'Tell me about him.' It was not a request from Lovejoy but an instruction.
They were at the table alongside the one at which Lovejoy and the American had eaten. Farooq's father had taken their order and Parooq had served them. They had eaten slowly, then lingered over I heir coffee as, around them, the restaurant had cleared, and father, son and other waiters had wiped down the tables and tilted the chairs. The shadows had closed on them and only their tablecloth, cups and empty glasses were lit. Lovejoy could play polite and could play domination. When the last customers had paid up and gone out into the wet night, when only they were there, Lovejoy had raised his hand and snapped his fingers imperiously for attention. The father had hurried to them. Lovejoy had said, 'We can do this here or we can do it down the road at the police station under anti-terrorist legislation. We can do it comfortably here or we can do it after they have spent a night in the cells. I want to talk to your son and to your son's friend, Amin. If you try to bluster me with lawyers sitting in, it will be straight down to the police station. You do it the straight-forward way or you do it the difficult way… and my colleague and I would like more coffee. Thank you.' The friend had been sent for, looked as though he had been roused from his bed.
The young men, Farooq and Amin, had shivered as they sat at the table beside them, and Farooq's father had hovered at the edge of the light before Lovejoy had waved him away. He played domination. He was brusque to the point of rudeness because that was the lactic he had decided on. He could hear, very faintly, the slight squealing howl of the turning tape that was on the American's knee, hidden by the tablecloth. His companion's arm was stretched out, lying, apparently casually, on the cloth but close to where the young men sat. The microphone would be inside his cuff.
Lovejoy said, 'I want only the truth. If you lie you'll be going straight to the cells. If you are honest with me you will sleep in your own beds after I've finished with you… I start with you, Amin. Tell me about Caleb Hunt, tell me about him before you went to Pakistan, everything about him.'
The response was hesitant and frightened.
He learned about the jubilee estate of houses built to com-memorate the first fifty years of Queen Victoria's reign and how .
Asian families lived in all the homes of ten streets, but there was one street of terraced houses where four white families lived. He heard about a white schoolkid who had first walked to school with Asian schoolkids, and moved on with them to the Adelaide Comprehensive.
'Caleb was our friend. We didn't have other white friends, just him. But, then, he didn't have white friends – we were his friends. He stood by Farooq when he was bullied. Didn't make any difference, skin colour. Most of the kids at the Adelaide didn't have Asian friends. We kept to ourselves, but Caleb was with us.'
Lovejoy felt that he peeled away layers of skin.
'We had scrapes, nothing much,' Amin said. 'We had trouble – graffiti and sometimes a car radio, and there'd be fights – but he was with us, not the skinhead bastards. We did everything together. Yes, we messed about, we had fun – but not bad trouble. We didn't go into his house. He wasn't happy with that, or his ma wasn't, but he came to our house. We left school and it was different then.'
Lovejoy probed. How was it different?
'I went to college, to get the A levels for a law course. Farooq came here to work for his dad, and Caleb went to the garage. It started about a year later, after I'd got the A levels and I was waiting to go on and do the law bit. We started up again, but we were older, more aware. I mean, you go to the mosque and sometimes there are guest imams and they tell you about Afghanistan and about Chechnya, about all the places where Islam is and where it's fighting against oppression, and he used to take Fridays off. He wasn't a Muslim, no.
If we went to a mosque in Birmingham, where he wasn't known, then all he had to do was follow us, do what we did and listen. You see, we'd changed. I suppose when we were kids, Farooq and me, we'd rebelled against the Faith. We smoked and drank alcohol, thieved a bit – but we finished that. He came on board with us, did what we did. We were the only friends he had and it was like we were his family, not his ma. We did the evenings together, and if there was a big imam speaking in Birmingham we'd collect him from work and we'd drive down in Farooq's car. We heard about the war in Afghanistan, and saw videos of it, and there were more videos of Chechnya and what the Russians were doing to Muslims. Please, you have to believe me, Farooq and me just listened and tried to be better Muslims and have more faith – but he'd come out of the mosque, Caleb would, and he'd be all tensed up. He was most tensed when he'd seen a video of fighting.'
