The Gun Seller

L. ARTHUR ROSE AND DOUGLAS FURBER

We’re back on the roof of the consulate now. Just so as you know.

The sun is already bobbing its head along the horizon, evaporating the sky-line of dark tiles into a misty strip of whiteness, and I think to myself that if it was up to me, I’d have the helicopter airborne by now. The sun is so strong, so bright, so hopelessly blinding that, for all I know, the helicopter might already be there - there might be fifty helicopters, hovering twenty yards up-sun of me, watching me unwrap my two packets of brown, grease-proof paper. Except, of course, I’d hear them. I hope.

‘What do you want?’ says Murdah.

He is behind me, perhaps twenty feet away. I have handcuffed him to the fire escape while I get on with my chores, and he doesn’t seem to like that very much. He seems agitated.

‘What do you want?’ he screams.

I don’t answer, so he goes on screaming. Not words, exactly. Or, at least, none that I recognise. I whistle a few bars of something to block out the noise, and continue attaching clip A to retaining lug B, while making sure that cable C is not fouling bracket D.

‘What I want,’ I say eventually, ‘is for you to see it coming. That’s all.’

I turn to look at him now, to see how bad he’s feeling. It’s very bad, and I find I don’t mind all that much.

‘You are insane,’ he shouts, tugging at his wrists. ‘I am here. Do you see?’ He laughs, or almost laughs, because he can’t believe how stupid I am. ‘I am here. The Graduate will not come, because I am here.’

I turn away again, and squint into the low wall of sunlight. ‘Well I hope so, Naimh,’ I say. ‘I really do. I hope you still have more than one vote.’

There is a pause, and when I turn back to him, I find that the sheen has folded itself into a frown.

‘Vote,’ he says eventually, in a soft voice. ‘Vote,’ I say again.

Murdahwatches me carefully.

‘I don’t understand you,’ he says.

So I take a deep breath, and try and lay it out for him. ‘You’re not an arms dealer, Naimh,’ I say. ‘Not any more. I’ve taken that privilege away from you. For your sins. You’re not rich, you’re not powerful, you’re not connected, you’re not a member of the Garrick.’ That doesn’t register with him, so maybe he never was anyway. ‘All you are, at this moment, is a man. Like the rest of us. And as a man, you only get one vote. Sometimes not even that.’

He thinks carefully before he answers. He knows I’m mad, and that he must go gently with me.

‘I don’t know what you’re saying,’ he says.

‘Yes you do,’ I say. ‘You just don’t know whether I know what I’m saying.’ The sun inches a little higher, straining on its tip-toes to get a better view of us. ‘I’m talking about the twenty-six other people who stand to gain directly from the success of The Graduate, and the hundreds, maybe thousands, of people who will gain indirectly. People who have worked, and lobbied, and bribed, and threatened, and even killed, just to get this close. They all have votes too. Barnes will be talking to them at this moment, asking for a yes or no answer, and who’s to say how the numbers will come out?’

Murdahis very still now. His eyes are wide and his mouth is open, as if he’s not enjoying the taste of something. ‘Twenty-six,’ he says, very quietly. ‘How do you know twenty-six? How do you know this?’

I make a modest face.

‘I used to be a financial journalist,’ I say. ‘For about an hour. A man at Smeets Velde Kerplein followed your money for me. Told me a lot of things.’

He drops his gaze, concentrating hard. His brain has got him here, so his brain must get him out.

‘Of course,’ I say, forcing him back on to the track, ‘you may be right. Maybe the twenty-six will all rally round, call it off, write it off, whatever. I just wouldn’t stake my life on it.’

I leave a pause, because I feel that, one way and another, I’ve earned the right to it.

‘But I’m very happy to stake yours,’ I say.

This shakes him. Knocks him out of his stupor.

‘You are insane,’ he shouts. ‘Do you know that? Do you know that you are insane?’

‘Right,’ I say. ‘So call them. Call Barnes, tell him to stop it. You’re on the roof with a madman, and the party is off. Use your one vote.’

He shakes his head.

‘They will not come,’ he says. And then, in a much quieter voice, ‘They will not come, because I am here.’

