Timo Rahman screamed.
He was not heard. The cell's walls closed around him.
A Europol advisory landed on Tony Johnson's desk.
He had his coat on and was preparing himself for the evening struggle on a commuter train when the clerk brought it to him. It already had a half-dozen sets of initials on it but - what else to expect in this perfect bloody world? - it would end with him and he was to field it . . . His eyes scanned the single page, and he gasped, shook, and flicked it into his in-tray for the next morning's attention. Then he punched the air.
For a detective sergeant with a reputation,
deserved, for carrying equally weighted chips on each of his shoulders and for spreading contagious gloomy defeatism wherever he walked, his stride down the corridor was emphatic with cheerful energy. That morning he had repeated his refrain at the weekly meeting of colleagues to hack at current problems that drugs and organized crime, and their effect on the great mass of the capital city's punters, were on the back-burner, ignored and victim to the swollen resources pushed at the War on Terror. At the ground-floor lobby, swiping his card, he blew a kiss at the lady on Reception, and saw the shock wobble on the face of the duty guard beside her.
He went out through the swing doors and on to the street, imagined he heard the guard's question, 'God, what's the matter with that miserable beggar?' and imagined he heard the lady's answer, 'Must be that he's got hot flushes, or he's on a bloody good promise, or it's the lottery.' What he could have told them was that a Europol advisory had reached his desk and stated that police in Hamburg had arrested the Albanian national, Timo Rahman, on charges of grievous bodily harm and wounding, and that officers on the case urgently requested co-operation from European colleagues on all links between Rahman and criminal organizations for immediate investigation while Rahman was in custody, and vulnerable
. . . What he could also have told them, on the reception desk, was that he had contributed - damned if he knew the detail of how - to the life of an untouchable going into the gutter.
On the pavement he turned heads as he laughed to himself like a maniac. 'You done us proud, Malachy. I hope you've a drink in your hand because that's what you deserve. You've done us proper proud - I hope it's a damn great drink and then another.'
Malachy had rainwater in his eyes, ears, nose, had it weighing down the clothes on his back and his legs.
He quartered ground, was inland from the highest dunes. He moved, alternately slow and fast. When he went slowly it was to listen, because he could see so little, and then he shook his head hard. His fingers went into his ears to gouge out the wet, but he heard only the wind's bluster and the pattering of the rain.
When he went fast, he held to what he believed was the line towards the source of the gunfire and often he thought he had lost it and that his instinct failed him.
Going fast, on a track, his shoes, with their worn tread, slid from under him.
He fell, went down. The breath squeezed out of his chest and his hands flailed. When they hit the mud it was not tackiness they found, but something slicked, wet, but not like mud. Malachy felt the surface of the path, realized its smoothness - as if mud had been pressed flat by a solid weight and then the slick had been left. He could not see more than the outline of his hands but there was darkness on his palms. He believed that it was blood and that the mud had been smoothed by a man's body. He thought, where he was, a wounded man had rested, then crawled forward. But Malachy did not follow the trail, and he tried again to find his line.
He came to the pond. A little of the reflection of the water shone back at him through the reeds. He saw, as a silhouette, the shape of the viewing platform where he had put his shoulder against a support post . . . In a crash of noise, and he froze, ducks fled - splashed, beat their wings, screamed - and he could smell the body of the old man, as he had done at the platform.
Malachy had warned her that it was a crime to involve others and risk hurting them. She had involved the old man, had picked at his isolation with honey words and pleading eyes, and he had been shot and crawled towards a refuge. She had rounded on him - what did he think she had done with him, if not involve him? He had said: I'll pick up my own pieces. He would. She - sweet girl, warm girl with a taste of sadness - did not own him; nor did those who controlled her.
In his mind, he adjusted the line.
He came to a hollow. He found a plastic bag caught on thorns and near it a Cellophane packet that would have held a shop-bought sandwich. Maybe it was because the cloud weakened in its density and a trickle of the moon's light came through, but small shapes gleamed and then their brightness died. He picked up three discarded cartridge cases. On his hands, on his knees, feeling with his fingers, he found the trail they had used and the indents in the mud.
