Clare Layton - Those Whom the Gods Love

Rano frowned and said something over his shoulder to the guard, who stepped forwards. Pictures flashed through Ginty’s mind as her body seized up: the man who had been dragged away as she arrived; the burned villages; the fifteen-year-old who had killed her own child rather than live with the knowledge that he was theirs too.

The soldier walked deliberately round the table to stand just in front of her. Something glinted in his fingers. Her heart thumped, and her throat closed so that she couldn’t breathe. Then she saw he was holding a cigarette packet. He opened it and offered it to her. She shook her head, not trusting her voice. He took it to Rano, who put a cigarette between his lips and leaned forwards for a light. Sucking in the smoke with greedy pleasure, he leaned back in his chair and swung his legs up on to the table again, picking up his wineglass in the hand that already held the cigarette.

Ginty pressed on: ‘Won’t your actions now make them – or their children – try to do the same to you and yours as soon as they get the power back?’

‘If we do our job properly, they won’t get it.’ Rano paused, looked over her head, then added deliberately: ‘And even if they do, most of the next generation of children will be half ours anyway. This time we will sort it out once and for all.’

He looked directly at her. She knew he must have been told what she’d been doing in the camps, that her main job here was to collect stories from the rape survivors for a quite different magazine. And he must have some idea of what she – or any other woman who had heard them – would feel about him and his men.

She tried to listen to what he was saying, instead of the remembered voices of his victims, as he explained that rape of the enemy’s women is the natural response of men at war, and that people in the west made far too much fuss about rape in general. It had always been part of life, he told her, because of the way men have been genetically programmed to ensure a wide enough spread of their genes and prevent in-breeding within the tribe.

He could have been an academic lecturer, offering evidence from well-known scientists and anthropologists, adding as a clincher the observations of primate-watchers, who had seen males of one group raping and kidnapping females of another.

Work on the guns had almost stopped, and the singing with it. If Rano’s men really didn’t understand English, something outside her five senses was making them remarkably attentive to what he was saying.

Half an hour later, he switched off the tape recorder, ejected the two cassettes, labelled them, dated and signed them, and then passed both across the table towards Ginty. The blood caught in his cuticles had dried to a dull brown, but she was beyond horror. Concentrating on his lecture, while fighting her fear, had been more tiring than anything she’d done before. She hoped she’d lived up to Harbinger’s faith in her. But she couldn’t think of that now.

‘If you would just sign both, then we can be sure we’re dealing with the same interview.’

She did as he’d asked, making sure her fingers didn’t touch his. Her hand looked tiny next to his. She wasn’t sure that her legs would hold her up when he let her go.

He stubbed out his cigarette and signalled to the men behind Ginty. One of them came into her peripheral vision, holding a camera.

‘Harbinger will need an illustration. You and I will look good together. A nice contrast. Come on.’

Unable to fight him, Ginty let Rano usher her outside into the sun. Muscles in her knees were jumping, and she felt sick, but she could walk perfectly well. He carefully positioned her in front of a spray of bullet holes near one of the blackened windows, before standing beside her. The young soldier with the camera shot the whole film. Sometimes Ginty was made to smile up at Rano; at others direct to the camera. She felt his arm heavy on her shoulders and tried to show something of her real feelings.

When it was over at last, the man with the camera rewound the film, took it out, and handed it to Ginty. Her hand was sweating so much she thought she might drop it, but she got the little reel into her pocket. The young man fished in his pocket and handed Rano a bundle of black cloth.

‘We have to use this,’ he said, shaking it out and reaching towards her head. ‘As much for your protection as ours. If you were seen unblindfolded with my men, the other side could make you tell them where you’d been today. D’you understand?’

Making a supreme effort, Ginty said lightly: ‘They might try, but since I’ve never been able to read a map and can hardly tell my left from my right, it wouldn’t do them much good.’

He clearly didn’t like the flippancy. ‘That wouldn’t help you, I’m afraid. You see, Ginty, nothing that we have done – or ever thought of doing – is half of what they’re capable of. You do understand that, don’t you?’

There was no point trying to get courage from making a joke if he was going to take her literally.

‘Good. And don’t forget that we have many friends still in London. Some of our people, too. They will always be able to find you if you have trouble remembering what you’ve heard or seen.’

With the barely disguised threat echoing in the hot still air, she nodded again. Her last sight of him before his men tied the scarf around her head, this time taking more care not to rip out her hair, was of the warmth of understanding in his blue eyes. Blindfold, she felt a hand lie gently on her right shoulder so that the thumb could stroke her neck. She shuddered.

John Harbinger looked at his latest freelance hopeful across the top of his wineglass and began to feel hopeful himself. He let his eyelids droop sleepily and lifted one side of his mouth in a sexy smile.

‘They say you should leave the table while you’re still hungry,’ he murmured, ‘so I suppose we ought to get going …’

‘Oh, but I’m stuffed,’ Sally Grayling said, gasping a little. She looked at her watch, then up again at his face. Her own turned pink as she realized what he’d meant.

Harbinger hadn’t known that girls still blushed. He began to feel a whole lot better. Without looking away from her big grey eyes, he flipped his Gold Card onto the bill and waved to the waiter. Sally wasn’t likely to go far as a journalist if she didn’t toughen up, but he wasn’t complaining. A bit of gentle adoration would come in handy just now. It would make a nice contrast with Kate’s unbelievable aggression, and it might stop him worrying about Ginty Schell.

He still couldn’t imagine what had possessed him to send her to interview Rano. True, she was already on the ground, but so were lots of real journalists: men, tough and experienced, who knew how to handle themselves and could have stood up to a hundred murderous thugs. He must have been mad.

Catching sight of Sally’s anxious eyes, he realized he was scowling. He did his best to forget what Ronald Lackton might be doing to little Ginty Schell and smiled across the table. Sally relaxed at once, all her muscles flowing into each other. Everything about her yearned towards him. Yes! He could still do it. And if her copy turned out to be crap, he could always rewrite it before it went to the subs. At least for as long as her promise held and he got his just reward he could.

‘I’m going to have to go back in a minute,’ he said, smiling ruefully. ‘I’ve got meetings stacked up this afternoon like high-season Gatwick.’

‘Gatwick?’ Her eyebrows were pressed up towards her neat hairline.

Harbinger wondered if she might be thicker than he could cope with. He put on an efficient briskness. ‘So, you’d better send me an outline of your piece. We don’t commission much these days from people who aren’t on our regular list of freelancers. With a synopsis, I’d be in a better position to give you a contract.’