4) Unveiled
BADFORT TOWERS
LONDON
Alex looked out over his balcony at the dull British Skies laded with rain, promising a deluge. At least the phototropic smogs were gone, a memory of autumns past. All he needed to contend with now was the grating contrast between modern, Integrated Britain - part of the FedCon and up to the millisecond in terms of technology, time, pace, taste and fashion - and Greece, an Isolate nation that looked to the distant past and it's heritage from antiquity to survive contemporary strife.
Transition would have been easier if he hadn't made a frenetic journey across Europe within hours of meeting "Mister Mad" at the Kazaklis' taverna. There would, doubtless, be repercussions about his using a Red Card facsimile freely to bluff a passage by VSTOL from that airfield in Bulgaria, easily the most difficult and stressful part of the whole enterprise; and the ride to Pristina airport; and the jet from there … well, They had wanted a delivery within twelve hours, hadn't They? Oddly enough, in retrospect, the whole affair had been exciting enough for him to regret completing it.
He gripped the warm balcony railing tight, himself in the grip of an un-named emotion that defied analysis but which an observer might have called an unease within the soul. Diverting himself, he looked at the skies to judge the weather, calculating that there wouldn't be any stargazing, nor any chess games with El Quatro. Which reminded him; at a cursory examination his telescope seemed to have shifted orientation slightly. Perhaps a bird perched on it, although he felt almost positive that birds were extinct within the London boundaries. Maybe a migrant.
Turning from the drab sky, he cast a knowing eye over the apartment from his balcony vantage, then re-entered, shutting the louvre doors behind him. Ever since moving in he'd had trouble from those doors; despite being so many floors up in a secure condominium set in a quiet residential area the alarm used to insist on chiding him should be leave the doors ajar or incorrectly locked. Eventually consulting a technical manual, he'd taken a pair of cable-cutters to the logic centre; the doors no longer squawked when left half-shut.
Oh the wonders of technology. Still, there were some decent things to be said about it. Fridges, for one thing; he had yet to encounter a properly working one in Greece. Apparently due to the exigencies of embargo and American supply, only the rich could afford them. A minor item, you might think, but when a person wanted a cold tube of beer it was a major disappointment to be presented with a tepid one.
He caught himself mentally. Cold tubes of lager? Jesus, Alex, remember Mexico. There is more to life than pandering to a dry throat. Somewhere in the world people are dying from dehydration and you worry about a cold drink.
Slightly less complacent, with a (cold) tube of lager clutched in his hand, Alex found his favourite fluid-seat to settle in. He decided to test one of the major technological differences between Greece and Britain, a true embodiment of FedCon-powered research and design as applied to conspicuous consumer consumption.
To his infinite disgust, the main subscriber selection now showing was "Pander", a game show of witless, lowest-denomination catering to bad taste. Put simply, people rang in to the studio to request guests, celebrities and presenters to perform explicitly degrading acts. The last time Alex encountered it he had rashly kicked the set and bruised his toes. Now he merely turned it off and fumed quietly. Greece definitely had something going for it. Any desire to vegetate in front of a television program, even a quality public channel one, flew out of the window. To make an insult more injurious, the picture quality had improved. Perhaps the London atmospherics had improved: it certainly cost enough in the anti-pollution surcharges for him to wish that true.
Bibor stood uncomfortably before his superior, Weiss. Bad news was always unpleasant to impart and it rarely earned those unfortunate to bear it any great reward either. All the more unpleasant when the bad news concerned a matter that Weiss had raised himself Bibor felt like the carrier of funeral tidings.
As requested seven people had been vetted. And Alexander Petrovic as well. Weiss raised his eyebrows a little at that: why was the Serb assessed separately, making a total of eight in all? That brought forward the news Bibor liked least. He showed Weiss the vetting report.
VETTING REPORT
SAVER 1037
SUBJECT: PETROVIC, ALEXANDER DRAGAN
FEDREGNO: 0772725436
STATUS: C.I.P.R.O. FILE (QV)
LOC:
FIL:
TUN:
ACT: PENDING
VETTING TEAM: S.I.E. VAN; I.O. CLEMENTS; I.O. KUREISHI
INSPECTING SUPERVISOR'S REPORT FOLLOWS:
Eagle Three carried out as per instructions (q.v. standing orders). During check following anomalies were detected under the terms of Contract (Contract Violations)
1) a) Apartment status: E3 subject currently owns in perpetuity 5 room apartment in secure condominium development, no rental, lease or sub-let in evidence, implying assets in excess of £250,000.
b) Subject currently owns Ford Khan Series 4 mod, market resale value est. £20,000 as at date of E3.
c) During premises search 1.5 kilos of loose-leaf tea (variety unknown) plus 0.5 kilos of coffee beans were discovered, market value total £3000.
d) 10cm refracting telescope (see below). Insurance documents indicate value of £27,000
2) a) Subject's salary £120,000 p.a. Savings £37,000.
b) No other source of income discovered. Further investigation necessary.
3) Atypical selection of specialist literature in view of subject's overtly anti-militarist stance
4) a) Telescope, as above, mounted on tripod.
b) Wehrmacht-surplus laser-sight mounted co-axially with telescope.
c) Austrian compensator mechanism attached to telescope mounting.
5) Downloading of information in personal computer reveals coded instructions to unknown third party (no decrpyt available at present). No indication of nature of user, communication or recipient.
After reading Weiss looked thoughtfully at his desk for a long time, thinking about the implications of the report. Substantial hidden income undeclared for several years, source unknown. It sounded very damaging for the subject, not to mention Weiss for having chosen him. Finally he spoke.
'Carry on with the recruitment selection, but go through an Eagle Two with Petrovic. If he comes through cleanly, make him the Offer. If not, if he's working for another power, disappear him.'
'Terminal Sanction?'
'Yes. Officially noted and approved as Terminal Sanction.' FedCon didn't kill double-agents, that would be immoral; no, they sent them to undertake hazardous duty at McMurdo Sound or at the bottom of the Philippines Trench.
Weiss dismissed Bibor. There was a sub-committee meeting scheduled for two hours beginning shortly and he still had to assimilate the necessary information for it. He wanted a report from September Station and RSFG Munich, too. As a replacement Bibor still failed to completely manage the routine details yet. Damn Chernovsky, wherever he was. By now the Russian had been declared officially "Lost". He could have been kidnapped, killed, defected, got amnesia, fallen ill - nobody knew what had befallen him, but the longer he remained absent the more likely it became that foul play was involved. As if he didn't have enough to cope with. In fact, while he remembered …
'Fenestre. Rossi.'
