The Unknown Soldier

by Gerald Seymour

  The Saudi would yell out his pain, and twice the Egyptian had tumbled into the sand. Rashid had lifted him up without sympathy, then thwacked the camel's back to get it moving again. He sensed, constant in his mind, the resentment they held for him because they had waited twelve days for his arrival.

  They climbed, scrambled, descended, and each in his own way would have prayed for another of the salt-crusted flats that made plateaux before the next line of dunes, and the heat was unforgiving

  . .. and it was only the start. The questions had started again, the piping voice demanded answers.

  'No,' Caleb said. 'You shall answer me.'

  'What?'

  He saw the triumph on the boy's face: a response had been won.

  'How long do we travel?'

  Mischief lit the boy's face. He grinned. 'How fast can you go? And the others? I think we go slowly.'

  'How many days?'

  'The camels drank this morning.'

  'How many days can the camels travel after they have drunk?'

  'For eighteen days.'

  'Is eighteen days enough time?'

  'How fast will you go?'

  'What happens after eighteen days?'

  'The camels die,' the boy, Ghaffur, said, and his eyes sparkled. 'But we must have water.'

  'How many days can we live without water?'

  'Two days, then we die.' The boy's smile wreathed his face.

  'Has your father been on this route before?'

  'I do not think so. Not with me. He has not said it.'

  More questions bounced in Caleb's mind. All had the same core.

  How did the guide, Rashid, know where he was going? What markers did he use? What pointers guided him? They were un-spoken. They had barely started, it was only the beginning . . . On every camel goats' stomach skins bulged with drinking water. Two days after that water was exhausted, they would die of thirst, and after eighteen days the camels would die. Caleb had not seen anything that told him men and beasts had gone this way before. The sands were pure. There were no tramped trails where hoofs or feet had been, and he did not think there was any possibility, however remote, that a vehicle could have ploughed through the soft, shifting sands of the dunes. Twice, in that morning's march, the guide had stopped and looked ahead, had seemed to sniff at the air, and his concentration had been total. The first time he had veered towards the right, a sharp, angled turn, and the second he had gone to the left, a softer turn. But the boy said his father had never been here before.

  He realized it: their lives depended on the instincts of the guide who strode ahead of them, led them further into the sand wilderness.

  Caleb asked, 'Does anyone come here?'

  'God is here.'

  He walked faster. The straps of his sandals were making blisters on his heels. He saw nothing that supported life, only the dunes - no track, no bush or dead wood, no trail. If he had not been important then the challenge of crossing the wilderness would not have been given him, but he did not know why he was important . .. He walked faster but his legs were leaden and his mouth cried out for water. The boy gambolled beside him, mocked him.

  He staggered. The boy caught his arm, but Caleb angrily pushed him away, and the horizon was blurred by the sweat in his eyes. He seemed to see, in his mind, the bones of the dead who had exhausted their water, and the bones were stripped white by the sand and the wind. He blinked, then wiped the sweat savagely from his eyes. He had stared into a trap of self-pity, as men had done at X-Ray and Delta.

  He screamed and the sound of it soaked into the dunes' walls and the cloudless sky.

  He checked his list for the day - three interrogations.

  They would all be dross. The Bureau and the Agency ruled in Joint Task Force 170, and the DIA ran a poor third, bottom of the heap. In his cubicle, Jed had scanned his overnight emails - nothing that couldn't wait - then turned to the files of the three men. The Bureau and the Agency worked the prisoners who stared at the ceiling and soundlessly repeated Holy Qur'an verses, or fed out the disinformation snippets, or gazed back at the questioner with silent contempt. The Bureau and the Agency had the big-time game of trying to break into the silence or the lies, and that was good, stimulating work. The men given to the DIA were the no-hopers, the unfortunates on the edge of nervous collapse. In the morning he would see a Kuwaiti, who said he was an aid worker in Jalalabad. In the afternoon, an Afghan would be brought in who said his father had given offence to a tribal chief in Paktia province and the chief had therefore denounced him. In the early evening, across the desk there would be a German passport holder from Tunisia who claimed the Pakistanis had handed him over when he was only an Arabic language student. It was pitiful.

