Jericho's War

by Gerald Seymour

  He spent the morning on the edge of the ridge. He was allowed use of the binoculars because Rat had a spotting scope on a short-legged tripod. There was much to see other than the dying man. He saw Belcher, saw the contact woman. realised the beauty of the place. The road ran east to west in front of them, perhaps two miles away. The tent camp next to the archaeological site was about a mile and a half away, and the village where the cross was lay a half-mile to the east of that. He had recognised Belcher; Corrie had only ever seen him inside the gloomy space of the garage and in the natural light that came through a dirt-caked skylight, and at night in the light from a torch. But when he had seen him, he had nevertheless been sure.

  Slime had brought them food, just bread and a piece of hard cheese. They would have military rations after dark. Corrie looked again at the open ground where the metal post was. He’d thought the pole had started to sag from the body’s weight, but it was not likely to collapse. One kid, might have been eleven years old, had picked up a stone and thrown it at the man hanging there. The flinch had been half-hearted, as if the guy didn’t care that much any more, but others seemed bored and went on playing football.

  He had seen Belcher. Never a moment’s doubt. His gait seemed different, but in Syria Corrie had hardly seen him move. Close, crouched over him, appearing to check chains, whispering, ear to mouth, mouth to ear. Belcher was now around two miles away. He knew it was him. Belcher had an assault rifle slung on his shoulder; he was in a small group sitting away from the village in a tight circle, listening to an Islamist lecture, perhaps, or a weapons-training talk. The man had saved his life. Corrie didn’t do gratitude or sentiment. He had used him then and hoped to use him again. Belcher had walked past the cross and had not looked up and had gone on talking to those with him. Corrie had seen him again later – he’d gone to the edge of the village, to a refuse pit there, and he’d tipped rubbish into it.

  He’d pointed out Belcher to Rat, and there had been a nod, but no reaction that said he was a clever shit to have spotted his man. Later he had seen the woman. He’d watched her emerge from a tent and go to a construction with heavy canvas sides. She’d had a towel draped on her shoulders, on top of all the other gear she wore, and her hair was covered. He had seen her in and out of it. Had seen her at a folding table in front of her tent, set apart from the ones used by the military, and she’d read a newspaper there, and had eaten and drunk something, and two younger men, Yemeni, had approached her. She had set to work, with a trowel and brush, in a ditch deep enough to hide her from him when she ducked down. They were good glasses: they were better glasses than the ones Clive Martin had brought up to the Hebrides when they had camped beside the freshwater loch.

  Corrie would have said that he never saw her laugh. Could he swear that, at such a distance? He never saw her laugh when she was working close to the two Yemeni diggers. He sensed her reserve, as though she carried a big weight – and she did, she carried a hell of a weight, and it would damn near crush her by the time the matter was played out. He looked several times at the man on the makeshift cross, blood caked on his loose clothing, and several times at Belcher as he went about his business. The cloud cover was solid and there were no drone engines above. Men and women moved cautiously in the open, and a boy brought his goats to the base of the incline but made no effort to climb it. There was nothing near their scrape for the goats to feed off. Otherwise, he watched her.

  He and Rat were forward of Slime and the guide, Jamil, who were now another hundred yards back. Slime had built a shelter and a base camp, using more scrim over an indent in the soil. The material was held in place by a loose mess of stones, and the rucksacks were there along with the rest of the kit, the assault rifles and the grenades. It was well hidden, better concealed than he and Rat were.

  His mind roved as he watched her. The first week of captivity, long before they had broken his leg, weeks before Belcher had happened across him, he had looked constantly for any chance he might exploit in order to escape. There’d been nothing. Each hour of each day without that chance had frightened him more. They did interrogations most days, not the clever people, but the gang guys, who wanted to be sure of what they had – if they had pulled in a journalist or diplomat or anyone who was not ‘just’ an aid worker, the price they’d ask of the zealots would steeple. This was not the sophisticated questioning they’d been taught to withstand at the trips down to the Fort on the coast – not sleep deprivation, water boarding and the stuff that Hereford knew – but slapping, kicking, beating, and trying, half-conscious, to recall every last detail of the cover story, to stick with the fucking thing and be the simple arsehole who had strayed across a border because his safety had been guaranteed and he’d wanted to help. The Italian seemed to think that ‘wanting to help’ and doing a ‘good deed’ would be enough to wash away any bad feelings, and had been in a bad state when the reality had dawned. The Canadian wanted to talk about his kids and his first grandchild. He reeled off phone numbers in Winnipeg of those who’d vouch for him. The Austrian reckoned his nation’s neutrality on international alliances should be enough to ensure his freedom, but the picture of his wife that he’d showed them had been ground under a heel. Corrie had done the least talking, given the fewest explanations, and had learned to ride the blows, to seem so trapped in fear that he could not speak. It hurt more, but it had meant he made no errors in his cover story. They’d have been gleeful if they’d known they had an officer, fair grade, of the UK Secret Intelligence Service.

