The Unknown Soldier

by Gerald Seymour

  All of them in the room were supposed to be the last line of defence for the tax-payers who coughed up their salaries. He did not know where that defence line could be drawn, and the hushed quiet in the room told him that none of the others, newcomers or old-timers, had a bloody clue . .. and he remembered the young Russian from last week, and the psychologist from the week before, and their messages. He would go home that night to his wife, Mercy, and not stop at the pub - where they thought he worked for Social Security -

  and he'd talk it through with her, because she was the only shoulder for crying on that he had.

  'A man walks with this suitcase, not an onerous burden, into London's Trafalgar Square or New York's Times Square or he approaches a major intersection in central Paris. He puts down the suitcase and walks away, and before the alarm is raised, the suitcase explodes. A big, big bang. On that night's television news, we see burning cars, damaged buildings - all very obvious - and we are told that three people have been killed and thirty injured. We do not see or hear the cloud, the particles of caesium chloride. The cloud climbs in air heated by the detonation, then it moves on the wind. The speed is extraordinary - half a mile in one minute, five miles in thirty minutes. The particles reach cooler air, further from the bomb site, and they drop. They fall on grass, into gardens, on to buildings that are residential and that house thousands of office workers, and they seep into drains and through the air-intake ducts of the underground's ventilation system. Twenty-four hours later, the terrorists use a Middle East originating website to announce that the bomb is dirty, the city is contaminated. Then, ladies and gentlemen, what do you do?'

  Go and live in a cave in mid-Wales. Go and rent a farmhouse in the Yorkshire dales. There were no names, no faces, on the files in Library, and Lovejoy doubted that the files of the Federal Bureau of Investigation held anything of value. They groped in the dark. He sensed, in the room, a pent-up desire to be out and looking, hunting, and a matching frustration that there was no target to search for.

  'Depending on the proximity to the explosion, the particles could be harmful to human life for up to two hundred years - which is, to most of us, for ever. The risk of fast-developing cancer is small, but in the long-term that risk increases. In theory millions, born and unborn, face the nightmare of being cut down by hideous tumours.

  In reality, the greater problem for government is the spread of panic.

  Panic. An ugly word for an ugly image. The creation of panic is the terrorist's principal aim, and I guarantee to you that he will have succeeded. Consider the psychological impact, so much worse than the recent SARS outbreak, then imagine panic on a scale never seen before by our western societies, and a commercial shut-down that is unprecedented. You see, ladies and gentlemen, civilians under the weight of the German blitz or the Anglo-American bombing of Hamburg, Berlin or Dresden could see, feel, touch, hear those attacks

  - but this cloud moves invisibly, at speed, silently. Panic would be total. What response can government make?'

  Precious little - it would come out of a clear blue sky. The explosion, the panic would tumble from that sky, probably without warning. And the lead to the identity of such a man who carried a suitcase, that also would come out of the same cloudless sky The good old clear blue sky was both the hell and the heaven of counter-intelligence officers.

  'The clean-up after the spill of one fistful of radioactive material in a Brazilian city, not scattered by explosives and not riding on the wind, necessitated the removal of three and a half thousand cubic metres of earth and rubble. My scenario is a bomb in the heart of a city, and the impossibility of stripping out buildings, tunnels, gardens and parks. It would take years, not months - and where then do you dump this Himalayan heap of dirtied material? The cost would be prohibitive. I venture that the answer is mass evacuation, then the abandonment of an inner city . . . The panic caused would initiate a new Dark Age. I can offer only one fractionally small area of comfort to you.'

  Lovejoy decided on the answer to one across.

  'If the man who carried the suitcase into that crowded city centre never opened it, never touched the caesium chloride, and was well clear when it exploded, he would survive. I cannot say the same for the bomb-maker. I would estimate that the bomb-maker's un-avoidable contact with the powder would limit his life to a few weeks after the completion of the device. He would die a slow and most unpleasant death. That is the only comfort I can offer you, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for your attention.'

