West complained — several hours later, and in a deeply contrasting silence after that long stretch of continuous, deafening noise — ‘I dig what SBS stands for now. Special Bloody Sherpas.’ He asked Cloudsley, ‘What else is in them packs? Bricks?’
Cloudsley had his back against a rock. He was wrapped in a poncho and wearing a cloth cap with earflaps dangling loose. Bombachas — baggy pants — stuffed into well-worn riding boots completed the external picture, but under the poncho he was also wearing a campera of reversed sheepskin, and the overall effect was to double his apparent bulk. The others were dressed similarly, having changed in the helo into this gear which had been rounded up in England from second-hand shops and other out-of-the-way places. Andy had specified the type of clothing, and approved the final selection.
Cloudsley said amiably, ‘You’ll be getting a free ride tonight, Jake. Count your blessings.’
The ponchos, made of alpaca wool, weren’t only for disguise; they gave protection against the wind that funnelled up the valley. Higher ground and the peaks above it were already white, under autumn snow; northward, the great receding march of the Andes was hazy-white over blueish lower slopes, while here on this north face of the ridge black shadows lay over them, daylight strengthening on the Argentine side. From the LZ about four miles away, where the Sea King was now pegged down and hidden under camouflage nets, the five men had trekked uphill under their heavy loads, through a neck of rain-forest and then out of it to the treeless ridge with the lake below them on its other side, silvering in the mountain dawn.
Geoff Hosegood grumbled, ‘Sooner not talk about bloody riding. Five days since I was on one o’ them things, I still got a sore arse.’
They’d arranged lessons for him. While Andy had been learning to parachute, practising unarmed combat (as well as close combat with a fighting knife) and in the intervals running — not jogging, running —incredible distances over hill country under a heavy pack, Geoff had been learning to sit on a horse and steer it. In fact horse-riding was not the kind of ride Harry Cloudsley had referred to a moment ago. Horses were for later — for tomorrow, if Tom Strobie had come up to scratch — and tonight’s ride would be in the inflatable they’d brought with them, four metres long, designed to carry six men with full equipment or eight more lightly armed. Its fabric was a new product, ultra-strong and lightweight, and the boat’s special value was in its strength/weight/capacity ratio, with a resulting high degree of buoyancy. The outboard motor was also new: lightweight, delivering eighteen horsepower, and sound-proofed, the engine itself enclosed in a glassfibre pod with a flexible ‘drowned’ exhaust. The noise reduction was said to be in the order of sixty per cent, and Beale and Hosegood, who’d tested it in sea conditions, confirmed this.
‘Lightweight’ was a comparative term, of course. 132 kilogrammes was a definite improvement on the 180 kilogrammes of a standard Gemini — a four-man lift on its own, without an outboard or any other gear such as weapons, clothing, rations, let alone more esoteric equipment such as that for castrating an AM39 missile.
They’d all slept during the long flight, and they had the whole span of daylight hours ahead now before it would be safe to move. Plenty of time for more sleep, and no hurry for it. Except for Hosegood, who was already yawning. Andy mentally pinched himself to make sure he really was awake, not dreaming this whole business. And aware of Cloudsley studying him — of wide-set eyes sombre, thoughtful, trying to see inside his skull maybe. You could hardly blame him, with these men’s lives (and indirectly, out there at sea, many others) in his hands, and knowing that his guide into unknown territory had a brother there who was clearly their enemy.
Cloudsley did not, Andy thought, know anything about Francisca.
The two civilians, well, men in civilian clothes — one young and abrasive and the other middle-aged, mild-mannered — who’d spent most of one day interrogating him and had then presumably cleared him, had known about her but had not linked her with him. Only with Robert. They’d known as much as they had about her, of course, because her father, Alejandro Diaz, was a prominent man of obvious interest to any Intelligence service. The younger of the two had asked him, ‘This man Diaz… He’s a neighbour — right?’
Andy had confirmed it.
‘A big wheel politically?’
‘Counter-insurgency. He was a commander in the Argentine fleet air arm before, then resigned and took on this state security job.’
‘Meaning torture, disappearances…’ The younger one had added, ‘One of his colleagues being Alfredo Astiz, for heaven’s sake.’
‘So one heard.’
Astiz was ‘wanted’ by several governments, to answer questions about the imprisonment, torture and disappearance of some of their nationals. (More recently, he’d been taken prisoner on South Georgia.)
The older of the two interviewers put in suddenly — as if he’d just woken up to what was being said, and found it shocking — ‘This man’s your neighbour?’
He’d nodded. ‘Happens to have a sheep-station to the north of ours.’
‘And an American wife, am I right?’
‘Did have. She left him, some while ago. Took off with a rich Yank polo player. Her brother’s a Congressman, incidentally.’
‘Quite. But there’s a daughter, isn’t there? Married to your brother?’
‘That’s correct.’
Both of them staring at him. As if expecting him to comment, or make excuses. He kept his mouth shut, because there was nothing he could have said that seemed to be any of their damn business. A minute later, they came back to Francisca’s father.
‘Alejandro Diaz… D’you know him well? As a neighbour; you must have seen a lot of him?’
