John Birmingham - Without warning

She waved away his apology. ‘I’m not pissed at you, Wales. I know my job, and I know it’s not always what it seems. I’m a pawn. I can be sacrificed. It’s just… I dunno. I’m sick, Wales, really sick. And it’s messing with my head, the way I think and see things.’ A weak breath escaped from her lips, and she deflated. ‘I made a friend. An asset. I shouldn’t have, but I did. I’m not well… And I got her killed because I wasn’t good enough to save her.’

The room broke up into a jewelled kaleidoscope as more tears came. Larrison leaned over and patted her on the knee. Her dad had done the same thing a thousand times, and it only served to deepen her sadness. Wales’s voice was soft, like her father’s had once been, but still hard with it.

‘You’re not a pawn, Caitlin,’ he said. ‘You’re a knight. And you’re still in play.’

The BBC offices in Paris were an armed compound, with every window covered in steel plating. It did nothing to dull the arrhythmic tom-tom beat of heavy machine-gun fire or the dense, percussive thud of high-explosive ordnance pounding the rubble in the 16th Arrondissement just a few minutes’ drive away. A sandbagged gunpit and razor wire guarded the main entrance, secured by a rotating team of gunned-up heavies from Sandline, a British-based ‘private military company’. Dave, one of the operators, was American, and Melton had initially attempted to forge some kind of relationship with him, but entirely without luck. All he ever received in return for his stream of ‘howdy’s, ‘hi there’s and ‘how ya doin’?’s were grunts and the blank, dead stare of deep disinterest.

‘He’s not really a people person, is he?’ said Monty Pearson, the chief of staff. ‘Still, better than having every man and his mad dog wandering in, eh?’

Monty was a thirty-year veteran of war reporting, having cut his teeth on the Golan Heights all the way back in 1973, during the Yom Kippur War. Like most of the bureau staff, he was a new arrival, a volunteer, in his case from Kabul. Paris was considered a war posting, which was how Melton had moved from freelancer to staffer almost as soon as he’d put his foot in the door with his collection of Iraq War interviews. Very few people had the desire, experience and unique mix of skills that he brought to the table.

Even among the grizzled veterans of the Beeb’s first-rank war correspondents, he stood out because of his own combat experience.

‘Tea?’ asked Monty, as they gathered in the second-floor conference room, a windowless box in the centre of the building. Along with the production studios down in the basement, it was one of the most secure areas in the building, but even so, every now and then a larger explosion nearby would shake flakes of plaster from the ceilings. Melton could feel the detonation through the soles of his shoes.

There was no coffee to be had, unfortunately, and Bret had noticed that the Brits really did seem to function a lot more effectively with just a cup or two of their weak, milky brew inside them. He had no idea where Barry, the office manager, sourced their supplies, but in a starving city riven by ethnic and civil warfare, he somehow kept the larder stocked and the teapots full. When Melton had complimented him on his scrounging chops, Barry had grinned back and said, ‘If I can keep Jim Muir’s fuckin’ beer fridge full of fuckin’ Boddingtons in Beirut, a cup of fuckin’ char in Paris in’t going to bovver me, is it, guvnor!’

‘But a decent cup of Java’s impossible?’ Melton asked.

‘All but,’ said Barry, in an apologetic tone. ‘Frogs is killing each other over mouldy croissants and fuckin’ Nescafe. So no, Mr Melton, no fuckin’ coffee. Learn to drink somefin civilised, why doncha?’

The small team of correspondents and editors took their places around the conference table, most of them juggling papers and folders in one hand, and bone-china cups and saucers in the other. A packet of ‘biscuits’, as they insisted on calling all forms of cookie life, sat in the centre of the table, and Monty doled out one to each tea drinker, before carefully twisting the packet closed again and clamping it with a wooden clothes peg. The provenance of the peg was never explained. It was a peculiar ritual, one that Melton had rather come to look forward to each day. He was offered one of the McVitie’s wholemeal ‘bickies’ to have with his glass of water, but again he turned it down.

‘Couldn’t get any Oreos, Barry?’ he teased, only half in jest.

‘Oh, I know where there’s a whole warehouse of ‘em, Mr Melton. Just couldn’t be fucked dickerin’ for ‘em. Why, do you want some?’

‘Oh no, don’t put yourself out on my behalf,’ Bret replied, smiling.

‘Wasn’t planning to, sir.’

Other exchanges rolled back and forth across and around the table as everyone settled in. The morning news conference was about something more than simply assigning new stories and monitoring those already in progress. It was the only time each day when the entire team was in one place, and it served as an opportunity for everyone to touch base, for the tribe to hunker down and count its blessings that once again their numbers had not been thinned out. The BBC had lost seventeen journalists killed or simply disappeared in the last month, not counting those who’d been vaporised in the Middle East. The Paris bureau, however, was charmed, having lost nobody since Jon Sopel was killed in the first week of fighting. The bureau had grown like topsy since then, and had taken the buildings on either side as they’d become abandoned, but only seasoned warcos and freelancers like Melton worked here now. He’d been hired on a twelve-month contract. It paid a fraction of his Army Times job, which hadn’t been a great earner anyway, but because of the hazardous posting status, the former Ranger was guaranteed ‘room and board’ at the Paris compound. It seemed perverse, but he ate better and slept more securely than many people in England.

‘Right then,’ Monty called out in his down-to-business voice. ‘What enchanting fripperies and puff pieces will we be filing from the City of Light today, then? Caroline, darlin’, any chance of that interview with the blessed Sarko yet?’

Caroline Wyatt rolled her eyes up to the peeling paint of the high ceiling. ‘His minders promised me I’d see him yesterday and I spent the whole bloody day in this wretched armoured car, roaring around from one bunker to the next, without ever actually managing to get anywhere near the little bugger. I’ll stay on it, Monty, if you really wish, but I don’t think Sarkozy’s going to roll over for us until he has some genuinely good news to crow about.’

‘Well, his armoured boys entered the old city last night. I’d have thought that was good enough.’

‘Yes, it is a feel-good story, isn’t it? Dozens of Leclerc main battle tanks crushing Arab street fighters under their treads in the Bois de Boulogne… I can’t imagine why he wouldn’t want to sit down and chat about that over a Pernod or two.’

‘Well, keep at it, sweetheart. I have faith in your charms,’ the chief of staff told her. ‘Bret, are you all squared away with the Marines? London is super-keen to see you embed with them after they cleaned out Lyons.’

Melton tapped the point of his ballpoint pen on a Spirax writing pad. ‘Soon as we’re finished up here, I’m heading west to Suresnes,’ he replied. ‘The Marines – although, you know, they’re really more like Army Rangers – they laid up last night at Mont-Valerien, the old fortress right next door. Parachuted in there when it was still full of jihadis. Pretty fucking hard-core. They’ll have some good stories.’