The next time it is Jim Hepsobah who spots them, a column of our guys disconsolately trudging westwards. They are gone before he can slow down, tricks of the light.
A bit later, soldiers appear as we pause to assist a lone woman with a baby, who turns out to be a slender boy with a bundle of rags, swaying his hips in a ludicrous counterfeit. He scampers away into the forest, shouting abuse, and there are bullets. The whole thing is petty, a moment of shock and almost of irritation. Someone is shooting at us. It’s so rude. We shoot back until they stop. We move on.
Then a jeep draws alongside, very fast. A slender figure in fatigues, shivering with cold, eyes fixed on the road ahead and the horizon, sits alone at the wheel. Annie looks at Jim and Jim makes a frantic gesture and Annie and (perforce) Gonzo pick up the pace. Sally Culpepper has blood on her elegant eyebrows and she obviously didn’t manage to grab a coat before she lit out. She won’t answer when Jim calls her and for the longest time she seems to think we’re like the ghosts at the roadside, and finally Jim steps from the machine-gun platform into the jeep next to her and she all but kills him, razor bowie whipping round in a blur. Jim does the smart thing, puts the outside of his arm up and takes the hit there, and Sally wrenches back and jolts and comes back to us, and Jim puts his arms around her as she drives, ignoring the gash on his arm as if it were a mosquito bite. Maybe it is. Maybe Jim Hepsobah is wearing chain mail under there. On the other hand, he’s bleeding. Maybe Ronnie Cheung’s hot iron filings and rough concrete blocks have made Jim Hepsobah immune to minor injuries. Or maybe it’s just Jim Hepsobah, because he’s in love, and isn’t this exactly what I would do for Leah? Sally slows to a more manageable pace and I clamber up into the gun nest and we head on, silent, down the long dark road. I get to be a hero for a while. Then it’s someone else’s turn, and I go back down into the car, and Leah uses me as a pillow.
We speed on through the gathering night. Leah wakes and doesn’t speak. I know she’s awake because her breathing has changed, but her eyes are closed and she doesn’t draw away from my shoulder, which is about the only good thing going on. Later, she asks where we’re going. Gonzo glances at me. “Copsen ordered withdrawal,” Gonzo says, and I look right back at him and say “Yes, he did,” and Gonzo knows that I am lying. I’m not sure if he loves me or hates me for saving us all from a heroic (pointless) last stand. He knows that it was a necessary lie, but it is not something he would have done. Leah gets her answer from Jim Hepsobah.
Our destination is Corvid’s Field, which is the name given by all the foreign forces in the Elective Theatre to the small flat strip of green grass and cracked runway which serves as the UN’s gesture in the direction of Addeh Katir. The local name is long and musical and relates to a legend about monsters and magic and (probably somewhat later) Buddha. It has too many consonants and a precise intonation which of all of us—as far as I know, including Vasille’s men—only Jim Hepsobah can get close to. He has an ear for melody.
“Twenty years ago, at least,” says Jim Hepsobah, after a kind of drawing-in-your-memory pause, “there was a guy flew a small plane out of Corvid’s Field. Back then it was still called Bravo Strip by anyone who didn’t call it by the Katiri name, and people just about still came here as tourists. Guy’s name was Bob Castle, but he played a decent game of chess and everyone who knew him called him Rook, which is the other word for a castle in chess.” He glances back to make sure he’s telling her something she already knows. Leah nods confirmation.
“So Castle—Rook—decided that was a pretty cool handle, and he painted a big black bird on his tail fin and changed his call sign, and he went right on flying his charters and taking backpackers on little pleasure hops and filling in the off-season with some more grey-area kind of stuff like medical supplies which may or may not have had a legitimate source. Those grey-area cargos he got from a local fixer called Harry Manjil, an Anglo-Chinese Katiri with messed-up legs. Maybe polio or something. Not sure. He was a little weasel geezer who could make you laugh in about a second and a half, and have your fillings out while you were doing it. And Harry had a gorgeous wife, about twenty years old, called Yvette, and Harry and Yvette and Rook used to spend every Friday night hanging out and playing mah-jongg with whatever girl Rook was dating, and drinking cheap hooch from Harry’s still.” Jim Hepsobah turns halfway in his seat, and glances around to be sure everyone is paying attention. He frowns.