‘Not so much. I was over here at school, and so on, and in the early years he never spent much time at his estancia.’
‘What sort of man would you say he is?’
‘Very ambitious. Ruthless. Socially he’s smart, sophisticated, moves in all the best circles, as they say. Dislikes Americans, one heard, because his wife ran out on him. But if you want the whole low-down on him, why not ask her? Or ask your opposite numbers over there to talk to her?’
He’d thought this suggestion was a good one to have made, as a way of distancing himself from the Diaz family. But they kept to the same subject, or near it, asking about his attitude to Roberto’s marriage. The older man asked, ‘Did you approve of your brother marrying the Diaz girl?’
He’d hesitated, thinking, Christ, what a question…
‘Not entirely. But you see — looking at it objectively — out there where it’s been happening, what they call the “Dirty War”, the activities of people like Diaz weren’t by any means universally disapproved of. People who’d had friends or relatives murdered by the Montoneros or ERP for instance, or who were in danger from them themselves, would see it as a matter of beating terrorists at their own game. I know, a hell of a lot of completely innocent people were victimised — I’m not excusing it for a moment, but—’
‘Quite.’ A nod. ‘Difficult to justify wholesale murder by the State. Eh?’
He’d held that stare, and nodded. ‘Diaz is not a nice man. If that’s the opinion you want.’
‘But your brother wouldn’t have had any compunction—’
‘My brother isn’t a particularly nice man either.’
Looking round the faces now: at Beale, Cloudsley, West, Hosegood. Not sure they were trusting him entirely, even though those two characters had cleared him at least to the extent that he’d been brought along. For instance, he was fairly sure they had their plans drawn up to the last detail, but he wasn’t being let in on much of it, only on as much as he’d have to know for today, tomorrow. He’d no idea, for one thing, how they were intending to get away after the task was completed — only that there was supposed to be a submarine involved. Where or how they’d get to the coast hadn’t even been discussed in his presence. OK, he understood it — the less anyone knew the less could be extracted from them. Interrogators, he’d been told, would be more likely to use drugs than torture in present circumstances, because they’d know (or in his own case, believe) they were dealing with men who’d been conditioned to withstand pressure, and because time would be vital to them; so they’d take the short cut… But he’d still have liked to know something about the final exit route. Not knowing was beginning to feel like going into a tunnel that might not have an opening at the other end.
More immediately, he didn’t know where Jake West and Monkey Start were going, tomorrow, after they made the rendezvous with Start. They had some separate objective of their own – the two operations apparently overlapping only in these early stages, Start making the essential arrangements with Tom Strobie, West helping meanwhile with the ‘Sherpa’ stuff, then away on their own business.
But these others knew, he thought.
Tony Beale met his eyes as he glanced round the circle of recumbent men again. The colour sergeant suggested, ‘How’s about a bed-time story, Andy? How the MacEwan family came to be farmers in the Argentine?’
West nodded. ‘And like how you come to be on our side.’
The question had a sting in it, even if he hadn’t meant it that way. But Beale answered for him. Tony Beale was about six-two, long-limbed and spare — like a greyhound compared to Cloudsley’s bull-mastiff. He was a year or two older than the others; and married, with two toddlers at home in Hampshire.
He said, ‘He’s British, Jake. That’s how come.’
‘Yeah, but — I mean, family here, an’ all?’
‘All the family I have is one brother.’ Andy took over — appreciating Beale’s defence of a member of his own team, even a civilian member, but also accepting that West had been perfectly justified in asking. Not every Anglo-Argentine, by a long chalk, was on ‘our’ side. He told them, ‘I was born in Edinburgh, and my father was born near Inverness. He was brought out here when he was a baby, just before the first war. So Tony’s dead right, I am British. Actually, there was an old great-uncle out here, been here since about eighteen-seventy, when sheep-farming first started, and he’d died with no wife or children. My grandfather Robert MacEwan was a crofter, in Inverness, and he just upsticked with his wife and baby son.’ He asked, thinking he might have told them enough to explain his origins, ‘Want any more of this heart-warming saga?‘
‘Yeah. It’s interesting.’ Jake West had a foxy look. Unshaven, as they all were, purposefully stubbled as well as tanned and shaggy-headed. As he wasn’t part of the main team, only Monkey Start’s partner in whatever the other thing was, he hadn’t been around as long as the others had, and Andy didn’t know him as well. He did know he came from Nottingham and wasn’t married, and that he was twenty-four, the youngest man in this circle of what could easily by the look of them have been Chilean peóns. He told them, ‘Grandfather pegged out suddenly, food-poisoning or some such, in nineteen-thirty. My father was twenty then — name was Bruce — and he took over the running of the place. His mother, old Granny Fiona, was a very domineering woman and she was the driving force behind him, most of his life – long as he had any driving force. In fact he didn’t lose it, she transferred it.’
Geoff Hosegood asked, ‘Who to?’
