Gambian Bluff

DAVID MONNERY

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by 22 Books/Bloomsbury Publishing plc 1994

Copyright © Bloomsbury Publishing plc 1994

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2016

Cover Photographs © MILpictures, Tom Weber/Getty Images (main image); Shutterstock.com (textures)]

David Monnery asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

Though many of the events depicted in this novel actually took place in The Gambia in the summer of 1981, it should be considered entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008155186

Ebook Edition © December 2015 ISBN: 9780008155193

Version: 2015-11-02

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Epilogue

OTHER TITLES IN THE SAS OPERATION SERIES

About the Publisher

1

‘This town is ’coming like a ghost town…’

The song seemed to float ominously out of every open door and window as Worrell Franklin walked slowly down Acre Lane.

‘Do you remember the good old days before the ghost town?’

No, not really, he thought, although only a fool would deny that things were getting worse.

A Rasta walked past him, going up the hill, and the look he flashed Franklin was for his uniform, not his face. Or, to be precise, the combination of the two. The oppressor’s uniform, the face of the oppressed. A black soldier in a white man’s army.

Franklin was used to looks like that, and to the more subtle ones that blended hostility with respect, contempt with envy. He was someone who had got out, escaped. He was someone with a job, which these days felt more and more like a privilege in itself.

Normally he did not wear his uniform around Brixton – it was just easier not to – but this morning he had it on for a reason. The only reason around here. For impressing Whitey.

He turned left onto the High Road and walked north. A crowd of youths were outside the tube station, doing nothing, just waiting for something to ignite their interest. On his side of the road a crowd were gathered round a TV shop, watching the Royal Wedding on the dozen or so sets in the window. When Franklin had left his mum in their living room Lady Diana had been setting out from Clarence House in the ceremonial Glass Coach, looking like an upmarket Cinderella. Now she was walking up the steps of St Paul’s, trailing an ivory-coloured dress which looked long enough to play cricket on.

The camera followed her into the cathedral, dwelling on a few famous faces in passing: Mrs T in a blue pillbox hat, Nancy Reagan in a nauseating pink, the Queen in aquamarine, looking like she usually did, as if she was trying hard not to notice that someone had farted nearby.

And then there was the King of Tonga, whose specially reinforced chair had been featured on the news that morning. It would hardly do to have the great fat git crashing through his pew in the middle of the ceremony.

Franklin tore himself away from the glorious nuptials and walked on under the railway bridges. The police station was another two hundred yards down on the right, across from the junction with Stockwell Road. Even from a distance it looked like a fortress, with its windows protected by wire mesh, and the building itself by iron railings.

He wove his way through the stopped traffic at the lights and walked in through the front door. The desk sergeant’s face went through that series of expressions which Franklin could have painted from memory. First there was the instinctive mixture of contempt and hostility accorded any black face, second the unpleasant element of surprise which went with putting that face above the authority of a uniform. Then the observer’s brain engaged, realized that it was a British Army uniform, and spread relief back through the limbs. Finally the question of a reason for his presence intruded, creating a wariness which was usually expressed through mock aggression.

It all took about five seconds.

‘What can we do for you, John?’ the sergeant asked. Behind him, from somewhere deep within the recesses of the station, the sounds of the Royal Wedding could be heard. Another two policemen were watching the exchange, both of them white. Where are the black policemen? Franklin wondered. Probably ‘out in the community’, trying to explain themselves.

This was why he had joined up, to get away from all this.

‘My name is Worrell Franklin,’ he said formally. ‘I believe my brother Everton Franklin is in custody here.’

The desk sergeant’s face went through another sequence, culminating in brisk correctness. He opened one of the ledgers in front of him and ran his finger down a list. ‘That is correct, sir,’ he said. ‘He was remanded by the magistrates this morning.’

‘I’d like to talk to someone about the circumstances of the arrest, and to see my brother if that’s possible.’

‘I don’t know…’

‘I only have a twenty-four-hour leave,’ Franklin lied, ‘so I would appreciate it if something could be arranged.’ He wondered if anyone had recognized the winged-dagger badge, or whether he would have to spell out his membership of the SAS.

The desk sergeant glanced round at his two comrades, who stared blankly back at him. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said, adding ‘have a seat, sir’ as he disappeared through a door. The other two resumed their paperwork.

Franklin sat down on the long bench and picked up the copy of the Sun which someone had left behind. Opposite the tits on page three he read that the identity of the Toxteth hit-and-run policeman had still not been established. Surprise, surprise, he thought. And the constable who had been brained by the TV thrown from the high-rise walkway was still in critical condition. There were victims wherever you looked.

Too much fighting on the dance floor…The bloody song would not leave him alone.

The sergeant returned with a plain-clothes officer, who introduced himself as Detective-Sergeant Wilson. ‘Like in Dad’s Army,’ he explained, most likely out of habit. ‘Not often we see the SAS in Brixton,’ he said. ‘We could have used you a few times this year,’ he added with a smile.

Someone had recognized the beret badge, then. Franklin politely returned the smile. ‘Can you tell me the circumstances of my brother’s arrest?’ he asked.

‘I can.’ He opened the file he was carrying, and extracted a typed sheet. ‘I’m afraid he’s facing four charges – possession of an offensive weapon, assault, damaging a police vehicle and using threatening behaviour. This is the arresting officer’s report,’ he said, handing it across.

It was not exactly a literary masterpiece. Nor did it seem particularly precise where it needed to be. The gist of it was that two officers had been inside one of the small businesses in Spenser Road when someone had thought fit to roll a petrol bomb under their car. Several arrests had followed, including that of Everton Franklin. He had apparently put up rather more than token resistance, setting about a policeman with a cricket bat.

‘There’s nothing here to connect my brother with the torching of the vehicle,’ Franklin murmured. Indeed there was nothing to suggest why the police had tried to arrest him in the first place.

‘He was probably carrying the bat,’ Wilson said, when confronted with this apparent oversight. ‘More evidence must have been offered to the magistrates, or they wouldn’t have remanded him.’

It didn’t seem the time or place to push the issue. ‘Can I see my brother?’ he asked.

‘If you wish, sir.’ The detective waited for a reply, as if hoping for a change of mind.

‘Yes, I would like to,’ Franklin said patiently. He was depressingly aware that if he had not been wearing his uniform his chances of getting even this far would have been less than zero.

‘Then come this way, sir.’

He was led down two corridors and ushered into what looked like an interview room. There was just a single table, with one chair either side of it, and two more against a wall. The two windows to the outside world were high enough to reveal only sky, the one in the door was small enough to remind Franklin of depressing prison films.

‘It’ll be a few minutes, sir,’ Wilson said, and disappeared, closing the door behind him. Franklin could hear the TV coverage of the Royal Wedding through the ceiling.

The minutes stretched out. How long could it take to bring someone up from the cells? Franklin had a sudden sinking sensation in his stomach – what if Everton was one of the unlucky few who went into a police station and never came out again? It did not happen often, but it did happen. It would kill their mum. Except that she would kill him first. He had always been expected to look out for his younger brother, and he had, at least until he had left home for the Army. He could scarcely watch over him from Germany or Northern Ireland. Or even from Hereford. And Everton was nineteen now. He should be able to look after himself.

But try telling his mum that.

He was about to go looking for Wilson when the door opened to reveal Everton. ‘Fifteen minutes, sir,’ Wilson said from behind him, before closing the door on the two brothers.

‘What you doin’ here?’ Everton asked wearily, sitting down at the table.

‘It’s good to see you, too,’ Franklin said, holding up a palm in greeting.

Everton gave it a half-hearted slap with his own. His face, Franklin noticed, bore a couple of angry-looking bruises. ‘How d’ya get those?’ he asked.

‘How d’ya think? I assaulted a policeman’s boot with my head.’

Franklin said nothing.

‘Don’t you worry ’bout me, bro,’ Everton said, more to break the silence than for any other reason. ‘There’s some Rastas here who pulled their own dreadlocks out to scourge the poor policemen with. By the roots,’ he added.

‘I read your arrest sheet,’ Franklin said.

‘Yeah? I bet that was a fine piece of fiction. They probably write poetry in their spare time, like that dickhead detective on telly.’

‘What did happen?’

‘You have to ask?’

‘Yeah, I have to ask. If the police report is a fine piece of fiction then I need someone else to tell me some fine fact, right?’

Everton breathed out noisily. ‘OK. I got no call to take it out on you.’ He sighed. ‘What happened was what always happens. Someone gives the police reason to freak, and they freak. Arrest anyone they can who’s the right colour, fill up the cells, then retire to their easy chairs upstairs to square their stories…’

‘What happened? Did a police car get petrol-bombed?’

Everton smiled. ‘Yeah. It was a couple of dumb kids. They’s probably halfway to Jamaica by now. They just roll this Coke can full of petrol with a bit of rag in it under the car. There’s no one inside it – the cops are inside Dr Dread’s, looking for some reason to bust him again. And the bomb goes off, but only like a firework – the car don’t go up or nothing. I was right there, talking to Benjy, when it all happens, and we see these kids in the garden next door playing cricket so we run in and try and get ’em to move in case there’s an explosion, right, but they ignore us, so we have to steal their bat. They come running after us, and the next thing I know about five policemen are jumping on top of me and throwing me in the back of a van. And they bring me here. And they make up a nice story for the magistrates, who all look at me like I should be grateful for not having been shot already.’ He looked at his brother. ‘That’s the whole story,’ he said.

‘And they beat you up?’

‘Not really. Just a couple of playful punches in the van. It was nothing much. I was lucky. Like I say, some of the Rastas really got treated bad.’

Franklin looked at the floor. Somewhere deep inside him, in that place he had learned to shut it away, his anger was straining for release. He suppressed the urge – where could it take him that he had not already been? He asked if Benjy had also been arrested.

‘No. He must have picked the right road to run down. Or maybe he just not carrying a cricket bat…’

‘So he can be a witness. Where’s he live?’

‘He won’t want to make himself that conspicuous. He knows what happens if he does.’

‘What happens?’

‘You’ve been away too long, bro. His car gets stopped every time he goes out, his social security gets delayed, the sniffer dogs take a liking to his house…you know.’

‘I’ll talk to him anyway. And there must have been other witnesses.’

‘Hundreds. And they all know they’re on a hiding to nothing. Even if they speak out the judges take the word of the policeman. So why speak out?’

Franklin had no answer. ‘You still looking for a job?’ he asked Everton.

‘Me and the rest of Brixton.’

‘I’ll get you out of here,’ Franklin said.

‘Oh yeah? Then I’ll keep my eyes on the windows for when the big black man comes abseiling in.’

Franklin refused to be provoked. ‘I’ll talk to some people,’ he said.

‘Worrell,’ his brother said, ‘one thing I like to know. The next time Brixton goes up, and they need the Army to put out the fire, whose side you be on?’

‘I go where my conscience say I should go,’ Franklin said. ‘I not on anyone’s side,’ he added, noticing that it only needed a few minutes with Everton and the old anger to have him talking like a Rasta again.

