He could no longer see the guide, Jamil. He sipped water sparingly. He did not need to eat.
‘When this is over, what do you go back to?’
‘I am again a tourist guide.’
‘What we do, is it important?’
‘Mr Jericho says it is important.’
‘And that is good enough?’
‘It is what I have.’ Jamil’s voice was soft, almost musical.
‘I understand, it is where we are . . . what is it you take visitors to see?’ Corrie could not have sworn that he needed to know.
‘Very rarely are they satisfied – we look for leopards.’
‘But you don’t see them?’
‘We see where they have been, where they have messed and where the paw print is, their claw marks and their pads, and where they have eaten. It is difficult to see them.’
‘Are there many leopards in Oman?’
‘Very few, and they hide, but tourists want to see them. It is almost impossible, but we try. One day – one day, perhaps.’
‘You have seen wild leopards, Jamil?’
‘Twice, but never with tourists. In the whole of Yemen and Oman and the Gulf States, and in Saudi, there might be a hundred leopards.’
‘It is what you dream of.’
‘All the time, I dream of leopards, of taking people close.’
‘And taking us close, here? Is that important only because Mr Jericho says it is?’
But Corrie won no answer, just a slight shrug. He heard the fabric of Jamil’s clothing rustle.
‘Is an animal that you can’t see more important than what we do here?’
‘The animal will not kill me.’
‘Better that I had never come? My own philosophy, Jamil, is myself first, myself second and third. That’s the truth.’
‘I am not your friend. I am here because I have to earn money to support my family. There is my mother and her sister, and I have three brothers younger than myself, and there is a girl. I hope to marry her. I need money and so I work for Mister Jericho. I am not your friend but I will do my best for you because I have taken his money. Do you like to talk?’
‘Not much . . . More than talking, I’d like to see your leopard. One day, perhaps.’
A hand touched his own arm. He felt fingers nestle on the hairs there; they were delicate and fine boned. The touch was a good answer, but they were not friends, and only the money shelled out by Jericho, and talk of a wild leopard, bonded them. They did not have to be friends. Corrie said what time they would go down the incline and towards the tent camp. The hand had gone, the conversation was finished, the moon tipped light on them and the stars had erupted, and danger did not seem real, and Jamil slipped away from him, as if his interest were expended.
The Emir was given the details of the ambush, was told also about the wounding of one of his fighters, a boy he barely knew and to whom he had never spoken, and who could not be taken to the hospital in Marib but would go overland, in a pick-up, towards Al Bayda, where treatment was possible – if he lasted. He was also told what the woman archaeologist in the tented camp – to whom he’d never spoken – had done to try to save the fighter. That interested him. He had seen her in the distance, fine looking and reportedly dedicated to her studies. He knew she helped out people with minor ailments.
He moved on. He was told of the killing of a police major. It was probably an execution by proxy. He had provided the fire power, but that served a purpose in his relationships with the elders of the string of villages to the north and west of the town of Marib. They were important men, gave him a safe haven, hospitality, cared for him and for his wife, and none would have wanted an exuberant new officer coming into their area, either taking money off them, or with ideas of enforcing statutes from the ministry in Sana’a. The government in the capital was fragile and ineffective, and attempts to reinstate authority would not be tolerated – the army detachment in Marib understood. None of this was a priority for him.
He sat cross-legged under an awning. His wife was in the kitchen of the home in which they lodged that night and would be preparing his food for the evening meal, simple and what he liked: rice, boiled lamb, fruit, fresh water from the well. In future the commander would learn to talk of an action with greater calm, more control, but he was excused this time because it was all new to him.
The Emir asked about one man in particular, Towfik al-Dhakir. How had he performed?
He had not been excitable or stupid during the engagement. He had been disciplined. Had followed instructions given him. Had been watched closely and had not given cause for complaint. Had fired twenty shots, his magazine emptied. Could fault be found with him? The commander had seemed perplexed at the question. No. He could not query why a man as significant as the Emir was asking these questions. He told the Emir that he would take this foreigner, a convert, on a mission, and would depend on him whatever danger was faced. He couldn’t judge the Emir’s response; the Emir was skilled at concealing his reactions. The Emir lowered his head. He had finished with the commander. He thanked and congratulated him. The man backed out of his presence.
He called, in a whisper, for his security men. He trusted in their judgements, and intuitions, and set them to work. The time was ripe for a decision, a final one.
Only a man who lived a lie himself would have seen them.
He was near to the lean-to where mechanics worked on vehicles. Sometimes he glimpsed a shadow thrown by a lamp in a window, sometimes the head and shoulders of a man, caught in the throw of moonlight.
Jericho had told him that there would come a time when he would be gripped by excitement, not able to escape it. Belcher could have sat in the house where he slept and stayed safe; but he would have been useless to Jericho, and shorn of the narcotic, excitement. He craved it. Where was the meeting going to be, why would prominent leaders break cover, how would the Emir travel to it? The vehicle would be the key. As Jericho had said, ‘A man who is turned, dear Belcher, can never again ignore fresh information. Yes, we’ll take you out one day, but until then we rely on your thirst for work. You keep at it. It was your choice, Belcher, and you must live with it.’ He heard them tuning the engine; it was the same vehicle as had been there before, black, with dirty windows but good tyres. They worked on the engine, but not at the dent in the front fender. It might have hit a donkey or a petrol drum rolled across a road. He stored the information smiled and waved to a man who looked up, oil stained, from under the bonnet, and kept walking. He’d taken a risk but hoped he just looked like another fighter who patrolled or wandered around because the night was long.
