Chapter 27: Arusha, Tanzania: October 25, midday.
Looking through the starboard window of Prince Omar’s private jet, Sophie finally realized where she was being taken. Kilimanjaro stood splendid and alone, an ancient Olympian aloof in its silver-haired wisdom. The plane banked to the left, keeping the lesser peak, Mawenzi, at a respectful distance to the right, before beginning its descent into Kilimanjaro International Airport.
Zahra, the beautiful Eritrean stewardess, gave Sophie another wistful smile. At first, before take-off from Madinat Al-Aasima, Sophie had demanded to know where she was being taken, adamant that her next destination should be London. But Zahra’s almost total lack of English, combined with a beguiling, sad-eyed charm had stifled Sophie’s resistance and an unspoken bond had developed between the two women.
Sophie was slumped back submissively in her regal seat. The anger, outrage, fear and shock that had washed over her in turn since watching the execution had all subsided, leaving only an overwhelming tiredness in their wake. She was tired of Omar’s mysteries and dark games. Tired and wistfully sad. She longed to revert back to the cash-strapped, anonymous frog she had been before the prince had found her.
But visions from the car park in Madinat Al Aasima and the questions that arose from what she had seen kept Sophie from the sleep she so craved. And of all the nightmare images, one bothered her more than all the rest. It was that demented look on Colonel Easterby’s face. God, the horror she had read in his eyes! What had he been staring at? Why had he been there at all?
For hours after the execution, her one overriding desire had been to phone Marcus, to hear his voice, to reassure and to get some reassurance. It could have been an accident that she could not find any telephones, computers or any sign of internet connection in the mountain lair outside Madinat Al Aasima, but knowing Omar better than that, she thought it more likely that he had purposefully arranged for their removal.
The aircraft wheels folded downwards with the customary electrical whining noises. Sophie sat up in her seat and tried to focus on her immediate surroundings. Africa. Before only a few glossy pages in the more-expensive travel brochures she would never even have dared to browse through in the high street travel agents. Now, like the rest of her dream-like life, whose strings Omar pulled at whim and without explanation, it seemed too fantastic to warrant much attention.
At Zahra’s insistence, Sophie fastened her seatbelt and prepared herself for landing, returning the flight attendant’s curious smile. Even if Zahra’s English could not give her the reasons for this latest confusing jaunt, Sophie guessed that Omar would be waiting there at Kilimanjaro Airport with some cryptic explanation, revelling in all the pain he had inflicted on her in Ramliyya.
But it was the ubiquitous Hasan, not Omar, who was waiting on the tarmac, watching dispassionately while she stepped down from the Airbus. He was cool and reserved again; the intensity with which he had gripped her wrist during the execution might never have happened, would certainly not be mentioned again. He took Sophie’s passport and passed it on to a Tanzanian official, who scurried inside the terminal building as if he were attending to a VIP.
Sitting by the outside of the terminal building was a green Land Rover Discovery. Hasan ushered her inside while the porter stowed her case in the rear. The immigration officer returned with her stamped passport.
‘Karibu Tanzania,’ he smiled, glancing at Hasan for a show of approval. As they drove off, Sophie caught a last glimpse of Zahra, waving wistfully from the tarmac, her loose robes furling in a stiff breeze.
Warm, pungent air wafted in through the open windows, and Sophie’s spirits began to rise as she studied the unfamiliar sights of Africa.
This was fertile country. Banana trees, coffee plantations and maize fields thronged both sides of the road. Mud-and-wattle houses with corrugated iron roofs loitered in thick foliage. Dark faces in multi-coloured shirts revelled in the sun-kissed simplicity of their poverty.
Sophie banished all the obvious questions and worries from her mind, all the why-am-I-here’s? and what-happens-next’s? It was the same feeling of grim relief that had washed over her after watching the execution: life and nothing but. She was alive while others were not, feeling the equatorial sun on the side of her face, breathing in lungfuls of rich, dusty air that carried in them all the invigorating potency of ancient Africa.
They passed through the city of Arusha. Crumbling brick buildings in alluring states of disrepair were the city’s best attempt at modern urban architecture. On the fringes of the city, more traditional ‘developing world’ shanty hovels teemed like thick creepers on a rotting trunk. Hasan stared ahead, quietly efficient with the driving.
Outside Arusha, they were suddenly in wide-open savannah country that Sophie had only seen before in Out of Africa or the occasional BBC wildlife documentary. But despite her unfamiliarity with the safari setting, she could recognize the herders straddling the roadside: Masai, driving long lines of bony cattle across the yellow grass.
