The Gun Seller

by Hugh Laurie

  He was leaning against the door of the van, smiling, holding out his packet of Marlboro to me. He wore a leather flight jacket, with the name Connor stitched over his left breast. Who the fuck was Connor?

  The friskers had fallen back a little, but only a little, out of an apparent respect for Barnes. Plenty of them kept on watching me, thinking maybe they'd missed a bit.

  I shook my head at the cigarettes.

  'Let me see her,' I said.

  Because she's waiting for me.

  Barnes watched me for a moment, then smiled again. He was feeling good, and relaxed, and loose. Game over, for him.

  He looked to his left.

  'Sure,' he said.

  He bounced himself casually away from the van, making the metal skin of the door pop, and gestured for me to follow him. The sea of tight shirts and wrap-around sunglasses parted as we walked slowly across towards the blue Toyota.

  To our right, behind a steel barrier, stood the television crews, their cables coiled about their feet and their blue-white lights puncturing the remains of the night. Some of the cameras trained on me as I walked, but most of them stuck to the building.

  CNN seemed to have the best position.

  Murdah got out of the car first, while Sarah just sat and waited, staring ahead through the windscreen, her hands clasped between her thighs. We had got to within a couple of yards before she turned to look at me, and tried to smile.

  I'm waiting for you, Thomas.

  'Mr Lang,' said Murdah, coming round the back of the car, stepping between me and Sarah. He was wearing a dark-grey overcoat, and a white shirt with no tie. The sheen of his forehead seemed a little duller than I remembered, and there were a few hours' worth of stubble around his jaw, but otherwise he looked well.

  And why wouldn't he?

  He stared into my face for a second or two, then gave a brief, satisfied nod. As if I'd done nothing more than mow his lawn to a reasonable standard.

  'Good,' he said eventually.

  I stared back at him. A blank stare, because I didn't really want to give him anything right now.

  'What's good?' I said.

  But Murdah was looking over my shoulder, signalling something, and I felt movement behind me.

  'See you around, Tom,' said Barnes.

  I turned and saw that he had started to move away, walking slowly backwards in a casual, loose-limbed, gonna-miss-you style. As our eyes met, he gave me a small, ironic salute, then wheeled round and headed off towards an army Jeep, parked near the back of the mess of vehicles. A blond man in plain clothes started the engine as Barnes approached, then tooted his horn twice to clear the crowd from around the front of the Jeep. I turned back to Murdah.

  He was examining my face now, a little closer, a little more professional. Like a plastic surgeon.

  'What's good?' I said again, and waited while my question travelled the immense distance between our two worlds.

  'You have done as I wished,' said Murdah at last. 'As I predicted.'

  He nodded again. A bit of a snip here, a tuck there - yes, I think we can do something with this face.

  'Some people, Mr Lang,' he went on, 'some friends of mine, told me that you would be a problem. You were a man who might try and kick off the traces.' He took a deeper breath. 'But I was right. And that is good.'

  Then, still looking into my face, he stepped to one side and opened the passenger door of the Toyota.

  I watched as Sarah twisted slowly round in her seat and climbed out. She straightened up, her arms crossed in front of her as if warding off the cold of the dawn, and lifted her face to me.

  We were so close.

  'Thomas,' she said, and for a second I allowed myself to plunge into those eyes, deep down, and touch whatever it was that had brought me here. I would never forget that kiss.

  'Sarah,' I said.

  I reached out and put both my arms around her - shielding her, enveloping her, hiding her from everything and everyone - and she just stood there, keeping her hands in front of her body.

  So I dropped my right hand to my side, and slid it between our bodies, across our stomachs, feeling, searching for contact.

  I touched it. Took hold of it.

  'Goodbye,' I whispered.

  She looked up at me.

  'Goodbye,' she said.

  The metal was warm from her body.

  I let her go, and turned, slowly, to face Murdah.

  He was talking softly into a mobile phone, looking back at me, smiling, his head cocked slightly to one side. And when he took in my expression he knew that something was wrong.

  He glanced down at my hand, and the smile tumbled away from his face like orange-peel from a speeding car.

