Rebus - Naughts And Crosses Part 13

"9 'I don't know,' I said. 'They'll tell us when they're good and ready, I suppose.'

'Are you scared?' he said suddenly. His eyes were staring at the raddled door of our cell.

'Maybe.'

'You should be f.u.c.king scared, Johnny. I am. I remember once when I was a kid, some of us went along a river near our housing-scheme. It was in spate. It had been p.i.s.sing down for a week. It was just after the war, and there were a lot of ruined houses about. We headed upriver, and came to a sewage-pipe. I played with older kids. I don't know why. They made me the brunt of all their f.u.c.king games, but I stuck with them. I suppose I liked the idea of running about with kids who scared the s.h.i.+t out of all the kids of my own age. So that, though the older kids were treating me like s.h.i.+t, they gave me power over the younger kids. Do you see?'

I nodded, but he wasn't looking.

'This pipe wasn't very thick, but it was long, and it was high above the river. They said I was to cross it first. Christ, I was afraid. I was so f.u.c.king scared that my legs wobbled and I froze there, halfway across. And then p.i.s.s started to run down my legs out of my shorts, and they noticed that and they laughed. They laughed at me, and I couldn't run, couldn't move. So they left me there and went away.'

I thought of the laughter as I had been dragged away from the helicopter.

'Did anything like that ever happen to you when you were a kid, Johnny?'

'I don't think so.'

'Then why the h.e.l.l did you join up?'

'To get away from home. I didn't get along with my father, you see. He preferred my kid brother. I felt out in the cold.'

'I never had a brother.'

'Neither did I, not in the proper sense. I had an adversary.' I'm going to bring him out don't you dare This isn't telling us anything keep going 'What did your father do, Johnny?'

120 'He was a hypnotist. He used to make people come on stage and do stupid things.'

'You're joking!'

'It's true. My brother was going to follow in his footsteps, but I wasn't. So I got out. They weren't exactly sad to see me go.

Reeve chuckled.

'If you put us into a sale, you'd have to say "slightly soiled" on the ticket, eh, Johnny?'

I laughed at that, laughed longer and louder than necessary, and we put an arm round one another and stayed that way, keeping warm.

We slept side by side, p.i.s.sed and defecated in the presence of the other, tried to exercise together, played little mind games together, and endured together.

Reeve had a piece of string with him, and would wind it and unwind it, making up the knots we had been taught in training. This led me to explain the meaning of a Gotdian knot to him. He waved a miniature reef knot at me.

'Gordian knot, reef knot. Gordian reef. It sounds just like my name, doesn't it?'

Again, there was something to laugh about.

We also played noughts and crosses, scratching the games onto the powdery walls of the cell with our fingernails. Reeve showed me a ploy which meant that the least you could achieve was a draw. We must have played about three-hundred games before then, with Reeve winning two-thirds of them. The trick was simple enough.

'Your first 0 goes in the top left corner, and your second diagonally across from it. It's an unbeatable position.'

'What if your opponent puts his X diagonally opposite that first 0?'

'You can still win by going for the corners.'

Reeve seemed cheered by this. He danced round the cell, then stared at me, a leer on his face.

'You're just like the brother I never had, John.' There and then he took my palm and nicked the flesh open with one of his fingernails, doing the same to his own hand. We touched palms, smearing a spot of blood backwards and forwards.

121 I.

'Blood brothers,' said Gordon, smiling.

I smiled back at him, knowing that he had become too dependent on me already, and that if we were separated he would not be able to cope.

And then he knelt down in front of me and gave me another hug.

Gordon grew more restless. He did fifty press-ups in any one day which, considering our diet, was phenomenal. And he hummed little tunes to himself. The effects of my company seemed to be wearing off. He was drifting again. So I began to tell him stories.

I talked about my childhood first, and about my father's tricks, but then I started to tell him proper stories, giving him the plots of my favourite books. The time came to tell him the story of Raskolnikov, that most moral of tales, Crime and Punishment. He listened enthralled, and I tried to spin it out as long as I could. I made bits up, invented whole dialogues and characters. And when I'd finished it, he said, 'Tell me that one again'.

So I did.

'Was it all inevitable, John?' Reeve was pus.h.i.+ng his fingers across the floor of the cell, seated on his haunches. I was lying on the mattress.

'Yes,' I said. 'I think it was. Certainly, it's written that way. The end of the book is there before the beginning's hardly started.'

'Yes, that's the feeling I got.'

There was a long pause, then he cleared his throat.

'What's your idea of G.o.d, John. I'd really like to know.'

