It hissed on to them, swept in with a sudden force that devastated them.
The storm burst over the dune wall beyond the caravan's pitched camp. In the dawn's half-light, the wind surged over the rim. The warning of its coming was brief, a few seconds, then it hit them.
Caleb was outside his tent, had slept only fitfully, was stretching and massaging his leg and shoulder muscles, facing the first peep of the rising sun, when he heard the whistle of sound, as if a tyre's valve was released. He turned. The cloud of sand careered over the dune and buffeted him. He rocked, could not stand, sank to his knees. For a moment he stared at the cloud that followed in the wind's wake, then the grains were in his mouth and nose, and pierced open his eyes. If he had not already been down on his knees, he would have been felled by the wind. The noise deafened him. The sand scraped the skin on his upper cheeks and round his eyes, his wrists and . ankles, and ripped at his robe. It came in waves that seemed to belt the breath out of him. Caleb twisted away from it and snatched at the loose sand to prevent himself being carried away by the gale.
A tent went past him, chased by bedding.
He heard the screaming of the Saudi.
The camels, hobbled, struggled to escape the wind's force but could not.
Another tent followed the first. Its canopy was caught, and it floated, then sank, raced over the sand's surface, was lifted again and ripped. After the bedding went the cooking pot and plates, the mugs from which they drank water, and clothing. A rucksack ran with the wind.
Through slitted eyes, Caleb watched the destruction of the overnight camp as the pieces billowed away from him. Tommy howled abuse at Rashid. 'You are a fool, an idiot. Did you not know it was coming? Were you not paid to know?'
The camels tried to flee the gale and the thickening cloud now blotting out the sun. Caleb heard their shrill bellowing. They could not run: their hobble ropes held them. They skipped, fell, rolled, and their long legs thrashed before they could stand again. Watching them, Caleb realized the scale of the catastrophe that had hit the caravan. While the others had still slept, Rashid and Ghaffur had begun loading the camels. Some had the crates already fastened to their backs, others had the water bags and food sacks roped to their flanks.
Caleb forced himself up, was tossed forward and tumbled, then crawled towards the two shadowed figures in front of him going in wavering strides after the camels.
Without the water they were lost. Bones in the sand. Without the camels they were lost. Bent double, Rashid and Ghaffur were in pursuit of the camels. On his hands and knees Caleb followed them.
Sometimes the cloud of whipped sand was too dense for him to see them. Sometimes he could see them clearly, father and his son, staggering after the camels that carried the water bags. The camels that carried the crates were ignored. Water was the lifeblood of travellers in the desert. Whenever he stood, thrust himself up, Caleb was immediately tossed down on to his face, and ate the sand grains.
He called out to them that he was coming, following, but the distance between them and him widened.
The wind came with a new force, stronger, hitting harder. Its cry blasted at his ears, and the grains scoured his body. He did not know for how long he crawled. He could no longer see Rashid and Ghaffur, or the scattered camels. The darkness spread over him. The only light in his mind was that of the whitened bones of a camel's ribcage.
It was gone as suddenly as it had come. His eyes were closed, the sand was loose under his hands and knees. His robe fell back over his buttocks and thighs. The sun, as harsh as on any day before, beat on his face and eyelids.
Caleb wiped the sand from his eyes. He stood and was not felled by the wind. The sun blazed at him. The cloud was in the far distance.
Stone-faced, eyes glinting in anger, Rashid came towards him leading three camels, with two more following. Away to the guide's right, the boy brought more. Two water bags, deflated and empty, lay in Caleb's path. He saw Ghaffur bend and pick up another, heard the triumphant cry that signalled that the binding on the neck had held.
Caleb called after Rashid, 'How much have we lost?'
There was a snarl in the reply pitched over the guide's shoulder:
'Too much. We have lost too much.'
The storm hovered at the horizon.
Caleb found a crate lying nearly buried. He scraped the sand from around it, snatched up the fastening rope and dragged it after the guide, his son and the camels.
Wretchedly, at the campsite, they searched for what could be retrieved. They had lost water, a quarter of what had remained, and food that would have lasted four days; one camel had broken a leg.
Caleb had turned away as Rashid's knife had flashed and Ghaffur had held the long hair above the beast's throat. They had lost a day of the march. When Caleb found Hosni, the Egyptian was on his stomach, his eyes pale and watering. The lower part of his body was buried in sand and his shoulders shook with a never-ceasing convulsion.
All that morning, as the sun's heat grew, Caleb helped the guide and his son search for the remnants from the campsite, but they found no more filled bags of water. When the sun was high, Caleb was beside the boy. 'Is it bad?'
'My father says there are too many men for too little water,' the boy said simply.
George Khoo took charge. The accommodation tents were streaming from the barbed wire of their inner perimeter fence; the clothes and bedding had gone further and were held by the barbs on the fencing at the extreme end of the runway.
