A Dying Breed, page 21
Karim’s ear was throbbing now and he had to concentrate hard in order to walk straight. As soon as he could, Patrick dropped back to walk alongside him shoulder to shoulder.
‘What happened? Why did he hit you?’
Karim cast an anxious look in the direction of the man in front and lowered his voice. ‘This man he spoke of, the General, he is a myth in Afghanistan, a monster. He fought against the Russians thirty years ago, he was the most feared mujahideen leader.’
Karim’s balance was still a little off. He veered right and the young bandit behind him stepped forward and encouraged him back into line with the butt of his rifle. As he staggered on, Patrick grabbed his arm in both hands and tried to walk in step, propping him up.
‘You’re sure this General they are talking about is the same man?’
‘Not sure, no. The General was a ruthless fighter but also a drug dealer. He supplied his own men but mainly he sold to the Russian Army. The story was that he got Russian soldiers so addicted – first to hashish, then heroin – that they were swapping their own weapons for drugs. The heroin he sold was stronger than anything anyone had seen before. Pure white heroin, too good to be local. Some said the Pakistanis were supplying him. Or the Americans. Part of their cold war against the Russians.’
Patrick gave his colleague a sceptical glance. ‘It all sounds a little far-fetched, Karim.’
‘Don’t be so sure. This is Afghanistan. The most unlikely thing is usually the truth. When the Russians left, the General didn’t come to the city, he stayed away from politics, stayed in the mountains. Everyone here knows the story. He bought and sold drugs and weapons, he became a warlord and a drug lord, one of the biggest. He was like America’s mafia. Untouchable, feared, rich.’ Karim took a glance over his shoulder. The young bandit was several feet away, but he lowered his voice anyway. ‘Maybe ten years ago something happened. He just disappeared. People say it was because of his wife; she was murdered by the Taliban. He only ever had one wife, a great beauty. Beautiful in the way only an Afghan woman can be beautiful. After this happened, he went mad, killed many Taliban, then killed his guards and his friends and then himself. That’s what they say.’
‘But no one’s sure?’
‘No. He disappeared, that is sure. And the palace he built with all the opium money, that has gone, destroyed. I have seen the ruins. But no one has seen him or heard anything apart from rumours for years. He is just a story now. A thing you say to scare your children.’
‘A bogeyman?’
‘Yes, something like that.’
Karim let go of Patrick’s arm and pulled himself upright, lengthening his stride. Patrick tried to keep pace.
‘So either these men are trying to scare us with a story, or they are taking us to see a ghost.’
Karim gave a mirthless laugh.
‘What’s funny?’
‘Ghost is correct. That is one of his other names. The Soviet soldiers gave it to him. They called him General Doushki. The Russian word for ghost.’
20 Ships and Towers and Temples
DATELINE: Parliament Square, London, W1, July 6th
Climbing the steps to street level at Westminster underground station, Dr Berry stopped and checked his grip bag. There were the sandwiches, wrapped neatly in greaseproof paper, and the silver thermos flask. Thank goodness for that, he’d been getting a little forgetful recently; keys lost, tickets mislaid, that sort of thing. He put it down to stress. His employers had reached the same diagnosis and suggested – insisted, in fact – that he take a couple of weeks’ gardening leave. Alongside his packed lunch were several newspapers and a thick manila envelope with the letters HMSO printed on the back. It was strictly against the rules to remove documents from the office but what else was he supposed to do with two weeks off? He loathed gardening.
For two days his wife had repeatedly chided him for hanging about and getting under her feet at home, so this morning he’d decided to take the train into town; he would have lunch in his usual spot and then take a wander around the National Gallery. It was a sunny day and all the benches on Parliament Square were already occupied. The civil servant picked a patch of grass close to a tree that he particularly liked and set about making camp. He stooped and put a hand to the turf; although the air was warm, there was still a little dampness to the ground. He would use one of his many newspapers as a blanket. From this position, Berry had a clear view across the square. There, in between the House of Commons and Portcullis House, he could see a section of Westminster Bridge, a corner of County Hall and the huge Coade stone lion who guarded the south side of the Thames. Westminster was the pick of London’s bridges as far as Berry was concerned. Majestic in its own right, but made doubly so through its connection with the Wordsworth poem, a poem which he’d had to learn by rote as a child and had never forgotten. He muttered a few lines now, while arranging the pages of his Financial Times into a makeshift picnic blanket.
