He could hear but not see. She was shrugging into a dressing gown that would cover her from throat to ankle. He was in near darkness, and Corrie did not know if he smelled from being on the hill and not having washed, and did not know if his stomach would grumble or if a tickle would irritate his throat or if his breathing was quiet enough. He heard the voice, not hers. Heard it and knew it and could not have forgotten it, and it had the ripple of the far north of his own country and of a bleak, cold, coast.
‘Had to come and see you again, bit of an emergency.’
Her voice cool. ‘Hi, tooth playing up again?’
Quieter, ‘Because I have to prove the contact with you, using the tooth. I’m saying the pain is shit, and have to prove it, and I’ve security around me.’
She said, louder, ‘The teeth I usually look at are in skulls, three millennia old . . . I’ve no anaesthetic, local or full. I’ve toolbox pliers. You game?’
‘Have to be.’
She called out of the tent. She wanted a table and a solid chair and wanted hot water and wanted a strong man to hold her ‘patient’ in place, still and steady. She came back inside and Corrie heard her dressing fast – would have been the loose trousers and the long top and she had sandals on, and there would have been a scarf for her head to hide her hair.
Belcher whispered, but Corrie could not make out what he’d told her. She did not reply but went to the back of the tent. He could see nothing, but could hear the snap as she closed and opened what he supposed were the household pliers.
He had been there, to Belcher’s country, had been drawn there. It had been after his convalescence, and while he was waiting to be allocated a new position. Not sanctioned, nor run through a committee, but there had been a late-night phone call from Muscat, coming through on the landline at his address, dear old Jericho: hard as ever, the old cutting edge. An easy-to-understand message: Jericho had taken him on and was going at a date in the future to extract him because there was more use for an embedded agent in Yemen than in Syria, and it was closer to Jericho’s bailiwick. He was supposed to go to Hartlepool, a day trip on the train, catching one at dawn and getting back into London in the evening. Just a bit of colour, was what he was asked for. So Corrie had been there and sat by the sea wall and gone past Victory Square, and done the school and the supermarket Belcher had thieved from, and walked the length of Colenso Street and back down again, and seen the woman come home at the end of the working day. He’d had time to have a coffee with a legal-aid solicitor, who did duty stuff in the courts, and who’d said, ‘He was an enigma to me because he was too bright to be running with that shower. He had gone off the rails but it was a shame, not just a stereotypical scum-bag. What screwed him down was the misplaced sense of loyalty that meant he didn’t grass his crowd: I know who they were – real low-life, who’d have turned him in. I heard he was a convert in gaol, which will end in tears. Can’t really tell you anything else, apologies.’ It had been fed back to Jericho. The voice of the man now sitting in the chair outside was as familiar as when he’d talked to Corrie late at night, a whisper, and the Canadian and the Italian and the Austrian had slept. Corrie owed him nothing, in his opinion – owed nobody anything.
He thought it would hurt, having a tooth pulled out with pliers.
And would hurt also to be hung from a cross and have the shoulder sockets broken. They might fire shots into her stomach, or his, and they might use knives, and it would hurt to be buried up to the shoulders in the dirt and have stones thrown at their heads and get so clogged in despair that he, or she, did not bother any more to try to twist away from the missile. Would hurt for him or her if they were forced on their knees, in the jumpsuit, the head pulled back and the throat exposed and the knife blade flashing.
Corrie wondered if Henry, an archaeologist and not a government fighter, was tough enough to pull out a live tooth, knowing that it was theatre, and might save a life.
She was back inside the tent and she gathered up a couple of thin towels. As she walked past the screen which hid him, the slip of paper fell from her hand and was against the ground sheet at the fold where the flap was, and she was gone. He bent, picked it up.
No reason for him to stay. He went out of the tent, where the spike was loose, and crawled towards the wire, and heard them struggle to hold Belcher down, and her breath heaved loudly as she pulled. Corrie went under the bottom strand, then was caught.
Chapter 11
Corrie’s head and most of his shoulders were under the strand.
