David Monnery - Mission to Argentina

‘It’s weird,’ Docherty went on. ‘I’ve seen some terrible things as a soldier. Oman was bad enough, but believe me, you won’t find a crueller place than Belfast. I got used to it, I suppose. You have to if you’re going to function. But sometimes I don’t think I’ll ever get over that room or that woman.’ He turned to face the priest, smiling wryly. ‘I couldn’t tell this sort of thing to anyone but you,’ he said.

‘Most people couldn’t tell it to anyone at all,’ Liam said. ‘You underestimate yourself. You always have. But I don’t think you should put these two scenes of yours together. I think you will get over Chrissie, even if it takes another ten years. But that room of yours – it sounds almost too good to be true, you know what I mean? Like a picture of the world the way we want it to be, everyone in their proper place, living in perfect harmony…’

‘Yeah. And what’s even crazier: I know it wasn’t really like that most of the time.’

‘That doesn’t matter. It can still be a good picture for someone to hold in their head. Particularly a soldier.’

‘How did you get to be so wise?’ Docherty asked him with a smile.

‘Constant practice. And I still feel more ignorant every day.’

‘Don’t the Buddhists think that’s a sign of wisdom?’

‘Yes, but I have to beware the sin of pride where my ignorance is concerned.’

Docherty grinned. ‘I think you’re probably the most ignorant man I’ve ever met,’ he said. ‘And your time is up.’

The priest looked at his watch. ‘So it is. I…’

‘I’ll drop by again tomorrow or the next day,’ Docherty said. ‘Maybe we can get to a game while I’m up here.’

They embraced in the gloom, and then Liam hurried back across the park. Docherty watched him go, thinking he detected a slowing of the priest’s stride as he passed the kids playing football. But this time no ball came his way.

Docherty turned and began walking slowly in the direction of his parents’ flat, thinking about the conversation he had just had, wondering how he could turn it into words for his father when the time came. Half the street lights seemed to be out in Bruce Street, and the blocks of flats had the air of prison buildings looming out of the rapidly darkening sky. Groups of youths seemed to cling to street corners, but there were no threatening movements, not even a verbal challenge. Either his walk was too purposeful to mistake, or here, on his home turf, they recognized Campbell Docherty’s boy, ‘the SAS man’.

His sister’s face at the door told him more than he wanted to know. ‘Where have you been?’ she said through the tears. ‘Dad died this afternoon.’

She was frightened for the first few minutes. The whole situation – sitting beside him in the back seat, her hands clasped together in her lap, watching the traffic over the driver’s shoulder – seemed so reminiscent of those few hours that had devastated her life seven years before.

But this was London, not Buenos Aires, and the policeman beside her – if that was what he was – had treated her with what she had come to know as the British version of nominal respect. He had not leered at her in the knowledge that she was the next piece of meat on his slab.

That day it had been raining, great sheets of rain and puddles big as lakes on the Calle San Martín. And Francisco had been with her. For the very last time. She could see his defiant smile as they dragged him out of the car.

Stop it, she told herself. It serves no purpose. Live in the present.

She brought the crowded pavements back into focus. They were in Regent Street, going south. It was not long after three o’clock on a sunny spring afternoon. There was nothing to worry about. Her arrest – or, as they put it, ‘request for an interview’ – was doubtless the result of some bureaucratic over-reaction to the Junta’s occupation of the Malvinas the previous Friday. Probably every Argentinian citizen in England was being offered an interview he or she could not refuse.

A vague memory of a film about the internment of Japanese living in America in 1941 flickered across her mind. Were all her fellow compatriots about to be locked up? It did not seem likely: the English were always complaining that their prisons were too full already.

Today was the day their fleet was supposed to sail. A faint smile crossed her face, partly at the ridiculousness of such a thing in 1982, partly because she knew how appalled the Junta would be at the prospect of any real opposition. The idiots must have thought the English would just shout and scream and do nothing, or they would never have dared to take the islands. Or they had not bothered to think at all, which seemed even more likely.

It was all a little hard to believe. The shoppers, the late-lunching office workers, the tourists gathered round Eros – it looked much the same as any other day.

‘We’re almost there,’ the man beside her said, as much to himself as to her. The car pulled through Admiralty Arch, took a left turn into Horse Guards Road, and eventually drew to a halt in one of the small streets between Victoria Street and Birdcage Walk. Her escort held the car door for her, and wordlessly ushered her up a short flight of steps and into a Victorian house. ‘Straight on through,’ he murmured. A corridor led through to a surprisingly large yard, across the far side of which were ranged a line of two-storey Portakabins.

‘So this is where M hangs out,’ she murmured to herself in Spanish.

Inside it was all gleaming white paintwork and ferns from Marks & Spencer. A secretary who looked nothing like Miss Moneypenny gestured her into a seat. She obliged, wondering why it was the English ever bothered to speak at all. It was one of the things she had most missed, right from the beginning: the constant rattle of conversation, the noise of life. Michael had put it all down to climate – lots of sunshine led to a street-café culture, which encouraged the art of conversation. Drizzle, on the other hand, was a friend of silence.

She preferred to think the English were just repressed.

A door slammed somewhere, and she saw a young man walking away across the yard. He looked familiar – a fellow exile, she guessed. In one door and out another, just in case the Argies had the temerity to talk to each other. She felt anger rising in her throat.

‘Isabel Fuentes?’ a male voice asked from the doorway leading into the next office.

‘ Sí? ’ she said coldly.

‘This way, please.’

She walked through and took another offered seat, across the desk from the Englishman. He was not much older than her – early thirties, she guessed – with fair hair just beginning to thin around the temples, tired blue eyes and a rather fine jawline. He looked like he had been working for days.

The file in front of him had her name on it.

He opened it, examined the photograph and then her. Her black hair, cropped militantly short in the picture, was now past her shoulder, but she imagined the frown on her face was pretty much the same. ‘It is me,’ she said helpfully.

He actually smiled. ‘Thank you for coming,’ he said.

‘I was not conscious of any choice in the matter.’

He scratched his head. ‘It’s a grey area,’ he admitted, ‘but…’ He let the thought process die. ‘I would like to just check some of the details we have here…’ He looked up for acquiescence.

She nodded.

‘You came to the UK in July 1975, and were granted political asylum in September of the same year…that was quick,’ he interrupted himself, glancing up at her again.

‘It didn’t seem so,’ she said, though she knew her father’s money had somehow smoothed the path for her. She had friends and acquaintances who were still, seven years later, living in fear of being sent back to the torturers.