He had a cousin, rather a black sheep in the family, wealthy and holed up in Harrow-on-the-Hill, an accountant, and he handled George’s few investments. He used to say that there were good schemes around and the trick was to get into them, use them, and quit, run like the frigging wind. The cousin might have given better counsel than Lizzie or Farouk. But it was weeks before he needed to make a final decision on the merits of a carpentry or a yacht navigation course, or the opportunity to run a National Trust pile with a leaky roof and oozing history.
He said, ‘Can’t remember the exact words used, but the director seemed happy enough, and I was fairly up front. But it was one on one and I don’t have a note of whatever caveats I might have made.’
Lizzie said, ‘They’d hang you out in the wind, George, for the crows to feast on.’
Farouk said, ‘Some little fucker, from the brigade of new brooms, will have blown the whistle on Crannog. I have to say, George, it’s tricky.’
Lizzie said, ‘The more you say, in explanation, the deeper down you are.’
He slammed a fist on to his desk surface and paper bounced and his screen wobbled; that had damn well hurt. ‘But nothing has gone wrong – why an inquest?’
The answer was readily available. Crannog involved entry into the fortified territory of an enemy of note. If it all went well, it would shame those who championed analysis and life in embassies abroad, where officers had discreet coffee-house conversations and gutted local periodicals. He had ‘risk ownership’, his name was stamped on Crannog.
‘And there’s been nothing reported, no news? We did our best, didn’t we? Didn’t we? What the fuck are we supposed to do?’
Farouk said that he needed some sort of resolve on the Riyadh party expenses, and Lizzie said she’d chase up Jericho and see if he’d had sight or sound of Corrie Rankin and of the Crannog mission in the field. And what was George supposed to do? Could be bloody lonely where he sat, and nothing was as it had been.
Jericho was eating dinner, a steak, wearing his stomach enhancer. His guest was the marine pilot based in the local port, who took container ships and tankers through the Strait of Hormuz to Iranian ports or anywhere on the other side of the Gulf. His access to gossip and rumour and verifiable fact was gold dust to Jericho. He saw, behind his guest, Woman Friday threading between tables. She knew, of course, where he was, and with whom and its importance, and would not have interrupted him for a trifle. He made an excuse, filled the guest’s glass, manoeuvred from his chair and approached her. They slipped out together and on to a verandah.
He was told.
‘They seem to think they should be kept more up to date. I suppose it’s a running commentary they’re looking for.’
‘But this is not the three-thirty race at Wincanton.’
‘How should I answer?’
A pencil and a small notepad emerged from her bag. Jericho murmured, into her ear, ‘Try “No Crannog news because I have no Crannog news. Get on with your knitting and leave me alone. A reminder, Alpha Quebec do not use satphones and mobiles but rely on occasional, courier-carried messages. They are mightily efficient without needing to ring up every five minutes. They value silence. They trust personnel. When there is something you need to know then you will be told it. Mean time, Foxtrot Oscar.” How does that sound?’
An eyebrow marginally raised, a fraction of a grimace. She turned away. Perhaps she would soften his message and perhaps she would not: if she had been late at her desk and had sipped from the bottle in the drawer alongside her knee, then it was very possible it would go as he had given it to her. He understood. Anxiety, far away at VBX, stalked the corridors, and the power barons sought out protection. If it failed, those at home would deflect personal blame and would know where to dump it. Jericho and Penelope would be on the big bird home, in cattle class, next to the package vacationers and the hen parties. If it failed, where would Rankin, his boy, be? Not worth thinking about.
‘Sorry about that,’ Jericho said to the marine pilot as he settled heavily back on his chair. ‘Something and nothing.’
Xavier had let himself into the kitchen of the married-quarters home he shared with his wife, back from his five-kilometre jog. First light was showing, and soon enough the noise of the fast jets would fill his ears, till he was inside the cubicle off the corridor. He went past the hall table, above which was the photograph of the Predator, Hellfires loaded and the auxiliary fuel tanks, NJB-3. He had more of a sweat on him that day because he had gone faster than usual. The extra speed would give him six minutes longer than the time he most often had available before going to work.