There was a slight delay until the call was acknowledged.
'Rossi here, sir,' came the fluid, accented English.
'Rossi, I'd like you to take up the matter of Sample A and Munich RSFG and the problem of how to hurry them along. Use my direct authority; in fact, take the Sky Clipper Downside and see them in person. They've taken far too long to assay. I take it you are familiar with their instructions?'
'Oh yes, sir.' Of course Rossi was; Weiss kept his staff on their toes and expected them to be informed. 'I'm on my way.'
Good. Rossi was reliable. He could be relied upon to bark loudly at people and get results, losing his temper just enough to make things go faster.
Fidelio Guido Rossi had been catching up with current affairs while on the observation deck, sitting in one of the seclusion cubicles watching a screen, when the call came through. Realising it was confidential he plugged in his earlink and so prevented anyone else from overhearing his conversation. After switching off Rossi dialled the Duty Officer to check on the next departure window. He bullied a little to get clearance for Number Three Shuttle, the solo pilot model; it went faster than the others and he wanted to get Downside quickly. He unplugged a flying suit from the rack in the Ready Room, signed out the suit and a helmet from the Sub-Flight Monitor and went through the airlock and into the shuttle bay. It took a few minutes to reach Number Three, clambering carefully over the walkway that skirted the other shuttles, reserved for emergency use. The small shuttle he wanted to use didn't have the large, luxurious airlocks of the other models so he needed all his innate agility to wasp himself inside the coffin-sized airlock and into the cockpit. After five minutes of pre-flight checks and warm-ups, getting to 94 effective, he traded banter with the Sub-Flight Monitor and asked for permission to leave ICE07.
Lights in the gloomy hangar blinked and flashed, a sequence of red and yellow warnings; a klaxon sounded within the Iceberg to warn crew that a shuttle would be departing in seconds, not to worry about loud noises and structural vibration. This would be the Italian's first time on a solo shuttle flight, but he didn't feel nervous, he'd got over 150 hours on the shuttles already and travelling Downside would be the easy part; returning to the Iceberg, riding a radar beam to dock with a moving body, now that was un-nerving. Rossi secured himself with the seat harness and retainer cage, then tapped his earlink monitor. Working. Good.
Solid metal clunked and scraped outside, transmitting the sound only through the structure of Number Three shuttle. Rossi uncovered, unlatched and pressed the Big Red Switch to release the parking clamps. A shudder ran through both pilot and craft as the eight mechanical feet let go; now only the magnetic dolly held Shuttle Three in place on the induction rail, "only" a misnomer since it could hold an object of up to two hundred and fifty tonnes. Ahead a wall slowly split along the seam marked with yellow and black hazard stripes; beyond it was another similar door that remained shut. Shuttle Three moved into the airlock this created and the "wall" shut behind it. More lights were coming on, now, enough to accustom a pilot to light outside. Finally the outside wall parted to spill actinic light on the parking bay. Rossi hastily polarised his helmet, not wanting to get his vision affected by the sunlight sweeping over him. Finger on the throttle, he felt the shuttle lurch forward and arrow off the induction rail, outwards into an indigo sky. There was a brief, disorienting weightlessness before gravity reasserted itself as the aircraft began to dive. Rossi did a quick visual check, then a radar scan to detect any nearby traffic. There wasn't any: the Iceberg flew in it's own special "box" and other aircraft, sub-orbital or otherwise, kept well away if they were wise. He turned on the Pilot's Friend. This left him free to concentrate with both hands on a greenscreen detailing his mission brief, namely to chase RSFG Munich and Sample A, courtesy of his temper and tongue. For more rapid results he ought to land at Bergen-op-Gauss airstrip, the satellite facility that served RSFG itself. He punched up the codes and fed them into the Pilot's Friend, then sat back for the twenty minute journey.
However, it was not to be. Five minutes away from Bergen-op-Gauss, his aircraft suffered total systems failure and despite all the efforts of its pilot the shuttle fell out of the sky and destroyed itself in a terminal dive.
Alex at work: diligent, conscientious, motivated. He concentrated on the "Techna" range that had sprung into being during his absence; one of the wonders of FedCon was the way it occasionally leapt upon ideas and turned them into actualities with a startling speed utterly divorced from the prosaic committee-base procedural. His outline sketch of a series aimed, via television, at children had reached the planning stage with an in-house design team already assigned. He knew one of these involved, Chellakooty, and wasn't too pleased about it. The man was a neo-monetarist, profit-powered, not the person to design toys for kids.
MacDuff at work: he gave his Serbian minion a very peculiar look. He wondered how such things were possible, repeatedly, looking every time the thought struck him. No answer came to mind so he clocked-off for lunch. Peter immediately turned on his radio, hidden in a desk drawer. Someone else produced a hip flask full of anonymous liquid and passed it rapidly around. Neil finished reading a comic purchased earlier in the day. Alex looked at them all in turn with amused circumspection because if he guessed right -
MacDuff bounced back into the room unexpectedly.
'PUT THAT AWAY! TURN IT OFF! DON'T TOUCH THAT!'
His staff leapt upright in either surprise or guilt. The Scot glared at everyone with uniform venom and left for a second time.
Shortly after, Neil and Alex clocked off, riding an express lift to the main staff canteen together. Neil finished reading his comic (a nasty, violent, adult-oriented publication that had nothing comic about it) during the ride, Alex stared at a public information poster years old, that remained the only decoration within the lift. All four corners had been ripped away and graffiti scrawled on it. Some wit of years past had carefully amended the official poster message to read
MARSHMELLOW NEEDS YOUR BONDSAGE
The floor heaved, the door pinged and gaped wide.
'Come on, the food's calling,' said Neil, ambling out.
Both chose Lasagni Nuovo al Pesci (that is, processed krill) as their main course. Alex beat Neil to a piece of bread and watched the other successively take a packet of crisps, an apple, a doughnut and a slice of processed cheesecake that always seemed to taste of synthetic chemical agents.
'That,' mumbled a masticating Neil, between mouthfuls of lasagne, 'was a particularly nasty trick of MacDuff's. He caught us.'
Alex wagged a chiding finger.
'Of course. I could predict it. You people ought to know better.'
During the afternoon a collection went around in aid of refugees in Algeria; Alex suddenly considered asking for a transfer out of CI and back to the DRA again. Lots of acronyms but basically a move from pen-pushing to people-aiding. He felt a vague sense of uneasy guilt, a response that begged an epiphany of some sort, although he didn't articulate matters so consciously. How could he sit at home and squander his life doing nothing positive when - amongst other catastrophes - thousands were dying of privation in the Maghreb's refugee slums?
