The Unknown Soldier

by Gerald Seymour

  . .. I've seen your face and I will not forget it.'

  She stared back at the barrel of the rifle and she knew. Through the sights he must look into her eyes. She held her gaze steady, never lost his eyes. The finger was on the trigger.

  She hadn't seen him come. One moment she faced the barrel, the next - the boy was in front of her. The boy protected her.

  She felt the trembling of his slight sinewy body against her stomach, and against her back was Bart. Could he shoot? To save him, the boy had been near to death in the desert. To save him, the boy had trekked to her. Over the boy's head, she saw now the pain in his face, and it was not the pain from the wound. The sun caught the bracelet on his wrist, and she thought that when it had been put on him he had not weakened. Now he did. More movement from the corner of her eye. The boy's father walked past the long-flung shadow, and past him, never looked at him, and past the raised barrel. The boy's father spat into the sand, then turned and stood in front of his son. Beth knew he would not shoot. They made their untidy line, body to body, and faced him.

  She did not taunt him again, did not need to.

  At that moment, as Beth saw it, there was a vulnerability about him, and loneliness, and—

  In snapped movements, those of a trained man, the rifle barrel was raised towards the brightened skies, there was the clatter of the mechanism as it was wrenched back and the bullet ejected. The bullet, its case gleaming, arched from the rifle and fell, and his finger was off the trigger. There was the click of the safety lever. The rifle was held out, and the guide went a dozen paces and took it. She wondered if he was broken - if she had isolated him, had killed him.

  He walked away from them, using the weapon to lean on, struggling to walk.

  Bart said softly, behind her, 'How's he going to get his name up in lights, murder half a city, if he can't blow us away?'

  The guide was at the trumpeting camels, knelt to loosen their hobble ropes, and the boy trudged to the high ground to resume his watch. Beth clung to Bart, held the gross, sweaty man in her arms, felt him quiver against her.

  'I'm not taking blame. Not any way I'm not. I done everything for him, he never wanted. One quick shag - excuse me - and it's with you the rest of your life. Might as well have hung a rock round my neck. Want to hear about it?'

  Jed Dietrich thought himself privileged to be at a master-class as taught by Michael Lovejoy. He knew the woman to be aged forty-three, but appearance gave her fifteen years more, minimum.

  'Well, you're going to . . . Me and Lucy Winthrop and Di Mackie, we're all eighteen, all in work at a packager, and it's Friday night.

  Twenty-five years ago, and it's like yesterday - would be because it screwed my life. We were in the Crown and Anchor, that's Wolverhampton, but it's a car park now. Hot night, summer night, too much booze. Three guys . . . They were Italians, all the soft talk.

  Italians in Wolverhampton to put in a new printing press or something. Closing time, chucking out. Christ, they'd hands like bloody octopuses, the lot of them. We're down an alley and it's a knee-trembler job. I'm in the middle and we're all going at it - and we're pissed. Mine's called himself Pier-Luigi, and he's from Sicily. What else do I know about him? Not much. Oh, yes - he was big and it

  .

  hurt. They did their zips and we pulled our knickers up. We went home, they went wherever.. . . Di's OK and Lucy's OK, but I'm in the club. Trouble is, I don't know it till it's too late to dump it. My dad tried to trace him but it was a brick wall. We called him Caleb - don't ask me why, it was Dad's choice. Five years later, Dad and Mum moved down south, bought a bungalow. Truth was, they wanted to be shot of us. So I was left behind with the little bastard. They hated him, said he'd ruined their lives. They're dead now, both of them. We didn't go to the funerals. They wouldn't have wanted us there, neither of them. As a baby and a child he was dark, he was different.'

  They'd been at the door early. In her housecoat, she'd answered Lovejoy's knock. He had been so charming, so gentle. Inside the hall he'd remarked on the wallpaper - 'What a pretty pattern, Miss Hunt, what a nice choice' - and he'd edged into the kitchen, and not seemed to notice the filled sink and last night's plate, and he'd fixed on a dying plant in a pot - 'Always did like that one, Miss Hunt, in fact I'd say it's my favourite' - and he'd put the kettle on.