‘Hi, honey, you coming up?’
He responded, ‘Coming, my sunshine, and coming now.’
When he ran – good for getting horny, the doctor had said – he used the shower cubicle off the utility room, and then upstairs and at it. She’d have stayed in bed, except that she’d probably have slipped out of what she wore when she slept, and might have dabbed on something smelling nice from the pharmacy in the Mall on Cannon. Worth a try that morning and a bareback ride – could be a ‘cowgirl’ one which he liked best. He left a trail of trainer shoes and socks and sweatshirt. He hadn’t yet heard a detailed forecast for the weather over there, Marib Governorate, but it was supposed to be clearing and good to go: he had worked out how long, to the minute, he could spend with her, and how long it would take to get to the room and sit down with Casper, and he had a shower, using the ‘chill’ setting. He towelled fast. She was a great girl, had been from the first time he had dated her, but the difficulties in conceiving were getting to be tedious. He reckoned she put too much effort into the business, talked to too many ‘experts’ who might not know much more than nothing about it. He was on the bottom step, and she would have heard him and was cooing for him. The telephone rang, sounding insistent.
She called from upstairs, ‘Let the mother-fucker wait. Hurry, honey.’
The number on the screen was from the office of the officer who controlled them. She might have been ready, might already have been wet. He’d rot in hell. Xavier picked up the phone. A staccato message. The bird was out on the apron, was fuelled and armed. He should shift himself. Five full minutes later – her shouts in his ears, then a wail – Xavier had his loose flying suit on and was scrabbling for the car keys. He loved the bird more than he could tell her, more than she would want to know: they might try to do it again when he came off shift. Back out through the kitchen door, and he might have overdosed on the bird and the joy of flying it.
Into the base and into the building and into the cubicle, and the yells and the weeping were forgotten, and he settled beside his officer, Casper. It had all been predictable, but when they took her up and flew her, then nothing was predictable, and that he worshipped. Never knew where the lenses, day or night, slung from its underbelly and extraordinary in their quality, would take them.
Shadows moved, came forward. Only the guilty would duck away; he forced himself to move towards them. Men had waited for Belcher.
Muted questions. Where had he been? He’d been walking. Who had he been walking with? He’d walked on his own. Why had he been walking alone? Because his mouth hurt; he had pain there, because he had been hit in the face without justification. Because the tooth must come out and she had no anaesthetic, because . . .
A hand on his arm.
Three men had waited for him. They wore the black overalls of the security people. Belcher did not know whether that crucial mistake had been made, or whether they were as brusque whatever the circumstance: they might have been the same men who had lifted up his friend to the arms of the cross, the boy from Sudan who wanted to go back to his village outside the city of Omdurman, condemned to death that others might note the penalty for lost commitment, or treachery. Might have been the same men.
He was led through the village. One went ahead and used a small torch to guide his footfall and the two others flanked him. The torchbeam had drifted, seemingly casuall
y, across his chest, and would have showed them that his weapon was not armed, and they had let it hang there. He was moved fast, and if he slowed and pleaded the severe toothache then they nudged him along so that he kept pace with them. They went through the village and he sensed they were irritated that they had been sent to collect him. The time for a meeting, or for an interrogation and denouncement, had gone. Then into a vehicle where a driver had waited. He was hemmed in on the back seat. There was no explanation, and Belcher knew better than to demand one. They drove out on to the road and away towards Marib and past the scattered lights of two of the villages in the line, but at the third track the wheel was wrenched hard over and they went left and on to a dirt surface and bumped along it. Keep the act going, Belcher – and so for deeper ruts he let out a slight moan, as if his ability to withstand pain were being tested beyond measure. The driver had not turned on his lights and they had the moon to guide them. Once he had sworn hard and wrenched the wheel, and an old crone of a woman, with a bent back, stumbled to the side, leading a donkey that carried two panniers of potatoes. Why? At that time? What the hell did it matter? They came into the village, braked hard, he was taken out. At the door of a house, explanations were given, and he sensed the nervousness of his guards. Good to see that. Nobody liked those bastards in security, and they would have been without a friend in any of the villages, kept to themselves and seldom seen to laugh. They killed and created this climate of fear. He heard words of apology, and reckoned blame was being heaped on him, but it was their failure to produce him at the appointed time that seemed to rankle. He was taken inside.