Later, Malachy came to the first marker: a strip of cloth tied to a branch.
He wanted to stand bare-faced in front of a mirror with brilliant light shining on his skin and coming back from his eyes. He wanted, as he had not done for a year and a half, to examine that face and those eyes, to search for a truth and know himself again. He would not know himself until he had hounded down Ricky Capel on the beach ahead where the sea stampeded the waves . . . Then, not before, he would learn if he was a coward, and the word beat in his head as he went forward and looked for the next marker.
19 May 2004
The old man walking towards the sandbags at the gate was hazed by the high sun.
On sentry duty with machine-gun, Baz had called for Sergeant McQueen to come, double bloody quick time, to Bravo's gate.
The old man came slowly on the raised road from the village, hobbled forward and used a stick in his right hand to ease his weight.
Scanning him with binoculars, Hamish McQueen had called for the major to get, soonest, from the operations bunker to the gate.
The old man was alone, wizened, and an SA 80 assault rifle dangled from his left hand and against his thigh, half hidden by his robe.
'Do I slot him, sir?' Baz asked, and his eye was against the sight of the machine-gun, his finger flexed on the trigger's guard.
'I don't think so, no.'
It was for the major, the commanding officer of Bravo company, a moment of extreme inconvenience. His place was in the bunker where his clerks had for him a mountain of paper. He watched the old man and the rifle he carried through the binoculars' growing clarity. In two hours he was due to welcome to Bravo the advance force of the infantry unit that would relieve them after their six-month tour of duty. Like a hole in his skull, he needed the distraction of an old man coming to their main gate... He had laid down that the relieving force would not find justification for even a damned small complaint at the state of the camp left for them. The old man carried a weapon that was not used by the ragtag fighters in his area of responsibility
- they had the AK47 and its variants - but had against his leg a rifle that was exclusively used by British soldiers, the SA 80. He checked that his interpreter was behind him, saw Faisal leaning against the back of the sandbags, smoking.
The major prided himself that he was blessed with a nose for danger. For the last week he had cut back on the company's patrolling, had reduced it to force protection -
guaranteeing the security of Bravo's perimeter - and had withdrawn any troop movements from the village. He had dreaded losing a Jock for nothing in the last hours of th deployment, wanted all of them on the flight home to Briz Norton. He sensed no danger.
On his belt was a service pistol, and he unclipped the holster's flap. He told Baz, the machine-gunner, to cove him, and asked that Hamish McQueen be at his side. He waved for the interpreter to follow him. He walked down the entry road to Bravo's gates, then strode briskly along the road to meet the old man.
He ducked his head, smiled, and introduced himself through his interpreter. The old man transferred the rifle ponderously to his other hand, juggled it with his stick and gave his name. He shook the major's fist with a go
od but bony grip, then gave him the rifle. On its stock was the reference number in white paint. He knew it. Every man in the unit bloody knew it. A lost high-velocity weapon's reference number had been dinned into the heads of every Jock, NCO and officer who had been tasked for house searches since the late-afternoon patrol of 13 January - its recovery had been an unfulfilled priority. He gave it to his sergeant for checking and making safe.
The interpreter murmured in his ear, 'The gentleman, Mahmoud al-Ajouti, has heard that the British persons are going back to their country and thought it correct this weapon be returned... It is his apology that it has not been done before.'
'Please tell Mr al-Ajouti that I am grateful.'
He remembered, with the clarity of yesterday and not of three months before, what he had seen that day and what he had been told, and the gist of what he had said: 'Put him somewhere in isolation where he can't infect anyone else...
I don't know how you'd ever get shot of it, being called a coward ... I can't imagine there's any way back.' The man had been sitting on a chair outside the command bunker, head hangdog, expressionless, silent. He had heard, from the vine, that the man had been shipped home, but his failing was talked of, still, in every mess and barrack room used by the battalion.