I shrug, because it’s all I can think of. I’m feeling very shruggy at this moment. The way I used to feel before parachute jumps.

‘Tell me what you want,’ screams Murdah, suddenly, and he starts to rattle the iron of the fire-escape with his handcuffs. When I look across again, I can see bright, wet blood on his wrists.

Diddums.

‘I want to watch the sun rise,’ I say.

Francisco, Cyrus, Latifa, Bernhard, and a bloody Benjamin have joined us up here on the roof, because this seems to be where the interesting people are at the moment. They are variously scared and confused, unable to get a grip on what is happening; they have lost their place in the script, and are hoping that somebody will call out a page number very soon.

Benjamin, needless to say, has done his best to poison the others against me. But his best stopped being good enough the moment they saw me coming back into the consulate, holding a gun to Murdah’s neck. They found that strange. Peculiar. Not consistent with Benjamin’s wild theories of Betrayal.

So they stand before me now, eyes flitting between me and Murdah; they are sniffing the wind, while Benjamin trembles with the strain of not shooting me.

‘Ricky, what the fuck is happening here?’ says Francisco.

I stand up slowly, feeling things crack in my knees, and step back to admire the result of my labours.

Then I turn away, and wave a hand towards Murdah. I have rehearsed this speech a few times, and I think I’ve got most of it down.

‘This man,’ I tell them, used to be an arms dealer.’ I move a little closer to the fire-escape, because I want everyone to be able to hear me clearly. ‘His name is Naimh Murdah, he is the chief executive officer of seven separate companies, and the majority shareholder in a further forty-one. He has homes in London, New York, California, the south of France, the west of Scotland, the north of anywhere with a swimming pool. He has a total net worth of just over a billion dollars,’ which makes me turn to look at Murdah, ‘and that must have been an exciting moment, Naimh. Big cake on that day, I would imagine.’ I look back at my audience. ‘More importantly, from our point of view, he is the sole signatory to over ninety separate bank accounts, one of which has been paying our wages for the last six months.’

Nobody seems ready to jump in here, so I press on for the coup.

‘This is the man who conceived, organised, supplied and financed The Sword Of Justice.’

There is a pause.

Only Latifa makes a sound; a little snort of disbelief, or fear, or anger. Otherwise, they are silent.

They stare at Murdah for a long time, and so do I. I notice now that he also has some blood on his neck - perhaps I was a little rough getting him up the stairs - but apart from that, he looks well. And why wouldn’t he?

‘Bullshit,’ says Latifa eventually.

‘Right,’ I say. ‘Bullshit. Mr Murdah, it’s bullshit. Would you go along with that?’

Murdahstares back, trying desperately to judge which of us is the least mad.

‘Would you go along with that?’ I say again.

‘We are a revolutionary movement,’ says Cyrus suddenly, which makes me look at Francisco - because really it was his job to say that. But Francisco is frowning, and looking around, and I know he’s thinking about the difference between planned action and real action. It was nothing like this in the brochure, is Francisco’s complaint.

‘Of course we are,’ I say. ‘We are a revolutionary movement, with a commercial sponsor. That’s all. This man,’ and I point at Murdah as dramatically as I can, ‘has set you up, has set all of us up, has set the world up, to buy his guns.’ They shift about a little. ‘It’s called marketing. Aggressive marketing. Creating a demand for a product, in a place where once only daffodils grew. That’s what this man does.’

I turn and look at this man, hoping that he’s going to chip in and say yes, it’s all true, every word of it. But Murdah doesn’t seem to want to talk, and instead we have a long pause. A lot of Brownian thoughts rushing about, colliding with each other.

‘Guns,’ says Francisco eventually. His voice is low and soft, and he might be calling from miles away. ‘What guns?’

This is it. The moment when I have to make them understand. And believe.

‘A helicopter,’ I say, and they all look at me now. Murdah too. ‘They are sending a helicopter here to kill us.’

Murdahclears his throat.

‘It will not come,’ he says, and I can’t really tell whether he’s trying to persuade me or himself. ‘I am here, and it will not come.’

I turn back to the others.