It was beautiful and uplifting country. A sense of freedom and escape welled over her. Hasan drove on for serene mile after mile over the potted tarmac, and as herds of wildebeest, zebra and impala started to equal in number the droves of Masai cattle on the horizon, Sophie could feel that he was close by, lurking somewhere in the long bush grass like a fat, angry puff adder waiting to be stepped on. And she did not know how it would be between them now. The anger that she had wanted to scratch into his eyeballs only last night had softened during the course of the long journey. Again, she knew he would have calculated for that.
Combi vans of European tourists hovered around curio stalls at a road junction where signposts pointed towards Lake Manyara, the Ngorogoro Crater, and the Serengeti. Sophie stared in wonder at the majestic escarpment that rose sheer behind Lake Manyara. It was the perfect antidote to the horror she had witnessed the day before, a world away in Ramliyya.
Past the road junction the road surface deteriorated further. The same warm breeze ruffled the yellow savannah grass and increasing numbers of baobabs uplifted spiky fingers into a clear sky. Ten miles further on, Hasan took a left turn towards Tarangire National Park. A billboard at the road junction advertised the luxurious Tarangire Tented Safari Camp.
They found a couple of park rangers lounging in a hut further down the dirt track, stationed there to collect visitors’ park fees. But as soon as they saw the Land Rover, the two men jumped to attention and swung open the barrier, saluting Hasan like a general.
‘Don’t we have to pay to come in here?’ Sophie asked, burdening Hasan with conversation for the first time in their two-and-a-half hour journey.
‘Not us,’ he answered tritely. ‘Only other people.’
It was classic game country, but Sophie saw few of the animals that passed in front of her eyes. She could only see him. Omar had to be very close now.
Sure enough, Hasan soon turned off the main track and pulled up at the lip of a natural bowl that stretched out in a semi-circular arc a hundred feet above the surrounding land, its acacia-studded glades shimmering in the perfection of a late-afternoon sun.
A green tent stood at the highest point, next to it a large black trail bike. Omar was in front of the tent, sitting on a gnarled tree stump, and studying a small herd of elephants in the dip below.
Hasan pulled the Land Rover up at a respectful distance from his master, cut the engine, and busied himself with Sophie’s bag and some other boxes in the rear of the car, which he hauled into the khaki green tent one by one, never once talking to or acknowledging his master throughout the entire operation.
Sophie jumped down from the passenger side and stretched her legs, walking away from Omar and the car to the rim of the dip, where she paused to survey the pristine view below, tense in the anticipation of what might come next.
But there was to be no more time for brooding, for she could feel him walking slowly towards her. She looked round. He was staring at her intently. The ironi
c smile had returned just below the sunglasses. With bare torso tanned and toned, wearing only khaki slacks and brown boots, any last pretence of Arabism had entirely vanished.
Hasan started the Land Rover behind them. The roar of the retreating diesel engine made Sophie feel suddenly vulnerable and alone. It was one on one. They watched Hasan drive off and Omar put a hand on her shoulder.
‘First time in Africa, Sophie?’ He was standing face-to-face, strands of off-blond hair wafting in front of his sunglasses in the breeze.
The slap came from nowhere, sharp and unexpected on the side of his face. He stared back at her coolly, then turned his gaze towards the elephants in the dip.
‘Well, that makes us even, I suppose,’ he sighed.
But Sophie’s anger had only just returned; and now she had it back, she didn’t want to waste any.
‘Oh, no. We’re a long way from even, Omar. You’ve got a hell of a lot of explaining to do, and even if you had an eternity to do it, you could never explain away the callous cruelty of that car park. You can take back your house—and your money, too. I don’t want anything more from you, except an immediate flight back home.’
He turned and walked abruptly away. For a second, it occurred to her that he might simply disappear on the motorbike, leave her stuck in the wilderness in some pathetic damsel-in-distress routine. Perhaps that was the point of this raw nature location, to make her realize her vulnerability and re-establish a bond of dependency on him.
She was fractionally relieved to see him disappear inside the tent instead, reappearing moments later with a beer in each hand. Sophie snatched at the ice-cold bottle he offered. In the heat of the fading afternoon sun, she could think of nothing she wanted more; every desire she had ever experienced was encapsulated inside that plain amber bottle of Safari Lager.
