The Perfect Soldier Read online

  ‘The famous McFaul,’ he was saying, ‘bit of a legend, the way I hear it.’

  McFaul shrugged. The phrase was familiar. It made little sense.

  ‘You fly in this morning?’ he said, wiping his hand on the back of his overalls.

  ‘Yep. Begged a lift on the WFP Beechcraft. I thought they’d be staying over but they’ve gone on to Cubal.’

  McFaul nodded. The big Russian freighters and smaller planes like the Beechcraft were still landing at Muengo but soon he suspected they’d stop. Local rebel units were supposed to have laid hands on American Stinger ground-to-air missiles. A Stinger could drop an Antonov at three miles. No one liked coming to Muengo any more.

  McFaul bent down, his arms held out straight, letting Domingos tug the heavy armoured waistcoat off. Peterson watched the procedure. The smile on his face looked strained.

  ‘I’m with Terra Sancta,’ he said at last. ‘Acting CR.’

  McFaul accepted Domingos’s proffered towel, mopping his face. CR meant Country Representative, one of the rungs in Terra Sancta’s administrative ladder. The man would have a rented house back on the coast in Luanda and responsibility for maybe thirty aid workers. It was an important job, far from easy, and McFaul began to understand why Peterson’s smile seemed so tight.

  ‘You’re here about last night? The boy? Jordan?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You want my opinion?’

  ‘Your help.’

  ‘How?’

  Peterson glanced at Domingos then took McFaul by the arm, trying to guide him away from the Land Rover. Instinctively, McFaul resisted the pressure, wanting no part of any confidential conversation. For once, Domingos wasn’t smiling.

  ‘You’ll be writing some kind of report?’ Peterson asked.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘May I see it?’

  ‘Yeah, when it’s done.’

  ‘Who else gets a copy?’

  McFaul looked at him a moment, at last understanding why he’d bothered to stop by.

  ‘My lot,’ he grunted. ‘The office in Luanda. The embassy people. The ODA …’ he shrugged, ‘and whoever else my boss thinks may be interested. Up to him really.’

  He paused, letting the circulation list sink in. The ODA was shorthand for the Overseas Development Administration, the Whitehall department responsible for funding the mine clearance work. They had close links to all the UK aid outfits. Peterson began to make a point about the importance of proper briefings but McFaul interrupted him.

  ‘Jordan was an arsehole,’ McFaul grunted, ‘and he’d done it before.’

  ‘So I understand. All I wanted to say was—’

  ‘No.’ McFaul shook his head. ‘You listen to me. There are rules out here. We don’t make them up to keep ourselves amused. They’re not for negotiation. They matter. There are things you do and don’t do. The boy thought he was immune. He knew it all. He wouldn’t be told.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You understand that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your people understand that?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘So do I. For their sake. And yours.’

  McFaul turned away, letting his anger subside. Last night, after the Mayday on Channel Two, he’d driven out with Domingos in the two-tonner. They’d spent the hours of darkness by the roadside, waiting until first light to spade the remains of James Jordan into a body bag. The Médecins Sans Frontières girl, Christianne, had done what she could to help, insisting on staying with them until the body had been recovered, but the price of the boy’s stupidity, his recklessness, was plain to see. Everyone knew how much the prat had meant to her. Poor cow.

  McFaul stood at the roadside, looking down the line of stakes. Peterson joined him.

  ‘All I came to say,’ he murmured, ‘was sorry.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘It can’t make things any easier for you.’

  ‘It doesn’t.’ McFaul glanced across at him. ‘Are you taking the body back? Only there’s a space problem.’

  ‘So I understand.’

  ‘There’s only one fridge at the hospital and they’re short of fuel for the gennie. If the bad guys get their act together, there won’t be any fuel at all. Then we’ll have to bury him.’

  McFaul broke off, watching Peterson working it out for himself. Mercifully, very few aid workers got themselves killed but when it happened, repatriation of the remains became a priority. Africa could claim white lives but white bodies, however mangled, belonged back home.

  Peterson was looking at his watch.

