Masters of War (36 page)

She’d been on the point of asking to be taken away when something had stopped her. What was she
thinking
? Did she really intend to climb, willingly blindfolded, into a strange car with a strange man? Had her experience taught her that men like this could be trusted? The familiar hot, sick feeling of anxiety had crashed over her. She had found herself nodding her agreement and being led out of the tent, this enormous, strangely jovial man by her side.

Clara had seen, immediately, the advantage of the tent’s colour. They were in the middle of the desert. The sand was hard and stony – not the rolling, Lawrence of Arabia waves she had always pictured as a child, but a harsh, weather-beaten landscape of crags and ditches. The tent was pitched against a sandstone cliff face about fifteen metres high. In the minutes after Clara’s arrival, the sun had started to set and the cliff had cast a shadow over the tent. She had worked out that she must be facing roughly east. A track wound off in a roughly easterly direction, disappearing over the brow of a small hill perhaps a couple of kilometres away. Clara had found her gaze fixed on that track as she wondered if she dared walk it alone.

Around the tent, at a distance of about ten metres and fanned out in a semicircle, were armed men. They were lying on their fronts, rifles engaged, scanning the surrounding desert. Clara noticed that their clothes, headdresses and even weapons were the same colour as the tents. From a distance – or from above – they would blend easily into the landscape. Four trucks were parked at the camp. These too were camouflaged. Two were open-topped. One carried a satellite dish, from which long cables led into the tent. The other had a large machine gun of some kind mounted on the back. Clara knew nothing of guns, but she had observed that it was pointed skywards, and she’d had to suppress a shudder as she remembered the bombardments in Homs. Five metres ahead of them, she noticed the remains of a fire smouldering in a pit. A man had been busy shovelling sand on to it. ‘We allow ourselves a fire during the day,’ Sorgen had explained, ‘but we must put it out at night.’

‘Why?’ Clara had asked.

‘So we cannot be seen from the sky.’

Clara had nodded.

Immediately to the right of the round tent was a second one, half the size and set up as a field hospital. But basic. Very basic. Thin mattresses on the floor for beds. Nothing but a dim, red-filtered torch to see by once the light failed – and that, Sorgen had explained, was to be used sparingly. A beaten-up 4x4 parked by the entrance served as a medical supply store, but its stocks had dwindled to two boxes of clean dressings, a box of painkillers and some sterile wipes. Hardly enough to treat the four women with shrapnel wounds, the two men with suppurating gunshot wounds and the little boy with no physical symptoms but an alarmingly high temperature and acute delirium. No antibiotics. No saline. Scarce clean water that had to be taken from a large plastic drum outside. It was only a quarter full.

Clara had been here for two nights now, unable to practise medicine as such. All she could do was keep her patients comfortable, their wounds clean. They had been long nights. She’d hardly dared to use the red torch, fearful that she would make her own little tent ‘visible from the air’ as Sorgen had put it. She did not dare leave the tent, unless it was to use the camp toilet twenty metres away, which was little more than a hole in the ground and a bucket of sand to cover whatever waste ended in there. Food was brought to her before sunrise and after sunset – bland fare that she ate ravenously. Between periods of fitful sleep and tending to the sick as best she could, Clara had sat in the darkness, trying to work out who these people were that she’d fallen in with. Clearly they were not on the side of the Syrian government forces. She could only assume that Sorgen led one of the rebel groups the government were so keen on obliterating. It seemed such a ludicrously basic set-up from which to run a rebellion, but then she had witnessed at first hand the brute force with which the government was attempting to crush those who opposed it. There was very little activity here, but she sensed that everyone was on constant high alert. She figured that it was some sort of centre of operations, but one that could be easily dismantled and moved elsewhere if word of it reached the wrong ears.

Now the dawn of her second morning at the camp was arriving. Her patients were all asleep. She found herself at the front flap of the medical tent once more, watching the sun rise over the desert. The sky was a riot of pinks and oranges, and everything seemed very still. As usual, four armed men stood watch in a semicircle around the camp, the glow of their cigarettes as they moved them to their lips the only sign of movement Clara could see. Beyond them, the bleak, unending desert. She again found her eyes following the track that wound off to the east, wondering where it led and what would happen to her if she escaped and tried to walk it alone.