‘Then I hope your conscience is in good shape, man,’ Everton said, ‘cos I think you’re gonna need it to be.’

‘Yeah. You worry about your own future,’ Franklin said, getting up. ‘And don’t go assaulting no more policeman’s boots with your head.’

‘I’ll try real hard to restrain myself.’

‘Any message for Mum?’

‘Tell her I’m OK. Not to worry.’

‘OK. I’ll be back.’

As if on cue, Detective-Sergeant Wilson opened the door.

‘We’re done,’ Franklin said. He had already decided to make no complaint about the beating his brother had been given. It would serve no purpose, and it might conceivably get in the way of getting Everton released. ‘I appreciate your help,’ he told Wilson, catching a glimpse of his brother’s disapproving face over the detective’s shoulder.

Out on Brixton Road once more, he took a deep breath of fresh air and walked slowly back in the direction he had come. The crowd was still clustered around the bank of televisions, watching the now-married twosome leaving St Paul’s. They looked happy enough, Franklin thought, but who could really tell? He wondered if they had made love yet, or if the royal dick was yet to be unveiled. Maybe the Queen Mother would cut a ribbon or something.

He remembered his own mother had asked him to pick up some chicken wings in the market. Her younger son might be in custody, but the older one still had to be fed. Franklin recrossed the road and walked down Electric Avenue to their usual butcher. A street party seemed to be getting under way, apparently in celebration of the royal event. Prince Charles was the most popular establishment figure in Brixton – in fact, he was the only popular establishment figure. People thought he cared, which in the summer of ’81 was enough to make anyone look like a revolutionary.

The only big difference between this and a thousand other British neighbourhoods was the colour scheme – the flags and balloons were all red, yellow and green rather than red, white and blue. Even the kids milling on the street corners seemed to have smiles on their faces this morning, Franklin noticed. For a couple of hours it was just possible to believe there was only one Britain.

Unless, of course, you were locked up in one of the Brixton Police Station’s remand cells for no better reason than being the wrong colour in the wrong place at the wrong time.

2

One of the many heads of state attending the Royal Wedding was Sir Dawda Jawara, President of the small West African state of The Gambia. In the colonial twilight of the early 1960s Jawara had led his nascent country’s pro-independence movement, and ever since that heady, flag-exchanging day in 1965 he had presided over the government of the independent state. The Gambia was not exactly a huge pond – its population had only recently passed the half-million mark and its earnings were mostly derived from groundnuts and tourism – but there was no doubting who was the biggest fish.

The Wedding over, the embassy limousine swished President Jawara out of London and south down the M23 towards Haywards Heath, where he planned to spend a long weekend with an old college friend. With him he had one of his younger wives; the senior wife, Lady Chilel Jawara, had stayed at home to preside over the household and the well-being of his eight children.

That evening he watched reruns of the Wedding, and talked with his host about the next day’s test match. It had always been one of Jawara’s great disappointments that his country, unlike, say, Guyana, had not taken the Empire’s game to its collective heart. The occasional unofficial test matches against Sierra Leone in the early 1960s had by now almost faded from the national memory.

Lately, though, there had been more serious causes for Gambian concern. The previous November a Libyan-backed coup had been foiled only with Senegalese help, and in the meantime the poor performance of the economy had led to food shortages, particularly in the volatile townships in and around the capital. That evening, sitting in his friend’s living room, a pleasant night breeze wafting through the open French windows, Jawara might have felt momentarily at peace with the world, but not so his countrymen.

As Newsnight drew to a close in the Sussex living room, two lorry-loads of armed men were drawing up in front of The Gambia’s only airport, at Yundum, some ten miles as the crow flies to the south-west of the capital, Banjul. The forty or so men, some in plain clothes, some in the uniform of the country’s paramilitary Field Force – The Gambia had no Army as such – jumped down from the lorries and headed off in a variety of directions, in clear accordance with a previously decided plan. Those few members of the Field Force actually on duty at the airport had received no advance warning of any exercise, and were at first surprised and then alarmed, but the appearance of Colonel Junaidi Taal, the 500-strong Field Force’s second in command, was enough to set their minds at rest, at least for the moment. Clearly this was official business.

Taal did not stop to explain matters. As his men fanned out to occupy all the relevant aircraft, offices and communication points, he headed straight through the departure area and into the office of the airport controller.

The last plane of the day – the 21.30 flight to Dakar – had long since departed, but the controller was still in his office, catching up on paperwork. As his door burst open he looked up in surprise. ‘What is this…’ he started to say in Mandinka, his voice trailing away at the sight of the guns in the hands of the civilians flanking the Field Force officer.

‘There has been a change of government,’ Taal said bluntly in English.

The controller’s mouth opened and closed, like a fish’s.

‘The airport will remain closed until you hear to the contrary,’ Taal said. ‘No planes will take off, and no planes will land. The runway is being blocked. You will inform all the necessary authorities that this is the case. Understood?’

The controller nodded vigorously. ‘Yes, of course,’ he said, wondering, but not daring to ask, how much more of the country these people – whoever they were – had under their control. ‘What reason should I give the international authorities for the closure of the airport?’

‘You don’t need to give a reason. They will know soon enough.’ He turned to one of the two men in civilian clothes. ‘Bunja, you are in command here. I’ll call you from the radio station.’

Banjul lies on the south-western side of the River Gambia’s mouth and is separated from the rest of the southern half of the country – the major tourist beaches of Bakau and Fajara, the large township of Serekunda and the airport at Yundum – by a large area of mangrove swamp, which is itself intersected by numerous small watercourses and the much larger Oyster Creek. Anyone leaving or entering Banjul had to cross the creek by the Denton Bridge, a two-lane concrete structure two hundred yards long. At around two a.m. Taal and twenty rebels arrived to secure the bridge, left half a dozen of their number to set up checkpoints at either end, and roared on into Banjul.

The lorry drew up outside the darkened building in Buckle Street which was home to Radio Gambia. No one answered the thunderous knock on the door, so two Field Force men broke it down, and the rebels surged into the building. They found only three people inside, one man in the small studio, sorting through records for the next day’s playlist, and one of the engineers undressed and halfway to paradise with his equally naked girlfriend on the roof. The engineer was bustled downstairs, while the two remaining rebels handed his girlfriend her clothing bit by bit, snickering with pleasure at her embarrassment, and fighting the urge to succumb to their own lust. It was fortunate for the girl that the coup leaders had stressed the need for self-discipline – and the punishments reserved for those who fell short of this – to all of their men. The girl, tears streaming down her face, was eventually escorted downstairs, and left sitting in a room full of records.

The radio station now secure, Taal called Bunja at the airport and checked that nothing had gone amiss. Nothing had. Further calls confirmed that the Banjul ferry terminal and the main crossroads in Serekunda had been seized. Taal called the main Field Force depot in Bakau where the coup leader, Mamadou Jabang, was waiting for news.

‘Yes?’ Jabang asked, his voice almost humming with tension. ‘Everything has gone according to plan?’

‘So far,’ Taal said. ‘We’ll move on to the Presidential Palace now. Are our men in position around the hotels yet?’

‘They should be,’ Jabang replied. ‘The tourists never leave their hotels anyway,’ he added sourly, ‘so it hardly seems necessary to use our men to keep them in.’

‘We don’t want any of them wandering out and getting shot,’ Taal reminded him. Their chances of success were thin enough, he thought, without bringing the wrath of the white world down on their heads.

‘No, we don’t,’ Jabang agreed without much conviction. ‘We’re on our way, then. I’ll see you at the radio station.’

Dr Sibou Cham yawned and rubbed her eyes, then sat for a moment with her hands held, as if in prayer, over her nose. You should pray for a decent hospital, she told herself, one with all the luxuries, like beds and medicines. She looked down at the pile of patients’ records on her desk, and wondered if it was all worth it.

There was a muffled crack, like a gun being fired some way off. She got wearily to her feet and walked through the treatment room to the empty reception area, grateful for the excuse to leave her paperwork behind. The heavyweight concertina door, which would have seemed more at home in a loading dock than a hospital, was locked, as she had requested. Ever since the incident the previous May this had been done. Her attacker might be in prison, but there were others.

She put the chain on the door before unlocking it, then pulled it open a foot, letting in the balmy night air. Almost immediately there was another sound like gunfire, but then silence. It was a shot, she was sure of it. Perhaps a gang battle. She might be bandaging the victims before the night was over.

She closed the door again and sat down at the receptionist’s desk. All the drawer knobs were missing, which seemed to sum up the state of the place. It was all of a piece with the peeling cream paint on the walls, the concrete-block partition which had been half-finished for six months, the gaping holes in the mosquito screens, and the maddening flicker of the fluorescent light. It went with a pharmacy which had fewer drugs than the sellers in the marketplace.

What was she doing here? Why did she stay? One person could not make all that much difference, and maybe the very fact that she was there, working herself into the ground day after day, took away any urgency the authorities might feel about improving the situation.

But where else could she go? Into private practice, of course. It would be easier, more lucrative. She might even get some sleep once in a while. But she could not do it. In The Gambia it was the poor who needed more doctors, not the rich. If money and an easy life was what she wanted, she could have stayed in England, got a job in a hospital there, even become a GP.

Most of the other Africans and Asians she had known at medical school had done just that. They had escaped from the Third World, so why on earth would they want to go back? They would bitch about the English weather, bitch about the racism, but they liked being able to shop at Sainsburys, watch the TV, give their children a good education. And she could hardly blame them. Their countries needed them back, but to go back would be a sacrifice for them, and why should they be the ones to pick up the tab for a world that was not fair?

She could hardly pretend it had been a sacrifice for her, because she had never been able to separate her feelings about the practice of medicine from the unfathomable desire she had always felt to serve humanity. A doctor went where a doctor was most needed, and it was hard to imagine a more needy country in this respect than her own.

But – lately there always seemed to be a ‘but’. Since the attack on her there had been a sense of…loneliness, she supposed. She felt alone, there was no doubt about it. Her family lived in New York, and in any case could not understand why she had not used her obvious gifts to make more of her life. More, that is, in terms of houses, cars and clothes. The people she worked with were the usual mixed bunch – some nice, some not so nice – but she had little in common with any of them. There were no other women doctors at the Royal Victoria Hospital, and the male doctors all wished they were somewhere else.

The Englishman who had saved her that night had become almost a friend. Or something like that. He flirted a lot, and she supposed he would take any sexual favours that were offered, but he had a wife in England, and she guessed that he too was more than a little lonely. And he was at that age, around forty, when men started wondering whether they had made the right life for themselves, and whether it was too late to do something about it.

She was nearly thirty herself, and there seemed little chance of finding a husband in Banjul, even if she had wanted one. She was not sure what she did want. Not to be alone, she supposed. Just that.

