by Shaun Clarke
Still sitting at their table in the outdoor part of their restaurant, mere metres away from the Arab, Marty and Taff waited until he had stepped well away from the door and the man directly behind him, possibly a bodyguard, could also be seen. Only then did they push their chairs back, stand upright, and reach under the futahs to whip the Browning High Power handguns out of their holsters and adopt the double-tap position.
Locking their arms and bending their knees slightly as they had been taught, aiming squarely at the advancing Arab from a distance of less than five metres, holding the pistol firmly and applying pressure equally between the thumb and fingers of the firing hand, they simultaneously fired six rounds in quick succession.
The big Arab in the English suit was punched violently backwards, blood soaking his shirt, to crash over the table directly behind him. The customers cried out and scattered as the table collapsed beneath the falling man and he hit the ground with bottles and glasses smashing under him. Even as the mortally wounded man was going down, the Arab behind him, also wearing an English suit, was dropping low and reaching into his jacket. Not waiting to see if he was reaching for a gun or not, Marty and Taff swung simultaneously in that direction, still holding their Browning High Powers in the double-tap position, and each fired another six rounds that punched the man back into the wall, where he shuddered epileptically, his jacket drenched in blood, and then flopped face down on the hard ground.
Not taking the time to check that the men were dead, Marty and Taff turned away and raced across the square, pushing shocked passers-by aside, knocking over at least one food stall, ignoring the screaming of women and the bellowing of men behind them as they plunged into the nearest alleyway. Holstering their handguns while still on the run, they made their way through the narrow, packed thoroughfare, again pushing the jostling Arabs aside and often knocking over pots and pans, until they emerged to the dazzling sunlight at the far end, where they crossed another, much quieter, square and eventually, breathlessly, reached their parked, dusty Volkswagen Beetle.
Taff took the passenger seat, Marty sat behind the steering wheel, and then they burned out of the square on shrieking tyres. Once outside Crater, taking the road back to the town centre, Marty slowed down and drove at a more normal speed, not wishing to attract attention, and kept driving until he and Taff were back in the safety of the military compound at Khormaksar.
The next day, after a good night’s sleep, both men were flown back to England.
Chapter Ten
‘Well, now we know where you went, don’t we?’ Diane Lavery said, smiling at Marty through the cloud of her own cigarette smoke across a candle-lit table in a modestly priced Italian restaurant in London’s Notting Hill Gate.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Marty replied, grinning back at her, pleased with himself for having worked up the courage to take her business card out of his wallet and actually call her, which he had debated doing for a fortnight, ever since his return from Aden to Hereford. He had been as nervous as a schoolboy when making the call, thinking she might have forgotten him; but she had remembered him instantly, said she was delighted to hear from him, and arranged to meet him in a pub right beside the restaurant, near to where she lived.
‘Read your newspapers,’ Diana said, brushing strands of blonde hair from green eyes and still smiling with that appealing mixture of mockery and girlish coquetry. ‘The usual lies and retractions which, when the wheat’s separated from the chaff, show the real picture.’
‘Give me the picture,’ Marty said. He had come up for the weekend, arriving only this morning and staying with his mother in Crouch End, nervously awaiting his reunion with Diane in the evening. However, delighted to find that his mother was no longer grieving and had, in fact, created a lively new life for herself – frequent visits to Lesley and the kids, church every Sunday, bingo with friends in the afternoons, even holidays in Spain – he had arrived at the pub feeling more relaxed than he’d thought he would be. Though the pub was filled mostly with young people, the girls resembling Julie Christie or Jean Shrimpton, the boys either into the mop-haired Beatles or the long-haired Rolling Stones, he had relaxed even more when Diane arrived, wearing a svelte figure-hugging dress under a tightlybuckled overcoat and high heels that showed off her long legs, and turned out to be as easy to talk to as he’d remembered. The evening had progressed pleasantly since then, and now, having moved from the pub to the restaurant, where they had shared a good Italian meal with a bottle of Chianti, he was feeling deeply satisfied and more romantic than he had a right to be at his age.
‘First,’ Diane said, ‘a Radio Taiz Yemeni propaganda report claims that the severed heads of two dead British soldiers were put on public display in the Yemen. Next, the GOC confirms at a press conference– which of course I attended – that he’s received reliable information on the decapitation of two British soldiers and the public exhibition of their heads on stakes in Yemen.’
‘I read that,’ Marty said blandly. ‘But I’ve also read that the republican government of Yemen has denied its own propaganda broadcast and denounced the decapitation story as a British lie. And don’t forget that the US Embassy in Taiz is handling British interests in the absence of UK diplomatic recognition of the republicans, and it’s investigated the matter and says there’s no truth in it.’
‘Don’t hold your breath for the next instalment,’ Diane told him. ‘The Times will be running a story in tomorrow’s edition, under my byline, confirming that a patrol of the Federal Regular Army did in fact find two headless bodies in a shallow grave in the Radfan mountains, near to where the SAS was engaged in a battle a few months ago – exactly the same time as you were out of the country on SAS business. You were in Aden, weren’t you?’
