“Chrisayres,” I said in my most fearless, professional voice.
“It’s here,” said Glen. “The fax.”
I was glad it wasn’t Fletcher. But this was terrible news: Part of me had still hoped the Pentagon would overlook The Times entirely. I had fantasized that no one in London would notice until it was too late.
“Please say it’s an aircraft carrier,” I said.
“Uh-uh,” said Glen. “No such luck. And it’s TWO places.”
“What?”
“I’ve got one place; you’ve got the other.”
At least, I thought, this meant I would get a traveling companion.
“Come on, Glen,” I croaked. “Tell me what units they’re with…”
“You’re not going to like this,” he said.
“Oh no.”
“Indeed,” said Glen. “Well, the first is with the air force.”
That wasn’t so bad, I thought. The air force, after all, would never put a base anywhere near the front lines. And the embedded position would be at the base. It would be both glamorous and acceptably safe.
“And the other?” I asked, feeling slightly more cheerful.
“The Marines. Front lines. On the ground.”
I wondered if the Coffee Bean had a bathroom.
Then I said: “Jesus Christ.”
“Yes, you’ll probably be needing him,” replied Glen. “If, of course, that’s where Fletcher decides to put you.”
“What do you mean?”
“He hasn’t made his mind up yet,” said Glen.
Glen, of course, knew as well as I did where Fletcher would put me. I worked for Fletcher’s department; Glen worked for home news. There was no way Fletcher was going to put someone from a rival department with the Marines. We both knew instantly, therefore, what my choices were: accept the embedded place with the Marines, protect my career at The Times, and put my life on the line; or turn down the Marines, protect my life, and put my career on the line. There was, of course, another consideration: If I turned down the Marines, I was effectively putting Glen’s life at risk. If, that is, he was stupid enough to go, or not brave enough to turn it down. There wasn’t much of a chance, however, that I would be brave enough to turn it down, either. Ambition and testosterone, it seemed, could overcome fear.
“Hang on,” interrupted Glen before I had any more time to contemplate this existential dilemma. “I can see Fletcher picking up the phone. He’s bound to be calling you. Let me know how it goes.”
He hung up. Within seconds my phone was vibrating again. The caller ID read “unobtainable.” It had to be Fletcher.
“Chrisayres,” I said.
“Good news!” said the clipped, posh baritone from six thousand miles away. I could feel my jaw tighten: Good news to Fletcher could only be bad news to me. “We’ve been given two of these ‘embedded’ positions with the Americans,” he said, sounding genuinely delighted. “One’s with the Al Jaber Air Base in Kuwait and the other… erm, hold on a second, Chris.” I could hear a scuffling sound, then a garbled murmuring as Fletcher answered an urgent question from one of the night editors. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine what death would feel like.
“Chr-is?” It was Fletcher again.
“Yes?”
“So congratulations. You’re with the Marines: frontline stuff. Well done! Should be very interesting.”
“Yes. Interesting. Very,” I said.
“We also got a place on an Air Force base in Kuwait, but I imagine that’ll be quite dull,” added Fletcher, as though he was comparing the routes for a pleasant afternoon hike. I pictured pilots, hundreds of miles from the fighting, enjoying hot coffee, bagels, and cigarettes back at the Kuwait base. “There’s a chap called Glen Owen going from home news. He seems pretty happy with that. I assume that’s okay with you?” A vivid image of Glen, also enjoying hot coffee, bagels, and cigarettes, flashed into my mind. I wished, for a moment, that I was Glen.
“Chris? Are you still there?
I wasn’t sure if I was really there. Surely this couldn’t be happening to me. Surely I couldn’t seriously be going to war.
“Won’t this be quite, er, dangerous?” I ventured, following it with what was meant to be a chuckle. It came out as a squeak.
There was a baffled silence.
“No! Go! Enjoy!” came the surprised reply. “It’ll be a character-forming experience for you, Ayres.”
Then came the aftershock. For a second, Sunset Strip went hyper-reaclass="underline" sound played backward and the cars bled into the sunshine. Breathe. Breathe. I saw Dr. Ruth, with her broken leg. “It’s fight or flight, Christopher,” she said. “Animals react to threats with a general discharge of the sympathetic nervous system.” Then normality clicked back into place. When I stopped hyperventilating, Fletcher was still chatting calmly. He was talking about some kind of course.
“So you’ve done the course, haven’t you?”
I jolted to attention.
“What course?”
“The Pentagon course. Military training. How to put on a gas mask. How to avoid beheading. That kind of thing…”
“Er, no.”
“Oh. Right. Your mate Oliver Poole’s done it. Wrote a lovely piece about it in the Telegraph this morning. Very interesting.”
“Poole?”
“Yes, Poole. He’s going in with the American infantry. Good job you got the Marines. Anyway, not to worry. We have our own course here. It’s with some chaps from the SAS. You’ll need to fly back to England. Get on the Internet now and book your ticket. We’ll see you next week.”
With that, Fletcher hung up.
The worst conversation of my life over, I gulped back my cappuccino, got up from my seat, and began to walk home on unsteady legs. My breathing was quick and shallow, as though someone were sitting on my chest. As much as I was terrified, I also felt slightly elated: heroic, in fact, for agreeing to go to Iraq. I had joined the elite and noble club of John Simpson, Ernie Pyle, and Walter Cronkite. Colleagues would be jealous; girls’ hearts would beat faster. And perhaps Fletcher was right: Perhaps it would be a character-forming experience. There was something almost fatherly about Fletcher, and I couldn’t imagine him deliberately sending me off to a hideous chemical death. Besides, if Oliver Poole could go to war, so could I.
“Poole is embedded,” I told Glen later.
“I know—saw his name included on the Pentagon e-mails. It’s quite amusing, isn’t it? Hollywood Reporters Go to War. Actually, I’ve heard that Poole’s fearless. He can’t wait to see some action.”
“Yeah, right.”
“No, seriously. He probably caught the bloodlust at Eton, from Prince Dippy of Nepal. Or from his grandfather: He was a colonel to Field Marshal Montgomery, y’know. Helped plan D-day.”
I groaned.
“Oh no,” I said weakly. “Poole’s one of those war types.”
“There’s a tradition of it at the Telegraph,” continued Glen. “Their man in Afghanistan was particularly impressive. He covered that battle with the Pathan tribesmen in the Swat Valley.”
“The what valley?”
“Took him a month to get there. Spent a good week of the journey on a train from Bangalore, in insufferable heat.”