After several days of unseasonable dryness, the heavens opened in the early hours of Saturday 1 August. Moussa Diba’s trench soon turned into a warm bath, and he was forced to sleep out on the open ground. An abandoned piece of corrugated-iron fence provided him with a hard, uncomfortable blanket. Still, at least it kept most of the water off him.
The rain stopped before dawn, and he had an hour or so of real sleep before Jahumpa did the rounds with his toecap, waking everyone up. The sun was already above the horizon, a large white disc behind a line of silhouetted palms, and the pools of rain on the road were beginning to evaporate, each forming its own private cloud of mist in the clear morning air.
There was no breakfast.
Diba washed his mouth out with some rainwater that had gathered in a fold of his iron blanket, and began baling out his trench, wondering what he should do. Or at least plan to do.
He supposed the Senegalese would be along in the not too distant future, though there was always the chance that they would head straight for Banjul. His company had been taken out of that line of march, and pulled back to form part of a defensive arc around the beach resort areas of Bakau and Fajara. Their current location lay astride the Serekunda-Fajara road, close to the village of Kololi, a mile or so from the coast. In front of them the road stretched arrow-straight for about a mile towards the outskirts of Serekunda. They would have no trouble seeing the bastards coming.
Diba wondered what was going on in the heads of the revolutionary leaders. Had they abandoned Banjul, or were they going to make a last stand somewhere? The Denton Bridge was the obvious place. If they could stop the Senegalese there, or blow it up, then Banjul could be held for a bit longer.
But what for? The rebels must know that they had lost. So what were they still fighting for? Because they could think of no alternative? Because they needed time to make a getaway? Who fucking cared anyway? He should be thinking about his own getaway.
Which was getting more and more complicated. If the Senegalese took Banjul – or even if they just got as far as the bridge – then they were between him and Anja, him and the Englishman, him and the doctor. That had occurred to him the previous night, but for one thing there had been no chance to slink away, and for another he was not at all sure Banjul would be a healthy place to be over the next couple of days. With the Senegalese in control, Jawara and his cronies would all be coming back, and they would be turning the town upside down, looking for the rebels, who they probably had no photographs of, and the released prisoners, whose mugshots they most certainly did have.
No, he would have to revisit Banjul before he headed for the border, but not just yet. For the moment Bakau seemed a safer bet. When the time came – and recognizing the right moment would be the difficult part – then he would do what he had to do. Steal enough money to buy a new life, kill the fucking Englishman, have a time to remember with the doctor, collect Anja and go. Guinea, the Ivory Coast, anywhere.
Four miles to the east, Colonel Taal’s thoughts were running in similar channels whenever the exigencies of the situation allowed him the luxury of such reflection. It could all be summed up in one phrase, he thought: when do we cut our losses and run? And he suspected they would all have different answers. The Sallahs of this world would leave too early, the Jabangs would probably leave it too late. So they were both lucky to have him around, he thought with a sour smile.
He looked back along the bridge towards the Banjul end, but there was no sign of any vehicle approaching from that direction. It was hard to believe that there were no explosives in the entire western half of the country, but he was reluctantly coming to that conclusion. He supposed that when it came down to it, explosives were mostly used by armies and miners, and The Gambia had neither. But still …
It hardly seemed worth blowing up the bridge anyway. It might slow down the Senegalese, keep them out of Banjul for another day perhaps, but the Revolutionary Council had essentially abandoned the capital in any case, and there was always the argument that if they could not march into Banjul the Senegalese might just march all their forces straight into Bakau.
Taal could not help feeling he was wasting his time. There were nearly a hundred men dug in on either side of the bridge, and it would take the Senegalese a while to shift them, but he knew his side had lost both the battle and the war, and that now it was just a matter of how much they could salvage through the hostage negotiations. In which case, these hundred-odd men would be better served defending the Field Force depot in Bakau.
Jabang, however, had insisted on at least a token resistance to the enemy occupation of the capital. The longer they held Banjul, he said, the longer the radio station could continue broadcasting. How his leader had reached the conclusion that another two hours of broadcasting threats and demands were worth a hundred men, Taal could not say. But he did know he had come too far with Mamadou Jabang to start arguing with him at such a moment. It was, as the American military liked to say, a ‘no-win situation’.
