The Unknown Soldier

by Gerald Seymour

  She looked for the camels, the men, for tracks . . . There was nothing.

  Lizzy-Jo punched up the forecast. She swore.

  Marty's head rocked in exhaustion. His eyes blinked shut, then opened. She mashed her fist into the small of his back. She said,

  'Doesn't let up, does it? The forecast is for stronger winds, westerly, tomorrow. If the forecast's right, there's no way we're flying tomorrow . . .'

  Lizzy-Jo was only a handful of years older than Marty but she felt, more often since they had come to Shaybah, as if she was his aunt and he was her kid nephew. She was fonder of him, a little more each day, since they had shared the Ground Control, just them together.

  She hoped the wind speed, up there four miles above the desert, would strengthen, and then the kid could sleep. She cared for him, wanted him to sleep and shed the exhaustion.

  He smiled ruefully, and her hand, which had belted him, rested on the skin of his forearm and . . .

  The voice said, 'This is Oscar Golf. We fly tomorrow, we fly every day. If you didn't know it, this is priority We ignore the manual instructions on what is possible. Until that target is found, we fly to the limit. Oscar Golf, out.'

  'Are you sure? Are you telling me, man, you are sure?'

  'Sure, and no argument. It's tied down.'

  His supervisor, Edgar, had been off Guantanamo for two days, back at the Pentagon for sessions on the preparations for retirement.

  The Pentagon had a good programme for readying long-service men in the Defense Intelligence Agency for the cold-shower shock of waking up on a Monday morning and having no work to go to. Jed watched his superior's eyes twitch and his fingers fidget. He might as well have rolled a hand grenade, pin out, across his supervisor's desk.

  Maybe Jed should have felt a tinge of sympathy for the man. The physical reactions were clear enough signs that his supervisor had taken on board the seriousness of Jed's message. Those two days, while the supervisor had been lectured on pension income, the tax implications of part-time employment in the civilian sector, the psychology of switching allegiance from government service to a golf course, had been well spent. The audiotapes of the voices of the supposed taxi-driver and the British 'unlawful combatant' had been edited together and the nasal similarity could not be argued with.

  'You are saying . . .' The supervisor's voice eddied away, as if he could not stomach the enormity of a truth now striking him.

  Jed said, 'I am saying we freed the wrong man. I am saying that Fawzi al-Ateh, taxi-driver, was a bogus identity. We freed a man who was smart enough, sufficiently intelligent, to deceive us.'

  'He was flown back to Afghanistan, so what's the problem? Round him up, bring him back. It's a cakewalk.'

  Jed pushed across the desk the signal from Bagram, from Karen Lebed. The eyes scanned it, and the fingers could not hold the paper steady. There was a long sigh, like it was personal pain.

  'God Almighty - did we deserve this?'

  'Can't say, but it's what we've got. The supposition is that we released a British-origin prisoner who, most likely, never drove an Afghan taxi in his life . . . I suggest you look on the bright side.'

  The supervisor was dulled. 'I'd like to but where do I look?'

  All the times when the Agency and the Bureau guys had let him know they were the chosen people flashed in Jed's mind. Every little insultt, each put-down, every sneer, each patronizing quip floated by him. He might have felt regret at his supervisor's discomfort, but not at any shit that landed on the Agency and the Bureau. Jed grinned. 'I think other guys took that decision. I'd say we're clean.'

  The supervisor's gloomy response: 'I sat in.'

  'Only to rubber stamp. I don't want to be offensive, but you wouldn't have been in the loop.'

  The supervisor brightened. 'It was just a list of names put down in front of me. They'd already done the list.. . Jed, are you aware of the ultimate potential end-game of this?'

  'I know it'll be a bad day for the Bureau and the Agency.'

  The supervisor's fist tightened on the pencil he held. 'There are bigger things in the world, Jed, than turf wars. Look at it . . . The implications of the release of a man who has gone to that deal of trouble to disguise his identity mean, to me, that he is a dedicated and committed activist. We are not looking at some guy who is just anxious to get himself home. We are talking dedication, commitment. That is a prime man, a man capable of inflicting maximum danger. There could be consequences, Jed, real bad consequences.'

