Red Joker

by Michael Nicholson

  Ambassador Solodovnikov had left his Embassy on one of his rare visits abroad, to attend the formal independence celebrations of the continent’s newest Socialist Republic on the island of Union.

  Pilger knew he had only the night to move in, one night to get down the mountain slope away from the pit and hide himself in town. An hour ago, huddled in their sleeping bags and blankets, they had tuned in to the BBC World Service news, eating the last of the tin of baked beans in the light of their last candles. They had waited for the voice from London to tell them the good news but there had only been bad.

  The Third World and Eastern Bloc countries of Africa, Asia and Europe had formally recognized the Soviet Republic of Union, to be renamed Uzania, and welcomed it into the family of World Socialism. Canada had protested at Cuban intervention. President Carter had protested at the violation of Human Rights and President Brezhnev in turn reprimanded America and Canada for jeopardizing East-West détente. There had been no further protests.

  Delegations from Mozambique, Ethiopia, Angola, Libya, Yemen, Poland, Bulgaria, East Germany and other European Soviets were on their way to the island for the next day’s Independence celebrations. The Soviet Ambassador to Lusaka, Vassily Solodovnikov, was to be the Guest of Honour, and the American air force was on its way to evacuate their own and other foreign nationals.

  It was all over so quickly that Pilger waited, sure that there was more to be said, but the newsreader went on about violence in the Indian elections and a political scandal in France, and Pilger realized that Union would not have such prominence in the world’s news again. Another episode in history had been taken note of but not considered pivotal. It had been so easily dismissed, the island so casually abandoned.

  Elizabeth had waited for her father’s anger but he said nothing, he hardly glanced at her, just sat there cross-legged on the floor looking up at the black overhang of rock. Then he reached across and pulled the Cuban’s rifle towards him and, to her surprise, quickly snapped it apart. First the magazine, emptying it of its bullets, then the long bolt along the top, then the barrel from the breach until each part was laid out neatly in front of him on the rug. How easily, she thought, as if he had done it before. But he had never seen one before; he had never ever talked about guns and yet he seemed to know exactly what catch undid what part. He seemed so professional.

  So she watched him as he sat there on his blankets, the candle flickering under his face, making patterns on the wall behind. Just as easily he picked up each part, cleaned it with his handkerchief and then put it down again in its place in the neat column in front of him. Within five minutes he was satisfied and he looked towards Elizabeth, cuddled up in her sleeping bag, and gave her a wink but she was asleep. Faraday, by her side, was also still and huddled, his breathing deep and regular.

  It was getting cold, he felt the chill. There would be a sea mist during the night, he could already feel the dampness in the air. Quietly he began to put the rifle together again.

  He slid back the bolt of the Kalashnikov and locked it again, and carefully and very quietly, one by one, pressed the slim copper-ended bullets back into the magazine. Faraday moved in his sleep, on to his back and began breathing noisily through his mouth and Pilger could just make out his profile in the candlelight. A handsome lad and good for her, he thought, and lucky too if she wants him and he thought she did. She was twenty-one and yet he had known her so briefly really.

  How would she judge him, what he was about to do? Would she understand? More important, would she see what was being lost and why someone like him had sometimes like now to make the ultimate protest? What had that marvellous man Solzhenitsyn said . . . ‘Those who aren’t prepared to die for freedom mustn’t dare demand it.’ Elizabeth would understand that surely, and so would Faraday and their children, and all be stronger for it afterwards. Wasn’t it why his own mother had been widowed so young on that peaceful English summer so long ago? Occasionally someone had to be the caretaker of the future, even if it was just looking after one’s lifeline. If we didn’t think about the future we wouldn’t have one.

  He decided he would make for the Square. If the delegations were coming, they would have to go to the Square, there was nowhere else big enough for the speeches and things people do on Independence days. They would go to the biggest open space on the island and the Place de la République was easily the biggest. They wouldn’t even have to change its name. Republican Revolution hadn’t changed that much in two hundred years.