  'Jesus Christ,' said a voice behind me, and I suppose that meant that someone else must have seen the gun too. I couldn't be sure, because I was staring hard into Murdah's eyes.

  'It's over,' I said.

  Murdah stared back at me, the mobile phone dropping down from his mouth.

  'It's over,' I said again. 'Not off.'

  'What... what are you talking about?' he said.

  Murdah stood watching the gun, and the knowledge of it, the beauty of our little tableau, rippled outwards through the sea of tight shirts.

  'The expression is,' I said, 'to kick over the traces.'

  Twenty-six

  The sun has got his hat on,

  Hip hip hip hooray,

  L. ARTHUR ROSE

  AND DOUGLAS FURBER

  We're back on the roof of the consulate now. Just so as you know.

  The sun is already bobbing its head along the horizon, evaporating the sky-line of dark tiles into a misty strip of whiteness, and I think to myself that if it was up to me, I'd have the helicopter airborne by now. The sun is so strong, so bright, so hopelessly blinding that, for all I know, the helicopter might already be there - there might be fifty helicopters, hovering twenty yards up-sun of me, watching me unwrap my two packets of brown, grease-proof paper.

  Except, of course, I'd hear them.

  I hope.

  'What do you want?' says Murdah.

  He is behind me, perhaps twenty feet away. I have handcuffed him to the fire escape while I get on with my chores, and he doesn't seem to like that very much. He seems agitated.

  'What do you want?' he screams.

  I don't answer, so he goes on screaming. Not words, exactly. Or, at least, none that I recognise. I whistle a few bars of something to block out the noise, and continue attaching clip A to retaining lug B, while making sure that cable C is not fouling bracket D.

  'What I want,' I say eventually, 'is for you to see it coming. That's all.'

  I turn to look at him now, to see how bad he's feeling. It's very bad, and I find I don't mind all that much.

  'You are insane,' he shouts, tugging at his wrists. 'I am here. Do you see?' He laughs, or almost laughs, because he can't believe how stupid I am. 'I am here. The Graduate will not come, because I am here.'

  I turn away again, and squint into the low wall of sunlight.

  'Well I hope so, Naimh,' I say. 'I really do. I hope you still have more than one vote.'

  There is a pause, and when I turn back to him, I find that the sheen has folded itself into a frown.

  'Vote,' he says eventually, in a soft voice.

  'Vote,' I say again.

  Murdah watches me carefully.

  'I don't understand you,' he says.

  So I take a deep breath, and try and lay it out for him.

  'You're not an arms dealer, Naimh,' I say. 'Not any more. I've taken that privilege away from you. For your sins. You're not rich, you're not powerful, you're not connected, you're not a member of the Garrick.' That doesn't register with him, so maybe he never was anyway. 'All you are, at this moment, is a man. Like the rest of us. And as a man, you only get one vote. Sometimes not even that.'

  He thinks carefully before he answers. He knows I'm mad, and that he must go gently with me.

  '
I don't know what you're saying,' he says.

  'Yes you do,' I say. 'You just don't know whether I know what I'm saying.' The sun inches a little higher, straining on its tip-toes to get a better view of us. 'I'm talking about the twenty-six other people who stand to gain directly from the success of The Graduate, and the hundreds, maybe thousands, of people who will gain indirectly. People who have worked, and lobbied, and bribed, and threatened, and even killed, just to get this close. They all have votes too. Barnes will be talking to them at this moment, asking for a yes or no answer, and who's to say how the numbers will come out?'

  Murdah is very still now. His eyes are wide and his mouth is open, as if he's not enjoying the taste of something.

  'Twenty-six,' he says, very quietly. 'How do you know twenty-six? How do you know this?'

  I make a modest face.

  'I used to be a financial journalist,' I say. 'For about an hour. A man at Smeets Velde Kerplein followed your money for me. Told me a lot of things.'

  He drops his gaze, concentrating hard. His brain has got him here, so his brain must get him out.

  'Of course,' I say, forcing him back on to the track, 'you may be right. Maybe the twenty-six will all rally round, call it off, write it off, whatever. I just wouldn't stake my life on it.'