He heard his name called, called from the darkness.
It was not the tone of someone asking for a flame to light a cigarette, or someone who had lost his bearings in the village. An instruction. He was told to come forward. The voice was to his right where the darkness was intense. Other than being close to the mechanics, he did not know what mistake he had made. He bit at his lip to regain concentration and felt the teeth gouge soft flesh. He did not recognise the voice; it sounded harsh, unfriendly.
A torch was snapped on and the beam lit his face.
He must keep alert, not make a mistake. A mistake meant a cross on the wasteground in front of the village, and a mistake was what had happened in Aleppo when he had been recruited and men were executed for allowing – on their watch – a prisoner to escape. Nobody stood in the corner of a man convicted of a ‘mistake’. The torch was in his eyes, the light bright, and he blinked.
He was hit. A smack at the side of his head. A gloved hand came fast and into the light, avoiding his nose and his mouth and reaching to the left side of his head, hitting him across the ear and the back of his jaw. He felt more shock than pain. As he blinked, eyes squeezed shut and watering, he was hit a second time, on the other side of his face. Neither was a hard blow, not sufficient to hurt him or to fell him. Belcher reeled back. His hand had a grip on his rifle and he could have used it in reverse
as a club to belt the face, body, balls of the man with the torch. Then he remembered.
The mistake would be not to remember.
Belcher’s hand came off the rifle. He clutched his face where the first blow had hit. He gasped, as if the pain ran free, squeezing his eyes shut and holding his cheek tight, seeming to squeeze on that point as if it were a way to hold in the hurt, then howled, loudly enough to raise the dead. The cry of a man in extraordinary agonies. Then he let it die, and the light was switched off. He kept the act going, a few more seconds of it. A hand snaked out and held his shoulder, caught the material of his coat. Believed, or not believed? He would either be kicked and hit again, but harder, then trussed and his rifle taken, or . . . The mistake might have killed him. If he had forgotten the affliction of the aching tooth that had allowed him out of the village in darkness to visit the woman in the tent camp, he would have been dead. The hand let his coat go and seemed to stroke his shoulder, as if that were the nearest he would get to an apology. Belcher kept up the moan.
He knew the vehicle. Belcher assumed that the vehicle was reserved for the use of the Emir, but he didn’t know where it would take him, or when. He was told that he should get more treatment for his tooth. A shuffle of sandals and then quiet, broken only by the sound of his own breathing. He let free deep bursts of breath. Anyone listening to him would have assumed they came from the waves of pain, and not from the desperate relief of having avoided a cardinal, and capital, mistake. He had enough to justify a visit to her.
Henry was washing. The bowl of warm water – not more than tepid – stood in front of her, the soap lathering it.
Lamya had been inside her tent, discreet and almost silent, and had swept up Henry’s clothing from the floor, stained with dirt from the ground when she had tended the major, and with blood from the fighter’s wound. She wanted every stitch of it scoured. The woman could clean her clothing, wash the filth off her trainers, and she would do her skin.
She used a bar of coarse soap. She felt contaminated, was no longer aloof from the war around her. She worked hard at her skin, as if it was penance to be paid; she wanted nothing of what she had seen that day, been a part of, to remain. A fighter would die in the night, before dawn, far from his mother; a police major would be in a makeshift morgue, his wife not yet told of his death.
So lonely.
Her arms shook and the water splashed. At her school in Bristol, Henry Wilson was rated as above average intelligence, described as having a trait of self-reliance that would take her far, and her degree had been good, and her ability to extract money with a cheerful smile from backers was second to none. Her dedication to her studies, staying behind after ‘all her colleagues’ had run for the airport, was much admired. But now fear gripped her. Death had not come prettily to the major – it had not been romantic; this was no hero’s sacrifice for the greater good. And the fighter had been pale with shock and too much of his blood was on the road. She knew there would be more of it and she did not know where to turn to for strength.
There were still scuff marks where the ground sheet of her tent met the canvas side; there was a pin there to hold it tighter. She bent and loosened the pin – she did not know what else she could do – and hoped one of them would come. Her maid, Lamya, came with fresh clothing and eyed her, maybe envious of Henry’s figure, but the shape of her was unimportant, shared with nobody. She would not sleep easily; she would have her supper and try to read, and watch that place on her tent floor.
The moon illuminated Corrie, and the Arab who followed.
It was dark enough for Rat to be able to come out of his scrape. He had been doing limited exercise, flexing joints, and then sharp press-ups and deep breathing, and all the rigmarole that he had learned years before on the Basra or Helmand stake-outs. He had nudged Slime awake and now he would be covering the villages and the camp with the image intensifier.
‘What’s your idea?’
He was told.
‘The guy hasn’t come to her. Unlikely she’ll have anything for you.’
