Three days later Crown Air flew us from Luton airport, a little strip of a runway some distance north of London, to Gibraltar. It was the only flight that got us to the area for a reasonable price, and there was no need to pay two thousand pounds more to fly to Casablanca. We had plenty of time. Morgan had bought the special offer hook, line, sinker, and rod, and in two days' time he would fly into the country. Two days after that, if all went according to plan, he would arrive in Todra Gorge.
It had all been surprisingly easy to arrange. It helped that Nicole worked in a travel agency. We had put together a travel package that consisted of return airfare to Marrakesh, one night in Marrakesh, two nights in Todra Gorge, two days of camel-trekking in the desert, and two nights in Essouaira on the Atlantic coast. As far as the hotels knew, or Morgan for that matter, we were a new package-tour company called "Marrakesh Express Holidays" which specialized in Moroccan packages for solo travellers or couples. I spent a few hours in a London copy shop using their computers to create official-looking documentation, using samples from real companies as a guide. It was Nicole's friend Rebecca, thinking that we were arranging a surprise birthday party, who called Morgan and gave him the last-minute cancellation story. He accepted on the spot.
Hallam, Nicole, Steve, and Lawrence had all managed to get one of the four weeks of vacation allotted to British employees despite their minimal notice. We were due to fly back from Gibraltar one week from today. If all went even remotely according to plan that gave us ample time and opportunity.
Once in Gibraltar we got off the plane, picked up our bags, and hiked across the enormous military-sized runway, which actually had an traffic light on it to indicate when it was safe to cross. The Rock of Gibraltar loomed above us, taking up a good third of the sky.
"Remember the last time we got here?" Hallam asked.
"I remember being bloody happy to get here," Nicole said. "First place that wasn't bloody freezing. I'd had enough of sleeping in car parks for one life, thank you."
"Sleeping in Dover car park because of Steve's minor oversight," Lawrence added.
"Come on now, I think I've heard enough about that for one life," Steve objected. "How was I supposed to know that Australians need to get their visas in advance for bloody France?"
"That's true, how was he supposed to know?" Lawrence asked. "Nation of penal convicts, you can't expect them to be able to read."
"Well, at least we don't bloody well abuse our sheep for unnatural sexual practices the way you Kiwis do — "
The usual Anzac bickering continued well into town. We were in no rush; the ferry didn't leave for a good six hours yet. None of us wanted to climb up the Rock, we'd done it last time and it didn't seem worth a repeat. We made a few last-minute purchases, found a pub near the waterfront, and whiled away the afternoon with cigarettes and beer and a truckload of nostalgia.
I had met the Big Yellow Truck and its inhabitants for the first time within sight of the pub in which we now waited. The truck had set out from London but Rick and Michelle and myself had bypassed the first week and flown to Gibraltar. Rick and I did this in order to gain an extra week's worth of pay. Michelle, typically, had missed the rendezvous in London and had to scramble to catch up.
I had mixed emotions at first. The truck was older and creakier than I had expected. Its denizens had already bonded into a group, with their in-jokes and their newly formed couples, and I felt very much an outsider at first. But everyone seemed nice enough. Hallam and Nicole were friendly and easy-going and self-assured, and you could tell that there was steel beneath their laid-back exterior. Steve seemed like a stereotypical loud, boisterous, jovial Aussie lager lout at first. It took me some time to realize that that was only half his story. And Lawrence and I got on famously from the start, when I climbed onto the truck and he wordlessly offered me a beer. We fell into a conversation about the merits of San Miguel versus Kronenbourg. Then a dark-haired girl came over, draped an arm around Lawrence’s shoulder, and smiled at me.
"Hi," she said. "My name's Laura."
The trip was supposed to go straight across Africa to Kenya, but we separated in Cameroon. War had broken out in the Congo, the border to Chad was reportedly closed, but those were side issues. Laura's death had been shattering for everyone. Me most of all, of course, but it took the spirit, the joy of adventure, out of everyone. We stayed together only long enough to arrange our flights out of Cameroon. Most of the rest of the group flew to Kenya. A few gave up and went back to Europe. I alone flew to Zimbabwe. Partly to visit my family there. Mostly to escape the memories of Laura that crowded around every corner of the truck, every familiar face, like an army of ghosts. I was drinking heavily, every night. It didn't help.