'Would you ask Mr al-Ajouti in what circumstances the rifle came into his possession?'
What he was told, through the hesitant voice of the interpreter, first confused the major, then rocked him.
'The soldiers came up the street where Mr al-Ajouti lives above his place of business, a bakery shop. They knew, everybody in the street knew, that an ambush was prepared, was ready, for the next soldiers, the next patrol, to come on the street. His son, his son is called Tariq. He had brought heavy stones, football-sized stones, into the home above the shop and had a window open enough to throw them down.
Mr al-Ajouti did not know of the stones and he was in the back of his home with his wife and his younger children.
Tariq is the eldest of his children. He does not think blame should be given to his son, Tariq, because all of the older children in the village are encouraged by men of the Mehdi army, followers of the imam, to hate soldiers - he regrets that. A soldier stopped outside Mr al-Ajouti's shop. His son told him afterwards, that is how he knows it, the soldier was lying on the ground, and his son, that is Tariq, threw down a stone and it hit the soldier's neck, which was not protected by the edge of his helmet. The stone, the size of a football, stunned the soldier - that is, he was made unconscious. It was just after a grenade had been fired into the wall near the window where Tariq was. His son - Mr al-Ajouti, at the back, did not know this at that time - went down the stairs and opened the door of the shop. He took the rifle and took the stone back into the shop. The rifle, it was hidden under his bed, and the stones he took to the yard at the rear where they had come from, from a wall that had fallen. For sixteen weeks the rifle was under his bed, because his son was frightened of having taken it, and was frightened of giving it to the Mehdi army. Yesterday, Mr al-Ajouti's wife found the rifle. Yesterday he questioned his son. Yesterday he found the truth, is certain it is the truth, of how the rifle came to his son's room, and of how the soldier was made senseless. He begs forgiveness for his son. He is ashamed for what his son did. He begs it is not spoken of in the village, his returning the rifle. If it is spoken, his life will be taken by the Mehdi army. He hopes it is enough that he has returned the rifle, that his son will not be punished. Later, children came. They took the soldier's helmet and the coat against bullets. It is the flak-jacket. Mr al Ajouti apologizes for the action of his son. He wishes you well on your return to Britain, to your families.'
The major said curtly, 'I am grateful to Mr al-Ajouti, and I can assure him that his son will not be punished, and that the taking of the rifle will not be spoken of.'
From his hip pocket, the major took a wad of dinar notes, probably the equivalent of what was put over the counter in a village bakery in a week, and pressed them into the bone-ribbed hand. The old man bobbed his gratitude, then turned, then started out on the raised road to return to the village, his bakery shop, and his home.
The major strode towards the sandbags, the machine-gun and the gate. His words snapped from the side of his mouth:
'I think, Faisal, it is a matter that is dead, buried. If you were to speak of it you would betray the trust placed in you by the British army, and your employment would cease.
Understood? Hamish, it is a business best forgotten. I think your role, and mine, in the affair concerning allegations made against Mal Kitchen, would not now sustain close examination. Yes, best forgotten.'
'Forgotten, sir, already forgotten.'
'Found on wasteground, hidden there, handed in by a local who was unable to give an exact location - that'll fit the paperwork ... No medals for digging up the past.'
'None, sir. I'll see the word goes round, found on wasteground.'
They walked back through the gate. Bravo's major returned to his bunker and the preparations for withdrawal.
He had names but no identity. He had been Anwar Maghroub, born into affluence in a suburb of Alexandria, but the character of the child was lost.
The voice behind him beat at the back of his head.
'What I'm telling you, Dean, and true - I'll be so damn bloody pleased to be finished with this. If you'd told me, anyone had, a month ago that I'd be flogging myself through this place, cold like I've never known it and hungry, I'd have told them to go jump.'
He had also been Sami, a student of engineering, with a girl and with friends who understood the rigour of sacrifice, but the personality of the pupil had gone.