  'But they're not in our ballpark.'

  'Christ, there is a bigger picture.' The supervisor's shoulders dropped as if a burden weighed down on him. 'And that picture is a verified homeland threat. A British-born and -reared fighter, with a shitty little heart filled with hate, can go to places an Arab cannot

  . .. No name.'

  'Then we go find a name.'

  The supervisor's pencil was stabbed close to Jed's face. 'I wouldn't want this plastered all over the walls.'

  Jed threw his last card, the ace card: 'Shouldn't I get on a plane?'

  'Give me time.'

  'Thought we don't have much time.'

  'Leave me to do this, Jed, and my way. I am not having a situation where my last days here are in a conflict zone with the Bureau and the Agency, I am not.'

  Jed scraped his chair back. Between grated teeth, he bit back,

  'Don't bury this. If you are going to bury—''

  'I am not. I need twenty-four hours of time.'

  'After twenty-four hours, I should be on a plane. Don't think this can be buried and don't think I can be bounced off it. It's mine.'

  He left the file and the audiotapes on his supervisor's desk. He closed the door and left his man to work a strategy. He walked back to his office and heard the noise of the camp around him; the sun hit on him and he smelt the sea. He did not know where the matched voices would take him, if he was allowed to get on a plane. He felt proud, as if at last in his professional life he had achieved something of value. He strode past the open doors of the Agency team, and past the doors of the Bureau men.

  He went into the interrogation block where a prisoner, an escort and an interpreter waited for him, and he thought of the chaos he had let loose. He sat in front of the prisoner, a Yemeni, but another face was there. The Yemeni's features were gone, had merged into those of a taller man with a strong nose and a powerful jaw that the cringing protestations of innocence could not hide, and he thought of the skill of the man who had deceived them all.

  The woman was forgotten, as Tommy was. Danger was forgotten.

  Only survival counted. His mind was deadened and his memory gone.

  The sun was in Caleb's eyes. The dried air scraped his throat and the growing wind lifted sand from the hoofs of Hosni's camel, which pricked his face. His eyes were squeezed shut against the grains. If he opened his eyes, blinked, he saw Hosni's back low across his saddle. He rocked on the hump of the Beautiful One, and he thought lhat only her courage carried her forward. She moved with leaden slow steps over the soft sand. More often than on any other day, he thought he would fall, and he yearned for the evening and the smaller portion of water that his tongue would move round his mouth, and the cold of the night, the uncooked dough, the handful of dates, and then sleep. He had heard Fahd fall behind him and the shouts of the boy, but he had not stopped, had let the boy get Fahd hack on to his camel. At the last stop, when the sun had been highest, fiercest, when they had remounted the kneeling camels, Rashid had put a rope round Hosni's waist and had knotted it to the saddle.

  Hiss survival depended on himself.

  The anger billowed in him.

  Caleb recognized it, understood it.

  The anger came in sharp surges . . . It was the same anger as in the camps. In X-Ray and Delta, the target of the anger had been the guards. The guards imprisoned him . .. Fahd and Hosni were his gaolers. They had the keys and the batons, and they were around him. His mind wandered loose. He was their prisoner. He had the hate
for them, as for the guards. His throat, without water, was pricking with the pain, his eyes hurt, the blister sores ate at him. He was the one, supposedly, with the strength, and he was rocking, sliding.

  Caleb toppled, lost his hold.

  He went down the Beautiful One's flank, was dumped in the sand.

  He fell face first.

  He heard the shrill laughter behind him.

  The Beautiful One had stopped and towered over him and the great brown eyes gazed down on him. It was Fahd's laughter.

  Fahd reached down and Caleb took his hand. Fahd heaved him up and Caleb caught the reins that hung from the Beautiful One's neck.

  He climbed, struggled, pulled himself back into the saddle.

  'Are you going to fail us? We do not expect the mule to fail us.'

  Caleb spat the sand. 'Is that what I am, a mule?'

  'A mule is noble, a beast of burden.'

  He ran his tongue round his mouth, let it gather the sand, then scraped it with his finger off his tongue. 'Is that what I am to you, a mule?' he repeated.