‘Cheers!’ he said, clinking her bottle. She scowled back at him, but her anger only seemed to amuse him. ‘And welcome to Tarangire Tented Safari Camp, Sophie! Why don’t you join me in the main bar and game-viewing lounge?’ he added, pointing to the tree stump on a knoll at the crest of the rise. ‘We can discuss all your concerns there.’
‘Is this the luxury tented camp advertised on that billboard outside the park?’ she asked in amazement, aware that he was succeeding in deflecting her attention away from the direction of her anger.
He grinned, ‘That’s right. I’ve had a lot of work done on the place since I bought it two years ago. Once a thriving tourist-class resort, made up of forty luxury, fixed-fitting tents, bar, restaurant, swimming pool and game-viewing terrace; now, totally reverted to nature! I’ve greatly simplified the design, and I must say that I am delighted with the results. Look!’ he laughed stonily, pointing to an area of bare earth behind her back. ‘You can see what a job it was to remove every last damned piece of concrete from the place. The swimming pool, in particular, was hard work.’
‘What on earth would you want to do that for?’ she asked, relaxed enough by the cool beer to indulge his side-track. ‘A swim would be the next best thing to a cold beer right now.’
‘Them again, I’m afraid,’ he sighed. ‘They were here, you see—profit sharks from the open seas of the global free market, smelling blood, wanting to turn this simple perfection into another concrete resort for the idle rich. Development, they call it! Just think of the value judgement inherent in the name! As if their buildings, swimming pools, roads and rubbish tips constitute any sort of improvement on what you can see all around you. Tell me, how the hell do they think they can improve on all this?’ he shouted, swinging his arms around in a full arc and slopping beer.
‘So you bought the camp with the express intention of pulling it down?’ she asked robotically, her mind still focused more on Ramliyya than Tarangire.
‘Of course! And I’ve bought other similar places throughout East Africa. The Tanzanian government thinks I’ve pulled down the camp to build a luxury resort lodge. I have to pay heavily in bribes to government officials, park rangers etc., but I pay more generously than the tourists do, so everyone stays happy. But whatever I can save here or elsewhere will only slow the cancer down by a few years. The plutocrats, corporate executives and the politicians they keep in their pockets are too powerful in the long-term, even for me. That is why I must take the fight to the very heart of their System.’
Sophie ignored the implications behind the last comment for the time being. Just more of the same dark, unspecified threats.
‘But isn’t tourism good for countries like this, Omar? After all, you’ve got to admit that it generates local jobs and provides a lot of much-needed foreign currency.’
He glared at her ferociously. For a second she thought he was going to return the slap; instead, he sighed and turned away.
‘Can’t you see what will happen—is already happening here, and all over the remaining ‘undeveloped’ world? Oh yes, it starts with a few discreet hotels or bush camps like this one, built to gratify the desire of a small international elite. They come in four-wheel drives to spend some vacation time and a modicum of their blood-sucked cash among the wonders of raw nature, careful to ensure that ‘getting close to nature’ entails no compromise to their own personal comfort. Next they build another hotel, pave the roads, a casino maybe, shops, shanty houses for the subsistence-salaried workers. You can imagine the rest. It’s the Midas touch. Before long they’ve irretrievably lost whatever they came here to find—freedom, untamed nature, wild animals. Look at the Costa del Sol or the Algarve. Not so very long ago they were beautiful backwaters full of orange and almond groves, scenic coastline and quaint Mediterranean villages. Now all that cash and development has created Birmingham-on-Sea, with more sun and cheaper booze. It’s all a result of the Growth Process, the ‘More Syndrome’; unfettered capitalism…call it whatever you want, the ideology is the same: take as much as you can while it’s still there—and sod the consequences!’
Animated by his usual political angst, he took Sophie’s empty beer bottle and walked off to the tent to fetch fresh ones. Two Masai herdsman appeared in the dip below, moving their cattle past the unconcerned elephants. Their arms hung gracefully from the ends of their spears, which were draped over shoulders and supported against the backs of their necks. The first Masai raised a hand and waved nonchalantly towards Omar. It was a salute of equals.
