‘Crannog drop off’.
Could have been ‘Crannog down’ if there had been ground fire or a malfunction and they’d crash-landed, or ‘Crannog aborted’ if local weather had been too difficult. Good stuff . . . He smiled at the other man, and in his mind was the message that a particular general of the revolution in Iran, no doubt fervent in his daily worship, was on the take and heavily, and might react well to appropriately applied pressure. Jericho loathed them, but would put the new knowledge into storage, for use at an appropriate time.
He went to the Bridge table.
‘Sorry and all that. Might be a little bit squiffy, but I’ll do my best.’
It was up and running, the end of the beginning.
They said the cloud cover was now broken: the wind was strong but not gusting. The Ghost was moved. There were four men in each car and he was squashed on to a back seat. The threat to the Ghost could come from the air, from the Hellfire carried by a drone, or from a Special Forces team, but informers who operated inside the Public Security Office had not reported that type of frenetic activity that would indicate an imminent operation against a principal target. It would have been possible for the Predators to fly from Saudi and cross the mountains and scour across the Marib plain, but they were less effective in darkness, and especially limited in the weather conditions present that night. Respectfully, he thanked the family who had given him sanctuary of a sort, and was away.
He was driven at speed, with no headlights under a partial moon. Every move was the same, carried out at the time when the dying slipped away in their beds, in the small hours, when the leopard would emerge from a cave to stalk a goat or a dog. The Ghost had no time to waste; he believed that one day, probably soon, his life would be taken. He would not have warning of the moment the missile was launched, and would have much to do and little time in which to do it. If he was targeted, the driver would die with him.
The man steered the car between potholes, missed some, hit others, went off the tarmac and on to the broken stones at the side: once he was almost into a rainwater ditch, shaking them to the bone. Some would have seen him in that village, or noted that he was with the donkey, and might have heard the explosion, but then he was gone. It would be a journey of twenty-five kilometres, and on this road it would take a half-hour.
In the last safe-house, and in the next, he would be a virtual prisoner. He would walk in the open only in exceptional circumstances. He would lurk inside and ponder his problems. Close to him would be a workbench and water with liquid soap, with a change of towels always available.
Those problems were rooted in his mind. Detonation was the prime area. It was possible to insert the device into a human body, carry out a medical procedure, then sew the patient, the bomber, the sahid, and feed him sufficient drugs to keep him on his feet long enough for him to get through checks and security, and board, and wait long enough to ensure the aircraft was above the fracture, the basin, the trough. All possible. Detonation was the difficulty. A bogus pacemaker was a possibility, with a pulse signal to fire the explosive. Or he was told a syringe could be stabbed into the area close to the weapon, squirting out a chemical compound that would activate it. He needed quiet, and also needed to know the workings of the large airports where thousands flew each night between Europe and the United States of America. Thrown about in the back of the car, jabbed by the butts of rifles, tossed against elbows and pelvic bones, he yearned again for the peace of a new safe-house where a bench would await him. Men went ahead, chose the property, then turfed the resident family from one room and transformed it, and cleaned it – as he cleaned himself. The Ghost would not have heard of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, but he washed more than once every hour and was liable to rage at contamination by dust or dirt. In the room, on the workbench, he must have access to chemicals and to circuit boards and the equipment to use on them. He had no wife; he would have said he had no need for a woman because he had his work.
They had arrived. Another day and another village. His guards clustered around him. He was hustled through a door that had been left unfastened, and dogs barked in the night, but the men and women who were woken from their sleep did not peer out to identify the disturbance. Better to see and hear little and know nothing. He went inside and the door closed after him. One vehicle stayed and the armed men who had come with it; the other pulled away, turned, and was gone.
His host greeted him. A girl, perhaps fifteen years he thought, peered from behind a half-drawn curtain. Most youths and their sisters would have ducked their heads away at the sight of him, arriving at that time in those circumstances, and with a room set aside only for him, but she did not. She watched him. An oil lamp showed a portion of her face, and the boldness of her eyes. Angrily, her father waved her away. She stared into the Ghost’s face; he was taken to the allocated room where he could wash and scrub his hands.
