The Henchmen's Book Club Read online

  “What?”

  “The prisoner, Your Most Excellent Majesty. Would you like to ask him any questions before we er…” the adjutant tailed off with a look to his shoes before leaving me to fill in the blanks for myself.

  “Oh yes, very much,” His Most Excellent Majesty confirmed, then looked at me. “What is your favourite football team?”

  The adjutant spared me having to ask His Most Excellent Majesty what his favourite football team was when he steered him back to the script.

  “What?”

  “The questions we agreed, Your Most Excellent Majesty,” the adjutant said. “You remember?”

  “Of course I remember, Sissiki. What are you saying about me, that I am a fool?”

  “Oh no, of course not Your Most Excellent Majesty. I am most humbly sorry.”

  “I should think so too, because you are the fool, not me,” His Most Excellent Majesty bristled and for one or two seconds a window of opportunity opened when any one of us could have suggested whipping down this kid’s pants and belting the living daylights out of him to concord all around.

  “You,” His Most Excellent Majesty pointed at me, “what is your name?”

  “Mark Jones, Your Most Excellent Majesty.”

  “And what do you do?”

  “I am a soldier, Your Most Excellent Majesty.”

  “And where is your army?”

  “Destroyed, Your Most Excellent Majesty. All dead.”

  “All dead?” he blinked.

  “Yes sir,” I confirmed. “All. I was the only one who survived.”

  The newly promoted Admiral-Colonel-General, His Most Excellent Majesty and the adjutant looked at me with mixed expressions. Only the translator continued to glare with as much mistrust as before.

  “And how did you survive?” the adjutant asked. “Did you run away? Are you a coward?”

  This hadn’t occurred to His Most Excellent Majesty, who suddenly looked crestfallen at the thought, but I was able to quickly restore his confidence with some boy’s own tales of dare-doing and heroism. When I was done, His Most Excellent Majesty stared at me agog.

  “You killed fifteen men single-handedly?” he gasped.

  I totted up my fantasy body count and confirmed that I had indeed killed fifteen men. Single-handedly.

  “Oh, a hero, huh?” the adjutant cooed.

  His Most Excellent Majesty picked up the baton and ran with it.

  “A hero?”

  “Yes,” the adjutant sneered. “But not so much of a hero that he was able to save the lives of his comrades.”

  “Very true,” I confirmed, “because we were attacked by over a thousand men, and I was only able to save my commander.”

  Now this did catch His Most Excellent Majesty’s attention.

  “You saved your commander?”

  “Yes Your Most Excellent Majesty.”

  His Most Excellent Majesty mulled this over. There was something about it that he didn’t believe, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He suddenly got it.

  “If you saved your commander, where is he?”

  “He escaped in the helicopter.”

  “The helicopter?”

  “Yes Your Most Excellent Majesty, I managed to get him to the helicopter and he escaped.”

  “And why didn’t you escape with him?” the adjutant was dashed to know.

  “I did, but the helicopter was too heavy. We were going to crash, so I jumped out to make the helicopter lighter and got left behind.”

  This finally broke the silence behind me.

  “Preposterous!” the big ebony translator roared. “You jumped out of a helicopter and lived?”

  “I landed in mud, a very dirty muddy lake, to be sure,” I explained. “And that is why, when the…” I forgot what rank the Admiral was momentarily before remembering, “… the Colonel-General captured me I was covered in mud. Was that not so Colonel-General?”

  The Admiral (which I think I’ll keep calling him because he was still in his Russian naval uniform despite whatever rank His Most Excellent Majesty had just invented for him) was on shaky ground himself, what with the details of my capture, so he chipped in and corroborated my version of events in order to shore up his own pile of nonsense.

  That did it for His Most Excellent Majesty and he confirmed that I was indeed a most excellent soldier, ending all concurrent thinking on the subject.

