War Torn (63 page)

Finn looked around swiftly for Dave. He was not in the cookhouse.

‘Yes, lads, I’m offering Burlington Bertie on Martyn’s safe return. The odds’ll be a lot longer tomorrow so now’s the time for a punt.’

He was met with blank faces.

‘Burlington Bertie. That’s a hundred to thirty. Who’s up for it?’

Dave took the phone to his favourite private corner near the washing place. For once it was deserted.

It took a while to get through to the hospital. He hoped Nurse Prim wouldn’t answer again but he recognized her voice at once. Evidently she recognized him too.

‘Is that the husband who’s in Afghanistan?’ she asked beadily.

‘Yeah. Can I talk to my wife?’

‘It’s taken you a long time to phone. She’ll be going home any day,’ said the nurse.

‘Well, we’re so busy playing cards and watching the grass grow that I just couldn’t be bothered before.’

‘Now, now, there’s no need for sarcasm.’

He could hear her carrying the phone through the ward.

‘We were all very shocked to hear that British soldiers have killed
some Afghan children,’ she said reproachfully, as if Dave had personally been out spraying bullets into kids.

‘Not guilty,’ he pleaded.

He could hear the cries of babies. His heart thudded. Babies. And one of them was his.

‘Hi, love,’ said Jenny.

He swallowed.

‘Dave? Are you there, love? Oh, don’t say we’ve lost the line!’

‘I’m here, Jen.’

‘Hi, darling!’

‘I couldn’t phone before.’ Bad start. Defensive.

‘Don’t worry, you’re here now.’ She sounded relaxed.

‘Is it all OK? I mean, you’re OK, the baby’s OK, tell me everything’s all right.’ Too anxious.

‘Calm down, everything’s fine. It all happened quickly in the end. There wasn’t even time to do it properly with groans and contractions and things. They just had to get her out so I had a Caesarean. It’s goodbye bikinis, but who cares?’

‘How are you, Jen?’

‘Fine. I’m taking painkillers. But I’ve felt so much better since she was born. All the swelling’s gone, the dizziness has gone. I’ve turned into a gentle old cow, giving milk and more milk.’

‘And the baby?’

‘A bit surprised to find herself out in the real world so suddenly.’

‘Wasn’t ready for deployment?’

‘She responded well to the alert. Now she’s happy as Larry. Likes to be held and cuddled and she’s drinking a lot.’

‘Trish was there?’

‘For the birth? Well, sort of.’

‘Only sort of?’

‘She was there when I came out of the operating theatre.’

‘Oh, shit, shit, you were alone.’

‘Nope. There were doctors and nurses everywhere making a big fuss of me. And then Mum was waiting outside. And then your mum arrived.’

‘Are they both staying at our house?’

‘Yeah, spoiling Vicky rotten.’

‘I’ve only just seen the pictures.’

‘Isn’t she gorgeous?’

‘Yeah,’ said Dave. ‘Yeah. She’s gorgeous. So are you. All I want now is to get home.’

‘Still think the army’s where you want to be?’ Jenny asked.

‘That was a cheap shot.’

She laughed. ‘Just answer the question!’

‘At this moment,’ he admitted, ‘I’m not so sure.’

When the call ended he turned and saw a silent figure, hanging back in the shadows.

‘Jamie Dermott, I should have guessed,’ he said, holding out the phone.

‘I haven’t booked it. But I guessed they weren’t minimized any more . . .’

‘Go on. Phone her. Get it sorted out,’ said Dave.

Jamie was already dialling. He asked how Jenny was but Dave could tell he wasn’t listening to the answer.

About ten minutes later, when Dave was wandering around the base, squinting in the dark at the damage caused by today’s attack, Jamie caught up with him.

‘Well?’ Dave was running his hands over a wall of sandbags and wondering if the engineers would say they should rebuild the whole bloody thing. He looked up. Jamie was smiling.

‘Everything’s fine! She was all over me!’

Dave grinned back at him in the dark. ‘I told you it was only a misunderstanding. Six days with no contact and she’s gagging to talk to you. It just proves you’ve been phoning her too often, mate.’

THE
HOSTAGE
CRISIS
CHANGED
EVERYTHING
AT
SIN
CITY.
SUDDENLY
THE
base was the focus of interest – from the international community as well as the Taliban. The major announced that the civilians were to be evacuated. They would be replaced in the isoboxes by top army, Foreign Office and Intelligence personnel.

A line-up of officers waited to receive the VIPs. The base came under frequent attack now and the Chinook was greeted by a volley of fire. Two Apaches hovered on either side, firing back.

Some of the arrivals climbed out looking terrified. A few wore city suits under their body armour. The OC greeted them and the 2 i/c led them away. The OC remained with the small group of soldiers who had assembled to say goodbye to the civilians, departing on the same Chinook.

Emily was tearful.

‘Martyn and I did nothing but argue. But I think we did like each other really,’ she sobbed, as she shook hands with the men.

Finn raised his eyebrows and said nothing.

‘Don’t talk about Martyn in the past tense,’ said the OC. ‘We may get him back yet.’

Emily clearly did not believe him.

She prepared to board the Chinook, handbag glued to her shoulder, bag of papers in her other arm and an engineer carrying her suitcase.

