by Andy McNab
There wasn’t a television set, which didn’t surprise me. She’d never watched it. If you asked her about Seinfeld and Frasier, she’d probably say it was a New York law firm. My eyes moved back to the bookcase. On the bottom shelf sat a large glass vase, but there were no flowers in it, instead it was filled with coins and pens and all the rest of the shit that people pull out of their pockets at the end of the day. Near it was her social calendar: thick, gilded invitations for drinks at eight at British Embassy or American Congress functions. I counted seven for the last month. It must be a terrible life, having to scoff all those free vol-au-vents and knock back glasses of champagne.
On the sideboard was a bog-standard, all-in-one, solid-state CD player, probably quite inexpensive, but serving its purpose. About a dozen CDs were stacked on top of each other, and as I walked over I could see that three of them were still in their cellophane. She hadn’t had enough time to play them yet – maybe next week. There was also a boxed set of five classical operas. I turned the cases to read the spines. Cosi Fan Tutte was there, of course – one of the few things I did know about her was that it was her favourite.
I looked at the rest of the music: a couple of 1970s Genesis albums, remastered on CD, and what looked like a bootleg cover of a group called Sperm Bank. I’d have to have a listen to that one, it was so out of place. She and I had never really talked that much about music, but I knew she loved opera – whilst I’d hear things on the radio and think, That’s good, I’ll buy that, but then lose the tape before I’d even played it.
The standby light was still on. I pressed ‘open’, put in the Sperm Bank CD and hit ‘play’. It was some kind of weird Tahitian rap/jazz/funk, whatever they call it – very noisy but very rhythmic. I turned the volume up a bit so I could hear it big time, and felt very fashionable. Fuck it, the chances of her coming back here were ziff.
I’d had my first cursory look in the living room, now I’d try the kitchen. It was about fifteen feet square, with units completely filling up both sides of the wall, so that it ended up being more like a passageway. The hob, oven and sink were all built-in.
I had a mooch in the cupboards above the work surfaces, trying to get some idea of how this woman lived. It was nothing to do with the job now. I was just curious to see this other side of her. There was hardly any food, and probably never had been. There were cans of convenience items, like rice and packet noodles, which could just be opened and boiled, and a couple of packs of gourmet coffee, but no spices or herbs or anything else you’d need if you cooked at home. On the few occasions when she wasn’t at embassy dos, or being dined in restaurants, she probably got by with the microwave.
I opened another cupboard and found six of everything – the accommodation pack again – plain white crockery, six cups, six glasses. Over 60 per cent of the cupboard space was empty. In the fridge was half a carton of milk, which wasn’t looking too healthy – it smelled and looked as if it held the cure for HIV. Next to that were some bagels, still in their plastic bag, and half a jar of peanut butter, and that was it. Not exactly Delia Smith, our Sarah. At least I had some cheese and yoghurt in mine.
The bathroom was between the kitchen and the bedroom. There was no bath, just a shower, sink and toilet. The room had been left as if she’d got up normally, done her stuff and dashed off to work. A dry but used towel lay on the floor next to a laundry bin which was half full of jeans, underwear and tights. No sign of a washing machine, but I wasn’t really expecting one. Sarah’s clothes would go to a dry-cleaners, or to a laundry for a fluff and fold.
The bedroom was about fifteen by twenty feet, with a walk-in wardrobe, but no other furniture apart from a double bed and a single bedside lamp sitting on the floor. The duvet was thrown to one side where she’d just woken up and thrown it off. All the bedding was plain white, the same as the walls. There were pillows for two people, but only one of them looked slept on. Again, there were no pictures on the walls, and the venetian blinds on both windows were closed. Either she’d just got up and gone to work, or this was simply how it always was.