It was a funny thing to be thinking in an empty hospital reception area in the middle of the night. She sighed. In the morning it would all look so…

The burst of gunfire seemed to explode all around her, almost making her jump out of her skin. For a moment she thought it had to be inside the room, but then a shadowy figure went racing past in the street outside, then another, and another. They were probably heading for the Presidential Palace, whose gates were only a hundred yards away, around the next corner.

It had to be another coup.

There was a loud series of knocks on the concertina door and shouts of ‘open up’. She took a deep breath and went to unlock it. As she pulled it back a man half fell through the opening, wiping the blood from his head on her white coat as he did so. Behind him another man was holding a bloody side. ‘We need help,’ he groaned, somewhat unnecessarily.

Taal had walked down the radio station’s stairs, and was just emerging onto Buckle Street when a distant burst of automatic fire crackled above the sound of the lorry’s engine. It seemed to be coming from the direction of the Presidential Palace, half a mile or so to the north.

‘Fuck,’ he murmured to himself. He had hoped against hope that this could be a bloodless night, but the chances had always been slim. The men guarding the Palace had received enough personal perks from their employer over the last year to guarantee at least a few hours of stubborn resistance.

The last few bars of ‘Don’t Explain’ faded into silence, or rather into the distant sound of the waves tugging at the beach beneath the Bakau cliffs. Lady Chilel Jawara had discovered Billie Holiday on a trip to New York several years before. Her husband had been attending the UN, and she had decided, on the spur of the moment, to visit an exhibition of photographs of Afro-American music stars. It was the singer’s face she had first fallen in love with, before she’d heard a single note of her music. It was like her mother’s, but that was not the only reason. It was the face of someone who knew what it was like to be a woman.

Not that Billie Holiday had ever been the senior wife of the president of a small African state. Lady Jawara had a lot to be thankful for, and she knew it. Her children were sleeping between sheets, went to the best school, and ate when they were hungry. If they got ill a doctor was sent for.

As for herself, she enjoyed the role of senior wife. Her husband might rule the country but she ruled the household, and of the two administrations she suspected hers was both the more efficient and the less stressful. She hoped he had enjoyed the wedding in London, though she doubted it. Generally he was as bored by European ceremonies as she was.

She yawned and stretched her arms, wondering whether to listen to the other side of the record or go to bed. At that moment she heard the sound of a vehicle approaching.

Whoever it was, they were coming to the Presidential bungalow, for the road led nowhere else. She felt suddenly anxious. ‘Bojang!’ she called, walking to the living-room door.

‘Yes, Lady,’ he said, emerging from the kitchen just as a hammering started on the compound gate.

They both stood there listening, she uncertain what to do, he waiting for instructions. ‘See who it is,’ she said at last.

He let himself out, and she went in search of the gun she knew her husband kept somewhere in the house. The drawers of his desk in the study seemed the best bet, but two of them yielded no gun and the other two were locked. She was still looking for the key when an armed man appeared in the study doorway.

‘Who are you? And what do you want in my house?’ she asked.

‘You are under arrest,’ he said.

She laughed. ‘By whose authority?’

‘And your children,’ the man added, looking round with interest at the President’s study. ‘By the authority of the Revolutionary Council.’

‘The what?’

Her contempt stung the man. ‘Your days are over, bitch,’ he said.

The firefight which began at the gates of the Presidential Palace soon after four a.m., and which continued intermittently across its gardens, up Marina Parade and down to the beach, for the next two hours, woke up most of those sleeping within a quarter of a mile of the Palace.

Opposite the new Atlantic Hotel in Marina Parade, Mustapha Diop was happily snoring his way through it all until his wife’s anxiety forced her to wake him. The two of them sat up in bed listening to the gunfire, then went together to the window, where all they could see was a distant view of the moon on the surf and any number of palm fronds swaying gently in the night breeze.

Diop and his family were from Senegal, and had been in Banjul only a few weeks, since his appointment as secretary to the committee overseeing the proposed union between the two countries. Since a treaty already existed whereby either government would intervene to save the other from an armed take-over, Diop was already aware that he might prove an important bargaining card for any Gambian rebels. The sudden violent knocking on the door downstairs made it clear that the same thought had occurred to them.

Half a mile to the west, the gunfire was only audible, and barely so, when the breeze shifted in the right direction. Moussa Diba and Lamin Konko shared a north-east-facing cell in Banjul Prison, and Diba, prevented from sleeping as usual by the vengeful thoughts which circled his brain, was at first uncertain of what it was he could hear. The sound of lorries rolling past, headed into Banjul from the direction of the Denton Bridge, offered him another clue. Either there was a mother of an exercise going on – which seemed about as likely as an edible breakfast – or someone was trying to topple that little bastard Jawara. Diba smiled to himself in the gloom, and woke Konko with a jab of his foot.

His cellmate groaned. ‘What is it?’ he said sleepily.

‘Listen.’

Konko listened. ‘Gunfire,’ he said. ‘So what?’

‘So nothing. I thought you’d enjoy some excitement.’

‘I was having plenty in my sleep. There’s this girl I used to know in my village. I’d forgotten all about her…’

He rambled on, making Diba think of Anja, and of what she was doubtless doing. The woman could not say no. Unfortunately, he could not say no for her, not while he was locked up in this cell.

Another burst of gunfire sounded, this time closer. So what? Diba’s thoughts echoed his cellmate’s. Whatever was happening out there was unlikely to help him in here.

Simon McGrath, awoken in his room on the fourth floor of the Carlton Hotel, thought for a moment he was back on the Jebel Dhofar in Oman, listening to the firqats firing off their rifles in jubilation at the successful capture of Sudh. The illusion was brief-lived. He had never had a bed in Oman, not even one as uncomfortable as the Carlton’s. And it had been more than ten years since the men he had helped to train had taken Sudh and started rolling back the tide of the Dhofari rebels.

This was Banjul, The Gambia, and he was no longer in the SAS. Still, he thought, swinging his legs to the floor and striding across to the window, the gunfire he was listening to was coming out of Kalashnikov barrels, and they were not standard issue with the Gambian Field Force. Out there on the capital’s mean streets something not quite kosher seemed to be taking place.

The view from his window, which faced south across the shanty compounds towards the Great Mosque, was uninstructive. Nothing was lit, nothing moving. He tried the light switch, but as usual at this time of night, the hotel’s electricity was off.

McGrath dressed in the dark, wondering what would be the prudent thing to do. Stay in bed, probably.

To hell with that.

He delved into his bag and extracted the holster and semi-automatic 9mm Browning High Power handgun which he had brought with him from England. Since McGrath was in The Gambia in a civilian capacity, seconded from the Royal Engineers to head a technical assistance team engaged in bridge-building and pipe-laying, his possession of the Browning was strictly illicit, but that hardly concerned him. The Third World, as he was fond of telling people who lived in more comfortable places, was like an overpopulated Wild West, and he had no intention of ending up with an arrow through his head. A little string-pulling among old contacts at Heathrow had eased the gun’s passage onto the plane, and at Yundum no one had dreamed of checking his baggage.

He threaded the cross-draw holster to his belt, slipped on the lightweight jacket to hide the gun, and left his room. At first it seemed as if the rest of the hotel remained blissfully unaware of whatever it was that was happening outside, but as he went down the corridor he caught the murmur of whispered conversations.

He was about to start down the stairs when the benefits of a visit to the roof occurred to him. He walked up the two flights to the fifth floor, then one more to the flat roof. With the city showing its usual lack of illumination and the moon hiding behind clouds, it was little lighter outside than in, and for almost a minute McGrath waited in the open doorway, searching the shadows for anyone who had chosen to spend the night in the open air. Once satisfied the roof was empty, he threaded his way through the washing lines to the side overlooking Independence Drive.

As he reached this vantage point a lorry full of men swept past, heading down towards the centre of town. Several men were standing on the pavement opposite the hotel, outside the building housing the Legislative Assembly. A yellow glow came from inside the latter, as if from gas lamps or candles.

It looked like a coup, McGrath thought, and at that moment a fresh volley of shots resounded away to his right, from the direction of the Palace. There was a hint of lights through the trees – headlights, perhaps – but he could see nothing for certain, either in that direction or any other. Banjul might be surrounded on its three sides by river, sea and swamp, but at four in the morning they all looked like so many pieces of gloom.

The Royal Victoria Hospital, whose main entrance was little more than a hundred yards from the Palace gates, showed no more lights than anywhere else. McGrath wondered if Sibou was sleeping there that night, as she often did, or whether she had gone home for some of that rest she always seemed to need and never seemed to get.

He would go and have a look, he decided, one part of his mind commending him for his thoughtfulness, the other thanking his lucky stars that he had come up with a good excuse to go out in search of adventure.

It was almost six-thirty before Colonel Taal felt confident enough of the outcome of the fighting around the Presidential Palace to delegate its direction, and to head back down Buckle Street to the radio station for the prearranged meeting. Mamadou Jabang and his deputy, Sharif Sallah, had arrived in their commandeered taxi more than half an hour earlier, and the subsequent wait had done little to soothe their nerves.

‘What is happening?’ Jabang asked, when Taal was only halfway through the door. He and Sallah were sitting at either end of a table in the station’s hospitality room. ‘Has anything gone wrong?’

‘Nothing.’

‘The Palace is taken?’ Sallah asked.

‘The Palace is cordoned off,’ Taal answered. ‘Some of the guards have escaped, either down the beach or into the town, but that was expected.’ He sat down and looked at the two of them: the wiry Jabang with his hooded eyes and heavy brow, Sallah with the face that always seemed to be smiling, even when it was not. Both men were sweating heavily, which perhaps owed something to the humidity, but was mostly nerves. Jabang in particular seemed exhausted by the combination of stress and tiredness, which did not exactly bode well for the new government’s decision-making process. Nothing perverted the exercise of judgement like lack of sleep, and somehow or other all three of them would have to make sure they got enough in the days to come.

‘It will be light in half an hour,’ Jabang said.

‘And the country will wake to a better government,’ Sallah said, almost smugly.

Taal supposed he meant it. For some reason he could never quite put his finger on, he had always doubted Sallah’s sincerity. Whereas Jabang was transparently honest and idealistic almost to a fault, Sallah’s words and deeds invariably seemed to carry a taint of opportunism.

Maybe he was wrong, Taal thought. He hoped he was. Jabang trusted the man and there had to be easier ways to glory than taking part in the mounting of a coup like this one. Everyone knew their chances of lasting success were no better than even, and in the sanctum of his own thoughts Taal thought the odds considerably longer. Seizing control was one thing, holding on to it something else entirely.

McGrath had decided that even in the dark a stroll along Independence Drive might not prove wise, and had opted for the long way round, making use of Marina Parade. On this road there was less likely to be traffic or headlights, and the overarching trees made the darkness even more impenetrable. He worked his way along the southern side, ears alert for the sound of unwelcome company, and was almost level with the Atlantic Hotel when two headlights sprang to life some two hundred yards ahead of him, and rapidly started closing the distance. There was no time to run for better cover, and McGrath flattened himself against the wall, hoping to fall outside the vehicle’s cone of illumination.

