Doris stood up, and dusted herself down.
‘Has he paid you yet?’ she called down.
George groaned. I thought things weren’t looking too good for him. We scrambled down to where he lay on his side in the heather.
‘Did you find the bomb?’ I asked Chris.
‘What bomb? I’m looking for a container of a medical radioactive isotope. Something for X-ray machines. Nobody said anything about a bomb to me.’
‘That isn’t a mine detector you dragged up here then?’
‘No, Charlie. It’s a Geiger counter – can’t you tell the difference?’
‘He told me we were looking for a box of documents for some museum,’ Doris complained.
Ean looked interested. Like an energetic working dog.
He asked, ‘What did he tell you, Charlie?’
I quite liked talking about George as if he wasn’t there. He groaned now and again to remind us he was. Maybe he was hoping to dissuade me from putting the words Geiger counter and bomb together in one sentence.
‘That we were escorting the lady to the spot where her brother had died – he was the pilot. That turns out to be true, after a fashion.’ I gave George a fraternal poke, and told him, ‘George, it’s time to come clean. Pay attention now, and tell me if we’re looking for an atom bomb.’
He groaned and turned away from me, saying, ‘That Scots maniac broke my leg.’
‘No, he didn’t, George. You broke it yourself because you are dumb. Let’s try again – are we looking for an atom bomb?’
‘Yes, fuck it.’
I was really pleased that everyone got it at once. However, nobody reacted quickly, until Doris said, ‘What say we just roll him back into the water, and hold him under until he stops wriggling?’ She had a point. If she had made the move I don’t think anyone would have stopped her.
It was at this point that Ean played the Highland lairdy card, and decided to start telling us all what to do. But he wanted some information first. He, too, prodded George, but he was less forgiving than me because he prodded George’s smashed leg.
‘If the American government has really dropped an atom bomb on my rather spectacular mountain, old thing, would you mind telling us what you were supposed to do if you found it?’
‘Mark it, go back down to the hotel and phone for some back-up.’ He groaned again, and said, ‘Shit, my leg hurts.’
‘Breaks are meant to, George. Then what?’
‘A US Army team would come and collect it. Discreetly. It would all depend on the condition the weapon is in.’
‘And none would be any the wiser, was that the idea? Not even our curiously craven government?’
The real pain must have been hitting George by now, because all he did was bite his lip and nod his head.
‘You Yankee bastards,’ Chris said. Then he asked, ‘What next?’
We all looked at Ean. We were on his patch, after all. He said, ‘I’ll go down and fetch a stretcher, some help to carry him down to the hotel – I’ll travel fastest alone. You stay put, and babysit him . . . and if you find that bloody bomb, don’t bloody touch it.’
Chris and I moved George further up the slope, and into the shadow of the low cliff face the aircraft had actually failed to clear. The pieces of airframe were noticeably smaller up against rocks. We moved sheets of ally around to give him some cover from the breeze. He moaned and groaned for America with every yard we moved him, even though we were as gentle as was practicable. I found his knife in the shallows, and put it in my pack. Doris took her revenge. She knelt down alongside George, smiled sweetly, and said, ‘George, you are an absolute fucking louse. If I’d had my way we would have left you in the water.’
‘Doesn’t your country mean anything to you?’ he groaned at her.
‘What has our country to do with it?’
‘I’m doing this for America, you bitch – saving face for Ike and the old country.’
‘Balls, George, you’re doing it for that suitcase of money that I’ve been carrying around for you for a month. I hope you die before we get you down off this mountain again.’ And she stalked off to lend her captivating presence to Chris.
Some kind of instinct kicked in: something I must have picked up on. You’re acting, Doris, I thought. You’re still bloody acting a part.
Despite herself, I think she was interested in the bomb.
I asked George, ‘Why didn’t you just tell us Brits you’d lost a bomb that wasn’t supposed to be here, apologize, ask Monty and the army to find it for you and give it back?’
‘Go away, Charlie. I don’t want to talk any more. I think I’m dying.’
I whistled one of those skiffle tunes they were beginning to play on the radio. I can’t remember which one now. Maybe it was ‘Lost John’ – I was fond of that one at the time. Eventually George groaned again, and asked, ‘Can I have a drink of water?’
I looked levelly at him, and asked it again.
‘Why didn’t you ask the British to find it for you, George?’
‘Because it wasn’t supposed to be here, stupid. The Prez had already decided to withhold the technology from you, so we couldn’t tell you it was already sitting here in your back garden – all you had to do was find it. You got it later, after you paid for it.’
‘So because you were frightened of us getting the Bomb before you wanted us to, an atom bomb has been lying out here in the rain and snow for ten years?’
‘It’s only a little one, Charlie, a model for the real thing – about a quarter-size.’
‘Which makes me feel much better – if its casing has