As each layer of skin came away, Lovejoy thought he came nearer to the hidden, reddened mass that held the poison.
'He used to say he was so bored, used to say that was real excitement, doing fighting. Yes, we'd talk about it, but didn't take it serious. He hated it here, that's what he told us. He was coming from nowhere and going to nowhere. It all happened quick. We'd heard this imam speak about Afghanistan and the need for fighters there, and a couple of guys had gone up, gone forward, at the end of the talk. They weren't boys we knew, and afterwards Caleb said they were the lucky ones, because they were going to get real excitement.
I didn't think anything of it, what he'd said. A couple of days later my father had the invitation to this wedding. I suppose we talked about it. We must have told him that Farooq and me were going, and he was all crestfallen, like he was shut out of something he wanted.
I suppose we talked about where we were going, the mountains and a wild place… Farooq said that he could come with us, why not?
Farooq said he could carry our bags, joked it. It was just two weeks.
He really wanted to come.'
Lovejoy said, 'Thank you, Amin. Take it up, Farooq, and only the truth.'
'I never saw him so happy. One day he'd wear his own clothes, next day he'd borrow ours – my top and Amin's pants. He liked to walk with us round the street-markets in Landi Khotal. It's chaos there. It's noisy, dirty and smelly, and Caleb said it was fantastic.
People knew who he was. Family people knew he wasn't Muslim and knew he was white – didn't seem to make a difference because he wasn't white, not strong white. He merged, he blended. Best thing about him was that he was humble. He said we were lucky, luckier than we knew, to have family like we had – he'd sit down with our family at meals and eat what was put in front of him, and he struggled to learn words, to say how grateful he was. I'd never seen him smile so much, be so happy. But it was coming to an end.'
'The wedding, and then the flight home – then back here?'
'The day after the wedding we were due to get the bus to Islamabad, then the evening flight out. That last day, the wedding, he . was all subdued. He wore a suit, a clean shirt and a tie; it was like he was making a statement that he was going home, and we talked a bit in the taxi going to the wedding, but he hadn't much to say – I remember that. At the wedding, inside our family there, all the men knew that Caleb was a stranger, that he didn't belong to our family – however much he'd been welcomed, he was outside our family. I didn't see it at first, the interest in him. It was only when he was called over… '
'He was spotted, he was picked out,' Lovejoy nudged.
'A part of the family is from across the border, from Jalalabad in Afghanistan. We think now, Amin and me, that word of Caleb in Landi Khotal had reached Jalalabad before the wedding day. A man was watching him. I have never forgotten that man. Late in the wedding party, the man had Caleb called to him. We believe he was already chosen, but a test was given him. It is a wild place on that frontier, a place of guns and fighters… I tell you, sir, I am prepared to go to a mosque in Birmingham and to listen to the fire of an imam, but I would not be prepared to go into those mountains and to fight.
The test was that he should shoot a rifle and then that he should climb a hill and use the cover of the bushes and rocks on it while men fired live ammunition at him. He shot well and he reached the top of the hill – but he had already been chosen. The test confirmed the choice. It was the decision of the man who had called him forward.
We were told what we should say.'
'What were you told?'
'We were to go home, come back here to the jubilee estate, and we were to say that Caleb had decided to travel on. Thailand was mentioned, then a final destination of Australia. That is what we were told to say. He had passed the test set for him, had been chosen.
He was with the man. His suit was taken from him, and his shoes and shirt. I saw him being given the clothes of a tribesman, then his clothes and shoes went on to the fire. I saw them burn and I saw Caleb's face in the firelight. It had a happiness that I had not seen before. He left soon after that. He went away in the back of a pickup and he never turned to look for us, to wave goodbye to us. We left the next morning, by bus, for the flight home. I have nothing more to tell you.'
'Who was the man who chose him?'
'A brute, a man who made fear.'
'How did he create fear?'
Amin took up Lovejoy's question. 'What he did, and his appearance, they made fear.'
Four years, less a month, before, and Lovejoy saw that the fear still ruled as sharp as on that day. 'Tell me.'
