Mike Bond Bound. Mike Bond

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      The earth was shaking, an earthquake; he raced up the stairs to the roof, smashed into a sentry coming down. “It's the Marines,” the sentry screamed. “A bomb!”

      From the roof he couldn't see the U.S. Marines' compound to the south, just a great billowing dark cloud. He raced downstairs to the radio room. Chevenet, the communications chief, was crouched speaking English then listening to the headset as he loaded his rifle. “A truck,” he said, “somebody drove up in a truck. The whole building. The whole fucking building!”

      Yves sprinted down the corridor and down the stairs. “Battle stations!” he screamed. “Battle stations!” Pumping a round into the FAMAS he dashed across the lobby into the parking area. Dark smoke filled the sky. “They hit the Marines!” he yelled to the sentries at the gate. “A big truck!”

      A Mercedes truck, the kind used to collect rubbish from the embattled streets of Beirut, geared down and swung into the parking lot, snapped the gate barrier and accelerated toward him. A ton of plastique, he realized as he fired on auto exploding the windshield but the driver had ducked, the truck's grille huge in Yves' face as he shot for the engine, the distributor cap on the left side, the plugs, the fuel pump. It was too late, the truck would have them. His heart broke in frantic agony for the men inside, the men who would be trapped, crushed to death, the Paras, fleur de la France, his beloved brothers. The universe congealed, shrank to an atom and blew apart, reducing him to tiny chunks of blood and bone, never to be found.

      2

      “IT’S YOUR LAST NIGHT, Neill – please let's not fight?” Beverly poured the noodles into the strainer and dumped the strainer into a bowl. “Can you get the butter?”

      Her close-cropped round head made him think of an eel peering from its hole. Waiting to sink her fangs. “It's just three weeks.” He spoke carefully, not letting the whisky slur his tongue, upbeat at the end. “Good to put a little distance between us.”

      She took the butter from the refrigerator. “There's been no lack of that.”

      He turned as if to hold her in his arms, opened the freezer door and took out the ice cubes. Everything you say, he told himself, she turns right back on you. He twisted the ice cube container and popped some into the low octagonal glass. She spun round. “There's wine with dinner.”

      He poured in extra Knockando, for what she'd said. “What I mean is we'll have a little time to see how it's like, living alone...”

      “I'll hardly be alone with two teenagers to cook and clean for, to drive around and worry about when they're not here and try to run my own office at the same time.”

      Under their feet the ground rumbled, a District Line train slowing for Earls Court Station. He took a sip. “And slip Timothy a quick fuck when you can.”

      “And you! With that Dutch bitch!”

      “Hardly, in darkest Beirut.”

      “You'll find somebody there. You always do.”

      He tossed back the whisky and put the glass in the sink. “There's no point, Bev. We can't keep this up.”

      She came close, took his elbow. “For all the years we've had, Neill, let's not take it out tonight on the kids? Let's have a quiet evening and then in the morning you can go and we'll see what happens when you get back? Please?”

      “You know they damn well don't care whether I go or stay.”

      “Yes, they do. They'd rather you go.”

      “Thanks.”

      “The way you've been, can you blame them?”

      “I blame you.” The phone was ringing. “Imagine, some day we could've been buried side by side.”

      “We have been!” she snapped.

      “Mum!” Edgar called. “Phone!”

      Neill opened a bottle of wine and took it into the dining room. “Yes,” Beverly was saying in the living room, into the phone. “Yes, yes.”

      “You didn't put out wine glasses,” he said to Edgar.

      “Sorry.” Edgar bent to the buffet, took out a glass.

      “Two,” Neill said. “Since when doesn't your mother drink?”

      “Sometimes.” Edgar put a second glass on the table. “Mostly with you.”

      He smiled at Katerina. “See how he is, your brother?”

      She glanced back at him. “No wonder.”

      “That's it, don't you see? No wonder at this magic life of ours!”

      The children looked at him. Beverly sat and began serving the peas, the noodles. “This case...”

      “That's why I'll never be a lawyer,” Katerina said. “You see what she has to go through?”

      Neill sat back. “You mean me, or her job?”

      Beverly's hand undulated through the plates and glasses, caught his. “We made a deal...”

      “I made no damn deal. I never made a damn deal that I couldn't say what I think.” He took a forkful of meat, chewing gristle, turned on Edgar, this son, he thought, I love who hates me. I didn't always drink, my son, I didn't always hate your mother. “What do you think?”

      “It's not worth saying,” Edgar said, “what I think.”

      “Even with me?”

      Katerina stopped chewing. “Especially with you.”

      He smiled at her. “Et tu, Brute?”

      “Now, don't pick on your father,” Beverly said. “He'll be gone three whole weeks, and if the news desk takes all his articles maybe when he gets back we can go up to the Lake District, unwind together.”

      “That, Mother,” Katerina answered, “is impossible.”

      “Promise to study?” he said to Edgar.

      “You were the one,” Edgar said, “who told me school was like what that caste does in India – maiming their children young so they'll always be able to earn a living. As crippled beggars.”

      “That's true.” Neill rubbed his head, imagined the gray hairs growing silently, ruthlessly. “I said that.”

      “You say lots of things.” Katerina tossed him her best smile, one she practiced in the cloakroom mirror before going out to that nauseous little creep with the curly Afro and the earring. Trying to slip his puny prick into my daughter. Go ahead, he told her silently, with his eyes. Go ahead and see what you get.

      The phone rang and in a single fluid motion Beverly was up and after it.

      “It's just a circus,” Neill said. “We play the clown, the tightrope walker, you name it. In the end the audience goes home.”

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