He had fretted all night because of the forecast. Every hour, on the hour, his pocket alarm had bleeped on the flooring beside his camp bed. He'd not undressed, had not even shed his boots. His only concession to the night had been to leave the laces loose. For five minutes in each hour he had paced restlessly round the tethered awnings that sheltered First Lady and Carnival Girl, then had gone back to his bed. He'd lain on his back, stared at the tent ceiling and waited for the bleep to sound again. He'd been lucky. The first strike of the storm had been while he was hunched on his camp bed, gathering the strength to slide off and go to make the inspection tour.
It had come in a numbing shockwave, with a suddenness that would have paralysed another man into indecision.
On his orders, barked against the wind and split with expletives, the twin sets of wings had been taken off First Lady and Carnival Girl.
They had been dumped without ceremony. Then the awnings had been dropped to hang loose on the fuselages of the two aircraft.
Ropes had been hurled over the awnings. Each man, and Lizzy-Jo, had been given an instruction, shouted at a volume and passion that frightened them more than the storm. Some hung on to the ropes.
Others, with Lizzy-Jo, clung to more ropes that straddled the roof of the Ground Control shed and the trailer with the satellite dish. While their possessions, few enough of them, raced to be snagged on the perimeter wire, they held the ropes against the wind.
George Khoo heard them cry out, yell, swear, and he ignored their fear. He thought it was like combat – but there was no enemy, no hostile incoming. One, on the same rope as Lizzy-Jo, pumped blood
– a chair had struck the guy across the forehead close to the left eye.
He would have been knocked half-unconscious, but his grip never wavered on the rope; neither did Lizzy-Jo's, nor the others'.
George had not known before a storm of this ferocity. Nothing like it in Chicago, the Windy City, where he'd been reared. Or at Nellis where he'd been trained, or at Bagram. He moved, best as he could, among them and each time he came back past them he blasphemed worse, ridiculed their efforts and cursed harder. He was, near as made no difference, double the age of the pilot, Marty, and a full fifteen years senior to Lizzy-Jo, and he felt for each of them as if they were his kids. His own kids were back in Chicago with their ma, and their ma's ma.
Without George Khoo's bullying aggression they would not have come through, would not have held on to the ropes till the palms of their hands were rubbed raw and bleeding.
Because he thought of Marty and Lizzy-Jo as if they were his kids he suffered and cried for them, and cheered with them. If First Lady had turned over, had gone in a rolling spiral towards the perimeter crushing the real-time cameras and the infra-red sensors then goodbye, damn double fast, to the mission. George Khoo knew responsibility for failure was never dumped fairly by the Agency.
Failure was failure – no excuse permitted. Failure had a smell that made a man's gut turn. Failure stank, was cruel. If the aircraft went, the shit would rain down, buckets of it, on Marty, the pilot, and on Lizzy-Jo, the sensor operator.
And it went on by.
The wind dropped and the sand haze cleared. If he was weak they were all weak. He snapped orders. Guys to go get the tents and awnings back off the perimeter wire. Guys to go get the wings fitted back in place on First Lady and Carnival Girl. Guys, Marty and Lizzy-Jo, to go get the electronics tested in Ground Control and the satellite link. Guys to get some breakfast made. Guys to get medical treatment readied. Guys to go get… He felt so damn tired and so damn old, and he hadn't the time to think he'd done well.
And he told the armourer to go get the Hellfire missiles checked.
He looked across to where the tents had been and saw Marty who seemed to probe in what debris was left there and he saw him lift up the picture that was his pride and joy. Even at that distance George could see that the glass, small miracles, was intact and a big smile creased the kid's face.
George Khoo's gruff cruelty melted. Lizzy-Jo stood apart from the team clustered inside and outside the Ground Control. He saw her wipe her hands on her trousers, just pyjama trousers that she'd slept in. She was gazing out over the desert and her eyeline seemed to follow the disappearing tail of the storm. There was new blood on the trousers where her hands had wiped. God, they were good kids, all of them.
He stood behind her.
Lizzy-Jo said, distracted, 'Hey, you know, there's a girl out there.
A really nice girl. I needed some tampons, and she sussed some out for me. She drove out there and I never saw her come back before I turned in. She's out there, in that storm – no way she'd have escaped it… Sorry, George, I know it's not your problem, I know, but – listen
– she's all alone.'
It had been like the white-out blizzards she'd known in Scotland and Norway.
She sat on the sand, the small of her back against the top of the near front wheel casing of the Land Rover.
No tears, of course not. Beth Jenkins could rage at herself and she could be contemplative about the future, but she would not weep.
She had precious little to sustain her and tears would have eroded what little was left. The sand on the near side was banked to the wheel casings; on the driver's side it was higher… It was madness to have gone out into the desert without leaving a note in her bungalow giving detail and map co-ordinates of her route and destination. She had no satellite phone and she had no classes for three days, and she was often away and it might be four days or five before she was missed, and a week or more before a search was mounted
… In her rush to be away from the bungalow she had not done the most fundamental, bloody obvious task of consulting the airfield control tower for the weather outlook.
