The Avatari (14 page)

The young man turned to Ashton and gave a low whistle. Ashton stared ahead and silently recalled how he had voiced his doubts about Peter Radigan back in England.

‘A mercenary?’ he had asked Duggy.

‘No. A specialist. And for that matter,
they
think Gurkhas are mercenaries.’

Ashton had thought that was hardly an answer, but he knew Duggy’s mind was made up.

* * *

It was in his third year at West Point that Peter was expelled for his ‘undesirable liaison’ with an older lady professor who taught ballistics theory. She had been on the campus for over fifteen years without her reputation ever being tainted by rumours associating her with such activity. Not that there hadn’t been a legion of instructors trying their luck with her. The latest had been Peter’s battalion commander, a colonel who had spent much time and money on wining and dining the lady in the best restaurants Orange County had to offer, only to learn that the object of his affections had been spending time with a cadet in a twenty-dollar motel – and bearing the expenses herself! That, Peter always maintained, had been his undoing. They threw him out on charges of ‘conduct unbecoming’ without pressing assault. The colonel had taken a swing at him and found himself decked with a quick left uppercut.

Apart from his obvious appeal to the fairer sex, Peter Radigan was natural officer material; an excellent sportsman, he was skilled in the handling of weapons and had a flair for leadership. His platoon sergeant, an ex-Green Beret who had been at the academy for the last nine years, from the time he had been awarded his third Purple Heart in Vietnam, had seen something in him. He had gone to look him up as Peter was packing his bags.

‘What do you plan on doing, son?’ the man had asked him.

‘Dunno, Sergeant,’ Peter had replied. ‘Guess I’ll try my luck with the navy.’

‘No family, eh?’

The question was rhetorical. The sergeant had seen the dossier. The senator from Tennessee had nominated Cadet Radigan. No immediate family, except a grandfather who had shared a slit trench with the senator in Korea.

‘Ring up this man,’ the sergeant had suggested, handing Peter a card. ‘Maybe you and him can work out something.’

‘Why, sure! Thanks, Sergeant,’ Peter had said, looking at the card.

The name, Shannon O’Reilly, was printed on it. Alongside was a phone number.

Peter rang the man. A mere mention of his platoon sergeant’s name as reference and O’Reilly had wired him a ticket for Florida. It turned out that he was another Green Beret who had set up his own ‘consultancy services’ with a small hand-picked team. When asked what he did for a living, O’Reilly would laconically define his work as ‘providing specialized and intimate sales support’.

In the late 70s, mercenaries were a dying breed. You did get the odd Colonel Mike Hoare organizing a band of ex-SAS and Foreign Legion types to overthrow one African government or the other, but that was a rarity. There was, however, other work available, as Shannon explained to Peter.

The first involved the arms industry. In the US alone, the annual legal sales of weapons yielded upwards of 20 billion dollars; the illegal market allegedly accounted for twice that figure. The trade employed half a million people, directly or indirectly. But it was a ruthlessly competitive field, with the Eastern European and, recently, Chinese arms industries posing a threat as major rivals. There were laws which specified to whom the US could or could not sell arms. The industry, however, wielded tremendous political clout; in this matter, some even compared it to big tobacco. So when the rules were bent, no one made a fuss. The logic was that none of ‘their’ boys were getting hurt. Moreover, if the US didn’t sell arms to any of the proscribed countries, the latter would get their weapons from the commies anyway. Most of the prospective buyers were despotic semi-literate rulers or oil-rich Arabs who needed full-time qualified personnel to train their militaries in the use of the sophisticated weaponry they were keen on purchasing. The contract lease only specified technical assistance by ‘defence experts’ and if routed through a third country, not even that. This was where Shannon O’Reilly and many defence contractors like him came in, providing what those armies really needed: training and, more often than not, physical handling of the weapon in a crisis situation.

The second customer was the Agency, a fact that was not universally known. But then, the CIA was a government body and all such organizations loved subletting their own work. In a way, it made sense, especially when things turned murky. If a plan went awry, they could always deny their involvement and knowledge and it would never be traced back to them. Shannon O’Reilly agreed that sometimes it was a shitty job and what he made from working for the CIA was next to nothing. But he was from New York. He knew that if he had to run his business, he would have to do the odd run for the Agency or risk being shut down.