On our last night, camped beside a dirt road just outside Douala, after a while it was just me, Hallam, Nicole, Steve, and Lawrence. Everyone else had said their tearful goodbyes and climbed into their tents for the last time. My mood was black despair, and when Nicole told me, gently, that it would eventually get better, I flared up angrily.
"How would you know?" I demanded. "How the fuck would you know?"
"You're not the only person to have a terrible thing happen to them," she said quietly.
"Yeah? What happened to you?"
There was a moment of silence as Nicole considered my challenge. She exchanged glances with Hallam, and then she spoke.
"I had an older sister," she said. "Four years older than me. She had cystic fibrosis. You know what that is? It's when fibres grow in your lungs and slowly, over a period of many years, choke you to death. It starts young. Usually you're dead by twenty-one. But Helen was a fighter. She lasted until twenty-three. The last three years, the way she breathed, it was like living with Darth Vader. And she knew, of course, she knew all along that she was going to die soon. So she was angry. Furious. And sick, and weak, and demanding, and manipulative. And who could blame her? You know? Who could blame her? I'll tell you who. Her little sister. Try living in the same room as your dying sister for three years, trying not to hate her for dying and for being the center of everyone's life, especially yours. Will that do? Is that terrible enough for you?"
I had never seen Nicole lose control of her emotions, never seen her even faintly aggressive before. "I'm sorry," I muttered, looking down. "I'm sorry. I'm really sorry."
"I am too," she said, immediately contrite. "Paul. That didn't come out right. I'm not angry at you. I'm not. I'm sorry."
There was a moment of silence.
"The worst thing that ever happened to me was in Bosnia," Hallam said. "Peacekeeping. A little town, I still can't pronounce it, one of those names that don't have any vowels. There was a woman there, about fifty years old. She was Serbian, but it didn't matter to her. She was the only one there who didn't go crazy, absolutely bugfuck crazy, about whether you were Serb or Croat or Bosnian. She lived all alone in this little house outside the village. I never really found out her story. I always had business to talk to her about. She'd spent a year in London, so she could translate. And we were busy. We were very busy. And one day she says that she thinks she knows where this local warlord is hiding. War criminal. Pretty penny-ante by Bosnian standards, we're not talking Srebrenica here, a little monster, but still a monster. She says she'll find out from her nephew, the next day." He paused. "We found her about a week later, about five miles from town. Her and her nephew both. What was left to them. Tied to a tree. It was… " Again he hesitated. "I'll spare you the details. It was ugly. It was extremely ugly." Another pause. "We never got the fucker either."
We all stared silently into the guttering embers of the fire.
"Lawrence?" Nicole asked, her voice barely audible.
"Sorry," Lawrence said, shaking his head. "I've been lucky. Never had anything that bad happen to me. Not even close."
"Steve?"
Steve shook his head. "I don't know, mate," he said. I didn't think I had ever heard him sound serious before. "I just don't know. There was this one time… "
He hesitated.
"What happened?" Lawrence asked.
"Well," Steve said. "There was this bit of a bloody misunderstanding, see? So I spent a couple years up in Darwin. And this one time, about midway through, there was another bloody cock-up and they went and blamed me for it, so I went and spent a few weeks helping build this road across the arse end of the world up there. Bloody hot it was. And the flies, Christ. But I'd gotten to be mates, a bit like, with one of the overseers, see? Fixed up his bike for him on the side. Old Triumph, it was, classic piece of work. So this one time, I got him to take me out, before dawn like, and bring this eskie full of ice cream to where they picked us up at the end of the day. Just as a treat for all the mates I was working with. And the whole day, I reckon it was the hottest fucking day of my life, I was telling them all about it this bloody big eskie full of ice cream waiting at the end of the day." He sighed and looked forlorn. "But I'd forgotten to lock down the eskie, hadn't I? And something got in there. Roos or camels or I don't know what. And when we got there, all excited like, the eskie was open and all the ice cream had melted."
He fell silent.
After a moment Nicole said, incredulously, "That's the worst thing that ever happened to you?"
Steve nodded tragically.
"Losing your ice cream? That was your worst moment? Didn't you get stabbed once in prison? Didn't you tell me once that your father left you when you were eight?"