  He watched the candlelight and the grotesque shadows on the walls around. How he wanted to kiss her again, to touch her just once more. Pity the candle was so low now, but he couldn’t risk taking the torch to her face and wake her. He would have liked to have seen her for the last time, but then she would always be there, he had only to close his eyes anywhere, anytime and he would see her clear and smiling. And so he would for the rest of the night and the waiting tomorrow.

  He left the candle burning low and tip-toed carefully to the tunnel exit, then turned and whispered his goodbye to them. As he went down he touched something stiff and furry with his left hand, and he saw by the wall two rats stretched out dead. ‘There you are, William,’ he whispered, ‘I told you I’d get them in the end. Maybe tomorrow you’ll not think me such a fool after all.’

  Then he began crawling forward on his hands and knees along the cold stone floor to the tunnel’s end, towards the cold night and the mountain slopes and the Cuban patrols, towards the streets and alleys that led to the tiny attic that overlooked the Square. To wait.

  15

  ‘It only hurts when I laugh, Mateys, so don’t look so glum. Anyway I’ve got another one. Funny thing though . . . used to be an old saying of mine . . . You’d never catch Alf Prentice on the hop.’

  He was propped up in the bed, pillows still supporting his foot. The bandages were now sopping with blood and beginning to smell badly, though it didn’t upset Prentice as it did the others. He knew the smell of gangrene and this wasn’t it. Anyway it was too soon. But he needed treatment before the bones began setting in their shattered positions because he felt it would be nice to walk normally again. He had regained consciousness during the night and had asked Protheroe to describe exactly what Elizabeth had done, how she had bound the wounds, what antiseptics she had used. Then he asked Protheroe to lay a clean towel carefully over the bandages to cover the blood and then to sprinkle his bottle of after-shave on the towel to hide the smell.

  He was very pale and two days’ stubble made him look worse. But Faraday’s crew had fed him with hot oxtail soup for breakfast and had regularly since brought him mugs of hot tea mixed with rum and syrup. He felt much better than he looked, but then, he said, it had always been that way.

  ‘You heard the World Service then, lads? So let’s have it.’

  ‘Reception wasn’t marvellous, Alf, but I think we got most of it,’ said Protheroe. He had slept in his clothes all night on the floor by Prentice’s bed.

  ‘The Americans have promised to send their planes to airlift us all out, their crews in the tracking station and all other foreign nationals . . . seems there are about eighty tourists holed up in the other hotels. The radio said the Americans had already got their planes on stand-by in Nairobi and they’re just waiting for the okay from the people here.

  ‘Independence celebrations start tomorrow, delegations are coming from all over the place, and the Guest of Honour’s a Russian . . . Ambassador in Lusaka . . . Solo . . . dov . . . something.’

  ‘Solodovnikov,’ said Prentice. ‘Vassily Solodovnikov.’ ‘Never heard of him,’ said Expressman Doubleday, suddenly very loudly. He was sitting in the corner still holding his hands tight, his eyes bloodshot, his skin grey and tight with dehydration from the night-time bottle of whisky.

  Prentice looked across at him, began to speak, but then relaxed and said nothing. That’s right, he thought. Doubleday hasn’t
heard of him and nor have his readers. But then who had? Say the name to anyone on the Mirror Foreign Desk and they’d think you were talking about Moscow Dynamo’s inside-right. But he knew him. He knew who the bastard was; had even tried to do a feature profile on him once after a friendly spook in Whitehall had tipped him off about the arrival in Lusaka of the Eminence Grise of the Soviet Foreign Service. And that’s how he wrote the piece - ‘Russia’s Richelieu’ he’d called him - which was why his paper probably hadn’t used it. Never heard of Richelieu either. Anyway, who cares, they had told him, and they were right. Who bleedin’ well cares?

  ‘That all?’ he asked Protheroe, his voice faraway now and suddenly weary.

  ‘No, there was something about three ships on their way here. Russian ones from Beira, full of weapons and tanks.’ ‘And MiGs,’ said Doubleday quietly.

  ‘Yes, MiGs and missiles . . . a South African destroyer has been tailing them.’