  ‘There might be another aid flight this afternoon,’ he said uncertainly. ‘No one seems to know.’

  Peterson eyed the sky, like a man assessing the weather. The road to Muengo had been off-limits for months, a combination of land mines and the fear of UNITA ambush. The only way in or out was by air.

  ‘It’s Sunday afternoon,’ McFaul grunted, ‘no one likes flying on Sunday afternoons.’

  ‘Tomorrow then. Or the next day. Would that be too late?’

  McFaul looked at him for a moment or two, suddenly aware of how tired he felt.

  ‘You tell me,’ he handed his helmet to the waiting Domingos, ‘I only work here.’

  Robbie Cunningham took the first Winchester exit off the motorway, peering through the rain to avoid the tangle of roadworks. He’d dropped Liz at the flat in Chiswick and doubled back towards the M3, pushing the rusty Escort to the limit. Westerby, the Director, had called the meeting for half-past four. With luck he’d just make it.

  Terra Sancta was headquartered in a sprawling Victorian vicarage on the city’s western edge. A big new extension to the rear of the building would treble the office space but the project was a month and a half behind schedule and what the Director called ‘the worker bees’ were still caged in the main building. Robbie shared an alcove with a fax machine, an unsteady pile of phone directories and a file of agency press cuttings. The file was on the thin side, a fact of which he was uncomfortably aware. In a good mood, the Director would refer to this as ‘disappointing’, though Robbie had no illusions about what he really meant. Third World charities survived on press coverage. Without profile, without your name in the papers, you stayed poor.

  The meeting was to take place in the Director’s own office. The room had once been the largest of the vicarage bedrooms, and for some reason the Director had hung on to the hand basin in the corner. He was soaping his face when Robbie knocked and entered, slipping into one of the two empty chairs at the long deal table. As far as he could judge, the meeting had yet to begin.

  The Director returned to the table. He looked older than his fifty-seven years. He was wearing a shapeless grey cardigan and the shirt beneath was open at the neck. There was mud caked on the bottom of his baggy corduroy trousers and his hair looked unusually wild. He settled himself at the head of the table behind an unopened file, murmuring a collective welcome to the half-dozen assembled faces. Robbie looked at the typed sticky label on the file. It said ‘James Jordan’.

  Before the Director had a chance to begin, the woman beside Robbie took a folded telex from her handbag and slid it down the table. Her name was Valerie. She looked after Africa.

  ‘From Luanda this afternoon,’ she said. ‘I thought you ought to see it.’

  The Director looked at her a moment, a pained expression on his face. He was famous for hating surprises. Aid, in his view, was about development, about the Third World marching to the slow, steady drumbeat of self-improvement. It was folly to rush things, to surrender to mere events. His least favourite words were ‘crisis’ and ‘emergency’.

  He unfolded the telex and read it. Then he looked up, sharing its contents with everyone else.

  ‘It’s from Peterson,’ he said glumly. ‘He thinks the press people may be on to us. Already.’

  He looked pointedly at Robbie who answered the accusation with a firm shake of his head.

  ‘Not this end,’ he said.
‘Not yet, anyway.’

  The Director gazed helplessly at the telex, then passed it to Robbie. Robbie read it quickly. Before flying to Muengo, Peterson had evidently received a phone call from the Reuters stringer in Luanda. He’d heard rumours about a dead aid worker. It wasn’t impossible that he’d been monitoring the radio traffic. Everyone did it. Peterson had naturally stonewalled but soon there’d have to be some sort of announcement. How was he to play it?

  ‘Well,’ the Director was sitting back now, polishing his glasses, ‘what are we to do?’

  Robbie was about to frame an answer when there was a brisk knock at the door. Before the Director could answer, the door opened and a figure stepped in. The white trenchcoat was streaked with rain and the umbrella left a trail of drips across the fitted carpet.

  ‘Came straight down,’ the figure said briskly. ‘Sorry I’m late.’ The Director waved the apology away, visibly brightening.

  ‘This is Todd Llewelyn,’ he announced. ‘No introductions needed. He’s kindly offered to help us out if things get … ah … sticky.’

