Another day was starting and a thin line far to the east lit up as the sun came. The wind hadn’t died and the cloud stayed constant. Rat had started to snore again. It might be the day that something happened, or it might not. Slime would likely be the last to know, usually was. He picked up a goatherd and a flock, far in the distance. He couldn’t see them clearly because he was between the image intensifier and the glasses, which needed daylight. The snoring did not bother him but he was concerned at the sight of the youth with his goats and his rifle and his dog – a bad combination, but a long way off.
The herdsman, a youth still and just past his sixteenth birthday, was on the move as dawn lightened the landscape in the east and away up the road towards the Hadramawt. He knew everything about goats: which ones were leaders, which had an instinct for where to find better grazing. They were ahead of him and he followed with his dog.
He was from the village further back from the road than the tent camp. A European woman was there, digging, looking for old pottery and for jewellery from a time before history had started. The herdsman did not know about history, and could not read, nor could he write more than a few Arabic characters. He had not been to any form of school since his eleventh birthday. His father was sick and could not work, and the teenager was a source of money for his family because he took out villagers’ goats, and watched over the kids when they were born. He did not have a mobile phone, and had never used a computer, but he knew as much as was necessary about the workings of the AK-47 assault rifle. The chance of his goats being ravaged by wolves or a leopard was remote, but he carried the rifle, with a killing range of four hundred metres, because it was the culture of his people to go armed.
He had seen the foreign woman in the camp but understood little of what she did, or the value of it. One of the best games when he was younger, with others, was to shin up the great columns of a ruin and laugh and then scramble down. Now he watched goats. He carried a rifle and looked for danger and for the dark shadow going over the ground of a circling steppe eagle, or a kite that had young to feed.
The money, given him by those whose goats he minded, went to his mother. They lived humbly, but had food in their bellies. He wore heavy sandals and a long-tailed shirt, and had a strong jacket that survived the harsh winter weather well. He was content. It had only been in the last months that so many of the fighters had moved into his village, and into the others around Marib. He kept away from them, had no reason to talk with them. A man had died yesterday. It was said he was a spy; some of the youths of the village had thrown stones at him, but the herdsman had kept away. The strangers, the fighters, brought money with them that helped support the village, and paid for everything they needed, and some of the kids had said they might join them and go away with them, but he did not entertain the idea. He had heard that a few had volunteered to wear explosives vests and to go out of their camps and detonate themselves close to the military or the police, and they would go to Paradise. The herdsman would not do that, not even for God.
There was higher ground behind the village. The tracks would be easy for him, and his goats would not notice the climb, but to get there took time so he did not wish to go to the summit of the hill. The goats led him to the base: he had not been there for several days and it was possible some grass had grown and there might still be leaves on the few bushes. Far away, beyond where the goats would feed, were the desert sands where nothing lived. The animals paused at the base of the slope, searching. It puzzled him that there were signs of light disturbance of the earth: kicked stones had left small holes, as if an animal had been there. They were not the marks that a sandal would have left, but heavier.
Belcher prayed.
The Fajr prayer was to be performed between dawn and sunrise. He was outside, kneeling. The prayers of each day and night were the Five Pillars on which the Faith rested. He knew what he should do. Belcher did not miss a prayer, had never done so. He had believed and been one of the most fervent converts, and now was a survivor and reckoned his best chance of staying alive, trapped in this place – between a rock and a hard place, between the devil and the deep sea – was to be seen to pray. Security men still swarmed around this village, and he assumed all of them had the skill to assess who was genuine and who was a fraud. It was Belcher’s practice to pray alone. His lips would move in the recitation from the Book, but no one could hear what actually passed his lips. With each day that had passed since his recruitment – and the loss of the Faith – it had been harder to remember what he had once known so well. So, he prayed alone and where he could be seen, and from time to time, making a gesture of annoyance with himself, he would touch the side of his face and press against his jaw as if in pain, and it would only be for a moment and then he would return to his devotion.
The prison had catered for prayer. When he’d been told to pack up his gear and his bedding and move a floor, a screw had told him that he was ‘bloody lucky’ the deputy governor had sanctioned the transfer. On that corridor were his protectors, the Yemenis. There had been catcalls and whistles, and chat about the size of his arse and whether he could blow, but no interference after he had left that cell and been walked up a staircase and along a landing. And the screw had said, ‘My advice, and you’d be a right idiot to ignore it, is to remember every hour and every day that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Got me, lad? Nothing comes for nothing. On your way.’
He was placed among the Yemeni boys – the authorities in the prison clearly did deals. They liked a quiet life, so did not abuse the rules set for them. He was woken by prayers in the morning and prayers in the night; and there were three more sessions of prayers, at midday and in the afternoon and at sunset. He had felt no fear. Belcher, as Tobias Darke, had never been inside a church, and his nan had left the world at the crematorium in the Stranton Cemetery off Brierton Lane, and there hadn’t been much singing and those who spoke prayers had to read them from the printed sheet. Nobody, now, in the gaol, pressed him, but he watched, and listened and he absorbed. And was protected. Good boys actually, the Yemenis, and they stayed close together because there were ‘nutters’, in their town they called ‘Nazis’, who’d have beaten them up. He could have been naive, and he could have forgotten what the screw had told him, but the Yemenis were around him and he was not touched and the abuse died, and he had friends – so he reckoned.
