The Unknown Soldier

by Gerald Seymour

  'Great trust is put in you, and what you can achieve.'

  Caleb said, 'I hope not to fail that trust.'

  'Tell me, those who were your friends, back at your old home, if you have achieved what we ask of you, what will they say of you?'

  'They would not understand - they live without living, without love.'

  'If they were to spit on your name?'

  'They are forgotten, they are dead. I would not care.'

  He felt the thin, bony hand touch his thigh. It seemed to crawl up it, then found his fist on the reins. It was held tight, as in a vice. This was his friend, not the boys from school or the kids on the canal towpath or the men in the garage. This was his family, not his mother. He lifted his fist. He kissed Hosni's hand.

  Chapter Fourteen

  'It is wrong,' Caleb said. 'We have to change.'

  He challenged the guide.

  Through the dawn, the thought had formed in his mind, as they had started out again, and in the morning's first hours. When the sun was high, convinced that Rashid was wrong, he had pushed the exhausted Beautiful One forward, faster. They had been in a long line, the guide far in front and the boy far to the back. He had come to the guide's shoulder. The Beautiful One stumbled from the effort.

  'It is wrong because we make too big a target. We have to change.'

  He spoke in the language he had learned from the Arabs in the 055

  Brigade - what he had learned when they laughed and when they shouted in anger and when they cried in fear. He had been with them in good times, and in the hell when the bombers had been over them.

  'We have to believe that it fired, then was recalled because of the wind. The wind has gone. We have to believe it will return to search for us.'

  He could not have counted how many days it was since the great storm and the girl, and since Tommy had gone down into the sand.

  In all of those days it was the first time he had ridden at the head of the caravan, been beside the guide.

  'If we are so spread out we make it easier for them, for the camera, to see one man or one camel, than to see us all.'

  The desert had changed, the formations were now small hills of reddened sand. Some were twice his height as he rode the Beautiful One. Here, the wind had made perfect circles of the hills, and between them were the flat areas where sand had been scraped away.

  But the formation of the caravan had concerned him. In all the days, uncounted, he had not thought to challenge the guide.

  'We have to close up, be tight together. We have to make the smallest target possible. We have to make it hard for them.'

  Now the guide turned. He had not spoken, had not used his rein to slow his camel. His face was a loose, uncut beard, thin lips that were dried and cracked, a strong, jutted nose, narrowed eyes that gleamed, and the deep cuts of the lines at his forehead. He was a man to fear. At his waist was the curved sheath and the dulled worn handle of his knife. Close to his hands, which held the camel reins, fastened to his saddle, was the rifle. The brightness shone in his eyes.

  'If they go over us, they have five chances of seeing us, or six. We should make it one chance only.'

  Caleb had spoken quietly, with patience. But his mind was made up, the decision was taken. He had led a section of the 055 Brigade.

  The decision was as clear to him as when he had squatted in the cages of X-Ray and Delta and had promised himself that he would fight. The Chechen, with the dead eye behind the patch, had seen the quality of a leader - the interrogators, guards and escorts had not. If he had needed it, the proof of his ability to think on his feet was on his wrist: the plastic bracelet with the reference number: US8AF-000593DR He did not discuss, did not talk it through with the guide, did not ask the guide's opinion. He spoke it as if he were giving an Older, but did so with politeness. He would not argue, he would lead.

  'You will say that if we are close and they find us that one missile lulls us all. I say if we are close the chance of them finding us is

  .mailer. I respect you as my brother, but please do it.'

  Caleb showed his patience. He dropped back and for half an hour he rode alongside the leading bull camel. He could read the batch number of the manufacturer, the stencilled name of the factory from which it had come, and the designation of the weapon, in the language he had thought he had lost, on the wooden crate it carried.

  In half an hour, the guide rose on his saddle and waved for Hosni to come forward, for his son too, for them to bring the camels close.

