He shunned company because the earlier elation was gone and he thought himself a man who had been cheated. The force of the peshmerga was in flight. The former brigade position at the crossroads was reoccupied. At first light, the next morning, units of Fifth Army would move back into Tarjil, and by the afternoon probing patrols would have reached the Victory City of Darbantaq. By the end of the next day the narrow corridor would have been emptied of the saboteurs. The chance to hunt the sniper – one to one, skill to skill, eye to eye, bullet to bullet – was lost to him.
The growl had become a snarl.
He stared at the curtain and the wall and imagined the man tramping back towards the distant mountains, walking in a ragged column bowed by defeat. He would be gone in the morning. There was no work for him in Tarjil or at the Victory City. And then the future hit him. The future was …
The snarl was a yelp of pain.
He started up in his seat and his sudden movement, as he twisted to look behind him, knocked the table and spilled the milk. A small man, older than himself, with flecked, cropped grey hair and a complexion of extraordinary smoothness, was crouched by the back legs of the chair. Aziz had not heard his approach. The narrow, fleshless fingers of one hand held the skin at the nape of the dog’s neck, while the other played gently over the fur on its head. His uniform of drab olive green had no rank insignia on the shoulders and no ribbons on the chest. In his breast pocket was a neat line of ballpoint pens, as though he were a bureaucrat, but he held the dog with expert power so that it did not dare to struggle, and stroked its head as if it were a child. Four men stood behind him, sweat staining their armpits and blood spattered on their tunics and trousers.
The dog quivered.
‘I am Commander Yusuf, and I am honoured to meet the sniper who has delivered to us this misguided peasant woman. I almost feel sympathy for her because she is not more, not less, than a plaything for others. It must be comforting to be able to shoot with such accuracy even when the target is a person of so little worth.’
‘Would you let go of my dog?’
‘I call her “worthless” – do I offend you? I assure you that offence is not intended.
There are some here who believe she was of importance, but I do not share that opinion.
It is the mark of our Arab society that some of our heroic forces feel demeaned by fighting against saboteurs led by a woman. It is an affront to their dignity and manhood that a woman should better them in combat.’
‘You are hurting my dog. Please, let go of it.’
‘They call her a witch. It is understandable. A witch has supernatural powers. Our heroic forces wish to offer her such powers as an excuse for their own failure, and their own treachery. She will be a victim, and it will give me no pleasure to hang her, but that will be necessary to satisfy the simple minds of our soldiers. I need to know from her only the extent of the treachery of officers who betrayed their trust. Then she hangs. The officers, Major Aziz, concern me.’
He listened to the purring voice. He had never met the man before, nor seen him, but had heard the name. It was whispered in the corridors of the Baghdad Military College, at the headquarters of the armies, and in the command posts of divisions and regiments. It was said, in the whispers, that none who faced him in the cells, whatever their courage, could resist the persuasiveness of his interrogation techniques.
‘I have no interest in those who betray their trust. I am a soldier, I do my duty. Would you, please, release my dog?’
‘I watch, Major Aziz, for the trail made by the belly of a snake and I follow the slime of that trail. The trail leads me, always, to the nest of the snakes. When the nest has been found, it is best to pour petrol into its hole and set fire to the petrol. The snake is a creature of treachery. It is discovered where least expected, then it must be followed, then killed … I am honoured to meet a man who knows where his duty lies.’
As he stood, the hand released the nape of the dog’s neck. The dog, coiled like a spring, hurled itself at the man’s ankle and bit hard. Commander Yusuf did not flinch, did not cry out. He seemed to watch the dog for a moment as it worried at his ankle. The strength of his kick was sufficient to break the hold of the dog’s teeth and propel it against the wall below the drawn curtains, where it fell back gasping.
‘Why should your dog regard me as a threat, Major Aziz, when all I offer it is kindness?’
The brigadier was on the floor of his cell, crumpled, finished with perhaps for an hour.