In the village, the day started. He’d already concocted an excuse in his mind. He screwed his face up in pain and mentioned the relief he’d had from the tablets given him at the camp, but said he needed more. He was to have gone with a work party to the big crossroads where a secondary road went north and towards the mountains and Al Jawf, to help there with the building of a small strongpoint, enough for three or four men, hidden from view. He was known for his willingness to do any task offered him, even dig a latrine pit, but he had not killed, not ever. He had wanted to kill in Syria, had been in fire-fights there, but could not claim to have taken a life and had not done the executions. In Yemen he hadn’t killed either. He had avoided each occasion.
He explained about the pain. He said it was necessary to deal with his toothache. He didn’t want to go to Marib because the town was full of agents for the Sana’a political police – his presence and identity were precious and should not be known. It was agreed. It was not a problem. Permission was given.
Five men went off up the road in the pick-up. They carried shovels to build the place from which an ambush could be launched. He did not know who would be the target. It was the art of a man who lived with deceit that he could compartmentalise events: the death of the Sudanese had not affected him any more than the death of the three boys who had gone up the road to check traffic on it. Jericho, too, was in another compartment and sealed off. He thought the suspicion inside the village was more acute, and he believed that events had now started, but he didn’t know when or how or in what form.
He walked. The wind freshened and might blow away the cloud. He r
eached the tent camp. He spoke to the sentry and the corporal was called. He knew that the police major had visited; every adult in the village where he lived knew it. The man should not have come because his visit had threatened her. The whole of life was weighed in matters that threatened or increased danger, and those that did not. He didn’t think his feigned toothache would endanger her. She was in another compartment, but important.
Sometimes there were women in the fighters’ camp and sometimes not. There had been women brought to the towns in Syria from villages that had been overrun, and more women who had come from Europe, who wanted to take a ‘selfie’ posing in a burka and holding a Kalashnikov or a rocket-launcher. Most became pregnant within four months of arrival and were chucked out, surplus to requirements and a problem to feed. There had not been many women in Hartlepool for Tobias Darke, none who had mattered.
She was in a ditch with her trowel. He called her name, ‘Miss Henry’, grimacing and pointing to the side of his face, hoping he’d remembered the correct side. There was shock on her face when she saw him. She wiped her hands hard on her clothing, and might have muttered something about an ‘intrusion’; she marched him to the entrance of the tent, and pulled a chair out from inside. He sat. She touched his arm, to manoeuvre him, and her fingers were filthy and the dirt dry under her nails. No one else had touched him on the arm. He opened his mouth wide and still felt the tips of her fingers on the hair and skin of his arm.
‘So what is it, little drummer boy, what’s your bit of welcome news? My end we’re pretty fucked up, if you’ll excuse me. It’s a lovely tooth, good as the day you were born. The man on the cross, I hope he died; if he did then he’s well out of it. It’s all closing in, and I didn’t ask for it.’
She would have said it to his face, but she did not have to.
‘Nothing to report, and the tooth’s great, wanted to see you and hear you, and wanted to get the hell out of that place, if only for an hour. When I get back it’ll be near lunchtime. There’ll be flat bread and rice to eat, after prayers. A highlight, we always have it, very tasty.’
She liked him.
‘Yes, they brought the boy down. He was Sudanese and wanted to get back to his village. They buried him under a rubbish tip, short of ‘‘full military honours’’ and without an imam. We all play a game, Miss, and have to hope we keep playing it well . . . I’ve learned nothing new and can’t push my luck. Go careful, Miss. First time in my life, I’m enjoying being treated for toothache.’
She liked what? Something droll; something about refusing to accept that days were bad, would become worse. Something about the certainty of a cloud clearing and sunlight, something about a future, even if vague. Something about not crumpling when, if unmasked, he was next for the cross on the edge of the village.
‘Miss, you don’t have to answer – you’ve got education, and respect, and I’m just from a nothing town, but if we get out of here, shall we do a night out in Hartlepool, the two of us on a tenner? Up for that?’
‘Might have a better offer – it would help if you brushed your teeth more often. Not sure I fit the bill, but I’m not sure about much nowadays. I don’t like being called ‘‘Miss’’. I’m Henry – don’t you have a better name than Belcher?’
‘I was given it, a time ago; it’s best forgotten.’
She opened his mouth wider and he gagged and that amused her and she touched him some more, had a hand on his shoulder to keep him steady. She would like to have slipped a finger into his armpit and tickled him, but didn’t. Always, the troops and her maid would be, from a distance, watching. She supposed it was what happened when people were far from home and danger racked up close to them, and supposed it was time to get back to the ditch. For the first time since Jericho’s proposition, she had felt the value of her work was diminishing.
