Arabesk (55 page)

“Who are you?” the voice demanded.

Ka sighed. “You’ve asked me this already…”

“Humour me,” said the voice. It didn’t sound very humorous at all. “That’s a basic rule, okay?”

“Sergeant Ka,” said Ka. “We were part of the Army.”

“Were?”

Ka thought of the ploughs turning over sand and blinked as his p.o.v. changed. The 4×4s were done now, even out at the edge of what had been Ka’s camp. Some trucks were even leaving, helmeted troops waving to a blonde woman who stood atop a dune, laden down with power pack and portable satellite dish.

Ka turned off the radio. “We can’t go back,” he told the others, as if that was an end to the argument.

“Oh yes we fucking can.” Saul’s voice was deeper than Ka’s own. His superior age showing in its gruffness and the ease with which he dropped swear words into his conversation. “We just turn this shitty boat around.”

“They’d flog us publicly,” Sarah reminded him. “Maybe shoot us.”

“Yeah.” Bec flicked her gaze from Sarah to Ka, then back again. “We’ll need an excuse.”

Lifting his shades, Ka stared at Bec. “We can’t go back,” he said slowly. “You know why we can’t go back? Because everyone’s dead.”

Mouths dropped open and Zac instantly flung his hands over his ears, as if to block out Ka’s lies. Both his sisters were in that camp, Ka realized; had been, rather…

“It was quick,” Ka insisted. “Instant,” he added hurriedly. “It was instant. A bomb made a small bang and everyone just fell over.”

“Yeah?” said Saul. “And how do you know…?”

“I just do. Then the ’copters came and trucks full of soldiers.”

“Why did they send soldiers?” Bec asked. “If the bomb had already killed everyone?”

Ka didn’t have an answer to that.

“Because the bomb doesn’t exist,” said the voice in his ear. “That’s why… In a moment your radio is going to come on. Talk to it direct.”

My radio is switched off, Ka wanted to say, but the blue box was already noisily swooping hi-to-low at exactly sixty cycles a minute, like a miniature police siren.

“Sergeant Ka,” said the boy, holding the radio to his ear and feeling stupid.

“Lieutenant Ka,” corrected the voice. “As of now. Lieutenant Ka, Sergeant Sarah, Corporal Bec…”

“What about Saul and Zac?”

“Zac’s a baby. And Saul…”

Ka waited.

“He’s a spy, you understand?”

“I understand,” said Ka, sitting up so straight his hair almost caught in down-hanging thorns.

“I understand, sir.”

“Sir.”

“And you know who I am?”

Ka shook his head. Somehow that was enough.

“Colonel Abad,” said the Colonel, introducing himself. “You’ve heard of me?”

Oh yes. Ka grinned stupidly at the badge on his shirt. Those shades, the cigar, that black beard. The Colonel.

“Where are you exactly?”

The boy looked round him. Cliffs tight on both sides of the river and white-headed vultures overhead. But then there were always vultures circling thermals over this stretch of the Nile. Above the vultures, made smaller both by reality and distance, hovered raptors. Black-winged kites, most probably.

Sarah’s felucca was tied at the river’s bend, on the side where floodwater flowed less fast and silt almost buried rocks that were pale and strangely square. Three thousand years earlier, during the flood season, a cargo boat had run aground there. Staying with his freshly hewn sandstone, the captain had sent slaves downriver to get help. He died in the night waiting for their return, killed by an adder as he sat by a small fire lit to keep jackals at bay.

Colonel Abad knew these things. The hieroglyphs of the pharaohs cartouched below their statues, the genera of birds and animals, even the molecular structure of each rock that made up the crumbling cliffs and temples, statues and ruins.

Ka could identify concrete, sandstone and polycrete, the frothy stuff that set hard and could be coated with sand or gravel, provided any covering was whacked on before the crete had time to dry. Both sides used it to make HQs that blended into any background.

“We’re upriver from the camp,” Ka said, “on a bend near low cliffs… And we haven’t eaten all day,” he added as an afterthought.

“You got grenades?”

“Yes,” said Ka. At least Saul had. Zac, Sarah and Bec had two rifles, a knife and a pistol between them. He had the plastic gun. What his dead lieutenant called a doublePup. He didn’t like it very much.

