‘Only a man of exceptional devotion to God could be given such an opportunity.’
And it hit and hit hard, and the man was smiling, and though his mouth was set in an imitation of warmth, his eyes seemed cold, distant. Belcher knew killers’ eyes; he had seen them when a man was shot, or suspended from a cross. Right at the start, a few weeks into Syria, he might have grinned back and answered that he wanted nothing less than to walk in the footsteps of the suhada and serve God by going – with a firm step and implacable determination – to istishhad. Time had moved on, he was changed. He did not intend to follow any of the fucking martyrs and go to what they called a ‘heroic death’. He had not anticipated it. It was not an invitation, or a suggestion, but was what was required of him.
‘Not just across the Levant, but over all the world where there are true believers, your name will be spoken.’
Belcher’s idea of his future had been that they would clean him up and put him on the first plane back to Europe, then pay him expenses and he would travel through the continent looking for slack security, and he would fly into and out of the United States because it would be necessary to pass through their checks, and he would report back to them, and then some mother-fucker low-life would be given the crap about the virgins waiting for him, and he would be loaded up, however it was to be done. Or that he would be sent to public buildings and centres of power and he would report similar security failings, copying in his handler, who might or might not be Jericho, and then – one day – the call ‘Taxi for Belcher’ would ring out, and he’d smile and nod to whoever he was with and melt away into the mists, all of it behind him. Men and women, he’d imagined, would come from the shadows to shake his hand and slap his back, and he’d be the best news out of Hartlepool since the heroes of the day had hanged the French monkey. He had never considered that it would be he himself they’d want to carry the bomb; they had poked him and checked his weight, and his mind churned, like it had been a code given him and gone undeciphered.
‘By striking a great blow for us you will be welcomed to Paradise.’
There were kids, boys and girls, who believed in the Paradise teaching. Boys had limitless virgins on call, and the girls who wore explosive vests would have just one sweet and faithful boy, who’d never stray. A big man here in Yemen had shoved a bomb up the backside of his kid brother and had sent him to kill a Saudi prince: he was on the verge of understanding, and squirmed.
‘You are a fine young man, a good fighter, deserving of our love – and an enemy of the Crusaders. Tonight you will be shown to many and your example will give them courage for the conflict ahead. It is a great blow that you will strike.’
They told stories in Hartlepool, up and down the terraces either side of Colenso Street, of what Christmas used to be like there, and they cackled with laughter at the memory of the chickens kept caged in the pint-sized back yards. The birds were fed with every household scrap that was left off the tea table, fattening them up, before Father went out two or three days before the supposed feast of goodwill, and throttled the damn thing, wrung its neck, and plucked its feathers. The intestines went over the yard wall for the cats to fight over, and the bird fed the family. Belcher would be the chicken – guarded and gaining weight.
‘You have our love, brother. Your moment will soon come. Your name will be shouted. Love never dies, brother. Tonight you will meet great men of the movement and they will thank you in person, and offer their love also.’
The man slipped his balaclava back on, the audience completed, then let himself out. Belcher winced, briefly squeezed his eyes shut, and tried to see himself as he would be. Men stood by the door, and one gestured with his head that he should follow. He was led out. The darkness pressed close on him and lights were rare, and the cobbles of the alleys seemed to slither with the sounds of men’s heavy sandals. He saw the glint of rifle barrels. His worry was that he would be pushed into a cage, like the chicken in the yard back home was held until they were ready to end its life. He wondered how he could shake off the watchers and run. He didn’t know where his handler was, or how close the girl was. He shivered. Men pushed past him and children ran and screamed. Veiled women lurked at the sides. He smelt the fumes from the fires where goats were being cooked over charcoal, and the spices. He was not a part of all this; he was a boy from the UK’s northeast coast, and was a traitor to them, and did not know how closely he was being watched – as precious as a plump chicken. Sharper in his mind than anything, as clear as the water that spanked the stones on the sea wall, was the moment he had made the commitment, betrayed the people who had thought him loyal. Not a big moment, no kiss on the cheek, but he had brought a paper clip. He had yearned for that respect, and a pride in himself. A London phone number had been whispered in his ear, he had memorised it and scurried back to his corner of a room in the villa, had scribbled it down and had buried a scrap of paper in the heel of his boot. The start of the lie. He had known that he would follow that man, beaten and with the damaged leg, wherever he led. The other three had been asleep, and he’d not been asked to do more than bring the paper clip and to ensure doors were not locked. He realised now he had been a fish, exhausted, and reeled in. There was chaos in his mind – then and now – and he staggered away from the outer door and drifted into the night, but he thought men followed him.