‘Now the tourists have gone, I told the rangers to allow the Masai and their cattle back in the park. After all, if the land belongs to anyone, it’s really theirs. Look at them! Once the most feared tribe in East Africa, now chased off the land they grazed for centuries. And do you know why? Because they were not greedy enough! They never built fences around their land, or carved it up into strips of private property. These people lived with the land; they were part of the environment, not its exploiters. Perfect symbiosis. And because none of them owned an individual plot, everybody cared about the whole. Then our system came along. To the System, no fences and no title deeds meant it was all there for the taking. Ripe for development! So now the Masai will have to join the rest of the world in the System game. And they start at the very bottom of the cesspool of global capitalism, down in the foulest smelling drains, where the majority of mankind lurks, each man and woman pretending they believe the lie that one day they, too, will get to drive round here in Toyota Land Cruisers, drinking ice-cold Coca Cola before hurrying back to luxury apartments to check the closing prices of the Nikkei exchange from their laptop computers. It’s a sick farce. Surely you can see that, Sophie?’
‘As sick as a public beheading in Ramliyya, for example?’
He looked at her intently, the ironical malice of the early days back on his face.
Why did you do it, Omar?’ She was all the more urgent for having been kept waiting. ‘How could you let that poor man die so horribly? What had he done to you to deserve such terrible punishment? No one deserves what he suffered.’
But Al-Ajnabi just shrugged nonchalantly, unmoved by the passion in her voice.
>
‘Phil Goss was a brutal murderer and an incorrigible bully, Sophie. You needn’t worry too much on his account. But anyway, who said it was my decision to have him executed?’
‘It was you, I’m certain of it. Come on, there’s no use pretending to me any longer, Omar. Why else would you have dragged Marcus’s father there to witness the execution? You had some grudge against that poor, unfortunate Goss, or whatever his name was, and you wanted to humiliate Marcus’s father as well. Isn’t that how it was? Well, I hope it was worth it. I hope you enjoyed your pound of flesh!’
The sun was setting in front of them, flecking the yellow land and dark acacias in its most delicious hues. Weaver birds whistled overhead. Three giraffes had joined the elephants, their tawny hides smudged golden in the amber sunlight. Omar got up, arranged three large stones into a fireplace and started snapping brushwood. Sophie stayed sitting on the tree stump, anger smouldering stronger than the kindling fire. But at the same time, just sitting on the tree stump, gazing out at the primeval beauty of dusk over Tarangire threatened to distract her fury; it was a powerful, gravitational counter-pull on the soul.
‘Marcus’s father did not just go to Ramliyya to witness the execution,’ he sighed eventually, watching the first flames flicker high in the fire. ‘Colonel Easterby was there at the execution because he himself had chosen it.’
‘What? You’re trying to tell me that Marcus’s father ordered that man’s execution? Rubbish! That’s impossible!’
‘Not impossible, Sophie,’ he said dryly. ‘And I can prove it to you. In fact, when you return to London on tomorrow’s flight, your friend Darren Chapman will probably have splashed the details over the front page of the Guardian.’ His voice was matter of fact, but Sophie could feel the latent hostility concealed underneath. And once again, she had the shudder of a suspicion that some of it was directed against her.
She looked at him in shock, certain, at last, that he wasn’t lying. ‘Oh my God!’ she moaned. ‘But that’s awful! Then her eyes narrowed again. ‘But hang on a minute, Omar. How could Colonel Easterby have chosen it, as you say? He can’t order executions in Ramliyya.’
‘No, he can’t. But Goss was working for Colonel Easterby’s company, British Defence Systems, at the time of his arrest. There was no question of Goss’s guilt. He slit the throat of a Ramli citizen when our police swooped to arrest him for his role in organizing an alcohol and drug smuggling operation. Murder is an automatic death sentence in Ramliyya, but we gave Colonel Easterby a choice: termination of his company’s substantial arms contract in our county, or Goss’s life. You yourself saw what he chose.’
Sophie cupped her head in her hands. Suddenly even the thought of Marcus revolted her. What was it the Bible said about the sins of the father?
‘But it was still you who gave Colonel Easterby that choice, wasn’t it, Omar? And you wanted to make him responsible for the execution. Don’t think I didn’t see the way you were looking at him and Marcus throughout your dinner party. Why are you so hostile to them? Is it something to do with me and Marcus?’
Omar laughed briefly and humourlessly, then busied himself with tending the fire. Black smoke curled upwards towards the earliest and brightest stars. The dusk was splendid and short-lived, provoking a riot of noise from animals and insects that teemed unseen for miles around. He lit a paraffin lamp and passed it to her.
‘Why don’t you fetch a couple more beers from the tent, Sophie? It’s a long story. I’ll cook while I talk.’
