Free The Perfect Soldier by Graham Hurley Page B

Jordan named, though it was plain that it couldn’t have been anyone else. McFaul returned to his space by the steps to the garden, musing on the irony. Out in the darkness, hundreds of local people were probably dying yet they didn’t rate even a mention. To a world hungry for bigger, starker, simpler tragedies, Angola remained a mystery, an unlanced boil on the face of Africa. The politics were complex. No one seemed to speak English. The world’s press had better things to do.
    McFaul lay down again, careful not to disturb the sleeping shape beside him. Off and on, he’d been with Bennie for three years now, and the two of them shared a rapport that had been cemented in the minefields: Kuwait first, and then – afterMcFaul’s convalescence – the six difficult months they’d endured in the madness of Afghanistan. It was there that McFaul had first put it all together – the mines, the money, the victims – and it was there that he’d first truly understood the way the scam worked. The guys in the factories making the stuff and the guys in the suits flogging it like sweets, Dolly Mixtures from the First World, enough cheap high explosive to lasso an entire society and choke it half to death.
    McFaul shuddered, all too aware of the ache in his own leg, the price his own flesh had paid. In a curious way, though, none of that had mattered. Not until Afghanistan, not until he’d been up in the high pastures, up beyond Jaji. He’d found the little Afghan goat herd quite by accident, his body curled amongst the rocks. The trail of bloodstains, already brown, led up the mountain to the scorchmarks on the path where he’d lost his foot.
    The mine had been Russian, probably one of the little PFM-Is, and the boy had finally died from shock, and exposure, and loss of blood, in sight of his home village in the valley below. Another statistic for the men in the suits. Another tiny triumph for the guys who’d sell you area denial. Later, McFaul had met the family, learned the boy’s name, pledged himself to take whatever small revenge he could. The spilling of blood – his own, Mohammed’s – carried certain responsibilities. And one day, somehow, he knew he’d repay a little of the pain.
    One of the big 120-mm mortars fell nearby, a deafening blast that rocked the building overhead. For a moment or two the generator faltered, dimming the light even more, and McFaul felt a movement beside him. Bennie was sitting upright, staring at the wall opposite. McFaul laid a hand on his arm. Bennie looked at him.
    ‘Boss?’
    ‘It’s OK, mate. Fucker missed.’
    Bennie nodded, sleep compounding his confusion. Then he rubbed his eyes.
    ‘Meant to tell you,’ he mumbled.
    ‘What?’
    ‘That bird from MSF. Christianne. The nurse. She was looking for you earlier. Wanted a word.’
    ‘What about?’
    ‘Dunno.’ He yawned, lying down again. ‘Some kind of favour, I think.’

CHAPTER THREE
    Molly awoke in the middle of the night, uncertain for a moment exactly where she was. She’d been dreaming about James. He was kneeling by some kind of pond or pool. It was very hot. The water was a strange colour, almost green, and he kept dipping his hands in it, cupping the liquid, offering it to her the way he’d sometimes come into the kitchen as a child, carrying trophies from the garden. His expression was childlike, too, the purest delight. I did this, he seemed to be telling her. Mine. My efforts. All my own work.
    Molly peered into the darkness, at last recognising the noise at the window. Since they’d gone to bed the wind had got up and now it was raining hard, the kind of rain that drove at the cottage across the bare, flat fields. One of the gutters beneath the big lime tree had become blocked with leaves and she could hear the water spilling over, splashing onto the flagstones below. She thought of James again by his pond, and she eased carefully out of bed, knowing that there was no possibility of getting back to