The Gun Seller

VALERIE SINGLETON

I persuaded Francisco to hold off with the statement for a while.

He wanted to get it out straight away, but I said a few more hours of uncertainty wouldn’t do us any harm. Once they knew who we were, and could put a name to us, the story would cool a little. Even if there were fireworks afterwards, the mystery would have gone.

Just a few more hours, I said.

And so we waited through the night, taking our turns in the different positions.

The roof was the least popular, because it was cold and lonely, and nobody took that for more than an hour. Otherwise, we ate, and chatted, and didn’t chat, and thought about our lives and how they’d brought us to this. Whether we were captors or captives.

They didn’t send us any more food that night, but Hugo found some frozen hamburger buns in the canteen, and we laid them out on Beamon’s desk to thaw and prodded them whenever we couldn’t think of anything else to do.

The hostages dozed and held hands most of the time. Francisco had thought about splitting them up and scattering them over the building, but in the end he’d decided that they’d just take more guarding that way, and he was probably right. Francisco was being right about quite a lot of things. Taking advice, too, which made a nice change. I suppose there aren’t many terrorists in the world who are so familiar with hostage situations that they can afford to be dogmatic, and say nah, the way you do it is this. Francisco was in uncharted waters just as much as the rest of us, and it made him nicer somehow.

It was just after four, and I had fixed it so that I was down in the lobby with Latifa when Francisco hobbled down the stairs with the statement for the press.

‘Lat,’ he said, with a charming smile, ‘go tell the world for us.’

Latifasmiled back at him, thrilled that the wise elder brother had conferred this honour upon her, but not wanting to show it too much. She took the envelope from him and watched, lovingly, as he limped back to the staircase.

‘They’re waiting for you now,’ he said, without turning round. ‘Give it to them, tell them it goes straight to CNN, nobody else, and if they don’t read it, word for word, they got dead Americans in here.’ He stopped as he reached the halflanding, and turned to us. ‘You cover her good, Ricky.’

I nodded and we watched him go, and then Latifa sighed. What a guy, she was thinking. My hero, and he chose me. The real reason Francisco had chosen Latifa, of course, was that he reckoned it might make an armed assault by the gallant Moroccans fractionally less likely if they knew we had women in the team. But I didn’t want to spoil her moment by saying that.

Latifaturned and looked out through the main doors, clutching the envelope and squinting into the bright lights of the television crews. She put a hand up to her hair.

‘Fame at last,’ I said, and she made a face at me.

She moved across to the reception desk and started to fiddle with her shirt in the reflection of the glass. I followed. ‘Here,’ I said, and I took the envelope from her and helped arrange the collar of the shirt in a cool way. I fluffed her hair out from behind her ears, and wiped a smudge of something off her cheek. She stood there and let me do it. Not as an intimacy. More like a boxer in his corner, getting set for the next round while the seconds squirt and rub and rinse and primp.

I reached into my pocket, took out the envelope, and handed it to her, while she took some deep breaths.

I gave her shoulder a squeeze. ‘You’ll be okay,’ I said.

‘Never been on TV before,’ she said. Dawn.Sunrise. Daybreak. Whatever.

There is still a gloom over the horizon, but it has an orange smear to it. The night is shrinking back into the ground, as the sun scrabbles for a finger-hold on the edge of the skyline.

The hostages are mostly asleep. They have drawn closer together in the night, because it has been colder than anyone thought it would be, and legs are no longer lolling over the edge of the rug.

Francisco looks tired as he holds out the phone for me. He has his feet propped up on the side of Beamon’s desk, and he is watching CNN with the sound turned down, as a kindness to the sleeping Beamon.

I’m tired too, of course, but maybe I’ve got a little more adrenalin in my blood at this moment. I take the phone from Francisco.

‘Yeah.’

Some popping, electronic noises. Then Barnes.

‘Your five-thirty alarm call,’ he says, with a smile in his voice.