‘Well — my father didn’t marry until he was in his middle thirties. In nineteen-forty-five actually, year the war ended in Europe. My mother was then eighteen. She was half Welsh and half Italian. Small, very feminine — what in Scotland they call a “wee smasher”… Granny Fiona was against the marriage. She was a great horse of a woman herself, and she was contemptuous — I dare say jealous — of my mother for being pretty and petite. Also for being what she called a mongrel. The old bag told my father, “Och, she’ll nae gi’e y bairns – an’ they’d be weeds if she did!”’
He’d slipped naturally into his grandmother’s Scottish accent, vividly remembering the tough old woman who’d treated his mother like a servant girl, called her ‘Joannie’ instead of by her real name, Juanita, and fought her on every detail of how the house and family should be run.
‘My father should’ve put his foot down, of course. But anyway, the first child came in nineteen-fifty — that’s my brother Robert. Big, ginger-headed like grandfather Robert. Too damn big, my mother nearly died having him. Granny Fiona was wild about him, though, spent all her time trying to take him over, same as she’d taken over everything else. And Robert made it easy for her… Incidentally, I’ve had most of this family history from Tom Strobie, who watched it all happening.’ Andy explained to Jake West, ‘Strobie’s the guy your Lieutenant Start’s been visiting — we hope. Neighbour; land adjoins my family’s. He arrived in Patagonia about the time Robert was born, and he and my father got to be close friends. Very different characters, but they got on. For one thing they both drank a lot; and my father used to get away from his own place whenever he could, avoiding having to face up to the old woman. Rough on my mother, of course… But then when she got pregnant the second time, he took Tom Strobie’s advice and whisked her away to Scotland, to make sure she was properly looked after — because, as I said, having Robert had nearly killed her. My father did love her, there’s no doubt of that, he just didn’t have the strength or the guts to handle his mother, so she browbeat him ninety per cent of the time. On that occasion he defied her — and we were doing well in those days, money wasn’t any problem. That’s how I came to be born in Edinburgh. Everything went fine, and we came home. Granny Fiona had made good use of her time alone with Robert — had him eating out of her hand, Strobie told me. And she used to sneer at me, called me “Joannie’s runt”. I happened to be smaller than my damn brother, that’s all. But having brown hair instead of the MacEwan ginger didn’t appeal to her either. Mongrel blood, you see.’
He nodded to Tony Beale. ‘There you are. One bed-time story.’
Cloudsley said, fingering the stubble on his short, cleft chin, ‘But you went to school in Scotland, too. How did that come about?’
‘Another idea of Strobie’s. I owe that old guy a lot, you see. They were having Robert schooled near BA, and Tom suggested to my father that it might be a good idea to give one of his sons an education back where we’d all come from. Who knows, he said, the boy might not want to spend all his life out here, specially as it doesn’t look as if he and Robert are likely to find much in common. Which was smart, considering Robert was still a kid and I was a toddler. Anyway, my father must have trusted old Tom’s judgement, and as he was doing very well financially — despite his drinking habit — that’s what did happen. Granny Fiona didn’t care much; she was glad to have me out of the way while she went on grooming Robert to take over. Shoving him along, really brainwashing him into becoming her idea of what a MacEwan ought to be — you might say, a fourteen-carat shit.’
‘Happy families.’ Beale’s tone was ironic. From the expression on his strong-featured, bony face you’d guess he’d been there. Cloudsley was using a very small pair of binoculars, studying the lake shore below them. Andy told them, ‘After my mother died — in BA, in the British hospital, having a still-born daughter — there was no stopping the old woman. I was four, then, so I don’t remember much, not even much about my mother, except not being able to believe it when they told me she wasn’t coming home. I do remember that… But most of what I know of those days is what Torn Strobie’s told me at various times. My mother’s death just about finished my father, and the booze problem went from bad to worse. By the time I was away to school in Scotland I knew my father was a soak, my grandmother a tyrant and my brother had all the makings of a — I don’t know, a storm-trooper. Just as the old bitch wanted him. But in one way he ran foul of her. She had this contempt for anyone who wasn’t British and preferably Scottish, but her beloved Robert was steadily becoming more Argentine than Anglo. I dare say his school up at BA was an influence, or his school chums. They were pretty well all what my grandmother used to refer to as “dagoes”. They used to have real battles about it.’
What Andy was not about to tell anyone was that when he came home in 1973 for a long pre-university break, he and Francisca Diaz fell in love. She’d spent her childhood in BA and around naval airbases where her father had been stationed, but at this time she was living at the family’s Patagonian estancia, Santa Maria. This was because Alejandro Diaz had resigned his commission in order to take up a political appointment, and there was some delay — a backwash, Strobie thought, from General Lanusse having not that long ago taken over as President from the equally useless General Levingston. But an influence in his making this change was his wife having left him, the year before. Elaine Diaz, who was American and a beauty, prominent in BA society, had skipped with a polo-playing Bostonian millionaire, run off back to the States with him and then got herself a divorce in Reno. Francisca hated her mother for this, sided completely with her father. She was seventeen that year, Andy eighteen; she was taller than him by an inch or so, very pretty, pale blue eyes, black hair, a long throat and a vital, athletic body. They rode together, played tennis, hunted, danced. She’d dance shoeless to make up for the difference in height, of which he was over-conscious. And they got to be lovers that summer. Tony Beale yawned. He murmured, ‘Our raconteur has dried up.’