She was marooned. She had been driving on full headlights, guided by her GPS, had been threading between the dunes and using salt-baked flats and was, she reckoned, within eight miles of the site of the ejecta field she had been told about. The four-litre plus engine had coped, just, with the ground terrain – until the storm had hit when she was about to kill the headlights and use the natural light of the dawn. God, and it had hit. The wind had seemed to shake the Land Rover's heavy frame and the sandclouds had overwhelmed the wipers. She'd had the sense to turn and manoeuvre the vehicle's tail towards the oncoming storm – about the only clever thing she'd done. She might have gone a hundred yards before the traction was lost, the cab had filled with sand, insinuated through closed doors and windows, and the pedals were covered. A minute or two after the wheels had started to spin, going nowhere, the engine had cut out. She had sat in the cab until the storm had passed.
When it had gone, Beth had prised open her door – had to put her shoulder to it – and she had slid and stumbled round the Land Rover.
At the back the sand had banked high over the tail door. She couldn't see the rear wheels. At the front only the tops of the tyres were visible. She had lifted the bonnet and seen the coating of sand over the engine parts. She had then crawled into the back of the Land Rover and scrabbled through the film of sand to retrieve her shovel.
With the sun climbing and the temperature rising, Beth had dug at the sand round the forward wheels for two hours. It had been a Sisyphean labour. For two hours, with the temperature above forty degrees, Beth had dug away the sand from the near front wheel, and each shovelful she'd chucked away had been replaced immediately by more soft dry sand rolling into the cavity she had made. The tyre was still hidden. Two hours had achieved nothing. Then she'd drunk water. She'd loaded enough, she reckoned, for three days. Half of what she'd loaded was now drunk. And even if she had been able to clear the sand from round one wheel, down to below the axle, there would have been three more tyres needing to be exposed – and even if she had been able to get all four tyres free of sand there was the engine, which would need stripping down and cleaning. She sat against the wheel casing and the sun was too high for the vehicle's body to give off shade.
Beth Jenkins understood what would happen to her.
One distant day, a dried-out, clothed body would be retrieved and shipped home. A stone would be put over a grave. Bethany Diana Jenkins. 1977-2004. Failure, idiot, life cut short through arrogance.
Spinster. She thought of boys and young men, and love she had not known. She had told herself, often enough, that her work was more important than searching for love. Plenty of time for love later. Now there was no more time… She had never met the man she could love, never would. Other young men, introduced by her mother, from Guards regiments and City broking firms, had faded from her side when she'd enthused about the rocks she studied. Guards officers and City brokers weren't big on granite, volcanoes and meteorite glass – their eyes glazed and they sloped off to hunt elsewhere. She had been left, too many times, mid-sentence… Love had never been offered.
The sun baked on her.
She would drink the water, what was left. She would not hoard it.
She would not fight for life any more than patients in Intensive Care who knew nothing of the drugs in their bloodstream and the tubes in their veins.
Beth had her arms tight across her chest and the sun seemed to suck the moisture from her body. The sweat seeped and she hugged herself as if that might give her an image of love.
Another lunchtime, and the programme of lectures continued.
Michael Lovejoy's packet of sandwiches, bought from the mid-morning trolley, awaited him on his desk. His newspaper crossword was frustratingly held up by the complications of five down:
'Groucho on Ike', three, four, six, seven and seven letters. And, not that he would have shown it, the lecturer interested him, diverted him from the clues.
They had a Russian from Counter-intelligence – flown in from Moscow – young and bright, with a flawless command of spoken English, and he came with enough good baggage to make waiting for the prawn and coleslaw worthwhile. 'The kernel of what I want to say is that we can too easily be blinkered when we seek out the snake with the intention of decapitating it. We look too easily at the obvious and then we are surprised when the television news in the morning confronts us with the newest atrocity… and do not ever forget that we bleed in our cities from the same atrocities as you do. Too readily, you, ladies and gentlemen, and we in Moscow and St Petersburg and Volgograd, attempt to target the Muslim that we can classify as a fanatic – and the bombs continue to kill and maim our innocents.
Take my advice. When you stand and look for the Muslims whom you believe carry the Holy Book in one hand and an explosives charge in the other, stop, consider, then turn a hundred and eighty degrees. Face the other way. Consider, what do you now see?'
Four seats down from Lovejoy was the military historian, retired from the Army, and from a Strategic Studies think-tank, now doing time with A Branch on surveillance; a mild-looking senior citizen in a checked sports jacket was unnoticeable in a public library or on a crowded train.
'What do you see? At first you see nobody. No Muslim, no fist clutching a Holy Book, no finger on an electrical circuit switch. Are you looking in the right place? You are confused. You do not wish to take my advice, but you hesitate. Men appear – but not the right men. They are people like yourselves, and like myself. You see white faces. You see Caucasians and Anglo-Saxons. Not robes and beards but suits and clean-shaven cheeks. Let me take you back to an inexact analogy, but that will point to the direction in which I travel. I believe I have the names correct – Omar Khan Sharif and Asif Muhammad Hanif, whom you had never heard of before they crossed into Israel through the most stringent border checks on the border with Jordan, journeyed across Israel to the Gaza Strip, left the Strip and went to Tel Aviv for reconnaissance, then put on the
'martyr warriors" belts and attempted to kill Jews in an Irish bar.