  They were together. The heat burned them. The sun's light, reflected up from the sands, was cruel in their eyes. The shadows were tiny beneath the lumbering hoofs. Caleb did not look up. To search the skies would have brought a weakening of his determination. Each could touch the other. He was strong.

  Bart spoke and Wroughton listened.

  'The pilots are all right, that's what he's saying. The pilots are fine, very professional, but they're not trusted. They know it and resent it.

  Of course they know it, and it hurts. Morale is poor throughout the Air Force, he says, but especially so among the pilots. He was told -

  one of them spilled it all out for him - that the lack of trust stems from their training. They go to California or Arizona, they're off to the land of the free where they get their introduction to what I think is called "fast jets". They live among Americans and that marks them down, in the regime's eyes, as potential for contamination. They are beyond the reach of the great theocratic state during the training, are exposed to influences. Good pilots, yes - but how reliable? Is this useful?'

  Wroughton nodded, but Bart thought his attention was far away.

  They were on familiar territory, on the low seats behind the palms in the corner of the hotel lobby. Normally Wroughton varied their meeting-place, did not create a pattern, and it had puzzled Bart when this location was named. It was the first time Bart had ever reported on the Air Force and he'd expected a keener reaction . . . it was the first time that Bart had seen Wroughton appear haggard -

  tired, drawn, his tie not over his collar button, and his shoes not immaculately polished.

  'Useful, but I think we've heard all this before.'

  'Have you now? Well, what about this? Armaments. I suppose it follows on from what I told you I'd had from the National Guard man - you remember, the chap training them in riot control, yes? If they do practice bomb runs, then they fly up north. Up north, they load the bombs, but they have fuel restrictions. They don't carry enough fuel to fly back down to Riyadh with a bomb, only to get to the range and let it go. Then they have to land again, but up north.'

  'I expect our air attache would have known that.'

  'Would he? I can only offer, Mr Wroughton, what I'm told. When they are flying within range of the palaces they are not armed. Sorry if you already knew that. The fear, of course, is that a pilot may have been poisoned psychologically while training in America. Two sorts of poison, my patient says. Could be that exposure to America, its culture - McDonald's, Coca-Cola and pornography - has driven him into the fundamentalists' arms . . . Could be that he realizes the Kingdom is backward, living in an aged mind-set and that a bomb down the chimney of the King's palace would get the place going forward. Whichever, no armaments.'

  'As I said, nothing there that's new.'

  Wroughton had eased up from his seat. Bart wondered what had happened in the bastard's life. He was pleased he'd come, delayed two appointments, and had seen his tormentor fazed. Wroughton dropped a banknote on the bill.

  'I just try to help, Mr Wroughton,'

  'Keep in touch.'

  Left alone, Bart finished his juice, gulped down what Wroughton had left, then sauntered across the lobby. At the swing doors, he realized that the banknote left to cover the price of their two juices would have paid for five and a handsome tip. Extraordinary, through the doors, he stood on the step and looked for his driver. A red Toyota saloon was parked in front of him, its engine idling and a European at the whe
el. Wroughton drove out fast in his Discovery with the CD plates, and - Bart would have sworn to it - the red saloon accelerated, followed him out, then nestled into a lane two vehicles behind Wroughton. It could have overtaken and did not.

  bloody hell, a tail on Eddie bloody Wroughton. Bart was certain of it.

  In Bart's past there had been briefings on how to recognize surveillance and a tail.

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

  God, if only there were more people like you Bart. If only.'

  He walked at the end of the little column into the central square. She was Austrian. She would only be in Al Maz'an for twenty minutes, en route between Jenin and Nablus. The column was peopled by these representatives of a Munich-based medical charity and their Palestinian escorts. When Bart had heard that they were to come to Jenin for a morning's study, then drive on to Nablus, he had suggested to the organizing committee that a visit to the village, however brief, would be welcome.

  'I do what I can. Sadly, I can do very little.'

  'Tell me again what are the principal complaints of your patients?'