'When Caleb went up that hill, using the cover of the scrub and the rocks, he did not only fire in the air. He aimed when he fired. He tried to shoot Caleb. He tried to kill Caleb. He was from Chechnya, he had an eyepatch and a claw, he was a brute. He took our friend away from us.'
Across the table from him, Lovejoy had seen the American stiffen.
The American spoke: 'Thank you, gentlemen, I think we've heard all we need to hear.'
Lovejoy paid the bill, gave a decent but not generous tip, and pocketed the receipt. They left the darkened restaurant and went out into the rain-drenched night. They walked, not quickly, up the street to where the Volvo was parked. Dietrich told Lovejoy of the link now made. Many of those questioned at Camps X-Ray and Delta had spoken of the Chechen, who was recognizable by his eyepatch and the artificial hand. He had been killed in an ambush set by American troops of the 10th Mountain division, had died in a commandeered taxi-cab. The taxi had been driven by Fawzi al-Ateh, recently freed from Guantanamo Bay.
'We reckon anyone associated with the Chechen, certainly anyone who was chosen by the Chechen, to be of elite quality/ Dietrich said.
'Jesus, man, are you following me? That is the scale of the disaster.'
It was past one in the morning of a new day. On his mobile, with the scrambler attached, Lovejoy rang Thames House, spoke to the operations room. He was an old warhorse, a veteran of the Service, but it was hard for him as he made his report to stifle the tremor in his voice. He felt exhilaration briefly, then a burdening, nagging apprehension. He thought he walked with the fugitive but did not know on what road or where he was led.
'Will you get a citation for this?' Dietrich asked.
'I wouldn't have thought so – more likely get kicked. In my experience, few of our masters regard a messenger bearing bad lidings favourably – about as bad as it can get, wouldn't you agree?
As – I say with confidence, Jed – you'll find out at first hand.' .
In the small hours of the night, a signal passed electronically from Thames House on the north side of the river to the sister service's headquarters at Vauxhall Bridge Cross on the south side.
The night duty officer chewed his sandwich, sipped his coffee and rang the home number of an assistant director, woke him, smiled grimly at the stuttered response, and thought: You may not be awake now, you old fart, but in fifteen seconds you'll be active as a ten-year-old with a tantrum. He knew all assistant directors had a loathing for the bombshell careering down from a clear blue sky, except that the night skies over London were cloud-laden and spewed rain.
He spoke the name, the history and pedigree of Caleb Hunt.
The dream soaked him in sweat but he could not wake, could not lose it. Sprawled across the front seats of his Mitsubishi, Bart rolled in his sleep and pleaded – pleaded for escape. Not even the thudding blow of his chin against the steering-wheel, jarring him, was enough to break the sleep and the dream.
Abandoned by his embassy, forgotten by Eddie Wroughton, the doctor of medicine – Samuel Algernon Laker Bartholomew – was lifted down through the back doors of the black van. His bladder was going, his sphincter was loosening. His hands were tied behind his back and just before the back doors had opened they had blindfolded him. But the cloth across his face had slipped and he was aware of fierce sunlight replacing the gloom of the van's interior. He stumbled but the hands held him and he did not fall. Like the waves on the pebbles of Torquay beaches came the murmur of a host of voices. He wore a prison robe, not the Austin Reed slacks that were his usual dress in the consulting room or the shirt from the same brand that his maid starched and ironed, and the robe was pressed against his body by the breeze that carried the voices. No man spoke for him, he had no friend. The heat blistered his face, above and below the headcloth.
He walked – sandalled feet scraping the ground but held up – a dozen paces, then was stopped in his tracks. He felt the weight of the hands pressing him down -not so that he should lie prostrate but so that he should kneel. His weight pressed down on the skin of his knees, the voices were stilled and he heard the silence.
The dream slipped back in time, but Bart did not wake.
Departures at the airport of Riyadh. He stood in the queue.
Around him there were families, adults grumbling and complaining, children sulking and whining. He edged towards the desk and used his toe to push forward his bag. The flight non-stop home was fully booked, and Bart queued for the KLM aircraft to Amsterdam. He thought only of escape, and the slow progress of the line towards the desk fuelled his fear and impatience. A woman behind him, bowed down by a lifestyle of bags, tried to tell him how her servants had wept before she'd left for the airport, but he ignored her. The desk came imperceptibly closer, and beyond the desk was the departure gate, then the lounge, the walkway, the aircraft cabin's door. He was sweating, could not hide the mounting fear… It was almost a relief.