So I told him, and as I spoke, lacing my erroneous arguments with little stories from the Bible, Gordon Reeve lay down and stared up at me with eyes like the full moons of winter. He was concentrating like mad.

'I can't believe any of that,' he said at last as I swallowed dry saliva. 'I wish I could, but I can't. I think Raskolnikov should have relaxed and enjoyed his freedom. He should have got himself a Browning and blown the lot of them away.'

I thought about that comment. There seemed to me a little justice in it, but a great deal against it also. Reeve was like a man 122 trapped in limbo, believing in a lack of belief, but not necessarily lacking the belief to believe.

What's all this s.h.i.+t?

Sshhhh.

And in between the games and the story-telling, he put his hand on my neck.

'John, we're friends, aren't we? I mean, really close friends? I've never had a close friend before.' His breath was hot, despite the chill in the cell. 'But we're friends, aren't we? I mean, I've taught you how to win at noughts and crosses, haven't I?' His eyes were no longer human. They were the eyes of a wolf. I had seen it coming, but there had been nothing I could do.

Not until now. But now I saw everything with the clear, hallucinogen eyes of one who has seen everything there is to see and more. I could see Gordon bring his face up to mine and slowly-so slowly that it might not have been happening at all-plant a breathy kiss on my cheek, trying to turn my head around so as to connect with the lips.

And I saw myself yield. No, no, this was not to happen! This was intolerable. This wasn't what we'd been building up all these weeks, was it? And if it was, then I'd been a fool throughout.

'Just a kiss,' he was saying, 'just one kiss, John. h.e.l.l, come on.' And there were tears in his eyes, because he too could see that everything had gone haywire in an instant. He too could see that something was ending. But that didn't stop him from edging his way behind me, making the two-backed beast. (Shakespeare. Let it go.) And I was trembling, but strangely immobile. I knew that this was beyond my ken, beyond my control. So I forced the tears up into my eyes, and my nose started to run.

'Just a kiss.'

All the training, all the pus.h.i.+ng towards that final lethal goal, it had all come to this moment. In the end, love was still behind everything.

'John.'

And I could feel only pity for the two of us, stinking, besmirched, barren in our cell. I could feel only the frus~ation of the thing, the poor tears of a lifetime's indignation. Gordon, Gordon, Gordon.

123 'John.

The cell-door burst open, as though it had never been locked.

A man stood there. English, not foreign, and of high rank. He looked in on the spectacle with some distaste; no doubt he had been listening to it all, if not watching it. He pointed to me.

'Rebus,' he said, 'you've pa.s.sed. You're on our side now.'

I looked at his face. What did he mean? I knew full well what he meant.

'You've pa.s.sed the test, Rebus. Come on. Come with me. We'll get you kitted up. You're on our side now. The interrogation of your. . . friend. . . continues. You'll be helping us with the interrogation from now on.'

Gordon jumped to his feet. He was directly behind me still. I could feel his breath on the back of my neck.

'What do you mean?' I said. My mouth and stomach were dry. Looking at this crisply starched officer, I became painfully aware of my own filth. But then it was all his fault. 'This is a trick,' I said. 'It must be. I'm not going to tell you. I'm not going with you. I've not given away any information. I've not cracked. You can't fail me now!' I was shouting now, delirious. Yet I knew there was truth in what he was saying. He shook his head slowly.

'I can understand your suspicion, Rebus. You've been under a lot of pressure. A h.e.l.lish lot of pressure. But that's past. You've not failed, you've pa.s.sed; pa.s.sed with flying colours. I think we can say that with certainty. You've pa.s.sed, Rebus. You're on our side now. You'll be helping us now to try to crack Reeve here. Do you understand?'

I shook my head.

'It's a trick,' I said. The officer smiled sympathetically. He'd dealt with the like of me a hundred times before.

'Look,' he said, 'just come with us and everything will be made clear.'

Gordon jumped forward at my side.

'No!' he shouted. 'He's already told you that he's not f.u.c.king well going! Now p.i.s.s off out of here.' Then to me, a hand on my shoulder: 'Don't listen to him, John. It's a trick. It's always a trick with these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.' But I could see that he was worried. His eyes moved rapidly, his mouth slightly open. And, feeling 124 his hand on me, I knew that my decision had been made already, and Gordon seemed to sense as much.

'I think that's for Trooper Rebus to decide, don't you?' the officer was saying.

And then the man stared at me, his eyes friendly.

I didn't need to look back at the cell, or at Gordon. I just kept thinking to myself: it's another part of the game, just another part of the game. The decision had been made a long time ago. They were not lying to me, and of course I wanted out of the cell. It was preordained. Nothing was arbitrary. I had been told that at the start of my training. I started forwards, but Gordon held onto the tatters of my s.h.i.+rt.