  ‘Sure it has,’ said Prentice, but they weren’t sure he’d heard properly.

  ‘Why, Alf?’ asked Protheroe. ‘Why are they bringing it all here? Are they going to start a war?’

  ‘Start, Matey? Start? The bastards haven’t stopped fighting the last one yet. If you ask me I think it’s just a . . .’ But his voice trailed off and he leant back against the pillows and closed his eyes.

  Christ, he thought, why bother? He was feeling sick again and dizzy from the rum in his tea. The throbbing in his foot was like a bass drum beating heavy and constant, sounding up through his body until it was a dozen echoes in his head. He felt the left side of his face, the cheek and eye, twitching and he couldn’t stop it. He wanted to doze but his mind was full of irritating images that wouldn’t let him and he could still see his hands spread out limp on the duvet, as white and as lifeless as the bleached cotton, and with the well-washed look that all hands in all sick beds seemed to have. He felt he was sinking and that the pain would creep slowly and dreadfully up his leg, into his groin and stomach, into his chest and neck and up into his brain until every part of him was dying. God! Just a simple drug, a single shot of morphine, just a grain would do.

  He’d taken a beating this time, but he’d promise whoever’s up there, never again. This was the last one, no more after this. If the Americans came and took him out, he’d never leave suburban Surrey again.

  He’d remember his wife’s Christian name and be friendly to her mother. He’d work his garden, prune the apple trees and roses and tidy up the wisteria that had almost buried the small conservatory where he’d once planned to grow Hamburg grapes. Promise, promise! Get me out with a foot that works and it’ll be slippers by the fire and the telly and maybe have a go at a novel. Everyone seems to be doing it nowadays and there was enough material for a dozen.

  But what a depressing bloody book, nostalgic recollections of death and disaster, war on war, little bloody wars that went on and on, the pus of one bursting like a boil on another. Years ago he had read H. G. Wells’s Little . . . all about generals and politicians put into a war temple, asylum really, and given little painted lead soldiers to play their war games with. Just like the strategic studies twits today, he thought, knocking over their toy platoons while the rest of us get on with living.

  And didn’t Wells write another? The Shape of Things to Come . . . about the real thing, real wars, not the final intercontinental ballistic missile war but dozens and dozens of little wars. What a prophet. Wells, what a bleedin’ prophet.

  Was this the book for his old age? Directory of Wars 1950-1980 . . . nice, easy reference for people in a hurry. And wouldn’t they be shocked to be reminded of how many war-hours people have lived through and died in since Hitler. Budapest and Prague when the Russian tanks came in, those pits full of human skulls the day Pakistan handed over Bangladesh; catalogue the corpses of Uganda and Rhodesia and the starving face of Biafra, and the shrapnel and B.52s of Vietnam, the cannibals of Cambodia, the belly of a six-year-old blown open in the Lebanon, the desecration of the Holy Land, the Palestinian grenade rolling down the aisle of a Pan-Am jet, the shattered kneecap on a bombsite in Ulster and a Black bleeding red in Soweto.

  The Little Wars, a great title if Wells hadn’t already used it. He got it wrong though. Should have subtitled his second book with his first. . . The Shape of Things to Come; The Little Wars.

  But who’d read the rubbish anyway? Who’d pay ninety- five piddling pence for some anonymous old hack’s reminiscences? Give them fiction. Give them revamped, re titled, jazzed-up Waffen SS eating babies, give them Dr Menges neutering Jews, give them Anzio as remembered by Punk. But don’t give them the war you saw yesterday because they’ll never believe you. They prefer to believe invention. It’s safer.

  It was something he’d never get used to. Spend a month up to your eyes in shit, anywhere you chose to remember, Vietnam, Middle East, Africa, death as the matter-of-fact reason for being there, a convoy blown apart by Israeli jets, a thousand Syrians oozing their brains and stomachs along two miles of sand, feel the sharp spray of tiny mortar shrapnel hit your face and the tightness of your hands cupped around your balls as the driver manoeuvres the jeep through the minefields, as if the poor sod in the medical evacuation helicopter hadn’t cupped his hands too, and where were his balls now. And you feel sick at your own stench with your fingers smelling of your last shit and water the substance of Paradise. And suddenly it’s all over, another one done, home and safety, and you’re standing in the local with the crowd from the Golf Club and you’ve never been away.