The walk-in closet had mirrored sliding doors. I pulled them open, expecting the scent of a woman’s wardrobe, that slight waft of stale perfume lingering on jackets which have been worn once and are back on their hangers before they find their way to the cleaners. In fact, there was almost no smell at all, which wasn’t surprising. The rows and rows of expensive-looking clothes were all in dry-cleaner’s plastic wrapping, and even her blouses and T-shirts were on hangers. Out of curiosity I checked a few labels, and found Armani, Joseph and Donna Karan. She was obviously still slumming it. On a shelf above the dresses was the just as expensive luggage to match. Nothing seemed to be missing or out of place.
In front of me was a small stand-alone chest, just a white Formica thing with about five or six drawers. One of the drawers was open; I looked inside and found knickers and bras, again all very expensive.
All her footwear was arranged on the floor on the right-hand side of the wardrobe, and looking very orderly: formal, summer, winter and a pair of trainers. To the left of the wardrobe, and also on the floor, was a shoe box. I bent down and lifted the lid. A Picasso dove greeted me, on top of more old Christmas and birthday cards. Flicking through them, I found a picture of her arm-in-arm with a tall, good-looking man. They were in woodland, looking extremely happy, both dressed the part in waterproofs and boots. Maybe this was Jonathan, and presumably in happier times. Sarah looked a little older than when I’d seen her on the Syria job; the bob had had three years to grow out and her hair was about shoulder length, still very straight and with a fringe which was just above those big eyes. She hadn’t put on weight, and still looked fantastic as she smiled that almost innocent, childlike grin towards me. I realized I was looking at the man beside her and wishing it was me as I dropped the photo back in the box and lay down on the bed. There was no smell of her, just that of dry-cleaned cotton.
We had been in and out of Afghanistan those first two months, with no result. The rebels had managed to get a major offensive off the ground in between their internal feuds and were kicking the arse out of the Russians. No-one would be talking to us for a while, so we got out of the way, taking time off and generally having fun. We could only hope that one of the rebel groups with an entrepreneurial flair would attack a heliport and see us all right with a couple of Hinds.
Both of us could have gone back to the UK with the other three and done our own thing, but she wanted to go trekking in Nepal and I knew the country well. It seemed a simple swap: she showed me the historical and religious sites, and I showed her the bars and dives where, as a young infantry soldier on an exchange with the Gurkhas, I’d been separated from my money. It was an education for both of us.
It was during the first week off, staying in Katmandu before moving to Pukara for our week’s trek, that things changed. By now she would take the piss out of my accent: I called Hackney ’ackney, and she called it Hackerney. We’d just finished a run one day, and were both getting our key cards from our socks, when she leaned into my ear and said, in her bad cockney accent, ‘Awright darlin’, you wanna fuck or what?’
Three weeks later, and back with the rest of the team in Pakistan, the cover story of being a couple was now played out for real. I even had fantasies of maybe seeing her later on once the job had ended. I’d been married for four years and things hadn’t been going well. Now they were in shit state. With Sarah I enjoyed the intimate talks and learning about things I’d never bothered to find out about, or even knew existed. Up until then, I’d thought Cosi Fan Tutte was an Italian ice cream. This was it. Love. I didn’t understand what was happening to me. For the first time in my life I had deep, loving feelings for someone. Even better, I got the impression she felt the same. I couldn’t bring myself to ask her, though; the fear of rejection was just too great.
When the Afghanistan job finished, we were on the flight home from Delhi and well into our descent to Heathrow before I plucked up
enough courage to ask her the big question. I still didn’t know that much about her, but it didn’t matter, I didn’t think she knew that much about me either. I just really needed to be with her. I felt like a child being dropped off by a parent and not knowing if they will ever come back. Courage or desperation, I wasn’t sure which, but I kept my eyes on the in-flight magazine and said, very throwaway, ‘We’re still going to see each other, aren’t we?’
The dread of rejection lifted as she said, ‘Of course.’ Then she added, ‘We’ve got to debrief.’
I thought she’d misunderstood me. ‘No, no . . . I hoped, later on, we might be able to see each other . . . you know, out of work.’
Sarah looked at me, and I saw her jaw drop a fraction in disbelief. She said, ‘I don’t think so, do you?’