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
Despite the crisp air, the modest exercise involved in laying out a newspaper and sitting down had left Berry’s back wet with sweat and his shirt stuck to him. ‘What is wrong with you, man?’ he muttered under his breath. He removed his glasses and wiped his face with his sleeve, then took the tail of his shirt from underneath his jumper and cleaned the condensation from his spectacles. Putting them back on, he took in the view.
The catalpa tree he sat beside was tall and handsome, its branches reaching up and out for every piece of London sky. To the left of that was the Abbey and then the Palace of Westminster itself, from somewhere inside of which a twist of smoke curled upwards from an unseen chimney. Then came Big Ben, which drew the eye upwards and encouraged you to check your watch against its accuracy. Berry did so. The time was twelve forty and young men and women from the various government offices were descending on the square to eat a quick lunch and hold their faces up towards the sun. A group of office girls strode past him and one paused, letting her friends walk on ahead before smiling broadly in his direction. At him, in fact, or so it seemed. Berry hesitated, unsure of whether this young woman was being friendly or perhaps found him amusing, a figure of fun. The latter seemed more likely. He smiled back regardless and was rewarded with a wave, which confused him still further, flustered him in fact and he looked quickly away. Only after the girl had gone did Berry place the face; he remembered that she had worked for him briefly, a temporary replacement for his secretary when she was away nursing her dying husband a year or two ago. Her name? Her name was Maria. He remembered that she had come with a slight health warning from civil service personnel but that he had found her pleasant and hard-working and had given her a good reference. He nodded to himself – the reference, that would be why she’d waved.
He took his sandwiches from the bag and unwrapped them. Coarse paté with sliced cucumber on buttered wholegrain bread. He ate and enjoyed the view while tourists poured across Westminster Bridge in both directions.
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky
That didn’t sound quite right. He’d missed a bit. What was it?
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare
That was right, but then what? As he sifted his memory, Berry became aware of a shadow at his shoulder. Looking up from his sandwich he saw a tall man standing above him carrying half a dozen shopping bags from a variety of sport shops and department stores. The man looked down and nodded. Berry nodded back and waited for the man, obviously a tourist, to speak, hoping that whatever enquiry he was about to make could be quickly dealt with.
‘Hello, sir. Beautiful day.’
The accent was strong but hard to place. Swiss or somewhere Scandinavian, perhaps.
‘Lovely,’ Berry said without conviction. He looked at the stranger. The man reminded him of a model in an outdoor sports catalogue. Healthy-looking, handsome, early thirties, with an open, almost childlike face and close-cropped blond hair.
‘You mind if I sit down here?’
Berry minded very much but wouldn’t dream of saying so. The square was getting increasingly crowded and he would have to share his view; to do otherwise would be unmannerly. ‘Public space and all that. Go ahead.’