He came back to earth. Or rather, rock, and full daylight now. He told them, ‘My father died in nineteen-seventy-five. The old woman had already gone by then, she kicked the bucket during my last year at school. I didn’t come home for that. But my father had been missing for two days, in mid-winter — deep snow, and blizzards. If you’re lucky you won’t see it, we won’t be here long enough, but in a hard winter like that one Patagonia’s a wilderness — hundreds of miles of bugger-all except snow and wind, wind never letting up for a minute. Robert had been out with the peóns, searching for him, but they gave up and went back home. Strobie heard that he’d said to the mayordomo — the manager — “He’ll be holed-up some place, stoned. He’ll show up when it settles. Maybe…” And he did show up — his horse brought him home, semi-conscious, out of his mind. He died — hypothermia, the doctor said — within twelve hours, and I got a cable, flew home for the funeral.’
Most neighbours braved the weather for it. Including the Diaz family, father and daughter. Andy’s sorrow at his father’s death had been mitigated by the prospect of reunion with Francisca, but she was no more than friendly, and much less cool — he’d thought he was imagining this at first — with Robert, who was calling himself ‘Roberto’ and talking to Diaz about buying a small airplane and getting himself taught to fly it — which in practical terms was a good idea, seeing that it could take a week on horseback to get round outlying paddocks, inspecting the stock and checking that the puesteros were doing their jobs. The MacEwan estancia, La Madrugada, contained more than 250 square miles of paddocks. Diaz was of course an airman, although by this time retired, in the government’s political service, with his own organisation in BA and growing influence everywhere else, and as an ex-flyer himself he was all for Robert’s plan. He was in favour of ‘Roberto’ from other points of view as well, including the fact that he and Francisca were spending more and more time together. His approval would have had some influence on her, too; since her mother had deserted him she’d been her father’s determinedly loyal daughter.
The day before he left finally for England, Andy asked her, ‘Remember the vizcacha game?‘
A vizcacha being a small, furry animal, an Argentine marmot, and the ‘game’ one that the local Indians had indulged in, years earlier. Robert would have heard accounts of it in the peóns’ reminiscences. They were all Criollos now, mixed blood, mainly lndian and Chilean. There probably wasn’t a full-blooded Tehuelche in the whole of Patagonia by this time, while down south the Yaghans were certainly extinct; but the stories and traditions lived on, and they’d told Robert — probably in the hope they’d see him wince, so they could laugh at him — about the sport their forefathers had had with the inoffensive little vizcachas. The trick was to catch one and skin it alive: an acquired skill, to get the pelt off in one piece and leave the animal otherwise undamaged and mobile; then to release it among the thorn-scrub, to be slashed and impaled as it dashed around, frantic with pain and terror. They’d have rocked with laughter, describing it, as their fathers had laughed to see it; and Robert had decided to try his own hand at it, then to invite Andy and Francisca — who to him at this stage were just a pair of children — to come and watch. He’d had the vizcacha already skinned, in a sack, had only to shake it out and give it a shove with his boot to start it running. Francisca had screamed a protest; then mounted, ridden her horse straight at him, screaming — well, wild, hysterical — but Andy had snatched the rifle from his saddle and put a snap shot through the dying vizcacha’s head. Robert had been busy dodging Francisca’s charge, laughing at her tears and fury; then he was derisive of Andy, angry with him for having spoilt the fun.
Francisca had answered his question — typically, taking it head-on, with no attempt to avoid the implications.
‘Certainly I remember. But that was then. Little boys pull wings off flies, don’t they? He’s not like that now, he’s — look, he’s grown up, like I have too. He’s a grown man, right? You’re still studying, Andy — you’re a student, you’re still a boy… I can see how you feel, I really can — and I’m sorry — but this is how it is, that’s all!’
West asked him, ‘Did your brother get the farm? When your father snuffed it? Why you settled in the UK, an’ all?’
‘No, we inherited equally. That’s how the law goes, in the Argentine. But he and I never got along. We could have split it, taken half each, but there’d have been a lot of complications and you can’t make a small farm pay, it wouldn’t have worked at all. So I still own half — half the profits, when or if there are any — but he runs it and lives off it, and I work for a firm in London.’
Beale commented, ‘Brother Robert’s the farmer, you’re the city slicker.’
‘He’s the farmer, but he’s also a flyer now.’
‘So I heard.’ Beale nodded towards Cloudsley. ‘In the Sea King.’
It would be why he’d wanted to hear the rest of it, the family background. Andy explained. ‘He had a light aircraft, a Beagle, for getting out to the paddocks. It’s a lot of ground to cover, you know, about thirty square leagues.’
‘A square league being how much?’
‘A league’s five kilometres, so a square league’s about three miles by three, nine square miles. But the flying thing — a neighbour is this man Diaz. He’s a high-up now, a prominent Junta supporter, but he was a commander in their fleet air arm before he went political, and I’d guess he personally taught my brother to fly and then encouraged him to join the naval reserve.’