She must have seen the confusion on my face. ‘Come on, Nick, it’s not as if we’re in love with each other or anything like that. We spent a lot of time together and it was great.’
I couldn’t bear to look at her, so I just kept my eyes fixed on the page. Fuck, I’d never felt so crushed. It was like going to the doctor for a routine check-up and being told I was going to have a slow, painful death.
‘Look, Nick’ – there wasn’t a hint of regret in her voice – ‘we had a job to do and it was a success. That means it was a success for both of us. You got what you wanted out of it, and so did I.’ She paused. ‘Look, the more intimate we were, the more you would protect me, right? Am I right?’
I nodded. She was right. I would probably have died for her.
Before she could say another word I did what had always worked in the past, ever since childhood: I just cut away. I looked at her as if I’d just been asking her out for a drink, and said, ‘Oh, OK, just thought I’d ask.’ I’d never been fucked off with such casual finesse. I kicked myself for even having considered that she would want to be with me. Just who the fuck did I think I was? I was definitely suffering from the dreamer’s disease.
It was only a month after we’d landed at Heathrow that I left my wife. We were just existing together, and it didn’t seem right to be sleeping with her and thinking of Sarah.
When the Syria job came along I didn’t know she was going to be on it. We met for orders in London, this time in better offices – Vauxhall Cross, the new home of SIS overlooking the Thames. She acted as if nothing had ever happened between us. Maybe it hadn’t for her, but it had for me. I made a plan. Never again would she, or any other woman, fuck me over.
I sat up on the bed and put the lid on the shoebox. That could wait. I needed to tune in to this place and try to get a feel of it.
I went back into the kitchen, filled the coffee percolator with water and ground beans and got it going. Then I went back into the living room. Sperm Bank – or the Sperm, as I now liked to call them – were still rattling along big time.
I slumped sideways in one of the chairs, with my back against one arm, my legs over the other. I’d found nothing at all on the first sweep. I would have to give each room a thorough going over, digging everything out. Somewhere, somehow, there could be a slight clue, a tiny hint. Maybe. The only thing I knew for sure was that if I rushed it I wouldn’t find anything.
As I looked around me my thoughts drifted. Sarah wasn’t that different from me really. Everything in my life was disposable, from a toothbrush to a car. I didn’t have a single possession that was more than two years old. I bought clothes for a job and threw them away once they were dirty, leaving hundreds of pounds’ worth of whatever behind me because I didn’t need it any more. At least she had a photo; I didn’t have any mementos of family, schooldays or the Army, not even of Kelly and me. It was something I was always going to get around to, but hadn’t.
I went back to the kitchen, realizing I was thinking more about myself than her. And I wasn’t looking for me. I was starting to feel quite depressed. This was going to be a long, long job, but I had to do it by the book if it was going to work.
I poured myself a cup of coffee and went to the fridge, then remembered that the milk was only good for medical research. I couldn’t find powdered creamer, so I’d have to have it black. I took the pot with me, and was walking back into the living room just as the Sperm decided to sign off. I threw myself back in one of the chairs and put my feet up again on the coffee table, sipping the hot coffee and thinking, I’ve got to make a start; it’ll be like most things, once you get stuck in, everything’s fine.
I finished the first coffee, poured another, got up and wandered over to the sideboard. I plonked the cup next to the CDs, then started to take off my Timberlands. I’d worn boots like this for years; they always seemed the thing to wear with jeans, and I always wore jeans. It felt like I hadn’t taken them off for days, and it was time to let my feet and socks add to the apartment’s atmosphere.
To work, then. Starting from the top, I opened the first drawer and took out a sheaf of dry-cleaning receipts, theatre stubs and folded-up back copies of Time. I studied each item in turn, opening each page of every magazine to check nothing had been ripped out, scored or ringed. Had I found anything missing, I’d have had to go to a reference library and get hold of the issue to find out what was so interesting that it had been removed. But there was nothing like that.
The second drawer was much the same, just as full of shit. The other drawers were completely empty, apart from one solitary safety pin, still stuck into yet another dry-cleaning ticket.