The man smiled and put his bags down a few feet from Berry. From one of the larger carriers he pulled what at first appeared to be an umbrella but on closer inspection Berry recognised as a shooting stick. Incongruous, the civil servant thought, but sensible nonetheless, given this damp ground. Trust a Scandinavian to come prepared for all eventualities. The tourist unfolded the shooting stick, planted the sharp end in the ground and unfolded the canvas seat before sitting down with a satisfied grunt. Berry went back to his lunch, pouring himself a cup of sweet tea from the thermos. He took the newspapers from his grip bag and leafed idly through The Times; he’d bought all the serious papers this morning, as he had every morning for the last few days, combing them for any mention of Aftel. He’d been through today’s editions thoroughly on the train but there was nothing, nothing on the radio either, apart from the dreadful news of William Carver’s producer and translator being kidnapped. Berry assumed that this made it even less likely that Carver would pursue the Aftel story, that his ham-fisted attempt at whistle blowing had been a complete disaster. He heaved a sigh and stared across fondly at that corner of County Hall. He’d worked there once, a long time ago, and visited it when it briefly became a rather outré art gallery. Who owned it these days, he wondered? It used to be the Japanese, maybe it was the Chinese now? He knew that sort of thing wasn’t supposed to matter anymore, but it still mattered to him. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the tourist stand and start fumbling with his shooting stick, folding it away and cleaning a clod of earth from the spiked end. Having done this, the man set about picking up his collection of bags. Berry looked away but the next moment there was a curse or exclamation – the clumsy tourist had tripped over one of his own bags and lost his footing. He took a step in Berry’s direction before planting the shooting stick sharply in the ground in an attempt to stop himself falling on top of the civil servant. In doing so, the oaf had grazed Berry’s bare leg between ankle and calf.
‘Bloody hell!’ Berry exclaimed, leaning forward to examine his injury.
There wasn’t much to see – a small nick, a little blood, no more than that – but the tourist was horrified. ‘Oh my goodness. I am so sorry.’
A couple of other picnickers looked across, briefly interested. Berry didn’t want any fuss. ‘Don’t worry. It’s nothing, really.’ He took a white handkerchief from his trouser pocket and stuffed it between skin and sock, a modest makeshift tourniquet. ‘There. Look. All fine.’
The tourist looked and smiled, apologetically, Berry thought. He retrieved his bags, nodded once in the civil servant’s direction, and then walked away, keeping his back to the small group of onlookers who had witnessed his embarrassing stumble. The civil servant waited until the man had gone, then removed the handkerchief and dabbed gently at the scratch – it really was nothing, just a flesh wound. He would tend to it later but right now he was a little tired, the heat was getting to him. He leant back on his elbows, stretched his legs out and looked at the view across Westminster Bridge.
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
That was it. Now he just needed the last little part, but first he needed forty winks. He would lie back and rest and then the poem would come to him, those last few lines, no doubt about it. He looked up at the sky. There were a few high clouds skating quickly across London, on their way to somewhere better. Berry lay down; his pupils were already dilating. He felt a small jolt pass up through his ageing body. He closed his eyes, and died.
From the other side of Parliament Square the tourist watched. Dr Berry looked like a perfectly respectable middle-aged man, a hard worker taking a well-deserved nap in a sunny London square. It might be hours before anyone tried to wake him. The man set off in the direction of a cheap motel where he could check in and out electronically without seeing anyone. He knew exactly where he was going. Part of him would have liked to have gone back, sat down and enjoyed the view that Berry obviously enjoyed so much. Over the few days he had spent following him, he had come to rather like the quiet civil servant. He respected the satisfaction the man seemed to get from simple pleasures and hard work. On the way back to his hotel he stopped at the only unvandalised phone booth at Piccadilly Circus underground station. He dialled a number from memory and his call was answered immediately.
‘Yes?’
‘Your leak is fixed.’
The voice at the other end of the line breathed a sigh. ‘Thank you.’
21 Expenses
DATELINE: New Broadcasting House, Portland Place, London, W1, July 6th
Rob Mariscal arrived in the office just as the programme debrief was breaking up. Underneath a whiteboard filled with illegible scribble were the several exhausted individuals who had worked all night to put that morning’s programme on air. Complexions were the colour of cold porridge. A handful of the early arrivals were playing a game of tip-and-run cricket in the corridor between two rows of desks – the cricket ball was scrunched-up pages of the Daily Mail mummified inside layers of yellowing sticky tape; the bat was a cheap-looking junior model with a ladder of dents up both sides. As Rob wandered through the outfield, Martin Mainwaring connected well with a loose ball and set off up the wicket. Rob ignored the various shouts of welcome and made straight for his glass-walled office. The collector tray on the printer just outside his room was broken and the machine was spewing sheet upon sheet of newswire copy on to the floor. Stories carpeted the ground. Stepping through them, he turned and bellowed at no one in particular: ‘Can some fucker fix that?’