  'I was lucky to get this place. Dad had a friend in the town hall, housing. It was his price to me for moving south. Dad got my file moved up, then he could go and wash his hands of me. We're here, like an island, all Asians around us. I'm not complaining - some people would, not me - they're good people and good neighbours, so all his friends were Asians, had to be. He got to blaming me that I wasn't Asian, and hadn't a family like his friends had - but I'm not taking any blame. Nothing's my fault.'

  Said so quietly and with a smile that won: 'Miss Hunt, you seem like a woman who looks after herself. I'm hesitating - will you have sugar if I do?' Lovejoy had poured the tea into cups he'd taken from the cupboard, and she'd almost purred. Dietrich reflected that the woman had no idea of the devastation about to hit her shabby, damp little home, and Lovejoy wasn't about to tell her; effortlessly it was established that the room upstairs was untouched, uncleared, from the day the 'little bastard' had left - the room would be the centre of the storm, but only when Lovejoy was finished.

  'I tell you who I blame most . . . that Perkins at the school. Made too much of a fuss of Caleb, made him do things that weren't natural to him. Speaking in front of the class, being special, marking him out.

  Caleb got so that nothing satisfied him. I was dirt. No respect for me,

  .

  his mother. No respect for the people in the job he had. Always dreaming of something he couldn't have. Why couldn't he have a family like Farooq, like Amin? Why couldn't he belong? He only wanted the Asians - didn't even have a nice white girlfriend. Could have had Tracey Moore or Debbi Binns. Truth to be told, girls scared him and he ran a bloody mile from them. Then the offer came. Nag, nag, nag, money, money, money. He never came back, nor did my money.'

  Looking out through the kitchen window - and Dietrich didn't think it had been cleaned that year - he saw a rubbish-filled yard, a washing-machine tipped on its side against a low wall, and above it, the walkway that he knew from the map was beside the canal. A group of loafing kids wandered along it, and he saw an old man with a bent back, who had a terrier straining on a leash, move aside to give them passage. He seemed to understand it was a place to escape from. Lovejoy had driven him through the estate on their way to the early-morning knock. Little streets, little terraced homes, little food shops, and everywhere the little bright-painted boxes of security systems. The only buildings of stature on the estate were the new mosque and the new Muslim community centre. It was a ghetto, not a place where Caleb Hunt could have belonged, and Jed understood why it had failed to provide the man with what he needed. All so different from the scrubbed-down interrogation rooms of Camp Delta where he met the enemy - but he learned more here than there.

  'They came round to see me, Farooq did and Amin, and they weren't straight up with me but they stuck to it - Caleb had gone travelling. I'd hear from him, they said, but he'd gone travelling.

  He's a grown-up, and I got on with my life. Two postcards came, one after two months and one after five. The Opera House in Sydney, and that big rock in the middle. It's more than three and a half years since the last one came. Nothing at my birthday, nothing at Christmas. I suppose he's forgotten me.'

  Tears ran down her lined, prematurely aged cheeks. She looked up, past Dietrich, towards Lovejoy.

  'Who did you say you were from?'

  'I didn't.' Lovejoy stood. 'Thank you for the tea, Miss Hunt.'

  They went out of the front door, on to the pavement.

  Two big vans, smoked-glass windows, were parked, one at each end of the short street. They walked past the van at the top, and Lovejoy rapped on its window with the palm of his hand. They went on, round the corner, to where the
Volvo was parked. Lovejoy wasn't a man to linger for the uglier side of his work. They would be well gone, speeding on the road south, when the detectives spilled from the vans, elbowed inside, tore apart the terraced house for evidence of the life, times and motivations of Caleb Hunt. Not that Dietrich thought there was anything left to know.

  They reached the car.

  Lovejoy asked brusquely, 'You happy, ready to call it a day?'

  Dietrich said, 'Ready to wrap, yes. Happy, no.'

  'The postcards?'

  'The postcards say that right from the start they marked him down as high potential for infiltration, created a cover. They reckoned they'd their hands on high-grade material. We did well but I don't feel like cheering or breaking out a bottle - I suppose it's because I think I know him.'

  'I'll get you on the afternoon flight - my granddaughter's birthday today, and I'll catch the end of the party, which'll please Mercy. I find there's not often cause, in our work, for cheering .. . Never seems quite appropriate.'