I was becoming bored, pissed off and very hungry. It was nearing time for my first Mickey D’s of the trip. I’d just heard on the radio that McDonald’s mission statement for the USA was something like, that no American was ever more than six minutes away from a Big Mac. In the UK that would make most heroin addicts jump for joy: scales were old hat for measuring out deals; McDonald’s 100-milligram spoons were absolutely perfect.
Before I went to fill my face, however, I decided to give the bookshelves the once over. I took out each book in turn, doing exactly the same as with the magazines. I got quite excited at one stage because a book on political terrorism had passages which had been underlined in pencil and notes in the margin, until I looked inside the cover and discovered it was a textbook from her university days.
It took about an hour, but I eventually got to the bottom shelf. Turning the pages of a photo-history of North Carolina, I admired the tree-covered mountains, lakes and wildlife, with bullshit blurb in the accompanying captions, ‘deer drink contentedly from the pool, next to families enjoying the wonders of the great outdoors.’ I could almost hear Kelly groaning a ‘Yeah, right!’
I took a look at her other books, about Algeria, Syria and the Lebanon, but they contained nothing but photograph upon photograph of mosques, cypress trees, sand and camels.
I threw them on the floor to check through later and started flicking through the atlas. Then I had second thoughts, deciding to go back to the chair with the atlas and the other three books and do the lot now. As I started a careful, page-by-page check, I found my attention drifting to the traffic in the street below, which I could just about hear through the double-glazing. But it wasn’t just my hearing that was wandering. For some reason my mind kept going back to the book about North Carolina.
It usually pays to listen to that inner voice. I stopped looking at the books and just stared at the wall, trying to work out what it was that I was trying to say to myself. When I thought I understood it, I got up and went into her bedroom.
I picked up the shoebox and tipped the contents out onto the bed. When I’d found what I was looking for it was back to the living room.
Turning the pages of the North Carolina book, I tried to match the photograph with the terrain – the type of trees, the background hills, the lakeside. Nothing. The spark was soon put out. It might not necessarily have meant anything, but it might have been a start. My head was starting to hurt. It was time for that burger. I’d be back in an hour to start again. I went to my boots and pushed my feet in, tucking the laces insi
de, too idle to do them up.
Two minutes later I was standing waiting for the elevator, staring at my boots, when it hit me.
I ran back to the apartment door, opened up and headed for her dressing room.
Sarah must have been the Imelda Marcos of the Washington section. She must have had about thirty pairs of shoes in all, but there were no hiking boots. All the times I’d been with her, she had always worn them when out on the ground. Like me, when it came to footwear, she was a creature of habit.
I was starting to get sparked up again. I turned and checked the rails. Where was the Gore-Tex jacket? Where was the fleece liner? She had always worn that sort of clothing, and she had it on in the photograph. It wasn’t so much what I saw as what I didn’t. Her outdoor clothing; it wasn’t here.
I couldn’t go to McDonald’s. I had to keep thinking about this. I went into the kitchen and threw some noodles into a pan, filled it up with water and got it boiling on the stove.
I realized that was what had been bugging me. I’d known it all along but hadn’t switched on, and the ironic thing was that it was Sarah who’d taught me.
She was in the middle of one of her very heated, noisy meetings. We’d been stuck in a cave for hours, the smoke from a large fire stinging my eyes and casting dark shadows in the background, just where I wanted to see the most. Two mujahedin were sitting cross-legged on the floor, wrapped in blankets and cradling their AKs. I’d never seen them at other meetings before, and they seemed out of place amongst the other three members of their group who were by the fire.
Sarah was also sitting on the floor, draped in blankets beside the fire with the other three muj. They were all drinking coffee as Sarah got more sparked up with them. The two men in the shadows started muttering between themselves and looking agitated, and eventually they pushed off their blankets and grasped their weapons. In a situation like that there are only seconds in which to make a decision to go for it or not. I did; I put my AK into the aim as I stood over Sarah.