What was most significant in this inexact analogy? They used British passports. They claimed the protection of Her Britannic Majesty – not Egyptian passports, or Saudi, or Moroccan, or Algerian, but British passports. That is my starting point, and that is where you will not look if you are blinkered. I will take it further.'
Leaning across, without apology, Lovejoy tapped the arm of the historian, passed him the newspaper and rapped his pencil on the clue to five down… Khan and Hanif were still Muslims even if they did carry British passports.
'Believe in the unbelievable, that is what I urge you. What if the men recruited by Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants, or the multitude of pilot organizations that swim with that shark, were white-skinned and had no links to the Faith of Islam? Where are we then? They carry British or American, French or German passports, they dress like you and me, they speak with our accent, and they have access. A young man, well dressed and clearly recognizable as one of you, one of us, carries a shoulder-bag containing a laptop. Why should he be denied entry to any crowded public building? Why should he be stopped when he goes down an escalator into a subway or Underground station? Why should he be prevented from reaching the front row of a crowd that greets a prominent figure? Why should he be regarded with suspicion?
I hear, ladies and gentlemen, your silence. I do not hear your answers.'
Men and women sat statue still. But, from the corner of his eye, Lovejoy saw the historian writing busily… So what do we do? Lock everyone up who is too young to be in a care home?
'He does not have to be a Muslim, does not have to be recruited in a mosque, does not have to be Asian. All that is required of him by the shark is that he should hate… Don't ask him to debate the subject of hatred because he is unlikely to give you a coherent response. Somewhere, in his psyche or his experience, there will be a source of hatred. He hates you and me and the society we serve – he holds us in contempt. He is the new danger. A radioactive dirty bomb, microbiological agents or chemicals in aerosol form may be built into the laptop. He is real, he walks among us, his power over us is devastating. How to stop him? Do I have the answer? I regret I do not. Can he be stopped? We have to believe it or we face disaster.
I am sorry if I detain you, but I have only one more thing to say.'
The newspaper was passed back.
'My final thought is positive. I ask whether this man, one of us, a mutation from our own culture, suffused with bitterness from an actual or imagined wrong, believes in the seventy virgins awaiting him in Paradise. Is he a martyr? Does he plan to commit suicide or to survive? We cannot know… My own feeling is that he would wish to attack and live to watch the results of his revenge. We have more chance of stopping a man who wishes to live. I offer a trifle of comfort. Thank you for hearing me.'
As the Russian stepped back from the lectern, Lovejoy read the note scribbled in the newspaper's margin. 'It wasn't a Groucho original: he lifted from a Senator Kerr of Oklahoma.' Then, as subdued and stifled applause rippled around him, he noted the answer to five down. The only living unknown soldier. He shuddered.
How appropriate – the 'unknown soldier' who was 'one of us'.
He went for his belated sandwich lunch. 'One of us.' That would make him chew the prawns and coleslaw with thoughtful preoccupation.
Caleb sat, hunched, on one of the boxes. By mid-afternoon, with the skies clear and the sun baking the sand, the storm would have been a memory, a nightmare, but for its consequences. The camels, still traumatized, stayed close together, body to body, as if fenced within a wire corral. Rashid and Ghaffur had been on three separate expeditions away from the destroyed campsite to search for the remaining stores and possessions that had been scattered. After they had returned from the third search, Caleb had expected that Rashid would load the animals and order them to move; he thought there were at least three hours of daylight left, and perhaps they could move further during dusk and the early night. The guide gave no explanations. His sour face, the thin hostile lips under his hooked nose, seemed to forbid interrogation.
When they were small figures, Caleb heard a little whoop of delight, and saw Ghaffur hold up a metal mug. Hosni slept, prone on the sand. Caleb heard Fahd's slithering approach over the loose sand; the temperature would have been a hundred degrees, and the wind was now minimal. When Caleb turned to face him he saw that the man shivered. They were all older, wiser, frightened. As the Saudi was about to drop down beside him, Caleb stood.
'Come on, we have work.' He said it brusquely, an instruction that was not for discussion.
He saw the man's face fall.
'Yes, we have work,' Caleb rapped.
The response was shrill. 'Do you now tell me what I should do?'
'I am telling you.'
Caleb took Fahd's arm, gripped it, and led him to the heap of stores and bedding, tenting, water bags and sacks that had been retrieved by the guide and his son. At first, the Saudi stood beside Caleb, arms crossed and idle, as Caleb crouched and started to sift, separate and pack. Suddenly, as Caleb's arm was outstretched, reaching for the last of the plates and stacking them, Fahd reached out and snatched at his wrist. His fingers fastened in a bony vice on the plastic identification tag. 'You were at Guantanamo?'