He need not have bothered. The lights swerved to the left, disappearing, as he immediately realized, into the forecourt of the Atlantic Hotel. He wondered what the rebels had in store for the hundred or so guests, most of them Brits, and all of whom had come to The Gambia on package tours in search of a sunny beach, not the wrong end of a Kalashnikov.

He would worry about that later. For the moment he wanted to make sure Sibou was all right. Hurrying on past the Atlantic, he came to the doors of the Royal Victoria’s Maternity Wing, and decided that it might be better to use them than attempt the front entrance. Ten minutes later, having threaded his way through the labyrinth of one-storey buildings and courtyards, he found himself looking across at the lit windows of the emergency department some twenty yards away. Several men were standing around inside, some of them bending down to talk to those who were presumably lying, out of sight, on the cubicle beds and waiting-room benches. One man was moaning continuously, almost forlornly, but otherwise there was virtual silence.

Then he saw Sibou, rising wearily into view after treating one of the prone casualties. Her dark eyes seemed even darker, the skin stretched a little tighter across the high cheekbones, the usually generous mouth pursed with tension and tiredness. McGrath worked his way round the perimeter of the yard to the open window of her private office and clambered over the sill. He opened the door a quarter of an inch and looked out through the crack. The corridor was empty.

Sooner or later she would come, and he settled down to wait, thinking about the first time they had met, a couple of months earlier, soon after he had arrived on his secondment. The circumstances could hardly have been more propitious for an intending Galahad. He had come to the Royal Victoria looking for the tetanus shot he should have had before leaving home, and found himself face to face with a room full of terrified Gambians, her half-naked on the floor and a man about to rape her at knife-point in full view of everyone else. All the old training had come instantly into use, and before he had had time to ponder the risks McGrath had used the man’s neck for a chopping board and his genitals for a football.

The damsel in distress had been grateful enough to have dinner with him, but he had foolishly allowed himself to be a little too honest with her, and she had declined to be anything more than a friend. That had not been as difficult as he had expected, though he still dreamed of covering her ebony body with his kisses, not to mention her covering his with hers. But Sibou was great company even fully clothed, and he had even found himself wishing his wife and children could meet her.

He could not remember being so impressed by someone’s dedication – in the face of such awe-inspiring odds – for a long, long time. She could have had a doctor’s job, and a doctor’s ample rewards, anywhere in the world, but here she was, in this ramshackle office, struggling to stretch always inadequate resources in the service of the ordinary people who came in off the street, and offering every one of them a smile almost beautiful enough to die for.

McGrath looked at his watch. In twenty minutes it would begin to get light: where did he want to be when that happened? At the Atlantic, he decided, where there would probably be a working telephone and some chance of finding out what was happening. After all, now he had found out that Sibou was all right, there had to be more pressing things to do than watch her smile.

He was halfway out of the window when she came in through the door. She jumped with surprise, then burst out laughing. ‘What are you doing, you crazy Englishman?’ she asked.

He pulled himself back into the room, wondering how anyone could look so sexy in a white coat and stethoscope. ‘I’ve come to take you away from all this,’ he said grandly.

‘Through the window?’

‘Well…’

‘And anyway, I like all this. And I’m busy,’ she added, rummaging around in her desk drawer for something.

‘I just came to check you were OK,’ he said.

She turned and smiled at him. ‘Thank you.’

‘What’s happening out there?’ he asked.

‘Out in the city? Oh, another bunch of fools have decided to overthrow the government.’

‘And are they succeeding?’

She shrugged. ‘Who knows? Who cares?’

‘I thought you didn’t like Papa Jawara.’

‘I don’t. But playing musical chairs at the Palace is not going to get me the medicines I need. In fact I’m having to use the little I’ve got to patch up those toy soldiers in there.’

‘How many of them?’

‘About a dozen or so. We’re already running out of blood. Look, I have to go…’ She suddenly noticed the holstered gun inside his jacket. ‘What are you wearing that for?’ she demanded to know.

‘Self-defence.’

‘It will give them a reason to shoot you.’

‘Yeah, well…’

She threw up her hands in disgust. ‘You play what games you want,’ she said, adding over her shoulder, ‘and take care of yourself.’

‘I’ll come back later,’ he called after her, although he was not sure if she had heard. ‘What a woman,’ he muttered to himself, and worked his body back out through the window. He retraced his steps through the sprawling grounds to the Maternity Wing entrance, crossed over the still-dark Marina Parade and scaled the wall of the grounds opposite. Five minutes and another wall later he was standing on the beach. Away to his right, over the far bank of the river mouth, the sky was beginning to lighten. He turned the other way, and walked a couple of hundred yards along the deserted sand to the hotel’s beach entrance.

The kidney-shaped pool shone black in the artificial light, but its only occupant was an inflatable plastic monkey. McGrath walked through into the hotel building, hands in pockets to disguise the bulge of the Browning. In the lobby he could hear voices, and after a moment’s thought decided to simply take a seat within earshot, and pretend he was just one more innocent tourist.

It was a fruitful decision. For five minutes he listened to two voices trying to explain to several others – the latter presumably the hotel’s management – that there was a new government, that the foreign guests would not be allowed out of their hotels for at least a day, but that there was nothing to stop them enjoying the sun and the hotel beach and the swimming pool. It was up to the management to make these rules clear to the guests. And to point out that anyone attempting to leave the hotel grounds risked being shot.

3

‘All authority now rests in the Revolutionary Council,’ said the voice coming out of the speakers. Someone on the hotel staff had channelled the radio through the outdoor hi-fi system, and around a hundred staff and guests were sitting around the hotel pool, listening to the first proclamation of the new government.

‘The Socialist and Revolutionary Labour Party, which was illegally suppressed during the regime of the tyrant Jawara, has contributed nine members to the new ruling Council. The other three members have been supplied by the Field Force, which has already proved itself overwhelmingly in support of the new government.’

Oh yeah? McGrath thought to himself. Some of the bastards must have been in on it, but he doubted if it had been a majority.

‘The Jawara regime,’ the voice went on, ‘has always been a backward-looking regime. Nepotism has flourished, corruption has been rife, tribal differences have been exacerbated rather than healed. Economic incompetence has gone hand in hand with social injustice, and for the ordinary man the last few years have been an endless struggle. The recent severe food shortages offered proof that, if unchecked, the situation would only have grown worse. That is why the Council has now assumed control, so that all the necessary steps to reverse this trend can at once be taken.’

The voice paused for breath, or for inspiration. What was the magic panacea going to be this time round, McGrath asked himself.

‘A dictatorship of the proletariat…’

McGrath burst out laughing.

‘…a government of working people, led by the Socialist and Revolutionary Labour Party, will now be established to promote socialism and true democracy. This will, of course, take time, and the process itself will doubtless provoke opposition from the forces of reaction, particularly those remnants of the old regime who still occupy positions of authority throughout the country. In order to accelerate the process of national recovery certain short-term measures must be taken. Accordingly, the Council declares Parliament dissolved and the constitution temporarily suspended. The banks and courts will remain closed until further notice. All political parties are banned. A dusk-to-dawn curfew will be in force from this evening.

‘Guests in our country are requested, for their own safety, not to leave their hotel compounds. The Council regrets the need for this temporary restriction, which has been taken with our guests’ best interests in mind.’

McGrath looked round at the assembled holidaymakers, most of whom seemed more amused than upset by the news. There were a few nervous giggles, but no sign of any real fear.

‘Oh well, we’ll be going home the day after tomorrow,’ one Lancastrian voice said a few yards away.

Maybe they would be, McGrath thought, but he would not bet on it. It all depended on how secure the new boys’ control was. If it was either really firm or really shaky, then there was probably little to worry about. But if they were strong enough to keep some control yet not strong enough to make it stick, then these people around the pool might well become unwilling pawns in the struggle. Hostages, even. It could get nasty.

The voice was sinking deeper into generalities: ‘…their wholehearted support in the building of a fair and prosperous society. It wishes to stress that the change of government is an internal affair, and of practical concern only to the people of The Gambia. Any attempt at interference from outside the country’s borders will be considered a hostile act. The Council hopes and expects a comradely response from our neighbours, particularly the people and government of Senegal, with whom we wish to pursue a policy of growing cooperation in all spheres…’

So that was it, McGrath thought. They were expecting Senegalese intervention. In which case, it should be all over in a few days. He did not know much about the Senegalese Army, but he had little doubt that they could roll over this bunch. And then it was just a matter of everyone keeping their heads down while the storm blew itself out.

‘How did it sound?’ Jabang asked as they settled into the back seat of the commandeered taxi. A few minutes earlier two Party members had arrived from Yundum with Jawara’s personal limousine, assuming that Jabang would wish to use it. He had sent them packing with a lecture on the perils of the personality cult.

Which was all to the good, Taal thought. And maybe riding round Banjul in a rusty Peugeot behind a pair of furry dice was a suitably proletarian image for the new government. At least no one could accuse them of élitism.

‘Junaidi, how did it sound?’ Jabang repeated.

‘Good, Mamadou, good,’ Taal replied. Jabang looked feverish, he thought. ‘We all need some sleep,’ he said, ‘or we won’t know what we’re doing.’

Jabang laughed. ‘I could sleep for a week,’ he said, ‘but when will I get the chance?’

‘After you’ve addressed the Council,’ Taal said.

‘Just take a few hours. We’ll wake you if necessary.’

‘And when will you sleep?’ Jabang asked.

‘Whenever I can.’ But probably not for the rest of the day, he thought. Whatever. He should get his second wind soon.

The driver arrived with Sallah, who joined him in the front. The street seemed virtually empty, but that was not surprising. Today, Taal both hoped and expected, most people would stay home and listen to the radio.

‘I must talk to the Senegalese envoy after the Council,’ Jabang remembered out loud. ‘Where is he at the moment?’

‘In the house where he is staying,’ Sallah said over his shoulder. ‘He has only been told he cannot go out.’

‘You will bring him to the Legislative Assembly?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good.’ Jabang sat back as the taxi swung through the roundabout at McCarthy Square, his eyes darting this way and that as if searching for something to rest on.

Watching him, Taal felt a sudden sense of emptiness. He had known Mamadou Jabang for almost twenty-five years, since he was fourteen and the other man was seven. They had grown up in adjoining houses in Bakau, both sons of families well off by Gambian standards. Both had flirted with the religious vocation, both had been educated abroad, though on different sides of the Iron Curtain.

Taal had graduated from Sandhurst in England, while Jabang had received one of the many scholarships offered by Soviet embassies in Africa during the early 1970s. The former had worked his way effortlessly to his position in the Field Force, and only Jawara’s unspoken but justified suspicion of Taal’s political sympathies had prevented him holding the top job before he was forty.