‘Your brother could be flying against our ships, then?’
‘Yes. He could.’ Cloudsley was pulling the poncho close around his large frame; he’d said something to West, who was moving, going higher up the ridge to take the first watch as lookout. Andy told Beale, ‘He’s what they call acriollado. Means he’s become one of them. It’s complimentary or derogatory depending on who says it. If Alejandro Diaz says it, it’s an expression of approval, but if you did you’d be saying the guy’s gone native.’
Letting sleep come: inviting it, while memory crowded in and held it at bay. The others’ fault, for having set the old reels running. He knew it would be as well to get some sleep, because there mightn’t be much chance of it tonight on the water, with five of them plus all the gear packed into the inflatable’s twelve-foot length.
Still recalling the vizcacha episode; and the most impressive recollection was of Francisca’s immediate quick and violent reaction. Initial shock, then the blaze of anger: the way she’d flung herself on to her horse and charged at Robert, spurring the horse into a gallop, clearly intending to run him down — no holds barred, no thought of consequences.
The key to Francisca? That shock in her face; most young girls would have turned away, covered their faces, wept. She must have felt the same impulses, he guessed — he’d seen them there, fast as a camera-flash, the stricken look, horror; then she’s snapped out of it and acted.
As she had with Robert? Accepting her father’s guidance — because it was her inclination to obey him, support him, make up for what her mother had not been to him; this reinforcing her admiration — one might assume — of ‘Roberto’s’ own forcefulness, a quality of ruthlessness (which her father certainly had in abundance) matching her own?
In her case, Andy thought, ‘decisiveness’ might be a better word for it. Having decided what she wanted, or how she was going to achieve whatever aim she had in mind, that was the way she moved.
They’d arranged a secret rendezvous, in the summer of 1973/4, at the old Sandrini place, which was on a point of Tom Strobie’s land but between Diaz and MacEwan territory. He’d ridden over from La Madrugada, and she’d come southwest, a much longer ride, from her father’s estancia Santa María. The clandestine meeting in the wilds of nowhere, as far as he remembered his own feelings about it at the time, was a basically innocent conspiracy born of the strong attraction they had for each other, the fact they revelled in each other’s company and preferred not to have anyone else around, but at the same time it wouldn’t have been so far removed from much younger kids meeting in the branches of an apple tree or in a seashore cave — a place to themselves, away from adult interference. The attraction between them was sexual, obviously, and compulsively exciting, but at no time had he consciously acknowledged to himself that sex was the purpose of the rendezvous.
There’d have been little shelter in the Sandrini place in winter. (He’d suggested to the SBS that they might use it, but that was something else entirely.) It was a ruin, none of it snow-proof or wind-proof, and even in summer the wind never stopped blowing; but the peóns’ quarters — a bunkhouse with a cooking and eating area added — had survived better than the house, at least the stone walls were intact. Strobie could have fixed this part up, easily enough, if he’d wanted to, but its only use would have been as a puestero’s shack and he had no need of one right out at this remote corner.
Sheep had spent time in here, and they’d used the main house as well. Francisca scraped the floor with a pane of window-glass, while Andy built a fire. She’d brought chorizos, and galletas — small rolls of hard, unleavened bread, and his own contribution had been wine. He’d built the fire with scraps of wood and poplar branches from the withered trees which had been planted to screen this place but were either dead or dying; he’d got it started with the aid of a sprinkling of lighter-fuel, and it was taking hold at last. For ten minutes he’d been crouching at it, blowing a smoulder into flame.
‘Andy, this is no time to bust a gut, you know.’
He’d finished the job.
‘We’re away now.’ Getting to his feet; winded from acting as a bellows. Francisca, who’d been waiting close behind him, began to unbutton her shirt; she put her arms back for him to slide it off her shoulders. Wordless: as if this was what they’d come here for, both known it when they’d planned the rendezvous. His mouth on hers — wide mouth, drawing him in, his a little higher than hers because he still had his boots on and she’d kicked hers off. He felt her hands working at his belt buckle; turning her wet lips from his then, leaning back to give her hands room and for her bra to fall away; then his hands. He’d murmured something about her breasts and she asked, ‘Just noticed, did you?’ Wrenching his breeches open, starting on his shirt as he crouched to undress her: snakeskin belt, jodhpurs, uncovering her small, sleek waist, belly silky under his palms, nipples risen to his tongue; she’d asked him later, ‘Would you have started if I hadn’t?’
He would have, of course. He’d dreamed of her that way — night dreams and daydreams — and the excitement had been almost intolerable, he remembered, anticipating the rendezvous. He’d have made some kind of move, he’d have tried… But without confidence in how she’d react. He’d have been cautious and therefore awkward, half expecting a rebuff and therefore easily rebuffed — might well have bungled it. Partly because she was so exquisite; he’d had the feeling he’d be reaching for the moon, for something like the ultimate even before he’d started living. Whereas she had known, had been absolutely sure — and had taken the initiative because she’d known there was a chance he might not.
Tom Strobie had said, a few weeks after that rendezvous in the back of beyond, ‘Heard you were up at the Sandrini wreck, Andy. You and—’
‘Heard?’
