Recoil - Andy McNab [37]
‘I’ve got my own church now. We educate, medicate, protect – and keep the Lord high on their agendas.’
I didn’t run for the hills, these days, when God came up in conversation. I’d worked out long ago that the afterlife was just a comfort blanket for people who didn’t know what the fuck was going on and needed to believe there was some sort of reasoning behind it all, be they Christian, Jew, Muslim or Seventh Day Jehovah’s Buddhist. Me? I was glad I was too stupid to worry about the meaning of life. I just wanted to keep mine going as long as I could.
I glanced at the row of photos on the wall behind the bar. ‘This the church?’
All I could see was a jumble of mud huts with palm-leaf roofs and a few crosses hanging over the doorways. In the foreground, a bunch of kids were grappling with a goat, up to their knees in mud.
‘Not exactly. That’s Nuka, in fact, an orphanage I also run.’
‘I still don’t quite understand how God fits in with your private enterprise. God and gun?’ I indicated the opulence around us. ‘Where’s the join?’
‘It’s wrong to think of it like that. The two are totally compatible. What good could I do without the cash? This house means nothing. It’s not mine, nor will it ever be. It comes with a job that I take very seriously because it gets me to the people who need my help and provides the money to run the church, to run Nuka . . .’ He saw the expression on my face and held up his hand. ‘Yes, it’s near the mine. We’ll get to her, don’t you worry.’
We went out on to a terrace overlooking the sea. The sun had just about sunk into it now. A woman was laying a table for two. Crystal glasses, gleaming candelabra, big linen napkins.
Sam looked pleased. ‘I thought we’d get the company silver out and celebrate with a few courses of mealie-meal and Milo. Then maybe a movie. Very romantic, eh?’
4
Sunday, 11 June
05:58 hours
We’d left the house nearly an hour ago and I was feeling good, even if my cell hadn’t made a squeak all night. At least I was getting closer to where I needed to be. We’d driven through the golf course, past security and out on to the metalled road in pitch darkness. We’d turned off after twenty minutes, and for the last ten Sam’s shiny new company BMW X5 had been bouncing along a dirt track. A sliver of light was peeping over the horizon.
Behind the blacked-out windows, we listened to an early-morning talk-show. The only other sound was the gentle hum of the air-conditioning. The station said there was a festival and wine-tasting up in Stellenbosch this afternoon, but I knew at least three people who wouldn’t be going. By the time the organizers were pulling the first cork, Sam, Lex and I should be on the Rwanda–DRC border and less than fifty K from Nuka.
I breathed in the aroma of brand new leather. Sam and I had spent the evening being served roast beef and fine wines. He seemed to have become a bit of a connoisseur. I couldn’t believe the transformation – but not everything about him had changed. He still thought God had created the earth, and that he needed to save everyone’s souls. Even the DVD we watched after dinner was a fund-raiser he’d put together.
I believed him when he said that the house, even the BMW, meant nothing to him. We’d spent all night talking about how he’d stayed in Africa after the 1985 job and worked for different aid organizations. Not once did he ask me about Zaïre; there were no more leading questions.
I suddenly realized I had to talk to him. ‘Sam?’
‘What?’ He adjusted the air.
‘The thing that happened on the heli, the boy . . . I need to talk about it.’
‘I know.’ He kept looking straight ahead.
‘I couldn’t hold him. I need you to know that. The little fucker was too slippery.’
‘I know.’
‘I couldn’t help Annabel. That fucking arsehole Standish, you see what he did?’
Sam nodded. We hadn’t talked about him all night. It was just as well. I’d still be honking and banging the table.
‘After the boy fell it was too late – I