The Unknown Soldier

by Gerald Seymour

  Leave it to me. You didn't tell me your business in the Kingdom.'

  'I took early retirement from the Luftwaffe. Now, I train air-traffic controllers for the Saudi Air Force.'

  Bart wrote up his notes. 'Do you now? That must be fascinating.'

  'Complete chaos, it blows my mind.'

  Never looking up from the notes, with studied casualness, Bart asked, 'What in particular do you find stressful about your work?'

  He was a worm at the core of an apple - victory on his rent or not, he was still Eddie bloody Wroughton's man.

  Caleb rode with Hosni. He sensed the wind slackened, but the smell was worse. Fahd's body was bloated by the sun's heat, and the wind carried to him the stench, sweet and sickly. He remembered the smell of the bodies in the trenches after the big bombers had gone over.

  The sand grains were plastered round the old Egyptian's eyes.

  They were dulled as if the life was going from them, and Hosni's head never turned to him. He rode with him for kindness. He thought of how it must have been when the missiles had come down.

  And how it would have been, in a half-light, when the camels had scattered, when Hosni's own had stampeded, its passenger strapped on, shaken, jolted, deafened, and not knowing. From a past life, a memory surfaced . . . There had been an old man who walked beside the canal, sunshine or rain, with a stick, and the kids had shouted at him and he had flailed the stick around him, but had not seen them.

  Caleb had been one of the kids. He had thought of the old man beside the canal, his stick and the jeers, and he rode with Hosni.

  Hosni was so frail, so weak, and Caleb thought his courage was an inspiration.

  'What, Hosni, can you see?'

  'I see what I need to see. I see the sand, I see the sun.'

  'Is there something a doctor can do?'

  'A year ago, perhaps there was something. Two years ago, for certain a doctor could do something. We were hunted, first in the Tor a Bora, then in caves on the border. I could not go to Quetta or to Kandahar to find a doctor. I was with the Emir General. If I had gone to find a doctor and been taken . . . I knew too much to go to Quetta or Kandahar. In Oman I saw a doctor.'

  'Was there nothing he could do?'

  The head came up and the smile cracked the face; the caked sand spilled down from it. 'He could do something. He could tell me. I have from the doctor a diagnosis. It cannot be treated, it is not reversible, it deteriorates.'

  'What?'

  'Maybe I washed in dirty water. Maybe I waded a stream that was polluted. It could have been long ago, right back in the days when we fought the Soviets and I was beside the Emir General. The doctor had a fine name for the condition, onchocerciasis, and a finer name for the parasite, Onchocerca volvulus. The doctor in Oman was a very educated and well-read man. The parasite is a worm that can live for fourteen years in the body. The female enters the body through any lesion, a scraped knee or cut foot, as you go through dirty and polluted water, and it breeds larvae. Soon your body is the home of many millions of worms and they roam through you. Some, it does not need to be many, make the long journey to the backs of your eyes.

  They live there, the little worms, eat there and breed there. The diagnosis is eventual blindness.'

  'How much time do you have?'

  'I have enough time to do what I wish to do. Do not be frightened for me.'

  'Tell me.'

  'I will not live to go blind.'

  'Explain.'

  'There is a suitcase or a bag that a brother prepares. In the bag are materials. I handle them, I work with them. I have said I will do it.

  To touch the materials is to walk away from life. When the bag or case is sealed it can be carried in safety. I dream of it. The dream sustains me in this hell. And I dream of the young man who will carry the case or the bag, and he is my friend.'

  'I am your friend, Hosni.'

  'Do you hate enough?'

  The smell of Fahd's body played in his nose. The noise of the thunder was in Caleb's ears, and he saw the fire exhaust from the missile streaming down from the sky.

  'I hate enough. I will carry a case or a bag.'

  Camp Delta, Guantanamo Bay.

  Exercise day .. . Another week gone by. Exercise, then his shower.

  He was escorted into the dirt yard. It was the second time that he had been led into the exercise yard and had seen the new goalposts.