‘Goodbye, my dears,’ she said to Asma and Jean. ‘I appreciate how well you prepared me for the
shura.
It rates as one of my most
fascinating experiences and the young tribesman was a most interesting cultural encounter.’

They did not dare to tell her that the young tribesman had been shot by Special Forces and this action had probably prompted Martyn’s kidnap.

She shook hands with the OC and his officers. ‘Thank you. Thank you for guarding us so well. I owe you all an apology. I have spent the last months telling you that your precautions were unnecessary. I will regret, to the end of my days, that I encouraged Martyn to treat this protection with such disdain. I have made it clear to anyone who will listen that his kidnap is not your fault.’

The OC smiled ruefully. ‘Thanks, Emily. But that may not be enough to save my career.’

The Chinook took off, as it had landed, under fire and accompanied by Apaches.

‘I liked her in the end,’ Asma told Gordon Weeks.

‘Emily?’ he said in surprise. ‘You and she are very different.’

‘You mean, she’s brainy and I’m pretty.’

‘I suppose I do mean that . . .’ He caught himself in time. ‘Although you’re brainy too, of course.’

She laughed. ‘Not bloody quick enough, Gordon. But what I like about Emily is, she knows who she is and what she believes and she sticks to it. She doesn’t care what anyone else thinks of her.’

The helicopters had disappeared. The enemy had stopped firing, although a few enthusiastic lads up in the sangars seemed keen to provoke a bit more of a fight. Jean had been called to the ops room. And, without discussing it, the boss and Asma were wandering towards the cookhouse for a brew. They had started to snatch a few minutes together whenever they could and Weeks suspected that these short meetings were becoming the high point of his day. He even found himself feeling agitated if he didn’t see her for a long time, as though she was a drug he depended on.

‘But you have beliefs which you stick to, surely,’ said the boss now. He was fascinated by her background and returned to the subject as often as she let him.

‘Christ, Gordon, you’re always prodding and poking. Look, I left Islam behind. I left my family behind. I left my husband behind. It doesn’t all add up to a lot of sticking power.’

‘Maybe it just means you can’t do things by halves,’ said Weeks, pouring her a brew. She cupped her hands around the mug as though they were back in England and it was cold outside.

‘When I got married I knew that meant I was leaving my family and leaving Islam. It all seemed far behind me. Until I came here.’

‘So you’ve found your roots again.’

‘Oh, you do talk a lot of crap. I’ve found my fucking DNA. That doesn’t mean I want to rush down the mosque with my shoes off praising Allah. It just means I’m a bit more interesting than someone who’s always lived in one country with one family speaking one language in one way.’ She did not meet his eye.

‘Like me,’ he said. She still did not look at him. ‘So you don’t find me very interesting. You know nothing about what it’s like to be me in my world, but you’ve decided it’s all farmhouses and polo ponies and therefore not interesting. Maybe you should find out a bit more before you dismiss it.’

He saw her wince a little. He wasn’t really offended. He was just challenging her because he had learned that she liked that.

She stood up, smiling. ‘Oh, fuck off, Gordon Weeks!’ she said cheerfully. But she was blushing. He studied the way her skin darkened, from the neck upwards. It was lovely.

‘See you later. I have to get over to the ops room now or Jean’ll kill me.’

He watched her go, carrying her mug of tea carelessly. He wished he could show her his world. The big old farmhouse, the horses in their rugs running their muzzles across frosty winter grassland, the log fire, the warm kitchen, the draughty bedrooms, that place on the dining-room wall where his parents had marked the heights of their growing children. He tried to imagine Asma there, but it was impossible. Not because she came from Hackney but because she seemed to belong to the swelling heat of the Afghan desert.

The soldiers saw little of the new personnel at the base but the OC, who now shared his ops room with at least fifteen people, was more visible. He frequently stood outside the ops-room door, looking hot and miserable.

Asma and Jean spent all day in there listening to radios with more senior Intelligence officers. If they slipped out to have a meal
with Kila or Weeks they were invariably called back. Cooks ran in and out with loaded trays. The 2 i/c appeared only when dashing to the cookhouse to replenish his supply of teabags.

‘They eat a lot of scoff and drink a lot of brews,’ said Finn. ‘But what are they doing about Martyn? For fuck’s sake, why aren’t we out there tearing into every Terry Taliban in Helmand?’

After four days Dave herded 1 Platoon into the Cowshed and the boss told them there was to be a clearance operation on the tribesmen’s house where the
shuras
had been held. According to intelligence, Martyn had actually been kept there for twenty-four hours. He had been moved on now but their job was to round up for questioning any insurgents who remained and to look for signs of Martyn’s occupation.

‘What’s the point in finding signs of Martyn after he’s gone?’ asked Mal.

The boss shrugged.

‘It’s too much to hope that there will be signs of
where
he’s gone. Probably the object is to feed the international press corps with something to keep Martyn at the top of the news agenda.’

As their convoy rolled into town every man quietly hoped that Martyn would be found at the compound. He had been Topaz fucking Zero, before: mostly irritating, sometimes entertaining and finally liked. Now, in his absence and with his new status as helpless victim, he was loved.