  “But Your Most Excellent Majesty, what army did he belong to? Why were they in our territory? What were they doing here? And who were they fighting? These are the things we need to know. Not jumping out of helicopters and single-handed fighting,” the adjutant objected, but he’d lost his audience and the ten-year-old kid in a wobbly hat and over-sized uniform disagreed.

  “Get away from me Sissiki. Do not tell me what we need to know. I am His Most Excellent Majesty, the Supreme Ruler and Commander-in-Chief of the First Lumbala Special Army and I know what we need to know, so do not keep telling me what to do. Unless of course, you think you would like to be the Commander of the Special Army?”

  The adjutant thought about this longer than was prudent before apologising once more and expressing his undying loyalty to all things Excellent.

  “You see Colonel Jones, my advisors are very stupid,” His Most Excellent Majesty told me.

  “I’m afraid I’m not a Colonel, Your Most Excellent Majesty,” I told him.

  “No?” he looked confused.

  “No,” I shrugged. “I’m just a…” a thought occurred, “… Brigadier.”

  “A Brigadier?” His Most Excellent Majesty repeated.

  “Yes sir.”

  “What is a Brigadier?” he asked.

  “It’s like a Colonel-General, only more senior.”

  “Ha!” His Most Excellent Majesty clapped, pointing to the Admiral. “He outranks you!”

  The Admiral chewed on this one and noted that I did indeed seem to suddenly outrank him.

  “So, would you like to be in the Special Army?” His Most Excellent Majesty asked me out right.

  “It would be an honour Your Most Excellent Majesty,” I saluted.

  “Then that is settled,” he declared, returning my salute three or four times. “You will be my chief of the guards and you will be in charge of saving my life if ever the enemy attacks.”

  I told him it was a job he’d never know me to fail at.

  “Excellent!” he said. “I now need to speak with my Colonel-General alone but Captain Bolaji will show you to your quarters,” he told me, giving our big ebony translator a name at last. “Good day to you, Brigadier Mark Jones.”

  “Good day to you too, Your Most Excellent Majesty,” I saluted, then turned on a sixpence and marched out after Captain Bolaji.

  The door closed behind us and the Captain turned to me and growled. “The Colonel-General is a fool. We should have left you by the side of the road where we found you.”

  “You’re not really a people person, are you?” I deduced.

  “Just know this,” he jabbed, “I will be watching you closely at all times, and if you endanger our mission I will not hesitate to kill you.”

  “Brigadier,” I reminded him.

  Captain Bolaji’s expression tightened up around his eyes. “Brigadier,” he reluctantly concurred.

  He turned and headed out through the double doors and once more into the African heat. I kept pace with him step for step but Bolaji didn’t look at me. He just rattled off the usual list of dos and don’ts that always gets rattled off whenever you join an organisation such as this one. ie. eight hour guard shifts, alternate night duties, no shooting the local wildlife, my shampoo’s the one with the A on it, that sort of thing until I had a general idea of what the daily grind was all about. The only thing that was still a mystery was the mission itself, but I didn’t worry about that. I never do. That was the adjutant’s department as despite the higgledy saluting order he looked like the brains of the operation. All I had to worry about was guarding my b
it of the fence and watching my back until the first opportunity came to slip away. I had no intention of being here for the long haul.

  Still, there was no reason to fritter away the time twiddling my thumbs so after Captain Bolaji allocated me a bunk in the main barracks block, I decided to ask about recreation time.

  “Recreation time?” he stared.

  “Yes, what do you do when you’re not on duty around here?”

  The Captain mulled this question over from all angles before asking me why I wanted to know.

  “No reason. Just wondered, that’s all.”

  “You just wondered?” he glared.

  “Yes, if you read at all.”

  “If I what?”

  “You know, read. As in books?”

  Now the Captain was truly confused.

  “Read?”

  8.

  SHOULD OLD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOT

  “I do not understand how he made the perfume out of dead people. Dead people do not smell good,” Savimbi said.

  “Yes, they smell bad,” Beye agreed. “Especially the women,” which was a curious statement and one worthy of Grenouille himself.