‘Any time now,’ I say, ‘a helicopter is going to appear, from that direction.’ I point into the sun, and notice that Bernhard is the only one who turns. The rest of them keep on watching me. ‘A helicopter that is smaller, faster, and better-armed than anything you have ever seen in your lives. It is going to come here, very soon, and take us all off the roof of this building. It is probably going to take the roof as well, and the next two floors, because this is a machine of unbelievable power.’

There is a pause, and some of them look down at their feet. Benjamin opens his mouth to say something, or, more probably, shout something, but Francisco stretches out a hand and rests it on Benjamin’s shoulder. Then looks at me. ‘We know they are sending a helicopter, Rick,’ he says. Whoa.

That doesn’t sound right. That doesn’t sound remotely right. I look around the other faces, and when I make contact with Benjamin, he can’t control himself any longer.

‘Can’t you see, you fucking shit?’ he screams, and he’s almost laughing, he hates me so much. ‘We’ve done it.’ He starts to jump up and down on the spot, and I can see that his nose has started to bleed again. ‘We’ve done it, and your treachery has been for nothing.’

I look back to Francisco.

‘They called us, Rick,’ he says, his voice still soft and distant. ‘Ten minutes ago.’

‘Yes?’ I say.

They’re all watching me now, as Francisco speaks. ‘They’re sending a helicopter,’ he says. ‘To take us to the airport.’ He lets out a sigh, and his shoulders drop a little. ‘We’ve won.’

Oh for fuck’s sake, I think to myself.

So here we stand, in a desert of gritty asphalt, with a few air-conditioning vents standing in as palm trees, while we wait for life or death. A place in the sun, or a place in the dark.

I have to speak now. I’ve tried a couple of times already to get myself heard, but there was some loose, foolish talk among the comrades of throwing me off the roof, so I held back. But now, the sun is perfect. God has reached down, placed the sun on the tee, and is, at this moment, rummaging in his bag for the driver. This is the perfect time, and I have to speak.

‘So what happens?’ I say.

Nobody answers, for the simple reason that nobody can. We all know what we want to happen, of course, but wanting is not enough any more. Between the idea and the reality falls the shadow, and all that. I take some loos from all quarters. Absorb them.

‘We’re just going to hang about here, is that it?’

‘Shut the fuck up,’ says Benjamin.

I ignore him. I have to.

‘We wait here, on the roof, for a helicopter. That’s what they said?’ Still nobody answers. ‘Did they by any chance suggest we stand in a line, with bright orange circles round us?’ Silence. ‘I mean, I’m just wondering how we could make this any easier for them.’

I direct most of this towards Bernhard, because I have the feeling that he’s the only one who isn’t sure. The rest of them have clutched at the straw. They’re excited, hopeful, busy deciding whether or not they’re going to sit by the window, and if there’ll be time to get duty frees - but, like me, Bernhard has been turning every now and then, squinting into the sun, and perhaps he’s also thinking that this would be a good time to attack someone. This is the perfect time, and Bernhard is feeling vulnerable up here on the roof.

I turn to Murdah. ‘Tell them,’ I say.

He shakes his head. Not a refusal. Just confusion, and fear, and some other things. I takeafew steps towards him, which makes Benjamin jab the air with his Steyr.

I have to keep going.

‘Tell them what I’ve said is true,’ I say. ‘Tell them who you are.’

Murdahcloses his eyes for a moment, then opens them wide. Perhaps he was hoping to find kempt lawns and white jacketed waiters, or the ceiling of one of his bedrooms; when all he sees is a handful of dirty, hungry, scared people with guns, he slumps down against the parapet.

‘You know I’m right,’ I say. ‘The helicopter that comes here, you know what it’s for. What it’s going to do. You have to tell them.’ I take a few more steps. ‘Tell them what has happened, and why they’re going to die. Use your vote.’

But Murdah is spent. His chin is down on his chest, and his eyes have closed again.

‘ Murdah…’ I say, and then stop, because someone has made a short, hissing sound. It’s Bernhard, and he is standing still, looking down at the roof, his head cocked to one side. ‘I hear it,’ he says.

