Carlyle tried to avert his eyes from the screen, particularly when Osgood appeared, but the sight of the pneumatic Tizzy, wearing a bikini that would have been too small even for young Alice, was predictably hypnotic.
Mercifully, a commercial break arrived. Helen pulled the remote out from under a cushion and muted the sound. ‘Osgood’s done well to get this far,’ she said, ‘but he’s not going to win.’
‘So it’s between the soap star and the stripper?’ Carlyle remarked, curious despite himself.
‘Yes,’ his wife replied, with all the seriousness appropriate to a discussion about a general election, ‘but the actor is more likely to win. Once Osgood is out, he can combine the gay vote with the housewives’ vote. There aren’t enough teenage boys who can be bothered enough to ring in to vote for Tizzy over the line.’
‘They’ve all got their hands full already, I expect,’ Carlyle joked.
Helen shot him a sour look. ‘Moving away from events in the jungle,’ she said, ‘I have some more news.’
‘Oh, yes?’ he said warily, expecting anything from a demand for money to an announcement that his mother- in-law would be paying them a visit.
‘About Agatha Mills,’ Helen said, rolling back on the sofa and pulling her knees up to her chest.
‘What about her?’
‘Well… Agatha and Sandra Groves did know each other.’
Carlyle yawned. ‘You told me that already.’
Helen rose above the rebuke. ‘They were both involved in a Daughters of Dismas campaign against the arms trade. Their particular interest was in British military aid to Chile. Apparently it was being used to finance mercenaries in Iraq.’
Carlyle let this new information sink in. ‘Does this come from the woman that you spoke to before?’
‘Yes.’ Helen glanced at the television screen to make sure that the adverts were still running and that she wasn’t missing any of her jungle fun. ‘I spoke to Clara again this morning, and she put me on to a couple of other people she knows. They say that the two of them were quite active about it.’
‘Was there anyone else involved?’ Carlyle asked.
‘Dunno,’ Helen shrugged.
‘Well, you’d better get your friend to check,’ he chided her. ‘These two have ended up dead, which means any of their chums could now be at risk. They need to get in touch with me straight away.’
‘I will pass the message on,’ Helen said coolly. She picked up some papers that were lying on the floor. ‘They were targeting a company called LAHC.’
‘Which stands for?’
Helen quickly scanned the text. ‘I don’t know. It was reportedly using men and equipment, paid for by British money, as so-called private security guards. Some of those guards are accused of human rights violations.’
‘ I get accused of human rights violations,’ Carlyle snorted, ‘on a fairly regular basis.’
‘Not including murder,’ Helen said bluntly. ‘This isn’t a laughing matter.’
‘I was just-’ Before he could finish his sentence, she dropped the sheaf of papers into his lap, restoring the television’s sound just as her programme resumed.
If anything, the stripper’s bikini seemed to have shrunk during the commercial break. Her nipples, meanwhile, seemed to have grown massively. Through great force of will, Carlyle managed to tear his eyes away from the screen and scan the documents that Helen had handed him. Much of the material was in Spanish, but one thing he could read was a Daughters of Dismas press release entitled Time To Act Against Iraq Mercenaries. Keeping one eye on the stripper’s tits, Carlyle scanned the text. Mercenary recruitment agencies are sending former soldiers to Iraq… human rights abuses… unauthorised use of Army weaponry… assault… murder. He read on: American private security companies who recruit guards at the request of the US government to send into armed conflict zones, to protect strategic installations and military convoys, tend to subcontract to South American firms like LAHC Consulting. The owner of LAHC is Gomez Gori, a retired admiral of the Chilean navy who played a leading role in overthrowing the democratically elected Chilean government in 1973.
Gomez Gori? Well, well, well. At that very moment, however, Tizzy McDee stepped into a shower. Her bikini became transparent and he completely lost his train of thought.
It took him several minutes to return to his reading. The only other item in English was a newspaper cutting from a year earlier:
IRAQ: CHILEAN MERCENARIES IN THE LINE OF FIRE
by Daniel Franklin
SANTIAGO, 9 March (CNW) The 150 former members of the Chilean military who are working as private security personnel in Iraq are potential targets of the resistance there, as indicated by the gruesome murders of three security contractors a week ago.
The former Chilean commandos are reported to work for the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). They are hired by private military firms that are benefiting from the lucrative contracts for the stabilisation and reconstruction of Iraq financed by the United States at an average monthly cost of four billion dollars.
Last November, a discreet ad was placed in the Chilean newspaper El Mercurio inviting ex-commandos who could speak English, to sign up to provide security services abroad at the tempting pay of 18,000 dollars for just six months’ work.
The ad, placed by LAHC, awakened the interest of at least 400 Marines and ‘Black Berets’ — the Chilean army’s special operations forces who retired early in the past few years.
The recruitment effort in Chile included a pre-selection of 400 men, who then participated in military exercises in San Bernardo, south of Santiago. That annoyed the Defence Ministry, which ordered an investigation into possible violations of Chile’s law on weapons control.
LAHC finally selected 150 men who underwent training in the United States, after which they were sent to Kuwait, and from there to Iraq.
American media outlets have reported that the United States has hired retired members of the Chilean army who served under former dictator Augusto Pinochet (1973-90), as well as former henchmen of South Africa’s apartheid regime to serve as soldiers of fortune in Iraq.
The private military industry is growing around the world, fed by local wars that are providing employment opportunities for former military personnel who found themselves out of a job, especially in Eastern Europe, when the Cold War came to an end. The 15 °Chileans now in Iraq also form part of those displaced from active duty by a plan for the modernisation of the armed forces. Current army chiefs have carried out a discreet but effective purge, forcing into retirement officers and non-commissioned officers who played a role in the dictatorship’s repression, in which some 3,000 people were killed or ‘disappeared’.
At the top of the story was a photograph of three soldiers, standing in front of a battered jeep. They looked as if they were somewhere in a desert, but the location wasn’t specified. Each was smiling while brandishing an automatic weapon that looked like something out of a Terminator movie.
Carlyle studied the photo carefully. None of these men was Matias Gori, but each of them was wearing what looked like a small badge. It was impossible to make it out clearly, but the motif could include a dagger, the same or similar to the one on the pin Matias had worn at the cemetery.
‘I told you!’ Helen punched the air in triumph.
‘What?’
‘He’s off.’ She pointed at the screen.
Carlyle turned back to the television. Fireworks were going off and Luke Osgood, dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, was walking across a swaying bridge and out of his jungle camp, after having been voted off the show.
‘I told you he wouldn’t win,’ Helen grinned, giving him a gentle poke with her foot. ‘Why don’t you go and make me a cup of tea?’
When he returned a few minutes later with a cup of peppermint tea, the celebrity nonsense had ended, giving way to the late-evening news bulletin. Carlyle half-watched the end of a story about an earthquake in the Philippines or somewhere, and was just on his way to bed when an image of Rosanna Snowdon appeared on the screen.