  ‘Where you been, Alf?’

  ‘To war, lads . . . Doing the rounds of the Arabs …’ (Or Vietcong, or take your bleeding pick!)

  ‘Christ, you poor sod,’ they say, and there’s a whip-round for a half and they ask you where it’s all going to end and why are those fucking Jews always causing problems. And you’re only two sentences into it and already they’re talking about changing their number seven irons and moaning about the Paks up the road.

  So who cares a monkey’s fuck? What did that lovely man James Cameron . . . one of the few Quality Street men left. . . say? ‘It is to be hoped that the war correspondent will soon be an extinct species of life.’

  Well, if he’s right, and he usually is, at least we’ll have rarity value. Postdated, but better than nothing.

  ‘Alf . . . Alf . . . you awake?’

  The voice seemed a thousand miles away but when Prentice opened his eyes Protheroe was standing only a yard away by the bed.

  ‘Take it easy. Matey,’ Prentice said. ‘Don’t look so anxious. I’m not dead yet, just doing a bit of dreaming. What’s up?’

  ‘It’s Faraday and the girl, they’re back. They’ve been hiding up on the mountain with her father. Alf, her dad’s knocked off a Cuban.’

  ‘Christ!’

  ‘And he’s taken his gun, the Cuban’s gun. He left them up there while they were asleep last night, and he’s taken the gun with him.’

  The abrupt arrival interrupted his early morning coffee and croissants and he was irritated. It wasn’t that he minded working out of office hours, but he was fond of his casual breakfast and letter-opening routine and he wouldn’t have it spoilt.

  ‘Tell him I’ll see him when I’ve finished.’

  ‘He insists you see him now.’

  ‘Insists? He insists? How dare he insist anything . . . He will wait until . . .’ But the French Ambassador didn’t finish. The tall South African was already standing in the doorway of the breakfast room.

  ‘Good morning, Ambassador. I apologize for the intrusion but it is most urgent and my people insisted I came immediately.’

  ‘Everyone seems to be insisting this morning,’ the Frenchman said, reaching for more coffee in the jug on the electric ring. He poured but he offered none to his visitor.

  ‘First,’ said the South African, ‘my Government wishes you to know how much it appreciates the contin
uing cooperation that exists between our separate staffs here in South Africa and in Mozambique over this current situation.’

  ‘We have a common cause in this at least,’ said the Frenchman a little peevishly, ‘though you mustn’t presume it a permanent feature of our diplomatic relations. This does all happen to be unique and the flow of information between us is considered vital by Paris and I am directed to continue it until the worst is over. Just as long as this “arrangement”, that is, remains absolutely private.’

  He buttered another croissant and dunked it into his bowl of black coffee.

  ‘We fully appreciate your concern for security. Ambassador, but there has been a development overnight that threatens us all.’

  The Frenchman raised his long thin nose towards the South African.

  ‘Development?’ he said. ‘What development?’

  ‘We gather from our man on Union . . .’

  ‘Your man there? Your men seem to be everywhere.’

  ‘Ambassador,’ the South African went on, ‘our man tells us that a Cuban soldier was stabbed to death yesterday and that the Cuban Command took hostages this morning and are threatening to shoot one an hour until the killer gives himself up.’

  The Ambassador stopped eating. ‘White hostages?’

  ‘No, Unionese.’

  ‘Ah!’ said the Frenchman with relief and dropped the sopping piece of croissant into his mouth, then wiped his lips clean on a large starched white napkin with a personal motif, his family crest, embroidered in one corner.

  The South African continued. ‘It seems they will begin shooting them once the Independence ceremonies are over and the foreign delegations have gone.’

  ‘What about the American airlift? Will they wait for that to be completed as well?’