‘We have no way of knowing, but we must presume so.’ ‘Then I don’t see there’s much we can do. My orders, like yours I presume, are to play this whole Union thing at very low key . . . do what we can but in no way become physically involved. Surely that must be your attitude as well?’ The South African came closer to the table, leant forward and rested both his hands on it, facing the Frenchman squarely.
‘Ambassador, we have been overtaken by events . . . it’s no longer now just a question of watching from the sidelines. It is, as the Americans say, a new ball-game.’
‘Please,’ said the Frenchman, put off by the closeness of the man, ‘you confuse me with your sporting clichés. Just tell me what has happened?’
‘Our man told us by radio less than an hour ago that the Cuban’s body had been found, and that while they were searching for it they came across an old slave pit, well hidden on the slopes of the mountain . . . about fifty yards from the body. The pit had been recently lived in, there was a radio and food, and some pipe tobacco. He is certain the Englishman smoked a pipe.’
‘The Englishman? Pipe?’
‘Yes, his name is Pilger, he must have . . .’ But it was too fast for the Frenchman.
‘Please,’ he said, ‘you gallop. Who is this Englishman? Why is he so important to you?’
‘The British here have sent us their file on him and it shows he renewed his passport in Nairobi two years ago on his way to Union. In that time he became a close friend of President Laurent, he bought a yacht and the two often went fishing together. Pilger has the reputation for being eccentric . . . wears native clothes, walks barefoot and catches butterflies.’
‘He sounds very English,’ murmured the Frenchman, ‘and obviously harmless.’
‘No, Ambassador, not harmless. Not at all. British records show he has been a soldier of sorts . . . started life as a Legionnaire.’
The Frenchman looked up.
‘He was never in the British army,’ the South African said, ‘but he has soldiered for many other armies and he knows his weapons. And he is still a fit man.’
‘I still don’t follow you,’ said the Frenchman, but he had stopped eating and he began twisting the thick gold ring on the third finger of his left hand round and around nervously.
‘We thought we were jumping to conclusions,’ said the South African, ‘until the British came up with the same idea. You see, Pilger was a friend of Laurent’s, must have seen him hang, must know by now what happened to his children. And now he has killed. When they found the Cuban’s body, the knife was still lodged in the heart, wedged between the ribs. Our man says it was a very professional kill.’
‘Killing is not exclusive,’ said the Frenchman. ‘What you say could mean everything or nothing. It doesn’t indict the Englishman.’
‘One more thing, Ambassador. The handle of the knife was bound in tape, black shiny tape, the kind used for electrical repairs. It had been used to keep the broken parts of the plastic handle together, and scratched deep into that handle were the initials AP. His first name was Adam. Once the Cubans found the body they started looking for the rifle . . . a standard Kalashnikov. They searched the small gorge where the body was found, searched an area a mile square nearby, searched the slave pit, but they did not find it.’
The Frenchman knew what the South African was about to say next and quickly said it for him. ‘He means to kill again.’
‘Yes.’
‘The new President of Union?’
‘No.’
‘Who? You think you know who, don’t you?’
‘Our man says he’s met Pilger a number of times and was impressed by him. He says he’s not a man who would waste his time knowing he will lose his life by trying for someone who isn’t really important. He is convinced he will go for the big one tomorrow. So are we. So are the British. He will go for the Russian.’
‘Oh my God! My God! . . . my . . .’ But his voice became a whisper and then nothing as he continued mouthing the words. He had become suddenly very pale. Then, carefully holding on to the edge of the breakfast table, he stood up and absent-mindedly brushed crumbs from his waistcoat as the napkin spread out like a parachute and fell to the floor. He blinked hard. ‘I must call Paris . . . now.’
‘No Ambassador,’ said the South African, standing erect again. ‘It is too late for that.’
‘Too late? But I must, I must know what best to do, I’m duty bound to call them.’
‘Ambassador, the order has already been sent.’
‘The order? What order?’