  'What else?' All the laughter had gone from Fahd's face. It was grim, closed. 'A mule is important to us because it carries what we put on its back. It goes where we want it to go, carries what we want it to carry. It is necessary for us to use the mule, but if we thought it would fail us we would shoot it. We would not waste food on it and we would find another mule. You are a mule - a pack animal. You will carry what we put on your back.'

  Caleb rode on towards his family.

  Instinctively, he looked up around him, ignored the sand blown into his face. He scanned the dunes and the tips of the sand walls, and he looked for danger, and saw nothing. Once, briefly, he looked into the blue sky but then the low sun burned his eyes.

  Chapter Twelve

  He thought of rain, cooling, healing and sweet, spattering on to the panes of windows.

  That last night he had slept, had not dreamed, woken as exhausted as when he had lain down on the sand. In the morning they had set out again. Twice, a bull camel loaded with two of the boxes had slopped, had refused to go forward, and each time Rashid had come back from the front of them, had taken the bull's head in his hands, had put his own face close to it, stroked and soothed its bellowing, and whispered to it. Twice, the bull camel had responded to the kindness of the guide, had shown its loyalty to him, had started again to walk into the strength of the wind.

  It was late in the afternoon when they had halted, not to pitch camp. The guide said they would stop for a short time, then go on.

  Caleb sat against the body of the kneeling Beautiful One and felt the rhythmic panting of the beast against his back.

  If he went where his memory took him, he would have stood with his arms outstretched, his head thrown back and his shirt unbuttoned, and he would have let the rain cascade on to him. When it had drenched him, and his clothes had clung to him, he would have danced and sung, gloried in it. He would not have huddled like the woman who pushed her baby in a buggy on the pavement or cringed from it like the man on the towpath who dragged his tiny ratting dog on a lead. He yearned for the rain that would have cooled the heat burning him and soothed the blister sores, that would have dribbled sweet on his lips.

  The guide had poured water from the neck of a water bag into a metal mug that Fahd had held. Fahd had carried the mug to Hosni.

  Perhaps Hosni did not see the mug clearly. Perhaps his eyesight failed him, perhaps he was too confused by exhaustion, by sunstroke. Hosni reached out, snatched at the mug, missed it and caught Fahd's wrist, twisted it. The mug toppled. Water fell from it, like rain.

  The water drops from the mug sparkled, jerked Caleb from his fantasy.

  'Idiot. .. fool,' Fahd screamed.

  Hosni whimpered.

  'You wasted water - imbecile.'

  Hosni had the mug in his thin claw fingers and tugged for it. More water slurped over the rim. When Fahd released his hold on the mug and Hosni sagged back, more water spilled.

  'I bring you water. What do you do? You throw it in the sand.'

  Caleb watched, said nothing. The mug would have been a third full when Fahd had offered it to Hosni's stretched-out hands. Now there would only be a wetness at the mug's bottom.

  'You don't get any more. You waste water, you go without,' Fahd yelled in his fury and his body quivered. 'We should never have brought you.'

  He saw Hosni tilt the mug so that the last drops would run into his mouth, and then run his tongue round the sides and the base of it.

  Hosni's wet watery eyes seemed to plead with Fahd as he prised the mug back from the fingers.

  'There is no more water for you. I am not sharing my water with you.'

  Fahd took away the mug. Caleb saw Hosni, his head bent, scrape the film of sand off the place where the water had fallen to retrieve the sand that was darkened. He cupped it into his hands, gobbled it into his mouth, then choked. The guide poured out Fahd's measure and Fahd drank it to the final drop.

  'You will learn it for the next time, you do not throw away water,'

  Fahd shouted.

  Without water, they died. The camels could go a maximum of eighteen days without water, the boy had said, then they would die

  - Caleb had long ago lost count of how many days they had been in the Sands. The men could not go eighteen hours without water. The bags on the Beautiful One were all empty. Caleb was not sure how many bags remained, filled, on the guide's camel; one or two, he hoped . .. Water went again into the mug, and Fahd brought it to him. Caleb took the mug.

  He looked down into the water. It was green-coloured, dead. He felt the dryness of his throat, the roughness inside his mouth.