At the radio station Mustapha Diop was trying, without much success, to quell a slowly growing sense of panic. After his broadcast the previous afternoon, and the threats to kill him and his family at five p.m. if the rebels’ demands were not met, he had been taken back to the house in Marina Parade. There he had agonized about whether or not to tell his wife, torn between a need to share his fear and an unwillingness to see her suffer. Instead, he had paced up and down for three hours, one eye on the window for the arrival of nemesis at his gates.
But five o’clock had passed without any visitors, and after another hour had passed Diop was beginning to let himself believe that the worst was over. When Sallah, accompanied by the same two ‘comrades’, did appear a few minutes later, Diop felt as if his stomach had dropped through the floor. The next thirty seconds were the worst of his life, and when Sallah coldly told him they only wished him to make another broadcast, he could have kissed the ugly bastard.
He had accompanied them to the radio station in the same taxi, by the same route. It would all have smacked of déjà vu, but this time there was to be no talk of prisoners or deadlines; they simply wanted him to politely ask his compatriots for two things: a ceasefire between the warring armies and negotiations between the rebels and the Senegalese Government.
Once he had done so Diop had expected to be driven back to Marina Parade, but no such journey was forthcoming. They might need him again, Sallah had told him, and there seemed no point in making continual trips to and fro. And in any case his family were at this moment being moved to the Field Force depot in Bakau – for their own safety, of course. He would be joining them as soon as circumstances allowed.
A long evening had followed, during which Diop reached the unhappy conclusion that even a terrified man can experience numbing boredom. Sallah had left soon after dusk, and his other minders seemed disinclined to talk. The radio played either mindless Afro pop or repeats of his own broadcast, which sounded stranger and stranger as the evening wore on. Sleep, even the fitful kind in an upright chair, had proved a merciful release.
He woke with all the old fears and a few new ones, but soon found reasons for hope. To judge by the faces of his companions, he was no longer alone in feeling afraid. It seemed that at some point in the night they had belatedly come to the realization that theirs was likely to be the losing side. And one of the consequences of this realization was a desire to ingratiate themselves with him. He was allowed some privacy in the toilet, and even asked what he would like for breakfast.
It never arrived, of course, but it was nice to be asked. The rebel in charge, a Mandinka named Jimmy Gorang, spent most of his time on the telephone, presumably talking to his superiors. The look on his face just before eleven, when the connection was suddenly severed, would have been comic in any other situation. His mouth gaped open, he shook the receiver, then pressed a few times on the cut-off button. He then tried redialling, once, twice. Eventually it seemed to sink in that the line was dead.
His countrymen had taken the Denton Bridge, Diop guessed, and put a temporary block on all communications between Banjul and Bakau. The question was: how would his captors cope with their new isolation?
Caskey had told him to pack for the tropics, so Franklin just gathered together the most lightweight clothing he could and stuffed it into the somewhat battered suitcase his father had originally brought from Jamaica. His mum was already at work, his sister at school and his brother still in bed, so he ate breakfast alone and walked down to the tube. He changed onto the Piccadilly at Green Park and got off at Holborn, with almost an hour in hand for the ten-minute walk to the MOD building in Theobald’s Road.
It being Saturday, the area seemed almost empty, and most of the cafés were closed. He eventually found an Italian sandwich bar open, bought coffee and a doughnut, and sat in the window watching the buses go by. Major Caskey had not told him much on the phone the night before – in fact all he knew was that three of them were going to Africa. Which was a big place. His first reaction had been to be thrilled by the news, and the fact that he had been selected. His second had been to wonder whether even his soldiering was now a hostage to his race. Had he been chosen for this mission simply because he was black? Franklin intended to ask Caskey precisely that question the first chance he got.
At least the third member of the party was not the Regiment’s other West Indian.
‘Joss Wynwood, B Squadron,’ the man in the MOD hospitality room introduced himself, the chirpiness of the Welsh accent somehow made more apparent by the unruly shock of dark hair and wide grin which accompanied it. Franklin found himself taking an instant liking to the man.
‘Worrell Franklin,’ he replied, smiling back. ‘G Squadron.’
‘Any idea where we’re going?’ Wynwood asked.
‘Africa was all the boss told me. What did he tell you?’
‘Nothing. Which boss? All I know is that I was given a flight ticket to London and ordered to report here at eleven.’
‘Where were you?’
‘Armagh. But if it’s Africa I can see a connection,’ he added. ‘I had my honeymoon in The Gambia last year, and I was just reading in the paper that there’s been a coup there.’