‘What do you want?’ And I realise immediately that I have said this with an English accent. I look across at Francisco, but he doesn’t seem to have noticed. So I turn back to the window and listen to Barnes for a while, and when he’s finished I take a deep breath, hoping desperately and not caring at all, both at the same time.

‘When?’ I say.

Barnes chuckles. I laugh too, in no particular accent. ‘Fifty minutes,’ he says, and hangs up.

When I turn back from the window, Francisco is watching me. His eyelashes seem longer than ever.

Sarah is waiting for me.

‘They’re bringing us breakfast,’ I say, bending my Minnesotan vowels this time.

Francisco nods.

The sun is going to be clambering up soon, gradually heaving itself over the window sill. I leave the hostages, and Beamon, and Francisco, dozing in front of CNN. I walk out of the office and take the lift to the roof.

Three minutes later, forty-seven to go, and things are about as ready as they’re going to be. I take the stairs down to the lobby.

Empty corridor, empty stairwell, empty stomach. The blood in my ears is loud, much louder than the sound of my feet on the carpet. I stop at the second floor landing, and look out into the street.

Decent crowd, for this time of the morning.

I was thinking ahead, that’s why I forgot the present. The present hasn’t happened, isn’t happening, there is only the future. Life and death. Life or death. These, you see, are big things. Much bigger than footsteps. Footsteps are tiny things, compared to oblivion.

I had dropped down half a flight, just turned the corner on to the mezzanine, before I heard them and realised how wrong they were - wrong because they were running footsteps, and nobody should have been running in this building. Not now. Not with forty-six minutes to go.

Benjamin rounded the corner and stopped.

‘What’s up, Benj?’ I said, as coolly as I could. He stared at me for a moment. Breathing hard. ‘The fuck have you been?’ he said.

I frowned.

‘On the roof,’ I said. ‘I was…’

‘ Latifa’son the roof,’ he snapped.

We stared at each other. He was blowing through his mouth, partly from exertion, partly from anger.

‘Well, Benj, I told her to go down to the lobby. There’s going to be breakfast…’

And then, in a rush of angry movement, Benjamin lifted the Steyr to his shoulder and jammed his cheek against the stock, his fists clenching and unclenching around the grips. And the barrel of the weapon had disappeared.

Now, how could that be? I thought to myself. How could the barrel of a Steyr, four hundred and twenty millimetres long, six grooves, right hand twist - how could that just disappear?

Well of course it couldn’t, and it hadn’t. It was just my point of view.

‘You fucking shit bastard,’ says Benjamin. I stand there, staring into a black hole.

Forty-five minutes to go, and this, let’s face it, is about the worst possible time for Benjamin to bring up a subject as big, as broad, as many-headed as Betrayal. I suggest to him, politely I hope, that we might deal with it later; but Benjamin thinks now would be better.

‘You fucking shit bastard,’ is the way he puts it.

Part of the problem is that Benjamin has never trusted me. That’s really the gist of it. Benjamin has had his suspicions right from the start, and he wants me to know about them now, in case I feel like trying to argue with him.

It all began, he tells me, with my military training. Oh really, Benj?

Yes really.

Benjamin had lain awake at night, staring at the roof of his tent, wondering where and how a retarded Minnesotan had learnt to strip an M16, blindfold, in half the time it took everyone else. From there, apparently, he’d gone on to wonder about my accent, and my taste in clothes and music. And how come I put so many miles on the Land Rover when I was only going out for some beer?

This is all trifling stuff, of course, and, until now, Ricky could have batted it back without any trouble.

But the other part of the problem - the bigger part, frankly, right at this moment - is that Benjamin was fooling around with the telephone exchange during my conversation with Barnes.

Forty-one minutes.

‘So what’s it to be, Benj?’ I say.

He presses his cheek harder against the stock, and I think I can see his finger turning white on the trigger.

‘You going to shoot me?’ I say. ‘Now? Going to pull that trigger?’

