in Guatemala, in Antigua.’ He read out the address. ‘If the relevant authorities can liaise with Martinson, he can meet the Wilkinsons at the airport on Sunday. Oh, and we’ll need a ticket for Mrs Wilkinson on the same flight as her husband.’
‘Anything else?’ Clarke asked coldly.
‘No, I don’t think so,’ Davies said, and put the phone down. He looked across at Razor, who was grinning at him, and looking not much more than half his thirty-six years. Davies smiled back, determined not to offer any outward display of the sudden sense of foreboding in his heart.
The news that the British had agreed to send their soldier reached Guatemala City soon after dawn, and an eager Alvaro was waiting to inform Serrano of the good tidings when the latter arrived at the G-2 offices in the Palacio Nacional.
‘Good,’ Serrano said, stirring sugar into the coffee which had just been brought to his desk.
‘He will join up with the man in Antigua, the one we knew about,’ Alvaro added. ‘And he is bringing his wife.’
Serrano was pleased. ‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘That must mean that no pressure has been put on him. If he is bringing his wife he must be happy to come. He will be a good witness.’
‘I thought of putting them in the Pan-American Hotel,’ Alvaro said. ‘Tourists seem to like it.’
‘They like it because it is comfortable, but not so luxurious that the streets outside make them feel guilty,’ Serrano said. ‘A good choice,’ he added.
‘Thank you, sir.’
Serrano sipped appreciatively at the dark coffee. ‘Has there been any progress in the business of finding El Espíritu?’ he asked, knowing full well that if there had been he would have been the first to know.
‘Nothing definite yet, but the net is being drawn in.’
Serrano allowed himself a thin smile. ‘Let’s hope the little shit is in it.’
The sun was sinking behind the twin peaks of Fuego and Acatenango as Chris approached his lodgings. Like most of the houses in Antigua, the Martinez family residence wasn’t much to look at from the outside, offering just a bare wall painted pastel yellow, with two small windows protected by wrought-iron grilles. But once through the gate the visitor found himself in an exquisite courtyard, decorated with palms and flowering pink bougainvillaea, and surrounded by cool, shuttered rooms.
From one of these rooms Chris could hear two voices which had become increasingly familiar over the past two and a half weeks; they belonged to Clara and Romero, the leading characters in the family’s favourite soap opera. Costa del Oro was supposedly made in Colombia, though Chris had never noticed anything which reminded him of his own trip to that country. The programme was basically an Hispanic Baywatch, with even flimsier swimsuits, acting and story-lines. The Martinez family adored it.
He was waved into the only empty seat, next to sixteen-year-old Maria, whose life seemed to revolve around flirting with whoever was at hand, and whom Chris found worryingly attractive. This evening, though, she was too engrossed in the TV show to nestle up to him.
Chris watched it too, feeling pleased that he understood more or less everything that was being said, right down to the occasional – and probably unintentional – ironic nuances. His time in Antigua had certainly delivered the goods as far as his Spanish was concerned, and he had even grown rather fond of his hosts. In many ways they reminded him of an English family – only the names of the soap operas had been changed.
The day’s episode ended with a cliff-hanger which made Chris nostalgic for the subtlety of Neighbours, and left the Martínezes in temporary shock. Senora Martinez recovered first, and headed for the kitchen, announcing over her shoulder that dinner would be in half an hour.
‘There has been a call for you,’ Maria told Chris, fixing her deep-black eyes on him.
‘From who?’ Chris asked.
‘Your embassy in Guatemala City,’ Senor Martinez told him. ‘They want you to call them back. Please, use our telephone.’
Chris did so, and was put through to the Military Attaché, Ben Manley, with whom he had once served in the Green Howards. Manley relayed the new orders from Hereford, half sarcastically adding that it sounded ‘like fun’.
‘Doesn’t it just,’ Chris agreed wryly.
For the next couple of hours he put the whole business to the back of his mind, and concentrated on enjoying his dinner. After he had helped with the dishes – something which still astonished the whole family – he announced he was going for a walk, and then dealt Maria a crushing blow by refusing to ask for her company. He needed to do some thinking, he told her. She gave him a persecuted look.
Once outside, Chris began wandering aimlessly through Antigua’s network of streets, feeling dismayed by the news. He told himself it would be good to see Razor and Hajrija, and that there seemed every likelihood he would now get to see parts of the country which were well off the tourist track. Who knew? – he might even find the twitcher’s holy grail, a quetzal in the wild.
It wasn’t enough. He felt almost cheated, and realized that although he still had two months of his final term to serve, he had begun to think and feel as if the SAS was already behind him.
He had been a good soldier – he was certain of that – but being a soldier, and an SAS soldier at that, had always been a means to an end for him, not an end in itself. It had given him the scope to stretch himself, and to see the wild parts of the world in a way which the tourist or even the seasoned traveller never could. There was no adventure-holiday company yet which offered a week-long hike out of Colombia, across mountains and through jungle, with the forces of a drug cartel and the national army on your tail.
But after Bosnia things hadn’t been the same. Maybe it had been the mission itself, or maybe he had just outgrown one way of looking at himself and the world. Damien Robson had died there, making Joss Wynwood and himself the only remaining survivors of the Colombian mission. That was chilling enough, but not the main reason for his change of heart. In Bosnia he and Razor – both of whom had chosen medicine as their first SAS specialization – had spent as much time looking after people as they had fighting. There had been the women from the Serb brothel, the children injured in the shelling of Zavik. He and Docherty had been round Sarajevo’s City Hospital, and witnessed the incredible dedication of people working in near-impossible conditions.
Back in England he had decided that there were other ways to travel and to serve than with the SAS. He had been quite happy to serve out the remainder of his three-year term. The work was rarely boring and there were always new opportunities to learn. Some of these – like the helicopter pilot’s course he had recently begun – would provide him with skills that were bound to be useful in the sort of Third World situations where he expected to find his civilian future.
What he had not anticipated was that anyone would ask him to take up arms again, much less send him out on loan to an army notorious for its murderous cruelty.
The MI5 report was waiting on Martin Clarke’s desk when he arrived back that evening from a day-trip to Brussels. Placing the miniature hamper of Belgian chocolates to one side – he had forgotten Valentine’s Day the previous year, and decided to shop in advance this time – he took the file across to the armchair by the window and started to read.
Darren James Wilkinson
