He's a busted flush. His wife came out to join him, stayed a month, then went home – she's now with her mother. They say his major subjects of conversation, when he can find anyone to talk to, are the price of tomatoes, the quality of the water supply and the frequency of the power-cuts. I heard he'd been ripped off rottenly by his new number cruncher… not all gloom. He's behind a big fence, sirens and electronics and lights – must feel quite like gaol. Don't get me wrong, I rather liked your man – a prig, but he had guts.'
A hand was offered, for shaking, but he continued writing his notes, and didn't take it. He had feigned indifference when told of Albert Packer's situation.
What he had learned since he had left the Church was that the highest and thickest wall imaginable separated serving officers from former officers. His status had gone with his identity card. He had received, in exchange for current reports and assessments, a carriage clock, a decanter set, and enough whip-round cash to purchase a ride-on mower. On his last day at the Custom House, before sherry with the CIO and the pub session with Sierra Quebec Golf, he had headed the meeting where the Crown Prosecution Service solicitor had pitched cold water on the prospect of a successful prosecution of 'Atkins' without the evidence of Joey Cann (deceased). The little queue had gone, and he put away his pad and capped his pen. He turned and laid his hand on the heap of stones. The diplomat had stepped back, as if understanding his mood. The funeral, down in the West Country, had been private; the family had requested that the Church did not attend, and it had not been disputed. There would be no plaque carrying SQG12's name and his dates in the lobby of the Custom House:
'Clear defiance of instructions, can't have that…
Broke all the rules in the book, made a mockery of the m a n u a l
… Brought it, let's not muck about, down on his own head… Put up a memorial and we send a message to future generations that we sanction personnel operating outside legality… It was a vendetta, unacceptable behaviour.' There would only be the stones in the valley. He heard the approach of the car, and the diplomat touched his arm. A Mercedes limousine approached, hugging the hammered-down ruts dug by tractor wheels. The doors opened. A sleek elderly man helped a young woman into a wheelchair, and bumped the chair towards the cairn. He had not seen them at the village ceremony. She held a small posy of flowers. He felt a wearying sadness. A spit of rain was falling.
He took out his notepad again, and wrote down their names: Judge Zenjil Delic, Jasmina Delic.
'We had a choice to make, the present or the future.
We chose to safeguard the future.'
'He bought me flowers… Before we rejected him I showed him the old burial stones in Sarajevo. On one was written, "I stood, praying to God, meaning no evil, yet I was struck to death by lightning." It is good that they have put stones here, where the lightning struck… I return his flowers.'
She gave him the posy of alive strident colours. He leaned forward, and down, kissed her cheek, then laid the flowers at the foot of the cairn. He stared at the heaped stones. Some had dried earth on them and some were covered with lichen. He heard the car drive away over the field. He felt a crushing weight of responsibility. They had all told him he was not responsible – the CIO had said it, and the team had clamoured it, and his wife had sought to persuade him of it – but he knew what he had done… Or had there been, in that valley, a young man's fulfilment?
The diplomat coughed, then said quietly, 'If you're to catch that flight, Mr Gough… '
He looked around him. He saw the fields, ploughed and grazed by livestock, and a vineyard of new posts and new bright wire, and the wooded slopes, and the gold of the leaves on a big mulberry tree, and the smoke from the villages' chimneys, and the river, and he thought it a perfect place, a place of peace. He took from his pocket the little knife with which he cleaned the inside of his pipe bowl, and opened it, and knelt beside the cairn. He chose a large stone, scratched the words on it, and wondered how long they would last against the weather.
CANN do – WILL do.
The words, above the flowers, glimmered back at him. He turned on his heel.