‘They are like the beat cop,’ he would tell his crew philosophically. ‘You got to do what he wants.’

Shannon’s crew was a motley group, mostly vets, though there were a few youngsters. There was little fraternization between its members, since most of the ‘jobs’ were usually solo assignments or, in rare cases, involved a small team. Shannon O’Reilly ran a tight ship and over the years, his small syndicate had come to be acknowledged as the best in the business. After a few assignments, where Peter ran rookie with some of the older guys, O’Reilly let him operate on his own. Peter realized that one of his most important qualifications was his fluency in several languages. He spoke both English and Spanish, the latter picked up from his mother who was Hispanic. As he kept going on missions, he added Arabic and Pushtu to his linguistic repertoire.

* * *

Aida turned out to be a tall, slim, black girl, who looked even taller with the headdress she wore with her
chitenge
. The meal she served Peter and Ashton consisted of antelope steak on a bed of greens and potatoes and pasty balls of
nshima
made of cornmeal. All this, washed down with chilled South African beer, the bottles still covered with sand grains from the riverbank where they had been buried to cool. Ashton noticed that Peter ate with his fingers and decided to do the same. It was midday and they were sitting on the wooden terrace which projected out onto the riverfront. Just below them, they could see a herd of hippos ambling about; one of them bellowed noisily before submerging itself in the muddy water. Ashton drank deeply from the bottle, allowing the amber liquid to fill his mouth, then leaned back in the cane chair, feeling the effects of fatigue and jet lag wash away.

There were groups of cottages on either side of the main building. The original owners, a German couple, had moved to Namibia when the war broke out. The lodge now served as a training area for recruits to the rebel FLN, which was trying to oust the UNITA, the group currently in power.

‘You’re training them?’ Ashton asked Peter who had just filled him in on the present state of the war.

‘Yeah. Just finished a cadre. They’ve gone to other camps in the bush. It’s break time for me just now, though I’m expecting another lot in two weeks’ time.’

‘Are they any good?’

‘Sure. Very keen and they learn fast. But they’re young.’ Peter grinned. ‘Every now and then, one of them will run off into the bush to try and make it to the villages, where he can find a girlfriend.’

‘And then?’

‘Oh, nothing. We just forget about him. Nearest village is fifty miles in any direction. You can’t cover even half that distance alone in this bush.’

‘Don’t you tell them that?’

‘We do, but it doesn’t make much difference when you are seventeen years old.’

Ashton observed the easy assurance of a man who had seen more action in ten years than he himself had seen in thirty. That was why Kamal Chettri had spoken so highly of him. Duggy had made his enquiries on the old Gurkha grapevine and it seemed they remembered Peter from the Falklands.

When Leopoldo Galtieri, President of Argentina, decided in 1982 to rise above the rhetoric and seize the Falkland Islands, he did Maggie Thatcher a favour, but kicked US foreign policy in its
cojones
.

The US dithered for a while as it considered how best to walk the fence, but eventually threw in its lot with the British military campaign, providing diplomatic support and imposing an economic and arms blockade on Argentina. Publicly, the British were loath to accept any military support at all. The media lapped it up. This charade in the South Atlantic helped buoy the Conservative ship and a second term for Thatcher looked almost certain.

The final stage of the war involved a landing on the beach at Goose Green, the largest island of the Falklands chain. Any military person could have told you it was going to be tricky. And success, if achieved, would be costly. Landing men from the choppy South Atlantic on the beach against withering fire from a determined enemy that was firmly dug in would mean leaving a great number of your men on the beach – dead. The British had last done it in Normandy and they remembered how
that
had been. A pile of body bags was the last thing they wanted. The key was to find out the exact layout of the enemy’s defences and the location of the reserves so that they could be neutralized until there were sufficient numbers on the beach. It was easier said than done. For one, the weather in the South Atlantic ranged from sullen to vicious and made aerial photo recon inconclusive. Secondly, there were no military satellites covering the area, a fact that was never faulted then nor has been since. The only satellite in the region was the one from NASA, designed to monitor the ozone layer over Antarctica. The photos it gave of the area were nowhere near the resolution required by the military.