As the decapitation story of two British soldiers known to be SAS had overnight made the regiment a subject of intense speculation in the press, Marty saw little point in denying it any longer. ‘Yes,’ he confessed, ‘it was Aden.’
‘And you were in that battle?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you know the identity of the unfortunate
soldiers.’
‘I can guess,’Marty said.
‘Do you care to tell me?’
‘No.’
Diane smiled and nodded. ‘Okay, I understand.’ The decapitated heads, Marty knew, were those of
Captain Keating and Trooper Al Reid, whose dead bodies he recalled being carried away by the Yemeni guerrillas shortly after he and the rest of the patrol had evacuated the besieged hangars. Even now he could recall his anger as the bodies were carried away and the bitterness he had felt at the war in general. A war staged for the benefit of politicians. No more and no less. Marty burned just to think of it.
‘Were the two men close friends of yours?’ Diane asked.
‘Not really close. But naturally I knew them and respected them.’
‘Does this conversation bother you?’
‘No.’
Diane looked relieved. ‘I just can’t help behaving like a journalist. I have to talk about these things.’
‘It’s no problem,’ Marty said.
Indeed, he was grateful for something to talk about as he had been quite nervous about calling her and still wasn’t sure why he had done so. Certainly there could be no denying that he had found her attractive from the first moment of meeting her at Paddy Kearney’s resignation party in Hereford. Also, he could not deny that he had thought often about her during his enforced celibacy in Aden and Radfan – more so as the dangerous excitements of the Keeni-Meeni operations had burned away the grief he had been struggling with over the past few years. By the time he returned to England, as he now realized, he was ready to take on life again and Diane was the start of that healing process. He needed to lose himself in a woman and he sensed that she wanted him. That was enough for now.
‘From what I gather,’ Diane said, ‘the news about two headless bodies being found in the Radfan mountains and
the severed heads being put on public exhibition in Yemen has led to singular embarrassment for the security forces.’
‘I can’t speak for the SF in general, but it certainly embarrassed the SAS.’
‘Why?’
‘The next of kin had been unaware of the deaths and, even worse, had been informed that the men were on a routine exercise in Salisbury Plain.’
‘I think that’s disgusting,’ Diane said.
‘Maybe. But it was necessary at the time. We were operating under strict secrecy, so we couldn’t tell the relatives where those men were. We couldn’t even tell them where they died. A necessary evil, you might say. Sooner or later, in fighting for your country, you get dirt as well as blood on your hands. Unfortunately, regarding that particular war, the sacrifice wasn’t worth it.’
‘Well,’ Diane said, stubbing her cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray and sipping the last of her Chianti, ‘the incident has certainly made the press interested in the SAS. Do you like that or not?’
‘I don’t,’ Marty confessed. ‘I think a regiment like the SAS works best when it’s anonymous. I’d hate for it to become an item of public speculation, which too often is fanciful. Anyway, let’s hope this business will soon be forgotten and the press think of something else to write about. Then we can go back to what we do best
– quietly, behind the scenes. Are you ready to leave?’
Diane glanced at her wristwatch and nodded agreement. ‘Yes.’ She raised her eyes again as Marty called for the bill. ‘I’m not at all sure I agree with that,’ she said, continuing the conversation. ‘Any organization that favours anonymity is open to corruption.’
‘Not the SAS,’ Marty said. ‘For a start, it doesn’t work for its own good, but for the good of the country, which means that it doesn’t necessarily make its own choices – it only chooses how it should do its work. Secondly, it encourages personal initiative and shared responsibility, which is very different from the regular army and, I think, safeguards it from becoming too insular. The anonymity is purely for reasons of security in what’s usually very specialized, highly dangerous work. In our case, the anonymity is a necessity, not a vice, and I certainly believe we work best with it.’
‘Let’s hope it lasts,’ Diane said.
‘Sorry,’ Marty said as he was paying the bill, laying the five-pound notes out carefully in the saucer presented by the cheerful Italian waiter. ‘Would you like a brandy?’
‘In my place,’ Diane said.
Glancing at her, noting the steady gaze and slightly teasing smile, Marty left a generous tip, then pushed his chair back and stood up. ‘Great,’ he said. ‘That sounds wonderful.’
‘Just like the meal,’ she responded, also standing. ‘Did you enjoy it?’
‘I loved it,’ he said sincerely, walking her to the door. ‘And I liked the restaurant. Cheap, unpretentious and easygoing. My kind of place.’
‘What about smarter, grander places?’
‘I don’t like them at all.’
‘You must still be a working-class lad at heart.’
‘No question about it.’
Leaving the restaurant, they stepped into the bright lights and noisy traffic of the Bayswater Road, wet from the rain and swept with a cold November wind. After buttoning up her overcoat and putting on a headscarf, Diane took Marty’s hand and walked him along the glistening pavement, then turned right into Kensington Church Street. As they walked downhill, passing antique shops and a couple of old pubs with lights beaming invitingly over the drenched, lamplit pavements, he felt the return of his former nervousness at the thought of entering her flat. He wanted to make love to her and thought she might want it, too, but it had been an awfully long time for him– he hadn’t touched a woman since the passing of Ann Lim– and now he wasn’t sure how to start. He felt like a schoolboy on his first date. It was a very strange feeling.
