. Acres of ground made safe for crop raising, for kids, for animals, each square metre carefully logged. But now the records had disappeared, and with them had gone that total certainty that had become the trademark of Global operations. One hundred per cent clearance, McFaul thought grimly. That was the way we always worked. That was our promise. And now it meant fuck all.

  Christianne was talking about the soldiers. She said she’d done her best to stop them but they’d ignored her. McFaul wasn’t listening.

  ‘What happened to the easel?’

  ‘They took that too. They said they wanted firewood.’

  ‘What about the maps?’

  ‘I don’t know about the maps. I didn’t see.’

  ‘Why not, for God’s sake?’

  ‘I …’ Christianne was staring at him.

  McFaul struggled to his feet, pushing her aside, searching through the piles of discarded equipment again. The maps, he thought. They’d never take the maps. Not lines of red dots and bits and pieces of fancy cross-hatching. That would mean bugger-all. That would mean nothing. Just bits of paper. He tossed the blankets aside. He kicked the saucepans into the corner. The maps had gone.

  ‘Who were these guys? Where did they go?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Did you get their names? Could you recognise them?’

  ‘Maybe.’ She nodded, wary now.

  McFaul hesitated by the doorway. Katilo had moved into the MSF house. He’d taken the camera back there. He was already talking of more filming, extra shots around Muengo, then a whole new sequence, somewhere else, somewhere completely different.

  Christianne was standing by the window, examining a splinter in her hand. When McFaul turned to leave, she called him back.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To find Katilo.’

  ‘You want me to come?’

  McFaul shrugged, too angry to care.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ he said, limping away into the sunshine.

  Katilo was addressing a circle of soldiers in the kitchen of the MSF house. One of the bodyguards in the garden outside, recognising McFaul, had accompanied him down the hall. Now, McFaul stood in the open doorway, waiting for Katilo to finish. He was talking in Ovimbundu, a long monologue, punctuated by flourishes with a length of bamboo he carried in his right hand. Beside him stood the easel.

  McFaul was already looking round for the maps. Except for rubbish abandoned before the evacuation, the kitchen was empty. McFaul waited a minute or so longer then began to go through the rest of the house. Christianne’s bedroom had been taken over by Katilo. A generator was already purring in the front garden and a length of cable through the window powered the television and video-recorder. On the screen was a picture of Katilo, a single frame from his march across the cathedral square. He was looking up, distracted by a flock of birds, and the lowness of the angle magnified his bulk. He looked almost biblical, the prophet come to free his people, and McFaul knew at once that he must have chosen this image himself. He can’t leave it alone, he thought. He’s been spooling and respooling the footage, infatuated with the role he’s assigned himself. Redeemer. King. Messiah.

  McFaul heard footsteps behind him, turning in time to see Katilo’s huge frame pause by the door. He’d been on his way out. Now he joined McFaul, his eyes at once going to the television.

  ‘Good, eh?’

  McFaul nodded, asking at once about the equipment from the schoolhouse. Katilo’s men had taken computers, small ones. Where were they? Katilo picked up the remote control for the video-player. The image flickered briefly on the screen and then began to move. Katilo was heading for the cathedral. Again.

  ‘Gone,’ he muttered. ‘They’ve gone.’

  ‘Gone where?’

  ‘Huambo.’ He nodded. ‘They belong to UNITA now.’

  ‘When? When did they go?’

  Katilo was grinning, watching himself pausing beside the big wooden door, delivering his lines about peace. The angle of the sun through the bedroom window flooded the screen with light, and Katilo knelt beside the television a moment, turning it carefully away from the glare, an object of reverence.

  McFaul was losing his temper. This clown was responsible for laying the fucking mines. McFaul and his team had risked their lives trying to lift them. Without the maps, or the computer records, they were as good as laid again.

  ‘Maps,’ he said slowly. ‘There were maps on the easel, pinned to the easel, when it left the schoolhouse. Where are they now? Where have they gone?’

  Katilo ignored the question, transfixed by the video. He was kneeling before the altar, caged by the shafts of dusty sunlight, and McFaul watched him crossing himself again as he saw the sequence anew. McFaul stepped in front of the screen, blocking Katilo’s view.

  ‘Maps,’ he said thickly.

  Katilo looked up, surprised, as if he’d just heard the question for the first time. He frowned a moment, then went to the window and bellowed to one of the bodyguards. The soldier came running, the same man who’d let McFaul into the house. Katilo muttered something McFaul didn’t understand, his eyes returning to the TV
set. Behind the set, for the first time, McFaul recognised the bottles of Glenfiddich he’d last seen in Katilo’s fridge. Katilo was bending down, feeling blindly. His fingers tightened around a bottle and he picked it up, passing it to McFaul without a word.

  ‘Go with the soldier,’ he muttered. ‘He knows about your maps.’

