Devil’s Harvest (29 page)

The cold fronts that had swept across Lincolnshire, with their gale-force winds and sleet, had abated. The gardeners were out in Pottergate Close, milling about their regulated patches of grass and flowerbeds surveying the storm damage. The cul-de-sac echoed with the snips of secateurs and the rustle of leaves being swept into piles. Dogs that had been cooped up for days, sleeping in front of anthracite fires and gas heaters, barked boisterously at one another and kicked up tufts of grass behind them. The wind was still cold, and those venturing out to enjoy the sun still wore high-necked jerseys and woollen hats, but the presence of blue sky and the crisp air gave the entire neighbourhood an invigorating sense of renewal.

George Bartholomew shared none of his neighbours’
joie de vivre
. He stood, stubby pruning shears in hand, staring at the wilting leaves of his Princess Anne roses while concentrating on the wheeze in his chest. The incident on Horse Guards Avenue had left him shaken and overly vigilant to every minor alteration in his bodily functioning, from a flutter of dizziness to a passing stomach cramp. He thought he could detect a slight irregularity in his heartbeat. It was just a matter of time before his ticker stopped in its tracks and he dropped stone dead to the ground. That would teach the medical profession to take his ailments seriously.

The roses had been viciously pruned for the worst of winter, but the remaining leaves had developed nasty brown spots with yellow halos around them. They wilted from their sturdy stems and several had been blown off by the wind.

Bartholomew heard the rustle of Lilly’s overcoat behind him and smelt her over-applied perfume as she joined him. She had seemed to both diminish in height and extend in girth with age, as if a lifetime of easy domesticity had pushed her down from above, forcing her body outwards to compensate. At times he marvelled at the unstressed simplicity of her existence, and at others he was appalled at her inability to see beyond the confines of the garden. A short journey into the city of Lincoln required both a sound reason and a high degree of advance planning. Sending a missile-laden drone over north-east Africa was a minor accomplishment by comparison.

‘George, do you see the roses have got some awful disease? I’m sure it comes from the Abujas down the road; I see that they planted some funny plant in the front garden. Mrs Abuja says they cook with it; I’ve no idea what you could use such a strange plant for, I mean it’s just sticks and seed pods, but, anyway, that’s not the point, the thing is probably full of foreign bugs. And now look at the roses, dear. We’ve never had that kind of problem before.’ Lilly was not one to pause for breath unnecessarily and her sentences came out in a single, unbroken stream. ‘I think you should take a cutting and send it to the botany department for an opinion. Just now it takes over the neighbourhood and there’s no cure. It could be a threat to agriculture, who knows? Anyway, it would be a shame to lose the Princess Anne. She’s the only Royal left who we can look up to, you know, from the old school. Not like that silly Kate. Would you like some tea, dear?’

The monologue would meander on for hours, he knew, and so he gathered as much enthusiasm as he could for her offer of tea. ‘That would be lovely,’ he told her, still trying to concentrate on the patter of his heartbeat.

Lilly turned towards the house and then stopped, staring past her husband into the lane. Their garden wall was low and the shrubbery kept closely cropped. ‘Good neighbours don’t need to hide’ was one of Lilly’s more pointless statements in this regard, as if Al-Qaeda operatives lived in similar village lanes behind unrestrained shrubbery. In Lilly’s book, unclipped hedgerows were indicative of all manner of moral deviancy.

A gleaming navy-blue Mercedes-Benz had pulled up outside the house, and a black chauffeur, complete with peaked hat and gloves, stepped out to open the rear passenger door. A suavely dressed man emerged from the leather seats and surveyed the residential lane with apparent disdain. He saw Lilly staring at him and made a little bow towards her. She remained motionless.

‘George, good to see you relaxing for once.’

Khalid Hussein advanced towards the garden gate, mastering the catch that had fooled many a postman. He swept into their small garden, utterly incongruous as he made his way along their cobbled path onto the grass in his gleaming black shoes. He put out his hand towards Lilly, who gave a worried glance towards her sickening roses before greeting him.

‘Lovely to meet the woman behind the air marshal, Mrs Bartholomew. Lovely to meet you. And so sorry for intruding on your husband’s much needed rest, but unfortunately it is unavoidable.’