  He watched her again through the lenses. Henrietta Wilson. Middle-class family, out of Bristol, only child. No complicated relationship, Jericho had checked that through, and a star of what she did, archaeological study in the lands of the great queen, which was all coming to an end. She’d curse the day that Corrie Rankin – and the old fraud Jericho, and Belcher – ever strolled into her life. Within a week they would have hit, or failed to hit and created chaos, and they’d be running or they’d be dead, and the investigations would start and her role would be unpeeled. Lucky if she was able to run, unlucky if she ended on the cross. The sand would blow into her ditches and cover her work.

  He would not expect a great welcome when he went down the hill and through the darkness. He didn’t really know what she looked like, not at that distance, not with all the modest clothing she wore, couldn’t say.

  On the move in Muscat, Jericho kept tight hold on priorities. He had a late lunch with the purser of an airline that flew into Bandar Abbas. There was always a moment when the pilot could be relied on to bank towards the harbour, and the purser made sure he was in the starboard-side toilet. The camera memory pad was passed from the purser to Jericho and he handed back a blank pad for immediate loading in the Nikon. The patrol boats docked at Bandar Abbas were fast, armed, and could play havoc in the narrow Strait of Hormuz. They talked of banalities, loudly.

  Other diners would have noted that an airline crew member, who had sought out an empty table in the hope of a quiet meal, had had his space invaded by one of the great bores of the expatriate community. But when their voices dropped, the purser gave Jericho little nuggets: about the switching of the unit of the Guard Corps from Bandar Abbas to a northern city in the mountains, nearer to Syria and on the Iraq border; the name of the new commander of the naval forces; the price of bread, and the cost of raw heroin, and who had control of the electronics goods brought to Iran by dhow without Customs clearance, all of it useful.

  He was not thinking about Corrie and the other three, any of them, for the very good reason that they had gone – almost – beyond the reach of his influence. He enjoyed his lunch. Jericho supposed his only possibility of shaping the well-being of Corrie Rankin and the boys with him, and of Belcher and Henrietta Wilson, was if he took out a begging bowl, dusted it off, wore a suitably chastened expression and tripped his way down to the American fortress and asked for the Agency’s big chief. And he’d have to say that a little bit of freelancing had gone awry, and that a
team of nationals were in dire trouble and needed a lift out, and pretty damn quick. Which would mean serious grovel, and the scrambling of a minimum of four helicopters loaded with their Special Forces, and then a humiliating explanation of why the processes of co-operation had been ditched, an agent in place not shared. He’d lose his job.

  So, they were best kept out of mind. Henry was a nice enough girl and merely ill-fated; Belcher was an interesting enough character and might very soon deliver an intelligence coup on a scale with the Baptist’s head on a plate. Corrie – he almost loved that boy – was harder to shift from his mind.

  Lizzie brought in the envelope. Farouk was already with George and they discussed winter leave plans. She gave George the envelope. He slit open the envelope, used the knife with the hammer-and-sickle motif on the handle, abandoned on a Soviet Armoured Corps colonel’s desk after the implosion a quarter of a century earlier.

  Internal mail. ‘Bloody hell.’

  Human Resources, a retirement opportunity. ‘For God’s sake.’

  A list of seminars that would be available for those leaving the Service. George would be going soon enough, but sooner rather than later if Jericho dropped the ball, screwed it. He was offered IT courses, carpentry lessons, yacht maintenance, lectures on opportunities for small businesses, an extended list of consultation slots, and talks on how to be bursar of an independent school. ‘All I damn well needed.’

  He had a routine when stressed. Now he was well and truly stressed because he had signed Operation Crannog off. He took off his shoes. He kept a bag of shoe-cleaning materials in a drawer. If it went sour he would last a week, would be scapegoated, and would find out fast how easy carpentry was and how much a yacht cost. He started to polish the shoes, already well burnished, worked hard at it. ‘What I fear, not messing, Lizzie, about retirement, being culled from here, is that I will then join the world of “ordinary” people. Know what I mean, Farouk. “Normal” people. Yes, normal, ordinary folk. I’ll be going off to the Lakes in Italy with Betty, with people around me who don’t – sorry, Lizzie – give a flying fuck for what happens in Yemen, unless some nondescript little bastard has breached security and brought explosives on board. Then they’d care, except I’ll be able to hold up my hands and say, “It was all right on my watch – cocked up now, have they? Not my fault.” I hope I’m not ordinary, but I may be well short of normal. Is anyone normal in this place? Plenty I’d classify as ordinary, not many at all I’d count as normal: you might find them serving in the canteen or cleaning after we’ve gone home. Truth is, if you’re ordinary and normal you may not be capable of executing this job. We’re all warped, perverted – have to be. Take Crannog. I’ve authorised it, I’ve played with people’s lives, tossed them up in the air like a juggler’s balls. I may drop some of them or may catch them all. You two did the planning and I didn’t see either of you crumple under the weight of responsibility. Old Jericho – a wicked bastard – could well stand on the summit of an even bigger heap of broken men and women. Is he normal? Not at all. The sad men – Rat and Slime – who have never retrieved a place in society, the protection team. The one who’s codenamed Belcher, has had the loyalty filleted from him. If he makes it out alive, I can’t imagine he’ll ever settle anywhere. That leaves Corrie Rankin. We called him back. Had we the right to? Miserable and introverted, and a superb player of the game we’ve picked him for. Forgive me that rant. I mean it, I dread being alongside the “ordinary” and the “normal”. Anyway, Crannog is beyond reach – God help them. Maybe He will and maybe He won’t.’