‘Dead right,’ a voice said behind them. Caskey dropped the blue holdall, introduced himself and shook each man by the hand. They looked young, he thought. Both of them. Which was hardly surprising – when he was their age they would have just been starting primary school. ‘We’re on the second floor,’ he said, picking up the holdall again.
They took the lift up, and the two troopers followed Caskey down a long corridor and into a large room. It made them think of school – rows of tables and chairs facing a blackboard and map easel. A thin man in a dark-blue suit was busy draping several maps over the latter. He looked about thirty, had black, sleeked-back hair, a cheery smile and a public-school accent.
‘Be with you in a mo’,’ he said.
‘From the Foreign Office,’ Caskey explained. ‘This is just the background briefing. We’ll get a more detailed briefing on the current military situation from the French in Paris.’
Wynwood and Franklin exchanged impressed glances.
‘Any chance of a night at the Folies Bergère?’ Wynwood asked.
‘A night in the Charles de Gaulle departure lounge if you’re lucky,’ Caskey said. ‘Two if you’re not.’
‘And they said the SAS was the glamorous Regiment,’ Wynwood lamented.
The FO man was clearing his throat. ‘I’m not sure how much you need to know,’ he began, ‘so if it’s too much or too little, just tell me.’ He turned to the map. ‘This is West Africa,’ he said, and this uneven sausage shape is The Gambia. It’s about two hundred miles long and between twenty and forty miles wide. The River Gambia runs down the middle of it and is the reason why it looks that way – the British just wanted control of the river for strategic reasons, and enough land on either side of it to make the territory viable. As you can also see, it is completely surrounded by Senegal, which was a French colony.
‘In fact the two countries would make a lot more sense together than they do separately – the River Gambia would provide exactly the transport artery for a united country which Senegal lacks, and Senegal would provide the hinterland which the river lacks. And that’s the main reason why the two countries have been moving towards a confederation – or at least they had been until the current crisis.
‘But I’m getting ahead of the story. The population of The Gambia is about 600,000, of which about a quarter live in the towns at its western end. Here’ – he pointed at the map with a ringed finger – ‘is the capital, Banjul, which used to be called Bathurst. Business and government are still centred there, but it tends to be like the City of London: most of the people who work there don’t actually live there. So by day you have business as usual in peeling colonial mansions, and by night it reverts to being a large shanty town.
‘Here is where most of the middle class tends to live’ – the finger pointed again – ‘about eight miles away along the Atlantic coast. Bakau and Fajara are basically outer suburbs, much plusher, much less fraught. Most of the embassies are there, and that’s where the big hotels are being put in for the European package tour trade.’
‘Finally, here, forming the third corner of a triangle with them and Banjul, almost like a gateway to the rest of the country, is Serekunda, which is probably more populous than Banjul by now, but is basically just an African township. It’s the place which looks most authentic to the tourists when they drive from the airport to their hotels. They can say they noticed Africa somewhere between the duty free and the beach.’
Wynwood smiled to himself at this. He remembered driving through Serekunda in the coach quite well, but had only a dim recollection of the beach – somehow the chalet had seemed a more appropriate setting for what Susan and he had in mind. It occurred to him that if he had been picked for this mission on account of his knowing The Gambia, then he was travelling on mostly false pretenses.
‘The people,’ the FO man was saying, ‘are mostly Muslim – about ninety per cent. The largest tribal grouping are the Mandinka, who make up just under half the total, followed by the Wollof – about sixteen per cent – and then several other small minority groups. The tribal boundaries don’t follow the national boundaries. For example, there’s a lot more Wollofs over the border in Senegal. Generally though, tribalism has never been a serious problem in The Gambia. All the chiefs got their own patch to lord it over, and none of the minorities seems to feel any real grievance. All of them are represented – were represented, I should say – in the Government.’
‘Is it a democracy?’ Caskey asked.
The FO man smiled. ‘Formally, yes. But Jawara has been in charge now for almost twenty years, since before independence, and – how should I put it? – well, he’s always the one in the best position to win the elections. He’s not a bad ruler, and not a very good one either. The Gambia is poor, make no mistake about that – the annual per capita income is about £100. It doesn’t have anything much in the way of natural resources – peanuts and sunny beaches are the only things they have which anyone else wants, and Jawara’s made a fair fist of encouraging tourism. But there are other things he could have done, which other small countries have done to earn revenue, like printing lots of stamps, or running lotteries, or setting up a free port … There hasn’t been much imagination devoted to the country’s problems, and the few major schemes which have been launched since independence have nearly all been ill conceived and incompetently handled. And in the last few years the economic chickens have started coming home to roost: there was widespread famine in 1978, and more shortages last year. Like I said, Jawara’s not a bad ruler, and he’s certainly not a half-baked psycho like Amin or Bokassa. He’s more like an African Mr Average.’