Nobody moves. We are frozen.

And then I hear it too. And then Latifa, and then Francisco.

A distant fly in a distant bottle.

Murdahhas either heard it, or believed that the rest of us have heard it. His chin has lifted from his chest, and his eyes are wide open.

But I can’t wait for him. I walk over to the parapet. ‘What are you doing?’ says Francisco.

‘This thing is going to kill us,’ I say. ‘It’s here to save us, Ricky.’

‘Kill us, Francisco.’

‘You fucking shit,’ screams Benjamin. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

They’re all watching me now. Listening and watching. Because I have reached down to my little tent of brown grease-proof paper, and laid bare the treasures therein.

The British-made javelin is a light-weight, supersonic, self-contained surface-to-air missile system. It has a two-stage solid-fuel rocket motor, giving an effective range of between five and six kilometres, it weighs sixty-odd pounds in all, and it comes in any colour you want, so long as it’s olive green.

The system is made up of two handy units, the first being a sealed launch canister, containing the missile, and the second being the semi-automatic-line-of-sight-guidance system, which has a lot of very small, very clever, very expensive electronic stuff inside it. Once assembled, the javelin is capable of performing one job supremely well.

It shoots down helicopters.

That’s why I’d asked for it, you see. Bob Rayner would have got me a teasmaid, or a hair-dryer, or a BMW convertible, if I’d paid the right money.

But I’d said no, Bob. Put away those tempting things. I want a big toy. I want a javelin.

This particular model, according to Bob, had fallen onto the back of a lorry leaving an Army Ordnance depot nearColchester. You may wonder how such a thing can happen in the modern age, what with computerised inventories, and receipts, and armed men standing at gates - but, believe me, the army is no different from Harrods. Stock shrinkage is a constant problem.

The javelin had been carefully removed from the lorry by some friends of Rayner’s, who had transferred it to the underside of a VW minibus, where it had stayed, thank God, the course of its twelve hundred mile journey to Tangier.

I don’t know if the couple driving the bus knew it was there. I only know that they were New Zealanders.

‘You put that down,’ screams Benjamin. ‘Or what?’ I say.

‘I’ll fucking kill you,’ he yells, moving closer to the edge of the roof.

There is a pause, and it’s filled by buzzing. The fly in the bottle is angry.

‘I don’t care,’ I say. ‘I really don’t. If I put this down, I’m dead anyway. So I’ll hang on to it, thanks.’

‘Cisco,’ shouts Benjamin in desperation. ‘We’ve won. You said we’ve won.’ Nobody answers him, so Benjamin starts his jumping again. ‘If he shoots at the helicopter, they will kill us.’

There’s some more shouting now. A lot more. But it’s getting harder to tell where the shouting is coming from, because the buzz is gradually turning into a clatter. A clatter from the sun.

‘Ricky,’ says Francisco, and I realise that he is standing right behind me now. ‘You put it down.’

‘It’s going to kill us, Francisco,’ I say.

‘Put it down, Ricky. I count to five. You put it down, or I shoot you. I mean it.’

And I think he probably does mean it. I think he really believes that this sound, this beating of wings, is Mercy, not Death.

‘One,’ he says.

‘Up to you, Naimh,’ I say, adjusting my eye to the rubber collar on the sight. ‘Tell them the truth now. Tell them what this machine is, and what it’s going to do.’

‘He’s going to kill us,’ screams Benjamin, and I think I can see him leaping around somewhere on my left.

‘Two,’ says Francisco. I switch on the guidance system. The buzzing has gone, drowned out by the lower frequencies of the helicopter’s noise. Bass notes. Beating of wings.

‘Tell them, Naimh. If they shoot me, everybody dies. Tell them the truth.’

The sun covers the sky, blank and pitiless. There is only sun and clatter.

‘Three,’ says Francisco, and suddenly there’s some metal behind my left ear. It might be a spoon, but I don’t think so. ‘Yes or no, Naimh? What is it to be?’

‘Four,’ says Francisco.

The noise is big now. As big as the sun. ‘Kill it,’ says Francisco.

