Trojan Morse

Trojan Morse

Eddie Booth scribbled down the last of the message that had surfaced
from beneath the white noise of the airwaves and put down the weighty
headset. He rolled his shoulders to loosen the joints and tipped his
head from side to side hearing the tendons creak then looked at his
watch. The chunky time hands glowed in the half-light and read ten past
eight. He was late for his own birthday drinks.

Kicking his way out of the signals tent, the lanky Australian trudged
past the mess and jumped across the storm water trench to take a short
cut to the Warthog. He was quite sure they'd have no scruples about
starting without him. Still, it would have been thoughtful for someone
to come and get him. He smiled at the idea. 'Thoughtful' was not
something he'd seen or heard of since arriving in the Congo. Kabila's
army was not exactly brimming with compassion.

Past the back of the sick bay and the net camouflaged ammo dump, he
suddenly noticed that it was very quiet. He should've been able to hear
the boys gabbing away in the bar by now.
It must be a surprise party. Oh no. Never mind, just go in look amazed
and humbled and then get on with the drinking. The Warthog Bar came out
of the merging shadows ahead and a movement caught his eye near the
door.

'Ah, Eddie. I was about to come and find you.'
It was Murchison, the division psychiatrist. Normally full of cheek and
outright abuse, the stocky, bearded South African was sullen and
worried.
'Paul. Where is everyone?'
'Um. You better come inside. I need to talk.'
They went in and turned on the fluorescent lights, which blinked and
flared the skeletal prefab interior into life.

'So what's going on?' Eddie asked, still half expecting the boys to
jump out and yell 'surprise!' from behind the oil drum and plank
tables.
'Bola's gone AWOL. He got back today, but took off a few hours ago. A
few of your unit and a squad of MPs from Kinshasa are out looking for
him. They think he's still nearby.'
Eddie was puzzled. Bola Valentine was a career soldier. Something must
really be wrong.
'Has he gone troppo or something?'
'Very much so, I'm afraid. But as a psychiatrist, I can't blame him. If
the same thing happened to me&;#8230; I don't how I'd handle
it.'

Murchison reached over the bar and snatched two mugs and a stray bottle
of wine. He poured for both of them, then drew a crushed packet of
cigarettes from his chest pocket and lit one, taking a deep drag. He
offered one but Eddie turned it down.
'Now, he said when he was settled on one of the only stools. I've got
to tell someone about this. It's the single weirdest case I've ever
had. Why the hell have you boys been using Morse code anyway? I thought
it was extinct.'
'Bemba's using it instead of a two-way. It's more reliable with these
kinds of distances. We managed to get a wiretap into one of his relay
stations last year.' Eddie reeled off the explanation as he had to many
other amused mercenaries.
'How long have you been doing these kinds of shifts?'
'Too long mate. Too long.'
'The Colonel tells me it's been more than six months without leave. Was
Bola acting differently in any way before he went to see his
family.'
'I didn't know he had. Digs told me he had gone to the Ivory
Coast.'
'No, no,' the psychiatrist said, 'it seems he managed to talk himself
onto a transport to Dar es Salaam where he took a boat back to
Zanzibar. I think it was this release from the cauterised thinking of
the army and his two daughters to dote on, which triggered him off.
Whatever it was, the world started talking to him in repeating
phonetics.'
'I've heard of this before.' Eddie reasoned. 'An American signalman
returned from to the States during World War 2 and swore that the
harvesters of Iowa had been talking to him.'
'Mmm. So it's not the first time. But this is stranger: The first few
instances were a frenzy of partial words that his brain was
automatically translating - short dash, short dash, long long short et
cetera. A deliveryman lugging a crate of chinking bottles had made all
sorts of sounds: ici, ne, alpha, la, papa - this sort of thing.
Initially Bola just blinked it away like they were sunspots of
something. But it kept on happening. While he was down in the market
buying squid and shrimps, a kid on a bike went past, the wheel clicking
mechanically, like this,' Murchison picked up his lighter and tapped it
against his mug in an attempt to simulate the sound. 'Bola said it
sounded like the French of Bemba's rebels. He thinks it said
demais&;#8230;demais, over and over. Then on his way back to his
home behind Africa House he heard the sound of a diesel fishing clinker
in the harbour throwing a ghost of clacking against the wall of the old
Arab fort. More phonetics. This time it said 'coupure.
'Being the product of a superstitious Catholic childhood but tempered
by the rational thought instilled by army training, Bola, I think,
would have found this intriguing if not a little unsettling. But as he
packed his duffel bag for the return journey to Kinshasa the following
day, stuffing clothing down one side, a hand slid down the blade of his
diving knife, which had broken loose of the rubber ankle helm. With
blood pouring from his palm he dressed it quickly in rough gauss and
with the help of his wife and daughters, bundled the rest of his kit
into the bag and headed for the ferry. With a gray face and forearm
matted with blood, his wife pleaded with him to go to the hospital.
Bola said nothing because he knew it wasn't the loss of blood alone
that was turning that black face gray.
'Call Colonel Umbeda,' his wife said, 'You could go back later.' But
Bola quietly murmured goodbye to his girls and left. It was all he
could do to hold himself together. The two full words he'd deciphered
from the harbour the day before had been 'tomorrow' and 'cut'.'
'That's selective memory, surely.' Eddie cut in.
'You'd think so.' Replied the psychiatrist. 'But he wrote it in his
diary the night before and that was written with the care and brevity
of a man with all his faculties.'
'What happened next?'
'On the packed ferry with hours 'til docking in Dar es Salaam, Bola
began twisting down into a regressive dementia. If you could imagine
his state of mind&;#8230;
'Was this some sort of collective underlying language that he'd
stumbled on that he wasn't supposed to? Or was the world just plain
talking to him? He told me about the trip on the ferry; bent up in a
corridor amid the dank throng of dozing passengers. How simple it would
be if the sounds of the bicycle and the fishing boat had been random
like static. Or if the words were gibberish. But they were exact,
prophetic to the letter.
'Unless you counted chance. But chance at such odds was just as
inexplicable. And if it was psychosomatic and he'd gone subconsciously
looking for a laceration of some sort, how did his subconscious get
into his rucksack? How did it break the rubber seal on his hilt and
place the diving knife in just the right place? On went his mind,
dissecting, splicing and rebuilding so his thoughts flew back and
forth, finding logic, then a loophole in the logic. The thoughts then
spiraled upwards towards more fundamental questions.'
'Whoa&;#8230;' said Eddie. 'Too much psychology speak. What are you
getting at?'
'Well, there's a dangerous place in the twilight between the edge of
what we know through rational thought and faith in something that we
can't comprehend. Halfway can leave you believing everything. The mind
becomes like a broadband receiver -excuse the play on words - and stops
filtering irrelevant information. It can easily become a road to
madness.'