The door was left open so that he could hear everything from the adjacent cell. He could not see through the open door because his eyes were closed by swelling, nor could he feel the rough concrete on which he lay because his fingers were numbed by the pain from the extraction of his nails. He was the Boot, a man credited with brutal strength and fortitude.
He had not yet broken, not yet given names.
The brigadier knew of the reputation of the little puny bastard with the voice that was never raised, and with the thin-boned fingers that had held the pliers. The reputation said his patience was great and failure was never accepted. He had tried not to cry out, even when the pain ran like rivers in him, because to cry out was to weaken her as she waited for them to return to her cell. He heard sometimes her whimpered cries, and once he heard her scream, and he thought that they burned her. What they had done to him, what they now did to her, was as nothing to the agony that awaited them both if they did not break, because the bastard’s reputation was for a refusal to be beaten.
When he had seen her first, she had been vibrant and so patronizing of him – but his ears heard her fear and the eyes of his mind saw the cigarettes ground out on her, the fingers prising into her. And when she had cried, screamed, weakened him, they would come back to his cell. He did not know how long he could last, but he knew that when he broke, others, now trusting in his courage, would follow him into the dark cells to await the coming of Commander Yusuf.
Isaac Cohen heard the radio transmissions as they were decyphered by his computers.
He felt a crippling weight of sadness. She was not one of their own, but the grief was as acute as if she had been.
In Tel Aviv, there were old men of the Mossad, retired and gathering now in the pavement cafés on Ben Yehuda, who had spoken of that pitiful and helpless sadness when the news had leaked of Elie Cohen’s capture in Damascus and of his execution in Simiramis Square. So much power at their disposal and none of it able to pluck out a patriot from a cell and from the gallows’ platform … There were the veterans of the Agency, whom he had met on Washington visits, who had spoken of that same burden of sadness when the news had filtered through of the taking in Beirut, and the subsequent death, of Bill Buckley – and a greater power had been worthless.
He remembered her as she had been when he had seen her in the mountains: certain, confident, at the edge of conceit, dismissive of his help. The torches had played on her eyes, and he had known why men followed her. He wanted to remember the certainty, the confidence, because then he did not imagine her in the cells of Fifth Army. The old men that he’d known had said to him that when Elie Cohen was in the cells in Damascus, they could not sleep, rest, laugh, make love to their women, could not live. He would talk to the sniper when the remnant army straggled back and hear how it had happened, and he might curse him for allowing it to happen … He was not the lapdog of the Americans. If his sadness permitted it, he would call them in the morning, but that night he would think of her, and say a prayer for her.
Gus asked, ‘Will you go to see the old man, Hoyshar, for me?’
‘I will.’ Haquim’s hawk eyes beaded on him.
‘Tell the old man everything that has happened.’
Haquim nodded.
‘And he should write about it, and what he writes he should send to my grandfather.’
‘I will do what you ask – but I tell you, Mr Peake, this death wish will achieve nothing.’ There was a choke in Haquim’s voice.
The column had begun to march away. The wounded were carried on the strongest men’s backs and on litters. Over Haquim’s shoulder, Gus could see the long straggle of the fighters. They were slow going, at the start, but he thought that when they sniffed the fine air of the high ground their pace would quicken, and they would have the goal of home to stretch their strides.
Gus said, ‘I am grateful for your advice, and I want your forgiveness.’
‘For what?’ Haquim asked gruffly.
Simply said, ‘For the insults I heaped on you.’
Their hands clasped, locked, the gnarled, blistered hands of the older man and those of the younger man. Gus could see the laid-out lights of Kirkūk and the silhouettes of the higher buildings, the towering flame that had been the unattainable target. It was about respect, which was precious to him.
Haquim said, ‘There is a remote possibility that I can save her. I have to attempt it, but I have little time.’