He thought he knew the answer to his problem, and with peace around him he would find it sooner rather than in several days, and then they would meet and he would explain to those who needed to know what further help he required. He hadn’t realised it, but the door latch had not caught, and she was there, looking at him. He did not look into her face, her eyes, but closed the door and shut her out. In the car, his guards had talked of the day ahead, what would happen. He could not deny it was his business. It was said, for a man such as himself – or the Emir – that death was the blink of an eye away, and it could come from the missiles hung from the pods under a Predator’s wings, or it could come from a traitor, a worm in an apple, before he had finalised his plans.
He squirted the soap, rinsed his fingers, rubbing hard, and reflected on the time taken by the ‘blink of an eye’ then took a towel. He did not understand why the child had looked so hard at his face, as if testing him. So much threatened danger – even a child; it was around him, encircling him, pressing close. They had left almond cake for him, and he would eat it, then wash again. Then he might sleep.
The sound faded. Slime thought it had been a lifeline being loosed.
His boots were on the ground, no longer on the juddering metal floor of the helicopter. The descent had been sharp and the impact firm and the guys on either side of them had had their machine-guns cocked, ready to fire, and the pilot had given them a brief thumbs-up that he’d seen against the lights on the control panels, and the gesture said they should get the hell out, the faster the better. Rat had gone first and had reached back for his rucksack, but had his main rifle slung in its case across his back, and his assault job in his hands. The kid, Jamil, had gone next. The little beggar seemed in shock at the suddenness of the landing and the speed with which the mother-ship had headed off. Then Slime had loosed his harness belt and tumbled clear and his boots landed on hard ground.
The one who thought he was the Boss came last.
Slime had taken his cue off Rat. Rat didn’t help Corrie, so Slime didn’t; meanwhile the kid was scuttling clear of the downdraught. He no longer heard the engine and its clatter. It was like when they’d been in the country north of Basra, or out in the wildness of Helmand, and then he and Rat had been dropped off and would have found a lie-up where there was a chance of a worthwhile target, but the helicopter would be on call and there might be Special Forces – maybe Hereford and maybe Yank – who’d come fast. There was silence.
A daft thought raced in his mind, unprofessional. Where else was there silence? Not at home, not in Hereford. Get out on to the Brecons and there’d be planes in the air heading towards the States, and music in the pubs, and if Gwen was at home then local radio was on, and there was canned stuff coming over the loudspeakers if he went down to the company where the deals were fixed for Rat and him; always noise, but not here.
He didn’t think that the absence of noise would bother Rat, but then the kid, Jamil, started to cough. There was light in the sky – not enough moon to give them a view of what was around them, but sufficient to identify their shapes, and the stars were u
p. Rat cuffed Jamil. A slap, not gentle. There was a gulp from the kid but he didn’t cough again. They had landed on a grid reference. It was a point on the map. How good was the map? A map, topped in the north by the desert emptiness, centred on the new town of Marib, was likely to have been as good as the one of Helmand Province, or the supposed street map of the north side of Basra, where the road headed out towards al-Amarah. The pilot had shown Rat – on the cockpit screen – where they were coming down, but there was precious little to guide them now. Rat had whispered in his ear that they’d have about four miles to hike, and have to do it before dawn came. Might be an hour and a half, might be longer if the Boss wasn’t able to match their speed.
They hitched up the rucksacks. It had been three years since Slime had been with Rat in Helmand, and then the papers had come through and Rat had – without emotion, no fanfare or obscenities – let him read the piece of paper, a redundancy notice. No longer required. It had been pretty immediate; ten days later, Rat had been on the big aircraft and going home, unwanted. He’d lasted a few months longer and then had put in his own ‘quit’ notice. In three years of working with Rat for the company, they had done close protection abroad, had escorted oil people in ‘difficult’ locations, but had not heaved the big weights on their backs and trekked, not as they used to. Long time, three years. Slime swayed at the weight and still had to reach out and take his weapon and magazines from Jamil, and grab the bag that had the optics for the Rangemaster, and he was responsible for the medical kit. The important matter in Slime’s life had not been, the last half-year, how to move across country, four miles of it, in darkness and with that weight on his back, it had been the £450 in cash that he’d paid for Gwen’s ring, and the down-payment on the flat that would do for their first home. He needed the money, which was not the best motivation for slugging around Yemen. The Boss had lifted his own rucksack on and had taken what Rat had passed him and done the talk with Jamil. Jamil was at the front, light-footed and wearing leather sandals, sort of skipping. Then Rat, ten yards behind him. After Rat was the Boss: he didn’t know how fit the Boss was, but doubted that a civilian – and one with a limp – had ever done anything in his life that beat a day’s training hike in the Brecons. He would have access to a gym, but he’d likely struggle. Slime was at the back.