  There was 110 titter of relieved laughter at the fate of a bomb architect, and no applause when the scientist stepped back from the lectern. No chair moved. Lovejoy wrote: Ambition. 'A woman who strives to be like a man lacks ambition'. It would give him a start for three, five and six down. For a moment, the crossword was protection for Michael Lovejoy against the awfulness of the message.

  When he reached his office, and his sandwich, there was a note on his desk from his Branch director.

  Mikey,

  Arriving tomorrow, American Airlines 061, from Florida, is Jed Dietrich (Defense Intelligence Agency). His people coy/shy about reason for his travel to UK, but they request co-operation. You, please, meet, escort and wet-nurse.

  Boris.

  A clear blue sky - not bloody likely. He looked from his window, out over the Thames. The cloud was low, ashen and carried rain.

  The voice was quiet, calm, and eased into Marty's headphones. 'This is Oscar Golf. We appreciate that conditions are adverse, but we think we - you, sorry - are doing well. You have good control and we like what you're doing.'

  He acknowledged curtly.

  'Unless there is a major deterioration in upper-air wind strength, we believe that we - sorry again - you should keep the bird up.

  That's the bottom line. We have complete confidence in you, Marty, but if you get too tired, need to rest, then we will take over. We are monitoring all output while Lizzy-Jo sleeps, everything is A number one. This is quality flying in that wind strength, and we go to the range limit. Oscar Golf, out.'

  Lizzy-Jo had all the floor space behind him. She had brought in her sleeping-bag, used it as a mattress. Her head was close to a wall and her feet were by the door. George had been in during the afternoon and had driven them both insane with the banging of his hammer and the scrape of his spanner, but he hadn't succeeded in getting the air-conditioning motor going. She wore short shorts and had her blouse unbuttoned, right down. His mother, back in California, would have turned up her lip and said it wasn't decent. If he turned, Marty could see a deep brown birthmark on the white skin of her lower stomach, Lizzy-Jo's breasts and the squashed-down nipples. Back in Langley, where Oscar Golf was, they did Lizzy-Jo's work and monitored the real-time camera images. He wasn't happy with her sleeping. Oscar Golf, and his crowd, were not tuned to the desert - not like she was. Ten more minutes, he'd give her. He sat very still in his chair, only his fingers moving with the joystick. He wondered whether she dreamed of her daughter, and of her husband who sold insurance in North Carolina. The few times he looked at her, Marty thought Lizzy-Jo looked good.

  But he didn't look often.

  It was hard flying. If it had not been for the order from Langley, Carnival Girl would not have been up. He was pressured. Refusal was not an option. In good weather conditions, without upper-air wind speeds that were at the limit or beyond, Oscar Golf and his people could have had control. In good weather, with what the instrumentation told them, Carnival Girl could have been flown from Langley, all commands transmitted from - whatever it was - six thousand miles' distance. But the weather was miserable.

  And because the weather was miserable, with the high winds, Marty had done that rare thing, had imposed his will on George.

  Carnival Girl would fly, not First Lady. The clapped-out, raddled Predator would be up, not the better aircraft. First Lady was too valuable to go down, hit by those winds, a dragonfly with broken wings. He thought that since they'd moved from Bagram he had learned more about
adverse-weather flying in a week, or ten days, than he had known in years of piloting before. His hands ached on the little joystick, but he held her steady and she ate the ground and beamed the pictures. Soon the night would come, then they'd go from the real-time camera to the infra-red images . . . No fucking way would he permit Oscar Golf to take over control of Carnival Girl. She was his, if she went down it would be his fault, no other asshole's.

  He flew her over the emptiness of the sand.

  She woke. He heard the floor creak. He felt her hands on his rigid shoulders, on the tightness of the muscles.

  She had the sleep still in her voice. 'How is it up there?'

  'Like shit,' Marty said.

  'Wind still bad?'

  'Getting worse - moved to south-south-west, forty knots.'