Jabang, on the other hand, had become mired in politics, and had foolishly – as he himself admitted – allowed himself to overestimate Jawara’s instinct for self-preservation. The SRLP had become too popular too quickly, particularly among the township youths and the younger members of the Field Force, and in the early summer of 1980 Jawara had seized on the random shooting of a policeman to ban the Party. With all the democratic channels closed, the SRLP had spent the succeeding year planning Jawara’s overthrow by force.

And here they were, driving to the parliament building behind a pair of pink furry dice, the new leaders of their country, at least for today. Taal felt the enormity of it all – like burning bridges, as the English would say. If the Council could endure, then he and Mamadou would have the chance to transform their country, to do all the things they had dreamed of doing, to truly make a difference in the lives of their countrymen. If they failed, then Jawara would have them hanged.

The stakes could hardly be higher.

‘Junaidi, we’ve arrived,’ Jabang said, pulling him out of his reverie. Mamadou had a smile on his face – the first one Taal had seen that day. And why not, he thought, climbing out of the taxi in the forecourt of the Legislative Assembly. They had succeeded. For the moment at least, they had succeeded.

He followed Jabang in through the outer doors, across the anteroom and into the chamber, where the forty or fifty men who had been waiting for them burst into spontaneous applause.

Jabang raised a fist in salute, beamed at the assembly, and took a seat on the platform. Taal sat beside him and looked out across the faces, every one of which he knew. He had the sudden sinking feeling that this would be the high point, and that from this moment on things would only get worse.

Jabang was now on his feet, motioning for silence. ‘Comrades,’ he began, ‘I will not take up much of your time – we all have duties to perform,’ adding with a smile: ‘And a country to run. I can tell you that we are in firm control of Banjul, Bakau, Fajara, Serekunda, Yundum and Soma. Three-quarters of the Field Force has joined us. I do not think we have anything to fear from inside the country. The main threat, as we all knew from the beginning, will come from outside, from the Senegalese. They have the treaty with Jawara, and if they judge it in their interests to uphold it then it is possible they will send troops. I still think it more likely that they will wait to judge the situation here, and act accordingly.

‘So it is important that we offer no provocations, no excuse for intervention. At the moment we have no news of their intentions, but I will be asking their envoy here to talk to his government in Dakar this morning. And of course we shall be making the most of the friends we have in the international community.

‘The Senegalese will not act without French approval, so we must also make sure that nothing tarnishes our image in the West. The last thing we need now is a dead white tourist.’ He grinned owlishly.

‘The Council will be in more or less permanent session from now on – and when any of us will get any sleep is anyone’s guess. All security matters should be channelled through Junaidi here.’

Taal smiled at them all, reflecting that it was going to be a long day.

The British High Commission was situated on the road between Bakau and Fajara, some eight miles to the west of Banjul. McGrath finally got through on the phone around ten o’clock. The line had been jammed for the previous two hours, presumably with holiday-makers wondering what the British Government intended to do about the situation. As if there was anything they could do.

He asked to talk to Bill Myers, the all-purpose undersecretary whose roles included that of military attaché. Myers had helped smooth the path for McGrath on the ex-SAS man’s arrival, and they had met several times since, mostly at gatherings of the expatriate community: Danes running an agricultural research station, Germans working on a solar-energy project, Brits like McGrath involved in infrastructural improvements. It was a small community, and depressingly male.

‘Where are you?’ was Myers’s first question.

‘At the Atlantic’

‘How are things there? No panic?’

‘Well, there was one outbreak when someone claimed the hotel was running out of gin…’

‘Ha ha…’

‘No, no problems here. People are just vaguely pissed off that they can’t go out. Not that many of them wanted to anyway, but they liked the idea that they could.’

Myers grunted. ‘What about the town? Any idea what’s going on?’

‘Hey, I called you to find out what was going on – not the other way round.’

‘Stuck out here we haven’t got a clue,’ Myers said equably. ‘There seems to be a group of armed men outside each of the main hotels, but there haven’t been any incidents involving Europeans that we know of. There was some gunfire in Bakau last night, but we’ve no idea who got shot. And we listened to Chummy on the radio this morning. And that’s about it. What about you?’

McGrath told him what he had heard and seen from the Carlton roof, and at the hospital. ‘It seems quiet enough for now,’ he concluded. ‘Looks like they made it stick, at least for the moment.’

‘If you can find out anymore, we’d appreciate it,’ Myers said. ‘It’s hard to give London any advice when we don’t know any more than they do.’

‘Right,’ McGrath agreed. ‘In exchange, can you let my wife know I’m OK?’

Myers took down the London number. ‘But don’t go taking any mad risks,’ he said. ‘I’m not taking a day trip to Banjul, not even for your funeral.’

‘You’re all heart,’ McGrath said, and hung up. For a moment he stood in the hotel lobby, wondering what to do. The new government had only restricted the movement of ‘guests’, by which they presumably meant the three hundred or so lucky souls currently visiting The Gambia on package holidays. McGrath was not on holiday and not a guest, so the restrictions could hardly apply to him.

He wondered if the guards at the hotel gates would appreciate the distinction.

Probably not. He decided discretion was the better part of valour, and after moving the holstered Browning round into the small of his back, left the hotel the way he had come, through the beach entrance. Already twenty or so guests were sunning themselves as if nothing had happened, a couple of the women displaying bare breasts. McGrath supposed they were nice ones, and wondered why he always found topless beaches such a turn-off.

Better not to know, probably. At least there were no armed men guarding the beach: the new regime was either short on manpower or short on brains. He headed west, reckoning it was best to avoid the area of the Palace and cut back through to Independence Drive just above the Carlton. There was a heavy armed presence outside the Legislative Assembly, but no one challenged him as he walked down the opposite pavement and ducked into the Carlton’s terrace.

The hotel seemed half-deserted. There were no messages for him and the telephone was dead. He decided to visit the office he had been given in Wellington Street, in the heart of town. If he was stopped, he was stopped; there was no point in behaving like a prisoner before he got caught.

Outside he tried hailing a taxi, more out of curiosity than because he really wanted one. The driver slowed, noticed the colour of his face, and accelerated away. McGrath started walking down Independence Drive, conscious of being stared at by those few Gambians who were out on the street. It was all a bit unnerving, and recognition of this added a swagger to his walk. He was damned if he was going to slink around the town in broad daylight.

The stares persisted, but no one spoke to him or tried to impede his passage. Once on Wellington Street he noticed that the Barra ferry was anchored in midstream: no one could escape in it, and no one could use it to launch an attack on Banjul. McGrath found himself admiring that piece of military logic. The rebel forces were obviously not entirely composed of fools, even if they did include the last person on earth who could use the phrase ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ with a straight face.

The offices of the Ministry of Development, where he had been allotted a room, had obviously not been deemed of sufficient importance to warrant a rebel presence. McGrath simply walked through the front door and up to his room, which he half-expected to find as empty as the rest of the building. Instead he found the smiling face of Jobo Camara, the twenty-four-year-old Gambian who had been appointed his deputy.

‘Mr McGrath!’ Camara called out to him. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I’ve come to work,’ McGrath answered mildly.

‘But…there is a revolution going on!’

‘There’s nothing happening at the moment. Why are you here?’

‘I only live down the street. I thought I would make certain no one has come to the office who shouldn’t have.’

‘And has anyone?’ McGrath asked, going over to the window and checking out the street.

‘No…’

‘Jobo, what’s happening out there? I’m a foreigner – it’s hard to read the signs in someone else’s country. I mean, do these people have any support among the population?’

The young man considered the question. ‘Some,’ he said at last. ‘It’s hard to say how much. Today, I think, many people are still waiting to see how these people behave. They will give them the benefit of the doubt for a few days, maybe.’ He shrugged. ‘The government – the old government – was not popular. Not in Banjul, anyway.’ He stopped and looked questioningly at McGrath, as if wanting to know if he had said too much.

‘People don’t like Jawara?’ McGrath asked.

‘He is just a little man with a big limousine, who gives all the good jobs to his family and friends. He is not a bad man. People don’t hate him. But I don’t think they will fight for him, either.’

‘You think most people will just wait and see?’

‘Of course. It is easier. As long as the new men don’t behave too badly…’

‘They seem to have the Field Force on their side.’

‘Some of them. Maybe half. My uncle is in the Field Force in Fajara, and my mother wanted me to check on him, make sure he’s all right. That was another reason I came to the office: to borrow the jeep,’ he added, hopefully.

‘Fine, I’ll come with you,’ McGrath said.

Franklin had been woken early by his mother setting off for the dawn shift at the South Western Hospital in Clapham, and then again by his sister leaving for school. When he finally surfaced it was gone eleven, and he ate a large bowl of cornflakes in front of the TV, watching the opening hour of the Third Test between England and Australia. The play hardly came up to West Indian standards, but the England batting did remind him of the last time they had faced Roberts and Holding. Boycott and Gower were both gone before he had finished his second cup of coffee.

With some reluctance he turned off the television, got dressed and left the house. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt – the people he meant to see today would not be impressed by his uniform. In fact, they would probably use it for target practice if they thought they could get away with it.

The weather was much the same as it had been for the Royal Wedding, but the mood on the streets seemed less sunny, more like its usual sullen self. Franklin’s first port of call was the address for Benjy which Everton had given him – a sixth-floor flat on a big estate in nearby Angell Town. Benjy, a thin young man with spiky hair and gold-rimmed glasses, was alone, watching the cricket.

‘You know why I’ve come?’ Franklin started.

‘It’s about Everton.’

‘Yeah.’

He let Franklin in with some reluctance, but offered him a cup of tea. While he was making it Gooch was bowled out. England were doing their best to make the Australians feel at home.

‘Did you see what happened?’ Franklin asked, when Benjy came back with the tea.

‘When?’

‘When he was arrested.’

‘No. I’m running too hard, you know. One moment the street is empty, the next the policemen are tripping over each other. I go straight down the alley by Dr Dread and over the wall and out through the yards. The last time I see Everton he is standing there with the cricket bat. I yelled at him to come, but he must have run the other way.’

‘OK,’ Franklin said. ‘Did you know anyone else who was there, anyone who might have seen what happened?’

Benjy shook his head. ‘They all got arrested. Or they didn’t stop to watch and didn’t see nothing. Like I and I. I’s sorry, Worrell, but that’s how it goes. Anyways, if the police all saying one thing, then nobody listen to nobody else.’ He opened his palms in a gesture of resignation.

Franklin walked down the twelve flights of steps rather than face the smell of concentrated urine in the lift, and stopped for a moment on the pavement outside the building, giving the sunshine a chance to lighten his state of mind.

It did not work. He walked back towards the centre of Brixton, hyper-aware of the world around him. There were too many people on the streets, too many people not actually going anywhere. It felt like a football crowd before a game, a sense of expectation, a sense of looming catharsis. It felt ugly.

He walked up to Railton Road to the address his mum had given him, where the local councillor held surgeries on a Thursday afternoon. Franklin did not know Peter Barrett very well, but his father had always had good things to say about the man, and even Everton had given him the benefit of the doubt.