He reckoned himself short of condition work, and Gwen knew the way to his heart was through pies and chips, and he hadn’t had the need to work out: Amman and Baku and even Kabul required men who were reasonably fit, but not in peak combat condition. And he was unused to the boots, which were unforgiving against the softer flesh of his feet. It was Slime who made the noise; the Boss turned once to him with a hiss that was indistinct but which might have been, ‘Lift your fucking feet, idiot.’ He had held tight to Gwen before the CEO had come, Rat already aboard, to take the two of them to the airport. He’d held her and told her, ‘I don’t really know too much of what it’s about, but – don’t ever repeat this – I reckon Rat is pretty much over the top, so it won’t be too bad. And me? I’ll do my best, love. Do what I have to do, not let anyone down. Can’t say better than that.’ He hadn’t intended to frighten her, but he’d never been good with words, and she’d stiffened. She’d have known him well enough to realise that if he frightened her it was only because he was frightened himself – anyone would be if they’d looked up ‘Yemen’ on the net. He didn’t know if the Boss was scared but hiding it, or wasn’t. They must hack on, because the first smear of sun was in the east, and there were occasional lights ahead of them – the larger cluster that would have been Marib town, and twice there were headlights on a road.
Slime supposed that what he did would make a difference, and hoped that – soon – he’d be told what the difference was and what he was going to do to achieve it. The kid, Jamil, set the pace, and he could hear Rat’s breathing, sometimes a growl, and could hear his own footfall, but not the Boss who was a shadow shape in front of him. They hadn’t time to halt for rest and for water; they had to push on, get forward.
Belcher had slept poorly.
He scratched at his face, let his fingers grind into the loose beard on his cheeks and chin. He rubbed the back of his hand over his eyes. He doubted that many in the village had slept well – perhaps only the children, the small ones. There was no screaming, that was long gone. No whimpering and no crying. The Sudanese would not have been gagged and the security people would have been happy to allow the sounds he made, pitiful and pained, seep out of the building where they held him. Belcher thought that the young man, known as one who complained and wanted to be back with his family, would now be pressed into a corner of the darkened room in which he was being held, crumpled down, with his knees against his chest, and quiet. He made none of the noise that would have ensured the villagers, and the other recruits to the movement, would fail to sleep as the dawn approached.
There must once have been the prospect of electricity coming along a cable from the town of Marib, which was on the edge of the horizon and where the last lights still burned. In anticipation of the arrival of power, poles had been brought to the village from which the cables could be slung. They had only been fifteen feet high, and had been dumped, and the funds for the supply had then either been withdrawn or pocketed by officials; the electricity had never materialised and the rusted metal poles had been abandoned. A use now was found for one of them. In the night the sounds had been of men digging a hole in hard ground, which would be deep enough to bury one end of the pole and support it so that it would stand upright, and take a weight. And there had been more noise as the security people had rooted around the village looking for any discarded metal piping. Some was found at the back of the home of a former headman, and he’d had a government grant for a scheme to bring water from a well to a compound where goats could be kept prior to slaughter; in an attempt to provide this prominent individual with an alternative source of income other than kidnap, extortion and bribe-taking. In the night they had made a cross, hammering punch holes to secure the lateral arm, constructed from the pipe that had never been used to transfer water. It had been a persistent noise; no one was allowed, in their beds, to forget the reason for it.