Their hands slipped apart. Haquim leaned over Gus and whipped his fist against Omar’s face. That, too, was about respect. Then he was on his way. Gus thought that a lesser man than Haquim would have turned, hesitated, waved a final time, but there was no such gesture. There was no stolen moment for the softness of sentiment. He watched Haquim hobbling away into the fading light to catch the tail of the column.
Gus twisted towards Omar and said, ‘You can still go …’
Stubbornly, his face lowered, the boy shook his head.
‘There is a life for you, stealing and thieving and pilfering, looting from the dead, there is still a chance of a life for you.’
‘Major Herbert Hesketh-Prichard always needed an observer.’
Gus’s voice shrilled in the dark space under the overhang, into the infuriating calm of the boy’s eyes: ‘You can go, damn you, and feel no shame. You can run, reach them, and live.’
He watched the column merge into the gloom. For Gus, it was like the breaking of a linked chain, which, while secure, led to Hoyshar and on from Hoyshar to another old man, and from his grandfather to his parents, his woman, his work and the long weekend days on Stickledown Range. But the column had disappeared into the last traces of grey light and he could no longer hear the shuffling of their boots, or the scrape of the litters.
A chain was broken, but new chains were fastened. There would be chains on her ankles; a chain held him to her, a chain held the boy to him. He snatched at Omar’s tunic top, caught it at the collar, wrenched the boy up then pushed him hard away from him, away towards where the column had gone. The boy sat beyond his reach. Gus picked up a stone and hurled it savagely at him, then another. They scudded past the small body with his patient, staring eyes.
Gus shouted, ‘Go, you little bastard, and live! Thieve from the dead and the wounded.
I don’t need you. I don’t want you. Head away out of here – do as you’re bloody told!
Go.’
His voice, trapped by the overhang, boomed around him. He threw one more stone and hit the boy’s shoulder. He saw Omar wince, but any cry was stifled and the boy did not rub the place where the stone had struck.
‘We are all not happy, Mr Gus, not only you.’ Then the cheek came, and the grin cracked across the boy’s smooth face. ‘Did you fuck her?’
Gus shook his head, slowly and miserably. He could not remember the taste of her or the feel of her. ‘I kissed her, I loved her.’
‘We all loved her, Mr Gus, not only you. Please, tell me a story from Major Hesketh-Prichard.’
Gus jerked his back straight. He recognized that the argument was ended, settled. The link to the past had gone with the column. They would be in Kirkūk by dawn.
‘No man’s land – where there were shell craters and fallen trees – was the best place for observers, where they were most valuable, and any unit with an aggressive commander always tried to dominate there. An intelligence officer with the 4th Battalion of the Royal Berkshire Regiment called Mr Gaythorne-Hardy thought it was necessary to know the exact layout of the German defences on Hill Sixty-three at a place called Messines. There was no point going at night across the four hundred yards of no man’s land because at night he wouldn’t be able to see the plan of their trenches and their defences so he went in daylight. It would have taken him hours to cross the open ground, and all the time the German snipers and sentries would have been watching it, but he was good enough in his fieldcraft to get right up to the enemy wire, to learn everything there was to know about their position. He was under their noses, but they did not see him.
Getting there, learning, was of no value unless he was able to return safely to his own lines and report what he had seen. That was much harder, and he would have been tired.
More difficult to crawl away than to go forward. But Mr Gaythorne-Hardy had the skill.
From what he had seen, the enemy’s trenches could be targeted more effectively by the artillery and our snipers had a better chance of killing Germans. Major Hesketh-Prichard thought him one of the best.’
‘Not as good as me.’ The smile swept the boy’s face.
‘Of course not.’
Then came the puzzlement that creased lines at Omar’s mouth and eyes. ‘Why, Mr Gus, are we staying?’
Gus said, a hoarseness in his throat, ‘Because it is owed her.’
‘What can we do?’
‘Something, anything is better than nothing.’
He heard the scream as he walked across the compound to find the telephone, the same scream as a goat’s when it is tied and held and first sees the knife as the guests gather for a wedding feast.