‘To our agent in Union . . . our man. It was acknowledged by him over our radio link fifteen minutes ago. I got it just before coming to you, and the British have given their assent.’
‘What assent . . . what order, you stupid man? Tell me what you have told him to do! ’ The Frenchman was almost screaming now, and his private secretary came running to the doorway in alarm.
‘Ambassador,’ said the South African looking down at the small man. ‘We have told him to find this Englishman, Pilger, and then to kill him. Before he gets close enough to kill Vassily Solodovnikov.’
16
The order had gone out over the radios to all street patrols at five o’clock, just as it was getting light. It had been a cold night, one of the island’s occasional weather freaks. A cloud mass moving across the Indian Ocean hits warm air coming off the East African coast and suddenly dips and gets caught up in the mountain, and the island wakes up dripping.
So when the Cuban soldiers, wet and tired, received the order to smash all statues, destroy the church and everything inside it, pull down the street names, set fire to all the books in the small library and smash the little maritime museum that housed the remains of the French brigantine. La Belle Marie, the soldiers went about their work surprised, delighted and very thoroughly.
One or two of them remembered much the same thing in Angola after Independence, though the orders had been different. Then they had been told to pull the statues down carefully because the bronze and stone monuments were to be kept, though less prominently, to remind the people of the miseries of colonial rule and the reasons for the rebirth of nations.
But this was different. Everything, they were told over the crackling radio sets, was to be destroyed, and the islanders working in the harbour unloading three Russian freighters that had docked during the night, and other work-gangs, already numbed in terror, watched as soldiers took out of the library volumes of leather-covered books with brass locks and bundles of parchment tied up with coloured ribbons, piled them in a heap on the pavements, dowsed them in petrol and rubbed their hands in the warmth of the blaze.
They saw Cubans lasso the bronze necks of former governors, admirals and colonial administrators and heard them cheer as the figures toppled and bronze heads and legs and arms snapped off on impact.
Lesser men of history, cast in cement or chipped from stone, were demolished by hand grenades; one very large one was blown apart by an anti-tank missile that sent a thousand fragments hurtling through the streets like shrapnel, smashing into stucco and windows and splintering doors so that it looked as if there had been a gunfight.
One-by one, in no special order, the monuments were demolished and the bronzes squashed flat by lorries running backwards and forwards over them. The last to go, because it was the furthest away, was the one at the end of the harbour wall, the tallest of them all, staring out to sea, his face pitted by the salt air; Union’s founder and first Governor, Henri Chaudenson. Six fishermen had been ordered away from their work in the harbour and, prodded with rifles, they strained at the chains they had flung around Chaudenson’s neck and shoulders. But he wouldn’t move, so the soldiers wedged a small wad of gelignite into the stone plinth and the explosion lifted the bronze figure three feet into the air. Over and over it tumbled, down the sloping harbour wall, into the sea.
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The monument of Chaudenson was revered by the islanders almost as much as the statue of the Virgin Mary and the fishermen watched as it suddenly turned and faced them, hands clasped. Then the Cubans began firing into it and on the next wave with what seemed like a sigh it was gone.
Another patrol in the Square, hearing the order over the radio, ran into the church, led by a young corporal. They began pulling down the rows of tapestries from the walls, one from the Bordeaux town of Royan, where Governor Chaudenson had been born, and another presented by
General de Gaulle at the time of Union’s independence. They tore down a dozen different flags from as many nations whose diplomats, admirals and generals had, at some time, visited the island. Using their bayonets, they prised brass and copper plaques off the walls, plaques commemorating the generosity of this sinner or that and recording the posthumous decorations of many others.
Then the Cubans came to the altar and they hesitated. Tall white fat candles were still burning in their brass holders at each end of the white linen-covered altar table and at its centre stood a simple brass cross. The young corporal kicked over a vase of withered flowers that was standing on the floor in front of the altar and water ran down the aisle, smelling of dead vegetation.
