I nodded, glancing over pages of the recruitment papers because I had no idea how to keep that going.
‘Joining the army?’ Mr. Jenkins unexpectedly asked.
‘Something like that.’
‘You are running from problems, right?’ he stared at me like a cat at a mouse. ‘Squabbled with your mad friends at the Garage, huh?’
‘I am not running anywhere!’ I became angry. ‘Just now there is war occurring and I… I have to be there!’
‘Ah really?!’ again he appeared sincerely surprised. ‘So it turns out you are a good guy, Joshua Kold! A real American, huh? Well, I am glad that we are familiar, only…’
‘Only what?’ I muttered.
‘Are you sure that you will bring any benefit to the war?’ he narrowed his eyes like a snake. He often did so, as if looking into your soul. ‘What do you know about war, boy?’
‘No less than you!’ I became angry. ‘It’s clear that people kill there and so on. But if no one will fight, these freaks, like those that blew up the twin towers in New York, will appear here with increasing frequency, and then settle here and begin to kill everyone.
‘All this is so,’ Mr. Jenkins inclined his head. ‘But this is not war in any way. This is a war on terror, you know. The other side of the same coin so to speak. And war… This is not a spectacular raid, not firing at enemies from behind a beautiful and reliable rock, nor forced marches and not even pulling your wounded commander out from under enemy fire. War, first of all is a very dirty and, I would even say, smelly life in such disgusting conditions that it’d give you one hundred points in your Garage. There’s a lot of hard manual labour. Real marines or G-I’s are like camels always carrying a burden: weapons, munitions, products, equipment… And all this under a scorching fifty-five degrees Celsius sun and however many it will be in Fahrenheit, Joshua. You’d better not know if you want to sleep peacefully today. There are no toilets, no proper food, or normal water, and there is no mobile communication and television – just nothing at all! And in all this time you may never see the enemy for your entire round of combat operations, or ever shoot from an M-16, or ever have the magic feeling of satisfaction of a day well lived. Not once, for all your time of service, you understand me, boy?
‘Everyone has his own experience,’ I muttered under my breath.
‘Scepticism is peculiar to youth,’ he parried, hitting me with this phrase. ‘But to become a hero, you don’t have to go into the army and march to the end of the world. You can protect your country here. Remember, Joshua: the front is everywhere. Do you understand what I’m talking about?’
I silently shook my head, getting a grasp of the contract in mind. This Mr. Jenkins was little by little beginning to irritate me with his mentoring, cheesy metaphors and vague hints.
‘You are a very promising boy as regards computers, an ace,’ he was switching back into the role of Baseball player again. ‘We need people like you!’
‘Do you – to whom am I promising?’ I asked, barely restraining myself from telling him where to get off.
‘To us – the organization that protects the United States,’ he became serious. ‘We don’t shoot from rifles and machine guns, we don’t fly fighters. But our contribution to state security is no less, and maybe more, powerful than the armed forces or navy.
“So you’re FBI!’ I turned my head to him, interested. ‘Did I guess?’
Mr. Jenkins smiled.
‘The FBI, Joshua are only our journeymen. Look higher.’
‘CIA?’
‘Even higher!’
This time I smiled:
‘And what’s above? The State Department?’
‘The State Department often follows our guidance and recommendations.’
I was already amused. Mr. Jenkins, it seemed, was a commonplace schizophrenic, living in his own invented world.
‘So who are you? Mossad? KGB? MI6?’
‘National Security Agency,’ he said simply.
‘Ah, No Such Agency!’ I continued to laugh. ‘Never Say Anything… Mister Jenkins, I have to go. All the best.’”
11:56 P.M._
The food ordered by Kold was delivered, and he took a break, shoveling down pizza and salad from a plastic container with unexpected enthusiasm. The Lawyer ate a salmon sandwich, and, as he drank coffee, asked:
“Mr. Kold, you told me about your patriotic feelings just now. Doesn’t it seem to you that your picture of the world is a little… idealistic?’
Kold wiped his oily lips with a napkin and nodded as if to say, I got your question. But he took his time with the answer. Five long minutes passed before finally he said:
“Idealism is a kind of protective reaction. That’s why so many teenagers are idealists. Cynicism comes with life experience.”
“The dispute between the physicist and the lyric poet ended with the victory of cynics,” the Lawyer smiled sadly.
“What?” Kold didn’t understand.
“Don’t pay any attention. It is our Russian, or to be exact, Soviet meme. If everything goes well, you will have time to study this and many other similar inventions of national folklore.”
“I’m ready to go on,” Kold told.
File 007.wav
On the bus taking new recruits to the base, we at first exchanged glances, then began to scoff.
A Latino by the nickname of El Gato, a big guy in a green shirt, reported to all the bus in broken English that the writing was on the walclass="underline" Saddam had it coming and it’s now all over.
A guy in a sleeveless leather jacket, a typical redneck, antsy and angry, lisped through his broken tooth something about a steak up the ass, and a couple of blacks, brothers I think, gave an impromptu rap on an army topic, with the refrain: ‘All day long you’ll be guzzlin’ dirt; at night you’ll be scrubbin’ the toilets!’ On the whole, it was cheerful, and the accompanying sergeant with a plastic hand had the most fun.
At last, the bus drove in through the gate of the Parris Island military base where I would have three months military training to achieve the proud rank of private 1st class and be deployed to Iraq as part of a brigade of US marines to restore democracy and justice there.
Parris Island, also called the ‘recruiting depot’ brought together all recruits from areas to the east of Mississippi, while those from the west trained at the base in San Diego, California.
The bus rolled on for some time through the base past mesh fences, army barracks and inscriptions: ‘Warning! Restricted area! Sentries will open fire without warning!!’.
The bus came to a halt, the doors opened, and we were ordered to leave. For some reason, the bus had stopped not by the barracks or headquarters, but in the middle of a huge puddle in a yard. Several officers and sergeants in raincoats and gumboots began to yank us skilfully from the bus and shove us face-down towards the dirt. The one-armed corporal was laughing crazily in the front seat. Then we were forced to do push ups so that our faces dipped into the dirty water. While we were doing push ups, we were given a lecture about discipline in the American military, whether we have rights (no!) and what will happen to us if we’re disobedient (everything, up to the death penalty).
Then there was a communal shower and a hair salon where we were cut under the cobbles. In the dining room, we were given ten minutes to push down puttylike porridge, beans and potatoes, and sent back out to the yard to do push ups. So my first day in the military began.
In the evening, after the command ‘Hit the sack’, I dropped on to my bed and fell into a dream and if anyone had asked at that moment how to ping a computer into a local area network from another subnet, I would send his ass to hell – according to the local lexicon.