'A month ago, I wouldn't have thought I could do this, go through it and still be on my feet - wouldn't have been able to, not without having a friend with me, and it's because I'm tough. It's what makes me a leader. Others come to me and know that I'll lead them. Lazy sods, all of them, and feeding off me. They feed off my brains and my energy.'
He had been Abu Khaled, conspirator and activist in the Organization, who had studied and learned the lessons of success in attack and failure in security, but that man's mind was outdated and finished with.
'Because of you, what I've learned from you, I am telling you that things are going to be different when I'm back, up and running - damn different. No passengers in my team and no bloodsuckers. Slim and lean, that's what you are, and that's what I'm going to be, and ahead of the game. In my crowd, they'll have one chance and if it's blown then they're out, out on their bloody arses. Best thing that ever happened to me was meeting up with you, and that's
God's truth. I'm surrounded by passengers and suckers, but not for long. They'll scream, but I won't be listening.'
He had been Dean, goalkeeper for a team he had not heard of, who listened without response to the ramblings of an idiot, but the character, personality, mind of that fantasy had never existed.
'I've got my cousins, three of them, giving me grief.
I've got old Percy, who's all disrespect, and what I know is that he loathes me. I've got Mikey and Sharon, that's my parents, and they live bloody well off my back. I've got Joanne and Wayne, he's only a kid and doesn't know better, but she's got the hump with me . . . and there's a bloody great crowd like a spider web. They all live off me .. . I'm telling you, there's changes coming. I like a lot about you, but I like most that you go alone. I reckon it's class to go alone. You and me, it's good we're together.'
He was, now, Milan Draskic who held a Slovenian passport and was a co-ordinator and sent to erase failures of security and to drive home success in attack, but he had not yet learned to live inside the thoughts and skin of that man, and— They had come past the five marker cloths he had left on branches. He stopped dead, and gazed forward - not at the whitecaps and the surf, not at the horizon - and the idiot cannoned into him. He saw, at the top of the dune in front of him, the three legs of his tripod, but not the flashlamp.
'What's up?'
; He said, quietly, with his hand shielding his voice, that the flashlamp, as he had left it, was gone from the tripod.
'What's that mean?'
He said, his words protected from the wind, that he had built the tripod in daylight so that it would be secure, fastened the flashlamp to it and aimed its face to the sea. He had lashed it in place by daylight so that its beam would be steady when it was used. He heard the first sliver of the idiot's panic.
'Well, you didn't tie it tight enough, did you? Got to bloody find it, haven't you? Didn't allow for the bloody gale, did you?'
He sank down into the softness of the sand and felt with his hands and the grains ran through his fingers, but the flashlamp was not at the base of his tripod's stakes.
'Got to be there, hasn't it? Got to be. Can't have bloody walked off, can it?'
The idiot was beside him, on his knees, and his hands were sweeping at the sand, and the idiot squealed.
'Cut my bloody self on glass. It wasn't the wind -
Christ, it wasn't - that shifted it.'
His fingers found the flashlamp, buried, and they ran over shards from its face, and touched the broken end of the bulb where it went into the socket.
The panic became more shrill. 'No light! How the fuck are they going to find us? Out in this shit-heap, how they going to get to us? What'll guide them? You fucked up, putting the light up and leaving it, fucked up big-time. No light, how they going to bring the boat in?'
He had only the pencil torch and a beam with a range of only a few metres.
'It's all round us. Don't know where. The old jerk you shot. The guy who came over the fence, and I lied about him. All round us, and we don't know how close . . . Can't bloody see them . . . Watching us . . .
How we going to get off of here? You know it and I know it, they're watching us and round us . . . maybe close enough to bloody touch us. What we going to do?'
He pulled the radio set over the sand, slipped the clasp on the case, opened it, threw the switch, reached out and dragged the idiot close. He felt the shaking fear - and he listened. He heard only the set's static whine and the wind's buffeting.
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