  McFaul felt a tug on his arm. The soldier was taking him away, taking him to where the maps were. They stepped outside, into the sunshine, McFaul still holding the bottle. The house next door had belonged to a sister charity, Oxfam. A handful of soldiers were squatting around a fire in the corner of the garden, surrounded by a small mountain of hacked-up wood. McFaul paused, recognising the desks from the schoolhouse. The soldiers looked up, curious. One of them was stirring a pot of funje. McFaul peered at the fire. A corner of charred plywood looked familiar. He reached forward with his foot, turning it over. On the other side, clearly visible, were the letters G-L-O-B-, part of Bennie’s carefully stencilled label for the onward shippers at Luanda airport. Bennie had used black paint. McFaul had watched him do it.

  The soldiers were still looking at McFaul. He tried to ask them about the maps, using sign language. At first they didn’t understand. Then the bodyguard got the drift, explaining what McFaul wanted. There’d been paper on the easel. Sheets of paper with marks on them. Where were they now? One of the soldiers pointed at the fire, miming a box of matches. Paper lights fires, he was explaining. Fires cook food. Food fills empty bellies. The other soldiers watched him, laughing, and McFaul turned away, limping back through the knee-high grass, his face betraying nothing.

  Piet Rademeyer’s little blue Dove landed at dusk. With a hiss of pneumatic brakes, he brought it to a halt at the end of the tiny strip. One of Katilo’s trucks came bumping across to meet the plane and the soldiers gaped as Rademeyer helped Molly down from the rear door. The aircraft secured for the night, the truck rolled away towards Muengo, Rademeyer and Molly in the back. On the outskirts of the city, dark now, they took the road to the schoolhouse. When the truck stopped, Molly could see a flicker of candle-light in the room the men had used as a dormitory. Rademeyer lowered the tailgate and jumped down from the truck. So far, he hadn’t let go of the blue canvas bag. The truck roared away.

  Molly and Rademeyer exchanged glances, then Molly led the way into the schoolhouse. The door to the classroom was missing. She stepped inside, tripping at once. Rademeyer helped her to her feet. Uncertain now, she picked her way slowly across to the other side of the room. The door to the dormitory was missing too. She could see the candle-light playing on the bare walls. She paused in the doorway, peering in. Across the room, beside the candle, two camp-beds had been pushed together. There were bodies on the camp-beds, unmoving. Molly thought she recognised the French nurse but she couldn’t be sure. She called her name, very softly.

  ‘Christianne?’

  Nothing happened. Molly looked at Rademeyer, fearing the worst. Rademeyer unzipped the canvas bag and produced a gun. Molly stared at it. It was an automatic, a big thing, steady in his hand. He moved carefully across the room, the gun trained on the bodies. For the first time, Molly saw the bottle. Rademeyer was beside the nearest camp-bed now. He reached out, peeling back the single sheet. Then he let it fall.

  ‘Long guy?’ he queried softly. ‘Thin? Scars on his face?’

  Molly nodded.

  ‘McFaul,’ she confirmed.

  Rademeyer began to laugh, chuckling in the semi-darkness.

  ‘Rat-arsed,’ he said. ‘The girl, too.’

  It was nearly midnight before Katilo came to the schoolhouse. Molly woke up to the cough of an engine. She heard voices outside. In the darkness, she could see nothing. Then the beam of a torch appeared at the window, sweeping around the dormitory, settling on the camp-beds by the wall. Molly kept very still. Already, she felt like a prisoner, unwashed, frightened, her life in the hands of total strangers.

  ‘Molly?’ She recognised Rademeyer’s voice behind the torch.

  ‘Over here.’

  The torch swung towards her. She shielded her eyes. There was movement across the room. She heard a low curse. McFaul, she thought. She got up and stepped across to the beds. The torch tracked with her. McFaul was sitting upright, rubbing his eyes.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘It’s me. Molly.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Molly. Molly Jordan.’ She paused. ‘James’s mother.’

  Christianne began to stir, pushing the sheet back, then Molly heard another voice at the window, deeper, an African speaking English with an American drawl. He was saying something about a party.

  ‘Party?’

  Christianne sounded bewildered, reaching for McFaul, and Molly heard the African chuckling as the torch left her face and drifted down to find the empty bottle of Glenfiddich beside the bed.

  They drove away from the schoolhouse in the MSF Landcruiser, Katilo at the wheel. He’d evidently commandeered the vehicle for his personal use and kept trying to start a conversation with Christianne, telling her how responsive it was. Christianne sat between Molly and McFaul in the back, her head in her hands, trying to fight the movement of the vehicle. McFaul sat beside her, stiff, unbending. After recognising Katilo at the window of the dormitory, he hadn’t said a word.