A room that would have been, almost, like any other in the village. No decoration on whitewashed walls. Windows with shutters closed and fastened. A roof of corrugated iron and a floor littered with rugs and cushions and mattresses. One occupant. Would not have been family. A man of Belcher’s age but more slightly built, with a thin beard and only a suspicion of hair on the upper lip. He sat cross-legged. A copy of the Book, closed, was beside him; he wore the drab-coloured clothing of an imam. Belcher was not greeted, not welcomed, but a gesture indicated that he should sit. He unhooked his rifle from his shoulder and it was taken and a door closed, and he was alone with the cleric.
More questions.
For some of the exams at school – most of them failed because of his truancy – there had been one-on-one interviews so that a judgement could be made. He’d thought them crap, and there had been no blow-back. This was different. He concentrated. He listened to each question put to him, judged the nuances, and gave answers that matched respect with sincerity.
From the day he had come under the protection of his brothers in South Shields, he had felt loyalty to their God and gratitude to them. He renounced all other faiths and believed only in Islam. He had tried to be as good a pupil as he was capable of and had striven to understand the Word and to abide by its teachings. He had commitment. He had discipline. He had courage. He had belief. He would, himself, if called upon, prove his belief and courage and discipline and commitment. He made his voice a murmur, a breeze over a dried field, and what he said was heard without interruption and the young imam gazed back into his face and never lost hold of his eyes. They would want him – pretty damned obvious – to go ahead of the bomber and test the defences that the ‘martyr’ would face, check out the security, report in detail on it. He thought his voice matched the humility they would expect from him. He heard the click of a door’s handle and felt a draught on his back. He kept talking: he was theirs, he belonged to them. It was over. A little bob of the imam’s head. Sufficient said. He should stand, and did.
A man stood inside an inner doorway. Taller than Belcher, and thinner, gaunt in the face, and with tiredness bulging beneath his eyes. His fingers were long and delicate, his beard sparse. Behind him was a darkened corridor, but Belcher saw the child, a girl, crouched halfway along it. She was watching and silent. He was asked to stand at his full height and then to raise his arms and hold them outstretched. His shirt was tight against his body and his shape would be clear and his ribcage and flat belly. The man shrugged and turned away and was gone through the door – like a Ghost, there and gone, no trace left – and the girl child wriggled on her haunches after him and both were lost in the darkness.
The imam called, then spoke close to the ear of the man who had led him inside. Belcher was taken out. He had passed – he thought – the test they had set for him, but they showed him no warmth: he might have been meat, might have been displayed on a stall with flies hovering over him. In the night air he was led back to the vehicle, his rifle again on his shoulder. He said where he wanted to go, and why.
They exchanged no farewells, no punching of fists. The guide held up the wire and Corrie started to crawl, then snagged and was freed, and had his shoulders and most of his body through when the seat of his trousers caught. A sentry, forty yards up to the right, coughed hard, and the barb was loosened again. They’d have no chance to check thoroughly and see that he had not left a cotton strand on the wire. He went forward. There was the sound of the wire loosing its tension. Corrie didn’t look back. He heard nothing behind him, didn’t know where Jamil would wait, how close to the wire.