She did as he suggested, handed him another beer, and sat back on the tree stump, despondent at what she had just heard about Colonel Easterby, yet at the same time deliciously awestruck by the splendid starscape and the beautiful loneliness of the fidgeting bush.
When he had finished throwing a hotchpotch of ingredients into the smoking pot, he turned to face her:
‘You think I would go to all that trouble just to get at your boyfriend?’ The sneer was emphatic. ‘Oh, no, Sophie. There’s much more to it than that. Much, much more. Let me take you back well over twenty years, back to the time when a young man was just graduating from university, same university as you, same college as well. He and his best friend were both on army scholarships, and as soon as they left Oxford, it was to begin a three-year commission.’
‘This young man left behind a college sweetheart he adored when Sandhurst swallowed him for seven months’ training. Barrack room life was dull, training hard, but at least he had his best friend with him to alleviate the boredom. When they graduated and both received their commissions after Basic Training and Officer Training, both were assigned as second lieutenants to D Company, the Parachute Regiment, stationed in Northern Ireland.’
He broke off from the narrative to take a long pull on his beer, peering intently into the darkness. His face was only dimly lit by the firelight, but Sophie didn’t have to see it to know the expression.
‘So really you’re British, then by origin?’
The revelation bewildered Sophie more than it should have; she knew she should have guessed that a long time back.
He nodded. ‘That was my nationality – a long time ago.’ The admission must have left a bad taste in his mouth, for he turned round to spit into the fire.
Curiosity had conquered Sophie’s anger. Now she was anxious to hear more.
‘So how did a second lieutenant from the Parachute Regiment turn into a Ramli prince? But wait a minute, Omar. Before you tell me that, don’t you think you should tell me your original name? I don’t suppose you were called ‘Omar’ back in your army days.’
He sighed:
‘Back then my name was Robert Bailey. In South Africa, I changed it to Frank Russell. I suppose you should really call me Robert but these days I prefer Omar.’
They both fell silent. Sophie’s confusion was total; she waited for him to carry on.
‘I was based in Antrim for the first two months, getting to know my new platoon, finding out how useless most of what we had learned in training was in Northern Ireland.’
‘Back then I was opinionated too, but only moderately socialist and proudly patriotic. One night in Antrim, I got drunk in the officers’ mess and ended up in a raging political row with my commanding officer. Bad mistake, but I wouldn’t back down. And I soon found out what a vindictive bastard he was. From then on he was at me the whole time, watching my every move, waiting for me to trip up.’
‘You’re talking about Marcus’s father, I suppose?’
Omar nodded.
‘But Major Easterby wasn’t the end of my problems. I was doubly cursed with a devil of a platoon sergeant, a brute and a bully who had taken a violent dislike to me from day one. Goss had run the platoon his way for some time. In it, he was God, and everyone, including the platoon commander I had just replaced, was taught how to say their amens and hallelujahs.’
‘Oh my God,’ Sophie stammered. ‘Did you say Goss? That’s the man who was beheaded yesterday, isn’t it?’
His silence did for confirmation.
Sophie felt suddenly sick now that she could match an identity to the head that had plopped so heavily onto the green mat in the car park in Ramliyya. And she felt angry again with Omar – or Robert, or whatever his wretched name was – angry that he had persisted with a revenge far more terrible than anything his army tormentors could ever have meted out against him.
But Omar forged ahead before Sophie could find words for her emotion.
‘After two months on the border country, we were moved up to barracks in Lisburn, North Belfast. Platoon morale was low. Major Easterby was giving us all the worst duties and Goss was on my back all the time, trying to ridicule me in front of the men. Added to that, we were carrying a lot of raw youngsters like myself.’
‘One April day, more than twenty years ago, we were on patrol in West Belfast. You probably know the date; it’s infamous enough in British history.’
She had not, so she waited for him to explain.
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??There had been trouble in the district all week: riots, stone throwing, that sort of thing. As we turned into the Falls Road from Whiterock Road, we ran straight into a mob of angry youngsters. We were exactly what they were looking for. A couple of young Catholics had just been shot up early that morning at an RUC roadblock. Before I knew what was happening, there were stones and petrol bombs raining down on us. Then came the shots. IRA snipers had taken positions in several houses further up the road and were opening up on us, using the youngsters in the crowd for bait and cover.’
‘Goss rushed over. His blood was up with me and with them. One of our lads was down and Goss wanted some payback – and fast. I refused and radioed in. But Major Easterby was in no mood for compromise either. I’d heard him often enough before to know that he wanted to teach the IRA and their sympathizers a lesson. ‘Short, sharp shock therapy,’ was what he called it after a couple of whisky and gingers in the Mess.’
