‘They’re off now,’ Aunt Vera said. ‘Wish them luck.’

‘Why?’ Ryan asked quietly. ‘What for?’

‘What do you mean? You’re always trying to shock us, Ryan. Don’t you want them to come back?’

‘Of course. But why leave in the first place? They could stay here.’

‘That’s crazy talk.’ His sister placed a hand on Ryan’s forehead, feeling for a temperature. ‘You had a hard time in the Hilton, Arkady told me. Remember what we’re fighting for.’

‘I’m trying. Today I helped to kill Angel Porrua. What was he fighting for?’

‘Are you serious? We’re fighting for what we believe.’

‘But nobody believes anything! Think about it, Louisa. The Royalists don’t want the king, the Nationalists secretly hope for partition, the Republicans want to do a deal with the Crown Prince of Monaco, the Christians are mostly atheists, and the Fundamentalists can’t agree on a single fundamental. We’re fighting and dying for nothing.’

‘So?’ Louisa pointed with her brush to the UN observers by their post. ‘That just leaves them. What do they believe in?’

‘Peace. World harmony. An end to fighting everywhere.’

‘Then maybe you should join them.’

‘Yes… ‘ Ryan pushed aside his combat jacket and stared through the balcony railings. Each of the blue helmets was a pale lantern in the dusk. ‘Maybe we should all join the UN. Yes, Louisa, everyone should wear the blue helmet.’

And so a dream was born.

During the next days Ryan began to explore this simple but revolutionary idea. Though gripped by the notion, he knew that it was difficult to put into practice. His sister was sceptical, and the fellow-members of his platoon were merely baffled by the concept.

‘I see what you’re getting at,’ Arkady admitted as they shared a cigarette in the Green Line command bunker. ‘But if everyone joins the UN who will be left to do the fighting?’

‘Arkady, that’s the whole point…’ Ryan was tempted to give up. ‘Just think of it. Everything will be neat and clean again. There’ll be no more patrols, no parades or weapons drills. We’ll lie around in the McDonald’s eating hamburgers; there’ll be discos every night. People will be walking around the streets, going into stores, sitting in cafs..

‘That sounds really weird,’ Arkady commented.

‘It isn’t weird. Life will start again. It’s how it used to be, like it is now in other places around the world.’

‘Where?’

‘Well…’ This was a difficult one. Like the other fighters in Beirut, Ryan knew next to nothing about the outside world. No newspapers came in, and foreign TV and radio broadcasts were jammed by the signals teams of the rival groups to prevent any foreign connivance in a military coup. Ryan had spent a few years in the UN school in East Beirut, but his main source of information about the larger world was the forty-year-old news magazines that he found in abandoned buildings. These presented a picture of a world at strife, of bitter fighting in Vietnam, Angola and Iran. Presumably these vast conflicts, greater versions of the fighting in Beirut, were still going on.

Perhaps the whole world should wear the blue helmet? This thought excited Ryan. If he could bring about a ceasefire in Beirut the peace movement might spread to Asia and Africa, everyone would lay down their arms Despite numerous rebuffs Ryan pressed on, arguing his case with any soldiers he met. Always there was an unvoiced interest, but one obstacle was the constant barrage of propaganda — the atrocity posters, the TV newsreels of vandalised churches that played on an ever-ready sense of religious outrage, and a medley of racial and anti-monarchist slanders.

To break this propaganda stranglehold was far beyond Ryan’s powers, but by chance he found an unexpectedly potent weapon — humour.

While on duty with a shore patrol by the harbour, Ryan was describing his dream of a better Beirut as his unit passed the UN command post. The observers had left their helmets on the open-air map table, and without thinking Ryan pulled off his khaki forage cap and lowered the blue steel bowl over his head.

‘Hey, look at Ryan!’ Arkady shouted. There was some good-humoured scuffling until Mikhail and Nazar pulled them apart. ‘No more wrestling now, we have our own peacekeeping force!’

Friendly cat-calls greeted Ryan as he paraded up and down in the helmet, but then everyone fell silent. The helmet had a calming effect, Ryan noticed, both on himself and his fellow-soldiers. On an impulse he set off along the beach towards the Fundamentalist sentry-post 500 yards away.

‘Ryan — look out!’ Mikhail ran after him, but stopped as Captain Gomez rode up in his jeep to the harbour wall. Together they watched as Ryan strode along the shore, ignoring the sniper-infested office buildings. He was halfway to the sentry-post when a Fundamentalist sergeant climbed onto the roof, waving a temporary safe-passage. Too cautious to risk his charmed life, Ryan saluted and turned back.

When he rejoined his platoon everyone gazed at him with renewed respect. Arkady and Nazar were wearing blue helmets, sheepishly ignoring Captain Gomez as he stepped in an ominous way from his jeep. Then Dr Edwards emerged from the UN post, restraining Gomez.

‘I’ll take care of this, captain. The UN won’t press charges. I know Ryan wasn’t playing the fool.’

Explaining his project to Dr Edwards was far easier than Ryan had hoped. They sat together in the observation post, as Dr Edwards encouraged him to outline his plan.

‘It’s a remarkable idea, Ryan.’ Clearly gripped by its possibilities, Dr Edwards seemed almost lightheaded. ‘I won’t say it’s going to work, but it deserves a try.’

‘The main object is the ceasefire,’ Ryan stressed. ‘Joining the UN force is just a means to that end.’

‘Of course. But do you think they’ll wear the blue helmet?’

‘A few will, but that’s all we need. Little by little, more people will join up. Everyone is sick of fighting, doctor, but there’s nothing else here.’

‘I know that, Ryan. God knows it’s a desperate place.’ Dr Edwards reached across the table and held Ryan’s wrists, trying to lend him something of his own strength. ‘I’ll have to take this up with the UN Secretariat in Damascus, so it’s vital to get it right. Let’s think of it as a volunteer UN force.’

‘Exactly. We’ll volunteer to wear the blue helmet. That way we don’t have to change sides or betray our own people. Eventually, everyone will be in the volunteer force..

‘…and the fighting will just fade away. It’s a great idea, it’s only strange that no one has ever thought of it before.’ Dr Edwards was watching Ryan keenly. ‘Did anyone help you? One of the wounded ex-officers, perhaps?’

‘There wasn’t anyone, doctor. It just came to me, out of all the death…’

Dr Edwards left Beirut for a week, consulting his superiors in Damascus, but in that time events moved more quickly than Ryan had believed possible. Everywhere the militia fighters were sporting the blue helmet. This began as a joke confined to the Christian forces, in part an irreverent gesture at the UN observers. Then, while patrolling the Green Line, Ryan spotted the driver of a Royalist jeep wearing a blue beret. Soon the more carefree spirits, the pranksters in every unit, wore the helmet or beret like a cockade.

‘Ryan, look at this.’ Captain Gomez called him to the command post in the lobby of the TV station. ‘You’ve got a lot to answer for…’

Across the street, near a burnt-out Mercedes, a Royalist guerrilla in a blue beret had set up a canvas chair and card table. He sat back, feet on the table, leisurely taking the sun.

‘The nerve of it…’ Gomez raised Ryan’s rifle and trained it at the soldier. He whistled to himself, and then handed the weapon back to Ryan. ‘He’s lucky, we’re over-exposed here. I’ll give him his suntan…’

This was a breakthrough, and not the last. Clearly there was a deep undercurrent of fatigue. By the day of Dr Edwards’ return, Ryan estimated that one in ten of the militia fighters was wearing the blue helmet or beret. Fire-fights still shook the night sky, but the bursts of gunfire seemed more isolated.