Lie down with lions - Ken Follett [39]
“Sure. It’s in the closet in the small bedroom.”
“Thanks. I want to look through it.”
“Go on, then. I’ll finish up here.”
Ellis climbed the stairs and went to the little bedroom at the top of the house. It was rarely used, and around the single bed were crowded a couple of broken chairs, an old sofa and four or five cardboard boxes containing children’s books and toys. Ellis opened the cupboard and took out a small black plastic suitcase. He laid it on the bed, turned the combination locks and lifted the lid. There was a musty smell: it had not been opened for a decade. Everything was there: the medals; both the bullets they had taken out of him; Army Field Manual FM 5-31, entitled Booby Traps; a picture of Ellis standing beside a helicopter, his first Huey, grinning, looking young and (oh, shit) thin; a note from Frankie Amalfi which said To the bastard that stole my leg—a brave joke, for Ellis had gently untied Frankie’s lace, then tugged at his boot and pulled away his foot and half his leg, severed at the knee by a wildly flexing rotor blade; Jimmy Jones’s watch, stopped forever at half past five—You keep it, son, Jimmy’s father had said to Ellis through an alcoholic haze, ’cause you were his frien’, and that’s more than I ever wuz; and the diary.
He leafed through the pages. He only had to read a few words to recall a whole day, a week, a battle. The journal began cheerfully, with a sense of adventure, and very self-consciously; and it got progressively disenchanted, somber, bleak, despairing and eventually suicidal. The grim phrases brought vivid scenes to his mind: goddam Arvins wouldn’t get out of the helicopter, if they’re so keen to be rescued from Communism how come they don’t fight? and then Capt. Johnson always was an A. hole I guess but what a way to die, grenaded by one of his own men, and later The women have rifles up their skirts and the kids have grenades in their shirts so what the fuck are we supposed to do, surrender? The last entry read What is wrong with this war is that we are on the wrong side. We are the bad guys. That is why kids dodge the draft; that is why the Vietnamese won’t fight; that is why we kill women and children; that is why the generals lie to the politicians, and the politicians lie to the reporters, and the newspapers lie to the public. After that, his thoughts had become too seditious to be committed to paper, his guilt too great to be expiated by mere words. It seemed to him that he would have to spend the rest of his life righting the wrongs he had done in that war. After all these years it still seemed that way. When he added up the murderers he had jailed since then, the kidnappers and the hijackers and the bombers he had arrested, they were as nothing when balanced against the tons of explosives he had dropped and the thousands of rounds of ammunition he had fired in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
It was irrational, he knew. He had realized that when he came back from Paris and reflected for a while on how his job had ruined his life. He had decided to stop trying to redeem the sins of America. But this . . . this was different. Here was a chance to fight for the little guy, to fight against the lying generals and the power brokers and the blinkered journalists—a chance not just to fight, not just to pay a small contribution, but to make a real difference, to change the course of a war, to alter the fate of a country, and to strike a blow for freedom on a big scale.
And then there was Jane.
The mere possibility of seeing her again had rekindled his passion. Just a few days ago he had been able to think of her and the danger she was in, and then put the thought out of his mind and turn the page of the magazine. Now he could hardly stop thinking about her. He wondered whether her hair was long or short, was she fatter or thinner, did she feel good about what she was doing with her life, did the Afghans like her, and—most of all—did she still love Jean-Pierre? Take my advice,