  I leave a pause, because I feel that, one way and another, I've earned the right to it.

  'But I'm very happy to stake yours,' I say.

  This shakes him. Knocks him out of his stupor.

  'You are insane,' he shouts. 'Do you know that? Do you know that you are insane?'

  'Right,' I say. 'So call them. Call Barnes, tell him to stop it. You're on the roof with a madman, and the party is off. Use your one vote.'

  He shakes his head.

  'They will not come,' he says. And then, in a much quieter voice, 'They will not come, because I am here.'

  I shrug, because it's all I can think of. I'm feeling very shruggy at this moment. The way I used to feel before parachute jumps.

  'Tell me what you want,' screams Murdah, suddenly, and he starts to rattle the iron of the fire-escape with his handcuffs. "When I look across again, I can see bright, wet blood on his wrists.

  Diddums.

  'I want to watch the sun rise,' I say.

  Francisco, Cyrus, Latifa, Bernhard, and a bloody Benjamin have joined us up here on the roof, because this seems to be where the interesting people are at the moment. They are variously scared and confused, unable to get a grip on what is happening; they have lost their place in the script, and are hoping that somebody will call out a page number very soon.

  Benjamin, needless to say, has done his best to poison the others against me. But his best stopped being good enough the moment they saw me coming back into the consulate, holding a gun to Murdah's neck. They found that strange. Peculiar. Not consistent with Benjamin's wild theories of Betrayal.

  So they stand before me now, eyes flitting between me and Murdah; they are sniffing the wind, while Benjamin trembles with the strain of not shooting me.

  'Ricky, what the fuck is happening here?' says Francisco.

  I stand up slowly, feeling things crack in my knees, and step back to admire the result of my labours.

  Then I turn away, and wave a hand towards Murdah. I have rehearsed this speech a few times, and I think I've got most of it down.

  This man,' I tell them, 'used to be an arms dealer.' I move a little closer to the fire-escape, because I want everyone to be able to hear me clearly. 'His name is Naimh Murdah, he is the chief executive officer of seven separate companies, and the majority shareholder in a further forty-one. He has homes in London, New York, California, the south of France, the west of Scotland, the north of anywhere with a swimming pool. He has a total net worth of just over a billion dollars,' which makes me turn to look at Murdah, 'and that must have been an exciting moment, Naimh. Big cake on that day, I would imagine.' I look back at my audience. 'More importantly, from our point of view, he is the sole signatory to over ninety separate bank accounts, one of which has been paying our wages for the last six months.'

  Nobody seems ready to jump in here, so I press on for the coup.

  'This is the man who conceived, organised, supplied and financed The Sword Of Justice.'

  There is a pause.

  Only Latifa makes a sound; a little snort of disbelief, or fear, or anger. Otherwise, they are silent.

  They stare at Murdah for a long time, and so do 1.1 notice now that he also has some blood on his neck - perhaps I was a little rough getting him up the stairs - but apart from that, he looks well. And why wouldn't he?

  'Bullshit,' says Latifa eventually.

  'Right,' I say. 'Bullshit. Mr Murdah, it's bullshit. Would you go along with that?'

  Murdah stares back, trying desperately to judge which of us is the least mad.

  'Would you go along with that?' I say again.

  'We are a revolutionary movement,' says Cyrus suddenly, which makes me look at Francisco - because really it was his job to say that. But Francisco is frowning, and looking around, and I know he's thinking about the difference between planned action and real action. It was nothing like this in the brochure, is Francisco's complaint.

  'Of course we are,' I say. 'We are a revolutionary movement, with a commercial sponsor. That's all. This man,' and I point at Murdah as dramatically as I can, 'has set you up, has set all of us up, has set the world up, to buy his guns.' They shift about a little. 'It's called marketing. Aggressive marketing. Creating a demand for a product, in a place where once only daffodils grew. That's what this man does.'

  I turn and look at this man, hoping that he's going to chip in and say yes, it's all true, every word of it. But Murdah doesn't seem to want to talk, and instead we have a long pause. A lot of Brownian thoughts rushing about, colliding with each other.

