We Are Now Beginning Our Descent by James Meek Read Free Book Online

reckons America’s the wounded puppy after the Twin Towers went down.’
    ‘What do you mean, you don’t think so?’
    ‘You’re closer to soldiers than I am to elves. You’re going to Afghanistan next week. I’m not going to the enchanted forest to make magic with some bunch of goblins.’ M’Gurgan flung out his hand in irritation, as if he was shooing a wasp out of a room. ‘Everybody compromises. It’s hard to be pure.’
    Kellas took the train back to London the next day. He’d already obtained his Russian visa. He’d flown to Moscow, got a visa for Tajikistan, bribed his way to a ticket on Tajikistan Airlines, flown to Dushanbe, acquired an Afghan visa and flown in the lizard-coloured plane to Faizabad. M’Gurgan had been wrong. By the time Kellas returned from Afghanistan, the US prison camp at Guantánamo Bay had opened and Kellas and others like him had begun sending off for maps of Iraq. In London, Frankfurt and Paris they heard the rising note of puppy snarl. His book had not been hard to sell.
    The Heathrow train was in the tunnel beneath the airport, slowing down. Kellas stretched and folded his arms. A stickiness in there. He would have to buy a fresh bandage before getting on the plane. He watched the business people line up their briefcases on wheels in the aisle.
    There was one message he would reply to. His thumb worked the keypad, telling his agent to fax the final contract for the book to his publishers’ office in New York. He’d sign it there. He stepped out of the train into the contrived shadows of the station’s south aisle. He was the only one not hurrying. Suits and briefcases on wheels flowed around him. He read M’Gurgan’s single contributionto the morning’s flow of text messages. It said: ‘Adam. More blood and darkness than you or we deserve. Call me.’
    He switched off the phone and walked towards the escalators.

3
    K ellas bought a first-class, one-way ticket to New York at one of the airline counters. He’d never flown first class. The saleswoman was friendly. Perhaps they were more friendly after you paid four thousand pounds for a first-class seat. It was a lot to pay for an extra square yard of space, free champagne and metal cutlery. He was going to spend like a lottery winner for a few days. He might turn out to be good at being rich. He’d been watching them. He noticed that they made luxury seem like something that had been imposed on them regardless of their wishes. It was impossible to tell whether they enjoyed champagne or not. It was what was provided, like water in the tap, and they bore it.
    ‘You’ve been in the wars,’ said the saleswoman when she handed him his documents. She had a Sinhalese name. She wore dark, heavy lipstick and had a constellation of tiny moles, like freckles, on her cheekbones. She was looking at his grubby bandage, which looped out from under his cuff over the base of his thumb and back inside the sleeve.
    ‘Yes, I have,’ said Kellas. He smiled. ‘It’s a war wound.’
    The woman’s mouth turned down at the corners and her eyes became rounder. ‘From where?’ she asked.
    ‘From Camden last night,’ he said.
    ‘You should get it seen to before you board. Have a nice flight.’ She smiled widely and he thanked her and walked away. She’d been checking on him, that he might not behave in an inappropriate way, bleed like the underclass on the starched napery of a 747’s royal enclosure. He looked round and at the same moment she looked upfrom her screen and caught his eye. This time she didn’t smile. She looked anxious. He should have stayed away from the war wound fuckwittedness, the being cute. The ticket clerk’s family was probably from Sri Lanka some generations back. Who knew what real war wounds flexed sinuous and pink here, crimped by healed-up thread holes, under nice jeans and skirts and T-shirts.
    Once through check-in and security, Kellas went to Boots. He bought a pack of AA batteries and asked if they