THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER (24 page)

I hear, ladies and gentlemen, your silence. I do not hear your answers.'

Men and women sat statue still. But, from the corner of his eye, Lovejoy saw the historian writing busily . . . So what do we do? Lock everyone up who is too young to be in a care home?

'He does not have to be a Muslim, does not have to be recruited in a mosque, does not have to be Asian. All that is required of him by the shark is that he should hate . . . Don't ask him to debate the subject of hatred because he is unlikely to give you a coherent response. Somewhere, in his psyche or his experience, there will be a source of hatred. He hates you and me and the society we serve - he holds us in contempt. He is the new danger. A radioactive dirty bomb, microbiological agents or chemicals in aerosol form may be built into the laptop. He is real, he walks among us, his power over us is devastating. How to stop him? Do I have the answer? I regret I do not. Can he be stopped? We have to believe it or we face disaster.

I am sorry if I detain you, but I have only one more thing to say.'

The newspaper was passed back.

'My final thought is positive. I ask whether this man, one of us, a mutation from our own culture, suffused with bitterness from an actual or imagined wrong, believes in the seventy virgins awaiting him in Paradise. Is he a martyr? Does he plan to commit suicide or to survive? We cannot know . . . My own feeling is that he would wish to attack and live to watch the results of his revenge. We have more chance of stopping a man who wishes to live. I offer a trifle of comfort. Thank you for hearing me.'

As the Russian stepped back from the lectern, Lovejoy read the note scribbled in the newspaper's margin. 'It wasn't a Groucho original: he lifted from a Senator Kerr of Oklahoma.' Then, as subdued and stifled applause rippled around him, he noted the answer to five down. The only living unknown soldier. He shuddered.

How appropriate - the 'unknown soldier' who was 'one of us'.

He went for his belated sandwich lunch. 'One of us.' That would make him chew the prawns and coleslaw with thoughtful preoccupation.

Caleb sat, hunched, on one of the boxes. By mid-afternoon, with the skies clear and the sun baking the sand, the storm would have been a memory, a nightmare, but for its consequences. The camels, still traumatized, stayed close together, body to body, as if fenced within a wire corral. Rashid and Ghaffur had been on three separate expeditions away from the destroyed campsite to search for the remaining stores and possessions that had been scattered. After they had returned from the third search, Caleb had expected that Rashid would load the animals and order them to move; he thought there were at least three hours of daylight left, and perhaps they could move further during dusk and the early night. The guide gave no explanations. His sour face, the thin hostile lips under his hooked nose, seemed to forbid interrogation.

When they were small figures, Caleb heard a little whoop of delight, and saw Ghaffur hold up a metal mug. Hosni slept, prone on the sand. Caleb heard Fahd's slithering approach over the loose sand; the temperature would have been a hundred degrees, and the wind was now minimal. When Caleb turned to face him he saw that the man shivered. They were all older, wiser, frightened. As the Saudi was about to drop down beside him, Caleb stood.

'Come on, we have work.' He said it brusquely, an instruction that was not for discussion.

He saw the man's face fall.

'Yes, we have work,' Caleb rapped.

The response was shrill. 'Do you now tell me what I should do?'

'I am telling you.'

Caleb took Fahd's arm, gripped it, and led him to the heap of stores and bedding, tenting, water bags and sacks that had been retrieved by the guide and his son. At first, the Saudi stood beside Caleb, arms crossed and idle, as Caleb crouched and started to sift, separate and pack. Suddenly, as Caleb's arm was outstretched, reaching for the last of the plates and stacking them, Fahd reached out and snatched at his wrist. His fingers fastened in a bony vice on the plastic identification tag. 'You were at Guantanamo?'

'I was.'

The fingers stroked the photograph , the printed name, Fawzi al-Ateh, and roamed over the identification numbers.

'Then they released you?'

'After nearly two years they released me.'

'Why? Why did they free you?'

'Because they believed me.'

The Saudi freed his wrist. He stood above Caleb and gazed down at him. His shoulders and arms still shook and his lips wobbled with the shiver. 'People more notable than me, more intelligent than me, have chosen you for a strike that will bring fire, pestilence against the Americans and the allies of the Americans. They have chosen you, but it is still to be decided as to whether you are trusted. Hosni says you should be trusted because you were clever and deceived the Americans at Guantanamo. Tommy trusts nobody - Tommy says that the constant purpose of the Americans is to put informers, spies, among us. Myself, I do not know whether to trust you or not to trust you . ..'