His doubt was dismissed without explanation.
‘Are you going to talk it through with me?’
The spook was not.
‘Clever fucker, eh? If you’re taken, what do I do, and Slime? Thought of that?’
Rat reckoned most people, if captured, would have asked that any colleague within range fire one well-aimed bullet straight through their head, a killing shot, while their captors were still sharpening their carving knives. Or that an airstrike be called, so that the allies could bomb the village where he was held, and all in her, back to the Stone Age. Had always had that deal with Slime. A poet, writing of Afghanistan, had urged any man left behind and wounded in that God-forsaken place to ‘roll on your rifles and blow out your brains’. Didn’t like to think about it, but he did here, and had played the pictures in his mind ever since the kid with his goats, and his rifle and his dog, had come close. Would Slime stay fast and hold his nerve and go through the ritual of readying the rifle with the big sight on it, or would he be whimpering about his girl and how to get back to her? Didn’t know . . . did not like not knowing. His stomach growled from the exercise and his throat was dry. He was told that he should get on the satphone, break the silence, and get Mister Jericho’s view, and maybe start walking.
‘Is that supposed to be clever shit?’
Only if he thought so. The Sixer gave him nothing more.
‘Are you one of the hero guys, had a bit of luck and living off it?’
Rat seemed to hear a light laugh but could not be sure, and then they were gone, positions reversed and the guide leading. Rat would not have done that, trusted the guide to lead. He could recall the hassle in Afghanistan when the casualties were ‘green on blue’, the local allies cutting them down, having gone rogue. They couldn’t be trusted, not as far as they could be kicked. He’d do some more, then he’d get Slime to fix some food, and he’d watch their progress – faint but distinct enough – on the intensifier, white wraiths on light grey.
Rat did not believe himself to be a PTSD candidate. Many were, not him. Half the bullshit boys in the British Legion had Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, but he didn’t go there. He had no string of old comrades he mixed with, swapping stories. Reckoned he’d have it under control, and wouldn’t crack. The kid with the goats had spooked him, and there were no Apache birds over the horizon and ready to come homing in, only the promise of a Yank helicopter or a private one, if he had the time to hang around and wait. He was uneasy, which was a first.
It would be good to eat. Rat could not get the snake, and its arc through the air, out of his mind, and what might have happened, and it festered.
Where would he like to be? About anywhere. Anywhere else. It was like a love had gone sour on Rat, which was also new.
At least he had talked to the guide, Jamil. It had been a good talk.
‘They’ve added to my list,’ George said, and lifted the sheet of paper, waved it at Lizzie. ‘It might be something to do with the National Trust.’
‘That would be nice,’ Farouk chimed in, irony disguised. ‘Probably get a grace and favour to go with it: a management position and you’d be a lord of the manor.’
‘Living alongside history, might be entertaining – and might be comfortable.’
‘I think it would be rotten,’ Lizzie said. ‘It would be a dereliction. For God’s sake, George, isn’t there something you could do that’s useful?’
‘Like to think there was, but not sure I’d know how.’
He’d probably floated that one in the hope that both of them, Lizzie first and then Farouk, would shout him down, accuse him of negativity, massage his ego. Always useful, always had been, and a row of triumphs in his wake to prove it. But George might have to wait if he’d expected a vanity ride. Farouk had an expenses query for the field station in Riyadh and Lizzie was putting down one of those silly little paper slips in front of him, three or four lines long, the sort that wer
e the most dangerous. He read it and a frown puckered his forehead. Out of a clear damn blue sky.
Farouk said, ‘About Riyadh, it’s a “did we sanction expenditure for Peter’s birthday bash?” Four k – seems excessive, but . . . Do we have a problem, George?’
Lizzie said, ‘In your court, George.’
‘What am I supposed to say? For Christ’s sake, it was signed off.’
Farouk asked, realising that attention had moved on from a binge in Saudi, ‘Sorry, where are we?’
Did Lizzie feel pain? She showed none. ‘It’s being suggested by a paper-pusher in one of the outer offices up on the Fourth that George is the “risk owner” for Crannog, and they’re checking that the assessment was properly done, that we have full contact, total control, that we’re not going to end up “embarrassed”, God forbid. Will it fuck up, and if it shows a sign of doing so, are we in a position to un-fuck it? The angels who sit close to God are looking for a clear firewall. What do you think, George?’
He gazed past them. In previous years the glass used to be cleaner and the view better defined. It was done less often now – that was the cutbacks, and not the issue of having men, supposedly with security clearance, hanging in baskets as they scrubbed at the big windows. He saw the slow pace of the city: tug boats and barges, pleasure craft, pedestrians and traffic on the bridge, and a flag flying over Westminster – the heartbeat of his country. Of course he owned the risk for where Corrie Rankin and the sniper and the other fellow were – his memory had mislaid both their names. Always sounded so bloody good when a thing kicked off. He had taunted, done it in that drawl he could summon up. You’re not getting cold feet, Corrie, are you? Do you want to back out? Late in the day, but you’re perfectly free. And was it sanctioned? Pretty much so. By the people that matter. Plenty of enthusiasm from them.
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