Thunder in the Blood (14 page)

I took him to lunch in a pub in a village near Dorking. He ordered scampi and chips in a basket, but left the scampi and picked at the chips, dipping them into a pond of Brown Sauce he’d poured on to the middle of his plate. In the weak autumn sunlight, the first for nearly ten days, he looked gaunt and preoccupied and as I listened to him I tried to imagine what he must have been like before the virus. Aldridge had said he’d been big – physically commanding, thirteen stone, well over six feet – but the only evidence left of this earlier Wesley were the bony bits. His feet were still large and his hands, too, and that enormous head, perpetually lowered, the eyes looking at you through a thin curtain of hair. His face was slightly lopsided and it was only now that I realized why. His nose, prominent and rather fleshy, was crooked. He was telling me about the American he’d met, the design engineer from Extec, Grant Wallace.

I leaned forward, touching him lightly on the arm. ‘Your nose,’ I said. ‘What happened?’

He looked at me in astonishment. There was a small comma of brown sauce at one corner of his mouth. ‘What?’ he said blankly.

‘Your nose.’ I touched my own. ‘It’s a funny shape.’

‘Oh, that…’ He frowned, fingering it. ‘It got broken.’

‘When?’

‘Years ago.’

‘Rugby?’

He looked at me. Then laughed, derisive. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Guy bottled me in a pub. Said I’d propositioned him.’

‘And had you?’

‘Yes. Of course I had.’

‘Was that wise?’

‘
Wise?
What’s that supposed to fucking mean?’

I shrugged. ‘Some stranger in a bar. It’s just…’ I reached for a chip. ‘Some people can’t take a joke.’

‘It wasn’t funny. Not at the time. He wasn’t a stranger, either. I’d been sleeping with him for a month. I even knew his name.’

‘And he hit you? Broke your nose?’

‘Yeah.’ He paused. ‘I don’t blame him. He was making a point, that’s all. It just got out of hand.’

He looked at me a moment longer, then dismissed the episode with a shrug, returning to the subject of Grant Wallace. He too had been gay. That’s why they’d got on so well. That’s why, even now, they were still talking.

‘You met him in Geneva?’

‘Yeah. Last month.’ He frowned. ‘Aldridge sent me to cover the conference. I think he wanted me out of the office. Me and Grant got smashed on the first night. Some club. Down by the lake.’ He was smiling, mischievous. ‘You ever try Tequila Slammers?’

‘Never.’

‘Don’t. We had six each. Grant’s idea. Some Texan trick you play on strangers.’

‘Potent?’

‘Lethal. And incredibly expensive. Twenty Swiss francs a throw. That’s ten quid each in real money. Aldridge went bananas when he saw the exes. He added them up on his calculator, right there in the office, demanded to know what I’d got to show for it—’

‘And?’

‘I told him.’ He shrugged. ‘Seemed quite reasonable to me. Hundred and twenty quid for the best story he’ll ever get his hands on—’ He broke off, suddenly angry, shaking his head, and I smiled, sympathetic.

‘But he doesn’t want stories any more.’

‘Who said?’

‘He did.’

Wesley looked up, startled. ‘When? When did he say that?’

‘Yesterday. Over lunch. He said it’s all changed. He told me it’s the advertising that matters now, the revenue, not the rest of it, your bits and pieces.’

‘He
told
you that? Admitted it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Shit.’ Wesley turned away, disgusted, shaking his head again, and I leaned forward across the table, helping myself to one of his chips.

‘This conference,’ I said, ‘last month.’

‘Yeah?’

‘How were you? Physically?’

‘Brilliant. No problems. You know the way it goes. Up and down …’ He paused. ‘I was up, way up. That’s partly why I got so …’ he shrugged, ‘so hectic. My state of health, you don’t waste stories like that. Guy tells you the war never really happened, you go for it, give it everything you’ve got. You’ve talked to Aldridge, you’ve listened to him banging on, you know the way he operates, all that stuff about moderation and responsibility and seeing it from every angle. That’s great when you’re sitting in fucking Guildford with a family and a pension and some prospect of being around to spend it. But people like me, that’s all fantasy.
Pensions?
Jesus …’ He laughed. ‘I should be so fucking lucky.’

‘So who did you upset?’

Wesley peered at me, not understanding the question. ‘You want a list?’

‘I meant about Wallace. This story of his. Of yours. About Extec.’ I paused. ‘I want to know who you upset. Why,’ I shrugged, ‘they sent me down.’

‘You don’t know?’