Marie tapped him on the shoulder, trying to attract his attention but enveloped in melancholia, he'd totally failed to notice her and her collection bucket. He blushed, thinking that she might feel he had been deliberately avoiding a donation; that made certain he poured all the loose change from his pocket into the collection. Marie beamed - what a nice man!
MacDuff dumped a large wad of memory-paper in front of Alex.
'Right, friend Petrovic. I want you to format all this info, index it and then do a search on the seven - here, on this sheet - the seven criteria. By, oh, Friday morning stats call. Can you manage that? Get a clerk to help you do the legwork tomorrow.'
The Scot felt especially annoyed at catching his staff slacking. Although he wouldn't admit it, even to himself, Petrovic had gotten the work because he'd complete it in time - even though it was actually enough for two people.
Mrs. Petrovic's son decided to leave work early. He felt bored and fretful, wanting out of the office-prison of South Benford, for today at least. Neil waived the usual lift, having a lengthy evening appointment with a bar.
Despite leaving early, traffic was bad. A three-car road train had shed it's load and overturned a kilometre from the underground car-park at South Benford. Police bollards, cars, men and a helicrane were mustered around the wreckage, live invert midwives. A big, full, dark green bag seeping blood lay on the paving, a handbreadth from cars crawling past, doubtless containing the mortal remains of the road-train driver. Alex turned on the radio and punched in a station he knew, run by Albanian immigrants and broadcasting traditional Balkan music. A song came snaking out of the speakers, about valiant Shqiperi resisting Ottoman onslaught, vaunting blood, thunder and sacrifice.
Christ preserve us, thought Alex with a light overlay of despair, I can well do without this.
After fifty minutes the traffic stream began to break up and accelerate. The delay resulted from a series of secondary accidents, idiot drivers who rashly attempted to overtake in the opposing lane to make up lost time. Once en route for Badfort Towers Alex set the Khan to automatic, settled back in his seat and began to doze, knowing that when "thinking" the car took the safest, slowest route.
The car's grating metallic voice rasped from the cheap Dutch speakers and brought him back to full consciousness, informed that they had mutually arrived safely.
Home again home again. Or subterranean car-park in this case. One of the overhead strip lights was out completely, another flickered erratically and (of course) they lit the area directly around the lift entrance. Shadows leapt at each fluorescent blink, monochrome monsters. That image of a body in a bag, seeping blood, came back to Alex. He shuddered. Suddenly, the cavernous parking spaces seemed bleak and hostile.
Nothing vile leapt at him from the gloom on the way to the lift, but as the doors opened something lunged at him -
'Christ!' he exclaimed in surprise and fright, jumping backwards.
The tall man in a Day-Glo trenchcoat regained his balance, stooped to retie the lace that tripped him, cast a suspicious glance at Alex and departed.
False alarm.
Alex laughed quietly and nervously to himself as he rode upwards. Twitchy. He produced his MagIC key before the lift stopped and strolled down the corridor, keeping a weather eye on Number Seven where the couple dubbed the "Gruesome Twosome" lurked. Occasionally they would glare out at people from a barely-open door for no obvious reason, two very old women (or possibly men) totally at odds with their neighbourhood and environment.
Today they remained indoors. Alex nodded sagely at their absence, as if he had some influence over them. He pushed the key cylinder home and waited until the door slid open with a hiss, extracted the key and dodged through before the door closed again. Odd. There seemed to be a funny smell, faint but discernible, in the hallway. A fire - or did he leave that slow-cooker on this morning? Visions of a completely melted kitchen sprang to life in his fertile imagination. Dropping his file-case, he kicked open the lounge door so he could hurry through tot the kitchen -
'Hello Alex,' said a stranger sat in front of the television viewing screen. A second, very large, stranger standing alongside the first merely nodded towards him.
- thieves. Burglars. Shit, these apartments were supposed to be impregnable - how'd they manage to get in? Kitchen, get to the kitchen, the mono-blade knives were there, get one of those.
He got to the kitchen doorway before a third stranger suddenly appeared in front of him from nowhere (afterwards he realised the man had been hiding behind the vertical storage units). About to lash out, Alex restrained himself when Stranger Number Three pointed a sinister-looking tubular device directly at his stomach. He didn't know what it was but didn't want to discover through painful experience.
'Now, whey don't we all sit down and have a nice cup of tea,' said the stranger in a remarkably bland voice.
Following a gesture from the armed man with his weapon, Alex walked backwards to the sofa.
'Sit down please Alex.'
Alex sat. His interlocutor seemed able to speak without punctuation or emotional emphasis. Nor, it seemed, was he paying any attention to the flat owner. Instead he devoted his entire attention to the viewing screen, showing a commercial channel.
'Hey, I like this one,' snickered the armed man.
Great, thought the victim. A moron, a monosyllabic goggler and a piece of furniture. Three beauties. Who were they? Thieves simply didn't behave like this.
A grim advert about Hepatitis D began running, giving details of how dangerous the disease could be, how relatively cheap the vaccine, could you afford to risk your health or that of your loved ones?
'Really,' sighed the watcher. 'If you believed all of them you'd just give up and die.' Seemingly losing interest, he turned to his aides and nodded. Clearly this sign-shorthand meant "back off and cease causing this person distress", because both did so.
'You can relax now. A little.'
He still wasn't looking at Alex. Then he raised a hand and one of the minions went to work in the kitchen. Alex, meantime, looked around his apartment, half-seeing things. To his mild surprise and considerable curiosity there were no signs of damage or disturbance; the bookcase remained neatly ordered, the tapes and disks alphabetically arranged, card table undisturbed and the chess game as it had been, balcony doors firmly shut. From the very brief view he'd gotten of the kitchen there didn't seem to have been any pillage there, either.
Clinking sounds came from within the kitchen. Alex noticed that his computer interface had been turned on and left running, as the power light remained glowing. A sudden hard knot of fear formed in his stomach out of the already present anxiety. Had they been snooping around on his private library file? And were they capable of code-breaking? Could they be blackmailers?
A thick silence persisted for minutes: only a muted hissing from the viewing screen echoed sullenly around the room. Stranger Number Three re-emerged from the kitchen with one of the old melamine trays clasped firmly in both hands. Placing it carefully between Mister Bland and Alex, he indicated in turn a teapot, two cups, a small jug of milk, a bowl of sugar, two teaspoons and a strainer.
Mister Bland inspected the tray carefully.
'Careful. Everything on that tray is valuable. So is the tray.' He seemed to know property value. And to have some respect for it, too. Odd but encouraging.