‘Easterby told me to, ‘Do what you have to, man.’ I prevaricated and objected. That was when Goss stepped in. He snatched the headset from my ears and jumped the chain of command to get Easterby’s support. I knew what Goss wanted, and Easterby gave him the green light. For a split second I could have killed Goss, emptied my magazine right into his beefy chest. But the bullets only ended up as a punch into his jaw, as hard and as vicious as anything I could manage. Stupid idea! Men like Goss have rubber jaws. He took the blow easily, then felled me with a head-butt.’
‘The next bit was the worst. I wasn’t properly unconscious; if anything, I was probably more acutely aware of every detail going on around me, just powerless to get up. I heard Goss give the order. Then came the shots. Steady taps of fire, all the more sinister for their controlled discipline. I wanted to shout out, scream at the lads to stop, but I could only lie on the pavement like a beached jelly, clasping my forehead, moaning gently. I could hear the kids’ screams, hear them running in pandemonium up the street, hear Goss revelling in every bullet that hit its mark. Later, when the ambulance men arrived to scoop up the bleeding, dead and dying, they counted twelve bodies, eleven of them under twenty years old.’
Sophie flicked her hair back. ‘It’s the Falls Road Massacre you’re talking about, right?’
Omar grunted, busy with the cooking. From the dip below came the sound of restless baboons. Beyond them, hyenas were howling. Omar asked her to shine the lamp over the fire while he dished out the food.
They ate in silence, sitting side by side on the tree stump. The food tasted salty, smoky and simple, but Sophie was ravenous, and she spooned down the stew like a hungry labourer in a farmer’s kitchen. After food came more beer and some smokes. In the mellowness of sated desire, she even accepted his offer of a puff on a cigar.
‘So you left the army after the massacre, never to return to England?’
He turned sharply towards her. Close up in the firelight, the anger flickered in his eyes.
‘Oh, no, Sophie, I didn’t leave the army,’ he growled, loud and bitter. ‘You don’t just walk away from the Parachute Regiment and say, ‘Sorry chaps, ’fraid it’s not my cup of tea after all’. Oh no, nothing like that, I can assure you. The best was still to come.’
Sophie waited for a minute out of respect, aware that he might be deliberately playacting his emotion to win over her sympathy. Behind them, a full moon was rising, already strong enough for Omar to lean over and turn out the paraffin lamp.
‘For a whole week nothing much happened. We sat miserably in barracks, avoiding the newspapers, avoiding each other. Towards the end of the week, rumours started to fly. The atmosphere inside the platoon was treacherous and poisonous. I knew that Goss was busy with the men, bullying them into line. I knew how he’d put it, too - ‘all for one and one for all’ – that sort of stuff. But with Goss, all and one meant the same thing: him. I should have fought back, gone straight to the regimental commanding officer to make my move against Goss and Easterby. I should have called the men together, reassured them and got them behind me, but I didn’t bother with any of that. I felt so sick of it all, I just wanted out of the army, and in a way, that’s what they gave me.’
He got up to collect and stow the plates and pan. Sophie sat silent. He knew he was winning her sympathy.
‘In classic army style,’ he continued from the fireside, ‘they came for me at five o’clock in the morning, exactly one week after the massacre. I was taken to Company HQ and locked up in a cold dark cell, where I spent the whole morning sitting on a bed with a sandpaper blanket wrapped around my shoulders, staring into an enamel slops bowl. In the afternoon the Colonel was ready for me. He interviewed me in his office, apologized for the formal arrest, and hinted that I would be released soon. He listened carefully to my story and made me repeat Major Easterby’s words exactly as I had heard them over the radio before the shooting began. Had Major Easterby really ordered me to fire on the crowd? Or had I given that interpretation to his words in the heat of the moment?’
‘The Colonel was a tall, thin and bony man with a reputation for detached severity. I told him about Goss’s role in the massacre. The Colonel listened without comment, thanked me, and allowed me to return to my quarters.’
Sophie could feel the onset of impending tragedy. The story had gripped her attention, but in the present surroundings, it left her feeling strangely confused. Here she was in the great outdoors, sky dripping with overripe stars, animals scuffling in the bush, insects pulsating. It was like a scout camp on safari – except the ghost story round the campfire was turning out to be horrifically true.