  His hands were manacled. A chain led from the manacles to his waist, circled by another chain. More chain link hung down from his waist and reached the shackles on his ankles. The guards let go of his arms. 'Off you go, kid - go get your circuits in.'

  The football pitch was in the centre of the yard, with white lines marked out across the dried mud. Around the pitch, a line of men shuffled the circuit, each twenty paces apart, their steps restricted by the length of chain between the shackled ankles, and listened to the shouts from the pitch where twenty or twenty-five prisoners chased a football. The most recent edict at Delta had invited prisoners to apply for extra exercise. Caleb had been confused by it. He had not known whether he should volunteer, whether it would help the deceit, or whether it would compromise him. If he had taken up the invitation would he then be expected to inform on fellow prisoners?

  He had not put his name forward. He had fifteen minutes of exercise ahead of him, but the football-players had an hour of chasing the ball.

  A big American, tracksuited, ruled the pitch with a whistle. He loathed them, all of them, loathed them whether they wore a tracksuit and praised, whether they wore the bright sun shirts and interrogated, whether they had the camouflage uniform and the key bars to the manacles and shackles.

  He did his circuits. When a goal was scored, the American blasted his whistle and applauded. He looked at the players, dancing because the ball was in the back netting, and tried to remember the faces. If any were moved to the cell next to his, he would be more careful, would guard against the smallest mistake.

  At the end of his last circuit, his escort gestured for him.

  His arms were held as he was led out of the yard. He would not exercise for another week.

  'You could be doing that, kid, playing soccer. You've only got to ask.'

  He did not understand. He smiled nervously at the guard. He had learned his part.

  He was taken to the shower block.

  With the loathing was contempt. He felt superior to the men who escorted him, unmanacled and unshackled him, who watched him undress, who saw him into the cubicle where the water sluiced down on him. He did not come cheap. They would not turn him with the offer of a game of football. He deceived them. The certainty of his superiority gave him strength.

  A towel was thrown to him.

  Marty lay on his back on the camp bed. Beside it, propped against the chair on which his clothes hung, was the picture, his only valued possession. Behind the glass, spattered with sand grains and misted with condensation, was Marty's hero; the hero at Gundamuck who had wrapped round his chest the colours of the 44th Regiment.

  Lieutenant Souter, a hundred and sixty-two years before, had survived the last stand of his troops and gone home, feted.

  Marty aspired to heroism, and did not know how he would achieve it.

  If he had still been at Bagram, Marty would now have been in the Officers' Club. He would have been a centre of attention. The beers would have kept coming. The Agency people would have been round him, pilots, sensor operators, interrogators and analysts, and the cans would have kept coming for free. He had done a launch, seen the Hellfires go, watched the cloud mushroom up. It would have been his party time, his moment of heroics, if he had been at Bagram.

  But he was not, he was in this shit-hole.

  At Bagram Marty would have had an audience, with supervisors and ranking agents doing cheer-leading. His praises would have been sung. And the talk would have moved on to him bringing Carnival Girl home, with the tanks showing empty and the wind plucking at her as she touched down. He
was a goddamn hero but no one was around to tell him.

  The wind battered at the tent's sides. The sand came in between the flaps and the ground sheet, and the roof billowed. A solitary beer, given him by George, was half hidden on the chair by his clothes, which were hitched on the back. Marty hadn't pulled the can's ring.

  The last thing he'd heard from Oscar Golf was a demand for

  'soonest' information on potential damage to the port-side wing-tip of Carnival Girl in the touch-down. There had been no hero-gram out of Langley, no congratulation from goddamn Gonsalves, nothing. He had staggered out of the Ground Control, had been close to spilling himself on to the sand at the foot of the trailer steps, and George had given him the beer, which hadn't come from an icebox.

  George had gone off in the jeep to tow the bird off the runway. Lizzy-Jo had been slumped, dead to the world, over her end of the workbench. He should have slept, but he could not. Again and again, searing in his mind, he saw the lurch of the platform when the first Hellfire went away from Carnival Girl, the ball of fire going down, and the camels breaking their line of march, then the cloud - and the second missile going into that cloud. Could not sleep.