But it isn’t Francisco. It’s Murdah. And he’s not saying, he’s screaming. Going mad. He is ripping at the handcuffs, bleeding, shouting, thrashing, kicking grit across the roof.

And now I think Francisco has started shouting back at him, telling him to shut up, while Bernhard and Latifa scream at each other, or at me.

I think, but I’m not sure. They have all begun to disappear, you see. Fading away, leaving me in a very quiet world. Because now I can see it.

Small, black, fast. It could be a bug on the front of the sight. The Graduate.

Hydra rockets. Hellfire air-to-ground missiles..SO cannons. Four hundred miles an hour, if it needs to. One chance only.

It will come in and pick its targets. It has nothing to fear from us. Bunch of crazy terrorists with automatic rifles, popping away. Couldn’t hit a barn door.

Whereas the Graduate can punch a whole room out of a building with one press of a button.

One chance only.

This fucking sun. Blazing at me, burning out the image on the sight.

Tears started in my eyes from the brightness of the picture, but I held my eye open.

Put it down, Benjamin is saying. Screaming it in my ear, from a thousand miles away. Put it down.

Jesus, it’s fast. It jinks along the rooftops, maybe half a mile. You fucking shit bastard.

Cold and hard on my neck. Somebody is definitely trying to put me off. Pushing a barrel through my neck.

I’ll shoot you dead, screams Benjamin.

Remove the safety cover, and flick down the trigger. Your javelin is now armed, gentlemen.

Choking on the shot. Put it down.

The roof exploded. Just disintegrated. And then, a fraction of a second later, the sound of the cannon fire. An incredible, deafening, body-shaking noise. Chunks of stone flew up and sideways, every piece as deadly as the shells that caused it. Dust and violence and destruction. I winced and turned away, and the tears ran down my face as the sun let me go.

It had made its first pass. At incredible speed. Faster than anything I’d seen, anything but a fighter. And its turn was unbelievable. It just dropped an elbow and spun. Flat out one way, spin, flat out the other. Nothing in between.

I could taste the fumes from its exhaust.

I raised the javelin again, and as I did so, I saw Benjamin’s head and shoulders thirty feet away. The rest of him, fuck knows where.

Francisco was screaming at me again, but this time it was in Spanish, and I’ll never know what that was about.

Here it comes. Quarter of a mile. And this time I really could see it.

The sun was behind me now, rising, getting up to speed, shining its full force on this little black bundle of hatred coming towards me.

Cross-wires. Black dot.

Flying a straight course. No evasion. Why bother? Bunch of crazy terrorists, nothing to fear from them.

I can see the pilot’s face. Not in the sight, but in my mind. From the first pass, the image of the pilot’s face has come into my mind.

Let’s go.

I pulled the trigger, firing up the thermal battery, and braced myself as the first stage motor shoved me back towards the parapet with the force of the missile’s launch.Newton, I thought.

Coming in now. Fast as ever, fast as anything, but I can see you.

I can see you, you fucking shit bastard.

The second stage motor ignited, kicking the javelin forward, keen and eager. Let the dog see the rabbit.

I just hold it. That’s all I do. Hold it in the cross-wires. The camera in the aiming unit tracks the flare from the missile tail, compares it with signals from the sight - any mismatch, and an error correction signal is sent to the missile. All I have to do is hold it in the cross-wires.

Two seconds. One second.

Latifa’scheek had been cut by flying masonry, and it was bleeding badly.

We sat in Beamon’s office, and I tried to staunch the wound with a towel, while Beamon covered us with Hugo’s Steyr. Some of the other hostages had got hold of weapons too, and they were scattered over the room, peering nervously out of the windows. I looked around the room at the nervous faces, and suddenly felt exhausted. And hungry. Ravenously hungry.

There was some noise in the corridor. Footsteps. Shouts in Arabic, and French, and then English.

‘Turn that up, will you?’ I said to Beamon.

He glanced over his shoulder at the television, where a blonde woman was mouthing at us. The caption underneath said ‘Connie Fairfax -Casablanca ’. She was reading something.

Beamonstepped forward and twisted up the volume. Connie had a nice voice.

