‘I had some bad breaks, that’s all,’ said Porter.
Danni shook her head, tossing aside her blonde hair as she did so. ‘That’s rubbish,’ she said. ‘You were Regiment once. The best of the best —’
‘How’d you know that?’ said Porter.
Danni laughed, taking another sip of wine. ‘This is a very small place,’ she said. ‘And nobody gossips like an office full of spies. This lot love to know what everybody else is up to.’
Maybe that’s why someone tried to kill me, thought Porter. Maybe word leaked out somehow. Maybe it got through to some al-Qaeda or Hezbollah guys in London, and they wanted to take me out before I had a chance to get out to Lebanon.
‘You have to be tough to get in, don’t you?’ said Danni. ‘I thought there were special tests?’
Porter could feel his mind flicking back almost two decades. There were special tests all right. He’d spent weeks of his life tabbing through the Brecon Beacons, with a deadweight on his back, and with the Welsh rain lashing into his face. He’d done the rock climbing, and the abseiling, learnt how to fly a plane and drive a tank, and he’d done enough hours running around the killing house to last a man several lifetimes. He’d watched men die as welclass="underline" two guys had bought it on the selection courses he’d been on, good lads both of them who just wanted to prove they could hack it, but who must have been cold in their graves for almost twenty years now. And for what? A few years taking orders from some jumped-up public schoolboys, before they toss you back on the scrapheap, and walk straight past you on the street when you ask them to help you out with the price of a beer.
‘Because you were in a bad way when you came in here,’ said Danni. ‘I mean, I thought Regiment guys could get good jobs in industry. Or go out to Iraq, and earn two or three grand a week in security.’
Not me, thought Porter. I flunked it. And once you’ve done that, there is no way back.
‘I had …’ Porter paused, taking a sip of the wine, already wondering if she might have something stronger tucked away in her handbag. What was it I had exactly? he wondered? Why couldn’t I get back into the world again? Maybe if I’d been able to figure out an answer to that I wouldn’t have been searching around at the bottom of so many beer glasses all my life. ‘I was out in the Lebanon. A long time ago. I was going in with my unit to get a hostage out, but I fucked it up.’
‘Go on,’ she whispered.
He looked up at Danni, his expression solid and strong. He held up his left hand. ‘That’s how I lost these,’ he said, nodding towards the missing fingers. ‘But that wasn’t the worst of it. I lost three guys from my unit, good men. It was my fault, you see. My own sodding fault. They’d have lived if I hadn’t …’
Porter stopped talking, leaving the sentence hanging between them. It felt strange to be talking about it. He’d tried to discuss it with Diana, but that was years ago, soon after he came back, but she was so preoccupied with the baby she’d hadn’t had any time to listen to him, and pretty soon he found it easier just to have another drink and forget about it. Since then, he’d never spoken about it to anyone. He just brooded on it himself, burying the story deeper and deeper within himself, until it was as much a part of him as the blood running through his veins.
‘If you hadn’t what …?’
He shrugged, emptied the wine glass into the back of his throat, and refilled it from the bottle. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It matters to me.’
‘I let a kid live, and then he killed my three mates.’
Danni edged forward on the bed, so that there was only a couple of feet separating them. ‘And you think going back there will fix it for you?’ she said.
She was looking straight at him, her bright blue eyes alive with curiosity, with a hunger for knowledge that Porter found puzzling. ‘I sure as hell hope so,’ said Porter with a shrug.
She edged another few inches closer. With her left hand, she was brushing a lock of hair away from her face, and her right hand was resting on the top of the bed. Slowly, she uncrossed and then crossed her legs again, and Porter was struggling to keep his eyes away from her. She was so close to him that Porter couldn’t escape the heady smell of the perfume splashed across her body.
‘I hope so too,’ she said softly, leaving her lips slightly parted, and her eyes half closed as she completed the sentence, ‘because it’s a bloody brave thing to do.’
Porter’s hand edged forwards on the bed, so that it was just inches from hers. Christ, she’s coming on to me, he told himself. Unless the signs have changed completely in the years since I last tried it on with a girl, I could be in with a chance here. He could feel his heart thumping. He wanted her, of course. She was blonde, and buxom, and dressed in a white, crisply starched nurse’s uniform: what man wouldn’t want her in his bed. But when you live out on the streets, he reminded himself, you stop even thinking about women. They aren’t on your radar screen. Christ, I’m buggered if I even know what to do any more.
‘Not that brave,’ said Porter, his tone turning weaker.
‘I think you’re plenty brave,’ she said. ‘And strong …’
Her hand was almost touching his now. Porter let his right hand stretch out, his fingers creeping across the bedding, until slowly they reached hers. He could feel the warmth of her skin against his, and as he looked up at her face, her eyes were still half closed and her lips still parted a fraction. He moved closer towards her, gripping her hand in his, and suddenly her eyes opened wide, and she looked straight at him and smiled. ‘Kiss me,’ she said slowly.
Porter leant into the kiss, and in the next instant could feel her tongue lashing into his. The embrace was passionate and urgent, as if they were both painfully aware of how little time there was. He could taste the wine on her lips as he flicked his tongue against hers, and her breath was warm against his skin. He could feel her breasts thrusting into his chest, and even through her lace bra, he could feel her nipples stiffening. Porter ran his hand down towards her legs, making impact just above the knee. Small gasps of pleasure started to moan from her lips as he ran his hand slowly up the side of her thigh, until it was nestling in the warmth of her crotch. Danni’s own hands were roaming across Porter’s chest, tugging at his sweatshirt. She rolled onto her side, and then suddenly was underneath him, pulling him down into the warmth of her body. ‘Fuck me,’ she muttered, her voice husky and harsh. ‘Fuck me right now.’
Porter pulled away her tunic, and buried his face in her chest. His tongue was lashing against her nipples, enjoying the way her large breasts rose and swelled under his touch. As he did so, her hands were busy unbuckling his trousers. In the next moment, Danni had turned him over, stripping the last of his clothes off him, then making him wait a few tantalising moments as she slowly peeled away her dress and tights, leaving just her lace knickers for him to feast his eyes upon. Jesus, thought Porter, as he lay back on the bed and watched her head disappearing towards his groin, girls have learnt a new trick or two since the last time I did this.
The sex was hot and frantic, over in a matter of minutes, but no less satisfying for that. Porter had worried briefly about someone coming in, but the door was bolted. When they finished, they lay wrapped in each other’s arms, and for a second Porter found himself wondering about the security cameras he felt certain they had installed in the room. Sod it, he thought with a wry smile. They can watch if they want to. I might even buy a copy of the tape from them.