"Oh, sure," Steve said. "I've been in my share of scraps, and I took a shiv once, and my dad left me young, and my mum drank too much. But she was a good mum still, and he probably wouldn't have been much of a bloody father so I reckon that all worked out all right. No, that wasn't so bad. But when I saw that empty eskie, after telling all my mates about the treat I had for them. Well." He sighed. "Bit of a disappointment, that was. Bit of a bloody big — what?"
For we had all started laughing. Once we started we couldn't stop, and eventually Steve joined in, and we all laughed until we had tears in our eyes. Looking back I guess it was the first time I had laughed since Laura's death. And the last for months thereafter.
The Moroccan ferry system had grown no more efficient in the last two years. "Welcome to Africa," Lawrence said dryly when we finally cast off, ninety minutes late, "please drop your watches over the side as they will only serve to confuse you for the next five thousand miles."
Most of the hundred or so passengers were returning Moroccans. Maybe coming home to their families from their backbreaking agricultural jobs in Portugal and Spain, maybe just returning after a day of shopping in Europe. There were a dozen or so backpackers, but no overland truck. I was relieved at that. It would have made the nostalgia so intense as to be actually painful.
We got our passports stamped by a bored official, maybe twenty years old, who was engrossed in his calculus homework. Then we crowded to the front of the boat to watch the sun set over the Atlantic. It was a glorious sight, a huge red disc disappearing beneath the endless ocean to the west, the pale half-moon rising to the east behind us, and the coasts clearly visible five miles on either side. Gibraltar and Morocco, Europe and Africa; the Pillars of Hercules. We stayed for a long time, the salt Atlantic wind in our hair, until the coasts were visible only as broken chains of light, we could no longer see the dark water that the ship surged through, and the sky had filled with stars.
We smoked incessantly. Lawrence made increasingly catty comments about it, starting with "I would have thought you were all smart enough to have quit by now," and moving up to "A filthy habit for filthy people." We knew it was mostly in good fun. Just like the old days.
It was nearly midnight when we finally arrived in Tangiers. A bad old town. Once upon a time it had been an International Zone with no real laws to enforce, and it still maintained a lot of that anything-goes, watch-your-back atmosphere. The moment the gangplank dropped a huge shoving contest began, and continued all the way through customs, where an officer plucked the five of us from a scrum of grimly determined Moroccans and opened a desk just for us. I felt bad about the reverse racism, but not bad enough to turn down the special treatment. Which probably went for all of us.
Once outside a sea of violently aggressive taxi drivers accosted us and demanded our business. We picked the first one who said "please." It's an arbitrary rule, but it beats no rule at all. He took us into the winding streets of the medina and to the Pension Palace, a crumbling but ornately majestic hostel near the Petit Socco crossroads. Naturally he initially told us it was closed and he knew another place at a very special price, but I think when we all broke out laughing he realized that that particular dog was not going to hunt.
We took four rooms, locked our bags inside, and went to the cafes of the Petit Socco.
"God, I forgot that about this place," Lawrence said sorrowfully as we sat down. "They're not going to have any beer, are they?"
"I'm sure if you ask nicely and wave a couple of hundred-dirham notes around they'll be more than happy to bring you a cold six-pack of San Miguel from somewhere… " I said.
"That's all right. I seem to remember they'll serve you in Marrakesh. One dry night shouldn't kill me," he said, as if trying hard to convince himself of this.
We shooed off all the would-be guides and ordered mint tea, in French. We could have used Spanish, and probably English if we had to, all three were tourist languages here. It tasted nothing like the mint tea in Nepal; the mint was the same, but here in Morocco the tea was so supersaturated with sugar that it is opaque even before they add the mint. It is no mystery why most Moroccan men of a certain age have rotting teeth.
"It feels so odd to be here," Nicole said.
"Always a bit odd to go back somewhere," Steve agreed.
"That's not really what I mean," Nicole said. "I mean it's odd to be here for… ah, hell. It's really fucking upsetting to be here to kill a man, even if he does deserve it. And Lawrence, don't you dare call me a weak sister," as he opened his mouth.
"No," he said. "I was going to agree."
"Cold feet?" Hallam asked.
Lawrence shook his head. "Not that. It's just, it's a serious thing, you know? I think our decision is well-taken, but it's a serious decision, and let's not pretend that it's not. It is upsetting."
"I've never done it before," Steve said. "I don't mind saying I'm not bloody looking forward to it either. I'm thinking of it as like pulling a bloody tooth."