  The tent's entrance flap was lifted back. The wind came in behind her. The sand spewed round her, spraying on to his legs and body, and over his face.

  She dropped the flap.

  She sat on the bed. Her hips, in the tight short trousers, were against his knees. He could have covered himself, could have reached for the boxers or his singlet, but he did not. Too tired, too dead, too cheated to care. The bed bent under her weight.

  'That's a fine sight,' Lizzy-Jo said, and winked. 'Might frighten a girl in the Carolinas - but not a New Yorker.'

  She had not buttoned up her blouse. Her hand rested on the hairs of his chest.

  'Did you sleep?'

  'No. Tried to, didn't.'

  'You want the news?'

  Her fingers pulled at the hairs, teased them.

  'What's the news?'

  'You look like you need a lift-up . . .'

  For months, Marty had worked with Lizzy-Jo, had shared a workbench with her. She'd been good, he was raw. The guys said, at Bagram, that she was assigned to mind him. Half the pilots at Bagram would have given a month's pay to work alongside Lizzy-Jo. He'd wondered often enough whether she'd complained about being put with him because he was new and given the dirty work, hadn't been an Air Force flier, had acne and fat-lensed glasses. He didn't know her - knew about Rick, who sold insurance, and about Clara, who was watched over by Rick's parents during the working day, knew about a marriage that had died, knew about her dedication .. . and nothing of her.

  ' Langley says that flight out of Shaybah was of the highest quality technical achievement, that it was pressed home in the most adverse conditions, that the video record of the flight and the missile firing will be used for training programmes in the future. It's what Langley said.'

  He felt the blood pound in his cheeks.

  She was bent over him, her breasts hanging close to his chest where her fingers played in the hairs. 'And Gonsalves came through from Riyadh. He said he was proud of us. If you'd stayed around in the trailer you'd have heard what he said.'

  He blushed, felt like a kid. It was like when his high-school grades had come through - and he'd thought he'd flunked when he hadn't.

  'I'd say it's party time.'

  She leaned over him, reaching for the can. He did not know her, did not know what she felt for him . . . and her finger was into the ring and tugging it. The beer's foam sprayed over him, ran on his belly. She tilted the can for him to drink and the beer spilled from his mouth as he swallowed. He thought he'd drunk half the can, then she put it down. She licked the warm beer off his chest, took the hairs in her mouth, then her tongue was on his stomach.

  'You good to party?'

  Marty nodded, closed his eyes. She kicked off her flip-flops and wriggled out of the tight short trousers. Her face was serious, set -

  like the business was important - as she stood and pulled down her panties, then her weight was on him. The condom had been in her pocket, and she ripped the wrapping off with her teeth and peeled it over him.

  He turned his head away so that he could not see her face . . . and he did not know why, what she needed from him, whether she had done it like this with the insurance salesman. The sweat ran in rivulets between her breasts and on to him, oiled them and fastened them together. The last time had been with a girl at Nellis, from the management of the base canteen, and she'd had thicker spectacles than him and had weighed more than a hundred and fifty pounds.

  She'd hoped he'd marry her. Then he'd gone to Bagram and she'd never written.

  He had killed. The reward for him, for killing, was to get laid twice in a half-hour. Maybe she had done it many times at Bagram, in her own prefabricated quarters or in a pilot's, but it did not matter to him. He gloried in the feel of her and squeezed deeper inside her the second time. He heard her shallow cries and the pace of her breathing, and he hung on to her as if in fear that it would finish. He did not see into her eyes, did not know her. He pushed his hips against hers. At the last moment, he yelled out, gasped, and sobbed his thanks to her. She squealed . .. He wondered how many of the technical guys or Maintenance heard her, if George did. He could go no deeper. His nails gouged her back and the sweat came off her and was in his mouth and he tasted the salt of it, with the beer.

  Lizzy-Jo took the second one off him, knotted it, dropped it beside the bed.

  She kissed his cheek, like she was his aunt.

  She knelt on the bed over him and her head was cocked up. 'You know what's different?'