The queue of people ahead of Franklin bore testimony to Barrett’s popularity in the community. Or maybe just the number of problems people were facing. Franklin took out his Walkman and plugged himself into the Test Match commentary. It was still lunch, so he switched to Radio One and let his mind float to the music.

Around two it was his turn. Peter Barrett looked tired, and a lot older than Franklin remembered, but he managed a smile in greeting. Franklin explained why he was there, knowing as he did so that none of it was news to the councillor.

It turned out that Barrett had already been contacted by half a dozen relatives of those who had been arrested in Spenser Road. He was trying to get them and any witnesses they could find to a meeting on the following evening. Then they could discuss what was possible. If anything.

‘Do you still live with your parents?’ Barrett asked.

‘No, I’m in the Army,’ Franklin said, wondering what the reaction would be.

Barrett just gave him a single glance that seemed to speak volumes, before carrying on as if nothing had happened. But something had – Franklin had failed a loyalty test.

Walking back up Acre Lane he wondered if he had doomed himself to a life in permanent limbo – for ever denied full access to one world, and with no way back into the other.

In Banjul, Mustapha Diop had not had the most relaxing of mornings. The rebel soldiers who had arrived at his front door in the hour before dawn were still there, albeit outside. He had been ‘asked’ not to leave the house – in the interests of his own safety, of course – and had been unable to derive any joy from the telephone. The radio broadcast had rendered his wife almost hysterical, which was unusual, and all morning the children had been driving him mad, which was not. He was lighting yet another cigarette when two men appeared in the gateway and started across the space towards his front door.

One of them was thin-faced, with dark-set eyes and hair cut to the scalp, the other had chubbier features and seemed to be smiling. Once inside they introduced themselves as Mamadou Jabang and Sharif Sallah, respectively the new President and Foreign Secretary of The Gambia.

‘I will come directly to the point,’ Jabang said. ‘We wish you to contact your government, and to give them an accurate picture of what is happening here in Banjul…’

‘How could I know – I have been kept a prisoner here!’

‘You have not been ill-treated?’ Sallah asked in a concerned voice.

‘No, but…’

‘It was merely necessary to ensure that you did not venture out while the streets were not safe,’ Sallah said. ‘The same precautions were taken with all the foreign embassies,’ he added, less than truthfully.

‘Yes, yes, I understand,’ Diop said. ‘But it is still the case that I know nothing of the situation outside.’

‘We are here to change that,’ Jabang said. ‘We are going to take you on a tour of the city, so that you can see for yourself.’

‘And if I refuse?’

‘Why would you do that?’ Jabang asked with a smile.

Diop could not think of a reason. He smiled back. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ he said, and a few minutes later, having told his wife where he was going, he found himself seated next to the new President in the back of a taxi.

‘Do you know the town well?’ Jabang asked, as they set off down Marina Parade.

‘Quite well.’

‘Good. We will go down Wellington Street to the ferry terminal, and then back up Hagen Street. Yes?’

‘Yes, of course.’

The taxi sped down the tree-lined avenue, then turned past the Royal Victoria Hospital onto Independence Drive. There seemed to be few people outdoors, though one group of youths gathered around a shop at the top of Buckle Street offered clenched-fist salutes to their passing vehicle.

‘It looks peaceful, yes?’ Sallah asked from the front seat.

‘Yes,’ Diop agreed. Actually, it looked dead. What were these people trying to prove?

‘Is there anywhere in particular you’d like to see?’ Sallah asked.

My home in the Rue Corniche in Dakar, Diop thought to himself. ‘No, nowhere,’ he answered.

They drove back up Independence Drive to the Legislative Assembly, where Diop was ushered through into a small office containing desk, chair and telephone. ‘You can speak to your government from here,’ Sallah told him. ‘And tell them that the fighting is over and the new government in full control. Tell them what you saw on the streets.’

‘I will tell them what I know,’ Diop agreed.

At that moment someone else appeared and started talking excitedly to Sallah in Mandinka, in which Diop was less than fluent. The gist of what was being said, though, soon became clear. As Sallah turned back to him, Diop did his best to pretend he had not understood.

‘There is a problem with the telephone connection,’ the Gambian said. ‘In the meantime you will be taken back to your house.’

‘I…’ Diop started to say, but Sallah had already gone, and two armed rebels were gesturing for Diop to follow them. He walked back to his house between them, pondering what he had heard – that all connections with Senegal had been cut by the Senegalese Government. That could only mean one thing as far as Diop could see – Senegal intended living up to its treaty with the ousted government, and troops would soon be on their way to dispose of this one. Where that left him and his family, Diop was afraid to think.

Moussa Diba turned away from the cell window and its unrelenting panorama of mangrove swamp. Lamin Konko was dozing fitfully on the half-shredded mattress they shared, his hand occasionally stabbing out at the fly which seemed intent on colonizing his forehead. It was the middle of the afternoon – normally the quiet time in Banjul Prison – but today was different. Today all sorts of noises seemed to be sounding elsewhere in the building: whispered conversations, hammering, even laughter. And more than that: all day there had been tension in the air. It was hard to put his finger on exactly how this had expressed itself, but Moussa Diba knew that something was happening outside his cell, or something had happened and the ripples were still spreading. He did not know why, but he had a feeling it was good news. Maybe he did have his grandmother’s gifts as a future-teller, as she had always thought.

Time would tell.

His thoughts turned back to the Englishman, as they often did. The man had humiliated him, and he was still not sure how it had been done. One moment he had had the woman on the floor ready for him and enough drugs in his hand to live like a king for six months, and the next he was waking up in a police cell, on his way to this stinking cell for five years. If he ever got out of here, Anja would be his first stop, and the Englishman would be his second. And next time the boot would be on the other foot.

4

McGrath and Jobo Camara took the Bund Road route out of Banjul, to avoid the rebel activity on Independence Drive, but there was no way round the Denton Bridge. As they drove past the prison, its two watch-towers both apparently unmanned, McGrath could feel the reassuring pressure of the Browning in the centre of his back. Driving hell for leather along a tropical road in a jeep brought back more memories than he could count, most of them good ones, at least in retrospect.

They saw the first checkpoint from about a quarter of a mile away. A taxi was parked on either side of the entrance to the bridge, and four men were grouped around the one on the left. Two were leaning against the bonnet, the others standing a few yards away, silhouetted against the silver sheen of Oyster Creek. All four moved purposefully into the centre of the road as they saw the jeep approaching, rifles pointed at the ground. None of them was wearing a uniform.

McGrath pulled the jeep to a halt ten yards away from them, and got down to the ground, slowly, so as not to cause any alarm.

‘Where are you going?’ one man asked. He was wearing dark glasses, purple cotton trousers with a vivid batik pattern and a Def Leppard T-shirt.

‘Serekunda,’ McGrath said.

‘Whites are confined to the hotels,’ the man said.

‘Not all whites,’ Jobo said, standing at McGrath’s shoulder. ‘Only tourists.’

‘I work for the Ministry of Development,’ McGrath added. ‘We have business in Serekunda, checking out one of the generators.’

‘Do you have permission?’

‘No, but I’m sure the new government will not want all the lights to go out in Serekunda on its first day in office. But why don’t you check with them?’ McGrath bluffed. He was pretty sure that the checkpoint had no means of communicating with the outside world.

The rebel digested the situation. ‘That will not be necessary,’ he said eventually. ‘You may pass.’

‘Thank you,’ McGrath said formally.

They motored across the long bridge. A couple of yachts were anchored in the creek, and McGrath wondered where their owners were – they seemed rather conspicuous examples of wealth to flaunt in the middle of a revolution. On the far side the road veered left through the savannah, the long summer grass dotted by giant baobab trees and tall palms.

Ten minutes later they were entering the sprawling outskirts of Serekunda, which housed as many people as Banjul, but lacked its extremes of affluence and shanty-town squalor. Jobo directed McGrath left at the main crossroads, down past the main mosque and then right down a dirt street for about a hundred yards. A dozen or so children gathered around the jeep, and Jobo appointed one of them its guardian, then led McGrath through the gate of the compound.

Mansa Camara was sitting on a wooden bench in the courtyard, his back against the concrete wall, his head shaded by the overhanging corrugated roof. He was dressed in a traditional African robe, not the western uniform of the Field Force.

His nephew made the introductions, and asked him what had happened.

‘I resigned,’ Mansa said shortly.

‘Why?’

‘It seemed like the right thing to do, boy. I’ll give it to Taal – he was honest enough about it. “Join us or go home,” he said, “and leave your gun behind.” So I came home.’

‘How many others did the same?’ McGrath asked him.

‘I do not wish to be rude,’ Mansa asked, ‘but what interest is this of yours?’

McGrath decided to tell the truth. ‘I work here,’ he said, ‘so I’m interested in whether these people can hang on to what they’ve taken. Plus my embassy is worried about all the tourists, and wants all the information it can get.’

‘No problem there,’ Camara said. ‘Not as long as the leaders are in control. They know better than to anger foreign governments for no reason.’

Jobo took out his cigarettes and offered them round. Mansa puffed appreciatively at the Marlboro for a moment, and then shouted into the house for tea. ‘Jobo is a good boy,’ he said, turning back to McGrath, and I know he likes to work with you. So I answer the question you ask.’ He took another drag, the expression on his face a cigarette advertiser’s dream. ‘One-third is my guess,’ he said. ‘One-third say no, the other two-thirds go with Taal.’

‘They really think they can win?’ Jobo asked.

‘Who will stop them?’ Mansa asked. ‘There is no other armed force inside the country.’

‘So you think the British will come, or the Americans?’

Mansa laughed. ‘No. The Senegalese may. But Jobo, I did not walk away because I think they will lose. I just did not want any part of it. My job is to keep the law, not to decide which government the country should have.’ He looked at McGrath. ‘That is the civilized way, is it not? Politicians for politics, police for keeping the law, an army for defending the country.’

‘That’s how it’s supposed to be,’ McGrath agreed.

The tea arrived, strong and sweet in clay pots. Another cigarette followed, and then lunch was announced. By the time McGrath and Jobo climbed back aboard the jeep it was gone three.

‘Did you like my uncle?’ Jobo asked as they pulled out into Mosque Road.

‘Yep, I liked him,’ McGrath said.

Serekunda seemed more subdued than it had when they arrived, as if the news of the coup was finally sinking in. The road to Banjul, normally full of bush taxis and minibuses, was sparsely populated within the town and utterly empty outside it. In the three-mile approach to the Denton Bridge they met nothing and saw no one.

The personnel at the checkpoint had changed. The man in the purple batik trousers, along with his three less colourful companions, had been replaced by two men who seemed more inclined to take their work seriously. As McGrath drove slowly over the bridge they moved into the centre of the road. Both were wearing Field Force uniforms; one was holding a rifle, the other a handgun.

The one with the handgun signalled them to stop.

McGrath did so, and smiled at him. ‘We’re working…’ he started to say.