  'Well, their overwhelming complaint is the savagery of the military occupation. All the hardship stems from it. Obstruction at every turn by the Israeli Defence Force, refusal to allow the entry of medical supplies, harassment of doctors and nurses and ambulance crews, even me . . . but that is not what you meant.'

  She was pretty, earnest, and her face was a study of concern. Two Palestinian doctors were behind them, within earshot. An official of the Palestine Authority was in front. Her colleagues in the delegation were further ahead, fanning out into the square.

  'I have here rampant bacterial diseases. E. coli, salmonella, typhoid, the constant threat of a cholera outbreak - you name it. I treat amoebic dysentery and toxoplasmosis. There is hepatitis A and B. Then I have the insect-vectored illnesses that you will have been told about in Jenin -

  dengue fever, filariasis and a particularly powerful strain of schistosomiasis where the parasites settle in the bowels, rectum and liver. Here, in the Occupied West Bank, Miss Hardenberger, we're looking at what your ancestors would have encountered in fifteenth-century Vienna. It is so unnecessary. Without the brutality of the Occupation all of them woidd be eradicated.'

  Every word he said was heard, was meant to be. The scaffolding was still up. In the seven weeks that had passed he had not seen again the woman whose son had been hanged from that upper cross pole. In the seven weeks he had been three times to the hut at the checkpoint and had played out his charade of abusing the troops who searched his car. He had had nothing to report to Joseph and had sensed, the last time, a frisson of impatience.

  'I don't think I know, Dr Bartholomew, about schistosomiasis - I specialize in midwifery. You understand?'

  'Of course, of course. All I am trying to say to you, Miss Hardenberger, is that when you get back to Vienna, please, stand on a rooftop and let the whole of that city know what you have seen. Please do that.'

  'I will. God's truth, I will.'

  It happened quickly. He was looking into her face, a little taken by the scrubbed cleanliness of her skin, no cosmetics, when the car came by. It was driven fast and the two men behind them, the doctors, quite roughly, with urgency, pushed Bart and the Austrian woman from the middle of the street.

  At that moment, as the car - a rusted lime-green Fiat - passed them, the back-seat passenger looked their way. A face from a photograph.

  'Tell me, Dr Bartholomew, because your commitment and dedication humble me, what did you give up back in England to come here?'

  His mind wandered. All of the photographs were good. They were not standard police photographs, front and profile, but unguarded surveillance pictures. They had a naturalness, were recognizable. In Joseph's hut, the photographs were ranked in order of sensitivity and the most sensitive were shown to him most often. He knew the face of the man in the back seat of the Fiat. The car sped across the square.

  'A normal practice.' Bart grinned. 'You know, hernias and hips, pregnancy and prostates.'

  'You gave up so much.'

  'I tell you, Miss Hardenberger, if you are here and you are tempted to drift into self-pity, you have only to look around you. Here, self-pity is not an option.'

  'I hope God watches over you,' she said softly.

  He smiled at her . . . More importantly, he thought, did the rapid-reaction unit stationed up on the hill at the checkpoint watch over him? Everything he said was listened to. They went past the scaffolding where children waited in line to give flowers to the delegation, and there was a shout from the front that they must hurry if they were to visit the medical centre, a Portakabin shed.

  He let her go ahead, said something about not wanting to hog her. She walked with the man from the Palestine Authority. Alone, without the distraction of her chatter, he could look better for another sighting of the Fiat.

  He saw it down a side alley, barely wide enough for it to have parked and for another vehicle to pass. The alley was on the right-hand side of the wider street that led to the medical centre in the yard of the village school.

  Opposite the alley he spotted a good marker, a collapsed telephone pole, felled by a manoeuvring tank months earlier and not raised again.

  Back at their vehicles, as the delegation loaded up, the Austrian woman came to Bart, stretched up on her toes and kissed his cheek. He coidd smell the soft scent of the flowers she held.