‘No.’

‘They haven’t told you? Whoever they are?’

‘No.’

‘They tell you
anything?
These people of yours?’

‘No,’ I said truthfully, ‘not much.’

Wesley looked at me for a long time, an expression I recognized from last night, and I knew he was trying to decide whether or not to believe me. Finally, he reached forward, pushing the basket of chips across the table towards me.

‘This might just work,’ he said, ‘if you don’t fuck around.’

We were back in his flat by mid-afternoon. In the car, he’d told me to level with him. ‘Level’ sounded a little dramatic, and I’d asked him to put it some other way. He’d thought about it for a mile or two, not saying anything, then he’d told me to stop the car. I’d done so, finding a muddy lay-by beside a sodden field. Then I’d turned to him. In any of my other lives, I’d have expected something physical – a hand on my thigh, some clumsy proposition – but Wesley lit a cigarette and made himself comfortable, his back against the passenger door, his eyes never once leaving
my face. To this day, I’m word perfect on the next piece of dialogue. Nothing else came as close to spelling out the shape of the next few months.

‘You work for who you work for,’ he’d begun, ‘probably MI5.’ He’d paused here. ‘Yes?’

I’d looked at him for a moment or two, still haunted by the way he’d put it last night.
‘You think any of that shit matters?’
he’d said.
‘You think I care about any of that? You think you should?’
Now, in the car, I nodded. In the great scheme of things, it suddenly seemed a pretty minor admission.

‘Five,’ I agreed.

‘OK. So the way these things go, you’ll be reporting back. They’ll want that. They’ll expect it. Am I right?’

‘Yes.’

‘So who do you work for? Report to? What’s his name?’

‘I can’t say.’

‘Won’t say.’

I’d nodded. ‘Won’t say.’

‘OK.’ Wesley had conceded the point with a shrug. ‘So let’s talk about the story. So far, I’m nowhere. I’ve got enough to tell me it’s huge, but that’s about all. I’ve got names, phone numbers, contacts. I know where to look next, where to go, who to talk to. It all takes time and money. Money’s not a big problem. Not yet. But time is. You with me?’

‘Yes.’

‘So…’ he’d smiled, ‘you have a decision to make. We can go into this thing together, or we can carry on playing games.’ He’d paused here. ‘Your call.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Where I am now, I don’t have a lot of choice.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I need you.’

‘What for?’

‘Everything. Physical help. Another pair of hands. Company. A few laughs.’

‘Don’t you have other friends? Someone else who could help you?’

‘No one who works for MI5.’

‘Is that important?’

‘Of course it is.’ He’d smiled again. ‘You’re the offer I can’t refuse. That’s why they’ve sent you. Don’t you understand that?’

There was a long pause here. I remember the rain beginning to fall again, the sound of the droplets drumming on the roof.

‘So what do you want from me?’ I’d said at last.

‘I’m asking you to join me. Be part of it.’

I’d looked away at this point, another silence, gazing out at the dripping hedgerow, thinking of Stollmann on my sofa, giving me back-up I’d never dreamed existed, telling me to get beside Wesley, to help him along the way, to get him to journey’s end before the virus and mortality intervened. He and Wesley, it now turned out, were asking exactly the same question. Wherever I belonged, whatever I decided, the answer was the same.

‘Yes,’ I’d said. ‘I’m saying yes.’

‘You’re with me?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the rest of them? The office? That boss of yours?’ He’d paused. ‘How much does he get to know?’

I’d looked around at him at this point, beginning a little speech about loyalty and obligation and how incredibly difficult the whole thing was, but he’d waved it all aside, so many empty words, totally irrelevant, so in the end I’d reached for the key, started the engine and wiped the condensation from the rear-view mirror.

‘Just trust me,’ I remember muttering. ‘Please.’

Back at the flat, Wesley was suddenly all business. We’d reached some kind of bend in the road and we’d got round in one piece, and whatever he’d made of our conversation in the car, he’d put it behind us. As he’d said himself, he didn’t have a lot of choice. Whatever happened, he needed help. Mine, with or without strings, was the best he could expect. I had limitless time and, thanks to Stollmann, a great deal else. We could meet anyone, ask anything. Our reach was infinite, our curiosity boundless, and if our interests were still separate, then so be it.

Now, Wesley was stooped over the table in the upstairs bay window. The curtains, for once, were open, spilling daylight on to the pages of manuscript that lapped around his battered old Olympia portable. He sorted through one pile, then another. Finally, he found what he wanted. He stapled five pages together, and gave them to me.