'I was.'
The fingers stroked the photograph, the printed name, Fawzi al-Ateh, and roamed over the identification numbers.
'Then they released you?'
'After nearly two years they released me.'
'Why? Why did they free you?'
'Because they believed me.'
The Saudi freed his wrist. He stood above Caleb and gazed down at him. His shoulders and arms still shook and his lips wobbled with the shiver. 'People more notable than me, more intelligent than me, have chosen you for a strike that will bring fire, pestilence against the Americans and the allies of the Americans. They have chosen you, but it is still to be decided as to whether you are trusted. Hosni says you should be trusted because you were clever and deceived the Americans at Guantanamo. Tommy trusts nobody – Tommy says that the constant purpose of the Americans is to put informers, spies, among us. Myself, I do not know whether to trust you or not to trust you. ..'
Caleb said quietly, 'Whether you trust me or not, you can help me pack what is here.' He pushed the pile of sand-covered bedding to Fahd's feet. 'Shake it, fold it, stack it… Should I trust you?'
The mouth of the Saudi puckered in anger. 'You are the Outsider, I am not. I have no home other than where the Organization takes me. I have no family other than the Organization… The Organization cares for me, and God cares for me. God is…'
'Can you not walk away?'
'I am hunted. My picture is in the police stations of the Kingdom.
If I am taken alive, pain will be inflicted on me, and with the pain will be drugs. I pray to God, if I am taken, that I will be strong and will not betray my family. At the end of the pain, if I am taken, there will be the executioner and the executioner's sword. I have a degree in mathematics, I could have been a teacher… but I worked as a gardener. I was a gardener in the Al-Hamra compound for Americans. I cut the grass and watered the flowers, and I would be shouted at by the supervisor if I left a weed in the earth. I did the work of Yemenis and Pakistanis. Because I believed in the Organization, and in God, I did the work of a foreign labourer – and I watched. I was behind the wall and the guards. I used the grass-cutter, the hose, the trowel and the broom, and I watched. I counted the guards and remembered their weapons. I saw where the important Americans lived. I worked late into the night, cutting and watering, weeding and sweeping, and I watched. When martyrs drove two vehicles into the Al-Hamra compound last year they used the map that I had drawn for them. They died, they are in Paradise, but others lived and were taken. They were tortured and they did not have the strength – they betrayed the names of many. I have been told my home was raided, my parents were abused. That is why I cannot leave the Organization. If I am taken, my future is the sword.'
'I trust you.'
Fahd shook the sand grains from a sleeping-bag, then carefully rolled it. Then he lifted a blanket and flicked it out. 'I am condemned, and Tommy, and Hosni. We are all dead men… What I regret, I will never be able to make as great a strike as you, the Outsider, who are blessed… Because you are blessed, you are also condemned.'
The sand flew in Caleb's face. He blinked.
The guide and his son walked back towards them and each had again gathered up another armful of the campsite's debris. Rashid gave them no praise for sorting through the heap. When the camels were loaded, and the sun finally dropping, they moved.
Caleb was the back-marker. His face was set and sombre. He had waved away the boy and walked alone in the last camel's hoofmarks.
The patient swung her legs off the examination couch and smoothed her skirt. The patient's husband eased up from his chair.
From the basin where he washed his hands perfunctorily, Bart intoned the details of the only acceptable recipe for acute depression, nerves and stress. Good old diazepam. Where would he be without diazepam? Up the bloody creek, no paddle. He could have told them to go home, get on the big freedom bird at the airport, head off for Romford or Ruislip or Richmond, but they wouldn't. The expatriate community was down to the hard core since the bombs at the Al-Jadawel, Al-Hamra and Vinnel compounds had thinned out the foreign community. Those who stayed, who could not face life in a London suburb where they'd struggle for work and be without servants, swimming-pools and fat-cat salaries, were now prisoners inside the compounds, their lives dependent on the alertness of the guards at the gates. A few, those who had been with him at the races, pretended life was unchanged; the majority cowered in the custody of their homes, and were reliant on the diazepam he doled out.
It was all about money for them… Beside the basin, the window gave him a good high view down the street. The wind tore at the white robes of men on the pavement below and creased the black robes of women against their bodies. A damn storm was up. The trouble with storms was that they carried sand. It would be all over his vehicle, that was always the worst thing about storms coming up off the desert
… All about money. Bart knew about money, the absence of it.
At six twenty-five in the morning, they'd come. Two oafish uniforms, a plainclothes constable with the weary look of a man close to retirement, and a gimlet-faced woman who'd identified herself as a detective sergeant and who wore an unflattering black trouser suit. At six twenty-five in the morning, he'd had a patrol car and a saloon in the driveway, and every one of the bloody neighbours would have been parting the curtains, lifting the nets and gawping.
Ann knew nothing. Ann had hissed, stage-whisper, as they'd filed into the hall, 'What have you done?' She'd had her dressing-gown wrapped tightly round her as if she was about to be raped. Ann only knew that there were new carpets in the hall, holiday brochures on the dining-room table, and school invoices in the office desk with 'Many Thanks for Your Prompt Payment' stamped on them.