The clock on his wall, like every other clock in the newsroom, was synchronised with Greenwich. He had an hour before his meeting with Fletcher. Plenty of time to work out a plan. He pulled out a notebook and quickly filled the page with names and numbers. He wrote the names in capital letters down the left-hand side of the page; first a couple of familiar high street banks, then several credit card companies, a few other loan providers and finally two short Christian names; local lenders who did most of their business around the pubs and betting shops of Fitzrovia. Next to each name he wrote a figure. Most of these numbers were five digits long. He added them all up and looked at the total before tipping the pencil on its end and rubbing it out. He did the sum again but came up with the same number. Excluding his mortgage, which Lucia had been paying for the last six months anyway, Rob owed just under £230,000. The water had risen from neck height to somewhere around his chin. He wondered how Fletcher or indeed anyone else could help him now.
The Head of News lived at the top of the shiny new part of Broadcasting House. Rob decided to take the lift. He didn’t want to arrive sweaty – and five floors had the potential to do that to him these days. The glass elevator climbed noiselessly through the building and deposited him on the eighth. It was probably a much healthier working environment up here than down in the bowels of the building, but there was something about the eighth that made him uncomfortable. With high ceilings and windows, it was strangely uncluttered and every item of furniture looked brand new. Most of all, it had a weird stillness to it. There were quite a few people up here, but they didn’t seem to move much. The boil and bubble of the newsroom seemed a long way away. Rob strode across the carpeted floor in the direction of Lance’s secretary.
‘All right, Sally? Beautiful day. I’m here to see the boss man.’
Sally didn’t like Rob and made no attempt to pretend otherwise. Mariscal wasn’t sure what he’d done to earn her contempt.
‘He’s with somebody. You can sit over there.’ She pointed a painted fingernail at the only uncomfortable-looking chair in the room, next to the water cooler. He sat only briefly; the chill from the cold-water cylinder gave him the shivers.
‘I’ll stand,’ he announced, unnecessarily. Sally nodded an acknowledgement without looking up.
Rob stared at the side of her head. She had nice hair. Clean. Maybe he’d made a pass at her at some party or other, though he had no memory of it. It could be she just didn’t like his personality, plenty of people didn’t. He wandered over to the coffee station and helped himself to an espresso from the expensive-looking chrome machine. A patchwork of postcards was pinned to a corkboard above it. His Italian geography was sketchy but it seemed that almost every card came from either Umbria or whatever region was next door to Umbria. He wondered if this was a game. Perhaps the people working here all sent similar postcards to each other by way of a joke. Rob had never sent a postcard to work, jocular or otherwise, nor did he remember ever receiving one. He removed the drawing pin from one of the cards, flipped it over and read For Lance and everyone. Skipping through the detail, which concerned a long walk to a monastery and a glass of lemon liqueur, and moving straight to the finish, Sally had written her name in a large curling hand and cross-hatched the bottom corner of the card with kisses. Rob wondered whether Sally’s feelings for her boss were in any way requited? He wondered whether Lance had even noticed? Just then, he heard Sally mutter his name and he was ushered in. Whoever Lance Fletcher had been meeting with had dematerialised and there he was, alone, poring over some papers. His thin grey hair, half-moon glasses and exhausted-looking cord jacket gave him the look of a headmaster scared of the school he was supposed to be running. Rob let him finish his reading and looked around. On a side desk, positioned so visitors might properly appreciate them, stood a collection of silver-framed photographs and a small golden cup celebrating victory in a Surrey squash tournament (1996/7. Mixed). The largest photo was of Lance himself, wearing an incongruous Hawaiian shirt and standing on a sun-bleached jetty. He was smiling and struggling with both hands to lift the glistening tail of a huge fish up over his head. The fish was longer than he was. Out of focus and standing slightly behind Fletcher’s right shoulder was the black man who had no doubt located, hooked and probably hauled the huge fish all but the last few feet from the bottom of the ocean.