Men came behind him. Nasally, in accented English, he was asked his name, and hands lifted up his bag, other hands were at his arms.
He was out of the queue. He was gone. The escape had failed.
The dream was without mercy.
He cringed. There was the slither of feet on the concrete of the corridor floor beyond the steel-faced door. Low sun threw from the barred window dark shadows the length of the cell. They always came for him in the early evening. When the sun went down, the beatings began. They were late for him: already he could hear screams that pierced his head. He had seen a man, two days before, through an open door as he was led to his own interrogation, suspended from a pole by his wrists and ankles – like a pig on a spit
– and had heard the man shriek as he was hustled further down the corridor. The door opened. Bart was taken down the corridor, but not to an interrogation room. A brightly lit room with easy chairs and a polished desk, and Eddie bloody Wroughton: 'You confessed, nothing we can do, you told them everything. You went down into the desert. You made your own bed, Bart, and now there's nothing we can do to stop you lying on it. They'll try you, closed court, condemn you, and then they'll execute you. You're beyond our help.
When it comes to the end, try to put up a good show, try to walk tall, try to have a bit of dignity… It'll be quick. What I don't understand, Bart, is why you were so incredibly stupid.' Taken back to his cell, and listening to the screams and shrieks of others.
' The dream was a circle that was routed from the square to the airport concourse, to the cell block, and back to the square. .
He knelt in the silence. He imagined that a thousand throats gasped in anticipation. He smelt the fresh sawdust. He seemed to see the machine that shredded wood and made the sawdust that spilled from the machine into a sack's mouth. He could not see the sack but the scent of the sawdust was in his nose. He hunched. The sun and a gentle breeze were on the skin at the back of his neck. He tried to make the space, the skin between the back of his head and the top of his shoulders, so small that the executioner would find no place that his sword could strike. He buried his neck in his shoulders. He had not slept in the night. The dawn had come after an endless wait.
Before he had been walked to the black van, he had been stripped of his prison uniform and dressed in a robe that was stiff from many washings and, in spite of them, was stained. The back of his head nestled against the top of his shoulders and he made no target for the executioner. He felt the pinprick at the base of his spine, where it merged with his buttocks. The prick was sharp pain, the executioner's trick with the sword point. Bart could not help himself.
He jerked forward. His neck extended.
The dream ended.
He was not on the seats of the Mitsubishi but on the floor, his face squashed against the accelerator and brake pedals.
Above him, the chrome lit by the moon, the keys were in the ignition.
Bart could have pushed himself up, could have sat in his seat, wiped the sweat off his face and from his eyes, could – in one movement – have turned the ignition key and driven away into the sand in the hope of finding the track, might have been back in Riyadh by the late afternoon. Possibly, he would have lifted a telephone, have said: 'Mr Wroughton, it's Bart here, I've something really rather extraordinary to tell you. When and where can we meet?' Should have saved himself.
'Fuck you,' Bart murmured. 'Fuck you all. I hope he, whoever he is and whatever he does, hurts you.'
Bart looked at his watch. Three more hours of night before the next injection.
He had purged the dream. He slept.
It was a risk, but necessary.
First Caleb slotted the battery coolant unit into the grip stock, then . he depressed the impulse-generator switch – as the manual told him to. He was in darkness, could not see, could only feel and hear. The manual said – he had read it and memorized it – that 6000 PSI pressurized argon gas coolant… He did not have to remember a scientist's jargon, but had to listen and watch. The whine grew, but the red light winked at him. The manual said that a red light's sporadic winking indicated low battery power. When it was exhausted the red light would be continuous. The manual recom-mended that the battery coolant unit be recharged or replaced when the red light winked – only in circumstances of exceptional combat conditions should an attempt be made to fire a Stinger at a hostile target when the red light was winking. He killed the switch, the whine faded and the red light died. Caleb might have used the last of the battery's power when he made the test: the final chance of firing might have gone.