‘How are you off for visas?’ he said.

I glanced at the top sheet. At the top, it said
‘Grant Wallace’.

‘Where for?’

‘The States.’

‘Fine. I’ve got a B1/B2. It’s up to date.’ I looked across at him. ‘Why?’

‘We’re going tomorrow. Dallas. Noon.’ He grinned. ‘But I expect you knew that already.’

14

Dallas/Fort Worth Airport, the following afternoon, was hot, humid and incredibly busy. The flight over was half an hour early, but the immigration hall was already packed with arrivals. There were five queues for the glassed-in kiosks and it was Wesley’s idea that we should have what he termed ‘a relationship’ for the purposes of getting our passports stamped. Entry to the USA is barred to carriers of HIV. They don’t insist on tests, or a certificate of immunity, but if they sense the need, they do ask you whether you’re infected or not. If you say no, they let you in. If the answer’s yes, you’re shipped out on the next flight.

The kiosk at the head of our queue was occupied by a small, tough-looking woman and she’d already given a couple of German youths a grilling by the time our turn came to step up. Wesley went first. From behind the yellow line, I could see her looking hard at his passport photo. I’d examined it on the plane. It showed a younger, bigger Wesley. If you knew what you were looking for, it was a dead giveaway. The latter phrase I’d used on the plane, reducing Wesley to helpless laughter, another brick in the wall we seemed to be building around ourselves. Now, I could see him shaking his head, gesturing towards me, full of righteous anger. The woman didn’t look impressed, but once she’d done the usual computer checks and made a lengthy phone call, she reached for her stamp and waved him through. When I caught up with him in the arrivals hall, minutes later, I asked him what she’d said. He ignored the question, grinning down at me and kissing me gently on the forehead.

‘What’s that for?’

‘You.’

‘Why?’

‘That’s what fiancées are for, isn’t it?’

Grant Wallace was waiting for us by the Hertz desk. Wesley hadn’t said much about him on the way over, but I’d read the notes he’d given me and the impression I’d formed of the man was somewhat at odds with the real thing. I’d somehow imagined Wallace to be a thin, nervy American executive, imprisoned in a world of performance targets and management-speak. Instead, I met a smallish, rotund little man with a chubby face and a warm handshake. His hair, cut short, was receding over a high forehead and his big wire-rimmed glasses made him look slightly owlish. Wesley enveloped him in a hug and introduced me.

‘Sarah,’ he said. ‘Friend of mine.’

Wallace beamed at me and said something folksy about the Lone Star State. He was glad I’d had a nice flight. He was real happy to meet me.

Wesley and I checked into the airport hotel, separate rooms on the eighth floor. I had a shower and a change of clothes, and it was nearly six when we rejoined Wallace in one of the downstairs bars. He was sitting by himself in the corner, reading a copy of the
Dallas Courier-Star.
Beside him, on the banquette, was an attaché case, deep red leather, with elaborate stitching and hideously oversized clasps. The glass on the table was empty, and according to the check lying beside it, Wallace was already three daiquiris down.

We drove to Fort Worth in Wallace’s big maroon Lincoln, and I sat in the back watching Route 2.0 roll by, mile after mile of neon lights winking in the warm dusk. I was half asleep by now, exhausted after the crossing, but Wesley seemed unaffected, sitting in the front, rocking with laughter at some story Wallace was telling him.

In Fort Worth, we drove through the downtown area and finally stopped at a restaurant called El Mesón. When Wallace enquired whether we liked Tex-Mex cuisine, Wesley answered for both of us, saying fine, then he was out of the car, loping towards the restaurant entrance with his arm around Wallace’s shoulders, a genuine tenderness. I followed them in from the street, wondering what had really happened between them the first time they’d met last month, the hotel in Geneva. Wesley wasn’t the kind to hide what was wrong with him. Maybe Wallace was looking for
a way out. Maybe he was desperate enough to see Wesley as the logical solution to his problems.

The latter had formed the basis for the notes I’d read on the plane. The details were complicated, but in Wesley’s phrase it appeared to boil down to some kind of mid-life crisis, an overwhelming attack of conscience that had swamped decades of blameless service to the flag.

Wallace was an electronics engineer by training. He’d spent his twenties and early thirties working for a number of aerospace companies on the West Coast. He was numerate, dedicated and highly articulate – a rarer combination than you might think – and he’d been a key player in the application of laser technology to attack helicopters. Laser technology, according to Wesley, was a means of guiding missiles on to specified targets. You ‘splashed’ the target with lasers, and you developed missiles clever enough to recognize laser light from all the other surrounding junk. As long as the laser stayed on the target, the missile would home in on it. The principle, Wesley assured me, was simplicity itself, but the small print depended on specialist engineering. Which is where Grant Wallace came in.