  He remembered the rain, and the comfort of it. He held the mug carefully as he stood and walked across to Hosni.

  He put his finger into Hosni's mouth, worked it round his tongue and the recesses of the man's throat, took out the sand and smeared it on his robe. Then, Caleb held the mug at Hosni's lips and tipped it.

  When it was empty he carried the mug back to Rashid.

  'We are carrying two fools,' Fahd snarled at Caleb, his face contorted with anger.

  The heat burning them and burning the sand, and the sky that was clear, blue and without pity, the expanse of the desert, destroyed them. Caleb knew it.

  They mounted up, rode away, and the windblown sand covered any trace of their passing.

  Another lunchtime, another lecture. The crossword on the back page of Michael Lovejoy's newspaper had not yet been started. The folded page lay across his knee and the pencil was in his hand, but he had read no more than the first question, one across: A woman who strives to he like a man lacks . . . (Graffito, NY) eight letters. Lovejoy had his usual seat at the back of the room. He'd come down early, when he'd finished a mid-morning meeting, and had left the newspaper on the favoured chair. Just as well. They were sitting on the aisle steps and standing inside the door.

  The speaker had the appearance of an old-fashioned preparatory-school teacher. He was as mild-looking a man as could be imagined wispy grey hair that had not been combed, a checked shirt with the collar curled up, a woven tie that was not pulled tight, a jacket with leather at the elbows, trousers that hadn't been pressed, and shoes that were scuffed. The man who had filled the lecture room in Thames House, on the north embankment of the river, came with a reputation. Officers from every branch of the Security Service had cut lunch to hear the scientist who was said to be better-informed on his specialized subject than any other man or woman in the United Kingdom. The subject was 'Dirty Bombs'.

  'I don't consider there to be a great risk from either microbiological or chemical sources. An explosion that scatters anthrax or smallpox spores or that spreads a nerve gas in aerosol form would have little effect, even in the confined space of an underground-railway system.

  The evidence from the United States of America, anthrax, and from Japan, nerve gas such as Sarin, tells me the result is bigger in instant headlines than in the reality
of damage caused. No, it is the real Dirty Bomb that concerns me, the radioactive bomb. Let us consider, first, the availability of the necessary materials for that bomb . . . '

  There was a grated cough from the assistant director of C Branch, otherwise nervous silence. Lovejoy had read the assessments, but the slightness and mildness of the speaker, and the quietness of his voice, gave his message a uniquely chilling quality. He was known to many of his younger colleagues - when they were polite about him - as a

  'veteran'. A veteran of the Cold War counter-intelligence work, and the days of the Marxists in the trade unions, and a veteran of the twenty years of Irish guerrilla warfare, he had also learned the earlier history of the Security Service. Already, he thought this the bleakest lecture of a nightmare future he had heard since he had enrolled from Army service. In fact, and his mind roved, the only comparable moment would have been when the Service was told, sixty-four years earlier, of the imminence of a German invasion.

  'We start with a suitcase. Any suitcase of a size that a man or woman uses for a week's stay in a hotel. Stand at Heathrow airport, at the arrivals gates of any of the terminals, and you will see passengers flooding through with suitcases of such a size. The wires and timing devices are available at any hardware and electronics shops. The terrorist will need ten pounds of Semtex or military explosives or what's used in quarrying operations, and he'll need detonators - everything so far is readily available. Sadly, and I urge you to believe me, the necessary radioactive material can be found without difficulty. Caesium chloride would be suitable. Vast quantities of it litter the countryside and farm buildings of the former Soviet Union. It was used to blast seeds, in powder form, at high pressure, therefore making them more productive once sown. We do not have to go to the agricultural industries of Belarus or the Ukraine. Radioactive materials govern X-rays. Medical instruments for the treatment of cervical cancer use caesium. The radio isotope caesium 137, which if spilled has a contamination life of thirty years, is widely used in radiotherapy. We are awash with it, but I am going to stay with caesium chloride, what you could hold in one hand, no more - bought in lethal quantities for next to nothing. The caesium chloride is packed round the explosives, and is covered with clothes, books, washing-bags, presents, and only the most awake security man at an airport, monitoring check-in and fresh off a meal break, will see anything suspicious.'