'John,' he said, his voice full of need, 'don't let me down, John. Please.'

But I pulled away from his weak grip and left the cell.

'No! No! No!' His cries were huge, fiery things. 'Don't let me down, John! Let me out! Let me out!'

And tben he screamed, and I almost crumpled on the floor. It was the scream of the mad. - After I had been cleaned up and seen by a doctor, I was taken to what they euphemistically called the debriefing-room. I'd been through h.e.l.l-was still going through h.e.l.l-and they were about to discuss it as though it had been nothing more than a school exercise.

There were four of them there, three captains and a psychiatrist. They told me everything then. They explained that a new, elitist group was about to be set up from within the SAS, and that its' role would be the infiltration and destabilization of terrorist groups, starting with the Irish Republican Army, who were becoming more than a mere nuisance as the Irish situation deteriorated into civil war. Because of the nature of the job, only the best-the very best-would be good enough, and Reeve and I had been judged the best in our section. Therefore, we had been trapped, had been taken prisoner, and had been put through tests the like of which had never been tried in the SAS before. None of this really surprised me by now. I was thinking of the other poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who were being put through this whole sick b.l.o.o.d.y thing. And all so that when we were being kneecapped, we would not let on who we were.

125 And then they came to Gordon.

'Our att.i.tude towards Trooper Reeve is rather ambivalent.' This was the man in the white coat talking. 'He's a b.l.o.o.d.y fine soldier, and give him a physical job to do and he'll do it. But he has always worked as a loner in the past, so we put the two of you together to see how you would react to sharing a cell, and, more especially, to see how Reeve would cope once his friend had been taken away from him.'

Did they know of that kiss then, or did they not?

'I'm afraid,' went on the doctor, 'that the result may be negative. He's come to depend upon you, John, hasn't he? We are, of course, aware that you have not been dependent upon him.'

'What about the screams from the other cells?'

'Tape-recordings.'

I nodded, tired suddenly, uninterested.

'The whole thing was another b.l.o.o.d.y test then?'

'Of course it was.' They had a little smile between them. 'But that needn't bother you now. What matters is that you've pa.s.sed.'

It did worry me, though. What was it all about? I'd exchanged friends.h.i.+p for this informal debriefing. I'd exchanged love for these smirks. And Gordon's screams were still in my ears. Revenge, he was crying, revenge. I laid my hands on my knees, bent forward, and started to weep.

'You b.a.s.t.a.r.ds,' I said, 'you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.'

And if I'd had a Browning pistol with me at that moment, I'd have put large holes into their grinning skulls.

They had me checked again, more thoroughly this time, in a military hospital. Civil war had indeed broken out in Ulster, but I stared past it towards Gordon Reeve. What had happened to him? Was he still in that stinking cell, alone because of me? Was he falling apart? I took it all on my shoulders and wept again. They had given me a box of tissues. That seemed to be the way of things.

Then I started to weep all day, sometimes uncontrollably, taking it all on, taking everything on my conscience. I suffered from nightmares. I volunteered my resignation. I demanded my resignation. It was accepted, reluctantly. I was, after all, a 126 guinea-pig. I went to a small fis.h.i.+ng-village in Fife and walked along the pebbled beach, recovering from my nervous breakdown and putting the whole thing out of my mind, stuffing the most painful episode of my life into drawers and attics in my head, locking it all away, learning to forget.

So I forgot.

And they were good to me. They gave me some compensation money and they pulled a lot of strings when I decided that I wanted to join the police force. Oh yes, I could not complain about their att.i.tude towards me, but I wasn't allowed to find out about my friend, and I wasn't ever to get in touch with them again. I was dead, I was strictly off their records.

I was a failure.

And I'm still a failure. Broken marriage. My daughter kidnapped. But it all makes sense now. The whole thing makes sense. So at least I know that Gordon is alive, if not well, and I know that he has my little girl and that he's going to kill her.

And kill me if he can.

And to get her back, I'm going to have tc; kill him.

And I would do it now. G.o.d help me, I would do it now. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox o 0 x x XO Part Five OX o 0 X X o 0 X X o KNOTS & CROSSES 0 X X o 0 XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX XXIII.

When John Rebus awoke from what had seemed a particularly deep and dream-troubled sleep, he found that he was not in bed. He saw that Michael was standing over him, a wary smile on his face, and that Gill was pacing to and fro, sniffing back tears.

'What happened?' said Rebus.