“Rook never made a move on Yvette, and Yvette never made a move on Rook. It just wasn’t a thing. I say this because people immediately think there’s a whole loooove triangle aspect to this story, and that pisses me off, because you can get three people in a room without someone screwing someone else’s spouse, and because these were good people and honourable people and this isn’t that kind of weak-ass story. Are we clear?”
“No triangle,” says Leah. “Gotcha.”
“So one night Yvette comes to Rook in a fluster and she says Harry’s gone, just gone, and she doesn’t know where he is, and she thinks maybe he got taken by bandits or maybe someone he was doing business with wasn’t into the right kind of business. And she thinks she knows where Harry was going and will Rook fly her around there so she can look down from on high and see if she can see anything? Like his car. Or him. Or something. Please? So . . . Rook says no. He says absolutely no. He tells her, go home. Harry will be back. But we are not going flying low over some criminal sonsabitches who are doing criminal sonsabitches-type business with Harry, because they will get nervous and shoot him, and us. And Yvette goes home. And Rook gets himself in his plane and he goes up and he looks for Harry himself, because he thinks Yvette is absolutely right.
“He takes himself a big old automatic rifle for personal security, and a couple of grenades for added personal security, and he goes out towards the mountains, which is where criminal sonsabitches mostly do business in this region. He goes out and he flies over a camp and he sees Harry’s jeep all shot up, and he drops one of his grenades on the tents down below, because his friend is dead down there. Now, he knows what will happen next, but he’s an emotional guy, this Rook, and he does what he thinks is the right thing. And the leader of these folk down on the ground is a huge bastard, a man called Nand. He comes out and he shoots Rook through the floor of the plane. Just plain lucky, or unlucky, or he just puts so many shells in the air that one of ’em has to do something, because Rook is flying so low. Rook knows he’s all done, and he brings the plane around one last time. On the ground Nand is cursing him and shooting at him and blowing bits off the wings. He shoots up the cockpit pretty good. Rook takes a few more, but he keeps that plane level and going in a straight line, right towards this evil sonuvabitch who killed his friend. Gets so close he’s staring Nand right in the eye. And then he pulls the pin on the second grenade and the plane comes down on the camp in a hail of fire. So Rook kills the ogre.
“But the thing is, Harry wasn’t dead at all. He’d had his car stolen right out from under him, and a bunch of arseholes had ripped him off and tried to kill him, but he was fast and smart and he ducked away into the jungle. Maybe they would have gone after him, but Rook arrived about that time, and they got busy.
“So Harry was footsore, but he was alive. He came home to Yvette just like Rook had said he would. So when Harry made it rich, he bought up the strip and got people around to calling it Corvid’s Field, because a rook is a kind of corvid, maybe the only good kind. Little headstone for a friend. And then Harry and Yvette packed up and went away and no one ever saw them again.” Jim Hepsobah smiles a sad little smile. Leah sniffs.
“But . . . the local people, the Katiri farmers and traders and the pirates from Lake Addeh, they liked Rook too. And they say the birds of Corvid’s Field fly around the strip each dusk, and they fly in formation like a little single-engine plane, and that’s the spirit of Bob Castle, the Rook, watching over Corvid’s Field and enjoying the sunset. And woe betide the man who steps out of line there, because Rook may not have any grenades left,
but he still has a rifle and he’s a mean shot.” Jim Hepsobah grins like a Viking, and you can pretty much smell the aviation fuel and the cheap flyboy cigars, and you can hear Nand the bandit screaming as he sees those burning fragments coming down on him from the sky.
Leah asks if that’s a true story, meaning “How much of it is a true story?” which makes me think of the Evangelist, and that, in turn, reminds me that Corvid’s Field is the UN airfield Elisabeth was writing about for her newspaper, and is she still there? Did she go home? Is she alive? And I realise that Elisabeth does not know about Leah, and that Leah does not know about Elisabeth, and then that there is no reason why they should, because Elisabeth and I have never been other than friends and training partners.
