Whispers of Betrayal. Michael Dobbs

the formal appeals process, Colonel, you will need to fill in this form.’ More nervous shuffling of papers. ‘And I’ve got some additional details of the assistance we offer with resettlement, just in case.’ At last the captain summoned up the courage to look into Amadeus’s slate green eyes. ‘Do you need any help filling out the form, sir?’

      Amadeus picked up the form, and with it a glass of water. His mouth had suddenly gone dry. And as he read, and sipped, he realized something had happened to him. Tiny almost imperceptible waves upon the water in the glass were catching the light from the overhead bulb. As he watched, transfixed, he thanked all the gods that the bumped-up little creep of a captain couldn’t see what had happened.

      For the first time in his life, Amadeus’s hand was shaking.

      He is back outside the theatre, in the rain, feeling homeless in his own homeland. In a moment of silent fury he tosses away the half-burnt cigarette, the cigarette that will change his life, then in considerably less silence he mouths a curse more suited to a sergeants’ mess after the beer has run out. As the wind carries his curse away into the raw night, a figure darts from the shadows, barely dodging the front end of the now-departing taxi and forcing it to a sudden halt. The brakes screech in protest but the figure pays no heed. It is a figure that belongs to the night, of no definable appearance, swaddled in a grime-streaked blanket. A man, by its size, bent and scurrying awkwardly, with no apparent care in the world other than to retrieve the still-smouldering cigarette from the damp, evil pavement.

      From beneath the blanket a thin, bone-filled hand reaches out to snatch up its prize. Eyes flicker, yellow in the night and on fire. A stare is held. A glimpse of recognition passes.

      Then the eyes are gone.

      Amadeus freezes, paralysed by memories of another life. Another place.

      Mount Longdon in the Falklands, on the march to Stanley. Amadeus no more than a first-flush lieutenant, a Para platoon commander on a night assault in the swirling snow, up against Argentinian lines that were well dug in. In the dark it had come down to hand-to-hand combat, bayonets and guts. A lot of guts, mostly theirs. Sleepless for three nights. Exhaustion to the point of hallucination. And carelessness. When he’d jumped into the trench he’d assumed that the spic was dead, like the other three, killed by his grenade, and so he’d turned his back. That was when he had seen those eyes, and the man, advancing on him through the darkness and snow with murder in mind and a bayonet already caked in blood. He remembered a lunge, a scream, another gut-spilling twist of the blade.

      But no pain, not for Amadeus.

      Behind him the Argentinian, rifle still clenched in his hands, had fallen dead.

      ‘Behind you, bastard!’ Amadeus had heard. ‘Why, there are Welsh Guardsmen out on this fucking hill and the sheep have all scattered or been blown to buggery. No telling what those Welsh fairies might get up to without their sheep. So remember. Watch your bleedin’ back, you stupid bastard. Sir.’

      And with that the eyes were gone once more, away on their mission of murder.

      The eyes had belonged to Scully. ‘Skulls.’ Albert Andrew. At that time a camouflage-covered, crap-chewing corporal, and later the Regiment’s finest and most formidable Sergeant Major with an MM, a QGM and a mention in despatches as proof, and a portrait hanging in a position of honour in the mess. A man who had risked his life on occasions beyond remembering in the service of his country.

      A man who now values his life as no greater than a discarded cigarette butt.

      Scully.

      They’d betrayed him, too.