‘Get down,’ the man growled. His partner, a younger man with a slight squint in his left eye, looked nervous.

Jobo recognized him. ‘Jerry, it’s me,’ he said, and the man smiled briefly at him.

His partner was not impressed. ‘Get down,’ he repeated.

‘Sure,’ McGrath said, not liking the unsteadiness of the hand holding the gun. He and Jobo got out of the jeep, the latter looking angry.

‘What’s this for?’ he angrily asked the man with the handgun.

‘Give me your papers,’ the man demanded. ‘And your passport,’ he said to McGrath.

‘Papers? I have no papers,’ Jobo protested. ‘This is stupid. What papers?’

‘Everyone leaving or entering Banjul must have a pass, by order of the Council,’ the man said, as if he was reciting something memorized. ‘You are under arrest,’ he added, waving the gun for emphasis.

It went off, sending a bullet between Jobo’s shoulder and upper chest.

For a second all four men’s faces seemed frozen with shock, and then the man with the handgun, whether consciously or not, turned it towards McGrath.

The ex-soldier was not taking any chances. In what seemed like a single motion he swept the Browning from the holster behind his back, dropped to one knee, and sent two bullets through the centre of the Gambian’s head.

He then whirled round in search of the other man, who was simply standing there, transfixed by shock. There was a clatter as the rifle slipped from his hands and fell to the tarmac. McGrath flicked his wrist and the man took the hint; he covered the five yards to the edge of the bridge like a scared rabbit, and launched himself into the creek with a huge splash.

McGrath went across to where Jobo was struggling into a sitting position, looking with astonishment at the blood trickling out through his shirt and fingers. ‘Let’s get you to hospital,’ McGrath said, and helped him into the jeep.

He then went back for the body of the man he had killed. The only obvious bullet entry hole was through the bridge of the nose; the other round had gone through the man’s open mouth. Between them they had taken a lot of brain out through the back of the head. At least it had been quick. McGrath dragged the corpse across to the rail and heaved it into the creek, where it swiftly sank from sight in the muddy water.

Colonel Taal replaced the telephone and sat back in the chair, his eyes closed. He rubbed them, wondering how long he could keep going without at least a couple of hours of sleep.

He found himself thinking about Admiral Yamamoto, whose biography he had read long ago at Sandhurst. In November 1941 Yamamoto had told his Emperor that he could give the Americans hell for six months, but that thereafter there was no hope of ultimate military victory. Even knowing that, he had still attacked Pearl Harbour.

Reading the biography Taal had found such a decision hard to understand, yet here in The Gambia he seemed to have taken one that was remarkably similar. They could take over the country, he had told the Party leadership, but if any outside forces were brought to bear their military chances were non-existent. Like the Japanese, their only hope lay in the rest of the world not being bothered enough to put things back the way they had been.

But the rest of the world, as he had just learned on the telephone, did seem bothered enough.

Should he wake Jabang? he wondered. Probably. But just as he was summoning the energy to do so, Jabang appeared in the doorway, also rubbing his eyes.

‘I can’t sleep,’ the new President said, sinking into the office’s other easy chair and yawning.

‘I have bad news,’ Taal said wearily.

‘The Senegalese?’ It was hardly even a question.

‘They’re sending troops tomorrow morning. I managed to get a connection through Abidjan,’ he added in explanation.

‘Shit!’ Jabang ran a hand across his stubbled hair, and exhaled noisily. ‘Shit,’ he repeated quietly. ‘How many?’ he asked. ‘And where to?’

‘Don’t know. I doubt if they’ve decided yet. As to where, I’d guess they’ll drop some paratroops somewhere near the airport, try and capture that, and if they succeed then they can fly in more.’

Jabang considered this. ‘But how many men can they drop?’ he asked. ‘Not many, surely?’

Taal shrugged. ‘A few hundred, maybe five, but…’

‘And if we stop them capturing the airport they can’t bring any more in, right?’

‘Theoretically, but…’

‘Surely our five hundred men can stop their five hundred, Junaidi.’

Taal shook his head. ‘These will be French-trained soldiers, professionals. Our men are not trained for that sort of fighting…’

‘Yes, but an army with political purpose will always triumph over mere mercenaries, Junaidi. History is full of examples. Castro and Guevara started with only twelve men and they beat a professional army.’ Jabang’s eyes were fixed on Taal’s, willing him to believe.

‘I know, Mamadou. I know. But the circumstances were different. And anyway,’ he added, overriding a potential interruption, ‘if we send all our five hundred to defend the airport who will keep order elsewhere? We just do not have enough men.’

‘So what are you proposing we do – nothing? Should we head for the border, after being in power for just a few hours?’

‘No.’ It was tempting, Taal thought, but he would not be able to live with himself if they gave up this easily. ‘No, we must resist as long as we can.’

Jabang grinned. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes!’ and thumped his fist on the arm of his chair.

‘What is it?’ Sharif Sallah asked, coming into the room, a smile on his face.

The temptation to wipe the smile away was irresistible. ‘The Senegalese are coming,’ Taal said.

‘What?’

‘Sit down, Sharif,’ Jabang said. ‘And tell us how we can increase the number of our fighters in the next twelve hours.’

Sallah sat down, shaking his head. ‘You are certain?’ he asked, and received a nod in return. He sighed. ‘Well, there is only one way to increase our numbers,’ Sallah said. ‘We will have to arm the men in Banjul Prison.’

It was Taal’s turn to be surprised. ‘You must be joking,’ he said wearily.

Sallah shook his head. ‘There are two hundred men in the prison, and many of them know how to use guns. If we let them out they will fight for us, because they will know that if Jawara wins he will put them back in the prison.’

‘And what if they decide to use the weapons we give them to take what they want and just head for the border?’ Taal asked. ‘After having their revenge on whichever Field Force men put them in the prison.’

‘We can keep them under control. In groups of ten or so, under twenty of our men. And in any case, they will know that Senegal offers no sanctuary for them. I tell you, they will fight for us because only we can offer them freedom.’

‘And the moral question?’ Taal wanted to know. ‘These men are not in prison for cheating on their wives. They are murderers and thieves and…’

‘Come on, Junaidi,’ Jabang interrupted. ‘There are only two murderers in Banjul Prison that I know of. But there are a lot of men who were caught stealing in order to feed themselves and their families.’ He looked appealingly at Taal. ‘Most crimes are political crimes – I can remember you saying so yourself.’

Yes, he had, Taal thought, but a long, long time ago. In the intervening years he had learned that not all evil could be so easily explained. ‘I’m against it,’ he said, ‘except as a last resort.’

‘You were just telling me this is the last resort,’ Jabang insisted.

As soon as he could McGrath had pulled off the open road and examined Jobo’s wound. It had already stopped bleeding, and seemed less serious than he had at first feared. Still, it would have to be looked at by a proper doctor, if only because there was no other obvious source of disinfectant.

He drove the jeep straight down Independence Drive, mentally daring anyone to try to stop him. No one did, and once at the hospital the two men found themselves in what looked like a scene from Florence Nightingale’s life story. Somewhere or other there had been more fighting that day, because the reception area was full of reclining bodies, most of them with bullet wounds of varying degrees of seriousness. The woman receptionist, who must have weighed at least eighteen stone, and who would have looked enormous even in a country where overeating was commonplace, clambered with difficulty over the prone patients in pursuit of their names and details. Sibou Cham, who looked like grace personified in comparison, was forever moving hither and thither between the reception area and the treatment rooms as she ministered to the patients.

It was almost two hours before she got round to seeing Jobo.

‘You look all in,’ McGrath told her, with what he thought was a sympathetic smile.

‘Yes, I know, you have a bed waiting for me.’

‘I didn’t mean that,’ he said indignantly. ‘Not that it’s such a terrible idea,’ he murmured, as an afterthought.

She ignored him and bent down to examine the wound. ‘Did he really get shot by a sniper?’ she asked.

‘You don’t want to know,’ McGrath said. ‘Is he going to be OK?’

‘Yes, provided he keeps away from you for the next few days.’

‘It was not Mr McGrath’s fault,’ Jobo blurted out. ‘He saved us both…’

‘She doesn’t need to know,’ McGrath interrupted.

Sibou gave him one cold, hard look and strode out of the office.

‘I don’t want to get her in trouble,’ McGrath explained. ‘The other guy – you called him Jerry – what do you think he’ll do?’

Jobo thought. ‘I don’t know. He was always a scared kid when I knew him at school. And not very clever. He may worry that he’ll get in trouble for letting his partner get shot or for running away. He may just go home and keep quiet, or even go up to the family village for a few days.’

‘Or he may be telling his story to Comrade Jabang right this moment.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Well, there’s not a lot we can do about it if he is. Except maybe send you to your village for a few days…’

‘I come from Serekunda,’ Jobo said indignantly.

‘Oh, pity.’

The doctor came back with a bowl of disinfectant and a roll of new bandage. After carefully washing the entrance and exit wounds she applied a dressing, then the bandage, and told Jobo to take it easy for a few days. ‘If it starts to smell, or it throbs, come back,’ she told him. ‘Otherwise just let it heal.’

‘I’ll take him home,’ McGrath said. She was already on her way back to the reception area. ‘When do you get off?’ he called after her.

She laughed. ‘In my dreams,’ she said over her shoulder, and disappeared.

Outside the jeep was still there, much to McGrath’s relief and somewhat to his surprise. Darkness was falling with its usual tropical swiftness. He helped Jobo aboard, climbed into the driving seat, and started off down the road into town.

The first thing that struck him was how dark it was. Banjul’s lighting would have done credit to a vampire’s dining room at the best of times, but on this night every plug in the city seemed to have been pulled, and McGrath’s vision was restricted to what the jeep’s headlights could show him.

The sounds of the city told him more than he wanted to know. The most prominent seemed to feature a never-ending cascade of glass, as if someone was breaking a long line of windows in sequence. Some evidence to support this theory came at one corner, where the jeep’s headlights picked out a tableau of three shops, each with their glass fronts smashed, and fully laden silhouettes bearing goods away into the night.

The sound of tearing wood also seemed much in evidence, offering proof, McGrath supposed, that in the Third World not many shops were fronted by glass. Banjul seemed to be in the process of being comprehensively looted.

And then there was the gunfire. Nothing steady, no long bursts, just single shots every minute or so, from wildly different directions, as if an endless series of individual murders was being committed all over the town.

It was eerie, and frightening. At Jobo’s house his mother pulled him inside and shut the door almost in the same motion, as if afraid to let the contagion in. McGrath climbed back into the jeep and laid the Browning on the seat beside him, feeling the hairs rising on the nape of his neck. He engaged the gears and took off, hurtling back up the street faster than was prudent, but barely fast enough for his peace of mind.