Number Three, surprisingly, had managed to make a decent cup of tea, which Alex found surprising because with the advent of synthetics a great British tradition had dried up and died.
'Now, to business. We shouldn't really be doing this, strictly; it's against regulations. But I simply couldn't resist. Real tea, you know. Ah, money!'
Alex reached for a teaspoon, a stretching action mis-interpreted by Number Two, who abruptly strode forward and grasped Alex's shoulder in an agonising, paralysing grip, sending needles of pain shooting into his deltoid. Mister Bland opened his eyes slightly wider, then waved the muscleman off with a languid gesture.
'So sorry. Where were we? Oh yes.'
Mister Bland's vague demeanour remained vague, yet his eyes met Alex's directly and the latter had the uncomfortable feeling that beneath his uninvited guest's sheeplike exterior lay a far deadlier creature.
"Regulations"? Where did they get that phrase from?
'Um - regulations about what?'
'Oh, didn't I say, how very ah, remiss, of me. We're from FedCon.'
Good - not thieves. Bad - probably investigators.
'Ah - I take it that you're not the Stationery Supplies people then.'
'Goodness no.'
'Ah. Internal Audit, then.' Alex deepened his voice and raised it to project as effectively as possible. 'Well LET ME SEE SOME IDENTITY THEN!' he bellowed.
Mister Bland lost his cool to the extent of raising his eyebrows. One hand snaked into an inner pocket and reappeared with, of all things, a Red Card.
'This one, incidentally, is real.'
Alex examined it closely. Lots of ornate motile holograms. Real. Oh dear. The only people who carried cards like this were (cue sinister minor chords) UNION. Never mind his stomach, the muscles of his abdomen were now playing games, twitching nervously. Mister Bland sipped delicately at his drink.
'Nice tea, Alex, very nice. Real tea leaves, too, I notice. You've got kilos of it. Costing, say, nine months salary?'
Under this unpleasantly accurate questioning Alex felt himself blush. True, all true.
'Hmm. Yes. Drove home, didn't you? Nice to have an automatic in the car, isn't it. Mind you, mine took a bank loan to buy. Still making the repayments. I see you own yours.'
Another hit close to home.
'And some home you have here. Lounge, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, guestroom, hall and balcony - complete with telescope - overlooking the suburbs. In a secure condominium. You don't lease or hire or rent or contract because you own it outright, Alex. Goodness me. Expensive, what? I've got a wife and child, Alex. Even though I'm better paid than you I can't afford something like this.'
Nobody spoke for a while.
'And about that telescope, Alex.'
That was how he said it, with a literal full stop, the type of verbal device that meant more news of a worse nature to come.
'There's evidence on that computer of communication, via your signalling laser, with one of the Lunaville sites.'
SHIT! Thought Alex a his stomach dropped half a metre at least whilst the blushes were replaced by a bilious paleness.
'Let me put it to you, Mister Petrovic, that you work for a hostile agency, probably American, and that you are in return paid by them. That is how you can afford this little residence. Also you have a contact in the Foreign Assignment section of your offices. You collect and transmit information to the American base on the moon; your annual visit to Greece is simply a cover for the annual meeting with your controller. Stop me when I start to bore you. What you didn't -'
Alex waved his hands to stop the accusations.
'No no no! What the hell do you mean, "a contact"? I've never … Christ Risen, you're mad!'
Silence reigned again, this time with a gloating essence to it. One of the ambulatory pieces of furniture moved forward to place a small, unfolded square of paper between the two seated drinkers. From the appearance it seemed to be a name and address, although at this range Alex couldn't resolve the writing and didn't recognise it anyway.
'Your contact from Foreign Assignment. An amateur. Why did they leave this lying around? Sloppy.'
Alex recovered his emotional equilibrium slightly. Alright, they had discovered two of his more guilty secrets but this nonsense about a "contact" - that could surely only be an attempt to muddy waters because they (the ever-present authoritarian "THEY") lacked sufficient evidence to prosecute him. Sledgehammer and nut.
Mister Bland still hadn't finished.
'In fact I don't think you're really Alex Petrovic. You're an imposter.'
Alex felt utterly floored. His jaw even sagged a little while he listened.
'No. Not the real Petrovic. You took his place when he got abducted across the Mexican border eight years ago and you've taken his place.'
'Nice fairy story,' said the Serb, voice dripping with sarcastic poison.
'Oh. Explain away all this, then,' retorted Bland with a scornful sneer and an expansive wave of the hand. 'Your flat and car and money, Petrovic. How do you explain possession. How!'
Yes, you'd like that, let me do the work for you in an admission. Why should I say anything at all -
'You may be wondering what leverage we have, Petrovic,' began Mister Bland, apparently able to read minds. 'Let me tell you what we have.
'One. Proscribed transmissions to and from the Moon.
Two. Undeclared income, in excess of two point five million in total.
Three. Evidence of complicity in conspiracy.
Four. Illegal imports from outside Federated Concordat-bounded territory.
Five. Defiance of and deliberate lying to a FedCon officer.
'All told, Alex, we could send you down for this. "Down" literally. Offences like this mean the Philippines Trench, or hard labour at the Pole, or maybe even despatch to the Moon.'
Despite these word's even tone there was pent-up emotion underlying them.. From what Alex saw he was in big trouble; although his interrogator might have exaggerated those penalties slightly, their effect would be horrendous. They made it clear to him that sentences would run serially, not concurrently. What he long feared as a background anxiety now looked to have become reality.
'Okay, okay, you want the true story, you'll get it.'
5) Another Country
SOUTH BENFORD TOWER
5:30 PM
Neil cadged a lift from Alex when they both clocked off at half past five. There was an ulterior motive; his friend's demeanour remained reserved and withdrawn all day long, much more so than usual. Normally Alex could be relied upon for a few droll comments or a bizarre Serbian aphorism that he probably fabulated, but not today. Neil wanted to find out why, but no enlightenment fell unfolded during the journey.
'Want to come up to mine?' asked Neil, when the car slowed, preparatory to letting the passenger dismount. The driver paused to think, momentarily, then nodded without any discernible delay. On they drove, still not talking. Neil put the radio on without asking. Christ, cheer up you miserable git, he thought uncharitably, no-one's died, have they. They parked near the small row of shops where Neil lived. Alex activated the BurglArrester; Neil whistled a small boy over and gave him a five-pound coin with instructions to guard the Khan. Before going up to the flat, Neil visited the Patel's corner grocery for a few little bits and pieces.
