35

‘I’m afraid there’s no question of our considering your application while this matter remains unresolved.’ Alex Levine turned from the window of his study overlooking the garden surrounding the Provost’s lodgings and gave a brief, distant smile of apology. ‘I’m sure you can appreciate our position, Leo.’

He was dressed for the weekend: jeans and a black polo shirt that fitted tightly over his flat-fronted torso. Black imagined him rising before dawn to pound the treadmill. He had the body of a man who punished himself, who wouldn’t afford himself an inch of slack until he had achieved his ambition. And right now, Black was one of the obstacles in his way.

‘I’m not sure I do.’

Levine’s eyes widened in surprise.

‘Quite apart from the issue of due process, the presumption of innocence, the possible political and even financial motives the sender of this email might possess, there is the other small matter of what exactly this college, this university is for. Is it for the pursuit of knowledge or for the continued reinforcement of some unspoken agenda?’

God, he sounded pompous.

Levine shifted uncomfortably from one foot to another, looking as if he had found himself trapped in the company of a madman.

Black continued, aware that he was fighting for his professional life. ‘Let’s imagine, for the sake of argument, that everything alleged in that email is true and that the British officer is, in fact, me. Wouldn’t that make my knowledge some of the most valuable in the field? Knowledge is knowledge, truth is truth. There’s no morality attached to facts. If you are only prepared to consider knowledge that comes from someone sufficiently in tune with your politics or prejudice, you’ve negated the whole purpose of intellectual endeavour. You’ve stopped enquiring. And even if through some mangled logic you manage to convince yourself that I am a useful source of information but because of my past career not a fit and proper person to impart it, you’ve done it again. Because truth is nothing, Provost, is it, except the power to transform? To turn darkness to light. What better illustration of all that you and this university stand for is there than the difference between me, the man you know, and the man depicted in that email?’

Black’s words echoed in the silence. He had stunned himself by the force of his outburst as much as he had Levine.

The muscles of Levine’s jaw tightened. He was used to colleagues who played by the rules, who obeyed and enacted the implicit codes without question. Who understood without thinking exactly why a man accused of unethical behaviour could never be accepted into their ranks. Black understood his dilemma perfectly. In a world in which diversity was the ultimate good everybody was categorized and pegged according to their antecedents and associations. There were no means for a person to escape their designations, no mechanism that responded to the spirit of the individual outside the set criteria. There was no room in a modern university for a heretic, reformed or otherwise.

‘It’s not a matter of principle, Leo; it’s one of practicalities. Can you imagine the press?’

‘You would prefer that students learned their military history from someone who has never been near a conflict?’

‘Now you’re being contrary.’

‘I’m simply stating the obvious.’

‘There’s a limit to how far I’m prepared to stick my neck out, Leo, especially when I have absolutely no access to the facts.’ He sighed and pressed his long, delicate fingers to his temples. ‘Leo, this is nothing personal. I like you. The students like you. I admire your work. I’m prepared to keep the door open, but for the sake of the college’s reputation we can’t take on a fellow embroiled in this much controversy. I propose you do what you can over the summer to resolve these accusations. You can keep your rooms in college. We’ll meet again at the start of September after your address to West Point and reassess the situation. That’s the best I can do.’

The two men looked at each other across the room and silently agreed that there was nothing more to be said.

Black rose from his chair and, accepting the Provost’s handshake, offered his thanks. He had secured himself a lifeline. A slender one, but it was better than falling into the abyss.

Towers remained incommunicado throughout the morning, failing to answer calls or emails. Only when Black had given up hope and was loading a hastily packed holdall and a cardboard box loaded with books into his Land Rover did his phone finally ring.

‘Sorry not to have got back to you earlier. Wanted to work out what the hell was going on.’ Towers sounded irritated rather than apologetic but Black let it pass. ‘Had a word with the Libya desk in ’6 and they’re going to send someone along to have a chat with him.’

‘A chat?’

‘They don’t want the embarrassment any more than you do, Leo. All these claims were meant to have gone away years ago. I think Mr Mahmoud might be one of those who thought he didn’t get his fair share when the government cheque book came out.’

‘But why now?’

‘It’s possible some unscrupulous lawyers of the kind who trawl for incidents of imaginary wrongs committed by British soldiers put him up to it, or, I fear, it’s something by way of an inducement to you to get our job done.’