‘Unavoidable’ had a sinister ring to it. Maurice had described some unpleasant examinations as ‘unavoidable’. Lilly gave a disapproving little ‘hmph’ and waddled at speed back into the house. Bartholomew eyed Hussein with distrust. The Saudi’s eyes were dark and his mood was indiscernible.

‘What, George? Do you think that we don’t know where you live? Come now.’

Bartholomew pointedly declined to shake his offered hand. He could feel that his pulse had already increased, and the whooshing sound had returned to his eardrums.

‘What do you want, Khalid? I’m on medical leave.’

‘Yes, yes, I know. Unfortunate incident in the Avenue. Just after being snubbed by the undersecretary. I do hope that you’re recovering, George. We don’t want you going belly-up on us, as they say.’ Hussein laughed freely, before adding: ‘Not yet, anyway.’

Bartholomew’s pulse peaked and troughed, as if Hussein had direct control over his state of health. He felt sure that with a single word, or perhaps a snap of his fingers, the Saudi could cause his heart to stop.

‘Can we go inside?’ Hussein said. ‘It’s very chilly out here and your English weather does not agree with me at all.’

He put his arm around Bartholomew, guiding him like a reluctant psychiatric patient along the path and through the front door. The entranceway was cluttered with mackintoshes and other paraphernalia to cope with the unrelenting winters. Bartholomew was suddenly ashamed of the dingy and parochial status of his home. He imagined Hussein lived in some grand mansion overlooking a desertscape, or perhaps a gold-rimmed apartment with a plunge pool and glistening white tiles.

Seated at Bartholomew’s scratched dining-room table, the arms dealer was even more out of place than in the garden. Bartholomew watched as the man took in the dinner plates attached to the wall, and the old food warmer parked in the corner next to a heavy wooden sideboard.

Lilly bumbled in with a tray of tea and crumbling ginger biscuits, still eyeing the visitor with suspicion, and left with a muttered ‘I’ll leave you to it then’.

When he was a younger man, Bartholomew’s work had often kept him away for lengthy periods, but it had never intruded into their home. Lilly had certainly never had a Muslim foreign national make himself comfortable in her dining room.

Bartholomew poured the tea, trying to steady his shaking hand. He hoped Hussein would ascribe it to his unnamed medical condition, but knew that his anxiety must be etched all over his face. Hussein declined a biscuit and sipped at his tea, letting his eyes cast about the room. It was as if he was assessing the true desperation of the military man in front of him.

Then his gaze returned to Bartholomew. ‘My client is most perturbed, George. Your unwillingness to assist with their reasonable request hasn’t been taken kindly. It’s most important that you reconsider. We were of the view that we had a good friendship, how do you say in this country … “a working relationship”. And now you spit in their faces.’

‘I wouldn’t put it like that. No one is spitting at anyone else. There’s no disrespect meant by our declining to undertake another … mission at this stage. It’s just that things are a bit … delicate.’

‘
Delicate
? This is another of your English words that hides its meaning. What exactly is “delicate”?’

Bartholomew sat glum and silent while Hussein waited for him to respond. Somewhere in the house a wall clock started to chime. He could hear Lilly busy in the kitchen, a light clanging of pots as she pretended to be cleaning up, as if after some extravagant dinner party the night before. Bartholomew’s lower intestines seemed to be on the move again, twisting with anger. His instincts told him that Hussein knew everything already – there seemed to be precious little that he didn’t know – and that to hold back would be to court danger. So, with a sigh and splaying of fingers on the table, he recounted to Hussein the problem of the identifiable piece of the missile, their inability to locate it, their concern that it might be used to embarrass the British government and military, and possibly Hussein’s client as well.

Hussein seemed unperturbed, in fact almost amused, by the story. ‘My client isn’t easily embarrassed, George. Quite honestly, this is your problem, not my client’s. If the world found out that the British government had undertaken a secret missile attack on an enemy target at the request of my client, well, my client would probably be delighted. Their enemies would quake in their boots and look up to the sky in terror. The world would know that they have the military support of one of the best armies in the world. No, this wouldn’t embarrass my client. But for your government on the other hand—’

‘It would be catastrophic,’ Bartholomew interrupted, smarting at the man’s arrogant mirth. ‘And for this reason, if no other, we can’t risk another strike. Not until this problem is completely resolved. It’s just not possible. And to make matters worse, some family member of the last target has been asking questions about the source of the blast.’