Alex hadn't visited Neil since the latter's move from Tottenham and took the opportunity to examine the surroundings. The flat sat in the middle of a row, built above the shops, ancient but well-built and still comparatively cheap by the ridiculous London standards. To enter they traversed the back street to a flight of concrete steps that led upwards to the level of the back doors. Ancient, crusted glass milk bottles lay abandoned on the walkway and a stray cat ran away from them.
The flat must have been old; it still had manual locks set into the door. Alex looked on with interest as Neil produced, inserted and cranked round a flat metal key.
'There. Welcome to the hovel,' announced Neil. 'Eric? You in?' A muffled shout issued from upstairs. That would be Neil's flatmate Eric, a student at the London College of Economics, who usually sat barricaded into his bedroom by books.
Inside, the flat manifested an air of complete chaos, as per normal for one of Neil's residences. Old papers lay everywhere, books with broken spines lolled on chairs, cups with cold dregs set up occupancy on every flat surface.
'Okay, sit down. Tea? Righto, coming up.' Off he went to throw dishes around in the kitchen, whistling gaily. Minutes later he reappeared with a tray, carrying two mugs of tea. To Alex's surprise Neil failed to turn on the viewing-screen; normally the television began playing the instant Neil arrived and didn't cease until the small hours of the morning.
'Tell me about it,' suggested Neil, matter-of-factly.
Alex cocked his head to one side, suspiciously. Could Neil be working for Them? No, surely not … no, certainly not.
Alex plunged in head-first. Or is that feet-first? he wondered.
'You've always asked me where and how I got all my money and I've never told you, because it was private. Well, last night the UNION broke into my flat to ask me that same question.'
Hang on, thought Neil, I'm the union steward - what's he on about, breaking into his flat?
'Why would the union do that!'
'No, no you misunderstand me. U-N-I-O-N was what I meant.'
'"UNION". The spy people,' said Neil, frankly and blankly surprised.
'Yes! Yes.'
'Why! Alex, the only people who check up on us are Internal Audit.'
'Yes, well, I did some work for UNION in Greece, I can't say what so don't ask. I am in very big trouble, very deep shit, Neil. My guilty secrets. Oh, hell, why not tell you. They'll find out anyway. The money. I wrote a book on history years ago, a book on military history from antiquity to modern times in the Balkans, with emphasis on how the landscape affected affairs.'
Neil blinked again. Military history? Alex? The Serb was keen on history, everyone knew that, but he expressed
nothing but loathing for armies and war.
'Might I ask why you wrote about what you hate?'
'Oh, as a diversion when I was in the army. Don't look so surprised! We still have conscription. Well, to stop myself from going mad from boredom and abuse I wrote a book, using the divisional library. A long story. Anyway, the government took it up as an official publication. They gave me a lump sum and annual royalties from then on. So, er, I ended up with a lot of money. I bought my first apartment, my telescope, a car. Half of the money went to my family, in my mother's name. But I never declared any of it, I thought "it's my money, my work and I earned it before I ever joined FedCon so it's none of their business."'
Neil nodded, seeing that this obviously violated protocol yet didn't justify the use of an UNION search team on personal premises. His sense of incredulity stretched further with Alex's next revelation.
'Er - then I made a really big mistake. I started to communicate with someone in Lunaville Four, playing chess, swapping non-political gossip via a signalling laser. And I kept all the records on my own database. In code, but that didn't help much.'
'Oh God Alex you fucking moron! They could send you down the Philippines Trench for this - illegal earnings, talking to the Moon - to the Americans on the Moon - , proscribed encoding - Jesus, they could have you grinding ice in McMurdo Sound! Buying a flat and a car and a telescope …' Neil was aghast.
Having his friend unwittingly echo the UNION visitor's threats did nothing for Alex's composure. From a vague, nagging anxiety his fears blossomed into a nightmare. A feral flower, indeed. The worst had yet to come. He explained that the interlopers left without arresting him.
'Oh great. Terrific. Don't worry, they'll be back. With a catch like you, they'll be back.'
Neil Nicholson shook his head in wonder. Alex had a chequered past, of that he was well aware, but a spy with an illegal source of income, who'd broken The Law As Graven In Stone by talking to Americans on the Moon - this ground felt dangerous indeed. It was hard to believe that the conversation had even occurred. Out of reflex he turned to the viewer, switching it on, giving it a swift wipe to remove static-acquired dust. There should be a can of anti-stat around but he couldn't locate it in the general chaos. What happened now? (Irrelevant burbling from the speaker about desert reclamation and the future it promised with "maximum return for minimal investment"). Were there any options open or not?
'You could volunteer to work for them. That would pre-empt any move they might try. After all, you said that you worked for them before.'
'What! You're joking. No way. I am not going to abase myself to them. Forget it.'
'Go to Mars?'
'Be serious.' Hardly a sensible idea. You needed a degree just to be a floor-cleaner on Mars.
'I am - Alex, your options are a bit limited. The Manual totally forbids everything you've done.'
They stared at each other gloomily. Neil left for a second, visited the kitchen and returned with eight plastic shrink-wrapped cans of beer. They had a vacuum jacket and were very cold when the seals got popped. Alex held one in both hands, rolling it against his forehead. He thought about the recent past.
Eric came downstairs after finishing his homework schedule, wanting to catch a programme on at half-ten, about the Callisto Mining Corporation. His field of study competence was Xenological Geology, an obstruse area touched on in the programme. In he walked, kicking a fax out of his way, to be greeted by even more mess than usual, empty cans lying around and a frowning, dark-complexioned stranger with a moustache slouched in one seat.
'Evening. This is Alex. Alex, Eric. Ah, could you get another eight full ones out of the chiller?'
Eric huffed slightly.
'Why can't you?'
'Because I'm too pissed.'
Eric went. When he returned the viewer, now tuned to a pirate channel, showed "adult animations" - ultra-violent cartoons. He sighed. So much for science and education.
Eight cans later all three were inebriated, Eric being chirpy, Neil swearing profusely and Alex being dour and glowering sourly. It felt worse than the bottom line in Mexico, he thought.
'Why did Mister UNION man accuse you of not being - uh, not you?' asked Neil, remembering a question he'd thought of earlier after his friend described yesterday's events. Not using any swear words because it was a serious question and merited a serious answer.
'Split personality?' suggested Eric, feeling that UNION must be rather dim-witted to investigate this saturnine but rather staid Serbian.
'Split? Split? Oh, I see, not the town. No.' Alex sounded scornfully dismissive. 'I got captured by the Americans, abducted overnight from Mexico.'
Both his listeners were abruptly silent. They continued to listen in semi-reverential silence as Alex told of his time, serving in the Disaster Relief Agency during Project Morning Glory - the aid-and-succour programme in Mexico, helping the Americano refugees in their camps.