She squinted. It was probably just a trick of the early-morning light, but she thought she could see a figure approaching over the brow of the small hill. She closed her eyes, rubbed them, then looked again. There was no doubt about it: it was a thin silhouette. Clara watched for several minutes. As the figure grew nearer, she could see that the person’s gait was strange, as though he or she was limping. And only when she – it was definitely a woman, she could tell now – was fifty metres away did Clara notice how intently the guards were watching. They all had their weapons trained on her, and though no shot had been fired, Clara knew that eventuality was only a trigger squeeze away.

She was a bedraggled woman whose long, black hair, strikingly, had a white streak at the front. The closer she came, the more evident was her limp. Her face was dirty, her eyes haunted. She looked like a ghost. Clara could tell she was in a bad way.

Five metres from the guards, the woman stopped and raised her face. ‘Sorgen,’ she cried in a weak, broken voice. ‘
Sorgen!
’

Then she collapsed.

Clara started to run towards the woman, but one of the guards turned and waved his rifle at her. Suddenly terrified, she hurried back into the tent, where she bent over and tried to catch her breath. She heard a commotion outside, but didn’t dare to peep through the flap again. Ten minutes passed before it opened. Sorgen walked in. It was the first time Clara had seen him since she arrived. He was with the woman, who had one arm round his shoulder and a dazed expression.

‘This is Basheba,’ Sorgen announced. ‘My niece.’

Clara offered her hand, but Basheba shrank away.

‘Please,’ Sorgen said. His voice was thick with emotion. ‘Take care of her. She has been through a lot.’ And with no other explanation, he took his leave.

Clara’s other patients were sleeping, which meant she could give this new arrival all her attention. She handed Basheba a cup of water, which she snatched and gulped down. Clara pointed at her right leg. ‘Your foot,’ she said, miming clumsily. ‘Let me see it.’

‘I understand English,’ Basheba replied. She had a deep voice, very hoarse. She found the one remaining mattress, towards the back of the tent, and limped over to it. Sitting down, she removed her worn leather sandals. No wonder she was limping. The sole of her right foot was a mess of blood where blisters had burst, then formed again and the epidermis had deteriorated. Having fetched a sterile wipe from her meagre supplies, Clara gently dabbed at the damaged skin, trying to remove the dirt and sand which had accumulated on the open flesh. Basheba winced at each touch, but clearly understood that this was necessary. An infection now could lead to blood poisoning, and that could be fatal.

When the wounded sole was cleaned, Clara dressed it with a bandage. The two women had not said a word to each other since the operation began, but now Basheba spoke. ‘Thank you,’ was all she said.

Clara smiled at her. ‘I shouldn’t really be here.’

‘Nor I,’ Basheba admitted, ‘but my uncle Sorgen is a good man.’ The woman looked down. ‘Better than my father-in-law.’ She saw that Clara was confused. ‘Asu is Sorgen’s brother.’ And then, with surprising suddenness, she started to weep. Not ordinary tears, but racking sobs that seemed to shake her whole body. Clara caught a few words of distraught Arabic before the woman whispered in English, ‘My sons.’

Clara took her by the hand. ‘Where are they?’ she asked, dreading the answer.

‘One is too scared to leave Asu. The other is dead.’ And then a fire in her eyes. ‘Killed by a British soldier.’

‘
What?
’ Clara was startled. ‘Basheba, I think you must have made a mistake. There
are
no British soldiers in Syria.’

‘And who told you that? Your government?’ Basheba’s expression clearly revealed what she thought of governments in general. ‘I watched him do it. My son was wounded by the bombs. You’ – she jabbed a finger at Clara – ‘
you
could have saved him with your skill.’

‘I don’t know . . . I . . .’

‘The soldier didn’t even
try
to save him. I watched him
kill
my son.’

‘How?’ Clara said.

‘With . . .’ Basheba hunted around for the word, before miming an injection into her arm.