  He had finished with his shoes and slipped them back on.

  Farouk said, ‘You’ve forgotten something, somebody.’

  ‘Have I? Who?’ He was bent low and tying his laces.

  Lizzie said, ‘Henrietta Wilson. I think Jericho is rather soft on her. We’d be damned if she was a casualty. She sounds ordinary, and normal, and critical to Crannog.’

  ‘Maybe. Enough of my gloom. Please, a pot of tea. I think it may rain tonight; heavy-looking cloud over Westminster, worse in the west.’

  The Emir moved.

  The cloud cover was good, but each time he left a refuge in one village to move to another, his life was in God’s hands. He had walked to the pick-up. He wore different clothes each day; sometimes he was in black and sometimes grey, or white or brown, and most times he would have appeared as an old and unremarkable man who was with a woman well past her youth. He took care to survive, was jealous of each hour that he lived, because time was valuable to him. Few bodyguards came with him; they were men from the retreat through the Tora Bora and would have died that he might live. He judged his own importance as high, and prayed each day that his time on earth be extended sufficiently to allow his plans to be completed. He heard his guards’ weapons clatter. His wife’s expression was serene and showed no fear. If death came from the air, from the Hellfire, it would be instant, far faster than that of the condemned man on the cross who might last to dusk. He had no pity.

  They drove away from the village. Two matters concerned him. He did not think in terms of the ‘strategic’ and the ‘tactical’. He supposed that in the big army bases of the Americans and the British and the French – in Qatar, on Cyprus, at Djibouti – teams of staff officers worked under the direction of a general to plan far into the future and for what would happen tomorrow. He had no staff crowded close to computer screens, no files that he could dig back into, and no timescale. His talents were in patience and the ability to absorb the most complex detail. The safe-house he was now lodged in was the equivalent of the Research and Development floor of a tower block. Late at night, a courier brought a scrap of paper, five centimetres by three, on which was a message written in a fine nib. Its contents joined the archive in his memory. He must always innovate and hold his followers’ attention. Two matters: one huge; the other like the grains of dirt that could be held by a single fist.

  He saw the young man from England, Towfik al-Dhakir. A pleasant boy; reports said he was dutiful in his prayers. There was a discarded concrete section of tunnel, what would be used for a road culvert. It lay beside the metalled road surface and it ran from a rain ditch, but there was no rain and no hurry to dig it in. It gave shelter to two guards, not from the sun, which was hidden by clouds, but from the airborne cameras. The foreigner sat against it, a rifle across his knee and a grenade launcher laid under the angle of the concrete. The boy would have seen him and would have recognised his men. He did not acknowledge him. If a camera had been on him, and a sentry stood in respect, the analysts would know that the vehicle was used by a person of stature. The Emir had great plans for the boy. Knowledge was the key. He could walk through airports and test levels of security, and then could drift away and return to the obscurity of that part of Yemen – or he could go under the knife, convalesce for a short time, and then himself walk on to the aircraft. It was an interesting dilemma. It had not been put to the boy that he should be prepared to face martyrdom. He would not subject him to the knife of the fool who had come up from Sana’a – a physician of quality could be found in Palestine. A businessman, a briefcase, a smile to the girl on security, a detonating system that carried no metal and was assembled in a toilet. Very soon he would decide.

  They drove on. Two bleating goats were tethered in the open back of the pick-up. The vehicle seemed to be that of a farmer going about his everyday life, a man concerned only with matters close to him. His wife would be with him and they might be travelling to a market for vegetables, leading a basic life.

  The second matter. In those great bases at Doha and Akrotiri and Camp Lemonnier, the juniors would deal with business that was reckoned to be of minimal value. The men at the bottom of the heap did not have to consider morale and the need to provide excitement to the lesser men of the movement. They liked blood. A crucifixion was good, would be remembered, but blood dried soon in the heat, and was lost in sand. He had no difficulty with shooting a man, with beheading him, with tying him
to a cross, and could have done the light anaesthetic on the donkey and made the incision and tucked the device inside, hard against the ribcage. Others liked it more and should be encouraged, and from those acts came a growing commitment. There was a police chief. Not a big man, not one of critical influence to the regime. A man who was new to the posting. Young and energetic, it was said. It was not acceptable that an incomer from government should have influence, authority. Big issues involved the loss of three hundred lives in the waters of the Atlantic, and little issues involved a new police major who might see that evening out but might not see the one that would follow.

  They drove on and his wife offered him an apple, sweet and ripe. If the cloud held, stayed thick and low, then they would meet together, all the parties he needed, within three or four days, and it was important that he be seen and that men should carry back to their villages reports of his mood, his optimism. Personal appearances, and encouragement, were as vital as the killing of a police major, but not as important as the downing of a full aircraft. He finished the apple and threw the core from the window. It bounced away into the ditch at the side and vanished.

  He closed his eyes; his wife was warm beside him, and he dozed, was at peace.