The picture of her face was in his mind. There had not been a face there since Maggie’s. He needed the prettiness of a face to guide him, the fall of golden hair, and the determination. He was desperate to find it. He went on his stomach across the open ground, and through the mud, still warm, where water had been spilt, and swore because it would leave a trail; he would not be able to wipe it away. There were tools in his way, trowels and a short-handled shovel, a spade and a lightweight pickaxe, but he did not disturb them. He knew he should have been clear-headed and focused when he’d first met Henry Wilson, learned what there was to know, then been gone. Every instructor ever born agreed that emotion was a poor item to carry in a rucksack: feelings were best left at home. No scarf had been hung out and he had no justification for the risk – to himself and to her – he was taking. He was breaking every rule that he would have prided himself in observing – and knew why. The tent was ahead of him and the moonlight flickered on the far side of it and the sentry heaved with his coughing attack and another yelled at him to shut up.
Corrie lifted the canvas. The side came up easily. The pin was loose and it took little effort to raise it; the pin had been worked to make his entry simpler. He was expected. He wriggled under and then was clear and saw her. Corrie thought she looked prettier than the picture in his head, and he might have been a shy, acne-covered kid, except they were old burn scars and he was an adult. She sat on her bed, on the outside of the sheet and the blanket. A camp bed, which could be folded away. Her clothes were laid out for the morning on a chair, and others were hung on a frame, and under it were the two big rucksacks that she lived out of, and the laptop she worked off was on the ground sheet. More clothing had been washed and folded, and was laid across the neck of the larger rucksack. She held a paperback book. She was wearing long pyjama trousers and a loose T-shirt that carried the logo of her college, faded and worn and precious, he thought. She stared at him. She put the book down, and her voice quavered.
‘So, tell me – what would they do to us if you were found here?’
He dropped down, knelt. ‘I came to check if there had been movement.’
‘I didn’t signal for you to come . . . It wouldn’t be too bright an outcome, would it?’
‘Doesn’t help to talk about it.’
‘Don’t give me any crap about protecting me from bad dreams.’
‘Forget it, won’t happen. Any movements?’
‘It could be a stoning, or a beheading, or a crucifixion. Would they put us up side by side? Do you feel the burden on your back for what you might have condemned me to – or does that not matter?’
‘My safety matters, to me. If it matters to me, then you will come along in the slipstream. I gave you my promise, and that will be good enough.’
‘Actually, I am quite into blood and guts today. I held the head of a policeman in the last spasms of his life. He liked me, wanted to chat me up. Top of his list – in your dreams, Major – would have been getting his hand in my knickers. I held him while he died, I think. Did he know it was me? Not sure . . . And I’m very fair, not partisan, so I also tried to put a tourniquet on a fighter who was shot in the leg and had bled too much. He was in shit street and I couldn’t help any more. Nice of you to come asking about “any movements” – very appropriate.’
‘The problem is bigger than you and bigger than me. And—’
‘Question: any movement? Answer: no movement. Anything else?’
‘Nothing else.’
‘Which should I worry about most – crucifixion, beheading or stoning? Should I have a preference?’
He heard the voices, the guttural Arabic, coming closer. Not a comic farce played out in the bloody village hall. Quite serious. It was a disaster, not even a qualified one, and she rounded on him and he recognised stress, the whole textbook load of it. Her talk was brittle and her eyes were glistening. But she was signed up and was going nowhere, not if it were up to Corrie, until the mission, Crannog, was decided. Her name was called from outside the main flap of the tent. Where could he go? Few options. There was a screen on the far side of her bed, maybe for dressing privately or where she kept a bucket. She gestured him there. She called back that she was coming and they should wait. He had the pistol in his hand, the Glock, which was pretty fucking useless, and if he legged it and fired shots, the chance of her being with him were short of zero. He did not have time to consider whether stoning, beheading or crucifixion was preferable. Best chance for her would be a bullet from the Glock, between the eyes or behind the ear. He crouched behind the screen.
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