The cross stood on a patch of open ground on the edge of the village. Kids often played football there. There were no goal posts, no crossbar from which a spy might have been hanged. Once there had been, and nets, but the funding had been a gift from a USAID programme a decade before, and the posts and bar had been crushed and destroyed when the movement had taken over the village. Kids usually used little piles of stones to mark a goal. If the generator in the village was working, and if the national team was playing, then the kids would cluster around a TV and watch and cheer; otherwise they would play among themselves. The kids were out that morning, without a football, and stood at what might have been the halfway line of their pitch, and the pole was in place and the light came low and slanting, and the cross threw a long shadow.
A crowd gathered quickly. They did not have to be roused from their homes. The villagers were docile and came – men and women, and all the children who were not already out. The whole village would attend. Nearly as many, Belcher reflected, as would have been at Victoria Park to watch Hartlepool. The Sudanese was not blindfolded or gagged, and a loosely tied rope held his arms behind his back. Belcher knew what it was to be brought from the drab and stinking cell and led forward and into the bright light of a courtroom. For the Sudanese it was a legal process – the end of it – of a sort. The accusation was read and the audience craned to hear, and in front of him would have been a good sight of the cross and a small stepladder that they’d use.
Tobias Darke had not slept that first night in the cells either, and there had been noises all around him, and threats, and he had been numb, huddled in a corner. At the suggestion of the police gaoler he had used the electric razor offered him, to shave stubble off his cheeks. He had no clean shirt, no tie or jacket to wear. He had looked a bloody mess, and knew it,
when he’d been brought up from the cells and to a room where a solicitor waited, not the one he’d seen the night before. One thing had been put to him, and it was not about an alibi or a straight denial: ‘Toby, you can make life a great deal easier for yourself if you give the detectives the names of those with you, a heck of a lot easier. You’re at the start of a process that is likely to finish with a custodial sentence if you keep silent. They don’t want to put you away, will do all they can to avoid it, but you have to cooperate. I must also tell you that the man who was assaulted is in hospital and likely to stay there for several days. It is a serious offence, and your options are limited. If you help the police, I can ask for clemency – but it’ll be tough if you don’t.’ The solicitor seemed quite a decent young man, with a local accent; he might have gone to Hartlepool Sixth-Form College ten years earlier. Toby Darke had shaken his head. That had been the first stride that was to take him down the track as Towfik al-Dhakir, and on towards being Belcher, and with no finish tape in sight. Then, up steps and into the magistrate’s court: pale wood panels, magnolia walls, the doors all duck green and the chairs burgundy scrubbed clean and sort of friendly, except that he’d been escorted through an armoured door to get to the dock and there had been a glass screen in front of him, and two big men flanked him, and it was clear in their eyes they thought he was worthless shit.
On the bench they listened hard to evidence given by a detective – it was more than the usual run of shoplifting, drink-driving, or burglary. He was charged with Section Twenty, grievous bodily harm, which carried a maximum sentence of five years, but the solicitor said that they might go for Section Eighteen, grievous bodily harm with intent, which carried up to a life term, if he refused to help police with their inquiries and if the victim stayed much longer in a hospital bed. They were so polite: he was ‘Mister’ each time he was addressed. He could see his ma in the gallery, the only one there. He had the bench’s attention because violence was involved, and he seemed intelligent enough; wasn’t an alcoholic or an addict. He had gone through the lower court system, had been remanded in custody, had not coughed up the names, then had gone to the crown court. Then to Middlesborough and a steamroller trial, and fuck-all to say in mitigation. It had only sunk in when the judge, miserable cold-faced bastard, had given him four years, and he’d seen the solicitor wince, then raise his eyebrows and seem to say, ‘I told you, kiddo, but you did not care to listen.’ And his ma hadn’t been there, as though she’d written him off, and the solicitor had shrugged and told him she’d had a problem getting more time off work. And it had sunk in big-time when he was on the wagon and going towards HMP Holme House, and no longer ‘Innocent until proved guilty’, but convicted. But he had still not recognised himself as a felon. He would not be going back to Colenso Road, which he’d thought was an option, and he hadn’t heard, in so many months, the cry of the gulls down by the sea wall, and hadn’t seen waves break on the stones and would not any time soon. And the Sudanese boy, who was his friend, would not again see his farm near to Omdurman.
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