He fell back, the launcher resting on his body.
It all depended on the boy, on the freshness and youth of Ghaffur's ears. Without his hearing – if the Predator's eye was above him – he would not succeed in the last leg of his journey back to his family.
He had had to know that the missile would fire, would eject from the launch tube, would seek out a target.
Caleb lay on his spine. The exertion of lifting the Stinger's tube had brought back the throbbing pain to his leg.
He rested, was relaxed. What had disturbed him was not what he would do in the morning after the light came when he would stand and hobble to the guide, Rashid, and take his rifle: what had churned in his mind was that the battery powering the Stinger had lost its life.
They had Carnival Girl up over the track that ran north to south. On the map boxes, she would fly from Al Ubayiah at the northern point and down above Bir Faysal and At Turayqa to Qalamat Khawr al luhaysh in the south.
Because they tracked a lorry they were both awake. Marty brought Carnival Girl down to the low limits of loiter speed and they kept pace with the lorry and its trailer. The infra-red real-time picture had the lorry as a clean dark shape on the screen. They might have been ready to doze, might have needed more caffeine to keep them upright, but the lorry diverted them from drooping. It wasn't the first . lorry on the track, but all of the others had been going south to north, which was pretty much a straight line running through the centre of the map boxes. What was a lorry with a trailer carrying?
Marty said, 'It's refrigerated and it's got a load of iced root beer.'
'I wish.'
'Or it's got Big Macs, and ketchup and chillies and fries.'
'Dumb-ass.'
Marty said, 'My last go, it's got fans and air-conditioning units.'
'I tell you what it's got,' Lizzy-Jo chuckled, 'it's got sand. There's not enough sand here so they're hauling it down from the north what you think?'
In the dulled light inside the Ground Control – easier to see the screens – George's entry was not noticed. They were both laughing: Lizzy-Jo thought they needed laughter as a distraction to stay awake, keep working.
George said, 'What you got is a visitor.'
He told them. The laughter went cold. She snapped upright, listened to all of it, then she called up Langley. Oscar Golf was on the headsets. George hadn't the authority to challenge a visitor. Marty was flying Carnival Girl. Lizzy-Jo said she'd do it, the challenge, and Oscar Golf would take over the sensor operator's controls via the satellite link. Effortless transition. Oscar Golf told her to take the guy on the perimeter-gate bar with her.
'Lizzy-Jo, go careful. Don't start a war, and don't give a yard.'
'Hearing you, Oscar Golf. Out.'
She took a swig from the water bottle, did up a couple of the lower buttons of her blouse and followed George down the steps, into the night. He'd been working on First Lady. The wings were off, and the engine was being stripped, the camera units already taken out.
By the time it was daylight, First Lady would be ready for her coffin.
The transport plane was due in at ten hundred and was scheduled for lift-off at twelve ten hours, and for Carnival Girl to be stashed and loaded in time for lift-off, then her sister craft had to be packed and crated in the coffin. George's people swarmed round First Lady.
George left her when they reached the armourer, who had a stubby rifle hanging across his spine from a strap, but his hand was hooked back and had hold of it.
The armourer pointed up past the gate in the razor wire, then handed Lizzy-Jo his night-sights. The binoculars were heavy in her hand, and she took a moment to get the focus right. A Mercedes was parked two hundred yards up from the gate bar, with a chair by the front passenger door. On it sat an Arab. He was middle-aged, had an austere, thin face and trimmed moustache, wore a dark outer robe, an under-robe of white brilliant enough to flood her glasses, and a headcloth held in place with woven rope. Around his neck, hanging from straps, were his own binoculars. Behind his chair the Mercedes' rear doors were open and three men stood close to the body of it. She gave the night-sight glasses back to the armourer.
'You reckon they've got hardware?'
'In the back – yes, Miss. An arm's reach away.'
'What you got?'
'An M4A1. We call it a close-quarters battle weapon, Miss. It uses ball ammunition and it has an attached M203 grenade launcher. And I got – '
'Jesus, is this going to be fucking Dodge City?'
'It's their call, Miss, what it gets to be.'
'Where are you going to stand?'
'I'll be, Miss, right behind you.'