Jim Hepsobah is about to answer Leah’s question when the road in front of us explodes and the windscreen stars and shatters, and we are hurled not forward, but back, as Gonzo stamps on the accelerator and takes us around and alongside the crater, gunning the engine to make it over the rubble by the side of the road, and controlling the slewing and skidding as we leave the asphalt or tarmac or clay or whatever it is they use here. Ronnie Cheung’s tactical driving course takes over, and everyone tries to throw the enemy, weaving in and out like a school of fish confusing a tuna. (It’s hard to think of tuna as predators, because we eat them as sushi, but if you’re on Mr. Bluefin’s dinner list, he’s as mean a sucker as you could ever know, and he is fast and damn hungry.) There are only four vehicles and one of them’s a tank, so the effect is muted, but Mr. Bluefin in this case is a lousy shot, or more likely he’s never seen coordinated tactical driving before. He shoots at where we are and he needs to be shooting at where we’re going to be. He misses. We leave him behind.
Twenty minutes later: three figures beside a barricade of wood and rubble. Gonzo barely slows. He flicks his headlights to full, and I catch a glimpse of a couple of guys with an RPG (they are not aiming it at us, they just have one, like they’re having tea and grenades) and a third figure in shredded coveralls. This third person, apart from the others, is tall and too thin, and wears an orange prisoner-suit and a gasmask. The gasmask is very strange because it makes the person in it look as if they have no head. The person waves, arms crossing and uncrossing. “Stop” the orange person is saying, or “Help” or possibly “Slow down so we can kill you and steal your car.” And then they’re gone—Gonzo has taken us over the middle of the barricade, and they haven’t shot at us. Does that mean they weren’t part of the outfit who blew up the road? Or does it mean that they were, but they don’t fancy a real fight? I have no idea. I ask Gonzo, but he’s fighting to control the car. He’s had enough of this crap, and he’s got the thing up to about sixty, which isn’t bad on a road made of clay and asphalt patched with sheep shit. We leave the waving creepy person behind, and Gonzo keeps that speed up until we arrive at Corvid’s Field.
THE UN FLAG is still flying over the control tower, sad and bleached. A couple of guys in blue helmets stand at the gates, covering us with their sidearms. The walls have been shot up some, and there’s a dirty smear along one side of the tower where some kind of explosive has gone off and the tower has been patched but not repainted. Otherwise, they seem to have got lucky, although from this angle it’s not possible to see the whole field. And on the runway (Sing hosanna!) there is a pair of elderly but serviceable cargo planes. They have no windows and the seating will not be comfortable, but between them, if we are permitted to use them, we can evacuate everyone.
One of the blue helmets walks out towards us, cautious. He’s a brave little guy, probably Puerto Rican on secondment. It takes some chutzpah to leave your own gate and walk up to an armoured column—even one as ragtag as ours—and tell them to behave or face the consequences of your displeasure. That is what he is coming to do, and he knows—and he knows that we know—that those consequences are basically him being extremely stern and maybe his commander giving us a sound talking-to. Or, I realise, a blonde civilian with a too-long face coming out and stamping her foot—but Elisabeth is nowhere to be seen. I hope she has already gone home.
“Who the hell are you?” the UN guy wants to know.
“We’re a travelling circus,” Gonzo says acidly. “I’m the bearded lady and these here”—he points to Jim Hepsobah and Sally and me—“are my clowns.” The UN guy doesn’t think much of that.
“Fine,” he says. “Take me to the ringmaster.” And Gonzo says that’s him too.
“Turn around,” the UN guy says. “There’s an armed camp maybe six or seven hours that way. They can help you better than we can.”
“We need evac,” Gonzo replies, “and so do you.”
“Turn around,” the UN guy says again. Gonzo looks thunderous and pissed off, and he’s about to share his feelings when the gate opens and the other UN guy waves us in. Our guy looks pretty disgusted and steps out of the way. Gonzo throws him a little grin and we all cruise merrily past him, through the gates, and the last we see of him is a single figure trudging slowly back to his position. We don’t pay him much attention, though, because by this time we realise how badly we have been fucked. We realise this because once everyone is inside the compound and outside their vehicles, soldiers who are emphatically not with the UN step out from the low buildings of Corvid’s Field and point their guns at us, and unlike George Copsen’s bastard squad at Jarndice, they don’t bother to tell us we are prisoners, because that sort of speaks for itself. And after patting us down and disarming us quite thoroughly, they take us to their leader. Vasille makes a face: merde.