"You won't need to." I hesitated, searching for the right words. "I brought you here. I'm the one he came after. I'm the one who should finish it."
"You didn't drag us off at gunpoint," Nicole said. "We're all in this together now."
"Right to the end," Lawrence agreed.
"It's… " Hallam began. We all fell silent as he found the right words. "It's not the end of the world. I reckon I'm the voice of experience here for… the deed in question… and the sad truth is it's not that difficult a thing. Either to do or to live with. Not saying that it's easy, or that it should be taken lightly, but… it's a lot easier than walking straight after a Dixcove spacecake."
We all laughed at that.
"A lot easier than finding a beer in Mauritania," Lawrence added.
"A lot easier than rescuing an abandoned cookpot full of lentils," from Nicole.
"A lot easier than crossing the border into bloody Nigeria," Steve said.
"A lot easier than the Ekok-Mamfe road," I threw in.
"A lot easier than climbing Mount Cameroon."
"A lot easier than shopping in Bamako."
"A lot easier than surviving food poisoning in Djenne."
"A lot easier than me trying to squeeze into a bloody tro-tro."
"A lot easier than spin bowling in coconut cricket."
"A lot easier than getting a new passport in Burkina Faso."
We raised our glasses and clinked our mint teas together, laughing. But when the laughter ended there were no smiles left on our faces.
The next morning we bought train tickets for Rabat. With a few hours yet to kill we went for a wander around Tangiers, to see what we could see. We saw sheep grazing peacefully on a hillside in the middle of the city; shoe shiners by the dozen; stairways and streets and tunnels and alleys branching at every angle and incline; the uttermost edge of Europe, seen through a salt-laden wind from the ramparts of the Casbah. We saw decay everywhere, crumbling walls and pitted roads, as if the city had been crumbling for a good fifty years. It probably had.
The train left only twenty minutes late. It was only three-quarters full, but there was little room, because most of the women carried enough goods to choke an army beneath their voluminous robes, doubling their width and making them waddle like overstuffed ducks. We rattled past rolling green countryside, farms fenced by walls of cacti, black bulls grazing so slowly they seemed like statues as we passed. We were paced by a flock of doves for a good half-hour.
We changed at a station called Sidi-Kacem, where we had to wait for an hour because the connecting train was light. The station was in view of an oil rig, its highest spire topped by an eternal flame that burned away the runoff gas. There were orange trees all around and Lawrence climbed up into one and picked enough for us all. The smell reminded me of Florida.
We nearly missed Rabat station, where we were told we had almost missed our connecting train to Marrakesh, and we ran to the wrong platform and then the right platform and frantically pulled ourselves into the train. "It's just so wrong to be in a hurry in Africa," Nicole panted. And indeed another fifteen minutes elapsed before the train finally shook off its slumber and began to trudge along the parallel iron tracks. By the time we finally got to Marrakesh it was nearly ten o'clock and we were all exhausted even though we'd spent most of the day sitting around waiting for something to happen.
We weren't up for wandering about the medina looking for a lodge so we took rooms on Boulevard Mohammed V, which was the main drag, just as it was in all the other towns in Morocco. It's always good civic policy to name the most significant street after your eternally-beloved king. It was a very Westernized lodge, with clean sheets and wallpaper, very boring after the crumbling courtyard and ornate filigree of the Pension Palace last night. We had a beer apiece in the common room, more out of habit than need, and crashed.
I was woken by a loud banging on my door and I started out of bed, alarmed, and was frantically looking around for a weapon when Nicole called out from the other side of the door: "Time for your OJ, Mr. Wood! Stall Number Nine awaits!"
I groggily pulled some clothes on and joined the others in the hall. We crossed the street and headed straight for the heart of Marrakesh, the Djamme el-Fnaa, the great central square between the medina and the modern city. I was amazed by how well we all remembered the geography here. None of us had been here since our visit two years ago, which had only lasted ninety-six hours, most of which had been spent very drunk.
By night the Djamme was an intoxicating melange of food stalls, sword swallowers, henna tattooists, snake charmers, dancers, gamblers, hashish salesmen, and buskers who were odd even by Moroccan standards — I wondered if Cigarette Eating Man was still performing. But in the morning it was crowded by some thirty stalls selling fresh orange juice for about a quarter per glass. Stall Number Nine, we all remembered well, gave you an extra half-glass for your ten dirhams. Unspeakable luxury. We added some fresh-baked baguettes and pain au chocolat, and breakfasted like emperors.