‘And what about the guys who mounted the coup?’ Caskey asked.
‘We don’t know much about them. The Socialist and Revolutionary Labour Party seems in charge, and that goes back a few years. It was banned last year after a policeman was shot, although it was never clear whether that was the reason or the excuse. Ideologically, they spout the usual Marxist rubbish, which sounds even more comic coming out of a continent without any industry or workers than it does anywhere else. But that may just be window-dressing. A lot of their inspiration – and probably their weapons – comes from Gaddafi, who also likes the phraseology, but takes its meaning about as seriously as I do. And since it seems that over half the military – the Field Force as it’s called – has supported the coup, it’s obviously not just a matter of a small bunch of loonies seizing power. I’d guess that Jawara must be pretty unpopular outside the tourist areas.’
‘Has it been a bloody coup?’ Franklin asked.
‘Hard to say. The reports we’ve had have only put deaths in the low hundreds, but the coup leaders have appealed for blood donors, so it may be more.’
‘What’s the latest news you have?’ Caskey asked.
The FO man went back to his map. ‘The Senegalese took the airport yesterday, and since then they’ve been advancing on Banjul up this road. I’d guess they’ll take it sometime this morning.’
‘That won’t leave us much to do,’ Wynwood complained.
‘The rebels still seem to be in control of this area,’ the FO man said, indicating the Bakau-Fajara coastal strip. ‘That’s where their main depot is, and that, I should imagine, is where they’ve taken their hostages.’ He smiled. ‘I’m sure they’ll find something for you to do. Any questions?’ There were none. ‘Then good luck,’ he said, removing the portfolio of maps from the easel and heading for the door.
Caskey turned to the other two. ‘Here’s the drill,’ he said. ‘Next stop is the Hospital of Tropical Medicines for our shots, then the Regent’s Park barracks for kitting out and lunch. We’ve got a four o’clock flight from Heathrow to Paris, and then a five-hour wait for the Dakar flight …’
‘Why Dakar?’ Wynwood wanted to know.
‘That’s where Jawara is at the moment. He wants to see us, or at least me. And the only people flying into The Gambia at the moment are the Senegalese Air Force.’
The Denton Bridge was still in rebel hands, at least for the moment. The first Senegalese attempt to take it, using two armoured cars and a hundred or so infantry, had been an ignominious failure. The rebels’ bullets had simply bounced off the cars, but without infantry support they could hold no ground, and the vulnerable foot soldiers had been forced back by well-directed fire. For the first time since the airborne landing, Taal had reason to feel proud of his men.
It could not last. The Senegalese were now simply waiting, and Taal could guess what for, long before he actually heard the sound of the approaching Mirages. There were two of them, and they streaked in across the waters of Oyster Creek, cannons firing. The rebels hunkered down into the shallow trenches they had dug in the soft earth of the flood plain, but to little avail. Both Mirages unleashed a cloud of small objects: anti-personnel bombs, designed to explode above the ground into a thousand deadly shards.
Suddenly the air was full of crying, screaming men, and those who had escaped were not about to give the planes a second chance. They were already running in all directions, most of them towards Banjul, but some into the mangrove swamps, and others straight into the dubious safety of the water.
Taal took a deep breath, and waited to see if the Mirages would return for a second strike. He could not see them, but at the swelling sound of their engines, he scrambled underneath the bridge.
The planes swooped in again, but either the pilots had shot their only bolt or their humanity prevailed, because no more splinters of death were cast across the fleeing soldiers. At the other end of the bridge Taal heard one of the armoured car engines pushed into gear.
It seemed like a good time to make his departure. He walked swiftly down to the water’s edge and stepped aboard the President’s speedboat, which had been liberated from the Palace moorings and brought around the coast with exactly this eventuality in mind. ‘Go,’ he told the driver, who needed no further encouragement to open the throttle and send them shooting out from under the cover of the bridge, with such force that Taal was almost thrown backwards over the stern. If anyone shot at them the sound was masked by the noise of the outboard, and within a minute they were out of range, the bridge receding behind them, the ocean filling the horizon in front.