“Swap it,” said Colonel Abad. “First chance you get. Right…” The radio crackled for a second. “Listen up. Food first. That means losing a grenade to the river. Get Saul to throw and Bec and Zac to collect the fish… All of them.”

“Do we eat them raw?”

“Sushi.” The voice sounded amused. “Only if you want. Personally I’d suggest a small fire and usually I’d recommend dry twigs, but today we want smoke, don’t we?”

“Do we?”

“Oh yes,” said the voice, “very definitely.”

Ka shuffled backward, then stopped when his foot hit Sarah’s shoulder. The girl didn’t move but she did glare, waiting while Ka edged sideways to give her space. They were alone together in the desert, on an important mission… That was how Ka had explained it to the others.

“Accident,” said Ka.

Sarah nodded. Opened her mouth as if she was about to say something, then shut it. She had perfect teeth, Ka realized. Tourist’s teeth. All in a neat line and with no chipped edges.

“How old are you?” He’d asked the question without thinking. “I mean, really?” He knew Sarah said she was fourteen but then he said he was thirteen.

“Fifteen,” Sarah said firmly.

“Me too…” Ka smiled, then shrugged. Questions were never welcome, he should have known that. Ka just wanted to be the one who persuaded her to open up and talk. Already he could describe how she looked without looking. Hair as black as her eyes, braided into long plaits. Her skin somewhere between dark chocolate and purple, not café noir like his. She’d taken grief for that in the camp; grief, comments and idle slaps. Mostly from the older girls.

There were more girls than boys in the Ragged Army. That was because they fought better, according to Saul, having more to fear if captured. Although Saul was the only person Ka had ever heard say this and, besides, both sides chopped off the hands of those who wouldn’t change and it was hard to think of much worse than that.

“What are you thinking?”

“About these,” said Ka and flexed his fingers. “Sometimes…about being captured.”

Sarah nodded. “Right,” she said. “Scare yourself, why don’t you?”

Sighting along the barrel of her rifle, she began to tighten her finger on the trigger.

“Not yet,” protested Ka. He had orders from Colonel Abad and he intended to obey them. “I’ll tell you when.”

“I can do it from here,” Sarah said crossly.

“I’m sure you can,” Ka agreed, “but the Colonel…”

He’d told Sarah about Colonel Abad. He’d told them all. No one any of them knew had ever seen the man in the flesh, but even having talked to the Colonel by radio raised Ka’s importance with the others.

“The Colonel?”

Ka had nodded.

“He spoke to you?” Zac’s small face had been bright with wonder.

“Yes, he wants me to go on reconnaissance…” Ka stumbled over the word. “After we’ve all eaten.” Ka gave them their new ranks, pretending not to see the anger in Saul’s eyes. “You,” he said to Saul, “throw your grenade into the river and we’ll grab the fish as they float to the surface.”

“It’s my last one.” Saul’s voice was suspicious.

“You were the person complaining you were hungry.” Which was true enough. He’d complained louder than anyone. “Throw it into the middle,” Ka ordered.

“Wait.” That was Sarah.

Ka stared at her until she looked away, suddenly unsure. “I mean,” she said quietly, “perhaps you think he should throw it over there.” Sarah pointed to a gravel spit a hundred paces up river. “So we can catch the fish as they float towards us.”

Agree with her, said a voice in his head.

“You’re right,” said Ka. “That’s a much better idea.”

“Really?” Sarah suddenly looked more unsure than ever.

The explosion boiled the river and echoed off the cliff face, sending egrets skywards in a wheeling cloud. In total they collected fifty-three fish, with Ka just missing a loglike Nile catfish that came to the surface, then rolled over and sank. Most of the catch were fat perch sporting heavy lines like makeup around their eyes. And mixed in with the perch were a handful of deep blue talapia.

Sarah told the others that talapia collected a better price at market but, to Ka at least, both fish tasted equally good. In a flourish that surprised everyone, Bec ripped handfuls of leaves from a spindly bush and stuffed them inside the gutted perch before letting Sarah bake them on her smoking fire pit.