He was shabah, the Ghost. He saw much, but was little seen or known about.
He had watched her taken. Her father had escorted her to the vehicle and had helped her climb up on to the rear open floor of the pick-up. So young, so pretty; there was little of her face for him to see, but her eyes. He knew her from the corridor of the safe-house where she sat and watched him as he worked, and he had dreamed. Many men followed, crowded in a long cavalcade. He thought they came from villages far to the east, and he had heard that more men would travel with a make-believe corpse, an old man who was not yet dead but who would lie still, or have his wrinkled face slapped hard – no one had conveniently died the night before. But that was an irrelevance. He saw her go.
The Ghost had been brought, alone, in the broken cab of a tractor. With him was the bag that held his laptop. The rest of what he owned – a bundle of clothing – would come separately. He saw her in a passageway after he had been shown the village elder’s home, and the big room where he and the Emir would speak to favoured allies. She trailed her father, and the veil on her face was askew and he could see her sullen mouth.
They were exploiting her youth. She would have been easily identifiable to the lens beneath the body of the Predator. The lens was between the two Hellfires. If he were seen, identified, they would have been launched, a button pressed, and he would have lasted two or three seconds: time for a blink, for a half-suck of air. He stood, but was not seen. The night was close around him. There was a celebratory mood in the village, and there would be grunted approval when the Ghost was seen, and when the Emir spoke. It might have been a wedding night, and a bride brought to a bed, but it was not.
He trembled.
Her father met men he had not seen in many months, or years. He talked. The girl, his daughter, trailed after him. The Ghost imagined . . . She would already have been taken to the bed, and women might have prepared her, and he would follow, and the dancing and raucous voices would continue outside. He seemed to see her on the bed, wearing a long Egyptian cotton shirt in pure white, like the snow in deep winter above Sana’a. A door closed behind him, and the hardening was coming, and he did not know what he should do. She hitched the nightshirt higher and tears formed in his eyes as she gazed at him, then reached towards him with her hand. Would she help him? He needed help from her. Would she lead him? The shirt was raised again and the hand was closer to his and he saw her body and the hair that grew on it and the muscled legs and breasts that were so small, half-lemons and unformed, and her eyes challenged him and seemed to say that he was an important person and that if he had not been she would have ignored him. He felt her fingers on his
and they were tough and calloused . . . she was a child. He panted. Her father had broken from a conversation and took three steps back and grabbed her arm and propelled her forward and he had lost sight of them.
It took him many minutes to calm himself. He moved on.
Corrie could not have said which of them saw the other first.
They were high in the village where the bigger and older homes had been built, the doors of heavy wood and the windows narrow. Little light seeped from them but, outside one, a paraffin-powered lamp had been hung. It would have shown half of Corrie’s face, a profile, and it spilled across the alley and on to the wider cobbled route to the summit of the hill. He thought he was close to the most defensible part of the crannog. The buildings pressed close and the way was too narrow for a vehicle. There was the smell of cooking and a sewer’s stench and a babble of voices. The lamp’s light fell on Belcher’s face.