She told Belcher about the man who had come in the night. About how little he had said, as if she were a conduit, no more, and not to be trusted with confidences. She knew he was out there and had a view of her position and she had been told that if she learned of the movements of a High Value Target, then she was to hang out a scarf on the washing line. They had no radio contact – why didn’t they use a radio? Why was it necessary for her to be a dead letter drop? Why couldn’t Belcher talk directly to this guy? Why hadn’t he given her a radio or a SatPhone to pass on? Why was she involved? But her hand stayed on his shoulder and he opened his mouth again and her fingers moved in the recesses of his mouth. He grunted responses. Because radios and phones were monitored, and electronic signals could be jammed and hacked, and the old ways were the best. There was a man he had met who had preached the tactics of the Stone Age and then had tied marionette strings to him. She had a sad smile on her face, and her fingers came out of his mouth.
‘And he’s fat and ugly and plays the idiot, and owns you?’
‘And is called Jericho.’
‘Are you a founder member of the club, Belcher?’
‘Could be. And the man who came has scars on his face and a slight limp?’
‘About right.’
‘I need to go, and I’ll want some painkillers to show.’
She went to her tent and came back with a packet of paracetamol.
He said, ‘I’ll be here the next time my tooth hurts, and have something more to say.’
She said, ‘And the next time I’ll use a pair of pliers on it. Good luck.’
A murmur, his lips hardly moving, ‘Watch yourself.’
She watched him leave, and she walked partway around the perimeter, pausing beside the place where the line was slung from a pole to the back corner of her tent. The ground stretched away beyond the wire – and beyond the place where, if she looked carefully, she could see the scrape marks where a body crawled. She saw the boy with a herd of goats and a dog at his heel, and saw the bottom of the slope and then its bare and unforgiving surface, divided by small gullies where last year’s heavy rain had gouged out routes, and she saw the top line where it merged with the cloud, a darker grey. It was where the man was, and whoever had come with him. We’ll be running however it ends. She shrugged – and ‘thanks a fucking bunch to you, sir’. It might be her last day on the site, and she might have two more days, might even have a week. She could have cried, but there was no one there to staunch the tears.
She went back to her trench. She told the boys they had done well, and that the man had a bad tooth and there was not much she could do. They had hardly worked up a sweat in the ditch, but they liked to be praised. When she was ‘running’ what would happen to them? A nasty question and not one that she wished to answer; it would be bad for all those who had enjoyed contact with her. She scraped away with her trowel, had nothing else to do. A teacher used to say, ‘Come on, girls, let’s not make a drama out of a crisis.’ He’d be entitled to, Belcher would, but it was good that he didn’t, something else she liked.
Corrie and Rat watched her, watched as the guy, Belcher, ambled away and went out through the camp’s exit.
‘What’s she like?’
‘She’s all right.’
They were sharing the scrape. Slime was behind them with the guide. They were surrounded by flies and also studied a pair of ant columns travelling in front of them, under the scrim and just below their chins.
‘She able to hang in?’ Rat’s question.
‘Seems to be.’ Corrie’s answer.
‘What I’m saying is, can she take the pressure?’
‘I think so, don’t know.’
Corrie had the binoculars and Rat used the spotter scope most of the time, but also alternated with the sight attached to the top of his rifle. The mood had started prickly and had gone acid. Crannog had been put together at speed, as a response to Belcher, and there hadn’t been time to shop around for contractors with a better bedside manner. They were sparring, like fencers, and Corrie was not sure whether it would come to lunges and stabs or stay at whispers and bickering. He’d thought her a really good girl, s
harp and hard: for living in this place, with that level of isolation, her commitment to the science and study outweighing the sacrifice, while life passed by, and no guy in her life because she’d have struggled and failed to find one who’d accept her disappearing into this environment. He knew. Maggie hadn’t waited, had not been at the airport when the stretcher had been brought down the ramp, had grown fed up with the waiting. He had – near as he knew how – loved her. He knew – had tried to move on and find the feelings elsewhere. The woman framed in the binocular lenses had, Corrie thought, a sort of lovely and bloody-minded veneer over the prettiness. Meanwhile, he’d come to fuck up life as she knew it, though that was her problem, not his.
‘If she can’t take it, if it ratchets, we’re all for the big jump – Slime, me, and you.’
‘Can any of us?’ Corrie mused. He sounded off-hand, knew he would irritate.
‘You speak for yourself. I’m all right under pressure, and I speak for Slime as well.’
‘Then you’re blessed, blessed and lucky.’
He thought of Rat as one of those ‘tidy’ people. He might almost have been in a caravan in an off-season holiday on the south coast, the weather foul. Everything was carefully stowed so that all was neat, always was. The rifle and the spare magazines, and the log notebook and the two-inch-long pencil, the toilet roll and kitchen wrap, and the maps that had been drawn of what was in front of them, and the water bottle that was alongside the rifle. Corrie, on arriving, had reached for it, and his arm had been slapped, indicating it was not for him.
Jericho's War Page 20