  By now, any benefit of Jed Dietrich's vacation was eroded. He wouldn't have told his father, Arnie Senior, but the work at Guantanamo bored him. A few times, he felt compulsive anger towards his targets, the men he faced, but the army's interrogation manual was clear cut on the boundaries he must not cross: he was permitted to use 'psychological ploys, verbal trickery, or other non-violent and non-coercive ruses'; he was warned that 'the interrogator must have an exceptional degree of self-control to avoid displays of genuine anger'; and absolutely forbidden was the 'use of force, mental torture, threats, insults or exposure to unpleasant or inhumane treatment'. Maybe if he had responded to that anger and kicked shit out of them, life at Guantanamo might not have been so dreary. It would not happen . . . He supposed that what kept him sane, what kept a man buying a lottery ticket, or what kept a guy out on a rainy day walking mud fields with a metal detector, was that something - one day - might just turn up. He started to read the case notes of the Kuwaiti who claimed to have been doing charity work in Jalalabad.

  A clerk brought the signal to him.

  He signed for it, watched the clerk close the door, and read it. He hadn't really the time to ponder on it, not if he were to get the Kuwaiti done in the morning. He read it a second time. He bit at his lower lip and dug his fingernails into his palms, but couldn't beat the frustration.

  From: Lebed, Karen. DIA, Bagram.

  To: Dietrich, Jed. DIA, Camp Delta, Guantanamo Bay.

  Subject: Fawzi al-Ateh. Ref. US8AF-000593DP.

  Hope the sun's shining and the swimming's good. Concerning the above individual - no can help. Afghan national Fawzi al-Ateh did a runner (exclaimer). He escaped from USMC escort en route Bagram-Kabul. A mess (double exclaimer). Subject should have been collected by Afghan Security (yeah****yeah****) but incoming flight was delayed and they'd gone home - believe me. Subject pleaded nature call and was allowed out of transport, but didn't drop his trousers, just ran.

  Anyway, ivhy the query? Wasn't subject cleared for release? Subject's home village is not accessible to us unless in battalion strength, bandit country. Low priority means follow-up assessment is not possible. OK, OK, so he wenr home early. Wishing you a happy day.

  Best,

  Lebed, Karen

  He winced. Ever since his supervisor had told him of the taxi-driver's release, the irritation had come to him in spasms. It was not a tidy wrap-up. He could go back in his mind to the first day of the vacation, up in the cabin by the lake, when the faces across his desk had been clear, clean images. He had identified something enigmatic about that subject: a tall young man, softly spoken, never shaken in his story. All the others who pleaded innocence, as the taxi-driver had, had tried to prove their non-association with Al Qaeda by naming men they'd 'met' or men they'd 'heard of' who were in the 055 Brigade, or men they'd 'seen'. This one, the taxi-driver, had never met an Al Qaeda member, never heard of one, had never seen one. It was such a small point, so trivial, and by the second day on the Wisconsin lake he'd forgotten it. It would not have resurrected in his mind if the Bureau and the Agency had not walked, in big boots, over his supervisor . . . It had made a niggling suspicion. He filed the signal.

  He went to work. He walked between the block where his office was and the block used for interrogation.
He could see the beach. The wind came off it. It should have been a place of beauty, but it wasn't.

  It was a place of fences and cages, of howled misery and failure. He'd complained, more than five months back, to Arnie Senior about the numbing tedium of the interrogation sessions - but Arnie Senior had done his draft time in the Central Highlands of Vietnam where questioning was 'robust': 'Take 'em up in a chopper, three of them, get up to a thousand feet, make two take a hike and then ask the third some questions. Never fails.' Arnie Senior's eyes had glazed over, sort of manic, and Jed had never again talked about his work to his father.