  'What's acceptable?'

  'Gone beyond acceptable, the manual says we're grounded . . .

  We're on the edge.'

  She slipped back into her seat. She told Oscar Golf that she was 'on station'. Her blouse still hung open, like that wasn't important. There was a line of sweat dribbling from between her breasts and down to her navel. He could feel, through his fingers on the joystick, the force of the gale winds that hit Carnival Girl . . . Then the Predator bounced, and fell. The dial needles jerked in slashed movements.

  Lights winked. There was a warning howl. She plunged. Lizzy-Jo stayed quiet. Marty had to let her go. She seemed to plummet and the real-time camera's image brought the desert sand leaping up at them. It was what they trained for in the simulator at Nellis, the air pocket - low-air density. He felt, through his fingers, the strain on the wings, already burdened by the Hellfires. She fell for a minute and twelve seconds, and all the time Marty kept the nose cone down and prayed she would not go to tail down and corkscrew. She seemed to hit a floor of air, then he had control. For three land miles he took her on level flight and checked every piece of instrumentation for damage, then climbed her back up and returned into the high thermal winds. Marty sighed. Lizzy-Jo's hand was on his arm, and she squeezed, like that was the way to tell him he'd done well. He was calculating how much fuel had been used in the engine thrust to hold her as she was going down, and how much more had gone with the climb to cruise altitude, and how much flight time had been lost.

  She said, face set and jaw jutted, 'We'll get them - whoever they are and wherever - I have the feeling that we'll get them.'

  Lizzy-Jo had not done up her blouse and he didn't think she was going to.

  The light was failing.

  Bart had no alternative. A braver man would have walked away long ago - he was not brave and accepted it. Never had been, never would be - had never stood up to his father, or to his wife. He sat that evening in the outer office of the real-estate rental company, and waited for the little prig inside to be so kind as to see him. He had been punctual for the appointment, the prig wasn't.

  His business there was to seek an extension to his rental agreement for the villa. In that past week he had failed, again, to stand up to Eddie bloody Wroughton. 'You leave when I say so. Files go walkabout when I decide it - and that's not now. You are going, Bart, nowhere.' And

  'going nowhere' necessitated an extension to the tenancy contract.

  The only way that he would win his freedom from Eddie bloody Wroughton was when he produced information of such value that it trivialized all the gossip, rumour and innuendo that was the stock-in-trade he peddled. Then he could quit, run for the damned airport.

  Nor had he stood up to Ariel. At least Ariel had made him feel wanted, not threatened. One evening in the Dan Hotel on the beach-front, one day shared between a car and an office in Jerusalem, one morning walking in the central streets of Tel Aviv. Ariel had courted him, had been assiduous. For the evening, Ariel had talked of the threat to peace in the whole region that was the work of the three organizations, Hamas, the Al-Aqsa Brigade and Hizbollah. 'They hate peace, they make war on peace,' Ariel had said. He had been driven in Jerusalem by Ariel to a fruit and vegetable market and to a bus station, and he had been told where the suicide bombers had detonated their waistcoats, and he had tried to imagine the carnage at the locations now rebuilt. 'The zealots kill many, but hundreds more who have survived, or have buried their loved ones, will be scarred for the rest of their days by the fanaticism of these murderers,' Ariel had told him. In a bare office, in a building that had no nameplate by the door, he had been shown the books of photographs of the immediate aftermath of the explosions, and he had seen men carrying from the smoke and fire the debris of severed arms, legs, torsos, heads of men, women and children. 'The ones who plan and recruit, then arm the kids with explosives and send them to their deaths are the men we target - they do not "sacrifice" themselves, they do not look to be martyrs, they hide behind the delusions of the kids. They are the murderers who destroy the chance of peace.

