The Unknown Soldier

by Gerald Seymour

  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.

  After the gunfire there were the explosions of grenades.

  Men and kids were running in the street in front of him. More shots. He was recognized. More explosions. His door was opened, he was pulled out by a clutch of hands and his bag was snatched off the seat beside his. He was propelled forward. Across the street in front of him an armoured personnel carrier was slewed and the same machine-gun now traversed on to him.

  That day he was wearing, over his anorak, a white sleeveless jerkin with a red crescent symbol at the front and a red cross on the back. His bag was pushed into his hand. From beside the carrier two shots were fired into the air. The crowd stayed back but Bart advanced. The barrel of the machine-gun was locked on him. There was a shout, first in Hebrew then in English. He was to stop or he would be shot. He was alone in the street. Behind the armoured personnel carrier there was sudden movement. Soldiers burst from an alley dragging what might have been a sack of grain, but the sack had legs and a lolling, lifeless head. Bart saw the head, only for an instant, as it bounced on the street's mud. The engines revved, the troops jumped for the rear doors of the carriers, and they were gone.

  Screaming filled the street. He saw a brightening bruise on the mother's cheekbone and blood dribbling from a cut on the father's forehead. He wondered if they had tried to block the troops' entry, or whether they had attempted to hold on to the dead body of their son and been beaten back with rifle butts. God might forgive Bart, no other bastard would. He reached the door and the crowd had thickened behind him. He did what was necessary, bathed the bruise and staunched the cut, and all around him was the wailing of misery. He realized it: he was a trusted as a friend.

  Three hours later he was at the checkpoint, and while his vehicle was searched methodically, and while the pretence was made that he was questioned in the hut, he drank a mug of strong coffee.

  Joseph said quietly, 7 don't think you are a military man, Bart - a s a man of medicine you are a man of healing and peace - but, I promise you, what we do is for the preservation of peace. Terrorists are the parasites that feed off people. We have to destroy those parasites or there can never be healing.

  You saw a body. The body was defenceless. You saw but you did not comprehend. He made the belts and the waistcoats that are used by suicide bombers. You have seen the buses that are destroyed, you have seen the markets where they kill themselves, you have seen the cafes where they detonate the bombs. He was good at his work. What you have done, Bart, is save lives. Sometimes a suicide bomber kills maybe ten, but it has been as high as thirty, and for every death there are five more innocents who lose their sight, their limbs or their mobility. Because of you, many innocents have been given the chance to live a whole life. You should feel good, you have removed a major player in what they call their armed struggle. I salute you.'

  He did not want to be saluted or congratulated. Some time, on the decision of others - and it had been promised him - his life would begin again, but only when others permitted it.

  Bart swallowed hard. He blurted, 'I saw him. I was in the house. Surely there will be a security investigation. How was it known he would be back at his home, that he was using his home? I was there. Too many people know I was there. What about me?'

  Joseph smiled and his hand rested in reassurance on Bart's shoulder. 'We take great care of you. You are a jewel to us, so precious. Have no fear.'

  He left his coffee half drunk. He was pitched out of the hut and his feet slithered in the mud. When he had his balance he swung and shouted at the troops by the hut door. He was watched by the Palestinians who waited for processing at the checkpoint and he heard the applause, the fervent clapping.

  Some chanted his name.

  He drove away.

  They talked of the complicated and intricately webbed world they inhabited.

  'You're not bullshitting me here, Eddie?'

  'You can count on it. I was there. I found the prime eyewitness. He wouldn't have known how to lie. The body of the paymaster, I saw it, on the slab. It's about as far from bullshit as you can get.'

  They were at the kitchen table. Juan Gonsalves and Eddie Wroughton shared the table with his children, their crayon-coloured drawings, and pepperoni pizza fresh from the microwave. The children ate and drew, Teresa tried to separate sheets of paper from the food, Wroughton talked and Gonsalves scribbled notes.

  Separated from his work, Gonsalves could laugh, but he never laughed when he worked. Wroughton understood the pressures now lying on the shoulders of every Agency man in the field: the disaster of failed intelligence analysis before 9/11 dictated that every scrap should be written down, passed on and evaluated. The life of a Langley man who ignored a warning was a cheap life. The pressures on Wroughton were lightweight, he thought, by comparison.

  'The caravan was a Bedu, his son and four strangers. I don't have the exact number of camels, but they carried enough water and food for a long trek into the Empty Quarter. They are important enough to be using about as remote a piece of the border to cross as there is. No Omani or Saudi border patrols, and camels rather than trucks and pickups.'

  'Who'd walk, or get camel sores, when they could ride in a vehicle?'

  'People of exceptional value. For the Organization it would be a major setback if men of that value were intercepted on either side of the border.'

  Theirs was a good friendship, that was Wroughton's belief. Most politicians in London deluded themselves they had a special relationship with the White House .. . but, here, on the Gonsalves kitchen table, the relationship was indeed special. Wroughton's report of his journey up-country in Oman was now being studied in London; in a week, when desk warriors had rewritten it, the revised report would go in the bag to Washington; in another week, the report would be passed to the sister agency at Langley; a week later, after further revisions and rewriting, a version would be sent in cypher back to Riyadh and would land in Gonsalves' office. The real relationship, between two dedicated professionals, was across a clutter of crayons and paper, and was dictated above a babble of excited kids' voices.

  'He said quite specifically that the camels were loaded with six packing cases, crates, whatever - they were painted olive green, military. Dimensions are estimated but seemed to be the eyewitness's arm span, both arms. Machine-guns wouldn't be in crates. The weight of the crates is a handicap going into the Empty Quarter, so we are looking at something that cannot be exposed to the elements, also that requires cushioning.'

  'What are we talking about?'

  'I'd reckon we're talking armour-piercing or ground-to-air missiles. If I had to bet I'd say we're talking ground-to-air. Try Stinger.'

  Gonsalves grimaced.

  'I did some work on it today. You shipped, with your typical generosity, some nine hundred Stingers into Afghanistan; the mujahidin downed an estimated two
hundred and sixty-nine Soviet fixed wing and helicopters using them. At the end of the war, when the Soviets quit, two hundred were unaccounted for, still out there.

  Your people tried to buy them back but went empty-handed. They can blow a military plane out of the skies or a civilian air-liner . . .

  What we don't know is shelf life. Eighteen years after their delivery, are they still functioning? Have they degraded? Don't know. My own view, what it's worth, the crates aren't the problem. The problem's bigger. I think the men matter, the four strangers are the priority.'

  Their greatest difficulty, as counter-intelligence officers, was to sift the relevant from the dross. Mostly their trade relied on the electronic intercepts of conversations sucked down from satellites, gobbled by computers, then spat out as raw verbiage. Wroughton and Gonsalves called it 'chatter'. Their bosses called it Ellnt. But this was the rarest commodity they dealt with: the word of an eyewitness.

  'Right, four men are being taken across the Empty Quarter in conditions of the greatest secrecy - they matter. The eyewitness is definite there was an argument over the price of the camels. Then one of the men intervenes. He assumes authority. He is young. He is tall. He does not fit in physique and build - the eyewitness notes that. He is different in his features from the others - wears their clothes, but is different. A young leader, with authority, that's what I have - but that's all.'

  All of the best material, high grade and rare, was exchanged across the kitchen table. The kids liked Wroughton. He drew the pencil outlines for them to colour in better than their own father, and after the meal they would go out into the floodlit yard where he would pitch a ball at the eldest kid, and do it better than Gonsalves, and later he would read to the kids in their beds and they liked his accent better than their mother's. In London and Washington there would have been coronaries and fury at the closeness of the two men.