  The translator was from Pittsburgh, second generation American, Syrian stock, and Jed disliked him, didn't trust him. The translator lounged and pared his nails. The chair opposite the desk was empty; they waited for the Kuwaiti to be brought in. Jed had talked three times to the taxi-driver, sitting in that same chair. He had found him co-operative and word-perfect on his story. Each time he'd done the oldest of tricks, what they taught at the training of interrogators, go back suddenly over a fact given an hour before, but every time the taxi-driver's story had matched and the trick hadn't caught him.

  Truthful, and he wouldn't have admitted it - not even to Brigitte -

  he'd rather liked the young man, and the story of the family's death from the bombers had kind of hit him . .. He looked up.

  The chained prisoner, between the guards, was shuffled into the room. His thoughts of the taxi-driver - where he was and what ground he walked - were shut from his mind.

  He looked into the pleading face of the Kuwaiti.

  The birds soared.

  She flew the peregrine, the shahin, he flew the saker falcon, the hurr. They were high, specks in the sky.

  Beth and her host, the deputy governor, were out for a day's sport, with four vehicles and a retinue of drivers, falcon-minders, and servants to pitch an awning when they broke for the picnic; there were bodyguards with rifles, and a tracker from the Murra tribe to bring them back to Shaybah if the GPS system failed. She would have preferred just her and him, one four-wheel drive and the two birds.

  It could not be: the deputy governor, a prince of the Kingdom, required such a following as a symbol of his rank.

  The birds, high enough over them to make her arch her neck and struggle to follow their flight, searched for prey.

  Had they been alone, two persons in the wilderness of sand, she would have experienced what she loved: the solitude, the quiet and the serenity. The desert captivated her. Lawrence had written, three-quarters of a century before, that 'this cruel land can cast a spell', and she understood him. She was captivated by the emptiness and the infinity of the horizons. Its imprint, she knew, would mark her mind for the rest of her days.

  She watched for the diving stoop of the peregrine, waited for it to spy out a bustard that would be condemned.

  They were a dozen miles off the road running to the north alongside the pipeline; the meteorite impact site of Wabar was a hundred and twenty miles to the west. The deputy governor would have been apoplectic had he known that she went alone to the ejecta field, had found a route for her Land Rover. He believed she only travelled there when he authorized drivers, a back-up vehicle and servants for the camp she must have, with a cook, a tribesman from the Murra, and troops from the Border Guard; with that crowd she felt con-stricted and watched, unfree. She had no fear of the desert that Lawrence had called 'cruel'. Once a month, Beth slipped away on her own to walk among the black glass and the white stones, to map and examine them, and once every second month she took the deputy governor's deputed escort. She had been told by a Bedouin trader who had come to Shaybah of another place, south of Wabar, where the glass and stones had fallen from the heavens, and had been given landmarks, perhaps a place where no human foot had ever been. She would be there, alone, with the quiet - if her Land Rover could get her there.

  The birds searched, had not yet found a prey below.

  She was there because she had written the letter to the Saudi Embassy in London, and had requested a visa for scientific research of meteorite impact sites. She had, of course, exaggerated her academic qualifications and egged-up her field experience. Her mother and father had lectured her that the Kingdom was not responsive to foreigners, intruders. Three months later she had whooped when a positive response had dropped through the letter-box, signed in person by the deputy governor, instructing her to go to the embassy where a visa would be issued to her. Everyone she knew in London said it was a miracle that she had won admission to follow her studies.

  The birds came down, but not in the dive to strike.

  Their flight back to the cluster of vehicles was frantic and in fear.

  Above them, distinct and threatening, an eagle hovered. The sport was finished: no bustard would be taken. The peregrine and the saker falcon would not fly again if an eagle dominated the sky. The picnic was laid out and the birds shivered in fear in their cages. She watched the eagle, felt its presence, a killer over the sands, danger where before there had been none.

  He followed the example of the guide, Rashid, and the boy.

  He must have the respect of Rashid. Caleb had seen, looking up the length of the caravan, that when Rashid glanced back there was no respect on his features for the men who rode the camels.

  He stopped, bent, and unfastened the buckles of his heavy sandals. He let his bare feet sink into the sand, then hitched the sandals' straps to his waist. He took the first step. He must have respect, he was driven to find it. The heat of the sand scorched the flesh on the soles of his feet, the grains clogged between his toes.