At Extec, it appeared, they’d given him his head. They’d lured him to Dallas from the West Coast, and they’d set him up with a state of the art laboratory and a hand-picked team, and they’d asked him to fine-tune a missile they’d already codenamed
Scarab.
The point about
Scarab
was its weight. At 37½ lbs it was light enough to be man-portable. In test versions, it had a range of three and a half miles, ample for most battlefield applications. A specially shaped warhead could penetrate all known armour. For the provisional $98,000 apiece, it was a steal. Only the laser-guidance system remained a problem.

Wallace had worked on
Scarab
for eighteen busy months, commuting daily to the Extec laboratories on a Dallas science park from a rented house in the suburbs. A month before the Gulf War, he’d finally miniaturized the on-board electronics and developed a launcher small enough to be likewise man-portable. Within the industry, Wallace already had a reputation. Now they were saying he was a genius. The electronics were smarter than anything to come out of Japan. The thing was cheap, reliable and so user-friendly it was even, in Wesley’s phrase, Arab-proof. For a company
desperate to make a major killing, it was the perfect product.

By the time the Allied armies were liberating Kuwait City, the first
Scarab
tank-busters were rolling off the production line. But too late to join the mauling of the Iraqi Army. Extec executives had ordered cassette after cassette of video rushes from the broadcast organizations, determined to use the pictures to sell
Scarab.
The carnage on the Basra Road was the work of big, heavy laser-seeking missiles launched from helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, but that didn’t matter. On the contrary, it was the whole point. The video would go to a hundred Third World countries. Sales teams would shutter the windows, kill the lights and run the pictures over and over again. All this can be yours, went the pitch, for a zillionth of the price. No need for helicopters. No need for pilots. No need for all that First World sophistication. Just come to us. And spend a couple of million dollars. And let
Scarab
do the rest.

Wallace had been obliged to sit through the videos. His technical advice was deemed vital. What he’d seen had sickened him. Five months later, Extec’s tame boffin at the Geneva conference, he’d met Wesley. Drink, loneliness, guilt and a long-suppressed homosexuality had done the rest. They’d talked and compared notes. They’d gone to bed. And only next day, when Wallace had realized the implications of what he’d said, had the conversations come to an end.

Now, in the restaurant, I listened to him talking to Wesley. He had small, chubby hands and they chopped the air as he leaned forward, making a particular point. Despite the air conditioning, there was a sheen of sweat on his forehead, and when the waiter arrived with the second round of cocktails, I realized that he was drunk.

According to Wesley, the pressures on him had been enormous. In the aftermath of the Geneva conference, Wesley himself had phoned and phoned, a missile of his own design, determined to penetrate Extec’s protective screen of receptionists, secretaries and inquisitive corporate relations staff. At no point had he compromised Wallace, refusing to discuss the issue with anyone else, but he was determined to pursue the lead that the American had offered, and when Extec refused point blank to take any more calls, he’d plunged down another alley, pumping contacts on the
West Coast until he found someone who knew Wallace’s unlisted home number.

He’d phoned him late at night, seven in the morning UK time, and the two men had talked for more than an hour. To Wesley’s surprise, Wallace was glad to hear him. Rumours were spreading, friends were melting away, and since Geneva he’d been frozen out of a widening circle of management meetings. For weeks now, he’d done no work worth the name and a good night’s sleep was barely a memory. But the more he thought about the conversation they’d had, back there in Geneva, and the harder he tried to analyse the morality of the thing, the more he was convinced that he must speak out. He’d been talking to one or two of the other guys. He’d been doing a little research. He had a couple of theories Wesley might like to test. Why not fly over? Stay a day or two? Kick the thing around?

‘So what are we saying?’

Wesley frowned, still waiting for an answer, pushing a small mountain of
enchilada
to the side of his plate. A guitarist had appeared, Country and Western, perched on a stool beside a tiny dance floor. Wallace, totally oblivious, leaned forward.

‘We’re saying it’s true,’ he said. ‘We’re saying the thing was staged. Phoney. Make believe. Desert Sham.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’ Wallace nodded. ‘You know how many US nationals we had out there in Saudi before this thing blew up?’

Wesley shrugged. For the first time in the evening, he was visibly exhausted. ‘No,’ he said.