It was only half a mile to the dim lights of McCarthy Square, only forty seconds or so, but it felt longer. At the square he slowed, wondering where to go. The Atlantic Hotel offered a whites-only haven, but there would be guards there, maybe guards who were looking for him, and he knew he would feel more restricted, more vulnerable, surrounded by fellow Europeans. Particularly if the rebels suddenly got trigger-happy with their tourist guests. No, he decided, the Carlton offered more freedom of movement, more ways out. And he could sleep on the roof.

The Party envoys, along with an armed guard of a dozen or so Field Force men, arrived at the prison soon after dark, and after a heated discussion with the warden, which ended with his being temporarily consigned to one of his own cells, they addressed the assembled prisoners in the dimly lit exercise yard. Moussa Diba and Lamin Konko listened as attentively as everyone else.

There had been a change of government, the speaker told them, and all prisoners, with the exception of the two convicted murderers, were being offered amnesty in return for a month’s enlistment in the service of the new government. They would not be asked to fight against fellow Gambians or workers, only against foreigners seeking to invade the country. If they chose not to enlist, that was up to them. They would simply be returned to their cells to serve out their sentences.

‘What do you think?’ Konko asked Diba.

‘Sounds like a way out,’ Diba said with a grin. He was still inwardly laughing at the exemption of the two murderers, whom everybody in the prison knew to be among the gentlest of those incarcerated there. Both had killed their wives in a fit of jealous rage, and now spent all their time asking God for forgiveness. Some of the thieves, on the other hand, would cut a throat for five dalasi. He would himself for ten.

‘I’ve only got two years more in here,’ Konko said. ‘I’d rather do them than get killed defending a bunch of politicians.’

‘We won’t,’ Diba insisted. ‘Look, if they’re coming here to get us out, they must be desperate. It must be all craziness out there in Banjul. We’ll have no trouble slipping away from whatever they’ve got planned for us, and then we hide out for a while, see how the situation is, get hold of some money and get across into Senegal when it looks good. No problem. Right, brother?’

Konko sighed. ‘OK,’ he said with less than total conviction. ‘I guess out there must be better than being in here.’

There’s women out there,’ Diba said. Anja was out there. And with any luck he would have her tonight.

The two of them joined the queue of those waiting to accept the offer of amnesty. Since only three of the prison’s two hundred and seventeen eligible inmates turned down the offer it was a long queue, and almost an hour had passed before the new recruits were drawn up in marching order on the road outside. They were kept standing there for several minutes, swatting at the mosquitoes drawn from the swamp by such a wealth of accessible blood in one spot, until one of the Party envoys addressed them again. They were being escorted to temporary barracks for the night, he told them. On the following morning they would be issued with their weapons.

The barracks in question turned out to be a large empty house in Marina Parade. There was no furniture, just floor space, and not enough of that. The overcrowding was worse than it had been in the prison, and, despite the protests of the guards, the sleeping quarters soon spilled out into the garden. There was no food, no entertainment, and after about an hour the sense of too much energy with nowhere to go was becoming overpowering. The guards, sensing the growing threat, started finding reasons to melt away, and with their disappearance an increasing number of the prisoners decided to go out for an evening stroll, some in search of their families, some in search of women, some simply in search of motion for its own sake.

Diba went looking for Anja.

Finding Independence Drive partially lit by a widely spaced string of log brazier fires, he slipped across the wide road and down the darker Mosque Road. It could not be much later than ten, he reckoned, but Banjul was obviously going to bed early these days. There were no shops open, no sounds of music, and few lights glowing through the compound doorways. Occasionally the sounds of conversation would drift out across a wall, and often as not lapse abruptly into silence at his footfall.

Conscious that he had no weapon, Diba kept a lookout for anything which would serve for protection, and in one small patch of reflected light noticed a two-foot length of heavy cable which someone had found surplus to requirements and discarded. It felt satisfyingly heavy in his hands.

Some fifteen minutes after leaving Marina Parade he found himself at the gate to the compound where she had her room. Her husband’s family had once occupied the whole compound, but both his parents had died young, he had been killed in a road accident in Senegal, and his brothers had gone back to their Wollof village. She had fought a losing battle against other adult orphans, and the compound had become a home to assorted con men and thieves.

To Diba’s surprise the gate was padlocked on the inside. He climbed over without difficulty, proud of how fit he had managed to keep himself in prison, and stood for a moment, listening for any sounds of occupation. He heard none, but as his eyes became accustomed to the gloom they picked out a pile of identical cardboard boxes stacked against a wall. They were new stereo radio-cassette players. No wonder the gate had been locked. He walked gingerly down one arm of the L-shaped courtyard, and turned the corner. The first thing he noticed was the yellow glow seeping out under Anja’s door, the second was the sound of her voice, moaning softly, rhythmically, with pleasure.

Maybe it’s not her, he told himself, a knot of anger forming in his stomach. He silently advanced to the door, and placed an eye up against the gap between the window shutters.

A single candle burnt on the wooden table, illuminating the two naked people on the bed. She was underneath, her back slightly arched, eyes closed, hands behind her head, gripping the cast-iron rail of the bedstead. He was above her, supporting his upper body on two rigid arms as he thrust himself slowly this way and that. The two bodies glistened in the candlelight.

Anger surged through Diba’s guts, but he fought it back. He took two deep breaths before walking through the curtained doorway into the room, the length of cable loose in his hand.

Though her eyes were closed she became aware of him first. Perhaps it was a draught from the door, or perhaps they really did have a telepathic connection, as she had always claimed. Her eyes opened, widened, and snapped shut again as he swung the cable in a vicious arc at the man’s head.

Blood splattered, and the man seemed to sway, as if he was held upright only by his position inside her. She cried out and twisted, and he collapsed off the bed with a crash, falling onto the already crushed back of his head. Two thin streams of blood emerged from his nose and mouth, merged on his cheek, and abruptly ceased flowing.

Diba used a foot to roll the body into the shadows. Anja was just lying there, one hand still gripping the iron rail, the other covering her mouth, palm outwards. Her eyes were wide again, wide with shock. He reached down a hand and brushed a still-erect nipple with his palm.

She reached for the sheet to cover herself, but he ripped it away from her, and threw it on the floor.

He pulled his shirt over his head, tore off his trousers and stood over her, his dick swelling towards her face. For a moment he thought of thrusting it into her mouth, but the expression on her face was still unreadable, and he did not want it bitten off.

‘Moussa,’ she said.

He clambered astride her, and thrust himself into the warm wetness which the dead man had so recently vacated. She moaned and closed her eyes, but Diba was not fooled. He came in a sudden rush, spilling three months of prison frustration into her, and then abruptly pulled out, and rolled over onto his back.

For several moments the two of them lay there in silence.

‘How did you get out?’ she asked after a while, her voice sounding strange, as if she was trying too hard to sound normal.

‘They let us all out to fight for the new Government,’ he told her.

She risked moving, raising herself onto one elbow. ‘Is he dead?’ she asked.

‘Looks like it,’ Diba said coldly. It was funny – he would have expected to feel something after killing a man, but he felt nothing at all. Unless he counted being aware of the need to make sure he was not caught.

But he did remember how angry he had felt. ‘Who was this man you were fucking?’ he asked in a threatening voice.

‘Just a customer,’ she lied. It was her experience that men who got it for free did not usually feel jealous of those who had paid.

She was right. ‘You been prostituting yourself?’ he asked, with an anger that was less than convincing.

‘While you’re in the prison I have to eat,’ she said, risking some self-assertion for the first time.

He reached out a hand and grabbed her by the plaited hair. ‘You sounded like you were enjoying it,’ he said.

‘Men like that need to think they’re making you feel good,’ she said.

He grunted and let her go. He wanted to believe her – he always had. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘But you’re all mine again now – got it? And we’re getting out of this shit-hole.’

‘Where to?’

‘I haven’t decided yet. You got anything to drink?’

‘No, but I can get some beer from Winnie’s. It’ll take five minutes.’

He grabbed one of her cheeks in his hand and held her eyes. She was so fucking beautiful. ‘You wouldn’t disappear on me, would you?’ he asked.

‘I’ll be five minutes.’

‘I’d kill you, you know that.’

‘Yes, I know that.’

‘Right.’ He let her go, watched her slip the dress over herself and head for the door, careful not to look at the prone body under the window.

He supposed he ought to do something about that.

He put his trousers back on, grabbed the corpse by the feet and dragged it out into the courtyard. Anja had left the gate open, so he carried on into the darkened street, his ears straining for other sounds above the scrape of the man’s head in the dust. After fifty yards he decided he had gone far enough, and simply left the body in the middle of the road. With any luck they would think he had been hit by a taxi in the dark.

Back in her room Anja was engaged in opening one of three bottles of beer on the edge of the table. He took it from her and sprang the cap off, remembering doing the same thing at other times in the past, in that same candlelit room.

‘Do you mean you’re in the army now?’ she asked.

He shrugged. ‘They want us to defend their revolution,’ he said. ‘They’re going to give us guns in the morning. And then…I don’t know. But I’m not going to get killed for a bunch of fucking politicians. I’ll take their gun all right, but who I use it on is my business.’ He smiled. ‘And I’ve got a few ideas on that myself.’

‘The Englishman who caught you,’ she said, before stopping to think.

‘How do you know about that?’ he asked angrily.

‘It was in the newspaper’, she said. ‘Someone showed it to me.’

‘What was? What did it say?’

‘That you were caught at the hospital by an Englishman, that’s all,’ she said. There had been more, but she reckoned he would not want to hear the details of his humiliation.

‘It was bad luck,’ he said. ‘But yes, I owe him.’ And the doctor too, he thought. He had had her naked once, and he would have her naked again, only next time she would not have the white bastard there to protect her. He would make her kneel for him.

He looked across at Anja, who was just as beautiful as the doctor, but had grown up as poor as he had. He felt the old desire mounting in his body. ‘Take the dress off,’ he said.

5

The column of five open lorries, each carrying twenty ex-prisoners, rumbled through Serekunda and south towards Yundum Airport. It had been light for only an hour or so, and the heat was not yet oppressive. Diba sat alongside Konko, the Kalashnikov leaning against his thigh, watching the countryside go by. He was not very happy with the situation. A town man, he felt much more confident of melting away into the scenery when it was composed of shanty compounds. Outside the town he felt too conspicuous.

Still, he had had no chance to get away again since returning to the temporary barracks an hour before dawn. Most of the other nocturnal absentees had also come back: like Diba they saw little hope of escaping the country under the present circumstances, and no hope of anything but longer prison terms from a returning Jawara. For the moment the new regime was their only friend – not to mention their only source of weaponry and ammunition.

The lorries with the Kalashnikovs had drawn up outside the barracks just as dawn was breaking, and the men had been told to claim their guns as they boarded. The new regime was obviously not composed entirely of fools.

Diba wondered if he really would find himself in a battle before the day was over. Not if he could help it, he told himself.

‘Where do you think we’re going?’ Konko asked him.

‘The airport,’ Diba replied. It was a guess. There was nothing else of any importance in this direction, only three hundred miles of villages. Unless of course the new government had decided to invade the rest of Africa.

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