  Molly spotted the MSF house from the end of the street. In the garden next door a huge bonfire was alight, flames licking upwards, showering the sky with sparks. There were soldiers everywhere, swaying to music, milling around the garden, spilling on to the street, and they parted with a slow, smiling insolence the moment they recognised Katilo at the wheel of the Landcruiser. There were trucks parked at the side of the road, more soldiers, and when Katilo stopped and opened the door to get out, Molly could hear the music more clearly. It was loud, exultant, something Latin-American, and it ran like a pulse through the mill of dancing soldiers around the fire.

  Katilo opened the rear door, looming over the Landcruiser, motioning McFaul out on to the street. Just the sight of him frightened Molly. The man was so obviously powerful, so obviously in charge. Whatever he wanted, he could have. He was still looking at McFaul. She’d never seen a smile so empty of warmth.

  ‘The camera, my friend. Pictures. I want more pictures.’

  McFaul was still looking at the bonfire. Beyond the dancers, tethered to the stump of a tree, was an animal, something big. Molly saw it, too.

  ‘What’s that?’

  McFaul had his arm round Christianne.

  ‘A cow,’ he said quietly. ‘Tonight’s cabaret.’

  ‘What’s it doing there?’

  McFaul glanced up at her, a look at once pitying and contemptuous. Rademeyer leaned into the car, indicating Katilo with a jerk of his head.

  ‘He means it. He wants you out. Something to do with a movie.’ He sounded anxious.

  McFaul laughed.

  ‘Tell him the camera’s bust. Tell him the batteries need charging. Any fucking thing.’

  Rademeyer looked back at Katilo. The UNITA commander had heard every word. He reached in, across McFaul, his huge hand cupping Christianne’s chin, turning her head towards him.

  ‘There’s dancing,’ he murmured. ‘Afterwards.’

  ‘After what?’

  ‘Good question.’

  He let the phrase linger on, then withdrew his hand. Rademeyer was back again, his voice urgent.

  ‘He’s not joking, man,’ he said. ‘I know this guy.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  McFaul eyed him without enthusiasm, then shrugged, getting out of the Landcruiser. He pushed past Katilo without a word and disappeared inside the MSF house. Within a minute he was back. Molly recognised Llewelyn’s camcorder in his hand. Katilo had joined a group of soldiers beside the bonfire. He was beckoning McFaul across. McFaul told Rademeyer to bring Christianne. Molly, too.

  Molly caught up with McFaul, oblivious to the leering soldiers on either side.

  ‘What happened to Llewelyn’s cassette?’ she whis
pered. ‘The one he shot here? The one with Domingos?’

  ‘It’s in there.’ McFaul indicated the MSF house.

  ‘Is it OK? Safe?’

  ‘Yeah. He loves it.’

  He paused at the kerbside, looking at Katilo, and Molly stopped beside him. Even here, twenty metres from the bonfire, she could feel its heat. There was a strange smell, too, pungent, bitter-sweet, and she began to turn her head, looking for its source.

  Beside her, McFaul lifted the camcorder to his eye, panning slowly across the circle of faces around the bonfire. The soldiers were laughing and joking. Some had cans of beer. McFaul ignored Katilo’s beckoning finger, stepping sideways, moving closer and closer to the fire. Rademeyer stopped him.

  ‘He wants you.’

  ‘Fuck him.’

  ‘Do it, buddy.’

  Katilo was sauntering across now. He bent to Rademeyer’s ear and whispered something. The pilot nodded, disappearing into the shadows, and Molly watched him talking urgently to a soldier. The soldier, unlike the others, had a gun, an AK-47. He stooped to pick up something at his feet and Molly recognised Rademeyer’s canvas bag. Rademeyer was coming back. He had a small package in his hand, wrapped in polythene. He tried to give it to Katilo but the rebel commander shook his head, gesturing towards McFaul. Rademeyer stepped across, still holding the package. Molly stared at it.

  ‘What is it?’

  McFaul didn’t take his eye from the viewfinder.

  ‘Ganja,’ he said. ‘It’s party time. These guys are out of their heads.’ He lowered the camera. ‘Can’t you smell it?’

  Someone turned up the music. Katilo told McFaul to follow him. He had his arm round Christianne now, and he loomed over her, the kindly uncle. They circled the fire. On the other side, still tethered to the tree stump, was the cow. It was trying to move from foot to foot, disturbed by the noise and the activity, but other lines snared both legs and a noose around its neck restrained the big head. Molly looked at it a moment, seeing the flames dancing in its huge black eyes.

  A group of soldiers detached themselves from the bonfire, seeing Katilo. Their shirts were open to the waist and their bodies glistened with sweat. One of them was smoking. The others began to dance around the cow, clapping their hands, stamping their boots in time to the music. They knew the lyrics of the song by heart and every time they got to the end of a line the soldier with the cigarette weaved towards the cow, stopping inches from its face, blowing smoke up its nostrils. The animal, terrified, tried to back away, but each time it moved the lines tightened, restraining it.