A carved wooden statue of the Virgin Mary, painted in reds and blues, stood on a gilt pedestal high up on the sill of a tall narrow stained glass window, presented to the church by a wealthy coffee planter a hundred years before.
The corporal shouted and two of the soldiers moved up to the altar to take the candles and set fire to the bundle of flags and tapestries they had heaped in the centre of the aisle. But then they stopped. Angrily he pushed them aside, grabbed the candle nearest him and threw it at the bundle and the candle’s tiny flame seemed to explode on impact and there was a sudden burst of flame. Turning on them, he shouted at their disobedience and began to tug at the white altar-cloth, pulling the cross towards him. They panicked, turned and ran down the aisle, past the flames, scattering the brass plaques with their boots and then out through the front door into the sun and the Square.
The corporal screamed abuse at them, turned back to the altar, cocked his gun and started firing at the statue and the window behind it, and they disintegrated together. Then he swept the rifle barrel along the altar top, sweeping the candle, the cross and tiny porcelain bowls of incense on to the floor. He stood there, hands on his hips, the rifle locked against his body, looking at the table and spitting phlegm at the desecration beyond it.
It was the heat that warned him, not the noise, the echoes of his own gunfire still rang in his ears. It was the warmth on his back that made him suddenly turn. The flames had quickly spread right and left from the central burning pile, jumping along the rows of old, tinder-dry, worm-eaten pews. He saw a gap on the left and ran towards it, but as he moved another pew burst into flame and in that instant, from stone wall to stone wall, the barrier of fire was complete.
He started to edge backwards, watching the flames bursting towards him, his eyes searching for another door, an escape. But the church had been built when the island was poor, when it could not afford more than one, so there was no other door for him this side of the blaze.
The fire was fanned and roaring with the rush of air as the draught shot down the narrow church from the open door at one end to the smashed window at the other. He saw it suddenly and he knew it was the only way out. The window was his escape. It was high but if he pushed the table to it he could reach the bottom sill and be able to pull himself clear.
The flames were five yards from him now, spiralling with the gusts of air that drew them up and on, chairs spat and cracked as they were smothered by the heat, and little muffled explosions sent a shower of dust on fire above him and smouldered on his uniform.
Panicking now, he threw his rifle hard at the wall, and it broke in two. He began to push at the heavy oak trestle table, made from timbers of the La Belle Marie salvaged from the sea and, little by little, sweating, his face and hands feeling the scorch of the heat, his boots sliding on the shiny smooth tiled floor, he moved it slowly towards the window. Above him two more flags were hanging out from the wall on two wooden staffs, billowing out across the window, touching the ceiling rafters and then falling heavily again so that the staffs bent with their weight.
A yard now . . . just a yard to go. The rubber soles of his boots were burning his feet, the tiles were so hot, but then the table jarred against his shoulder as it touched the wall and he was on it, reaching, clawing for the narrow stone ledge that had once supported the stained glass, his fingers grabbing for it, trying to find the strength to pull his body up. He looked over his shoulder and saw the flames, white flames they seemed, jumping at him, crawling across the floor towards him, touching the table now. Sweat ran into his eyes. He heaved himself up, trying to get an elbow on the sill. He hung there, his fingers beginning to slip and weaken, the toes of his boots searching for a crack, anything to give him leverage. One of the flags hit his face, another knocked off his forage cap, he almost fell but the fingers held and then his left foot found a hold and his arm began moving up the wall. Then he heard above him a loud crack, then another, he craned his neck back and saw the two broad wooden staffs had snapped. His elbow reached over the sill, he saw the Square, he saw the morning sunlight, felt the cold air on his face and saw the red bunting in the trees as the great brocaded flags fell together and pulled him down and covered him screaming on to the table as the flames poured over him like running molten lava.
Pilger was woken by gunfire, single shots from the far side of the Square, the Governor’s Fort side. Then he saw the smoke coming from the direction of the church, though because of the trees he couldn’t see what was burning. He looked at his watch. Just after ten. He had slept longer than he had meant to but it had been a very slow and careful journey down from the pit, dodging Cuban night patrols. He had been helped by the heavy mist, but he still hadn’t got to the room until four o’clock, an hour before it was light.