'Don't mind me saying it, but I'd prefer you a yard to the right or lo the left. Wouldn't want to be in the way of a close-quarters battle weapon,' Lizzy-Jo said, dry.
The armourer lifted the bar for her. She walked forward. Lizzy-Jo was a sensor operator, not a diplomat, a negotiator or a soldier. She felt the cool of the night air, a little wafting wind, on her bared thighs and shins, on her arms and face. The man stood as she approached and the guys with him seemed to inch closer to the open doors. She heard, against the tread of her footsteps, very soft, the click of oiled metal behind her and knew the armourer's weapon was armed. The man moved a little aside from his chair and motioned that she should sit.
'No, thank you, sir.'
'Would you like water?'
'Sir, no, thank you. What I would like to know is why, at seventeen minutes past three in the morning, you have binoculars on us.'
'You should button your blouse. In the night cold it is possible to contract influenza or a headeold if one is insufficiently covered. I am a prince of the Kingdom, I am the deputy governor of this province.
Each time I am in Shaybah, since you came, I watch you, but before from a distance. I have a question for you too: why are you flying at seventeen minutes past three in the morning?'
She said, parrot-like, 'We're doing mapping and evaluation of flying performance over desert lands, as we stated when permission was granted us.'
She heard the mockery in his voice. 'With a military aircraft?'
Lizzy-Jo might have been a corporate recorded message. 'The General Atomics MQ-1 Predator has dual purpose military or civilian use.'
'For mapping and for evaluation of performance do you need to carry, without the Kingdom's authorization, air-to-ground missiles?'
In the darkness he would not have seen her rock. 'I think you must have mistaken the additional fuel tanks carried under the wings for missiles.'
'When you came the fuselages of your two aircraft were without markings. Yet the one being dismantled now carries a skull-and-crossbones – once the symbol of a pirate, now a warning of death or danger – on the forward fuselage. I ask, why would such a symbol be on an aircraft preparing maps and evaluations?'
'Sir, I can only refer you to our embassy in Riyadh.'
'Of course.'
'And I am sure that, inside office hours, any query you have will be answered. Actually, sir, we will be gone in less than nine hours.'
'With your mapping finished, your performance evaluation completed?'
'No, sir,' Lizzy-Jo flared – should not have done, but did. 'Not completed – because some jerk shoved his nose in, and screwed things for us.'
He stared at her. She heard the hiss of his breath between his lips.
In the darkness, his body seemed to shake.
The words were chill. 'Maybe you are from the Air Force, maybe from Defense Intelligence, maybe from the Central Intelligence – maybe you were never taught to dress with correctness and decency, were never drilled in the virtues of truthfulness and the values of humility… but you are American, and how could it be different?
You lie to us because you do not trust us. You have no humility because you believe in your superiority over us. When you have been expelled, in less than nine hours, take this message back. We fight terrorism. Al Qaeda is our enemy. We are not the wet-nurse to the fanaticism of bin Laden. Together, and with trust, you would have been able to fulfil your mission. Your arrogance destroys that possibility. It is why you are hated and why you are despised, and why your money cannot buy affection or respect. Take that message home with you.'
She bit her lip. Anyone who knew Lizzy-Jo – knew her in New York or at Bagram base – would not have believed that she could resist a response. She turned on her heel. She walked back to the armourer and kept going. She went past George and his team, who were struggling to crate the engine of First Lady, and past her tent, which was now folded with her possessions stacked, and past Marty's tent – and past the boxes of the Hellfires that would not now be needed. Alone untouched, because Carnival Girl still flew, were the Ground Control and the trailer attached to it that carried the satellite dish. She climbed the steps.
Flopped beside Marty, she called Oscar Golf. 'Lizzy-Jo here. It was just some local rubbernecker, it was nothing. I'm taking over, but thanks for helping out.'
Marty said, smiling, 'I got bored watching that lorry. Wasn't sand it was carrying. I reckon it was pretzels.'
She snapped, 'Just watch your fucking screen – watch it till we finish.'
