THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER (52 page)

'I never saw him so happy. One day he'd wear his own clothes, next day he'd borrow ours - my top and Amin's pants. He liked to walk with us round the street-markets in Landi Khotal. It's chaos there. It's noisy, dirty and smelly, and Caleb said it was fantastic.

People knew who he was. Family people knew he wasn't Muslim and knew he was white - didn't seem to make a difference because he wasn't white, not strong white. He merged, he blended. Best thing about him was that he was humble. He said we were lucky, luckier than we knew, to have family like we had - he'd sit down with our family at meals and eat what was put in front of him, and he struggled to learn words, to say how grateful he was. I'd never seen him smile so much, be so happy. But it was coming to an end.'

'The wedding, and then the flight home - then back here?'

'The day after the wedding we were due to get the bus to Islamabad, then the evening flight out. That last day, the wedding, he

.

was all subdued. He wore a suit, a clean shirt and a tie; it was like he was making a statement that he was going home, and we talked a bit in the taxi going to the wedding, but he hadn't much to say - I remember that. At the wedding, inside our family there, all the men knew that Caleb was a stranger, that he didn't belong to our family -

however much he'd been welcomed, he was outside our family. I didn't see it at first, the interest in him. It was only when he was called over . . . '

'He was spotted, he was picked out,' Lovejoy nudged.

'A part of the family is from across the border, from Jalalabad in Afghanistan. We think now, Amin and me, that word of Caleb in Landi Khotal had reached Jalalabad before the wedding day. A man was watching him. I have never forgotten that man. Late in the wedding party, the man had Caleb called to him. We believe he was already chosen, but a test was given him. It is a wild place on that frontier, a place of guns and fighters . . . I tell you, sir, I am prepared to go to a mosque in Birmingham and to listen to the fire of an
imam,
but I would not be prepared to go into those mountains and to fight.

The test was that he should shoot a rifle and then that he should climb a hill and use the cover of the bushes and rocks on it while men fired live ammunition at him. He shot well and he reached the top of the hill - but he had already been chosen. The test confirmed the choice. It was the decision of the man who had called him forward.

We were told what we should say.'

'What were you told?'

'We were to go home, come back here to the jubilee estate, and we were to say that Caleb had decided to travel on. Thailand was mentioned, then a final destination of Australia. That is what we were told to say. He had passed the test set for him, had been chosen.

He was with the man. His suit was taken from him, and his shoes and shirt. I saw him being given the clothes of a tribesman, then his clothes and shoes went on to the fire. I saw them burn and I saw Caleb's face in the firelight. It had a happiness that I had not seen before. He left soon after that. He went away in the back of a pickup and he never turned to look for us, to wave goodbye to us. We left the next morning, by bus, for the flight home. I have nothing more to tell you.'

'Who was the man who chose him?'

'A brute, a man who made fear.'

'How did he create fear?'

Amin took up Lovejoy's question. 'What he did, and his appearance, they made fear.'

Four years, less a month, before, and Lovejoy saw that the fear still ruled as sharp as on that day. 'Tell me.'

'When Caleb went up that hill, using the cover of the scrub and the rocks, he did not only fire in the air. He
aimed
when he fired. He tried to shoot Caleb. He tried to kill Caleb. He was from Chechnya, he had an eyepatch and a claw, he was a brute. He took our friend away from us.'

Across the table from him, Lovejoy had seen the American stiffen.

The American spoke: 'Thank you, gentlemen, I think we've heard all we need to hear.'

Lovejoy paid the bill, gave a decent but not generous tip, and pocketed the receipt. They left the darkened restaurant and went out into the rain-drenched night. They walked, not quickly, up the street to where the Volvo was parked. Dietrich told Lovejoy of the link now made. Many of those questioned at Camps X-Ray and Delta had spoken of the Chechen, who was recognizable by his eyepatch and the artificial hand. He had been killed in an ambush set by American troops of the 10th Mountain division, had died in a commandeered taxi-cab. The taxi had been driven by Fawzi al-Ateh, recently freed from Guantanamo Bay.