  The faces around the table offered Llewelyn a collective smile of welcome and Robbie watched him shedding the white trenchcoat, knowing now that the rumours had been true. Llewelyn’s was a well-known television face from the eighties. Square-jawed, eloquent, pugnacious, he’d presented series after series of hard-hitting documentaries. Now, somewhere in his mid-fifties, he’d been beached by the broadcasting revolution, his mannered front-of-camera delivery overtaken by a sleeker, glitzier style. Robbie had always wondered where men like Llewelyn ended up. Now he knew.

  The Director was beaming at the new arrival, like a child showing off his latest toy, and Robbie leaned back in his chair, trying to decide who’d made the first approach. Llewelyn, probably. Taking initiatives of any kind was something the Director generally tried to resist.

  Llewelyn slipped into the empty chair, eyeing Robbie across the table. The look – cold, hard, appraising – was unambiguous, an immediate declaration of war, and Robbie felt himself reaching for his pen, scribbling lines of nonsense on his pad, anything to hide his own fury. Appointing Llewelyn as some kind of media consultant would be typical of the Director, saving himself the embarrassment of confronting Robbie face to face. The Director wanted him out. And this was his way of saying it.

  ‘An update, Todd,’ the Director was saying. ‘You know about our Mr Jordan. We discussed that on the phone. But there are complications. Valerie?’

  With a glance at the others, the woman beside Robbie picked up her cue, addressing Llewelyn directly. For several months, she told him, Terra Sancta had been winding down its efforts in Angola. Plainly, the political situation was out of control. Three decades of civil war had brought the country to its knees and the recent elections had solved nothing. The MPLA, the socialist government in Luanda, had won a narrow victory but UNITA, their right-wing opponents, had refused to accept the result. UNITA’s leader, Jonas Savimbi, had renewed the war and fighting had broken out again with pockets of violence flaring wherever government or Savimbi’s troops sensed an advantage. The countryside was emptying. The cities were choked. There were thousands of casualties, millions of displaced Angolans fleeing their homes. Under these circumstances, charities like Terra Sancta were helpless. There’d been much agonising, many meetings, but the consensus was plain. Angola was a basket case. Terra Sancta’s precious funds would be better spent elsewhere.

  Llewelyn listened to the briefing, his eyes never leaving Valerie’s face. When she paused for breath, he leaned forward, one finger raised, the pose familiar from a hundred prime-time documentaries.

  ‘So you’re pulling out? Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘We … ah …’

  ‘Yes or no?’

  Valerie glanced towards the Director. The Director was looking uneasy.

  ‘We’re going through a process of re-evaluation,’ he said hurriedly. ‘Pulling out sounds a little … ah … harsh.’

  ‘But that’s what you’re saying. That’s what it means.’

  ‘Essentially …’ he conceded the point with a nod, ‘yes.’

  ‘And you’re embarrassed by the decision? Is that it?’

  ‘Not embarrassed, no. But we believe it may be open to …’ He paused, frowning.

  ‘Misinterpretation?’

  ‘Yes, exactly.’

  The Director smiled gratefully, accepted the proffered lifeline, and Robbie felt the blood rising in his face. He’d spent a lot of time in Angola. He’d seen the country at its worst and he loved the place. He’d never been anywhere in Africa that had so much potential: the oil, and the diamonds, and above all the people. The last thirty years would have crushed most nations but here they still were, ever-sunny, ever-cheerful, making the most of what pitifully little they had. In his view, a withdrawal of aid was inconceivable. Angola was in big trouble, no question, but to abandon it now was beyond comprehension. If Terra Sancta existed for anything, it existed for this.

  He raised a hand, rehearsing the old arguments in his head, but the Director ignored him. They’d had this out before and the Director had little taste for public dissent.

  Llewelyn was musing aloud, his eyes moving slowly from face to face, his command of the meeting established.

  ‘You’re all worried about the downside,’ he was saying, ‘the negative publicity. You’ll have the media round your neck over Jordan and you’re afraid the rest will come out …’ His gaze reached the Director. ‘Am I right?’