It (the story, that is) began well before Morning Glory, with the accession to power within the New America Party of an unduly radical, xenophobic clique; known as the "Ousters", they deployed considerable behind-the-scenes influence in addition to their overt power. One essential part of their policy was the indefinite extension of the State of Emergency that had suspended the Constitution, allowing the NAP to crowbar itself into power in the first place. The second essential part of their strategy began with the disenfranchisement of non-Americans. To them, "non-Americans" meant, predominantly, the Hispanic and Negro population alongside Catholics, Indians, Asians, non-WASPs of all descriptions, who would be gradually reduced in status to third-class citizens without a franchise. Any rebellious or objecting parties were despatched to the grim Census Control Centres of Utah and Nevada. Having first secured its grip on power and ensuring that no milksop democratic backlash would succeed, the NAP created an underclass and set out to exploit them, blaming any flaws in "Fortress America" on them. It was a depressingly old story and strategy, with one great asset (for the NAP): it worked. Or, that is, it worked at first. The loss of American pre-eminence in the world didn't do the NAP any harm, either.
Gradually the Hispanic populations gravitated south, under varying pressures over time. Whenever a particularly severe pogrom took place, tens of thousands of Americanos would cross the border, in differing states of panic. Frequently all they possessed were their clothes. Mexico became a reluctant host, keeping refugees in squalid encampments just below the line of the Rio Bravo del Norte, not wanting any integration of them into the Mexican population since the ruling junta feared they might carry dangerous political ideas with them. After a decade of increasing population within the semi-permanent ghettos, FedCon moved in. Project Morning Glory was intended to set up an infra-structure parallel to the notoriously inefficient, under-staffed, under-paid and endemically corrupt Mexican administration of the camps. There existed great scope for improvements: sanitation, construction, education, agriculture, health projects, self-help packages and many sub-divisions of these.
Lack of sufficient foreknowledge prejudiced Morning Glory's chances of success. Because the Mexican government refused to properly integrate refugees, there had never been an official census in the rash of settlements that straggled along the border zone. Rumour had it that officials thought of a number, added six noughts and then regarded that as an accurate population estimate. FedCon itself reckoned on a refugee population of about one and half million; in fact they rapidly discovered a population of almost three million. It became necessary to rapidly increase the DRA staff who were actually on the ground by calling for volunteers from elsewhere within FedCon.
Enter Alexander Petrovic.
Working in Holland for Civil Infrastructure, Alex felt bored with paperwork; the clarion call for volunteers came as a godsend to him. Alongside thirty others working in Holland under the auspices of FedCon, he packed a few essentials and gone to Ijsselmeer airport. Not long out of his teens, ingenuous, idealistic, Alex was due to lose his fervour rapidly. Only thirty people turned up at Ijsselmeer to leave for their unknown destination; one person had learnt of the destination and suddenly decided not to go in violation of Contract.
The rest were told only after boarding a FLO Major Mover that they were to be assigned, en bloc, to the Refugee Support Scheme and would be based at Nuevo Laredo.
For a space of several seconds after the impersonal tannoy announcement nobody uttered a sound until everyone spoke at once. Their tone, collectively, sounded anxious: Mexico! And the most active part of the border, too, facing Texas. In fact they were due on one of the most active parts of the active zone.
That discovery lay in the future. In the meantime a briefing officer shouted over the hubbub, trying to get the message through, running up and down the aisles with sheets of paper.
'Hi,' Alex's seatmate had said. 'I'm Katrina. Are you scared, too?'
'Scared,' deadpanned Alex in reply. 'Ho ho.'
But he would be.
Recounting: Alex didn't describe everything he experienced, which would have been mightily dull in parts, not to mention long-winded. He sketched in the heat, dust, dirt, effort and enlarged on the less humdrum things. First he filled in the political scenery.
From the Mexican perspective: it was judged ill-advised to integrate immigrant refugees into the body politic - they might carry ideological or political contamination, there were too many of them, they could form pressure groups, and so on; still, deporting or barring entry would have been impractical - humanitarianism also had a bearing on this resolution, as did grants made available to the government to aid refugees; conflicting policies at government level forced incoming pogrom-fleers to settle in a squalid ghetto-land just south of the US-Mexican border, with more populous nodes based around centres such as Nuevo Laredo, Matamoros, Piedras Negras, Ciudad Juarez, Mexicali and of course Tijuana. The principal area of concentration was near Allende, and became known as "the Campo".
From the American perspective: a suitable recipient for the expelled millions suited the New America Party "just fine". World opinion would jib at victims being marched, for example, into the Atlantic Ocean (a comparatively mild suggestion compared to some from the more extremist NAP members). No, merely expelling them across the border to mingle with their cousins was far better. Those with a liberal conscience wept blood at what happened. With such expulsions the continued instability of Mexico persisted, which again suited the New America Party "just fine". A feeble, internally-wracked neighbour presented far less of a threat than an assertive one, also presenting the NAP with the perfect excuse to maintain the State of Emergency and deny their countrymen any recourse to the Constitution. More, it appeared to show Americans what a mess Hispanics could make of their own country if allowed to run it. Of course, to instigate such chaos and maintain it meant covert American destabilisation activity - which Alex would return to.
From the refugee perspective: encamped in their slum cities, devoid of almost every requisite for a basic living, exploited by their host government politically - their existence within the USA must have been an ordeal indeed for them to consider such conditions an improvement. The Americanos, being people with aspirations, did not like the thought of remaining in their slums; they appreciated any attempt to help them. FedCon had been presented to them within the United States as an evil, corrupt, tentacular, tyrannical, planet-wide bureaucratic dictatorship, aiming for total control of humanity. Initially the DRA workers found themselves treated with hostility and suspicion, though over time they came to be revered.
From Alex's perspective: he had come to serve in a moral crusade, looking for an epiphany.
During their first night the thirty newcomers watched a display of vari-coloured lights, kilometres to the east of their camp; blue, red, green.
'Nice,' commented one. 'A firework display.'
'Fireworks nothing,' replied another. 'Those are tracer bullets.'
A few disturbed murmurs ran round the group at that little revelation. Next morning they discovered that the Americans subjected Camp Castro to bombardment all night long, for no especially good reason. Alex helped pick up the pieces for the rest of that day, shifting rubble, digging out bodies, driving a pocket bulldozer, giving blood. After working solidly for eight hours a small group of the volunteers sat on a stone wall, resting. All of them were dirty and dusty and most had blood smeared on them, from triage or first aid duties. A canteen of water passed backwards and forwards between them. Alex took a long swallow, sluicing away the grit lining his mouth.