‘One of my peóns — Anselmo, know the fellow? He saw we had visitors, so he rode up for a closer look and recognised both horses. He’s one of the old brigade; see a nag once, he’ll know it ten years later. He’d know it was your horse even if he didn’t recognise you, boy.’
‘I see… ’
‘He’s a wise bird, though. You can rely upon it, I’m the only person he’ll have told. But all the same’ — the old man’s hand had fastened on Andy’s shoulder — ‘more remote a place is, more conspicuous you are in it. Might be no one there in half a year, but—’
‘We met for an asado, Tom.’
Asado meaning ‘barbecue’.
‘Surely. I’m telling you it’s not a good spot even for that. Anyway, not with that particular young woman. For whom as you know I have a soft spot, a warm admiration — as well as respect, Andy, for your taste and good fortune. So’ — he’d turned away — ‘if you want some place to meet her, meet her here. I shan’t play gooseberry. I’m out and about a lot, you know.’
He’d wondered then, right at the time, what might have been Strobie’s motivation in making this offer, of which a lot of people would have been highly critical but of which he and Francisca had taken full advantage all through that summer. Strobie’s paternal attitude to him, and the fact it had spread now to embrace Francisca as well, was hardly enough. Then a clue had emerged from one of Tom’s rare personal revelations, the story of a young and adored wife who’d died of polio when Tom had been away at sea on the other side of the world, and of whom Francisca reminded the old man. Over the years since, he’d come to accept that this had been the heart of it.
Cloudsley stirred them at dusk, for a bite to eat before moving down to the lake shore. The first job was to unpack the boat, fit its deckboards and inflate it, and unpack and prepare the outboard. They’d done it before, of course, as a drill and in the dark, working to a stopwatch, and it took only a few minutes. The boat’s fabric was black, the motor’s pod and even its short shaft dull grey, gas-tank and spare jerrycan the same; there was no reflective surface anywhere.
West asked as they started loading — Tony Beale meanwhile checking wiring points and plugging in headsets for’ard and aft — ‘We liable to meet patrols on this pond, Harry? At the border, maybe?’
‘Yup.’ Cloudsley hefted a pack, slung it down to Hosegood, who stowed it snugly against the inflatable’s swollen port side. The next went end-on to it, balancing a similar stowage-plan on the other side. Down here at the water’s edge it was already dark; the sun’s last efforts still lit the heights above them but were cut off from the valley floor by the ridge they’d spent the day on. Cloudsley said, ‘We’ll tell ’em we’ve nothing to declare. Take the green channel. But — patrol or no patrol — no ruckus, remember. We lie doggo, or we run for it.’ He added as if to himself, ‘Circumstances permitting, of course.’
Policy, dictated from on high: no firefights or killings, except in self-defence, last resort. The enemy was to be avoided, not confronted, and the SBS motto By Stealth, By Guile was to be the keynote of the operation. Each man except for Andy was carrying an Ingram 9-mm Model 11 machine-pistol with suppressor, but the hope was to take them out of the country clean, unused, their 30-round magazines all full.
‘Looks like the lot.’ West straightened. ‘What’ll we do — swim?’
‘We sit on top of the cargo, Jake. But you can swim behind if you like. Tony—’ Beale was climbing into the bow: Cloudsley told him, ‘Get set with your PNG.’
Passive Night Goggles: a smaller type than the helo pilots had used, but effective up to eight hundred metres, with the image in green and black. Cloudsley continued his distribution of body-weights: Hosegood already in his appointed place. ‘Andy, you next. On the centreline.’ Peering down… ‘Now you, Jake. Right… Last, but very far from least’ — easing himself over, sliding into the stern — ‘the driver.’
‘Nothing sophisticated like remote control, Harry?’ Andy suggested. ‘From up front so you’d see where you were going?’
‘Waste of space. This is all we need.’ Holding up a headset — small plugs to fit in his ears and a spring-loaded throat microphone. It plugged into wiring that was integral to the boat’s starboard blister and connected him with Tony Beale who was at the sharp end with the goggles.
‘Any more fares?’
Nobody offered. The boat lurched from the shift of Cloudsley’s weight as he swung back on the lanyard. The outboard coughed, then roared, went a lot quieter as he shut down the soundproofing glassfibre lid over the starter mechanism. Shoving off then, Beale with a long leg out against rock.
Gathering way. Black lake water lifting, rolling away in a wide, smooth ‘v’, while under the boat’s stern the water shivered, fragmenting, glassing over again before it was lost to sight. Ahead the mountainsides rose towering, forming a huge canyon which, from this beetle-like object creeping into it, was daunting, overpowering in its immensity. Cloudsley opened a the throttle another notch: you felt the surge, and the engine-note rose but there was no significant increase in volume. Keeping one hand on the tiller Cloudsley removed his cap, pushed the headset on and settled the plugs in his ears, adjusted the position of the tiny mike against his throat. Cap on again, pulling it down all round, and its flaps down over the earplugs; he spoke quietly, the words indistinguishable even though he was only a few feet away. ‘D’you hear me, Tony?’
No answer. Beale didn’t have his set on yet, he was still getting the Litton’s PNG in focus. Cloudsley waited, then winced when the colour sergeant said in a normal tone of voice, ‘Testing comms…’
‘Keep it down, Christ’s sake!‘
‘Sorry, Harry.’
‘And don’t suck your teeth, Tony, d’you mind?’
With a throat microphone you had to be careful how you salivated.
Bloody cold. And you couldn’t swing your arms or stamp your feet, could hardly twitch a muscle. It would have been much worse without ponchos — and in Andy’s case, thermal underwear — but it was still tooth-rattling cold. They all had their caps on with earflaps down, muffling the steady swish of lake water, hum of the night wind and the steady grumble of the muffled motor, which was pushing the boat along at a fair rate of knots and hadn’t — yet — faltered even once. It could happen at any moment, of course; the others had made gloomy prophecies, earlier on, all of them having had unpleasant experiences at other times with outboards, apparently. Mountainsides rose sheer to a starless, black infinity, and Andy thought about the coming day, the Argentine side. If they made it that far, they’d be landing thirty miles inside enemy territory, and then would come the moment of truth when you’d discover whether the HALO dropper’s mission had been successful.
Strobie might well be dead. He was of an age when people died — quite apart from the fact that his survival of the last forty years had been fairly miraculous. There wasn’t anyone who’d have written, sent the news if Tom had died or been removed to hospital, whatever.
Francisca, he guessed, would have kept in touch with the old man. (Knowing she would have been seeing him from time to time had made that paragraph in his letter — the accusation of having given her up too easily — exciting, full of a sort of frustrated hope, when he’d read it. Guessing it might not have been only Tom speculating, that she might have said something to inspire it.)
Strobie really loved her, and she’d enjoyed that rough, no-strings affection; but she wouldn’t have written. She’d have done whatever might have been necessary for Tom — nursed him, or helped in any other way including burying him; but she wouldn’t have brought him, Andy MacEwan, into it. She would not, in fact, have said anything to make Strobie write that in his letter. The hope had been wishful thinking, hadn’t taken account of the kind of person she was — that she’d made her choice, picked her bed to lie in, would be loyal to that decision. Roberto’s bed; and Roberto in close cahoots with Alejandro Diaz — who’d made his choice too, was playing for high stakes, for power, both of them — or you could say all three of them, because Francisca would be a part of it, wouldn’t have allowed herself to be shut out — the Diaz-MacEwan alliance with its future riding on the outcome of this fight for the Falklands, alias Malvinas.
The silence woke him. As startlingly as a gunshot might have. Not total silence. The motor had cut out, that was all. He loosened his earflaps. Wind’s gusty thrum, water lapping, a soft thumping from under the inflatable’s flat bottom; and the others stirring, questioning. Cloudsley growled, ‘Quiet. Get down. Right down…’
Trying to make himself smaller, between West’s crouching, bony length and the awkward heap that was Geoff Hosegood doing his best to become invisible. Hearing Cloudsley ask ‘Where is it now?’ — using his intercom with Beale — and a very quiet reply whispered from that end. It wasn’t engine failure, anyway: he guessed the PNG had picked up some hazard out there ahead. He was fully awake now, shedding the aftermath of a dream in which they’d been burying old Tom, Alejandro Diaz scattering a handful of dirt into the open grave and Francisca, old, wrinkled, a crone shrouded in a mantilla, clinging to her father’s arm. Still enough reality about it so that he’d wondered, since waking in this tense silence, why Roberto hadn’t been there too…
Cloudsley informed them in a whisper, ‘Patrol boat passing, right to left, four hundred yards ahead. Haven’t seen us yet.’
Andy heard the chugging beat of a diesel engine.
Beale hissed, ‘Turned towards us.’
Cloudsley shifted, squirming round without rising, groping for the lid of the outboard’s glassfibre pod. He flipped it up, found the wooden toggle and took up the lanyard’s slack against the spring. Ready to start up; then to open the throttle and run for it.
If this was the border — which Andy thought which it might be, to justify the presence of a patrol — you’d only have to retire a mile or so into Chilean waters, then try again later. The Argies surely wouldn’t follow very far that way. Chileans and Argies had certain differences of opinion, some of them of long standing, and the Argies wouldn’t want to create problems on a second front — unless they’d consider ‘hot pursuit’ worth the diplomatic consequences.
‘Three hundred yards.’
No way on the boat now: just drifting, turning slowly. The diesel sound seemed very close — so close that he was straining his eyes into the dark and expecting to see the approaching boat at any second. Watching for it with his head down, watching under his eyebrows, knowing from wildfowling experience how a face, the whites of eyes, could show up. Wondering how close Cloudsley was going to let them come before he made his break for it. Could be leaving it a bit late, Andy thought: for instance, if the outboard didn’t fire on the first pull — which obviously they’d hear…
‘Stopped!’
The diesel was still audible, but idling, chuntering to itself in neutral. But the boat would still be closing in this way, because its momentum would be carrying it on. You could imagine them with their glasses up, trying to decide whether one of them had actually seen something or only imagined it. A minute ago — or however long ago it had been — a flicker of broken water might have caught an Argentine eye. Another question sprang to mind: how many of them? Few enough for this team to handle, if they came in close?