  The second step, and then he was climbing a dune's lee slope and each step set fire to the skin under his feet, which was pink and protected between the calluses and the new blisters, but his grip was better than it was with the sandals; his toes dug into the loose sand and he did not fall. The burning ran from his feet to his ankles and up to his thighs. Caleb gasped. His teeth locked on his lip. He would not cry out. They tumbled down the dune's reverse slope. He fell but did not scream as the pain surged.

  The boy, Ghaffur, was gone. Caleb was alone, abandoned by the caravan's stampede down the reverse slope. He scrambled to his feet.

  He saw the boy sprint, sure-footed, past the pack camels and past the camels on which Fahd, Hosni and Tommy clung, as if for their lives.

  He plodded after them, the gap growing and the pain burning. The boy reached his father at the head of the caravan and tugged at his father's sleeve. Rashid seemed to listen to his son, then turned. Tears welled in Caleb's eyes. His bare feet gouged into the sand. He saw, through misted eyes, the moment of disinterested contempt on Rashid's face, heard faintly the cough and the spit, then Rashid resumed his march at the caravan's head.

  The next dune line was at least a mile in front. It was as if bull-dozers had scraped off the sand bed, scalped it down to a surface of grit and chipped stones. Rashid led the camels on to the new ground.

  The boy waited for him.

  Each step on the burned grit and the sharp stones was rich agony The boy waited and watched him.

  Caleb's own craving for respect made him hang the sandals at his waist. If, now, he dropped the sandals to the ground, slipped his feet into them and refastened the buckles, he could not win respect. The vista stretched ahead of him, and he started to count numbers to divert his mind from the shoots of pain.

  The boy's gaze wavered between Caleb's wet eyes and his feet. He thought the boy understood. The boy's feet were hardened as old leather and Ghaffur stood and waited for him. Caleb counted each step. He came closer to the boy - and the distance to the end of the caravan and the last bull camel carrying two of the boxes had widened. He reached the boy, still counting, and passed him and kept on walking and each step hurt worse.

  'What do you say?' the voice piped.

  'I am counting.'

  'What are you counting?'

  Caleb grunted, 'I am counting each step I take.'

  'I
have never heard of such numbers,' the boy said, and shook his head.

  He counted the next number . . . and realized. The pain and the heat, the grit and stones under his feet had pushed him beyond the chasm that was the limit of his memory. He cursed softly. An old language had seeped into his mind, his past. He stamped on the memory and walked on.

  Caleb endured.

  At the base of the next dune line, where there would be soft sand, Rashid had called a halt. Fahd prayed, but the Egyptian and the Iraqi squatted in the shade of their kneeling camels. Caleb reached them.

  Tommy sneered, 'What do you wish to be, a soldier or a peasant?'

  When the Saudi's prayers were complete, they went on. The boy stayed close to him, eyes never off him, because the boy had heard the evidence that the life of the Outsider among them was a lie. Who was he? The boy's question had, almost, been answered. Caleb was able to hold the pace that Rashid set.

  The traffic was fierce.

  Lunatics hurled cars, vans and lorries around Bart's chauffeured saloon. His driver, a favourite with the expatriates at the compound, was slow to anger and seldom treated the roads as if they were stock-car circuits, manoeuvred among the hazards with caution, was a byword for calm, and therefore was in demand. They had just left the supermarket, on the northern edge of central Riyadh, where Bart had filled a trolley with meals-for-one. It was always a risk for an expatriate to drive himself: a foreigner was inevitably considered to be in the wrong at an accident scene. A European foreigner could be milked for rich pickings if a Saudi was injured or his car dented: no access to a lawyer, and no help from the embassy. He sat in the back of the Chevrolet, believed the company's sales pitch on the strength of the vehicle, and was relaxed.

  He was going shopping. The supermarket had merely been his first call, and his last call would be the English-language bookstore, but next in line was the Pakistani-staffed men's clothes emporium.