“Corporal Bec is in charge until I get back,” Ka announced when everyone had eaten more than they should. “Sarah comes with me. The rest of you remain here.”

“Says who?”

He could pretend not to hear Saul or he could answer. And for once the truth was a better reply. “Colonel Abad,” said Ka, “those are his direct orders…” He turned to where Sarah was washing her fingers in the river.

“Sergeant…”

Ka had led the way up a wadi, coarse gravel giving way to grit as rare grass scabs grew more spiky and vanished altogether. Walking in the heat of the afternoon was insane but that was what the Colonel had wanted. And the man had been sympathetic, his voice understanding but firm as it crackled through the radio.

“I only ever ask for the necessary,” he had said. “And you and Sergeant Sarah can do it. I’m certain you can.”

So Ka kept walking into the shimmering haze, with the low cliffs two hours behind him and miles of low slope ahead. Plus a dark line at the horizon that could have been mountains but was probably low cloud. And if not cloud, perhaps a trick of the heat haze. Whatever it was, that thin smudge of colour was further than either of them could walk.

“Give me the bottle…”

“No.” Ka shook his head and kept going. One foot in front of the other, his plastic rifle held firmly in front of him. They’d stopped twice already for water. If they finished their bottle now how could they manage the return?

“You don’t even know where you’re going…”

That was true.

“Colonel Abad will tell us,” said Ka. “When he’s ready.”

Sarah sucked at her teeth and pushed past Ka, forcing her aching legs to carry her over a crescent-shaped dune. Sweat had glued her vest to her back and drawn dark circles under her arms. Even her combats were sticky with perspiration and those were made from a special kind of cloth that breathed for itself. She knew that because it said so on the label.

Ka let her go on ahead. Sometimes when Sarah got angry it was best to leave her alone. But that wasn’t the real reason Ka was happy to let her walk on. Ka liked watching the way her thin hips swung as she walked. And he liked the changing gap of nakedness between the top of her loose combats and the bottom of her vest. Also…

Any further thoughts were cut off by the crackle of his radio.

“Lieutenant Ka here.”

Ka noticed Sarah turn back but he was already intent on new orders that were simple and precise. Walk half a klick straight ahead, climb to the top of a vast mound and wait until their target was too close to miss. No more than fifty paces max…

“Load your rifle,” he told Sarah.

She shifted her Martini Henry so that it was angled across her body. “It’s already loaded,” Sarah said, as if she couldn’t believe he’d say something that stupid.

“What about the sights?”

“What about them?”

“Set them for fifty…”

Obediently Sarah adjusted for distance. Then she licked her finger and tested for wind, even though she knew there wasn’t any. Satisfied that she was right, she made another slight adjustment and worked the bolt, pulling a bullet into the gun’s chamber.

“What now?” she asked.

“We wait…”

The truck looked like a child’s toy. That might have been a side effect of a yellow Tonka-toy paint-job that was intended to make it blend in with the desert, or it might have been the balloon tyres, which bulged with each jolt across the broken ground.

“The Colonel knew this was coming?” A look that Ka recognized began to creep across her face, smoothing away all expression. She didn’t even glance over when she spoke. Instead, she wriggled her body down into the sand, shuffling one knee outwards until it gripped the ground like a rider’s leg locked tight to the side of a mount.

“Well?” she said.

“Yeah,” said Ka, “undoubtedly.” Right on cue Ka heard his radio crackle to life. They both guessed what the orders would be but Ka told her anyway. “Shoot the driver.”

Sarah wanted to suggest taking out a tyre instead. Only, so what if she killed the driver and the truck crashed? The hardest thing it could smack into was the side of a dune and besides, shooting people was her job. She never got the shakes, at least not in advance and she always held the moment.

Ice in the soul, her uncle had called it. The feeling had come after Kordofan, which was when she’d first been captured, towards the end of a battle with her brigade already retreating and the scrub full of bodies and abandoned weapons. One of Sarah’s own officers had unwittingly provided camouflage and she’d almost got away with hiding in a ditch beneath him. And then the stripping crews had come and yanked away his body, intending to strip it of everything valuable and found Sarah crouched beneath.