He recognised him immediately. Not a hesitation. The man had saved his life. He was fuller in the cheeks, the skin less pink and more weathered, the beard thicker. He was walking well, but aimlessly, not seeming to know where he should go. Three men followed him – one at three paces’ distance and another at five or six, and the third at fifteen paces; all were masked and wore black and were armed. And they were alongside each other. Corrie said nothing. There was no movement on Belcher’s lips. Belcher played a part; he paused and looked up at a window from which came the noise of a TV programme, and he seemed to be listening to the dialogue. Corrie took it as the signal.
A very faint voice. He thought he heard and understood it.
Could have been, ‘Within an hour’, but it might not have been. There was a clothes line slung between the buildings that would have carried washing in the daytime, and the wind played a little anthem as it shook the cable and it could have fooled Corrie.
But it was all he had. Corrie went out into the alleyway and walked up the slope, climbing steadily, and did not look behind him. A relationship? Of course not. Gratitude? It had no place. Good to see the man? If it were shown to be useful. Did he owe Belcher anything for the risks he had taken that were real: torture, crucifixion, losing his head to a blunt knife? He thought not.
Corrie retraced his steps. He could read Arabic, enough to make sense of the slogans on a wall condemning America, and he saw the crude outline of a Predator. He stayed clear of the largest building, realising that more men with rifles were there; they lined the short length of track between the wide wooden door and the furthest a vehicle could get. He went towards the top but took the right side of the cobbled track, and so would skirt the building he had first climbed to, where there was fodder for livestock, two goats, a goose in a wooden crate, and a sheep. It would be his vantage point.
He hoped Belcher had watched him and memorised his route. He felt calm.
He did not know how he would get clear of the village, but presumed he would leave the way he had come – he would leg it, then be in open ground. He tried not to think of that, or how Rat and Slime would do when the chance was given them, or of how Belcher would break away. He thought of the woman, Henry Wilson, and what their life might be, and where, and he would not talk – ever – of how it had been in the fortress village. It would be kept bottled, Corrie Rankin’s way.
He was challenged. A shout. Where was he going? What was he doing? Who was he?
If he were a thief they could slice off a hand. If he were a spy they could sever his head. Two men came, asking the same questions. They did not wear the black overalls and face masks of the security team. A yelling beat in his ears . . . wrong place, wrong moment. He was grabbed, fists in his clothing. He had a Glock 9-mm automatic pistol which no idiot in Yemen could easily possess. He had grenades of three types stowed around his body. They had a hold of his coat, both men, and he rolled his eyes and pushed out his lips and jabbered, as if speech were beyond him, and tried to do signs with his hands. Corrie reckoned this was the best and last hope of getting clear without pulling the pistol. In the UK, gunshots were often described as ‘sounded like a car backfiring’, but, not in a remote village in Yemen, one expecting a visitor of supreme importance: shots fired in the darkness would clearly be heard and recognised as shots. He pretended to flop, and the suddenness of his fall broke him free from their hands.
Arms and legs flailing, he writhed on the cobblestones, letting out little gurgles from his throat. He tried to grip a leg and to rake fingernails down the skin above the sock, but was kicked, and he croaked in his throat, and was kicked again.
If he hurt them they would go savage. If he intrigued them they would hoist him up and search him. If he created suspicion he was dead.
So, he feigned the epileptic fit, and they kicked him some more and he seemed not to feel their blows, even when he was whacked with a rifle butt, or when one of them bent over him and slapped his face. And he thrashed and stifled the sounds in his throat, and rolled back from them. There was an entry off to the right, and he fell into it, moaning like a dog in pain, the cry of a simple animal.
The men were being called. Where were they? They delivered one more kick, chuckling because he had amused them, then they were gone. Old pains surged.
Where the Service trained its officers on the south coast, they rated the epileptic routine. The instructors had emphasised that it was a good hope in a bad place. Not that they had dealt out the sort of kicking he had just taken. They’d rough recruits up a bit, but they didn’t break bones and weren’t violent enough to inflict real pain. Two men from a Yemeni village had found him where he should not have been, and would have thought him either a helpless fool, or may just have enjoyed having a stranger to kick and no witness. Perhaps they hated idiots, and perhaps they hated the men who had moved into their villages and screwed their trade and its income, and who brought the drones over them by their presence.