      One minute he had been sitting in a bar off a cobbled backstreet in Osnabrück, having a last drink before being sent out to Kosovo, the next he’d been spewing his mince and tatties into his partner’s hands, his leg and his career shattered by a coffee-jar bomb. Kids’ stuff, those bombs. A simple affair, nothing more than a glass jar filled with scrapyard confetti and a compression detonator, and the top screwed on. The coffee jar had been thrown from the back of a motor scooter which disappeared into the night even before the coffee jar had hit the floor. The one brief sighting of the bombers suggested they were teenagers. Truly kids’ stuff. When the glass broke less than a dick-length away from Scully’s right foot, the detonator had decompressed and exploded, and the confetti – sharp, murderous chunks of metal with razor teeth – had chewed a path halfway through his leg. All in a day’s work for a Para keeping the peace on the streets of Djakovice or Pristina, perhaps, but not in a backstreet bar in Germany, not when he was off duty. Which is why, when they decided they had no further use for a soldier with only one leg, they offered him their very best wishes but no compensation beyond a meagre disability payment. They argued that Osnabrück wasn’t a war zone, the sort of place where you budget for a heavy cripple count. Hell, he was off duty. Drinking! Couldn’t expect the Treasury to pay for every last damned scratch. It was unfortunate, of course, and unexpected, but that’s what goes with being a soldier. Have to expect the unexpected. Of course, the two youths on the scooter might have been members of the pro-Serbian Prince Lazar terrorist group that was chucking bombs all over the place. That was entirely possible, but not provable. So, sorry, Skulls. Now, if you’d actually reached Kosovo, that would’ve been different, and Northern Ireland, too. Part of the home country. Sensitive. Soldiers weren’t supposed to get blown up and butchered on home turf, so if Scully had copped it there he’d have got a thousand pounds a stitch.

      But Osnabrück wasn’t the Bogside. Scully hadn’t been an innocent victim. He’d simply been … well, unlucky. Wrong place, wrong life. A trooper with a bad break. And only one leg. As if he’d fallen down stairs on a Friday night. And if they paid out to every soldier on the basis of bad luck, where would the System be?

      So Scully’s career had disappeared, and with it his wife. Then Scully, too, shortly after that.

      Until tonight.

      Amadeus was about to launch himself after the RSM, but now his wife was at his side, dragging him back, as always she dragged him back. Anyway, Amadeus knew there was little point in pursuit; if Scully didn’t wish to be found then he would not be found.

      Suddenly Amadeus found himself overcome by a feeling he could only describe as envy. Envy of Scully, of this man in the gutter. Of his freedom, his ability simply to be able to disappear and leave the whole miserable mess behind him. God’s bollocks, it had come down to that. He was jealous of a fucking tramp.

      His wife was summoning him, demanding he find a taxi. The call of duty. At one point in the Gulf War, during his tour with the SAS, Amadeus had been leading a Scud hunting patrol and in the darkness of the desert night had stumbled across a recce company of Iraqis. They shouldn’t have been there, according to the oxymorons at Army Intelligence, and even if they were they shouldn’t have offered any resistance, certainly not a fire fight. With only seven men Amadeus had captured 43 Iraqi regulars – 49 if you counted the body bags. Stopped an entire Iraqi company. For that they’d given him the Military Cross. Now all he did was stop taxis. Two young women brushed by, arm in arm, their young faces full of life. They were laughing – not with him, not even at him, they simply hadn’t noticed he existed. To them he was just another anonymous, middle-aged man stuck in a crowd. A cold, sodden cloak of self-loathing suddenly wrapped itself around Amadeus’s shoulders. He found himself reaching for another cigarette, his hand shaking, the cigarettes all but tumbling from the packet.

      Then the loathing overwhelmed him. His hand clenched tight and, with all the strength he could find, he crushed the pack of cigarettes as once, when his rifle jammed, he had crushed the neck of an Iraqi conscript until the terrified eyes had begun to bleed in their sockets. All in the service of his country. A country that no longer wanted him, and thousands of others like him, like Scully. A country whose leaders had betrayed those who had served them most loyally.

      He spilled the offending cigarettes into the gutter, slamming his heel down and grinding them to pulp underfoot. He didn’t want them any more. What he wanted, what he truly bloody wanted out of this mess, for himself, for Scully and all the others, was … what? Not their careers back, not even justice, it was surely too late for that. But perhaps an apology, an