‘What age are you, Marty?’ Diane asked him, as if reading his thoughts.
‘Hold on,’ he replied jokingly. ‘Let me think about that. It’s been so long. I can’t…’
She tugged at his hand and said, ‘Come on! Stop fooling around. Just tell me, Marty.’
‘Forty-five,’ he said truthfully. ‘Going on for forty- six.’
‘My God, you don’t look it!’
‘Are you disappointed that I’m older than I look?’
‘No. Why should I be? I’m not that young myself. Thirty-eight this year. Are youdisappointed?’
‘No. I like what I see.’
‘So do I, Marty.’ They walked farther downhill where the wind was less strong, then turned right into a street of elegant Georgian houses where, presumably, Diane lived. ‘So what happens now, Marty? Will they send you overseas again?’
‘It depends when they next have to go,’ he told her. ‘As a matter of fact, I do still go overseas on training exercises with other Special Forces units in Europe and even the United States. So travel’s certainly still on the agenda.’
‘I meant on activeservice,’ she clarified. ‘Will you ever get to fight another war?’
‘Unfortunately, for me, in my advancing years – ho, ho – that’ll depend entirely on when the next war starts and on exactly what kind of activity’s required. I’ve probably got until I’m about fifty or, depending on how fit I remain, a few years after that for major assaults requiring great physical stamina. But I may be allowed to take part in other operations even when I’m slightly older, particularly the counter-terrorist or counterinsurgency type.’
‘And right now?’
‘I’ll probably alternate between return trips to Aden and acting as a DS at the training wing of Bradbury Lines. When the war in Aden finally ends, which it will soon, I’ll be condemned to the latter.’
‘What does “DS” mean?’
‘A member of the Directing Staff. Something like a drill instructor, but much more wide-ranging. Running the training and selection courses. Supervising the actual training – the rifle range, route marches, parachuting, navigation… That kind of thing.’
‘Sounds interesting.’
‘It’s not as interesting as fighting, I’m afraid. That’s the beast in man.’
‘So how can a nice man like you enjoy fighting in beastly wars?’
‘I don’t know. At least I’m not sure. I’ve certainly thought a great deal about it, but I can’t find an answer. Of course, I believe in the necessity of it– the need to defend your country– but on a personal level I can only offer the fact that danger has its attractions. You never really know how precious life is until you come close to losing it. That’s a sad fact of life.’
‘What about sex?’ she asked him.
‘Pardon?’
‘Doesn’t sex do the same? You never really know what life is until you’re having good sex. That moment just before the orgasm, when you’re right on the edge. Isn’t that the same feeling?’
‘Sex and war have certain similarities,’ he agreed, though he felt uncomfortabletalking about it. ‘They both offer danger, excitement… a heightened awareness of the moment. So in that sense, yes, I guess you’re right. They’re very similar that way.’
‘We’ll soon find out,’ she said, surprising him, even shocking him a little. Before he could respond, however, she stopped walking, turned into him, kissed him lightly on the lips, then pushed open the gate they were at and walked up the short garden path. Confused and pleased at once, he followed to stand behind her as she opened the front door of the house and motioned him inside.
The house has been converted into flats and Diane’s was on the third floor. As they went up in the lift, facing each other, close to each other, she smiled at him in that slightly mocking, coquettish way, then reached out to lightly stroke the side of his face without saying a word. When the lift stopped at the third floor, she led him into her flat, which was just along the corridor. The flat was surprisingly spacious and airy, with Habitat furniture, lots of potted plants, Oriental carpets, mock-Picas
so curtains, packed bookshelves and original paintings on the walls – the kind of place you saw advertised in women’s magazines selling fashionable living.
While still at the closed door, Diane kicked off her high-heeled shoes, then removed her soaked overcoat and hung it up on a coat hanger. Marty did the same. Then Diane, still wearing the scarf on her head, went to the drinks cabinet in the living room, which was, Marty noted, centrally heated and comfortably warm.
‘A brandy?’
‘Great,’ he said.
As Diane poured two brandies, Marty noticed, as he had done when first seeing her, that in the Mary Quant white dress that fell to just above the knees and left her arms and shoulders bare, she was bone-thin, almost flatchested, yet undoubtedly, inexplicably, sensual. She did indeed look a bit like Jean Shrimpton, but with a fuller figure and a more mature, lived-in face and, of course, those searching green eyes. To him she was not merely attractive, but damned near irresistible.
Turning away from the drinks cabinet, she handed him one of the two large brandies, then motioned to the white-leather sofa that faced the TV set and what looked like expensive hi-fi equipment and a cabinet filled with long-playing records.
‘Over here,’ she said with no trace of shyness, leading him to the sofa, letting him sit first, then settling down beside him, so close her thigh was pressing against his. ‘Cheers, Marty,’ she said, raising her glass in the air.