'Done nothing,' he'd murmured. 'Go in the kitchen and make a pot of tea.'
He'd led them into the lounge. Did he know a Josh Reakes? Yes, he had a patient by that name. Did he know Josh Reakes was a dealer in class A narcotics? No, he did not. Would he be surprised to learn that Josh Reakes had named him, Dr Samuel Bartholomew, as a principal supplier? Yes, he would, and it was a damned lie. He had kept with the denials, stuck with them. He learned that Josh Reakes, arrested the previous evening, had named him as the source of the morphine alkaloid tablets, liquid heroin and powdered cocaine that had been found when he was strip-searched. Deny, deny, deny – his word against a contemptible little rat's; a baseless allegation that was poor thanks for his efforts on behalf of one more of Torquay's addict population. They had a search warrant for the house and another for the surgery. They went through the walnut-veneer desk – bank statements and income-tax returns. Each time Ann had come into the living room, between feeding the kids and getting them ready for school, she'd looked like an ally of the police, squinting at him with suspicion. The best thing he'd done was give her the housekeeping in Josh's cash, so the carpets, holidays and school fees came out of the bank account and were laid against his salary… Then down to the surgery. A full waiting room for him to tramp through with his escort. Into the records of the quantities of morphine alkaloid tablets, liquid heroin and powdered cocaine he'd prescribed, and then he'd realized they were trawling and had no decent idea of how to prove that the terminally ill who'd been given Brompton's Mixture, or the back-ache sufferers, had left excess supplies for him to collect.
He'd brazened it out. The word of a professional man against the word of an addicted yob. He'd known he was on solid ground when the detective sergeant had snarled through her pasty little lips: 'I'll bloody get you, Bartholomew. You are a fucking disgrace – a doctor who is a mainstream supplier. I'll get you sent down, see if I bloody don't.'
They'd taken him down to the station, hands on his arms like he was a criminal, and he'd dictated a statement of innocence – and known they believed not a word of it.
By the time he was freed, seven hours after the wake-up knock, his partners had met and revealed to him their considered opinion that he should leave the practice, not the next week and not the next day but within the next hour. Within a month, the day after he had again been interviewed at the police station and the day before he was due to be grilled in London by lawyers of the British Medical Association, Ann and the children had moved out of the family home and into that of the guy who had the Saab franchise up the road from Torquay.
He was unemployable in the United Kingdom, friendless, and soon divorced; the house was sold and nine-tenths of the proceeds had gone to the mortgage company. But he had to have food in his stomach, a shirt on his back and a glass in his hand, and in the profession's journal he'd seen the advertisement… If he'd thought what had gone before was the steepest downhill tumble, he had been so wrong.
If they had only known the truth of his life, the patient and her husband might have felt sorry for him. He counted out thirty daazepam tablets, bottled them and wrote the dosage on the label. He was more trapped, incarcerated, than they were. He showed them out. All their problems were money, but Bart's were far beyond that level of simplicity. He closed the door after them.
AI Maz'an village, near Jenin, Occupied West Bank.
Bart braked.
If he had not slammed his foot on the pedal, crushed it against the floor, had not swerved and come to a grinding halt as he emerged from the side turning, he would have run straight into the armoured personnel carrier.
There were three more behind the one he had missed colliding with.
They rumbled down the street, but the machine-gunner on the last swivelled the mounting and kept the barrel aimed at him until they were gone. He sat behind the wheel and the sweat poured off him. Outside the four-wheel drive it was cold enough to freeze the sweat. He could no longer see them but he heard the racing whine of the carrier's tracks and the street was pitted where they had been. Where had they gone? He knew. Dozvn that street a patient, a child, was suffering from acute diarrhoea, and in the patient's home there was a back kitchen and a yard beyond it. In the yard there was a shed… Jesus. He heard gunfire. He sat with his head in his hands and tried to blot out the sounds that crashed in his ears.
After the gunfire there were the explosions of grenades.
Men and kids were running in the street in front of him. More shots. He was recognized. More explosions. His door was opened, he was pulled out by a clutch of hands and his bag was snatched off the seat beside his. He was propelled forward. Across the street in front of him an armoured personnel carrier was slewed and the same machine-gun now traversed on to him.
That day he was wearing, over his anorak, a white sleeveless jerkin with a red crescent symbol at the front and a red cross on the back. His bag was pushed into his hand. From beside the carrier two shots were fired into the air. The crowd stayed back but Bart advanced. The barrel of the machine-gun was locked on him. There was a shout, first in Hebrew then in English. He was to stop or he would be shot. He was alone in the street. Behind the armoured personnel carrier there was sudden movement. Soldiers burst from an alley dragging what might have been a sack of grain, but the sack had legs and a lolling, lifeless head. Bart saw the head, only for an instant, as it bounced on the street's mud. The engines revved, the troops jumped for the rear doors of the carriers, and they were gone.