‘Twenty thousand. Twenty thousand US citizens, living in Saudi, working there, when Saddam went into Kuwait. That’s how many we had.’ He paused. ‘There were Brits as well, of course. And the French. And some Spanish. And you know what happened to them?’

‘No.’

‘Evacuated. Ordered out by their own people. Your guys. British Airways laid on extra flights, right up to K-Day, right up to when the shit hit the fan.’ He paused again. ‘So what about our guys, eh? What about Uncle Sam?’

Wesley was leaning forward now, alert again. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘What happened?’

Wallace looked at him for a moment.

‘Nothing,’ he said at last.

‘Nothing?’

‘Nope. Nothing. They all stayed. Not a single goddamn word from Washington. Nothing. Zilch. You know what usually happens? Situations like these? Third World situations? Civil wars? Insurrections? All that stuff? The State Department goes broody. Mother hen gets on the phone, and there’s queues at the airport a mile long, like you’ve never seen. No one leaves the Third World quicker than the US. And that’s not cowardice, my friend. That’s just plain good sense. We care about what happens to our people. We hate uncertainty. We hate risk. We hate not knowing. So what made it all so different in Saudi, eh?’

Wesley nodded slowly. ‘You knew,’ he said, ‘Uncle Sam knew.’

‘Sure.’

‘That there was no risk.’

‘Right.’

‘Because?’

‘Because there’d be no real fighting, not the kind that would matter to our guys. There’d be public relations and scare stories and all those cute little maps with Iraqi tanks all over them, but that’s about all. The rest of it was taken care of. Real well.’

Wesley nodded, leaning back in his chair, beaming with delight. I could see why he liked this little Texan so much. The way he put things smacked of Wesley himself, that same combination of fervour and mischief and contempt. Wesley glanced across at me, stoking up the fire, tossing on some timber of his own.

‘You know that photo in my kitchen? On the pin-board?’

I nodded. Insects on a sandtray, I thought. Each one trailing its own little spoor.

‘Tanks,’ Wesley said, ‘Iraqi T-72S. Filmed from one of the Russian satellites. The Soviets sold the picture worldwide and a paper down in Florida published it.’ He looked at Wallace. ‘You know about this?’

Wallace nodded. ‘The
Times
,’ he said, ‘out of St Petersburg.’

‘Spot on.’ Wesley was looking at me again, teacher and pupil. ‘The photo came from early on, August, the point when Bush was trying to put the shits up the Saudis. He wanted to ship US troops in. Marines, armour, planes, the lot, but the Saudis weren’t
that keen. So there had to be a threat, a credible threat, Iraqi tanks up there on the Saudi border, thousands of them, about to invade, about to head down from Kuwait.’

I frowned, following the logic, remembering the tiny dots on the pin-board. ‘There were a handful,’ I said, ‘maybe a dozen or so.’

‘Exactly.’ Wesley nodded. ‘And that was the reality. A light screen. Nothing awesome. Just a precaution.’

‘And they showed the Saudis that photo? Is that what you’re saying?’

‘No, fuck no. They commissioned some alternative photos. Their own stuff. Right off one of the military satellites. They call them “overheads”. They fetch them down and take them along to some little room or other in the Pentagon, and the guys in there get busy with their pens and their brushes and… fuck me, thousands of the bastards, everywhere.’ He beamed at me, delighted with his own exposition. ‘Instant invasion, cooked up in Washington, courtesy of our friends in the White House.’

‘You’re saying they made it up? And the Saudis believed them?’

‘Of course they did. Why else would they let in all those fucking infidels?’ He glanced across at Wallace. ‘Right, Grant?’

Wallace nodded. ‘Right,’ he said.

Wesley looked at me again, enjoying himself now, determined not to lose the initiative, his voice rising. ‘Another thing,’ he said. ‘The MOD, your friends in London…’

I nodded.

‘They were running computer predictions. After K-Day, after our boys went in, all the data was coming back from Dhahran, real-time, as we pushed forward, and it went straight into the computers. You put stuff in one end, you get predictions out the other.’ He paused for a moment, his eyes on a table beside the door. ‘There were various predictions as the thing developed. One copy went back to Dhahran. Another went to Downing Street. The key figure was casualties, how many blokes we’d lose. It was meant to prepare the politicians for the worst. The military, too, for that matter.’ He turned back to Wallace. ‘I’ve never told you this. I had a contact on the analysis team. You know how many programs we ran? In the first forty-eight hours?’