Most of Banjul either saw or heard the two Mirages as they swooped low across the town after their attack on the rebel positions at the bridge. One of Diop’s guards put his head out of the second-floor window at the radio station, and was spotted by most of the small group of men concealed in the building on the other side of Buckle Street, a deserted school.
‘There’s five of them out front,’ Mansa Camara said. ‘Maybe two inside, maybe more. But nothing we can’t deal with. Those five outside look ready to jump out of their skins if someone farts at them.’
McGrath grinned. ‘OK, but we don’t know if they have any of the hostages inside,’ he argued. ‘If we get Jawara’s senior wife shot, I don’t reckon much on your chances of promotion.’
Mansa laughed. ‘He’d probably make me head of the Field Force. It’s the young wife he takes everywhere these days. But …’ He turned to McGrath. ‘How are you thinking we should do this?’
‘Send a small party in the back,’ McGrath said without hesitation. ‘At a given time you call on the ones out front to surrender, which should flush out the ones inside.’
‘I take it you would like to be the “small party” at the back,’ Mansa said wryly.
‘I’ll take Kiti,’ McGrath said, indicating another of the Field Force men, who grinned back at him.
‘OK,’ Mansa agreed. ‘How long?’ he asked.
‘Give us fifteen minutes,’ McGrath decided.
‘Right.’
McGrath and Kiti left the school the way they had come in, over the back wall, and worked their way around in a large circle, crossing Buckle Street a hundred yards down from the station, and ending up in front of the building in Leman Street that backed onto it. They advanced carefully down the side of this structure, until the back windows of the radio station building came into view. Though they were partly hidden by a large mango tree, no one seemed to be keeping a watch from the windows. A back door looked similarly unguarded.
The two men stealthily crossed the intervening space, on the alert for any sign of danger, and McGrath gingerly tried the door handle. It was locked. But the window next to it was not. The shutters opened with only a slight creak, and a judicious insertion of McGrath’s knife released the catch on the windows. He climbed in and stood motionless for a moment, listening for any relevant sounds, then gestured Kiti to follow.
Twelve minutes had passed. McGrath signalled Kiti to stay where he was, and went on a short tour of investigation. The next door led into a short corridor, which ended in a lobby. From this another open door led into a large empty room, and carpeted stairs led upwards. He went up them two at a time. The next floor was also unoccupied, though all three rooms seemed in regular use. One was full of records and tapes, one a kitchen, the third a bathroom. On the floor above McGrath thought he could hear voices. Then he did hear the sound of someone beginning to pace up and down.
Almost fourteen minutes. He swiftly descended the stairs, crooked a finger at Kiti, and led him back up to the first floor. He put the Field Force man behind the bathroom door and himself behind the corner of the opening into the music library.
A loud voice suddenly boomed out: Mansa must have found a megaphone somewhere. Almost instantly guns opened up in the street below, though from inside the building it was impossible to tell whose they were. Nor did McGrath have time to think about it. A man came hurtling down the stairs from the floor above, tripped over the Englishman’s extended foot, and smashed his head into the kitchen door jamb with a satisfying thud.
McGrath was halfway up the next flight of stairs when a face appeared briefly in the doorway above. By the time McGrath had reached the threshold of the studio, the man it belonged to was backing away, one hand gripping another African around the throat, the other holding a Luger to his head.
‘I will kill him, I will kill him,’ the man said, but his victim apparently had other ideas. With a look on his face that suggested the end of his tether had finally been reached, he kicked back like a mule at the rebel’s shin.
The rebel shrieked, let go his grip and fired the gun, all in the same moment. As his prisoner fell away he tried in vain to re-aim it in McGrath’s direction. Two bullets from the Browning knocked him backwards into the glass partition separating the engineer’s room from the studio, and he slid slowly down to the floor with a bemused expression freezing on his face.
On the other side of the studio the other man was getting slowly to his feet.
‘Are you OK?’ McGrath asked.
‘I think so,’ Mustapha Diop said. It looked like his career as a radio star was over.
The three SAS men sat in the back of the London cab, Franklin and Caskey facing forward, Wynwood perched uneasily on one of the dicky seats facing back. He might be uncomfortable, but the long ride to Heathrow also offered him the first chance he had had to relax since his drink with Stanley in Armagh the previous night. It had been quite a day.
His arm was sore from the typhoid and yellow-fever jabs, his backside sore from the gamma-globulin jab against hepatitis. They had not had an immunization against being shot by African rebels, so at least he had been spared being sore somewhere else.