Screaming filled the street. He saw a brightening bruise on the mother's cheekbone and blood dribbling from a cut on the father's forehead. He wondered if they had tried to block the troops' entry, or whether they had attempted to hold on to the dead body of their son and been beaten back with rifle butts. God might forgive Bart, no other bastard would. He reached the door and the crowd had thickened behind him. He did what was necessary, bathed the bruise and staunched the cut, and all around him was the wailing of misery. He realized it: he was a trusted as a friend.
Three hours later he was at the checkpoint, and while his vehicle was searched methodically, and while the pretence was made that he was questioned in the hut, he drank a mug of strong coffee.
Joseph said quietly, 7 don't think you are a military man, Bart – a s a man of medicine you are a man of healing and peace – but, I promise you, what we do is for the preservation of peace. Terrorists are the parasites that feed off people. We have to destroy those parasites or there can never be healing.
You saw a body. The body was defenceless. You saw but you did not comprehend. He made the belts and the waistcoats that are used by suicide bombers. You have seen the buses that are destroyed, you have seen the markets where they kill themselves, you have seen the cafes where they detonate the bombs. He was good at his work. What you have done, Bart, is save lives. Sometimes a suicide bomber kills maybe ten, but it has been as high as thirty, and for every death there are five more innocents who lose their sight, their limbs or their mobility. Because of you, many innocents have been given the chance to live a whole life. You should feel good, you have removed a major player in what they call their armed struggle. I salute you.'
He did not want to be saluted or congratulated. Some time, on the decision of others – and it had been promised him – his life would begin again, but only when others permitted it.
Bart swallowed hard. He blurted, 'I saw him. I was in the house. Surely there will be a security investigation. How was it known he would be back at his home, that he was using his home? I was there. Too many people know I was there. What about me?'
Joseph smiled and his hand rested in reassurance on Bart's shoulder. 'We take great care of you. You are a jewel to us, so precious. Have no fear.'
He left his coffee half drunk. He was pitched out of the hut and his feet slithered in the mud. When he had his balance he swung and shouted at the troops by the hut door. He was watched by the Palestinians who waited for processing at the checkpoint and he heard the applause, the fervent clapping.
Some chanted his name.
He drove away.
They talked of the complicated and intricately webbed world they inhabited.
'You're not bullshitting me here, Eddie?'
'You can count on it. I was there. I found the prime eyewitness. He wouldn't have known how to lie. The body of the paymaster, I saw it, on the slab. It's about as far from bullshit as you can get.'
They were at the kitchen table. Juan Gonsalves and Eddie Wroughton shared the table with his children, their crayon-coloured drawings, and pepperoni pizza fresh from the microwave. The children ate and drew, Teresa tried to separate sheets of paper from the food, Wroughton talked and Gonsalves scribbled notes.
Separated from his work, Gonsalves could laugh, but he never laughed when he worked. Wroughton understood the pressures now lying on the shoulders of every Agency man in the field: the disaster of failed intelligence analysis before 9/11 dictated that every scrap should be written down, passed on and evaluated. The life of a Langley man who ignored a warning was a cheap life. The pressures on Wroughton were lightweight, he thought, by comparison.
'The caravan was a Bedu, his son and four strangers. I don't have the exact number of camels, but they carried enough water and food for a long trek into the Empty Quarter. They are important enough to be using about as remote a piece of the border to cross as there is. No Omani or Saudi border patrols, and camels rather than trucks and pickups.'
'Who'd walk, or get camel sores, when they could ride in a vehicle?'
'People of exceptional value. For the Organization it would be a major setback if men of that value were intercepted on either side of the border.'
Theirs was a good friendship, that was Wroughton's belief. Most politicians in London deluded themselves they had a special relationship with the White House… but, here, on the Gonsalves kitchen table, the relationship was indeed special. Wroughton's report of his journey up-country in Oman was now being studied in London; in a week, when desk warriors had rewritten it, the revised report would go in the bag to Washington; in another week, the report would be passed to the sister agency at Langley; a week later, after further revisions and rewriting, a version would be sent in cypher back to Riyadh and would land in Gonsalves' office. The real relationship, between two dedicated professionals, was across a clutter of crayons and paper, and was dictated above a babble of excited kids' voices.
'He said quite specifically that the camels were loaded with six packing cases, crates, whatever – they were painted olive green, military. Dimensions are estimated but seemed to be the eyewitness's arm span, both arms. Machine-guns wouldn't be in crates. The weight of the crates is a handicap going into the Empty Quarter, so we are looking at something that cannot be exposed to the elements, also that requires cushioning.'
'What are we talking about?'
'I'd reckon we're talking armour-piercing or ground-to-air missiles. If I had to bet I'd say we're talking ground-to-air. Try Stinger.'
Gonsalves grimaced.
'I did some work on it today. You shipped, with your typical generosity, some nine hundred Stingers into Afghanistan; the mujahidin downed an estimated two hundred and sixty-nine Soviet fixed wing and helicopters using them. At the end of the war, when the Soviets quit, two hundred were unaccounted for, still out there.
