Gerald Seymour - The Glory Boys

His deep, raucous, baying laughter shook the bar. Head well back, face taking on the crimson of exertion, body shaking. And all around the faces of hostility and reaction.

'What's so funny about that?'

'Nothing to bloody-well laugh about.'

'Warped little bastard.'

'What's the matter with him? Half pissed.'

He ignored them with grand contempt. So bloody funny.

Hilarious. Laughed till it hurt in his guts, till the pain came to his chest and was laughing as he stumped out into the coldness of the street. Cheated them all, you little bugger.

Denied the bloody satisfaction to Famy and McCoy.

Fucked the triumph of our side. What price now, Mr bloody Elkin, or Jonesey. How much champagne already downed, and what now?… A fair old belch there'd be back at the department. And you, Jimmy-boy. He screwed you, too, and after all that. All the bloody heartache, all the bloody pain. You screwed everyone, Dr Sokarev, sir.

The whole lot of us. Both sides. Didn't know you had it in you, you crafty little sod.

The flat would be empty. There was no hurry to approach its loneliness, its vacuum. Slowly Jimmy made his way down the pavement, and the hiccups were inter-mingled with the laughing, and that soon faded to little more than a giggle.

Failure had been a familiar bedfellow. So many missions launched with high expectation, and rarely the wounding blow that they sought. Barely a fortnight without the young men departing for their objectives, erect in their confidence, and then hard on their heels the devastation of disappointment. Undisturbed beds, unused mess tins, shortened ranks on the morning parade. And when does frequency become inevitability? When does the dimness phase into darkness? When is there no longer hope of success? The leader of the General Command had been brought the transcript of the World Service news from London and had read without comment of the death of Famy, the survival of Sokarev, the flight of the El A1 jet from Heathrow. He had walked into the sands seeking solitude and absence from the new recruits. It had been a good plan, he reflected, and he had sent good men, but it had been insufficient. He stood more than an hour as the dusk came down over the desert, so still that an earth-coated mouse ran close to his feet as it meandered a path to the ambush of the adder. And the killing was quick; startled eyes, frozen movement, and the job completed.

The land where the soft, and the gentle and the harmless did not survive. He yearned for the snake's speed and resolution, remembered the cold, unfeeling and mechanical strike of the reptile and craved the ability to impart the simplicity of that minute brain into the minds of the men who would leave the camp before midnight and drive in the jeep to the frontier and walk forward toward the minefields and the wire and the enemy.

When the night had advanced and the stars risen he made his way back to the camp and went and sat with the four who were eating together with their friends, perhaps for the last time. He hid his depression behind humour and quiet exhortation, and made no mention of the news from Europe. When the time came for them to leave he walked with them to the jeep and hugged them deep and kissed each on both cheeks, and watched the tail lights till they were too distant and had gone among the shallow hills. Afterwards, in his tent, he lay on the canvas bed and read again the operational plan on which they had been briefed. He was close to sleep when the old man pulled aside the tent flap and illuminated by a storm lamp came across the floor to him.

'They have been monitoring the Israeli broadcasts.

Sokarev is dead. He died tonight in Tel Aviv… '

'From what?' The confusion of the leader showed. Half-sitting up in the disarray of his blankets he said, 'The reports made no mention of his being injured.'

'The Israelis say he was unhurt in the attack, but he suffered a heart seizure on the plane.'

'So it was not us, not by our hand?' He sank back on to his roughened pillow, the momentary excitement extinguished.

'But he is dead.'

'But not at our hand.'

'We sought to kill him, and he is dead, and… '

'Listen, old man.' Weariness crept tantalizingly and irrevocably through him. It was not the time for discussion.

'Listen. His death is unimportant if it was not at our hand.

We had to show we had the power to strike successfully at him. Instead we showed we were not capable. That is no victory.'

'We could say… ' and the old man, mindful that he had been interrupted before and aware of the leader's failing attention, let his words tail away.

'We could say nothing. To make people of whatever country, wherever in the world, aware of the mushroom clouds that can rise over our men and women and children then we had to be triumphant in our attack. We were not.

The mission is over and completed. Sleep well, old man.'

When the light had gone and the tent flap had been folded back into place the leader turned toward the canvas side that was close to his face. And before he slept he thought of the lights of the jeep and the bright furnace eyes of the men he would not see again.