  We target them to kill them,' Ariel had murmured in his ear, as he turned the pages of the books. He had been walked in Tel Aviv down Ben Yehuda and along the seafront, and had seen restaurants, cafes and discotheques with guards outside them. 'If we are lucky, at the last moment, as the bomber hesitates and steels himself, or creates suspicion because he wears a coat to hide his bomb and it is hot, the guard may intervene in time, but we need great luck - if we know the bomb planner, and his movements, and his factory, if we strike him then we do not need luck. More highly than luck, we value intelligence. If you help us, Dr Bartholomew, you would be a proud servant of peace, and honoured,' Ariel had whispered in his ear, as they had threaded between the pavement crowds. He was not a brave man, not then and not now.

  When he was called in, forty minutes after the time of his appointment, he did not meet his landlord. The villa was owned by a prince of the blood, and the tacky work of negotiation was done by a hireling, the prig in the white robe and red-checked ghutrah who pared his nails with a chrome file and waved him casually to a chair.

  That evening Bart surprised himself.

  Not bravery but bloody-mindedness ruled. Everything they preached at the embassy and the Chamber of Commerce about patience was abandoned. He launched in with a blatant untruth: 'I don't mind sitting in the waiting room for forty wasted minutes, but my patients mind. I am late for home calls to two patients who are unwell, who need my attention. You are dealing with a busy man.

  Now, I seek an extension to my tenancy of six months. I note that five of the villas in my compound are currently empty because of the security situation. If a sixth villa is not to join them, bringing in no rent, then I require a discount of twenty per cent for that half-year. I believe that should be acceptable or I will go elsewhere.'

  He leaned forward. His expression, carefully nurtured and fraudulent, was of concern and anxiety. 'Have you seen a doctor recently?

  Your neck looks a bit swollen to me. Had any pain in the glands in your neck, pains or aches? I'm not saying you should be worried, but I really do advise that you book an appointment with your doctor and get him to give you a run-over. Nasty things, when they go wrong, glands. Best caught early.'

  Masterful, and the little prig had blanched. His fingers were under the hang of the ghutrah and were massaging a naturally plump neck.

  'Right, I've two appointments to cover, so I'll be on my way. I'm looking at a six-month extension with a twenty per cent reduction in rent - and, of course, my sincere best wishes to His Royal Highness.

  I can see myself out.'

  He went out into the evening. A harsh wind snatched at his trousers. The chauffeur flashed the headlights. As Bart walked to the waiting vehicle, he reflected that - at long last - he had stood his corner . . . not on anything that mattered, but he felt better for it.

  There was a spring in his step. The bloody wind caught his tie, snaked it over his shoulder.

  Beth heard the wind beat on the windows. Outside, the palm trees'

  fronds shuddered. She held up the book. 'Everyone got it, Sonnet Eight? I'll start, first two lines, then each of you, to a
stop or a colon, from the right. "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate." N e x t . . . '

  In front of her, hanging on her words, were her four most advanced pupils. Shakespeare for them, not the technical language of petroleum extraction. Her finger wavered towards the chemist from Pakistan.

  It was risque for her to have chosen a sonnet of love: it was at the limit of religious correctness. One day, when she had her flight out booked, confirmed, she might just get round to The Merchant of Venice, give them Shylock's lament. For now, love was challenge enough, and taught by a woman.

  She cued in the pipeline engineer. The man read and stuttered to a halt. 'Miss Bethany, I do not understand it.'

  The men laughed, she grinned. She could have done Lear with them, or the speeches at Agincourt, or given them Coriolanus.

  She had chosen love. A nun, a permanent virgin, at the convent school had made the class learn the sonnet by heart. Not a full hour of the day had gone by when she had not thought of him . .. and the wind outside now whipped the sand and she wondered where he sheltered, huddled, and how hard it went for him.

  'You will, when we're through it. OK, on we go . . .' She pointed to the airfield manager.

  He had not left her. He had been with her in the shower in the morning, no time for a bath, and as she'd gulped down her breakfast.

  He was with her now. She heard the beat of his breath as he had dug with the shovel. She saw him stare out the men who would have killed her. His voice was with her, as he had gone away with the boy: