realized, into the forecourt of the Atlantic Hotel. He wondered what the rebels had in store for the hundred or so guests, most of them Brits, and all of whom had come to The Gambia on package tours in search of a sunny beach, not the wrong end of a Kalashnikov.
He would worry about that later. For the moment he wanted to make sure Sibou was all right. Hurrying on past the Atlantic, he came to the doors of the Royal Victoria’s Maternity Wing, and decided that it might be better to use them than attempt the front entrance. Ten minutes later, having threaded his way through the labyrinth of one-storey buildings and courtyards, he found himself looking across at the lit windows of the emergency department some twenty yards away. Several men were standing around inside, some of them bending down to talk to those who were presumably lying, out of sight, on the cubicle beds and waiting-room benches. One man was moaning continuously, almost forlornly, but otherwise there was virtual silence.
Then he saw Sibou, rising wearily into view after treating one of the prone casualties. Her dark eyes seemed even darker, the skin stretched a little tighter across the high cheekbones, the usually generous mouth pursed with tension and tiredness. McGrath worked his way round the perimeter of the yard to the open window of her private office and clambered over the sill. He opened the door a quarter of an inch and looked out through the crack. The corridor was empty.
Sooner or later she would come, and he settled down to wait, thinking about the first time they had met, a couple of months earlier, soon after he had arrived on his secondment. The circumstances could hardly have been more propitious for an intending Galahad. He had come to the Royal Victoria looking for the tetanus shot he should have had before leaving home, and found himself face to face with a room full of terrified Gambians, her half-naked on the floor and a man about to rape her at knife-point in full view of everyone else. All the old training had come instantly into use, and before he had had time to ponder the risks McGrath had used the man’s neck for a chopping board and his genitals for a football.
The damsel in distress had been grateful enough to have dinner with him, but he had foolishly allowed himself to be a little too honest with her, and she had declined to be anything more than a friend. That had not been as difficult as he had expected, though he still dreamed of covering her ebony body with his kisses, not to mention her covering his with hers. But Sibou was great company even fully clothed, and he had even found himself wishing his wife and children could meet her.
He could not remember being so impressed by someone’s dedication – in the face of such awe-inspiring odds – for a long, long time. She could have had a doctor’s job, and a doctor’s ample rewards, anywhere in the world, but here she was, in this ramshackle office, struggling to stretch always inadequate resources in the service of the ordinary people who came in off the street, and offering every one of them a smile almost beautiful enough to die for.
McGrath looked at his watch. In twenty minutes it would begin to get light: where did he want to be when that happened? At the Atlantic, he decided, where there would probably be a working telephone and some chance of finding out what was happening. After all, now he had found out that Sibou was all right, there had to be more pressing things to do than watch her smile.
He was halfway out of the window when she came in through the door. She jumped with surprise, then burst out laughing. ‘What are you doing, you crazy Englishman?’ she asked.
He pulled himself back into the room, wondering how anyone could look so sexy in a white coat and stethoscope. ‘I’ve come to take you away from all this,’ he said grandly.
‘Through the window?’
‘Well…’
‘And anyway, I like all this. And I’m busy,’ she added, rummaging around in her desk drawer for something.
‘I just came to check you were OK,’ he said.
She turned and smiled at him. ‘Thank you.’
‘What’s happening out there?’ he asked.
‘Out in the city? Oh, another bunch of fools have decided to overthrow the government.’
‘And are they succeeding?’
She shrugged. ‘Who knows? Who cares?’
‘I thought you didn’t like Papa Jawara.’
‘I don’t. But playing musical chairs at the Palace is not going to get me the medicines I need. In fact I’m having to use the little I’ve got to patch up those toy soldiers in there.’
‘How many of them?’
‘About a dozen or so. We’re already running out of blood. Look, I have to go…’ She suddenly noticed the holstered gun inside his jacket. ‘What are you wearing that for?’ she demanded to know.
‘Self-defence.’
‘It will give them a reason to shoot you.’
‘Yeah, well…’
She threw up her hands in disgust. ‘You play what games you want,’ she said, adding over her shoulder, ‘and take care of yourself.’
‘I’ll come back later,’ he called after her, although he was not sure if she had heard. ‘What a woman,’ he muttered to himself, and worked his body back out through the window. He retraced his steps through the sprawling grounds to the Maternity Wing entrance, crossed over the still-dark Marina Parade and scaled the wall of the grounds opposite. Five minutes and another wall later he was standing on the beach. Away to his right, over the far bank of the river mouth, the sky was beginning to lighten. He turned the other way, and walked a couple of hundred yards along the deserted sand to the hotel’s beach entrance.
The kidney-shaped pool shone black in the artificial light, but its only occupant was an inflatable plastic monkey. McGrath walked through into the hotel building, hands in pockets to disguise the bulge of the Browning. In the lobby he could hear voices, and after a moment’s thought decided to simply take a seat within earshot, and pretend he was just one more innocent tourist.
It was a fruitful decision. For five minutes he listened to two voices trying to explain to several others – the latter presumably the hotel’s management – that there was a new government, that the foreign guests would not be allowed out of their hotels for at least a day, but that there was nothing to stop them enjoying the sun and the hotel beach and the swimming pool. It was up to the management to make these rules clear to the guests. And to point out that anyone attempting to leave the hotel grounds risked being shot.
‘All authority now rests in the Revolutionary Council,’ said the voice coming out of the speakers. Someone on the hotel staff had channelled the radio through the outdoor hi-fi system, and around a hundred staff and guests were sitting around the hotel pool, listening to the first proclamation of the new government.
‘The Socialist and Revolutionary Labour Party, which was illegally suppressed during the regime of the tyrant Jawara, has contributed nine members to the new ruling Council. The other three members have been supplied by the Field Force, which has already proved itself overwhelmingly in support of the new government.’
Oh yeah? McGrath thought to himself. Some of the bastards must have been in on it, but he doubted if it had been a majority.
‘The