'Why? Why?' he grated from behind clenched teeth. 'Thirty dead. Twice that many injured. A dozen children in the school bus alone, shot by machine-guns all night long. Christ Risen, may those Americans all go to Hell.'
Katrina, sitting alongside, nodded glumly and dumbly in agreement. They both removed the bodies from that bullet-sieved bus.
A baptism of fire. Alex rapidly developed a loathing for the Americans only a few kilometres away across the river, as days became weeks and ran into months and the random attacks continued. No rhyme or reason, merely random - or so he thought, until experience taught him otherwise. There was an hierarchy of military might across the Rio Bravo: the lowest rung of the ladder and most numerous were the Texas State Militia, an offshoot of the National Guard; next were the ten regular divisions of the US Army; last were the unseen Special Forces Commando units. The Texas State Militia were the worst by far, gun-toting and trigger-happy irregulars whose idea of fun on a Saturday night seemed to be machine-gunning 'Cano refugees. The word "Militia" happened to be a misnomer, to, conjuring up an image of part-time weekenders with obsolete rifles, instead of the full-timers with heavy machine guns, mortars, artillery, helicopters and light tanks that existed in reality. Regular US Army soldiers rarely engaged in action, unless tensions were very bad and the Mexican Army ranged itself against them. Engagements took place only three or four times per year. The Commandos were never seen. By deduction, they had strict instructions not to attack civilians, since they were never seen or heard. But they existed; almost every week they sneaked across the border and demolished bridges, monorail lines, marshalling yards, runways, airport towers, oil tanks, communication lines and junctions, vehicle parks, storage depots, anything that could be classed as strategic in target terms.
By such means they kept all of Northern Mexico destabilised. Then, too, there just so happened to be the time Alex got kidnapped. Out for an evening stroll on his own after a hard day of driving, digging and unloading supplies, he had seen what he thought in fright to be a moving log.
Fooled by twilight, he crept closer, finally recognising with a horrid intestinal lurch, a person. A person punctured - a silly word but the first one that came to mind - punctured. Blood dribbled from the painfully crawling figure, victim of a dreadful accident, surely, wounded in a dozen different places.
He stopped walking and rushed to help, but the figure continued to crawl, gasping, trying to physically escape from the pain that dogged it.
Christ, he thought, what do I do? They're dying -
Stabilise. Stop them moving, stop the bleeding, subdue the pain. Yes; one thing he always carried ( a legacy of two years hated conscription) was a Premaid kit, compact and comprehensive. His first-aid skills weren't too bad, being kept in practice here on the Campo.
Fumbling the kit open, he luckily found a syrette of Pseudo-Morph immediately, rapidly injected the sufferer in the neck, threw away the empty tube. Then came packets of arresting agent, a mixture that both sterilised and stimulated clotting action. He used every packet, tearing them open with his teeth. Lastly he used another syrette, an anti-shock agent. Using his knife he carefully cut away torn clothing and bound over the wounds with medical adhesive tape.
You poor swine, he thought. If this is the best I can do you won't last long. Have to call for help. Where's my TACT? Have to call camp, get a medical team here, so now where did I put it?
To better aid the victim he had unclipped the bulky TACT unit from his belt and left it nearby. Except that it no longer lay on the riverbank.
Panic! If he couldn't find it this man would die. As he turned -
A hard, unyielding metal thing came over his head, pulled down and back tight across his windpipe, effectively gagging him. Trying to reflexively move his arms he found that they were pinioned, too.
The Texas militiaman with his rifle firmly choking Alex, kneed his captive in the kidneys with a casual, brutal skill that spoke of long practice. The prisoner, rasping breath in and out through flaring nostrils, felt a sledgehammer blow that hurt and then went deeper and hurt even more. Tears of pain ran down his cheeks: he felt he was dying.
Dark shapes moved forward. There were three more of them, realised Alex. Three others, all carrying guns. With fixed bayonets. Remembering the wounded man, he grimaced in pain and fear.
'Ah, crying? We've got ourselves a real wuss this time. A real savage,' said one uniform.
'Yeah, a real wuss. Where's the spic?'
'Over here. You didn't do much good with that pig-sticker of yours, sucker's still alive.'
It wasn't easy for Alex to understand their drawling speech, which they kept low for fear of discovery, nor did the slowly receding pain in his back help to concentrate his attention. He did recognise their fatigue-cap badges; Lone Star Guards, Texas militia of the worst ilk. They kept necklaces of human ears for trophies.
'Pull him over. Over there. That's right.'
Two uniforms dragged the gasping, dying man in front of Alex. A mustachioed face abruptly interposed itself between Alex and the victim.
'So you spend yore time fixing up spics, do you? See how we fix 'em, you greasy Commie rag. Junior, do yore stuff, finish the job.'
The face disappeared. "Junior" appeared in front of them, grinning an entirely humourless rictus that would have been more at home on a cat than a man. Raising his rifle, Junior bayonetted the helpless man repeatedly and with vigorous relish. Un-necessarily, really, since the first thrust had been fatal.
Alex sagged, helpless with horror. Empty roaring sounds echoed around his head. Carelessly, his captor misjudged his captive's relaxation and slackened the punishing grip.
'You BASTARD!' screamed Alex, leaping free and kicking Junior in the crotch with all the strength he could muster with his DRA-issue reinforced steel-toecap boot.
The American collapsed in silent agony, clutching his pulverised crotch. His gun dropped on it's butt and began firing enthusiastically all by itself, bang bang bang.
Alex didn't see one of the others step up and silence the weapon because the man who had been doing the choking came up and battered the side of his face with something cold: hard metal.
Falling forward, he thought that the ground rose to meet him instead, until he actually hit the river bank and winded himself. The whole left side of his face felt numb and his vision was funny. No pain, not until a foot brushed his chin and he trembled with the dull, enormous pangs that shot through his jaw.
Broken, he thought, slowly. Broken jaw. Don't move it.
Unable to judge time, Alex couldn't even guess how far the four dragged him, expecting to die at any minute. Tears ran down his cheeks when his face hit a rock or another type of obstacle. Still the foursome didn't kill their prize. What he later thought of as the worst time in his life, easily, began as he was dumped in a canoe that the militiamen rapidly paddled across the Rio Bravo. More dragging, cursing, punching; Junior took an especial delight in tormenting their prisoner. His malicious glee was tempered by an inability to walk properly, so he contented himself by kicking Alex's kneecaps repeatedly and with considerable force.
Finally the group reached and stopped in an encampment, of the clandestine kind, it's scale only partly revealed b the sounds and smells prevalent.
