The man standing in front of them was at least sixty, with orange hair and white pasty skin, but he had a strong jaw and serious, dark green eyes. He’d been in the SAS during the 1960s, according to Bruce, then joined in some of the mercenary wars that raged through Africa in the 1980s. He’d fought with the Batoteans, with the Portuguese in Mozambique, and for the mining companies up in the Congo. He spent a decade fighting in Africa when it was a battlefield in the Cold War, with Russian- Chinese- and American-backed armies vying for control of the region. He’d taken on Stasi fighters advising the guerrillas in the Congo, and a renegade brigade of hardened Vietcong veterans who’d been sent to stiffen the rebel forces in Namibia. And although he’d made it back with nothing worse than a couple of bullet wounds to his thighs, he’d known plenty of men whose corpses would have rotted beneath unmarked African graves many years ago.
‘Since Bruce has asked me here to tell you what I know, I’ve three messages for you,’ MacAskill began. He looked around the oak-panelled library, where the men were sitting on club armchairs surrounded by shooting magazines and prints of dogs and horses. ‘First, never underestimate the African fighting man. He may not have the discipline that some of you guys are used to. He may not have the kit or the back-up, and his officers may not have any training to speak of. But he’s brave, and he’s not afraid to die - and that makes him a formidable enemy. Get into a fire-fight with an African platoon, and you’d better make sure you’ve got enough ammo, because the bastards are going to keep coming at you until there is no one left alive. A lot of them will be high on dagga - what they call the weed in Southern Africa - and the local stuff is so strong it does things to a man’s mind. Makes him think the bullets will just bounce off him . . . and a lot of those men are so strong that sometimes it will seem as if they really do.’
He paused, draining a glass of neat Glendronach. ‘Next, make friends with the weather. Contrary to what a lot of people imagine, Batota isn’t that hot. The climate in Ibera isn’t even as hot as London. But it’s the rainy season and that’s going to make it hard for you. You’ve never seen rain like you get in Africa. It will come down in great sheets. You won’t just be wet through, you’ll feel as if you’re drowning. Your clothes will destroyed; none of your guns will work. And you know what? There won’t be a damned thing you can do about it.
‘Lastly, get used to the brutality. Africa is a cruel continent. Don’t ask me why, but it just is. I’ll tell you one story. I was part of a small unit of foreigners making raids in Mozambique in the late 1970s for the Batoteans. We were hitting some of the guerrilla bases used by Kapembwa’s men. They didn’t want to use their own guys because they weren’t meant to be in Mozambique. We came into this one village, and the guerrillas decided that the people there must have been helping us. They rounded up the twenty-seven workers in the village, most of whom were migrants anyway, then hacked the men to death one by one, making their wives and children watch. Why did they do it? We never had any idea. They were just making a point. But you have to remember, people in Africa are going to be afraid. No one will help you, no one will want to talk to you. And whatever else happens, don’t get taken alive. You might think that “a fate worse than death” is just a phrase. In Africa, it’s the literal truth.’
For the next hour, MacAskill was happy to be cross-examined, telling the men everything he knew about the terrain they’d be fighting across, and the kind of kit they should take with them. When he’d finally wrapped up the session and gone up to bed, Steve said to Chris, ‘What happened to you?’
Chris remained silent.
Steve persisted. ‘You said this job was personal - so what was it?’
Chris took a sip of his whisky. He didn’t speak often, and when he did the words were slow and measured, but once he got going he was like a car with no brakes: he didn’t stop until he crashed into a wall.
‘There was a mate of mine, a guy called Joe,’ he started. He took a deep hit on the drink, his eyes runny and sad. ‘Great bloke. We were at school together, ran around the place as teenagers, then joined the Recces together. Man, I loved that guy. Funniest bastard you ever met and one of the bravest as well. We were in the same unit, went on patrols together. One time, our patrol moved into Mozambique to try and flush out a troop of Kapembwa’s guerrillas. Joe set off out by himself one night to try and get a lead on where they were operating. He never came back. The rest of us went out in the morning to try and find out what had happened to him. It took all day in burning hot sun, but we finally found him.’