It was sunny outside, a lovely summer afternoon. London looked almost attractive. Wynwood had always felt vaguely intimidated by the British capital – its sense of … smugness was the word. Londoners thought they were the centre of the world, all of them, from the rich, chinless bastards in Kensington to the pink-haired punks in Camden Town.
Maybe they were right. He thought about Pontardulais and its people, living in their small goldfishbowl world. He thought about Armagh, where everyone seemed to know everyone else, and even kneecappers seemed on first-name terms with the kneecapped. Maybe London was a network of villages like that, which strangers like him could not differentiate, but he doubted it. He would have to ask Franklin sometime. Though maybe it was different for blacks.
Why did he think that? Because he associated black faces with villages? Wynwood realized for the first time that going to Africa would have a very different meaning for Franklin from the one it had for him. For him, the thought of ‘Africa’ was simply exciting. He had joked that the SAS was ‘the glamorous Regiment’, but before being badged he had at least half-believed it. Three months in Northern Ireland had cured him of such romanticism, and imbued in him the knowledge that even the most unglamorous jobs could still be well worth doing. But that did not mean he should not enjoy the glamorous assignments when they came. And being part of the SAS three-man team to The Gambia was glamorous by any standards. And definitely worth a sore arm and a sore bum.
In the seat opposite, Franklin was having similar thoughts, though in his case the pride in being selected for this job was tempered by the knowledge that the colour of his skin had played an important role in the selection. He had asked Caskey the direct question while Wynwood was receiving his injections, and the Major had not tried to sugar the pill.
‘Yes,’ was the reply. ‘The CO’s reasoning was that an all-white team would have less credibility in a black country. But if that upsets you, I can tell you that I would not have agreed to take you if I didn’t think you were up to the job. Fair enough?’
‘Yes, boss,’ Franklin had said, knowing it was the best he could have expected. If it still did not feel quite right – and it did not – then that, he told himself, was too bad. He had to get over it. Whatever the reasons for his selection, he was going. To Africa, where everyone in his family had ultimately come from, and where none of them had ever been. That felt good, and, he had to admit, it also felt good just to be getting out of England. Away from all the problems.
The roads they were travelling down seemed festooned with the litter from the Royal Wedding celebrations, which somehow seemed to sum up the whole country. It was all so fucking inappropriate. All that money spent on a wedding while the cities were going up in flames. And even the unemployed were dancing in the streets for Lady Diana. The briefing on The Gambia had scarcely painted a picture of freedom and prosperity, but it would have to be pretty fucking dire to compete with this. He grunted, causing Wynwood to open his eyes and grin at him. He grinned back.
Next to Franklin, Caskey was still running through all the various tasks they should have completed, and praying that he had not forgotten anything important. Their clothing needs had been met by a combination of what each man had brought with him, a scavenging trip round the Regent’s Park barracks and a quick collective trip to Lawrence Corner, the nearby Army and Navy surplus store. The jabs had all been administered, the course of malaria pills started, the water purification tablets procured. Each man had a Browning High Power in his bag, together with a supply of ammo, and a couple of stun grenades. They had some idea of where they were going and why.
He could understand Franklin’s questioning of his selection, and hoped it was not the beginning of a problem. In all other respects both he and Wynwood seemed like ideal companions for this particular trip. Though he supposed he should have realized that honeymooners tended not to get out and about very much.
It was just past three o’clock, and they were getting close to Heathrow. At the airport he should be able to get the latest score from Edgbaston, though he doubted whether it would be good news. England had lost a couple of wickets before lunch, and there was not much reason to believe they had not lost another couple since. But it would be nice to know all the same. He would have to buy one of those new portable things with the funny name. Walkmans, that was it.
The taxi drew to a halt outside the terminal building. Caskey paid off the driver with MOD petty cash, added a generous tip and led the other two through the crowds milling around the check-ins to a small door marked ‘Security’. He knocked and walked straight in, greeting the surprised uniformed men inside with: ‘SAS – we’re expected.’
Behind him Wynwood was thinking: a bit over the top, but impressive anyway.
The uniforms certainly jumped to attention, one of them standing nervously in front of them while the other went to get their superior. He was not so easily impressed. ‘Major Caskey?’ he asked, and on receiving verbal confirmation demanded to see their passports and order papers.