  'Guns,' says Francisco eventually. His voice is low and soft, and he might be calling from miles away. 'What guns?'

  This is it. The moment when I have to make them understand. And believe.

  'A helicopter,' I say, and they all look at me now. Murdah too. 'They are sending a helicopter here to kill us.'

  Murdah clears his throat.

  'It will not come,' he says, and I can't really tell whether he's trying to persuade me or himself. 'I am here, and it will not come.'

  I turn back to the others.

  'Any time now,' I say, 'a helicopter is going to appear, from that direction.' I point into the sun, and notice that Bernhard is the only one who turns. The rest of them keep on watching me. 'A helicopter that is smaller, faster, and better-armed than anything you have ever seen in your lives. It is going to come here, very soon, and take us all off the roof of this building. It is probably going to take the roof as well, and the next two floors, because this is a machine of unbelievable power.'

  There is a pause, and some of them look down at their feet. Benjamin opens his mouth to say something, or, more probably, shout something, but Francisco stretches out a hand and rests it on Benjamin's shoulder. Then looks at me.

  'We know they are sending a helicopter, Rick,' he says.

  Whoa.

  That doesn't sound right. That doesn't sound remotely right. I look around the other faces, and when I make contact with Benjamin, he can't control himself any longer.

  'Can't you see, you fucking shit?' he screams, and he's almost laughing, he hates me so much. 'We've done it.' He starts to jump up and down on the spot, and I can see that his nose has started to bleed again. 'We've done it, and your treachery has been for nothing.'

  I look back to Francisco.

  'They called us, Rick,' he says, his voice still soft and distant. Ten minutes ago.'

  'Yes?' I say.

  They're all watching me now, as Francisco speaks.

  'They're sending a helicopter,' he says. 'To take us to the airport.' He lets out a sigh, and his shoulders drop a little. 'We've won.'

  Oh for fuck's sake, I think to myself.

  So he
re we stand, in a desert of gritty asphalt, with a few air-conditioning vents standing in as palm trees, while we wait for life or death. A place in the sun, or a place in the dark.

  I have to speak now. I've tried a couple of times already to get myself heard, but there was some loose, foolish talk among the comrades of throwing me off the roof, so I held back. But now, the sun is perfect. God has reached down, placed the sun on the tee, and is, at this moment, rummaging in his bag for the driver. This is the perfect time, and I have to speak.

  'So what happens?' I say.

  Nobody answers, for the simple reason that nobody can. We all know what we want to happen, of course, but wanting is not enough any more. Between the idea and the reality falls the shadow, and all that. I take some looks from all quarters. Absorb them.

  'We're just going to hang about here, is that it?'

  'Shut the fuck up,' says Benjamin.

  I ignore him. I have to.

  'We wait here, on the roof, for a helicopter. That's what they said?' Still nobody answers. 'Did they by any chance suggest we stand in a line, with bright orange circles round us?' Silence. 'I mean, I'm just wondering how we could make this any easier for them.'

  I direct most of this towards Bernhard, because I have the feeling that he's the only one who isn't sure. The rest of them have clutched at the straw. They're excited, hopeful, busy deciding whether or not they're going to sit by the window, and if there'll be time to get duty frees - but, like me, Bernhard has been turning every now and then, squinting into the sun, and perhaps he's also thinking that this would be a good time to attack someone. This is the perfect time, and Bernhard is feeling vulnerable up here on the roof.

  I turn to Murdah.

  'Tell them,' I say.

  He shakes his head. Not a refusal. Just confusion, and fear, and some other things. I take a few steps towards him, which makes Benjamin jab the air with his Steyr.

  I have to keep going.

  'Tell them what I've said is true,' I say. 'Tell them who you are.'

  Murdah closes his eyes for a moment, then opens them wide. Perhaps he was hoping to find kempt lawns and white-jacketed waiters, or the ceiling of one of his bedrooms; when all he sees is a handful of dirty, hungry, scared people with guns, he slumps down against the parapet.