At the steps of the building that dealt with Fifth Army’s victualling, there would be an empty office and a telephone.
The sentry at the main entrance saluted, unlocked the door and admitted him. The screams would have been heard by the sentry and by every soldier, every non-commissioned officer, every officer in the compound. If the screams destroyed the brigadier’s resolve, if the Boot broke, then any man in the compound whose name stumbled from his lips was doomed. His own name would end the pain, would still the cries.
The clerks who filled the order forms for Fifth Army’s meat and rice, vegetables, fruit and cooking oil had all returned to their barracks. He walked along a half-lit corridor and into a darkened room. He did not switch on the light but groped towards a desk. He found the telephone. The arrival of the torturer had precipitated his course of action. He had lain on his bed and fashioned the plan. He could not abandon them. There was a dialling code that circumvented the switchboard operators and provided access to a direct line. She was distant, faint.
‘Leila, you must listen exactly to what I say, and do it.’
He could hear the television playing behind her, the babble of the children’s voices and her mother’s. She said she was listening.
He was wary of the security of the direct line. ‘Leila, are you listening? Don’t interrupt. I am leaving Kirkūk in the morning. I have the chance to take a short holiday.
You remember that four years ago we camped with the children? I wish to do that again.
You will pack what is necessary and meet me at Sulaiman Bak on the Kirkūk road.’
She said that the weather forecast on the television had warned of freezing nights, and she did not think the conditions were suitable for camping with the children.
‘You should pack clothes for four days, and the children’s best boots. From Sulaiman Bak we will take the road for Kingirban and Kifri, then we will find a place to make a camp.’
She said that tomorrow was a busy day at the hospital, that it was impossible for her to find a replacement at such short notice – perhaps later they could camp, when the weather improved.
‘As you love me, Leila, do as I say. Meet me at Sulaiman Bak. We have to take the chance being offered here.’
She said that Wafiq had an examination at school in the morning – had he forgotten?
And Hani was playing football for the school in the afternoon of
the day after tomorrow –had he forgotten that, too? Karim Aziz could not know if the line was routinely monitored, whether it was already listened to. He repressed the desire to shout and block out each of her reasoned excuses for not leaving Baghdad.
‘Leila, it is the best chance we have of a holiday with the children. There will always be busy days at the hospital, many examinations and football games. Pack tonight, be on the road early. It is important to me.’
She said that it was her mother’s birthday two days after tomorrow – had he forgotten that, also?
‘Be there, I beg of you. Bring tents, warm clothes, food. On the Kifri road there is a fuel station, about a kilometre from the Kirkūk road. I ask little of you. It is about the love that I have for you and for our children. It is the chance of a short freedom. It is for us. Please, be there …’
She said that it was difficult. Aziz replaced the receiver. He knew she would be at the fuel station. They had been married too long for her not to be there. He walked out of the building and across the compound, ringed by high lights. He was beyond middle age. She was plump and wide at the hips and her youth had gone. They had only each other, and their boys. He heard the cry in the night. He wondered if the torturer would need to sleep, would go to a cot bed to rest, wondered if the torturer’s need to sleep and rest would win him the time to drive south to a fuel station eighty-five kilometres away and meet those he loved, take them towards Kifri then strike out for the jebel ridge, and cross the lines.
He knew of many who had failed to find an unguarded track, and he had heard of a few who had successfully crossed the lines and then been captured by the peshmerga and handed back to the soldiers at an outpost for a cash reward. The wife he loved tolerated the regime in helpless resignation, never complained at the shortages of equipment and drugs in the hospital, merely stoically endured. The children he loved went to the school, believed implicitly what their teachers told them of the evil of Iraq’s enemies, stood each morning facing the smiling image of the President and chanted their support, were proud that their father served him. He would tell them, on the road beyond the fuel station, that their tolerance and pride was a fraud. He would lead them, as fleeing refugees, towards the patrols and the strong points and he did not know whether they would curse him.
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