He licks his lips. He knows what I’m thinking.

He twitches slightly, then pulls his face away from the Steyr, keeping his huge eyes on me.

‘ Latifa,’ he calls over his shoulder. Loud. But not loud enough. He seems to be having trouble with his voice.

‘They hear gunshots, Benj,’ I say, ‘they’re going to think you’ve killed a hostage. They’re going to storm the building. Kill us all.’

The word ‘kill’ hits him, and for an instant I think he might fire.

‘ Latifa,’ he says again. Louder this time, and that has to be it. I can’t let him shout a third time. I start to move, very slowly, towards him. My left hand is as loose as a hand can be.

‘For a lot of guys out there, Benj,’ I say, moving, ‘a gunshot is just what they want to hear right now. You going to give them that?’

He licks his lips again. Once. Twice. Turns his head towards the stairs.

I grab the barrel with my left hand, and push it back into his shoulder. No choice. If I pull the weapon away from him, the trigger’s depressed, and so am I. So I push it back and to the side, and as his face comes further away from the stock I drive the heel of my right hand up under Benjamin’s nose.

He drops like a stone - faster than a stone, as if some massive force is pushing him down to the floor - and for a moment I think I may have killed him. But then his head starts to move from side to side, and I can see the blood bubbling away from his lips.

I ease the Steyr out of his hands and flick down the safety catch, just as Latifa shouts up from the stairwell.

‘Yeah?’

I can hear her feet on the stairs now. Not fast, but not slow. I look down at Benjamin.

That’s democracy, Benj. One man against many.

Latifarounds the corner of the lower flight, the Uzi still slung at her shoulder.

‘Jesus,’ she says, when she sees the blood. ‘What happened?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say. I’m not looking at her. I’m bending over Benjamin, peering anxiously into his face. ‘Guess he fell.’ Latifa brushes past me and squats at Benjamin’s side, and as she does so, I glance at my watch.

Thirty-nine minutes.

Latifaturns and looks up at me.

‘I’ll do this,’ she says. ‘Take the lobby, Rick.’ So I do.

I take the lobby, and the front entrance, and the steps, and the hundred and sixty-seven yards from the steps to the police cordon.

My head feels hot by the time I get there, because I have my hands clasped on top of it.

Not surprisingly, they frisked me like they were taking a frisking exam. To get into the Royal College of Frisking. Five times, head to toe, mouth, ears, crotch, soles of shoes. They tore most of my clothes from my body, and left me looking like an opened Christmas present.

It took them sixteen minutes.

They left me for another five, leaning against the side of a police van, arms and legs spread, while they shouted and pushed past each other. I stared at the ground. Sarah is waiting for me.

Christ, she’d better be.

Another minute went by, more shouting, more pushing, and I started to look around, thinking that if something didn’t happen soon, I’d have to make it happen. Bloody Benjamin. My shoulders started to ache from the weight of my leaning. ‘Good job, Thomas,’ said a voice.

I looked to my left, under my arm, and saw a pair of scuffed Red Wing boots. One flat on the ground, the other cocked at a right angle, with the toe buried in the dust. I slowly tilted up to find the rest of Russell Barnes.

He was leaning against the door of the van, smiling, holding out his packet of Marlboro to me. He wore a leather flight jacket, with the name Connor stitched over his left breast. Who the fuck was Connor?

The friskers had fallen back a little, but only a little, out of an apparent respect for Barnes. Plenty of them kept on watching me, thinking maybe they’d missed a bit.

I shook my head at the cigarettes. ‘Let me see her,’ I said.

Because she’s waiting for me.

Barnes watched me for a moment, then smiled again. He was feeling good, and relaxed, and loose. Game over, for him. He looked to his left.

‘Sure,’ he said.