  Marty panted, 'You and me, us? That was fantastic, it was—'

  'You dumb ass,' she said, sharp. She showed no passion. Her face was the same, serious and set, as it had been when she'd zoomed the camera for the freeze-frame and when she'd launched. 'It's the wind.'

  'I don't hear any wind.'

  'You fool. That's what's different.'

  He looked at the sides of the tent, then at its roof. The tent shook in the wind but not like it might collapse. He heard the sing of the wind but no longer its scream. She had her panties back on, was dragging up her short tight trousers and slipping on her blouse. The wind was down. Now it was not carrying sand under the flaps and on to the groundsheet. She bent over him and he tried to kiss her, but her face turned away and she only reached down to pick up the two knotted condoms, which went into her pocket. . . He did not understand anything of her. 'Why did you come here, to me?'

  'I thought we deserved a party - didn't we?'

  She went out through the flap and it dropped back. Marty kicked himself off the bed. He dressed slowly. A clean shirt, boxers and T-shirt from his bag, and the old jeans. His mother and father, up in the cabin overlooking Santa Barbara, had never asked him whether he had a girlfriend, seemed to expect that one day he'd turn up with one; he didn't know how they'd feel about a woman like Lizzy-Jo. He wrote to them once a month, was due to, but he would not tell them about his party. He drank the rest of the beer, stale and flat, and s;plashed water on his face. He did not go for a shower, did not want to take the smell of her off him.

  Outside the tent, the sun hit him.

  A small windsock flew from a pole on the far side of the satellite-dish trailer; it was out but not rigid.

  A little knot of men worked around the port-side wing of Carnival Girl, and George and Lizzy-Jo blocked his view of the forward fuselage. He walked towards them. George faced him, stepped aside and made a mock bow of respect. It was black on the white of the fuselage. Marty gazed at the skull and the cross-bones under it, clenched his fist and raised it above his head. It was a confirmed kill.

  Marty felt on top of the world.

  She said impassively, like she'd shared nothing with him, 'We're going back up tomorrow. You look like you need some sleep. Take-off an hour before dawn. Get over the strike site, get a damage assessment, then go af
ter any of the bastards we missed. Got it?'

  Alive, the body had been thin. Dead, it was swollen and grotesque.

  When they stopped in the dusk, as the sun sank, they did the burying before taking the share of water.

  There were no stones for them to make a cairn to cover Fahd's corpse. Rashid, Ghaffur and Caleb scooped away sand with their fists, used their nails to dig, and made the hole. Hosni said the prayers.

  With their feet, they pushed the sand back over him, covered what remained of his head.

  After the sand had taken him, the stench of the body stayed with them. Caleb thought it clung to his robe. Then they drank their water, a quarter of a mug each, and moved on.

  The wind only flapped their clothes, did not rip them. He knew the growing danger. They were hunted. The boy sat rigid and upright on his camel, rode and listened. The darkness settled on them, and the cool came.

  Hosni said, 'I asked you - do you hate enough?'

  Caleb whispered his answer. 'I told you, it has not changed -1 hate enough.'

  'Without hate you will fail.'

  'I have the hate. First there was excitement, then there was pride.

  After the pride came the hate.'

  'Explain to me.'

  'When I went to Landi Khotal with my friends, everything was strange, was colour, was new. I was tested, then I was chosen. I had never known, where I came from, that excitement. I passed through the training camps, I was accepted into the 055 Brigade, I was made a squad leader. Of course there was pride - I had never been trained or accepted, had never led before. In the camps, X-Ray and Delta, there were two choices, two roads. I could have surrendered, as many have done, and submitted, or I could have fought them and hated them.'

  'Where you come from, is there no love of that place?'

  'None. All my love is for the family that I go back to at the end of this journey.'

  The chuckle was low, choking, beside him. 'Bravely said. What would be your future if you had not gone to the wedding at Landi Khotal?'

  'I would never have known excitement, pride and hate,' Caleb said simply, and quietly. 'I would be dead, and without love. I would have nothing. I would be choked to death by boredom . . . That I am alive is because I believe in the love of the family - you and Fahd, even Tommy, and the love of the people who helped me to reach you, and the love of those who wait for us.'