A barb had gone into the top layer of clothing, had lodged above the small of his back. A slight pull failed to free him, so he squirmed backwards in the hope of loosing it. It held fast. The ground under his stomach was dry, solid, had no give, and he could only wriggle down an inch, not enough. He attempted to manoeuvre his hand backwards and upwards, then wriggle his fingers at the pinch where the cloth was hooked. Voices played around him, in Arabic, staccato conversations between troops and fighters, formal exchanges: the military was there on tolerance and the woman who dug for artefacts was permitted to do her work, and to be of use when called upon. Such a moment was now, because a prized convert had toothache. His voice rang out, in English, and hers in response; he was subdued and she was brusque and angry that the hot water she’d demanded had taken so long. It was more than two years since he’d heard Belcher, and there was still a tinge of richness to the accent, as he’d remembered it. Corrie had not understood him then, did not understand him now, but would work him. He could hear them prepare to extract a tooth, but could not free himself.
It was pointless to try and rip the barb out because the material was strong, would be hard to tear. A soldier might come and walk around the perimeter of the camp, or another might come to pee, or another to eat a choice-tasting morsel he didn’t want to share. As loudly as he dared, Corrie hissed the name of his guide, but his voice seemed more a bellow than a whisper. The guide, Jamil, did not emerge from the darkness. He had in his pocket a crumpled note: all of his world, and Belcher’s, and Henry’s was about delivery of the scrap at the bottom of his pocket, resting there with dust and fluff. Corrie supposed the guide had run, had opted out. He would be on his way overland, off to find himself the elusive leopard: too bloody right he would. With his last breath, Corrie would denounce Jamil to Jericho and demand the little bastard never worked again in the Gulf, would fucking starve, and his family. And still he could not free himself.
No one came. The moon climbed. A dog called in the distance. A distant vehicle travelled the Marib road.
Her voice dominated. They must have brought the water. She instructed her woman how to hold the towel. Telling the men who had come with Belcher how to hold him down in the chair. And speaking to Belcher, no gentleness in her voice – as if rolling up her sleeves.
Corrie had had a leg broken by a blow from an iron bar. He had crawled with the injury across country, had been kicked and beaten and burned. He had not had a tooth yanked out by a girl armed with household pliers, and all to protect a lie.
He lay still. Corrie, the man who had achieved legendary status in the corridors of VBX, was hooked to a strand of wire. The trusted guide given him had disappeared into the night, and if he was found then his life was forfeit, and Belcher’s and Henry Wilson’s. Another girl’s face had been in his mind at another time. Replaced. He saw the hair smeared down across her forehead, held by the sweat streaks, and the freckles and the plain straightness of her nose and the tilted lips and the jutted chin, giving the message that she took no prisoners. Her life, if he were found . . . Corrie knew no girl who could, to protect a lie, pull out a tooth with pliers – except her.
And the little bastard paid to guide him had fucked off into the night. A great anger surged in Corrie and his fingers scraped helplessly at the ground. He still could not free himself. It was not her face in his mind, not any longer. Corrie seemed to see the ranks of them in their easy chairs in the small auditorium down at the camp on Sali
sbury Plain, the rows of men from the squadrons of the Hereford Hooligans, who should have been with him and were not. Word might seep through, next year or the year after, that the guy had cocked up, had caught himself on a wire strand, had had his balls cut off and then his head, had existed off a reputation gained yesterday. He could not loose himself and he slumped.
He sucked in breath, and held it, and heard her voice. The laughter would have been from the audience, and Belcher might have said, ‘Get the show on the road, get it done’, and they’d not have understood.
Corrie lay on the ground, his fingers no longer trying to free the barb, and he felt a wave of despair. He had known despair before and had come through it, and could not now think how he had. Where to go? He seemed to see the pub and the cat laid out in front of the fire and heard a query shouted across to him: could he make up the darts team numbers? . . . He moved and kept on moving. He was free. It must have been when he’d heaved himself up and then slumped down hard. He felt the barb touch his buttocks and brush over the top of his thighs and he emerged from under the strand. He did then what was sensible, and what not one of the Hereford gang would have expected him to consider. He reached back and found the barb and also the strand of cotton clinging to it, and slid it off, and he took another few seconds to smooth the ground under the wire and to hide the place. He heard her voice, decisive.