Murchison stubbed out the last of his cigarette on the raw plank and
lit another one. Eddie once again turned the offer down.
'Was that the last of it?' He asked impatiently.
'No,' said Murchison, releasing a cloud of blue smoke into the torched
air, which lingered in the light above them, swirling. 'It happened
again on the ferry as the engine shook the fire extinguisher cabinet
opposite him. Repeating over and over again all the way to Dar es
Salaam was the word decapiter&;#8230;

'Bola fought off this rising tide of madness all the way back to
Kinshasa where the Colonel ordered him to sick bay for a tetanus shot.
They got straight onto me. When I came to see him, he was hardly
coherent. They had him strapped to a table and he was babbling about a
demon that wanted his head. I've never seen fear in a man's eyes like
that. It was medieval. 'Demon come; all around' he was saying over and
over. I knew about that guy from Iowa so I began confronting Bola with
it. It really is last resort stuff in psychiatry to confront a patient
with his own psychosis, I can tell you. But I couldn't calm him. Then
suddenly he was fine. One minute, as mad as a mongoose, the next,
chatting away like it was a day at the races. That's when I began to
get the story so far. He seemed fine. His blood pressure dropped right
off. He said he had had a revelation.'
'A what?'
'A revelation. About the voices. That they had just been trying to get
his attention. That he was safe now, if only he would listen to what
they had to say. Bola now believed he could travel over the airwaves
like Morse code. Since he was strapped to the table, I took the doctor
and the nurse out into the corridor to talk. It was clear to me that
this was a section 8. We only left Bola for about a minute. When we
came back he had vanished.'
'Out the window?'
'We don't know. The window was still locked from the inside and the
harness buckled up. That's when we called your boys in and got the MPs
on the case. Do you know anything about Voodoo?'
'Not much.' Eddie admitted.
'Well, don't go thinking I've been out here too long. I mean I'm still
shopping on religion but it goes with the territory to learn about what
Africans believe. I've talked with witchdoctors who say a soul can do
anything if it knows&;#8230;'
'Knows what?'
'Knows that it's mad. You're going to have to forgive me for doing this
Eddie but you were the only one in the signals shed when Bola
disappeared. '
'Eddie stared at the psychiatrist. Murchison leaned closer, searching
for recognition in Eddie's eyes.
'Come on Bola. Let him go or we'll have to hurt Eddie&;#8230;'
'What are talking about man!' Eddie exclaimed, suddenly alarmed, but
they were upon him. Hands tightened around his arms, pulling him from
the stool and then his legs were wrapped in rope as they hauled Eddie
onto one of the makeshift tables and held him down. Familiar faces
appeared over him - Solomon, Snake, Digs&;#8230;Bola. Bola!
There was laughter. Slow at first, but growing as the signals unit
released Eddie and fell about the place in fits of mirth.
'Bastards!' Eddie screamed.
'Happy Birthday mate.' Murchison said, slapping him on the back as he
sat up. 'Hope it was a surprise for you.' He mimicked his own
over-acting, throwing his head around 'Demons come, all
around&;#8230; Hahaha. I don't know which was hardest: The acting or
keeping a straight face.'
'Was all of it made up?' Eddie asked. 'I mean some of that was pretty
convincing.'
The psychiatrist scratched his beard. 'No, the best stuff's always
based on fact. Bola and the boys told me about that case in Iowa and
I've dealt with so many cases of Voodoo, I could pass for a witchdoctor
myself. Gotta admit, it was cruel but bloody funny.'

Snake and Digs fetched several buckets of beer and ice from behind the
bar as Solomon helped loosen the rope from Eddie's legs. Other regulars
from the Platoon their unit was on secondment to, drifted into the bar
laughing and patting Eddie and rubbing his hair. He was never going to
live this down.
When the drinks had been poured, the twenty or so men gathered around
with their tin mugs and raised them to a good sport.
'To Eddie. Happy Birthday.'
'To Eddie.' And the mugs clashed sporadically together. As they did, a
strange rhythm danced across Eddie Booth's mind somewhere in the midst
of the toast. Snake, Digs and Solomon looked at each other in puzzled
concern while Bola looked straight at Eddie, his eyes wide like the boy
who'd cried wolf one too many times. They'd heard it too. Not a
disciplined, professional rhythm, but not vague either - tictictic
tickety tictic... It said sant?.
Cheers.