Caleb said quietly, 'Whether you trust me or not, you can help me pack what is here.' He pushed the pile of sand-covered bedding to Fahd's feet. 'Shake it, fold it, stack it. . . Should I trust you?'

The mouth of the Saudi puckered in anger. 'You are the Outsider, I am not. I have no home other than where the Organization takes me. I have no family other than the Organization . . . The Organization cares for me, and God cares for me. God is .. .'

'Can you not walk away?'

'I am hunted. My picture is in the police stations of the Kingdom.

If I am taken alive, pain will be inflicted on me, and with the pain will be drugs. I pray to God, if I am taken, that I will be strong and will not betray my family. At the end of the pain, if I am taken, there will be the executioner and the executioner's sword. I have a degree in mathematics, I could have been a teacher . . . but I worked as a gardener. I was a gardener in the Al-Hamra compound for Americans. I cut the grass and watered the flowers, and I would be shouted at by the supervisor if I left a weed in the earth. I did the work of Yemenis and Pakistanis. Because I believed in the Organization, and in God, I did the work of a foreign labourer - and I watched. I was behind the wall and the guards. I used the grass-cutter, the hose, the trowel and the broom, and I watched. I counted the guards and remembered their weapons. I saw where the important Americans lived. I worked late into the night, cutting and watering, weeding and sweeping, and I watched. When martyrs drove two vehicles into the Al-Hamra compound last year they used the map that I had drawn for them. They died, they are in Paradise, but others lived and were taken. They were tortured and they did not have the strength - they betrayed the names of many. I have been told my home was raided, my parents were abused. That is why I cannot leave the Organization. If I am taken, my future is the sword.'

'I trust you.'

Fahd shook the sand grains from a sleeping-bag, then carefully rolled it. Then he lifted a blanket and flicked it out. 'I am condemned, and Tommy, and Hosni. We are all dead men . . . What I regret, I will never be able to make as great a strike as you, the Outsider, who are blessed . .. Because you are blessed, you are also condemned.'

The sand flew in Caleb's face. He blinked.

The guide and his son walked back towards them and each had again gathered up another armful of the campsite's debris. Rashid gave them no praise for sorting through the heap. When the camels were loaded, and the sun finally dropping, they moved.

Caleb was the back-marker. His face was set and sombre. He had waved away the boy and walked alone in the last camel's hoofmarks.

The patient swung her legs off the examination couch and smoothed her skirt. The patient's husband eased up from his chair.

From the basin where he washed his hands perfunctorily, Bart intoned the details of the only acceptable recipe for acute depression, nerves and stress. Good old diazepam. Where would he be without diazepam? Up the bloody creek, no paddle. He could have told them to go home, get on the big freedom bird at the airport, head off for Romford or Ruislip or Richmond, but they wouldn't. The expatriate community was down to the hard core since the bombs at the Al-Jadawel, Al-Hamra and Vinnel compounds had thinned out the foreign community. Those who stayed, who could not face life in a London suburb where they'd struggle for work and be without servants, swimming-pools and fat-cat salaries, were now prisoners inside the compounds, their lives dependent on the alertness of the guards at the gates. A few, those who had been with him at the races, pretended life was unchanged; the majority cowered in the custody of their homes, and were reliant on the diazepam he doled out.

It was all about money for them . . . Beside the basin, the window gave him a good high view down the street. The wind tore at the white robes of men on the pavement below and creased the black robes of women against their bodies. A damn storm was up. The trouble with storms was that they carried sand. It would be all over his vehicle, that was always the worst thing about storms coming up off the desert . . . All about money. Bart knew about money, the absence of it.

At six twenty-five in the morning, they'd come. Two oafish uniforms, a plainclothes constable with the weary look of a man close to retirement, and a gimlet-faced woman who'd identified herself as a detective sergeant and who wore an unflattering black trouser suit. At six twenty-five in the morning, he'd had a patrol car and a saloon in the driveway, and every one of the bloody neighbours would have been parting the curtains, lifting the nets and gawping.