Your people tried to buy them back but went empty-handed. They can blow a military plane out of the skies or a civilian air-liner…
What we don't know is shelf life. Eighteen years after their delivery, are they still functioning? Have they degraded? Don't know. My own view, what it's worth, the crates aren't the problem. The problem's bigger. I think the men matter, the four strangers are the priority.'
Their greatest difficulty, as counter-intelligence officers, was to sift the relevant from the dross. Mostly their trade relied on the electronic intercepts of conversations sucked down from satellites, gobbled by computers, then spat out as raw verbiage. Wroughton and Gonsalves called it 'chatter'. Their bosses called it Ellnt. But this was the rarest commodity they dealt with: the word of an eyewitness.
'Right, four men are being taken across the Empty Quarter in conditions of the greatest secrecy – they matter. The eyewitness is definite there was an argument over the price of the camels. Then one of the men intervenes. He assumes authority. He is young. He is tall. He does not fit in physique and build – the eyewitness notes that. He is different in his features from the others – wears their clothes, but is different. A young leader, with authority, that's what I have – but that's all.'
All of the best material, high grade and rare, was exchanged across the kitchen table. The kids liked Wroughton. He drew the pencil outlines for them to colour in better than their own father, and after the meal they would go out into the floodlit yard where he would pitch a ball at the eldest kid, and do it better than Gonsalves, and later he would read to the kids in their beds and they liked his accent better than their mother's. In London and Washington there would have been coronaries and fury at the closeness of the two men.
'Juan, they are regrouping down there, pulling in new men, new blood. I can smell it.'
'Kill her.'
Caleb's head was down as he climbed the dune. He saw the sand, loose, slide through his burned toes. Beside him the camel struggled.
He had hold of its rein and helped it steady itself. They went up together. The voice was Tommy's.
'I say it, kill her.'
He looked up and the low sun bruised his eyes. They were all at the top of the dune and were silhouetted in the dropping light. Their shadows, and those of the camels, fell down the dune's slope towards Caleb. He heard only the Iraqi's voice.
'Because she has seen us, kill her.'
They seemed not to hear him behind them. They gazed ahead and below. Caleb reached them. He pushed past Hosni and Fahd, past the boy, who turned and faced him, wide-eyed, past the guide, who was clawing at the baggage on his camel and had his hand on the rifle. He was at the shoulder of Tommy, the executioner. He looked down.
'Because she has seen us, can identify us, kill her.'
She was standing. The sun back-lit the gold of her hair, which was tangled and sweat-streaked. She wore a dirtied blouse of soft colours, faded jeans and heavy boots. Her hands, face and clothing were stained with oil. She looked up at them, rocking as if she no longer had the strength to stand erect. There was a calm about her, like an indifference. She did not flinch from Tommy… and Caleb saw the Land Rover wedged in the drifts of sand. He wondered what faint, minuscule, mathematical chance had thrown her into their path.
'If you won't, I will kill her.'
The guide had the rifle. With a fast, clattering movement of his hands, he armed it. Caleb looked into Rashid's face, saw the hesitation. Furrows lined his weathered forehead. Caleb understood.
It was the way of the Bedu to offer help, aid, whatever was in their power, to a traveller in distress. It would have been the way of any villager in Afghanistan… He had been offered help, aid, when he had crawled towards the village. Deep memories stirred. They came from beyond the chasm he had fashioned to block them out. The words croaked in his throat: 'We would break the culture of the Sands. We would dishonour ourselves.'
Tommy laughed at him and spittle flew from his mouth. It rested wet on Caleb's face. 'Culture, that is fucking rubbish. Dishonour, what is that? You won't, I will.'
'She has seen a caravan pass by. She has seen nothing…'
They would have known, all of them, that his words were empty.
In turn they sneered derision at him.
Caleb ignored them. Rashid had the rifle. He fixed Rashid with his eye. He held the eye. He did not blink, did not waver. He stared at Rashid. He would listen only to Rashid… He himself was the chosen man. He was the one for whom the rest struggled in the Sands. Was he not worthy of trust? Rashid broke, looked away, then began to replace the rifle under the bags on his camel's flank.
Caleb said to Rashid, 'You are a fine man, a man I love… Go, till it is too dark to go further. Light a fire. There I will find you.'
They went. After a splutter of argument, on which Caleb turned his back, the guide led them in a deep half-circle around the woman, as if by her glance or her presence she might poison them. Caleb watched them go. When the sun first touched the horizon's dunes, when he could no longer see them, when his body ached with tiredness, hunger and thirst, he went heavily down the slope towards her.
She was reaching into her hip pocket. 'Are you going to try to rape me?'
As she spoke, in clear Arabic, her hand slipped to a position of defence. Against the dirt and the oil smears on her blouse Caleb saw the clean shape of an open penknife blade.
'Are you going to kill me?'
'No,' Caleb said. 'I am going to dig you out.'