This was the day that Morgan was due to fly into Casablanca. Nicole's mate was supposed to watch for him at Stansted to see whether or not he was on the plane.
We went to the bus station and bought overnight bus tickets to Todra Gorge, which would give us a full day to prepare for him there. We spent the intervening time wandering around the medina, which as always reminded me of a line from that old video game Zork: "You are in a maze of narrow, twisting passages, all alike." Narrow, high-walled, cobblestoned streets, lined by countless alcove-sized shops selling leather, ornaments, carpets, spices, textiles, hats, daggers, food, medicine, musical instruments, live animals, every article imaginable. Kids played soccer, shopkeepers hawked their wares, hustlers attached themselves to us like leeches. It was dizzying and fascinating and a little bit frightening in its teeming, noisy, unmappable confusion.
We didn't talk much. I think we were all thinking mostly about what it was we had come here to do. We didn't want to talk about it directly, and it didn't leave room for much levity. Nobody bought anything or even tried to have some fun haggling with a shopkeeper. Mostly we just talked about things that we observed or nostalgically called each other's attention to some reminder from two years before. I felt impatient. I wanted today and tomorrow to be over with, and I particularly wanted the day after that to have ended. I think the others felt the same. I smoked more cigarettes than I ever had in a single day, and Steve and Hallam and Nicole were puffing away at a record pace too. At this rate we'll all die of lung cancer before he even shows up, I thought.
At one point we passed a tall pretty dark-haired European girl in the medina, and for one crazy moment I thought it was Talena here to join me. I couldn't help thinking that she might come to find me here the same way she had in Indonesia. I imagined her sneaking up on me from behind as I walked through the medina, tapping me on the shoulder, me turning around to see her there with a fondly amused smile beneath those mesmerising blue eyes. A nice fantasy. But I knew it would never happen. She had made it very clear that she wanted no part of this. I wished I had some excuse to call her. But I didn't really have anything to say, and I was far from certain that she wanted to hear from me. Later, I told myself. When it's all over. When I get home.
Laura and I had our first actual one-on-one conversation on a rooftop cafe overlooking the Djamme el-Fnaa. I was sipping a Coke and writing postcards, after which I planned to go meet a gang of the others in the nearest hotel that served beer. My subconscious must have recognized her when she walked in, because I looked up for no reason and saw her enter the cafe. She saw me, smiled, and sat down at my table.
"Hi," she said. "What are you writing?"
I looked down at the postcard and pretended to read. "Dear Mom. I have been kidnapped by a strange cult of African nomads who are starving me of meat and forcing me to wash dishes and dig toilets. Please send military assistance. PS I need more money."
She laughed. "Is that a dig at my strictly vegetarian cook group?"
"It might be."
"I didn't notice any steaks the last time your group cooked."
"That's different. We're vegetarian out of sheer laziness. You guys do it out of principle. That's just wrong."
"It's not my fault," she protested. "Melanie's the only real veggie in our group. The problem is she's also the only one who knows how to cook."
"And whose fault is that?"
"My lazy parents."
"Well, as long as laziness is involved in some way all is forgiven," I said. "Where's Lawrence?"
She grimaced and waved her hands in a curt who-knows-who-cares-I-wash-my-hands manner.
"Uh-oh. Trouble in paradise?"
She sighed. "It's not… well. He's a good man. And, it seemed like a good idea at the time… and… and I vote we change the subject."
"Sure thing," I said, though I was very interested in the subject. I looked out at the Djamme for inspiration and saw one of the snake charmers. "You know what I think?" I asked. "I think the truck needs a pet. You know, a truck mascot. One of those big snakes ought to do nicely."
"That's a really good idea," she said seriously. "It can ride under the floorboards. Or in the locker space. We can feed it rats. I don't know if we have any rats yet but we could start a rat farm, too, where they keep the spare engine parts."
"Also we could feed it Michelle if she starts giving us any trouble."
"Good point. And I bet she will. That girl has trouble written all over her. Or at least she will when the henna-tattoo salesmen are finished with her."