It was as if he was building a wall of information. Eddie Wroughton's way, when trying to make sense of intelligence, was always to pretend that he was building a wall of coloured bricks. He sat cross-legged on the floor, had pushed aside the rug to give himself a firm surface and spread out sheets of paper. He had used his highlighter pens to ring each of the sheets – red and green, white and blue, and yellow.
He had started to build the wall.
In the red brick was the telephone number that had called Bartholomew's home. The number's code identified it as coming from the extreme south-east of the Kingdom, and his assistant's unpraised work had found that it was listed in the name of Bethany . . Jenkins. He remembered her from a party – tall, a picture of healthy endeavour, well muscled, tanned – and from a casual meeting at the embassy. Something about meteorites and something about the oil-extraction plant at Shaybah. She had called Bartholomew late in the evening, and he'd gone, disappeared.
He had run the fine dark sand granules across the indented sheet that he had taken from Bartholomew's notepad beside the phone.
Pretty basic, what they taught on the recruits' induction courses, about as sophisticated as invisible ink pens – and they still lectured on the use of them. Scribbled words came to life after the granules were tipped from the indent marks. 'Military action… missile attack
… head wound and a leg wound… Highway 513. Route 10. Harad, south. To Bir Faysal (petrol station).' That was the green brick.
The white brick was Shaybah, from where Gonsalves' people flew Predator unmanned aerial vehicles that were armed with twin pods for Hellfire missiles.
The blue brick built the wall higher. Wroughton reached behind him for the photographs taken by the Predator's real-time camera.
With a magnifying-glass – could have done it on the computer with the zoom, but preferred old ways and trusted practices – he studied those who were identified as dead, and the one who was not accounted for. A young man, head up and erect, and the magnifying-glass – at the blurred edge of its power – seemed to show a strong chin. He laid the photographs on the blue sheet.
Two and two did not make five. The worst sin of an intelligence officer was to leap to untested conclusions. Conclusions must always have foundations, his father used to say, as any wall must. What he knew… Bethany Jenkins had rung Samuel Bartholomew from Shaybah. At Shaybah there was an Agency search-and-destroy operation, which had searched and destroyed, but there was a target still not accounted for. Bartholomew had driven away in the night, with fuel and medical supplies, after being told of a patient injured in 'military action'. The stupidity of the woman – Jenkins – astonished him. The involvement of Bartholomew bewildered him
– and then his own guilt swelled around him. It came back to him as the scabs on his face and body itched. A phone plug pulled out, a mobile switched off. But Bartholomew could still have left a message on the voice mail. His head sank. Why had no message been left? . There was a knock.
Wroughton called sullenly, 'Come.'
His assistant always had a nervous twitch in his presence, as if expecting a rebuke. He had not known she was still there. Thirty-five minutes past four in the morning. What was she staring at? She was staring at nothing. Hadn't she ever seen the scrapes from walking into a door? She hadn't noticed any scrapes. What did she want? Had thought Mr Wroughton might need coffee and a hot beef sandwich – and she put the mug and the plate on the table in front of him.
As Wroughton growled an acknowledgement, without grace, she said cautiously, 'Oh, and this just came through – it's a general notification, to all stations. It's probably not worth you looking at right now but…'
'I am trying, if you didn't know it, to work.'
Papers and photographs were laid on the table alongside the mug and the plate, and she fled.
On his hands and knees, Wroughton went to the table, lifted down the mug and slurped from it, then the plate and took a coarse bite of the sandwich. In putting back the plate he dislodged the papers and the photographs. They fell at his knees. He started to read.
Caleb Hunt. 24 years. Description, ethnic Caucasian but sallow-skinned, and no distinguishing marks, and his height and weight. The address, 20, Albert Parade, and the name of a town sandwiched between the conurbations of Birmingham and Wolverhampton; the address of his place of work as a trainee garage mechanic. The recruitment, Landi Khotal, North West Frontier of Pakistan, April 2000 by known Al Qaeda talent-spotter. The arrest, captured by US military persooel in ambush south of Kabul, December 2001. The deception, assumed the name and identity of Fawzi al-Ateh, with profession of taxi-driver. The detention, held at Camps X-Ray and Delta, Guantanamo Bay, under category of 'unlawful combatant' until release back to Afghanistan in programme for freeing those believed innocent of terrorist involvement. The escape, during comfort stop en route from Bagram to Kabul City for lodgement and processing with Afghan intelligence, ran, and was not subsequently recaptured. Status, extremely dangerous, exceptionally professional and highly motivated. His success at duping interrogators at Guantanamo marks him out as.. . His laughter split across the room and broke the night's quiet. More detail to follow. He pushed the papers away across the floor, looked again at the bricks – and the upper photograph caught his eye.