‘Three more days passed. The rest of the Company returned to active duty, but my platoon was still confined to barracks. On the fourth morning after the interview with the Colonel, they came for me again. But this time the duty sergeant placed me under formal arrest. I assumed that Easterby, Goss and other members of my platoon were also under lock and key, and that we would face each other later at the inquiry.’
‘But it didn’t happen like that. They put me in a Land Rover and took me to the airbase. That night I was in an Army prison cell in Catterick, where I learnt that I had been singled out to face a court-martial the next month, charged with the manslaughter of 12 civilians. I couldn’t believe it! What about Goss and Easterby? I screamed out from my cell down the dim, disinfected prison corridors. Why hadn’t Goss and Easterby been arrested, too? It didn’t make any sense.’
‘That first night in Catterick I started to panic. Since the morning after the massacre, the British and international press had been screaming for a full inquiry and for strong disciplinary action to be taken against those responsible. At first that had sounded all right to me. The sooner they got Easterby and Goss under lock and key the better! Only then in Catterick did the possibility occur to me that I was being set up to take the blame. The army needed a scapegoat, someone who could be held responsible for what had happened without looking evil enough to create any far-reaching shockwaves for the future of British troops in Northern Ireland. Of course, I was the perfect candidate. A young, inexperienced second lieutenant would make a better sacrificial lamb than an upper class major or a veteran sergeant. The top brass would be able to say, Falls Road fiasco? Ah, yes, young, excitable lieutenant lost his nerve under fire. Very sad affair, but these things happen.’
‘And that’s precisely how they played it. I faced a court-martial of five senior officers, then watched and listened in silence as every private and NCO in my platoon came forward under oath to testify that I had been responsible for the order to fire. They were nervous and shifty; at least none of them had the cheek to look me in the eyes while they trotted out their lies. Not that I blamed them so much for what they were doing, especially the younger lads. They’d all been brainwashed or intimidated by, Goss, Easterby, and (as I later found out) even by the regimental CO. I think that some of those poor cretins actually believed what they were saying.’
‘Goss was the first of the big fish to testify to the court-martial. He
looked me straight in the eyes throughout, enjoying every minute of it, as if he were slowly boring a blunt pencil into my eyeball. You couldn’t break a man like Goss down under questioning just as you couldn’t wear him down under fire. He stuck unshakably to his story. According to him, Major Easterby had told me over the radio to, ‘Cool the situation.’ I had ignored the Major, panicked, and ordered the men to open fire. Goss saw that I had lost it and countermanded my order. A scuffle broke out between him and me. I broke free and opened fire on the crowd with his SLR. Other less-experienced members of the platoon panicked in turn and followed my lead. Gospel according to Sergeant Phil Goss: Massacre, one of, particularly ugly issue, properly accounted for, sir. QED.’
‘Major Easterby followed Goss to the witness box. Same story told with more aplomb and reserve, as befitted a gentleman officer. But the best was yet to come. The regimental commanding officer was the last witness for the prosecution. He backed up everything Goss and Easterby had said, described my character as moody and unreliable, dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s on the case for the prosecution. And it soon became quite obvious that the regimental CO was a personal friend of four of the five judges. My fate was sealed. They gave me seven years for manslaughter, exonerated Goss and Major Easterby from the allegations I had made against them, and gave the regimental CO a promotion. Less than a year later, my friend the Colonel left the Paras to embark on the political career he had apparently been sniffing at for a while. It seems that his pals in government were relieved at the very swift and public way in which justice had been seen to be carried out and public outrage softened. They gave him a safe seat and welcomed him to the club.’
‘What was his name?’ Sophie asked. ‘Is he still in politics today?’
Bailey snorted contemptuously. ‘Yes, he’s still there today. Switched parties twice – not that there’s much difference between Labour and the Conservatives any more. Now he has been rewarded for his pragmatic approach to politics by gaining the position of foreign secretary under today’s regime.’
‘James McPherson!’ Sophie gasped, ‘Christ, you mean McPherson was your regimental commanding officer?’
She stood up from the tree stump in surprise. ‘Wow!’ she repeated several times over, perplexed and enthralled.
Only half an hour ago she had been brimming with a dull anger for Omar. Now her fury had now wilted to a confused mess. There was too much information to take on board in one go, some of it as incredibly unlikely as the beauty of all those rich and creamy stars overhead. Omar had thrust her centre-stage and unrehearsed into the midst of a complex drama, and she wasn’t sure which characters to trust, fear, like or love.