  Two hours later, in the hut at the checkpoint, over a mug of coffee and a sweet seed cake, he told Joseph of the lime-green Fiat, and the photograph was on the second page - at the top - among the most sensitive fugitives, and he described the flattened telephone pole at the top of the alley.

  'You are sure?'

  'Certain.'

  'There is no possibility of an error?'

  'None.'

  Joseph said, T think to utilize this we have little time. Not time enough to make a complicated separation of you from the target. 1 don't wish to frighten you - be very careful, be exceptionally careful.'

  Bart drove home. He fed the cat. He sat in his favourite chair, the sun beat on the windoivs and he shivered.

  The class finished.

  'Shu-ismak?' What is your name?

  'Min wayn inta?' Where are you from?

  That morning of the week, the last before the lunch-break, Beth had her biggest class. No history, no literature, and not the detailed language of the petroleum-extraction manuals. It was for basics.

  'Ana af-ham.' I understand.

  'Ureed mutarjem.' I want an interpreter.

  The class catered for workers from every section of the Shaybah complex, was always full. Each time she read out the Arabic phrase, there followed a choir of voices struggling with the English translation.

  'Mish mushkila.' No problem.

  'Wayn al-funduq?' Where is the hotel?

  In any other week she would have enjoyed the class for its enthusiasm. She did not think that any of them, as she spoke the Arabic and they replied in English, had realized that her heart was not with them, her concentration was gone. The class drifted towards the door with a cacophony of conversation and scraped chairs. One of the last to leave, gathering up the photocopied sheets she gave them for private study, was the head of Security. She was wiping clean her blackboard.

  She called his name. She asked, please, if he could stay a moment.

  The room cleared.

  'Yes, Miss Bethany?'

  She hesitated, then blurted, 'There is something I do not understand.'

  'If I can be of help.'

  She felt stupid. She should have backed off - but she never did. It was not her way. She tried to master a fraudulent casualness in her question. 'Someone told me that the Rub' al Khali around us is a place of danger. Is that true?'

  He glanced down at his watch, as if unwilling to be delayed. 'True, and you know that. Extreme heat, dehydration, remoteness, it is very harsh.'

  'Sorry, I don't ex
plain myself - danger because of the people who move in the Sands.'

  'False.' Again his eye slipped to his watch and a puzzled frown settled over his eyes. 'In your language you call it the Empty Quarter.

  That is what it is. Only the Bedouin are there. An old culture of trading has given them the knowledge of the Sands. They can survive there, nobody else. The Bedouin are not thieves, they have a tradition of kindness and generosity. I know you go into the Sands, Miss Bethany, when you search for the meteorites, and you should be fearful of the conditions of nature, but not of criminals. Only the Bedouin are there, no other man can survive such a place. A stranger who tries to walk in the Sands, he condemns himself - he is dead.'

  Thank you.' She dropped her head.

  He lightened. 'Now, I understand .. . You have heard, Miss Bethany, the rumours - what they would gossip about in a camel market - of terrorists in the Sands. No, no. Those people are in Riyadh, Jedda and Ad Dammam, not in the desert. They would die there. Excuse me, please.'

  She was left in the emptied room.

  She wiped out the last lines on her blackboard. Min wayn intal and shu-ismak? She smeared out the chalked words.

  Where are you from? Who are you?

  In the boxes are the Stinger missiles. Do you know about the Stinger missiles?' Hosni was laid across the neck of his camel and his voice was a reedy, frail whisper.

  Caleb crouched in his saddle to hear him. 'Once I saw one, but not close.'

  'They are old. We do not know whether they are affected by the age. But they are important.'

  They moved in a tightened knot, man close to man, camel brushing against camel, and he smelt the sweat on the guide and the boy, on the Egyptian and himself, the foul breath panted by the camels.

  His knee bumped against a box's edge on the flank of a pack bull.

  'I saw one when we tried to hold a line beyond Kabul, but the bombers were too high,' Caleb said. 'It was not fired.'