He was cold and his clothes were damp. He had opened the attic window as soon as he had arrived so as not to risk doing it in daylight, and the window sill was wet and so were the leaves on the trees in the Square. In front of the window was a low concrete balustrade that builders, generations ago, had put there to hide the rain guttering and enhance the tall line of the terrace. It provided Pilger with excellent cover; he could see out through the gaps but no one below could see him. The Square was full of red bunting hanging from lamp-posts and from the boughs of trees, and there were scarlet painted posters everywhere. In the centre of the Square, next to the ornamental fountain, was a wooden stage partly covered in a red and white striped awning, and soldiers were reeling out cables from stand microphones at the front of the stage to loudspeakers other soldiers were tying to the trees.
Pilger remembered an old employee of President Laurent’s, a retired fisherman who had tended Laurent’s vineyards, talking of the parties that had once been held in the Square when he had been a child, how the Governor had entertained his friends at the great Christmas feasts. The beautiful people, the fisherman called them, had come in their schooners and small steamships from Madagascar, Zanzibar, Mombasa, even as far away as Lourenço Marques. The old man remembered how the peasant people had sung carols on the stage and how they had got drunk on the Governor’s wine once he and his friends had gone off to the church for midnight mass.
Pilger heard the shots again and over the purple-blossomed jacaranda trees he saw them, Cubans, standing on top of the high white-washed wall of the Governor’s Fort, shooting at the doves as they swooped above in the formations that had once made them favourites of the tourists. One by one the soldiers knocked them out of the sky, cheering and jumping with excitement every time white feathers scattered in the air like tiny pillows bursting.
Pilger sat down on the floor again, his back to the window. All things, he thought, are possib
le now. The nightmare would continue from one atrocity to the next and there was nothing to stop it. Today the doves, and tomorrow? What would they do tomorrow?
He rubbed his eyes and then brought his fingers hard down his face, distorting his cheeks and lips. How wonderful all the tomorrows had once seemed, and so many of them to come too. Fifty years old at his next birthday and, given the bit of luck he was due for, he had another twenty- five to go. What a prospect. Another half-a-lifetime on Union, sailing, fishing, climbing, swimming, cataloguing his butterflies. And his silly bit of writing, doing as Elizabeth had ordered him to do, put down on paper what he could remember of his adventures, certain he would be able to pick the right time to show her his past, because she knew so little of it. He had always meant to keep this room a secret though.
He looked at the rifle, propped up against the wall by his feet. The decision had been so easy to make, but then so had they all, it was something of a lifetime’s habit. Perhaps it had been made for him that moment he watched them pull Laurent up the lamp-post on the end of a rope, watched unbelieving as his friend kicked the air, his body convulsed in the final agony as his face turned blue and the eye was forced out on to his cheek with the strain.
Perhaps it had been decided for him that moment he saw the woman, his woman, the woman he had loved, the woman he had sung songs in happy drunken hours with, watched her push her way, dressed in black as she always was, slowly through the crowd towards the hanging body. And then so suddenly, before he could turn his face from it, saw them cut her throat.
Perhaps the decision was made early that morning when he had watched, beyond the Square to the harbour, his old yacht. The Killing of Sister George, move slowly out past the harbour walls, sails down, silent on the ebb tide, escaping, with Laurent’s two small sons aboard and the President’s own brother at the wheel, in a desperate bid for freedom. And then the explosion, the dreadful flash of orange light and the mast lifting twenty feet into the air, and the ball of thick black smoke as the diesel tanks caught fire and then the great gulp of water that quickly swallowed up the wreckage. And on the harbour wall, the solitary figure, outlined against the sea, still holding on his shoulder the long cylinder that Pilger knew was an anti-tank missile launcher. A tall Black, the tallest Black he had ever seen, in an army uniform and wearing a red skullcap.
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