‘Basheba, it was probably just morphine. If he was wounded . . .’

‘Morphine, yes,’ Basheba spat. ‘Four injections.’

Clara blinked. ‘Four? Are you sure?’ That was enough to kill an adult, let alone a wounded child.

‘You think I would make it up?’

Looking at her, Clara thought nothing of the sort. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. It seemed so inadequate.

‘Asu refused to punish him,’ Basheba said. ‘So I ran away. They say he will be the leader of Syria one day. Perhaps very soon. But how can you be a leader if you do not punish the guilty ones?’ She stared at her hands. ‘If he knew I had come to Sorgen, he would be angry. Very angry. They hate each other. But Sorgen is kind. He did not turn me away.’ She frowned. ‘My father-in-law, he makes the children fight for him. They are too young to use guns, to kill men, but that is what they must do for him. I have seen eight-year-olds commit killings. And I have seen them killed, too. Losing their friends. Sorgen looks after the children in his care. He does not make them fight.’ She smiled. ‘You are kind, too. Thank you again for . . .’ She indicated the bandage, before trying to push herself upright.

‘You must rest,’ Clara told her. ‘You’ll hurt your foot even more if you—’

But Basheba was already walking, painfully yet steadily, towards the front of the tent. Clara joined her, ostensibly to continue their conversation, but really so that she could be there if the woman fell. Together they left the tent and stood just outside it looking across the desert.

The sun was a little higher in the sky now, a fierce white ball, the pinks and oranges of dawn having burned away. Clara wished she had sunglasses as she looked out across the desert.

‘Someone is coming,’ Basheba said quietly.

Clara shielded her eyes and squinted. Basheba was right. Coming along the winding track she had followed were two vehicles, the sun glinting blindingly off them, amid the dust they kicked up.

‘Who is it?’ asked Clara, not really expecting an answer. Why would Basheba know any better than she did? It hadn’t escaped Clara’s attention, however, that Sorgen’s men had noticed these new arrivals and evidently weren’t expecting them. Five men had emerged from the large tent and two of them were kneeling in the firing position with their rifles. A third ran to the open-backed truck with the machine gun and trained the weapon’s sight on the approaching vehicles.

‘We should get back inside,’ said Clara.

But Basheba didn’t move. She appeared transfixed, and Clara felt as if she was stuck to the Syrian woman’s side. ‘I recognise those cars,’ said Basheba. Clara found that she was holding her breath.

The two vehicles, both Land Rovers, stopped side by side about fifty metres from the camp. For perhaps a minute there was no movement. Then the rear door of one of them opened and a figure stepped out. Still shielding her eyes from the sun, Clara peered towards him. He had a slight frame, floppy brown hair, sloping shoulders and a somewhat diffident gait. He seemed to shimmer in the heat as he walked slowly but steadily towards the camp, his palms raised to indicate that he was unarmed.

When the man was ten metres from the Land Rover, a second emerged. This one made no attempt to pretend that he was unarmed. A rifle was slung across his front, and he gripped it with both hands as he followed the first man at a respectful distance.

Basheba inhaled sharply, then hissed.

Clara turned to her. ‘What is it?’ She was alarmed to see the look on her face.

‘It’s him,’ Basheba whispered.

Clara was confused. ‘Who?’ she asked.

‘The man who killed my son.’

‘
Basheba! No!
’

But she was too late to grab her new friend. Basheba was running towards the newcomers, faster than Clara would have thought her injured foot would allow. She was screaming at them in Arabic, her hair flowing in the wind and her face filled with hatred.

At first, Danny didn’t recognise her. All he saw was a wild-eyed woman sprinting in Buckingham’s direction. His first instinct was to raise his M4 ready to protect him from this crazy apparition. But she ran past Buckingham towards Danny himself. He realised who she was at the same moment that she pulled a knife from under her robe. She couldn’t have been more than three metres away, and it was a five-inch blade, broad and sharp, that glinted in the morning sun. She held it inexpertly – not low, as Danny would have done, but level with her head, ready to stab. She was screeching like a mad woman.