Probably. Andy thought the four men with him in the inflatable could probably deal with three times their own number, and think little of it.
But — if they shone a light this way, saw the huddle of crouched intruders, wouldn’t they open fire, look for identification later?
Cloudsley might have had the same thought. He whispered, ‘Geoff. Jake. Be ready to return fire.’
Shifting: Ingram automatics emerging from the heavy layers of peóns’ clothing. The Ingrams’ thirty-round magazines emptied themselves in one and a half seconds, Cloudsley had told him; it’d take that long to cut a man in half.
Quiet movement from Cloudsley now. Getting set to jerk the lanyard back, shatter the night’s peace… But the other sound thickened: there was a wrench into gear, then a stronger, deeper beat. Cloudsley’s head lifted an inch as he listened to whatever Beale was whispering over the intercom. He’d grunted an acknowledgement; then he held the mike away from his neck for long enough to tell them, ‘Moving on, leftward. Sit tight, keep quiet.’
Five or six minutes — or three or four — dragged like ten or twenty.
‘Tony?’
‘Yes. All clear.’ Beale let out a breath as if he’d been holding it since yesterday. The diesel sound had faded some time ago. He added, ‘Well out of sight, Harry.’
‘Some guide, we have.’ Holding the microphone clear again, and jossing, pulling Andy’s leg. ‘Leads us smack into an Argie patrol!’
‘Balls.’
‘Did Mr MacEwan make some remark then?’
Chuckles: humour not difficult to trigger in the sharp relief from tension. Andy said, falling into the trap and defending himself unnecessarily, ‘I don’t know a damn thing about this Chilean side, you know that.’
‘We aren’t on the Chilean side, chum.’
‘How d’you know?’
‘Distance run, for one thing. For another, half an hour ago there was a patrol boat showing lights — inshore, no threat, we let you layabouts sleep on. But a boat showing lights would’ve been Chilean, wouldn’t it? The Argies are the ones playing silly buggers… We’ll push on, now. Keep your goggles peeled, Tony.’
The outboard wouldn’t start.
Cloudsley swore, and Hosegood murmured, ‘Have to get out and push.’ West said, ‘Many a true word…’
‘How far to go, Harry?’
Beale had asked it, but no one answered — except the motor, responding to about the sixth pull. Relief was enormous: it would have been a long, long paddle to shore, and then a very long trek indeed, carrying all the gear and missing by maybe two or three days the rendezvous which he hoped Start would have set up. But — say thirty miles to go, and there were roughly seven hours of darkness left. A lot to be said for long nights and short days, at that. If nothing else delayed them — and the outboard’s reluctance to start did shake one’s confidence in it, somewhat — they’d make it with time in hand.
If…
The boat was gathering way, and Cloudsley was turning it back on course. Beale using the PNG, searching for any sign of the patrol returning. But if it was far enough away to be out of range of those goggles its own engine noise would cover the distant sound of this one. Which sounded OK now, and the stink of petrol which had been strong a minute ago had gone.
No need for any guide. Navigation was a matter of keeping roughly in the middle, mountains equidistant right and left… Cloudsley, however, knew more about it than he’d let on, and wasn’t surprised when Tony Beale picked up an island with the PNG. He put the tiller over, slanting towards it on Beale’s directions, and after about ten minutes rock loomed over them, a whaleback shape with stunted firs like bristles along its spine. He slowed the engine as they approached, then cut it and let the boat drift in.
‘Hope the bloody thing’ll start again… Look, I’m landing here. Geoff, come with me. Bring those binos. You come too, Andy. Jake, fill up the tank, will you. Tony, you might break out some nutty and a thermos or two.’
‘Nutty’ meaning chocolate, a sailors’ word for it. The thermos packs were disposable, and easy to dispose of too, when you had deep water all around.
The landing was on rock, and steep. Cloudsley led, then Hosegood, then Andy. A slightly dangerous scramble, then, aiming for the top, a tree all on its own. All the trees bent exactly the same way and looked as if they’d been chewed; there was hardly any soil, and he guessed they’d be rooted in crevices in which wind-borne dirt had settled; wind-borne seeds as well. Cloudsley explained, ‘At this end the lake gets wider. And we want to land in its northwest corner, right, Andy? So I need a course to steer — that’s to say, I know the compass course but I need a mark or marks to steer by.’
His compass would be useless in the boat, because of magnetic interference from the outboard and other metallic elements in the gear. Up here they were well away from such influences.
‘OK.’ He had his landmarks. ‘That’ll do it.’
Hosegood, meanwhile, had been using binoculars to examine that end of the lake, and found nothing except for some lights on the southern shore. Which figured: there was a settlement there, the map had shown it. Cloudsley pointed into the darkness. Resting the other hand on Andy’s shoulder he said, ‘We steer that way now, about six hours’ run. If—’ He moved that hand, rapped his forehead with its knuckles and muttered, ‘Touch wood… If our blessed motor keeps up its so-far impeccable performance…’