He bounced himself casually away from the van, making the metal skin of the door pop, and gestured for me to follow him. The sea of tight shirts and wrap-around sunglasses parted as we walked slowly across towards the blueToyota. To our right, behind a steel barrier, stood the television crews, their cables coiled about their feet and their blue-white lights puncturing the remains of the night. Some of the cameras trained on me as I walked, but most of them stuck to the building.

CNN seemed to have the best position.

Murdahgot out of the car first, while Sarah just sat and waited, staring ahead through the windscreen, her hands clasped between her thighs. We had got to within a couple of yards before she turned to look at me, and tried to smile.

I’m waiting for you, Thomas.

‘Mr Lang,’ said Murdah, coming round the back of the car, stepping between me and Sarah. He was wearing a dark-grey overcoat, and a white shirt with no tie. The sheen of his forehead seemed a little duller than I remembered, and there were a few hours’ worth of stubble around his jaw, but otherwise he looked well.

And why wouldn’t he?

He stared into my face for a second or two, then gave a brief, satisfied nod. As if I’d done nothing more than mow his lawn to a reasonable standard.

‘Good,’ he said eventually.

I stared back at him. A blank stare, because I didn’t really want to give him anything right now.

‘What’s good?’ I said.

But Murdah was looking over my shoulder, signalling something, and I felt movement behind me.

‘See you around, Tom,’ said Barnes.

I turned and saw that he had started to move away, walking slowly backwards in a casual, loose-limbed, gonna -miss-you style. As our eyes met, he gave me a small, ironic salute, then wheeled round and headed off towards an army jeep, parked near the back of the mess of vehicles. A blond man in plain clothes started the engine as Barnes approached, then tooted his horn twice to clear the crowd from around the front of the jeep. I turned back to Murdah.

He was examining my face now, a little closer, a little more professional. Like a plastic surgeon.

‘What’s good?’ I said again, and waited while my question travelled the immense distance between our two worlds. ‘You have done as I wished,’ said Murdah at last. ‘As I predicted.’

He nodded again. A bit of a snip here, a tuck there - yes, I think we can do something with this face.

‘Some people, Mr Lang,’ he went on, ‘some friends of mine, told me that you would be a problem. You were a man who might try and kick off the traces.’ He took a deeper breath. ‘But I was right. And that is good.’

Then, still looking into my face, he stepped to one side and opened the passenger door of theToyota.

I watched as Sarah twisted slowly round in her seat and climbed out. She straightened up, her arms crossed in front of her as if warding off the cold of the dawn, and lifted her face to me.

We were so close.

‘Thomas,’ she said, and for a second I allowed myself to plunge into those eyes, deep down, and touch whatever it was that had brought me here. I would never forget that kiss. ‘Sarah,’ I said.

I reached out and put both my arms around her - shielding her, enveloping her, hiding her from everything and everyone - and she just stood there, keeping her hands in front of her body.

So I dropped my right hand to my side, and slid it between our bodies, across our stomachs, feeling, searching for contact.

I touched it. Took hold of it. ‘Goodbye,’ I whispered. She looked up at me. ‘Goodbye,’ she said.

The metal was warm from her body.

I let her go, and turned, slowly, to face Murdah.

He was talking softly into a mobile phone, looking back at me, smiling, his head cocked slightly to one side. And when he took in my expression he knew that something was wrong. He glanced down at my hand, and the smile tumbled away from his face like orange-peel from a speeding car.

‘Jesus Christ,’ said a voice behind me, and I suppose that meant that someone else must have seen the gun too. I couldn’t be sure, because I was staring hard into Murdah’s eyes.

‘It’s over,’ I said.

Murdahstared back at me, the mobile phone dropping down from his mouth.

‘It’s over,’ I said again. ‘Not off.,

‘What… what are you talking about?’ he said.

Murdahstood watching the gun, and the knowledge of it, the beauty of our little tableau, rippled outwards through the sea of tight shirts.

‘The expression is,’ I said, ‘to kick over the traces.’

Twenty-six

The sun has got his hat on,

Hip hip hip hooray,