A gaggle of women walked past, heads under hijabs, rattling their gold and bumping their gums. It seemed impossible to speak Arabic without sounding as if you were having an argument, and these guys were no exception. They reminded me that Lugano might only be the country’s third financial centre, but the place was still all about money, whatever continent it originated from.
More class than Zürich or Geneva, though. Not a scrap of litter on the streets or pavements, not a fag-end in the gutter. They had guys here whose only job was to water the public flower-beds. American universities and schools had sprung up, even a research centre for artificial intelligence. Whoever they were and wherever they came from, everybody was in town to either deposit cash or spend it.
A car horn blared. Riva Albertolli was clogged with Bentleys and Japanese tourists who’d just got off a coach and hadn’t worked out how to cross a street.
Lugano was small, just over fifty thousand people in the city proper, but it had its own airport, with frequent flights to and from other major financial centres, including the City of London. According to Silky, Lugano was where the Cosa Nostra kept their money. They had even built a school here in the 1980s during the Mafia wars so their kids could get educated in safety while they left horses’ heads in each other’s beds at home.
A coach the size of an airliner parked with a deafening hiss of brakes and ejected its payload of retired Americans. There was a tidal wave of plaid shorts, socks and sandals. Enough gold and diamonds dangled from liver-spotted wrists to pay off a developing country’s national debt and still leave Bob Geldof enough change for a haircut.
A plan started to form in my head. After lunch, I’d walk Silky back to her office, past the glittering display windows of the jewellery shops. I’d reach into my pocket, pull out the box, and say something like, ‘I’ve always preferred economy-sized, myself . . .’ Maybe I’d buy her an ice-cream at the place at the end of the street, put it behind my back, and say, ‘Which hand?’ I wondered how Hugh Grant would do it.
Twelve thirty came and went, and Silky didn’t call. I knew she was busy, so I didn’t call her. I ordered another coffee and decided to hit the inside pages.
There was an election crisis in Peru, and a hosepipe ban in London. Two volunteers with a medical charity had been kidnapped at gunpoint by one of the factions in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Nobody seemed to know why they were being held, and the outlook was bleak. None of the players up there was ever going to win a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The country’s name had changed from Zaïre since I was there on the team job in ’85, but not much else. For over seven years, the Congolese had been involved in the biggest conflict the world had seen since the Second World War. Hutus responsible for murdering nearly a million Tutsis in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide had fled across the border to escape the avenging Tutsi army. Zaïre had imploded from civil war and incursions by neighbouring states. Rwanda invaded again in 1998, sparking a war that, at its height, sucked in nine other African countries. Four million had died, and the rest of the world had barely heard about it. The only people who had were the medical charities, like Mercy Flight, who had guys on the ground doing their best to patch up the wounded and fucked-up.
The place was a nightmare for exactly the same reasons as it had been when I was there: greed, and the struggle to control the country’s vast gold, diamond and mineral resources. If it wasn’t rival groups backed by one foreign power or another in their fight to get their hands on the mineral wealth, it was people starving to death simply because they had fuck-all to offer – no diamonds, no oil, no crops – and, as a result, no money to buy stuff from the West. So we turned our backs. Sir Bob the Knob and Bono the Dog Biscuit did their bit, but they were pissing into a force ten.
But that wasn’t what made me uncomfortable. I closed the paper, sat back and shut my eyes.
Sometimes, if a child caught my gaze and stared at me, the way kids do, I saw that little boy’s eyes – scared and wide, desperate for me to lift him up as if he were air. I’d wanted that to happen just as much as he had. I didn’t realize it until maybe ten years later, but it was as if saving him would have made up for all the others.
And that was nothing compared with what I felt about leaving Sam and the rest of them to the fuck-up that was spread all over the scrubland that day.
My cappuccino turned up and we went through the being-served routine.
‘Grazie mille.’ It was nice to be nice.
He smiled back at me. ‘Prego.’
My thanks weren’t so much for the coffee, as for helping me cut away from the look in the boy’s eyes as he’d slipped from my grasp. The image had burned into my brain, and haunted me whenever I was stupid enough to let myself remember him. The waiter had helped me do what I always did when thinking about the shit end of my life – cut away and get back to the more practical parts of it.
It had been a hot refuel. Both helis had kept their rotors spinning, and marines ran up to us with the hose from the Sea Knight and shoved the nozzle into our tank. By then I had settled myself against the boxes, watching Standish and the general continue to congratulate each other on a job well done.
Once we were safely on board the carrier fleet I’d been separated from the other two, and eventually flown to Nigeria. From there, armed with a new passport by the embassy, I was sent back to Hereford.
I never saw Sam again. The moment he’d got back to Kinshasa, he’d thrown his hand in and left the Regiment. After that, he disappeared off the radar.
Annabel had landed head first and broken her neck. She’d died immediately. The boy had managed to stay alive somehow, but he wasn’t expected to see his next birthday. That was if he knew when it was.
All in all, a shit job. But fuck it, that was a long time ago. Now there wasn’t any scrubland, dead kids or Milo. There was a beautiful lake, a beautiful girl and the best cappuccino in five hundred miles.
But still I couldn’t get the boy’s pleading stare out of my head. I hated it when this happened. I knew what was coming next.
I leaned forward over the table to sip my brew, feeling as if it was wrong, somehow, to be enjoying the view. I couldn’t help but think about Sam. I knew it wasn’t my fault that I had been stranded on board when the heli took off. I knew I’d done my best to save the boy. But did Sam? Did he know how much I’d wanted to be back on the ground with him and the team?
It wasn’t the only thing that kept me awake at night, but it had a nasty habit of sneaking under the wire when I was least prepared.
Fuck it, so what? Next time, I’d stop at the headlines. I made myself sit back and soak up the surroundings as I checked my watch again. It was a cheapie from Australia, but it always made me smile. Silky had given it to me because I was always asking her the time. The dial was black and a kangaroo‘s paws were the hands. It didn’t have a strap. It hung off a small karabiner key-ring that I hooked on to one of my belt loops. It was well after one. Normally she’d have called by now.
My mobile vibrated. I smiled as I saw the number. I still had her +41 country prefix in my address book. I stopped smiling when I opened up the text.
Can’t make lunch. Sorry. x
I folded up my paper, paid the bill, and went over to the desk to apologize. Could they make it dinner instead? No problem. They knew us. Or, rather, they knew her stepfather.
My mobile kicked off again: And I’m sorry about this morning. xx
I was sorry about this morning too, but I was fucked if I’d dwell on it. She’d been acting a bit strange these last couple of weeks, but it was a small cross to bear.