  “He wasn’t making the perfume out of the dead women, he was just extracting one ingredient from their bodies,” I argued, but the overall consensus was that nothing about dead people smelt nice so how could anyone make perfume out of them, least of all the most powerful perfume in the world.

  “I think it is a metaphor,” Captain Bolaji said.

  “A metaphor?”

  “Yes, all the women he killed were beautiful, the most beautiful women Grenouille could find.”

  “I would not have killed them, I would have fucked them,” Mbandi grinned, slicing open a big papaya with his bayonet and sinking his pink-yellow teeth into the pink-yellow flesh.

  “Then you would have had to kill them first, Mbandi,” Savimbi quipped, prompting chairs and papaya to go flying in all directions as the third meeting of the Special book club descended into yet another punch-up.

  Captain Bolaji knocked the bayonet out of Mbandi’s hand while Savimbi’s mates pinned him to the ground until he’d calmed down, then once order was restored we retook our seats and continued discussing Patrick Süskind’s Perfume.

  I don’t know what it was with African men, particularly your typical African bucks. They loved – and I mean absolutely lived for – ripping the piss out of each other’s virile inabilities but had a paper thin sense of humour when it came to jibes about their own lack of sexual prowess. Perhaps it was a tribal thing; an ancient marker of accord, that their ability to pull virgins, impregnate them with a single thrust and leave the countryside dotted about with single mums reflected their position in society. So bigging themselves up as God’s gift while dissing their mates as seedless grapes was all part and parcel of this primeval tradition. Locking antlers across the Serengeti, that’s all they were doing. Locking antlers.

  Of course, blokes in Britain did this too, only with Turtle Wax and Ford Mondeos.

  Still, as quaintly ritualistic as this was, it did somewhat hack into the cut and thrust of our debate and turn our Friday morning meetings into African Gladiators. But on the plus side, they’d all read the book.

  “Sorry Captain, you were saying?” I invited.

  “Yes, I was saying it was a metaphor.”

  “A metaphor? For what?” Beye asked.

  “For God’s finger; that this mysterious ingredient, which was distilled from the most beautiful women in all of France, was not a smell at all, but an alchemic. Grenouille’s perfume, as beautiful, hysterical and intoxicating as it was, was life itself.”

  Captain Bolaji attended every book club meeting. At first I figured it was just to keep an eye on me to ensure I didn’t try to insurrect the men, but over the weeks he’d really gotten into the spirit of things and always made a key contribution, be it picking holes in Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons or wrestling the pin back into Mbandi’s grenade. Accordingly, I thought he made a good point here but Jaga wanted to know if life was so beautiful, why did Kasanje’s feet smell so much?

  Chairs went flying again.

  Captain Bolaji looked to the rafters and rolled his eyes.

  This time the fracas was interrupted by Vice-President General-Brigadier Admiral-Colonel Dembo, who’d been making out like a bandit in the promotions stakes in recent weeks.

  “What is this? What is this” Africa’s highest ranking soldier cried as he waded into a twisted knot of arms and legs. “Captain Bolaji, call your men out immediately! We have visitors.”

  This caught the Captain’s attention so he pulled a whistle from his top pocket and gave it two blasts, ending book talk for another day. The troops rushed to their bunks and collected their hats and rifles (which had been banned from book club after the first meeting) and we all filed outside into a scorching hot dust storm. Across the compound a large Soviet helicopter was blowing His Most Excellent Majesty’s daisies around and settling just in front of the main building.

  The Admiral quickly arranged us into some sort of welcoming committee and found a suitably convincing smile for his face. A moment later the door on the side of the helicopter slid back and sixteen pairs of the very latest Russian issued army boots hit the ground and formed an honour guard of their own.

  His Most Excellent Majesty, the Commander-in-Chief of the First Lumbala Special Army even made a rare excursion away from the air conditioner, making me realise that the money men must’ve flown into town. Sure enough a couple of high-ranking Europeans in incognito khakis leapt from the bird and strode towards their host for a handshake. Naturally, His Most Excellent Majesty bemused and amused them by trumping their handshake with one of his newly learned salutes (these Commander-in-Chiefs, they grow up so fast don’t they?), but they were good sports and played along to His Most Excellent Majesty’s delight.