Once satisfied, the security man led them through a series of rooms and corridors, finally emerging through a door on the travelling side of the boarding gate. Wynwood had a brief glimpse of less privileged passengers waiting to board before he was ushered down the flexible loading corridor and into the first-class section of an empty plane. After exchanging a few words with the crew their guide departed. Their bags, and the weaponry they contained, were stowed in the overhead compartments.
A few minutes later the rest of the passengers began to board, and within twenty minutes the plane was airborne. They were over the Channel before Caskey remembered that he had forgotten to find out the test match score.
At Charles de Gaulle they were allowed off the plane before the other passengers and led by a French security official through a labyrinth of corridors and steps to a private lounge overlooking the airport. Here they were offered drinks while they waited for their French Army contact, Major Jules Mathieu.
He arrived about half an hour later, just as Wynwood and Franklin were starting on their second Pils. He looked liked anyone’s idea of a French officer, thin-faced and dark, with a pencil moustache and meticulously pressed uniform. His English put their French to shame.
‘Bonjour, messieurs’, he began. ‘I have just checked your flight details for tonight. There seems to be no problem with the Dakar flight, despite all the activity down there.’ He rubbed his hands together as if they were cold. ‘And you will be escorted aboard, without the … er, inconvenience of customs clearance or an X-ray check. Yes? Bon. And in Dakar you will be met by people from your own embassy. So, I understand you require the latest information about the situation of the Senegalese forces in The Gambia?’
Caskey nodded.
Mathieu spread his arms in an unmistakably Gallic gesture. ‘The Senegalese do not tell us everything,’ he said, ‘but … what they have told us …’ He reached into his briefcase and extracted a photocopy of part of a 1:250,000 map of The Gambia. Someone had already drawn on it with a red felt-tipped pen.
He held it in front of him, so that all three SAS men could see it. ‘They say they have secured the road from the airport here at Yundum all the way to Banjul, and placed a strong force here at the Denton Bridge. They claim to have cleared the rebels out of both Banjul and Serekunda during today, and they probably have, though whether that amounts to restoring order or simply retaking the main boulevards I don’t know. You know the rebels emptied the prison two nights ago?’
‘No. We hadn’t heard that.’
‘Ah. Well, they did. So there are also many armed criminals on the loose, which must be making the military job more difficult. And then there is the question of the hostages.’ He paused to rub his moustache with the outside of his thumb. ‘The rebels have made several threats to kill the President’s family and the Senegalese envoy and his family – he was released today, by the way – but so far, we think they have not killed anyone. Still, the Senegalese are being very careful … You understand – Jawara is Diop’s partner in making the confederation between the two countries, and he will be telling his commanders not to take any actions that might trigger off a desperate response. They would like to catch the rebels and free the hostages, but now that the coup is, how do you say? – fucked? – the big priority is getting the hostages back alive. And of course, your SAS is famous for the Iran Embassy siege …’
‘Do you know what weaponry the rebels have?’ Caskey asked.
‘Kalashnikovs, c’est tout. Jawara says they got them from Libya and the Senegalese are saying they came from the Soviets.’ He laughed. ‘And Tass says the Gambian Government bought them years ago, which sounds the most likely.’
‘Do you know any of the Senegalese commanders personally?’ Caskey asked.
‘Not the C-in-C, General N’Dor. But I was at St Cyr at the same time as his second in command, Aboubakar Ka. He is a good soldier.’ Mathieu smiled at some memory. ‘And good company,’ he added.
There was a silence while Caskey tried to remember if there was anything else he needed to ask.
‘If you have no more questions,’ Mathieu said, ‘perhaps you would enjoy a meal, yes? Because I can assure you the dinner on Air Afrique flights is nothing to look forward to.’
‘I could eat a nice French dinner,’ Caskey conceded.
‘Bon. Then follow me.’
They walked down a few more empty corridors, through a security check on Mathieu’s say-so, and up to what looked like an extremely expensive restaurant. Mathieu disappeared from view for a few moments, before returning to tell them their meal was on the French Army. ‘And bon appétit’, he told them.
Caskey went off to phone the test match scorecard and came back looking depressed. ‘The bloody Aussies have got two days to score a hundred and forty-two,’ he said gloomily. ‘With nine wickets left on a batsman’s pitch.’
But the food did something to restore his spirits, and the wine something more. When Wynwood, glass of Burgundy in one hand and forkful of succulent steak in the other, happily exclaimed that this was indeed the life, Caskey could hardly find it in himself to disagree.