‘Right, friend, here we go.’
And laughter behind him. Well, the guys hadn’t had a crucifixion for nearly forty-eight hours so a tooth coming out was the best they were going to get. The hank of cotton went into his pocket and down where the paper was. He didn’t think he’d feel Belcher’s pain, and no one had been around when his own had run riot. Corrie crawled away.
Last thing he heard, her voice in English, a grunt, ‘God, not going to come easy.’
There was a block on the road and Jamil skirted it.
He scrambled up the last steep incline and reached the first home. It was obvious to him what he should look for, and what he would find if the village were chosen. It was the only one that could deserve the title of ma’qil, ‘fortress’, and Mister Jericho had told him that their mission bore the name of crannog, meaning a ‘refuge’ or ‘sanctuary’. There it would be an island surrounded by water, here it would be built on ground that rose above the plain. He had no doubt of it; he had told the sniper.
A man who tried to go close to a leopard was aware of each step he must take to avoid sound and smell, and how to hug shadow and find safety in darkness. He would not stampede goats and sheep fenced in for the night, or trip on a stone, clatter into the buckets filled from the main well. He would be able to calm the village dogs shut outside for the night. If it were the right place, and the meeting was soon, more guards from security would be there. When he had spoken to them, had lain beside them and alongside the big rifle, he had sensed their respect and valued that.
He shuddered.
No more laughter. As she started her work, the pain came in a surf swell through him, seemed to split open his head, to float into his stomach, along his legs. Tears streamed from his eyes. He did not cry out. The man on the cross had not and Belcher would not . . .
Henry was breathing hard. No emotion, not that. She gulped in air, sucked it in, to give herself strength. He was on the chair. It was ordinary enough, with a thin canvas seat. A hurricane lamp lit him and one of the security people held a big torch, aiming it sporadically at his face. It wobbled between his mouth and the offending tooth, or up to his eyes and forehead. Another man had two big hands on his shoulders from behind.
She dabbed his mouth, used a towel to wipe blood from the gums.
She said, chest heaving, ‘They told me on my first-aid course before coming out, that blacksmiths used to do teeth pulling.’
He could not answer.
‘These boys round us, they don’t have local anaesthetic and all that.’
Nothing sensible to say or think.
‘And before the blacksmith took his kit out of the bag, they’d have poured a clear litre of gin down your throat, but these boys don’t have that option.’
She took a big chance, and seemed satisfied that her words were not understood,
‘One last go, my boy, so hang on, enjoy the ride.’
She set herself for the effort.
‘What you need to know, what you brought has gone – worthwhile, on its way.’
His head was back and she knelt on the ground, and her two hands held the pliers and her hips were hard against his. He felt the damn things grappling and searching for the tooth again, finding it and then the grip holding, and she pulled. Might for a moment have closed her eyes, and she heaved again and his shoulders were held, and the guys didn’t laugh because the show was past comedy. He’d thought once, before she’d rested, that one of the security men might take over from her, do the job faster but she’d not permitted it. And he gasped once more, and felt it move.
She slipped back, her chest cannoning into his knee. Worse pain than before.
She said, spluttering, ‘My vocation, putting shoes on horses. It’s a fine tooth.’
He blinked. She held it up. He thought it a classic example of a bloody good tooth, and it dripped his blood. She opened the pliers and it fell into her lap and she slipped it into his pocket. Her woman had the towels at his mouth and Belcher felt the size of the hole, and then there was water going into it and more dabbing, and he started to choke. All over. Hands came off his shoulders. Two things that Belcher realised: the big boys who had escorted him there thought the trip unnecessary. They would have done it themselves – there were no dentists here, and had been none in Aleppo. Clear and simple, they’d have done it. Secondly he realised that he’d been awarded this treatment, against the normal run of life, because of who he was; he was that important.
He was given water, sipped it.