'We reckon anyone associated with the Chechen, certainly anyone who was chosen by the Chechen, to be of elite quality/ Dietrich said.

'Jesus, man, are you following me? That is the scale of the disaster.'

It was past one in the morning of a new day. On his mobile, with the scrambler attached, Lovejoy rang Thames House, spoke to the operations room. He was an old warhorse, a veteran of the Service, but it was hard for him as he made his report to stifle the tremor in his voice. He felt exhilaration briefly, then a burdening, nagging apprehension. He thought he walked with the fugitive but did not know on what road or where he was led.

'Will you get a citation for this?' Dietrich asked.

'I wouldn't have thought so - more likely get kicked. In my experience, few of our masters regard a messenger bearing bad lidings favourably - about as bad as it can get, wouldn't you agree?

As - I say with confidence, Jed - you'll find out at first hand.'

.

In the small hours of the night, a signal passed electronically from Thames House on the north side of the river to the sister service's headquarters at Vauxhall Bridge Cross on the south side.

The night duty officer chewed his sandwich, sipped his coffee and rang the home number of an assistant director, woke him, smiled grimly at the stuttered response, and thought: You may not be awake now, you old fart, but in fifteen seconds you'll be active as a ten-year-old with a tantrum. He knew all assistant directors had a loathing for the bombshell careering down from a clear blue sky, except that the night skies over London were cloud-laden and spewed rain.

He spoke the name, the history and pedigree of Caleb Hunt.

The dream soaked him in sweat but he could not wake, could not lose it. Sprawled across the front seats of his Mitsubishi, Bart rolled in his sleep and pleaded - pleaded for escape. Not even the thudding blow of his chin against the steering-wheel, jarring him, was enough to break the sleep and the dream.

Abandoned by his embassy, forgotten by Eddie Wroughton, the doctor of medicine - Samuel Algernon Laker Bartholomew - was lifted down through the back doors of the black van. His bladder was going, his sphincter was loosening. His hands were tied behind his back and just before the back doors had opened they had blindfolded him. But the cloth across his face had slipped and he was aware of fierce sunlight replacing the gloom of the van's interior. He stumbled but the hands held him and he did not fall. Like the waves on the pebbles of Torquay beaches came the murmur of a host of voices. He wore a prison robe, not the Austin Reed slacks that were his usual dress in the consulting room or the shirt from the same brand that his maid starched and ironed, and the robe was pressed against his body by the breeze that carried the voices. No man spoke for him, he had no friend. The heat blistered his face, above and below the headcloth.

He walked - sandalled feet scraping the ground but held up - a dozen paces, then was stopped in his tracks. He felt the weight of the hands pressing him down —not so that he should lie prostrate but so that he should kneel. His weight pressed down on the skin of his knees, the voices were stilled and he heard the silence.

The dream slipped back in time, but Bart did not wake.

Departures at the airport of Riyadh. He stood in the queue.

Around him there were families, adults grumbling and complaining, children sulking and whining. He edged towards the desk and used his toe to push forward his bag. The flight non-stop home was fully booked, and Bart queued for the KLM aircraft to Amsterdam. He thought only of escape, and the slow progress of the line towards the desk fuelled his fear and impatience. A woman behind him, bowed down by a lifestyle of bags, tried to tell him how her servants had wept before she'd left for the airport, but he ignored her. The desk came imperceptibly closer, and beyond the desk was the departure gate, then the lounge, the walkway, the aircraft cabin's door. He was sweating, could not hide the mounting fear . . . It was almost a relief.

Men came behind him. Nasally, in accented English, he was asked his name, and hands lifted up his bag, other hands were at his arms.

He was out of the queue. He was gone. The escape had failed.

The dream was without mercy.