Latifahad a nice face. The blood from her cut was starting to thicken.

‘… issued three hours ago to CNN, by a young woman of Arab appearance,’ said Connie, and then the picture cut to footage of a small, black helicopter, apparently getting into serious difficulties. Connie kept reading.

‘My name is Thomas Lang,’ she said. ‘I have been coerced into this action by officers of the American intelligence services, ostensibly to penetrate a terrorist organisation, The Sword Of Justice.’ The picture cut back to Connie as she looked up and pressed at her earpiece.

A man’s voice said: ‘Connie, weren’t they responsible for the shooting inAustria?’

Connie said yes, that was absolutely right. Except it wasSwitzerland.

Then she looked down at the piece of paper.

‘The Sword Of justice is, in reality, being financed by a western arms dealer, in conjunction with renegade elements of the American CIA.’

The shouts in the corridor had subsided, and when I looked over to the doorway, I saw that Solomon was standing there, watching me. He nodded, once, and then slowly advanced into the room, picking his way through the wreck of furniture. A clutch of tight shirts appeared behind him.

‘It’s the truth,’ screamed Murdah, and I turned to the television to see what kind of footage they’d got of his rooftop confession. It wasn’t great, to be honest. The tops of a couple of heads, moving about occasionally. Murdah’s voice was distorted, layered with background noise, because I hadn’t been able to position the radio microphone near enough to the fire-escape. But I’d have known it was him, all the same, which meant that others would too.

‘Mr Lang closed his statement,’ said Connie, ‘by giving CNN a wavelength of 254.125 megahertz, the VHF frequency from which this recording was made. No one has yet identified the voices involved, but it appears…’

I gestured at Beamon.

‘You can turn it off, if you want,’ I said. But he left it on, and I wasn’t going to argue with him.

Solomon perched himself on the edge of Beamon’s desk. He looked at Latifa for a moment, then at me.

‘Shouldn’t you be rounding up some suspects?’ I said. Solomon smiled a little.

‘Mr Murdah is very rounded up indeed, at the moment,’ he said. ‘And Miss Woolf is in good hands. As for Mr Russell P Barnes…’

‘He was flying The Graduate,’ I said.

Solomon raised an eyebrow. Or rather, he left it where it was and dropped his body slightly. He looked as if he didn’t want to be surprised any more today.

‘Rusty used to fly helicopters for the Marines,’ I said. ‘That’s how he got involved in the first place.’ I eased the towel gently away from Latifa’s face, and saw that the bleeding had stopped. ‘Do you think I can make a phone call from here?’

We flew back toEngland ten days later in an RAF Hercules. The seats were hard, the cabin was noisy, and there was no film. But I was happy.

I was happy watching Solomon sleep, slumped on the other side of the cabin, his brown raincoat folded behind his head and his hands clasped across his stomach. Solomon was a good friend at any time, but asleep, I felt like I almost loved him.

Or maybe I was just getting my loving mechanism warmed up, ready for someone else.

Yes, that was probably it.

We touched down at RAF Coltishall just aftermidnight, and a gaggle of cars followed as we taxied to the hangar. After a while, the door clanged open and some coldNorfolk air climbed aboard. I took a deep breath of it.

O’Neal was waiting outside, hands thrust deep into the pockets of his overcoat, shoulders bunched around his ears. He jerked his chin at me, and Solomon and I followed him to a Rover.

O’Neal and Solomon got in the front, and I slid in behind them, slowly, wanting to enjoy this moment.

‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Hello,’ said Ronnie.

There was a pause of the better sort, and Ronnie and I smiled at each other and nodded.

‘Miss Crichton wanted very much to be here on your return,’ said O’Neal, wiping condensation off the windscreen with his glove.

‘Really?’ I said. ‘Really,’ said Ronnie.

O’Neal started the engine, while Solomon fiddled with the de-mister.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘whatever Miss Crichton wants, she must definitely have.’

Ronnie and I kept on smiling as the Rover swept out of the base, and into theNorfolk night.

In the six months that followed, overseas sales of the javelin surface-to-air missile increased by a little over forty per cent.THE END