Ruth Kemner.
She has taken the small departures hall for her own. It is a high room with narrow vertical windows in frosted glass intended to let the light through but not the glare. There’s a beaten-up luggage carousel by the door and a bar on one side, but the main event is at the far end under the sign saying Embarquement and the same in a variety of languages. Men stand in precise parade-ground formation, port arms. A moth-eaten red carpet has been layed out in strips across the floor, and a few rostra have been shoved together to make a dais. As in a place where a monarch sits—which is where the whole thing goes absolutely to the bad.
Ruth Kemner is sitting on a throne. It is not a very special throne, as these things go. It is the control chair of an assault helicopter welded to a metal frame, the whole thing draped over with a leopard skin which might have come from an actual leopard, but probably didn’t. The setup looks like some seventies movie in which warrior women, played by bathing beauties, capture and threaten to execute a group of male castaways, before melting blissfully into the arms of the square-jawed and plucky chaps, who stand for no sapphic nonsense and know that every good girl wants a firm hand. It’s ludicrous.
That’s probably why she has added the two severed heads to the uprights of the throne. They lend her an undeniable air of not screwing around. Her eyes look completely ordinary, which is what eyes do, but the face in which they rest, the network of small muscles which are used, voluntarily and otherwise, to produce expressions and communicate mood, is broadcasting that she’s dangerously psychotic. She sits forward, and she turns her head slowly so we can see that someone has taken a knife to her. They have attempted to open her throat, but they have failed, and there is a cut along her jaw which must have been painful and bloody, but which is now nicely stitched up. The surgeon has also put the lower half of her ear back, but it’s not looking too hopeful. As she looks at us, her face is in precisely the same position as head number 2, and the resemblance is uncanny. Unless Ruth Kemner has a sister, she’s gone and murdered someone who looks very like her, and used that person as part of the furnishings. It hardly matters which. Kemner has, as advertised, gone batshit. And from the old newspaper stand at the far end of the room her flunky brings out a muffled, furious figure, thrashing and bucking and roaring for a fair shot, or possibly for justice and freedom, and when they whip off his hood, we are all able to recognise Ben Carsville. If that scar is his work, it says a great dea
l for the unvarnished power of idiocy. It also explains why Kemner isn’t dead, and foreshadows a very bad ending to the story of the most handsome soldier in the Elective Theatre.
Carsville sets his jaw and glances at the throne situation and the heads, and he obviously takes in the movie thing too, because he makes some off-colour joke. Ben Carsville, of course, is exactly the kind of man who would be able to win the heart of a libidinously frustrated Amazon queen. Unfortunately, Kemner isn’t some busty trollop with a power complex. She was a respectable kind of mercenary soldier (“non-governmental military consultant”) at the bloodier end of the spectrum. What she is now, after the things which have happened since George Copsen’s red telephone rang and signalled the commencement of non-conventional hostilities in the new era, is less certain.
She looks at Ben Carsville with a chilly curiosity. Whatever sassy opening he used hasn’t immediately had its effect. She doesn’t slap him in an affronted yet alluring way; she doesn’t stare moodily into his eyes. She regards him with a kind of scientific interest, as if he were a new species ready for vivisection. She nods at her thugs. They pick Carsville up with a lot of “hur hur hur” and Kemner leads us all out around the back of the departures hall.
When you walk a prisoner at gunpoint, there is one thing you do not do. You do not poke him with your gun barrel. Every second you spend in physical contact with your prisoner is a second he is aware of the disposition of your body, and is close enough to attack you—assuming he knows where the gun is—before you can pull the trigger. Olympic athletes leaving the starting blocks are too slow to fire a gun in the time it takes a trained soldier to push the barrel to one side once he knows where it is. A gun is a weapon of medium distance, not close combat. So you don’t give him the chance to map out the situation, you don’t let him feel how relaxed or how tense you are and you never, ever shove him with your weapon, because if you are a fraction off centre, and he allows the barrel to pivot him, you have just put the business end of your gun right past him and he can bite your nose off or use your gun to shoot the man in front or any number of other things which are not conducive to good penal discipline.