Ann knew nothing. Ann had hissed, stage-whisper, as they'd filed into the hall, 'What have you done?' She'd had her dressing-gown wrapped tightly round her as if she was about to be raped. Ann only knew that there were new carpets in the hall, holiday brochures on the dining-room table, and school invoices in the office desk with 'Many Thanks for Your Prompt Payment' stamped on them.

'Done nothing,' he'd murmured. 'Go in the kitchen and make a pot of tea.'

He'd led them into the lounge. Did he know a Josh Reakes? Yes, he had a patient by that name. Did he know Josh Reakes was a dealer in class A narcotics? No, he did not. Would he be surprised to learn that Josh Reakes had named him, Dr Samuel Bartholomew, as a principal supplier? Yes, he would, and it was a damned lie. He had kept with the denials, stuck with them. He learned that Josh Reakes, arrested the previous evening, had named him as the source of the morphine alkaloid tablets, liquid heroin and powdered cocaine that had been found when he was strip-searched. Deny, deny, deny - his word against a contemptible little rat's; a baseless allegation that was poor thanks for his efforts on behalf of one more of Torquay's addict population. They had a search warrant for the house and another for the surgery. They went through the walnut-veneer desk - bank statements and income-tax returns. Each time Ann had come into the living room, between feeding the kids and getting them ready for school, she'd looked like an ally of the police, squinting at him with suspicion. The best thing he'd done was give her the housekeeping in Josh's cash, so the carpets, holidays and school fees came out of the bank account and were laid against his salary .. . Then down to the surgery. A full waiting room for him to tramp through with his escort. Into the records of the quantities of morphine alkaloid tablets, liquid heroin and powdered cocaine he'd prescribed, and then he'd realized they were trawling and had no decent idea of how to prove that the terminally ill who'd been given Brompton's Mixture, or the back-ache sufferers, had left excess supplies for him to collect.

He'd brazened it out. The word of a professional man against the word of an addicted yob. He'd known he was on solid ground when the detective sergeant had snarled through her pasty little lips: 'I'll bloody get you, Bartholomew. You are a fucking disgrace - a doctor who is a mainstream supplier. I'll get you sent down, see if I bloody don't.'

They'd taken him down to the station, hands on his arms like he was a criminal, and he'd dictated a statement of innocence - and known they believed not a word of it.

By the time he was freed, seven hours after the wake-up knock, his partners had met and revealed to him their considered opinion that he should leave the practice, not the next week and not the next day but within the next hour. Within a month, the day after he had again been interviewed at the police station and the day before he was due to be grilled in London by lawyers of the British Medical Association, Ann and the children had moved out of the family home and into that of the guy who had the Saab franchise up the road from Torquay.

He was unemployable in the United Kingdom, friendless, and soon divorced; the house was sold and nine-tenths of the proceeds had gone to the mortgage company. But he had to have food in his stomach, a shirt on his back and a glass in his hand, and in the profession's journal he'd seen the advertisement... If he'd thought what had gone before was the steepest downhill tumble, he had been so wrong.

If they had only known the truth of his life, the patient and her husband might have felt sorry for him. He counted out thirty daazepam tablets, bottled them and wrote the dosage on the label. He was more trapped, incarcerated, than they were. He showed them out. All their problems were money, but Bart's were far beyond that level of simplicity. He closed the door after them.

AI Maz'an village, near Jenin, Occupied West Bank.

Bart braked.

If he had not slammed his foot on the pedal, crushed it against the floor, had not swerved and come to a grinding halt as he emerged from the side turning, he would have run straight into the armoured personnel carrier.

There were three more behind the one he had missed colliding with.

They rumbled down the street, but the machine-gunner on the last swivelled the mounting and kept the barrel aimed at him until they were gone. He sat behind the wheel and the sweat poured off him. Outside the four-wheel drive it was cold enough to freeze the sweat. He could no longer see them but he heard the racing whine of the carrier's tracks and the street was pitted where they had been. Where had they gone? He knew. Dozvn that street a patient, a child, was suffering from acute diarrhoea, and in the patient's home there was a back kitchen and a yard beyond it. In the yard there was a shed . . . Jesus. He heard gunfire. He sat with his head in his hands and tried to blot out the sounds that crashed in his ears.