He cringed. There was the slither of feet on the concrete of the corridor floor beyond the steel-faced door. Low sun threw from the barred window dark shadows the length of the cell. They always came for him in the early evening. When the sun went down, the beatings began. They were late for him: already he could hear screams that pierced his head. He had seen a man, two days before, through an open door as he was led to his own interrogation, suspended from a pole by his wrists and ankles - like a pig on a spit

- and had heard the man shriek as he was hustled further down the corridor. The door opened. Bart was taken down the corridor, but not to an interrogation room. A brightly lit room with easy chairs and a polished desk, and Eddie bloody Wroughton: 'You confessed, nothing we can do, you told them everything. You went down into the desert. You made your own bed, Bart, and now there's nothing we can do to stop you lying on it. They'll try you, closed court, condemn you, and then they'll execute you. You're beyond our help.

When it comes to the end, try to put up a good show, try to walk tall, try to have a bit of dignity . . . It'll be quick. What I don't understand, Bart, is why you were so incredibly stupid.' Taken back to his cell, and listening to the screams and shrieks of others.

' The dream was a circle that was routed from the square to the airport concourse, to the cell block, and back to the square.

.

He knelt in the silence. He imagined that a thousand throats gasped in anticipation. He smelt the fresh sawdust. He seemed to see the machine that shredded wood and made the sawdust that spilled from the machine into a sack's mouth. He could not see the sack but the scent of the sawdust was in his nose. He hunched. The sun and a gentle breeze were on the skin at the back of his neck. He tried to make the space, the skin between the back of his head and the top of his shoulders, so small that the executioner would find no place that his sword could strike. He buried his neck in his shoulders. He had not slept in the night. The dawn had come after an endless wait.

Before he had been walked to the black van, he had been stripped of his prison uniform and dressed in a robe that was stiff from many washings and, in spite of them, was stained. The back of his head nestled against the top of his shoulders and he made no target for the executioner. He felt the pinprick at the base of his spine, where it merged with his buttocks. The prick was sharp pain, the executioner's trick with the sword point. Bart could not help himself.

He jerked forward. His neck extended.

The dream ended.

He was not on the seats of the Mitsubishi but on the floor, his face squashed against the accelerator and brake pedals.

Above him, the chrome lit by the moon, the keys were in the ignition.

Bart could have pushed himself up, could have sat in his seat, wiped the sweat off his face and from his eyes, could - in one movement -

have turned the ignition key and driven away into the sand in the hope of finding the track, might have been back in Riyadh by the late afternoon. Possibly, he would have lifted a telephone, have said: 'Mr Wroughton, it's Bart here, I've something really rather extraordinary to tell you. When and where can we meet?' Should have saved himself.

'Fuck you,' Bart murmured. 'Fuck you all. I hope he, whoever
he
is and whatever
he
does, hurts you.'

Bart looked at his watch. Three more hours of night before the next injection.

He had purged the dream. He slept.

It was a risk, but necessary.

First Caleb slotted the battery coolant unit into the grip stock, then

.

he depressed the impulse-generator switch - as the manual told him to. He was in darkness, could not see, could only feel and hear. The manual said - he had read it and memorized it - that 6000 PSI pressurized argon gas coolant . . . He did not have to remember a scientist's jargon, but had to listen and watch. The whine grew, but the red light winked at him. The manual said that a red light's sporadic winking indicated low battery power. When it was exhausted the red light would be continuous. The manual recom-mended that the battery coolant unit be recharged or replaced when the red light winked - only in circumstances of exceptional combat conditions should an attempt be made to fire a Stinger at a hostile target when the red light was winking. He killed the switch, the whine faded and the red light died. Caleb might have used the last of the battery's power when he made the test: the final chance of firing might have gone.

He fell back, the launcher resting on his body.

It all depended on the boy, on the freshness and youth of Ghaffur's ears. Without his hearing - if the Predator's eye was above him - he would not succeed in the last leg of his journey back to his family.

He had had to know that the missile would fire, would eject from the launch tube, would seek out a target.

Caleb lay on his spine. The exertion of lifting the Stinger's tube had brought back the throbbing pain to his leg.

He rested, was relaxed. What had disturbed him was not what he would do in the morning after the light came when he would stand and hobble to the guide, Rashid, and take his rifle: what had churned in his mind was that the battery powering the Stinger had lost its life.