‘Seven years,’ he muttered wistfully to himself, pulling on his cheroot.
‘I was twenty-two when I began my sentence. Can you imagine it, Sophie? If someone were to show you a tiny cell inside four strong plaster-coated walls and tell you that you were going to spend seven years of your young life there? Seven years! Do you know what that means? Three hundred and sixty four weeks. Two thousand five hundred and fifty-five days. Sixty-one thousand, three hundred and twenty hours. You get the feel?’
She shivered despite the warm night air.
‘As you can see, you get plenty of time to think, plenty of time to brood, plenty of time to strip yourself of all the emotions you took into the place. But far worse than the pain and loneliness was the acceptance. They were wrong, I was right. What could I do about it? Nothing. ‘Learn to grin and bear it, son,’ the Military Police guys kept reminding me. ‘You’ll be out in four or less, you’ll see. Army always looks after its own, no matter what you’ve done!’
‘For the first ten months, that was what I did. Probably I would have carried on like that for the remainder of my time, watching TV, reading trashy thrillers, perfecting my table tennis. But something far more painful happened, something that hurt me in its own way every bit as much as what Goss, Easterby and McPherson had concocted.’
Sophie waited for him to continue, but not impatiently, thanks to the mellow buzz from the grass she had just smoked. The baboons filled his silence, and in the distance a series of deeper, panting groans.
‘What was that?’ she asked eventually, staring into the distance as if in a trance.
‘Lion.’
‘No. What happened to you in prison?’
He stood up and crushed the end of his cheroot under a boot. They were standing cheek to cheek in front of the fire, looking out over the dip below that was bathed in silver light. Sophie felt his eyes on her and turned to look at them. It was the malicious, vampiric smile of the early days, only this time, worse than ever. Far worse.
‘That’s another story, Sophie. Another story for another place.’ His voice had become distant again, as if it belonged more to the backdrop of animal noises.
Sophie sighed and looked away. She was struggling with too many emotions, some her own, some felt on behalf of all the characters in Omar’s drama, and another feeling for Omar that she had been trying to choke back for some time. But she understood none of them clearly. And in the turbulence of emotions, she believed in none of them, just as she refused to believe that she was standing on a warm night on the East African savannah, listening to the magical sounds of the restless night, and watching a myriad of stars, planets and galaxies, all of them spawned from a sub-atomic singularity of immeasurable smallness and immeasurable mass.
Finally, she looked at him again.
‘There’s one thing I must know, Omar; one thing that worries me more than anything else.’
He smiled elliptically for her to continue, his teeth shining ghostly in the moonlight.
‘I’ve noticed that too many of the people from your past seem to haunt your present. Nothing seems to happen by accident in your life. I want to know where I fit in. Why am I here now? What’s my role in your schemes, Omar?’
He swallowed audibly.
‘If you could choose your role and your meaning here tonight, Sophie, what would it be?’
She had to look away abruptly, embarrassed by the unsolicited thought that had just struck her. She would have believed he could read minds.
‘Are you trying to get at Marcus through me, by taking me away from him? Are you trying to punish Colonel Easterby’s son for the guilt of his father?’
He laughed briefly, this time with some humour.
‘That would be an amusing, but very coincidental bonus, I can assure you. But tell me, Sophie, am I… taking you away from Marcus: your affections, I mean?’
She looked away:
‘I say, Omar, why is there only one tent? You didn’t plan on one last ‘bed duty’, I suppose.’
He took hold of her forearm and found her eyes.
‘I never use tents.’
She stared at him for some time, mesmerized by the glow of the firelight on his cheeks.
‘Then neither do I.’
He reached out with his other hand and pulled her close, running a hand through a plume of long, rich hair, then up against the back of her neck, stroking its base and resting his hand against her lips, before pulling her gently into an embrace.
They swayed to and fro, locked together, kissing deeply. He broke off sharply, walked to the tent, and returned, dragging a mattress to the fireside. Everything was methodical with him, mixed with short, frenzied bouts of passion that seemed disturbingly genuine.
Sophie let him coax her to the mattress and unpeel her clothes one by one, until they stood naked side-by-side, standing on the soft foam. She sensed the danger in what she was about to do, but the drink, the drama, and above all the vitality of the night air made her more determined to go through with it. She loved him and hated him, didn’t know which impulse to believe. But intense feeling was there, and whatever it was, she knew she had to explore it to its conclusion.
End of Part One
Guy Fawkes Day: Part Two