  ‘Perfectly.’

  ‘So we’re into damage limitation. Or perhaps damage deflection. Yes?’

  ‘Alas, yes.’

  Llewelyn nodded, snapping open his briefcase, the visiting GP. He produced a yellow lawyer’s pad. The Director was waiting for his next word. The patient was sick. There was the possibility of a scandal. What would this enormously experienced media giant recommend?

  Llewelyn was scribbling something on his pad.

  ‘Anyone been in touch with the parents?’ he said without looking up. Robbie stirred.

  ‘Yes,’ he said quietly, ‘I have.’

  ‘And how are they taking it?’

  ‘The father’s in a state. The mother …’ he hesitated, ‘I’m not sure.’

  Llewelyn glanced up, that same expression in his eyes, open intimidation.

  ‘You’re not sure?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  Robbie shrugged, refusing to lose his nerve.

  ‘On the face of it she’s pretty together, very coherent, very much in control …’ He paused. ‘In fact she wants to go out there.’ There was a sharp intake of breath from the end of the table. The Director looked genuinely shocked.

  ‘You’re serious?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She wants to go to Angola?’

  ‘That’s what she said.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To fetch her son. To …’ he gestured at Jordan’s file, ‘find out what happened. Say goodbye, I suppose.’

  Llewelyn was leaning back in his chair, listening to the exchange, the pose of a man who’s heard it all before. For the first time, he smiled.

  ‘It’s common enough in these cases …’ he said. ‘Believe me, I’ve seen it over and over again. The Falklands was a classic example. Every time the casualty lists came in, the M.O.D. was swamped. Mothers mainly, funnily enough …’

  ‘I’m sure.’ The Director was still looking at Robbie. ‘So what did you tell her?’

  ‘I told her it would be extremely difficult.’

  ‘Impossible. It would be impossible.’ The Director frowned. ‘And what did she say?’

  ‘She didn’t say anything.’

  There was a brief silence. Llewelyn was making a note on his pad. At length he put his pen carefully to one side, folding his arms.

  ‘Why would it be impossible?’ he said softly.

  Robbie began to answer but the Director cut in.

&n
bsp; ‘For one thing, it’s a war zone …’ he began, ‘just getting in there would be a nightmare. Then there’s the situation on the ground. Places like Muengo are in chaos. People are dying. There’s a food problem, no drugs, no power, poor water. The situation’s appalling, completely out of control.’

  ‘I understand that,’ Llewelyn said gently, ‘but why would it be impossible?’

  The Director was frowning now, confused, watching helplessly as Llewelyn took the conversation back to Robbie.

  ‘This Mrs Jordan …’ he mused, ‘… what’s she like?’

  ‘I just told you.’

  ‘I meant to look at, to be with. Nice woman? Sympathetic? Pretty?’

  Robbie shrugged.

  ‘Middle forties, smallish, trim …’ he paused, remembering the pile of abandoned jogging gear, ‘and fit, too, I imagine.’

  ‘Pretty?’ he asked again. ‘Good-looking?’

  ‘Yes.’ Robbie frowned, feeling curiously insulted by the question. ‘Yes, definitely. Blonde, slim, nice manner, nice eyes …’

  ‘Determined?’

  ‘I’d say so, yes. Difficult to judge, but … yes.’

  There was another silence and Robbie shifted uncomfortably in the hard wooden chair. For reasons he didn’t understand, he’d become involved in some kind of audition. Llewelyn was studying his fingernails.

  ‘And does she trust you?’ he asked at length.

  ‘Trust me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve no idea. I was only there an hour. Maybe less.’

  ‘But what’s your feeling? You’d know, surely.’

  Robbie gazed at him, at last sensing where this conversation was headed. Llewelyn wanted him to go back there, back to the picturesque little cottage on the northern edge of Essex. He was to carry a proposal of some kind, the opening gambit in a master plan that would doubtless get the Director off the hook. Quite what this proposal might be, Robbie didn’t know. But in his own way he was determined to hang in there, whatever the consequences, buffering the poor woman from the likes of Todd Llewelyn.