The Reluctant Hero by Michael Dobbs Read Free Book Online

why?’
    ‘Lots of reasons. I’m curious. All this talk about Asia forging a brave new world – I want to see a bit of it myself.’
    Bowles chuckled, like a tutor with a confused child. ‘Yes, but Ta’argistan at this time of year is a pretty remorseless place. Even in the capital they can’t guarantee power supplies. A bloody icebox, I can tell you. God knows why they suggested we go at this time of year, but that’s why it’s only four days. You’d be better off in the Caribbean or Courchevel – anywhere, in fact.’ ‘
    I’m not looking for a holiday. And I suppose . . . well, let me be frank. It’s the anniversary of Julia’s death. Could do with getting away somewhere completely different, take my mind off things. So I’d like to be part of your group.’
    ‘And I’d love to have you, Harry, be glad of your support, and if I could help I most certainly would ,’ Bowles replied, banging his fist on his knee for emphasis, ‘but the Ta’argis are an inflexible lot, no imagination. Still polishing Joe Stalin’s boots. And they’ve been very clear that they can only accommodate five of us. And since they’re footing the bill—’
    ‘My bills aren’t a problem.’
    ‘Maybe so, but the arrangements and accommodation are. Five, they have said, and five it will have to be.’
    ‘Surely you can squeeze another one in.’
    ‘Out of my hands, I’m afraid. We’re already fully subscribed. I’ve got that twerp Bobby Malik, Sid Proffit – what an old buffer he is. There’s Ian McKenzie to make up the Scottish quota and Martha Riley for decoration. A rum lot, I’ll agree, but also a full house. I’d love to have you on board, Harry, a man with your qualifications, but . . .’ He spread his hands wide in surrender to the facts. ‘I’m so very sorry.’ The words were syrup, but there was no disguising the stone that lay beneath.
    The noise of someone moving about crept from a room nearby. Bowles rose to his feet, the interview at its end. ‘Wish I could ask you to stay for coffee but, as you can see, I’m tied up at the moment.’
    Or likely to be later, if the rumours were true. He might bring his paintings up from the country, but never his wife.
    He led Harry to his door and shook his hand, a rather awkward gesture between colleagues, before propelling him out. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint,’ he lied, briskly closing the door.
    ‘Oh, but you haven’t,’ Harry whispered, as he headed for the stairs.
    When, at last, Zac became aware, he found himself in a place that had been stripped of every shred of colour. Some pain was like that, so intense, so personal, that it tore away all subtlety from the world and left nothing but obliterating darkness and flashes of blinding, impenetrable light. He lay immobile in the filth, curled up, like a child, his hands tucked between his thighs, instinctively trying to protect those most vulnerable parts of a man’s body from any further injury. The pain they had inflicted had been, literally, unimaginable. The sort of pain that makes a man do anything, say anything, to make it stop.
    And Zac had. Given them everything. Every name, every contact, everything he knew, not that there had been much.
    Zac had been part of the Circuit, the name insiders gave to that expanding world of private armies that stretched from Algeria to Afghanistan, from Nigeria to Venezuela, anywhere there was a mixture of money and danger. They filled gaps where local security forces were ill-trained or under-staffed; even the US and British governments used such men to guard the outerperimeters of some of their more exposed embassies. It was a world of mercenaries, of guns for hire. Mao Zedong had once declared that power grows out of the barrel of a gun, and so did big fat profit.
    Zac had been hired to help with the training of Ta’argistan’s paramilitary forces. Nothing unusual in that, it was happening all around the globe, but Zac was still that irrepressible football player,