They pushed him down a flight of stone steps, where he smashed his chin on stone at the bottom and passed out for a while.
Coming to, Alex found that his bladder had emptied, soaking his trousers. Next, he sat with his back to a wall, from which rusty but still hale chains snaked to secure his wrists and ankles. The place had to be small, judging by the dulled noises he made, since the militia didn't see fit to provide any type of illumination. It stank, too.
All during the slow night and into the false dawn his jaw ached, at first periodically, then permanently and it got worse. It hurt if he moved to breathe; it hurt if he hung his jaw open; it hurt even more if he shut his mouth. A perpetual nagging bruise reminded him of that punch - or kick - in the kidney, making it painful to lie or sit. The chains and manacles weighed heavy on his ankles and wrists, cutting and chafing. Sleep never came, only a pale shade of it that made dreams dance around the reeking cell.
A recurrent question flitted about his feverish thoughts. Why hadn't they killed him? Come to that, why bother to haul him across the Rio Bravo? Texas Militia never crossed over.
Those shots, perhaps, scared them into retreating. They should have just killed him on the spot. After all, they were certainly capable of it. Perhaps, in crossing the river, they had exceeded their orders. They could have been chasing that dying Americano, or maybe stumbled across him on the wrong side of the river. If they had killed him, well, maybe they had been after a prisoner. If they weren't supposed to cross the United States/Mexican border, then they ought to have a concrete result, a tangible asset to trade off against their transgression. Or they could have orders to bag a FedCon prisoner. For interrogation. That thought made him shudder, no theatrical affectation but a real shiver of fear, facing the thought that he would be tortured to death.
For all his waking nightmares, nobody came to see him. Dawn came. Daylight fell into the cell through a small, barred window set into the ceiling.
Escape? No, forget it. Injured, chained, imprisoned, doubtless guarded, within a major hostile encampment on the wrong side of the border. Miracles simply didn't that conveniently, despite the muttered prayer Alex sent up. With a sudden visceral surge, he realised that Alex Petrovic wasn't unique, that this experience must have been undergone by countless victims of the NAP already. Except that they weren't members of a supra-national aid entity, capable of interceding on behalf of its members should it choose to do so.
As day limped on, no-one came to torment, interrogate or feed him. The pain in his jaw became intermittently even more intense, making Alex faint for seconds or minutes. Pains in his knees and shins made themselves known - especially his knees, the targets of Junior's studded US Army surplus boots. Also, almost apologetically, his stomach announced itself, grumbling loudly to remind him that nothing edible had passed his lips since noon of yesterday. Thirst would tell first.
A fusillade of shots from outside made him jump in a painful panic, but nothing else happened. Gradually the cell heated up as day dragged slothfully on and the stinking straw gave off even more disgusting vapours.
After long-endured delay the cell door was unlocked and thrown open. Large figures in uniform unlocked the manacles and frog-marched the lone occupant outside, up the steps and southward, towards the river and a party of waiting canoes. A small group of people on a sandbank in midstream watched the progress of the prisoner and escort. The group included Camp Monitor Lafarge, who had been frantically busy talking to UNION and DRA about their missing member. She watched in angry silence as three soldiers escorted Petrovic into a small powerboat and sped across to the island. In mid-stream, both sides held it to be neutral territory.
Shit! Thought Lafarge in alarm, he looks a mess. What have those animals done to him!
'Petrovic? Can you walk?' she asked.
Alex looked a mess because he was one. His face, scratched all over, was disfigured by an immense purple bruise, he had two black eyes and his knees seemed to consist of equal parts straw, bloody denim and flayed skin. He could barely stand upright.
'Gmno,' he mumbled, not daring to shake his head.
The reason for his being there and alive at all was his reflexive kicking of Junior, an act that saved his life even if it secured him a good beating; the Americans, after all, intended to kill any witness to their trespass onto Mexican soil. The firing from Junior's gun had been heard and the bullets thus fired were discovered embedded in sand and logs; they were concrete evidence that Americans committed an act of trespass across the border onto Mexican soil. Lafarge called the American Army colonel in charge of the Lone Star Guard camp to inform him that if the abducted FedCon employee was returned intact, the bullets would also be returned to their owners.
The seriously embarrassed camp's commanding officer raged at the four transgressing militiamen, then had them arrested, imprisoned, beaten and Junior shot by firing squad in full view of Mexican, FedCon and 'Cano observers. He wanted to make sure that the rest of his wilful command didn't ever disregard his orders about total deniability of operations again.
Thus Alex returned to the land of the living, battered but alive.
Neil and Eric soaked up the story readily, almost dying to ask question after question but not quite daring enough to intervene. Alex left out a lot more than he told: the Purple Plague, Hells Highway, wild leave in Nuevo Laredo, long hard dirty slogging to rebuild devastated housing - all sorts.
'Did the locals like you?' asked Eric. 'I've heard that some of them didn't like you, thought you were like neo-colonists.'
Alex finished his recounting more cheerfully.
'Like us? They loved us! Don't confuse the Mexicans with their government and don't confuse the 'Canos - the Americanos, the refugees - with the Mexicans. The government didn't like us, oh no. But the people were different. You could walk into a cantina anywhere and people would thank you. They'd give us Catholic medallions, crucifixes, food, money on occasions and these were poor people. After my truck driving I got to be well know, or maybe because that was the way I drove. After that I couldn't pay for drinks or meals in the Campo, the Canos wouldn't let me. '
'How many of your lot were killed?' asked Neil in a touch of morbidness.
Pausing, Alex counted. Odd, that. At that time he knew it would never leave his mind. Now -
'Let me think. One canny man left before joining. Another got himself killed in a fight in Nuevo Laredo. Oh, and someone else ran off to Tijuana, never to be seen again. One died of the Purple Plague, another so badly debilitated that he returned to Holland. Two died when the helicopter was shot down. Six were injured and hospitalised for part of their tour. One got killed by a sniper from across the river. Ah - and seven were killed driving trucks up and down Hell's Highway, which is what we used to call Route Thirty Seven.'
A total of twenty casualties, eleven fatal. Fortunately for the volunteers who came afterwards, the lessons of the first Project volunteers were learned and it became unusual to lose more than one or two members on a tour.
Bloody hell! You devious dark horse, Petrovic! thought Neil. You went through all that and never told anyone at Benford about it, not even a hint.
'It can still tingle a bit if the weather is extra cold,' said Alex, in reference to his jaw. 'And the kneecaps are artificial. Had them replaced in Nuevo Laredo by DRA medical while they put my jaw back together. They need replacing every four or five years.'
Both his drinking partners shook their heads in wonder.