‘Yes, I know. Are you aware that she has the assistance of a British national?’

The question felt like a whip sting on Bartholomew’s face. He sat upright and stared at the man opposite him. Hussein knew about the victim’s daughter; he almost certainly had already known about the missing piece of the missile. And now he knew something that Bartholomew did not.

‘Yes, we’re aware of the presence of a British national,’ he lied, his voice noticeably hoarse.

There was a glimmer of a smile on Hussein’s mouth. ‘We’ll take care of it, George.’

‘How?’

‘Our way. We have our own ways to take care of these little hiccups. You need not concern yourself. You focus on the favour we have asked.’ Hussein closed his hands together in some kind of mock prayer, though the gesture was one of authority, not subjugation. ‘Yes, we’ll clean your mess and you’ll do us this little favour. I’ll send you the details soon. Please thank Mrs Bartholomew for the tea.’ He rose without waiting for a reply.

Bartholomew was physically unable to escort his guest out. He heard the front door close. A few moments later the Mercedes engine roared to life and the car did an ostentatious U-turn in the quiet lane before gunning away. His neighbours would be dropping their rose cuttings in consternation.

Bartholomew remained seated at the table, his tea now cooled in the cup in front of him. Lilly came in and moved about him as if he were a statue, stacking the cups and whispering to herself.

Chapter 17

JILA REFUGEE CAMP

Gabriel had never had cause to reflect on the configuration of a refugee camp, but if asked he would have imagined a fenced compound of military tents, erected in rows, leaving space in between for Land Rovers and trucks. Officials with clipboards would sit at wooden tables and queues would form to collect family-sized food parcels. It would be something like a larger version of the work camps sometimes set up when upgrading the rural English roads. Perhaps a long row of portable latrines, like at the open-air concerts. Thinking about it, he realised that he must have seen such an image on television at some stage, as the vision in his mind was strong. Perhaps a picture of an emergency centre after the mudslides in Brazil. Certainly he had never been near such a place in his life.

The UNHCR refugee camp at Jila conformed to none of these perceptions. It was in fact a town, far larger than Gogrial, a dense scattering of structures of haphazard shapes and sizes, tossed as if by a child across the landscape. As far as the eye could see, there were grass huts, mud-and-pole houses, tents with semi-permanent add-ons, and clusters of brick buildings bearing UN signage. Reed fences ran between some huts, merging into the reed and stick walls of temporary domed structures. Smoke drifted through the trees until the shapes blurred and disappeared, continuing into the hazy distance. Everywhere people were on the move, women with bright red-and-orange shawls, some with light-blue scarves and dresses covering everything but their faces. And children, almost none wearing tops, some just in underpants, carried by their mothers, eyeing the newcomers with frightened faces. There were more ‘No Weapon’ signs tacked up on some of the structures.

Gabriel slowed to a crawl as children crossed over the vaguely marked road between the trees, many not bothering to look up to see whether the vehicle would avoid them. Alek directed him to a cement building where he parked in an area roughly demarcated by white-painted rocks. He turned off the engine and was immediately aware of the sound of habitation. The forest had been so quiet, even Bentiu seemed strangely silent compared to this incessant murmur of people talking, walking, chopping wood, preparing meals, stirring pots. Somewhere a child was crying, not a histrionic, attention-seeking scream, but a low, droning sob. And yet, there was the sound of someone else laughing, a woman telling a story in a loud voice and her audience cackling back at her. The smell was familiar. The Juba-mix of smoke, cattle, humanity and their excretions. The bright colours, the noise, the pervasive odour, they all combined to provide the most unexpected assault. Gabriel sat in the car, gazing without comprehension.

A European woman with frizzy orange-blonde hair emerged from one of the office doorways. She held up her hand to block the glare of the sun as she monitored their arrival. Her cotton dress pressed against her broad hips and equally endowed chest. The heat had made her skin blotchy, undefined scarlet islands marking her bare arms, chest and neck. Alek opened the passenger door and strode around the bonnet. The redhead gave a laugh, more a guttural shout, at seeing Alek and stepped off the porch into the dust, arms outstretched.