  Words were exchanged and lost in the roar of the engines, then the money men played Santa and ordered a couple of their pink and sweaty troopers to drag a crate off the helicopter and plonk it down in front of His Most Excellent Majesty’s smile. A crowbar knocked the lid off and a shiny black M16 was handed to His Majesty. Bullets were quickly found and a nearby bin dispatched, all to His Most Excellent Majesty’s immense satisfaction, before the leading lights decided they’d had enough fun in the sun for one day and headed into the house for shadowier discussions.

  The Admiral ordered those of us not invited to help offload of the rest of the crates so half a dozen of us mule-trained the remainder of cargo to the weapons bunker.

  Being the only white soldier in a black African army was always likely to earn me a few looks, though one particularly tough-looking trooper eyed me with deep-set misgiving. His eyes narrowed further when a chrome lock-box came off the troop carrier and made its way to our bunker, followed closely at heel by a couple of white-coated boffins.

  When all was unloaded, the Admiral ordered most of his men back under the carpet, but the most photogenic of us were posted outside the bunker to guard His Most Excellent Majesty’s newest toys.

  My tough-looking friend and a couple of his Russian comrades were given equivalent orders and a dozen of us formed up facing each other under the murderous African sun while the brass sloped off to change shirts.

  My tough-looking friend’s face cracked into a warm smile.

  “Mr Jones!” he said.

  I returned his smile with interest and stuck out a hand.

  “Mr Smith!” I declared, beaming to see my old American friend again.

  Mr Smith shook my hand warmly and we slung our rifles over our shoulders and jawed for a couple of minutes on old times.

  “What are you doing here?” Mr Smith finally asked.

  “Just trying to scrape a few pennies together to pay the bills,” I explained.

  Mr Smith wasn’t convinced though. “You didn’t get this job through The Agency.”

  “No, work on spec – ‘situations vacant’ sign hanging on th
e gate post.”

  Mr Smith decided against scrutinising that one too closely and asked me if I was being well treated.

  “Well enough, I can’t complain,” I said, complaining as much as I could with my eyes out of view of my Special brethren. Mr Smith noted it and frowned in acknowledgement. Troopers on either side of us were staring with suspicion so we explained to our respective comrades that we’d served together before.

  Captain Bolaji decided we’d caught up enough and reminded us of our orders. After a token glare of protest, I unslung my rifle and resumed my post, but Mr Smith stayed right where he was. I thought for one moment they were going to get into it with each other but in the event Mr Smith just asked me what I was reading.

  “We’ve just finished Patrick Süskind’s Perfume,” I told him, rolling up the sleeves of my tunic to show him the bruises.

  “You’ve got a book club going?” he delighted.

  “Of sorts. Just something to pass the nights.”

  “Perfume?”

  “You’d be surprised what we’ve been able to get delivered from Durban,” I told him.

  “What did it score?”

  “We haven’t scored it yet. But End of The Affair got two point nine last week, while Alan Bennett’s Untold Stories did very well with four point two.”

  “Really? That surprises me,” Mr Smith said.

  “Well, it was a bigger book, wasn’t it? And in hardback. Better for fighting with,” I explained.

  Mr Smith understood. He thought for a moment, looking like he wanted to say something but didn’t know how to put it, before asking me if I’d read Papillon.

  “Henri Charrière yeah?” I said. “No, I haven’t read that one yet.”

  “We just read it a few weeks back.”

  “We?”

  “Yeah, we’ve got a little book club of our own going, like before,” Mr Smith told me.

  “Hey that’s great. Are you scoring and nominating and everything?”

  “Yeah, same as we did back on the island. It’s working out really well,” he said, and several of his comrades nodded in agreement behind him.

  “What did you give for Papillon?”