"Let's do it," I said. "Sure, we could talk to everyone about it and have a vote, but like they say, easier to ask forgiveness than permission. We can go buy the snake right now and bring it back to the truck. I think Steve's on guard tonight. He'll never notice."
"Even if he does he'll probably just think it's Michael," Laura said, and I barely managed to keep my expression rigid. "But what if it's shy? Then it will have to meet all these other people tomorrow. Poor thing will be psychologically scarred for life. I bet it's better off with small groups, so we should probably just go around tonight introducing it to people in ones and twos. You know, set it loose inside people's tents and hotel rooms."
"That's an even better idea," I agreed.
We nodded at each other in a serious, self-satisfied way before allowing two wide grins to creep onto our faces.
"Thanks," she said. "I needed that."
"No, no," I said, "thank you."
She stood up. "I guess I've wasted enough time. Not that this was a waste of time. But… I need to go find Lawrence and have The Talk." The capitals were clearly audible.
"Good luck with that."
"Thanks," she said. "And if I find a snake in my room tonight? You're a dead man."
At eight o'clock Nicole called London from a pay phone. She talked to Rebecca briefly, nodded, hung up, and emerged to give us the news that was supposed to be what we wanted. "Morgan was on the plane," she reported.
Nobody said a word.
The two buses to Todra Gorge were big and air-conditioned and populated almost entirely by backpackers saving a buck by spending their night on a bus instead of in a hotel. I felt ill from all the cigarettes. The seats were faded and torn and only reclined back about ten degrees. I didn't feel as if I slept, but I must have, because once I thought I saw a big bald man at the front of our bus turn his head to stare at me, and it was Morgan. I shook myself and when I looked again there was no bald man there, just a Japanese couple.
We had a cigarette break by a gas station that was surrounded by a cedar forest. My watch told me it was two in the morning. The forest looked beautiful; no bushes or weeds, just a smooth carpet of grass beneath hundred-foot cedar trees, painted white and black by the bright moonlight, extending as far as the eye could see.
As we puffed away in front of our bus Lawrence climbed down and walked over to join us. We waited for him to make the inevitable comment about filthy disgusting habits.
Instead he said: "Give me one of those bloody things."
We stared at each other in shock.
"Lawrence," Nicole said, "have you ever smoked before?"
"Once," he said, taking a cigarette and a lighter from Steve. "I was eleven years old. I chundered," Anzac for 'threw up,' "like a champion." He gagged on the first puff. "Fucking things haven't gotten any better since," he coughed, but he kept at it. When he was three-quarters finished he stubbed it out and climbed back on the bus.
The four of us gaped at each other, speechless, before following him
I must have slept again after that, because the next thing I remembered was looking out the window and wondering where the stars were. Must be cloudy out there, I thought. Then I realized, probably not. We had left the green, fertile, Mediterranean climate of northwestern Morocco behind and now we were on the very edge of the Sahara Desert, a land of camels and scorpions, raw jagged desert scrubland where only the hardiest and thorniest bushes and weeds survived the baking sun and flash floods, where entire mountains were a smooth uniform colour unpunctuated by a single tree. Heavy cloud cover seemed unlikely.
I looked up further and saw a crescent moon hanging off the shoulder of a colossal mass of rock that swallowed up most of the sky. The cliff edge gleamed pale as death in the moonlight. We were there. Todra Gorge, a narrow crevice perhaps a hundred feet across at this point and a good five hundred feet high. I nudged Lawrence beside me and his eyes opened as if he really had been only resting his eyelids.
"We're there," I said.
"Oh happy day," he said, and closed his eyes again.
A few minutes later the bus rumbled and wheezed to a stop and after long minutes of confused disembarkation in the dark we pulled ourselves and our things together and signed into the Hotel des Roches, a grand old dilapidated place, all faded tile and crumbling paint. We signed in under false names, which was easy enough. The hotel staff dealt with us and the three others staying here as if we were the first group of travelers they had ever seen, even though they must have been accustomed to receiving a new crowd every morning.
We napped in our rooms until dawn and then we met in the common room for a quick breakfast of bread, omelettes, and mint tea. Lawrence turned down an offer of a cigarette. There were no jokes exchanged today. Morgan was due to arrive in Todra Gorge in twenty-four hours, on the same bus that had just taken us here. It was time we started talking about the gory details of the ugly mission that had brought us here. It was time for a council of war.