After hectic discussions between the allies, a solution to the problem was found. General Dynamics was conducting final-user trials with the Marine Corps over a land-based digital surveillance and electronic warfare system. It was effective, irrespective of weather conditions prevailing over the target, and could upload data onto the satellite, which could then be processed and handed over to the British. Neither side wanted American military personnel involved. The matter was resolved, with Peter Radigan being granted the quickest British citizenship in history under the assumed name of Jeremy Glass, thereby enabling him to join a team from the Special Boat Service seventy-two hours before the assault.

The assault went as planned, pulverizing the opposition. The Argentinians were confounded by the surgical precision with which their defences were taken out. To add insult to injury, all that their commanders received on the combat net radio from their frontline units was the greatest hits of Bob Dylan.

‘Never travel without him,’ Peter would quip later.

He was linked up by the Gurkhas, who took a liking to him, and was promptly rechristened ‘Captain Jeremy’, something he enjoyed, coming as it did from ferocious men who could laugh like children and indulge in horseplay on a beach still littered with shrapnel and the odd body part.

‘Good beer,’ Ashton now said, draining his bottle.

‘South African,’ Peter told him, adding with a grin, ‘I get fresh stock flown out of Jo’burg every fifteen days, and dropped by chute. Though,’ he paused before continuing, ‘yours was the first plane that landed on the strip since the rains.’

Aida came up to clear away the plates and Ashton thanked her, to which she curtsied and murmured, ‘
Gracias
.’

‘
Algo más
?’ Peter asked her pleasantly for dessert in Portuguese, to which she replied, ‘
Fruta
.’

Peter glanced enquiringly at Ashton and realizing that he was quite content to pass up the fruit, waved the girl away. As she passed him, he gently smacked her bottom. She turned and giggled prettily before moving off. Peter took out a packet of cigarettes and they lit up.

‘Business is good?’ Ashton asked, attempting to break the silence.

His eyes lingered on the hippos in the distance. They were half out of the water now, engaged in a noisy struggle, their huge jaws yawning open.

‘Okay,’ the young man replied. ‘I prefer UNITA to the FLN any day, though the FLN pay cash and are prompt.’ He sat up suddenly, his eyes narrowed, as he focused on a spot across the river. ‘Lion,’ he murmured.

‘Where?’ Ashton turned to follow the young man’s gaze.

Peter pointed to a great shaggy beast drinking from the river. ‘He looks edgy,’ he remarked.

The lion drank, then retreated a few steps before coming up to drink again.

‘Crocs,’ Peter explained. ‘It’s only the hippos that aren’t afraid of them.’

‘You seem to be quite at home,’ Ashton remarked.

‘Pretty much,’ the young man agreed. ‘How’s Kamal Chettri?’ He was referring to the RSM of the battalion which had beached on Goose Green.

‘Very well. He sends you his regards.’

‘Didn’t realize he knew where I was.’

‘Well, he did.’

‘So now, Colonel, you can tell me what this is all about.’

Ashton told him, omitting nothing. He felt there was no point in subterfuge. If they were going to take Peter on, he needed to know everything. He told him about Liu Than, referred to Ru San Ko’s letter and mentioned the inputs he had received from Tim and Susan. While he spoke, he could see the young man listening intently.

‘You owe this man, this Teacher?’ Peter asked, when Ashton had finished.

‘Yes.’

Peter waited for him to elaborate. When Ashton remained silent, he shrugged.

‘Sure thing,’ he said and, after a pause, ‘do you guys
really
think this Shambhala is out there?’ There was a grin on the young man’s face.

‘Well, it’s worth a shot.’

‘And you think the map to this place is with the bad guys and
we
, who don’t have much to go by, have to find them and stop them from getting there?’

‘That about sums it up.’

‘Wow!’ Peter exclaimed, but Ashton, who was watching him closely, saw that he was unfazed and non-committal. ‘So where do
I
come in?’