‘Freddy?’

‘The Committee wants this dealt with. As quickly as possible.’

Black slammed the tailgate closed and marched to the cab. ‘Why should I work for people who treat me like that?’

‘If my fears are correct, it strikes me they’re people who think exactly as we do, Leo. What better way to stimulate a man to action than to threaten all that’s most precious to him? In your case your reputation.’

Along with the one person in his new life that mattered to him.

‘Ours is a strange calling, I admit,’ Towers said with a trace of wistful regret.

Black remained silent. He climbed on to the hard bench seat behind the wheel and pulled the creaking door shut. His view through the windscreen was of the small apple orchard that bordered the fellows’ car park. A gardener was carefully clearing weeds from the base of a recently planted sapling.

‘What do you want me to do for you, Leo? I’ll try my best to put the lid on it, but you know what the price will be … Leo? Are you still there?’

‘Yes,’ he answered shortly.

‘Sorry to change the subject, but you might be interested to know that Stein and her friends slipped the net. Their plane changed course mid-Atlantic and made it to Cayenne, French Guiana. From there they seem to have flown on to Puerto Ayacucho. Had to look it up – a one-horse town in southern Venezuela.’

Black made no comment, afraid of where Towers was heading.

‘This you’ll find very interesting – what you said in your message was bang on. I looked up the list of private contractors operating out of Baghdad back in ’05. There were a dozen or more. Triple Canopy, Vinnell, Blackwater, all the usual suspects, and an outfit called Sabre. Started by a retired French colonel, Auguste Daladier, as far as I can gather. Daladier spent his career in the Foreign Legion, much of it in Africa. It seems he was particularly active in the Democratic Republic of the Congo during the nineties through to ’03. According to my man in the Foreign Office, the French took advantage of the civil war and got themselves a bunch of mineral rights in return.’

Black listened. He couldn’t help but be intrigued.

‘It seems Sabre have stayed in business ever since. Contracts all over the world. All the rough stuff that pays the most – they were first in securing the Libyan oil fields; the French government employed them to counter insurgents in Mali and Chad; they’ve been busy in northern Nigeria. We suspect they’ve also been involved in Central and South America, policing the drugs business – the kind of stuff we used to do back in the eighties, knocking out the cartels and seizing their assets. We haven’t got a location for Daladier at present, but my money would be on a rather agreeable tropical villa overlooking the southern Caribbean. If he’s our man and he’s spent the last dozen years recruiting the finest and best to his private army, it still begs the question, what’s he doing with our scientists? Is he taking them to order or what?’ Towers paused briefly to give Black time to assimilate. ‘I thought you might have a theory, Leo.’

‘No, I don’t,’ Black lied.

‘Can I tempt you to formulate one? Isn’t this right up your alley – modern warfare?’

He glanced right out of the driver’s window and saw Silvio Belladini strolling out of one of the college buildings, accompanied by a beautiful young woman who appeared to be hanging on his every word. Seeming to sense his presence, Belladini glanced over, inadvertently caught his eye, then quickly looked away again. He put a hand in the small of the young woman’s back and moved her along.

‘Freddy, for the last time, I am not going to bloody Venezuela. Enjoy your weekend.’

He switched off the phone, tossed it to the far side of the passenger seat and started the engine. Oxford was starting to feel like a prison. He needed to break loose.

Late afternoon rolled into evening and finally faded to dusk. Black came to a halt for the first time in four hours and looked out from the top of the ridge at a Welsh landscape dissolving in shadow. His lungs burned and his muscles were screaming, but the anger inside refused to subside. He had set out from Ty Argel intending to reason each cause of it away but at some moment during his long tramp across the countryside he had abandoned the effort and accepted that was just how it was, who he was: a man caught in an endless loop of promise and frustration. Doomed by his past.

Then, as if in response to the setting sun, the vengeful rage that had propelled him up hillsides and through valleys seemed to retreat from his extremities to settle in his core, where, slowly, it coalesced into something hard, cold and flint-edged. Like an object he could weigh in his hands.

The cacophony of voices in his head reduced to one. It told him he had been here before. Many times. The dilemmas had been different but the choices the same.

Attack or retreat.

Live or die.

Reluctantly, he chose his path.

With a feeling, if not of peace, of purpose, Black watched the day snuff out and turned for home.