Wroughton breathed hard.
The upper photograph was a school group, a leavers' picture, with a circle drawn round one face. The lower photograph was a compilation of a prisoner, full face, left profile and right profile.
He laid the papers from Vauxhall Bridge Cross on the yellow-bordered sheet, then the photographs. The image of the lost fugitive taken before the Predator's strike did not match Guantanamo, humble and cowed. He gazed down at the school photograph – the boy was taller than the others, straight-backed and head held high.
The face, Wroughton thought, showed a mind that was detached and restless, and the eyes looked through him and beyond. It was where Caleb Hunt would be, in the wilderness of the Rub' al Khali. He was injured, and Samuel Bartholomew had been idiot enough to be persuaded to minister to him. He went to the door, leaned through it.
'I'd like to say thank you for the coffee and the sandwich. I much appreciate that you've worked through the night.'
It was the first decent thing he had said to his assistant in months and he saw her gape.
Back on the floor, peering down at the papers and photographs, he realized there was one area of doubt among the many certainties.
Why was she involved? Why was Bethany Jenkins – quality, with class, wealth and education – in the desert and helping the man?
Why…? The doubt was erased.
'Because, Miss Jenkins, you are naive, self-centred, and you have let the world pass you by.' The photographs and printouts, the imagined bricks, were Wroughton's witnesses as he spoke. 'You cut yourself off from the real world, and scrabbled in the sand after meteorites and did not listen to the radio, didn't watch the satellite TV and didn't read newspapers. You did not concern yourself with the Twin Towers or with Bali or Nairobi or a hundred bombs around the world. You did not care about rows of coffins and about the weeping of victims' loved ones. You did not know about the hatred because you'd closed your mind to everything other than your own demands. It'll take some getting out of, Miss Jenkins, where you've put yourself. Unless you're very smart – smarter than you've ever been – you are destined to end up as a casualty, and you'll call for people to help you but they'll not come running.'
Through a pane of glass, she saw them. She dreamed. They were together and she rode beside him, rocking on the camel hump, and the emptiness of the desert stretched away in front of her. She did not feel the heat, or the dryness in her throat, or exhaustion, and she was aware only of her happiness to be with him in a place of beauty, and free, and it was her future and his.
A shot was fired. She heard the rifle's crack, then the breaking of the glass.
She no longer saw herself clearly, and did not see him.
The voice was in her ear, replaced the ring of the shot.
Beth woke, blinked in the darkness.
The boy was above her, his face was silhouetted against the sunken moon.
'Please, Miss Bethany, do not make any sound.'
'What… what?' She lay on the sand, a single blanket wrapped round her, beside the Land Rover's wheel.
'What my father says…'
'What does your father say?'
'My father says you should go.'
'Go?' Beth stammered. 'Go? Where to?'
'My father says you should go, and leave, drive away.'
'Yes, in the morning. More injections. When he can stand, ride, when he leaves…'
'Go, my father says, go now.'
'I made a promise,' Beth said bleakly. 'I gave my word. I cannot break my word.'
'My father says you should go.'
The boy slipped away. She heard the rustle of the camels' harnesses, their endless grinding chewing, and Bart's snores.
She felt small, frightened, and she knew by how far she had overreached herself. She had given her word, had made her promise.
She would not sleep again, would not dream again… There would be no happiness, no place of beauty, and she thought the simplicity of love was snatched.
Beth rolled in her blanket, swore, lay on her stomach, swore again, and beat her fists down against the sand.
He slept. He heard nothing, saw no movements. The great body of the Beautiful One, beside him and close to him, soothed his sleep.
Caleb slept because the pain had been beaten back, slept as the first light of dawn broke.