Corrie crawled away. It hurt to breathe deeply, and it was a big effort for him to reach the lean-to shelter where the fodder was. From there he could look down and see perfect darkness, and feel the wind, and hear it. And out in the darkness, waiting for him, were Rat and Slime; and he would prove his usefulness, needed to.
Chapter 14
He might have passed out. The pain brought back his consciousness, where he was and why. He reached the heaped fodder and the animals. His breath came in short gasps, and he’d the wit to realise that Mother Luck, whoever and wherever she was, had smiled on him. Corrie was only another wanderer invading their village, and had not aroused suspicion, but instead had been used as a punchbag. If they had not been called away . . .? Small matter, they had been. A lamp burned inside an upper window of the building against which the lean-to was set. A sliver of light fell on two sets of bright jewels in the depth of the rough-packed bales. Eyes. He needed to make the signal with his torch. Who hid in fodder in darkness? Perhaps lovers who faced a stoning or a hanging, or kids who told stories, looked for adventure. He thought they would be more fearful of him than he of them. It was another gamble.
He might already be carrying a cracked rib, and his forearm might have fractured when he was protecting his face, so he would not be able to take them by the scruff of the neck, two boys, or a man and a woman, and chuck them out and on to the pathway above the steep descent to the plain below. And if it were a man and a woman facing severe penalties, would they not feel justified in stabbing him?
The gamble was to shine the torch full into the eyes, blind them, and growl at them to get the hell clear, in his best Arabic. Three seconds or so and the torch showed them. Two kids, just as it would have been at home. Little eyes set close, and a huddled innocence. He did the gruff voice. The boys would have known from his accent that he was not from their village, but they did not stay and quiz him. They scampered past and he heard the giggling voices, not yet broken, and they were gone.
Would they tell anyone? He couldn’t predict.
He crawled to the open edge of the lean-to. A tethered goat strained its halter and cried
out, and he scratched soothingly at the hair under its chin. Another pushed forward and seemed to wish to trample him. Two hands to calm them. He looked into the darkness. He had to estimate, another gamble, where the road was, where Rat and Slime had settled, where the village was in relation to them, and at what angle he should hold the torch, then signal them. The method of communication was antiquated, though not back to the flaming torches they would have used in the days when the foundations of this village were laid, or when the stones for the base of the crannog were heaped into the water of the loch.
All of it was a gamble; or Jericho would not have demanded him.
It hurt to move. His right arm was worst and the left side of his ribcage.
He had the torch on, held it steady. The wind played on his face and tugged at his clothing, its singing more shrill and tuneless. Corrie could not know whether he had been unconscious, or for how long the kids had watched him, and how much time now remained. The asset had said it would be within the hour: Belcher’s call. The biggest gamble was now, and he held the torch and his thumb was on the button switch and he did not wave or shake it but kept it rock firm, and he counted to twenty. Corrie’s discipline stopped him gabbling the numbers. And he killed it. The darkness swamped him again and one of the goats pushed at him for more attention. He could not say whether there were guards out behind the village, circling it; whether one might have turned his head to pee or avoid the wind or to look behind him on the off chance of seeing the shadow of a friend.
It was done.
Corrie Rankin could have claimed to have fulfilled a limited part of what he had set out to do, and the rest was ahead of him. It was about provenance, seeing and hearing, and it would be very soon if the word of the informer, Belcher, was to be believed.
Then he would go to the tent camp, collect her, lead her to the incline, and head for the helicopter – they would be running for their lives. His arm ached incessantly from one of the kicks, and his chest hurt where the ribs had been belted, and he moved and the point on the leg where the bone had been reset in hospital was aflame. He did not know how he would do, attempting to flee to the helicopter. If he could not then the gamble was lost. He showed a touch of gentleness – and those who knew him best at the VBX building would have been surprised – by hugging the goats, each in turn. His fingers ruffled at their necks and they butted against him affectionately.
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