At the cost of a tooth, and the worst fifteen minutes of his life, he had established reason to be with her. Fair exchange? Had to be. She’d turned her back on him and spoke with the security. Her Arabic was good enough for them. She didn’t act in the way they’d have been familiar with, the little woman, apologies for disturbing them. She had her hands on her hips, holding the pliers loosely, and it was about hygiene. She was demanding that she see him again soon because the cavity was now an open wound and dirt would cause first inflammation, and then more serious infection that she’d not answer for. They agreed.
The woman brought a roll of cotton wool from the tent and a wad of it was forced into the gap and pulled out bloodstained and then another was inserted. More water went into the bowl. She pulled her plastic gloves off, soaped her hands. She said nothing more to him. And what might he have said to her? Something about his thanks, and something about it would have been good to be held and have the breath back in his body and her warmth. Something . . . Not a backward glance, and she had gone into her tent and had closed the flap. He did not know whether he would be able to stand or would fall over. Had to stand because he was a fighter. Did. Rocked a little, seemed dizzy and about to spin, but gripped the back of the chair and the moment passed. He did not call after her.
No applause from the fighters or the troops. He stood.
A silly moment, but his eyes roved over the security guys and he looked at the balaclavas and face masks and could see the eyes and wanted to identify some semblance of humanity. Well done, my brother. Brave stuff, my friend. God found you deserving of his help. None of it. He saw her shadow move once inside the tent and then lost it. They took him away and led him back to the vehicle. Belcher reflected that the price of a tooth might just be his life, but it was where life was cheap and death was everyday. And he had not cried out – that, at least, they would have valued.
She had undone the belt and the buttons and the clasps, had thrown the clothing to the floor. Now she lay on her bed in pyjama trousers and T-shirt, but it would be a long time before she slept. She did not read or try to write up any reports
of her work as she usually did late in the night. Her wrist ached from the effort of extracting the tooth. The pliers would be scrubbed in the morning and the dried blood removed. They might have applauded him, but had not, and she thought they had no love for him. Interesting, in her opinion. He had come to fight with them, earning a degree of trust, and they believed him of use, but he would never have earned their friendship – or the respect of the Sixer man. It was a good tooth. She had held it up briefly and claimed she could see the clear indications of decay, and the deceit – and its attendant pain – was justified. Her hands were behind her head and the pillow was thin and unforgiving and her legs a little apart and she stared at the tent’s roof and could not see it and reflected that two men had been close to her that evening and each had had life-and-death business with her, and it had oozed from each of them that – also – they yearned to share that bed with her; and she might have taken either of them. Fear bound them, and it built level upon level of tension and trauma, and the waiting was hardest. She felt she could have held either of them as a release from the fear, and she did not know which of them to put her faith in. Time passed, and the camp was quiet, and the tooth would have dried in his pocket. If they did not survive, would she?
She imagined a diary entry, something to be read at the Royal Archaeological Institute. A little speech about her, and fulsome praise, at Burlington House, in the heart of Piccadilly. After the speech, the reading. I had been given all of this stuff about fractures and troughs and basins and it was spelled out to me, words of one syllable, that my work in the Marib Governorate was of trifling importance compared to the safety of hundreds, many hundreds of people – none of whom I knew, would ever meet. My previous findings were classed as low priority. I was in a gin-trap. Today I held in my arms a police major as he died, and I used my feeble knowledge as a first-aider to keep a young fighter for a few hours more in this world before martyrdom. This evening I took out the tooth of a British-born man, a turncoat, and it was necessary to prove that he had the right to come to see me as I might help him lessen the pain. He passed me a note that I have given to a UK intelligence officer, who is in hiding close to my bivouac and in great personal danger. It is a world of mirrors and I understand little of it. When – if – I leave here, then I will be fleeing, and I will have the clothes I stand in and a lightweight rucksack, and all of the artefacts will be abandoned here, all of the work I have done will be as nothing. If I do not escape then I am condemned. I wish I could sleep, but cannot, and tomorrow may be worse, and I am alone. I have to hope it was worth it. But her diary stayed in her bag, and the pen, and she wrenched the pillow from beneath her head and her hair fell across her face, and she held it tight. They were two good men but she had neither, had only the pillow.
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