and deadly earnest as he talked.
'Doll boy' Hendry had called him, and it was an accurate description of
the effeminately pretty face with the big toffee eyes; the steel helmet
he wore seemed too large for his shoulders to carry.
I wonder how old he is; Bruce watched him laugh suddenly, his face still
turned upwards to Hendry; not much over twenty and I have never seen
anything less like a hired killer.
'How the hell did anyone like de Surrier get mixed up in this?' His
voice echoed the thought, and beside him Mike answered.
'He was working in Elisabethville when it started, and he couldn't
return to Belgium. I don't know the reason but I guess it was something
personal. When it started his firm closed down. I suppose this was the
only employment he could find.'
'That Irishman, the one at the barrier, he called me a hired killer.'
Thinking of Andre's position in the scheme of things had turned Bruce's
thoughts back to his own status.
'I hadn't thought about it that way before, but I suppose he's right.
That is what we are.' Mike Haig was silent for a moment, but when he
spoke there was a stark quality in his voice.
'Look at these hands!' Involuntarily Bruce glanced down.
at them, and for the first time noticed that they were narrow with long
moulded fingers, possessed of a functional beauty, the hands of an
artist.
'Look at them,' Mike repeated, flexing them slightly; they were
fashioned for a purpose, they were made to hold a scalpel, they were
made to save life.' Then he relaxed them and let them drop on to the
rifle across his lap, the long delicate fingers incongruous upon the
blue metal. 'But look what they hold now!' Bruce stirred irritably.
He had not wanted to provoke another bout of Mike Haig's soul-searching.
Damn the old fool - why must he always start this, he knew as well as
anyone that in the mercenary army of Katanga there was a taboo upon the
past. It did not exist. 'Ruffy,' Bruce snapped, aren't you going to feed
your boys?'
'Right now, boss.' Ruffy opened another beer and handed it to Bruce.
'Hold that - it will keep your mind off food while I rustle it up.' He
lumbered off along the root of
the coach still singing.
'Three years ago, it seems like all eternity,' Mike went on as though
Bruce had not interrupted. 'Three years ago I was a surgeon and now
this.-The desolation had spread to his eyes, and Bruce felt his pity for
the man deep down where he kept it imprisoned with all his other
emotions.
'I was good. I was one of the best. Royal College.
Harley Street. Guy's.' Mike laughed without humour, with bitterness.
'Can you imagine my being driven in my Rolls to address the College on
my advanced technique of cholecystectorny?'
'What happened?' The question was out before he could stop it, and Bruce
realized how near to the surface he had let his pity rise. 'No, don't
tell me. It's your business. I don't want to know.'
'But I'll tell you, Bruce, I want to. It helps somehow, talking about