  They drove away, out of the estate, over the canal and left behind the place that had fashioned the past, present and future of Caleb Hunt.

  The file was under his arm. On it was written the name.

  'I want Mr Gonsalves on the phone, and I want him now. Please.'

  The marine guard and the receptionist stared at the scars on Eddie Wroughton's face.

  'You should tell him I am in possession of information he'd give his right ball for, and if you obstruct me I guarantee to flay the skin off your backs. You want to sit comfortably again, then do it.'

  A call was made. The receptionist murmured into the phone and fixed Wroughton with a glance of sincere hostility. Somebody would be with him soon. Would he like to sit down? He paced and held tight to the file.

  The young man came down the stairs, went through the security barrier, and tracked towards him. 'I'm sorry, Mr Wroughton, but Mr Gonsalves is in conference, and I am deputed to take whatever message you have for him.'

  Wroughton saw his curled lip, the sneer.

  'Get me up to Gonsalves, if he wants to see this.' Theatrically, Wroughton held the file in front of the young man's spectacles.

  'Wait here.'

  He waved the file again, taunting with it, as the desk telephone was lifted.

  'Excuse me, guys, bottom right of screen, wasn't that? We lost it.'

  The serene voice of Oscar Golf broke into their headsets, the intervention from Langley.

  'No, it's not there now. We've gone past. . . Did you see anything?

  Bottom right of screen for four or five seconds.'

  It was a little short of two hours since they had last heard from Oscar Golf. Marty had stiffened. It was like they were watched, tested, spied on. He saw Lizzy-Jo's mouth move as she swore under her breath.

  'Our calculations give you fourteen minutes more time over your current box. Let's use the time, guys, by going back. How does that sound?'

  He looked at Lizzy-Jo. She'd her tongue stuck out, like she was a kid in contempt of an adult. Then her forefinger waved across her lips - not a time to fight.

  'I'll bring her back. We'll work back.'

  Oscar Golf, lounging in a swivel chair in the darkened room at Langley, was not a target to pick for a scrap. Maybe Oscar Golf had six pairs of eyes alongside to help him. Marty grimaced at Lizzy-Jo and she shrugged. He'd seen nothing, bottom right of the screen, neither had she, and . . . He heard a thundering roar, piercing into his headset, billowing through the open door. Where he sat, he couldn't see the window of Ground Control, and the door was at the wrong angle. She leaned close, slipped his headset up off his ear and whispered that it was the transporter landing, their freedom bird.

  'Oscar Golf, I am going into a figure eight, and let's hope we find what you think you saw.'

  'Appreciate that. Oscar Golf, out.'

  There was just sand on the screen - from top left to bottom right.

  Red sand and yellow sand, ochre sand and gold sand, and there were sand hills, sand mountains and flat sand. The track was out of sight, too far to the east of the last map boxes they flew. Tiredness ached in Marty. The previous day, at the start of the last flight and before the weariness had settled on him, he would have resented any request to go back and look again. With the joystick, he banked Carnival Girl and swung her to starboard before the correction to port. Dust came in a storm through the Ground Control open door and he did not need Lizzy-Jo to tell him that the transporter had taxied off the runway and come on to the compacted dirt beside the compound gate.

  The dust filled the Ground Control Centre, settled on his head and his shoulders and spread over the chart of map boxes. She choked.

  He heard her gulp and then she had hold of his hand.

  'Heh, Marty, see that? What are we looking at?'

  Wroughton was led into Gonsalves' empire.

  All the desks were deserted. All the screens in the open-plan flickered, but were not watched. He went past a conference annexe, and through the door saw briefcases dumped and files left open.

  Wroughton was brought to a technology and electronic control centre. He went in. Over shoulders, backs and heads there was a bank of screens. He saw Gonsalves in a Godawful floral shirt.

  He said, 'I've hit a jackpot, Juan, and I'm sharing it with you.'

  It should have been a moment of triumph for Eddie Wroughton. In the throne room of the empire, he held up the file and was ready to boast of what he had achieved. He won no reaction, except that Gonsalves waved a hand at him without turning, gestured for him to shut his mouth. He looked at the screen they all watched. And he heard the voice, metallic and distant, from the high speakers.

  'That's good, Marty, and well done for bringing us back. You have eleven minutes more flying time on station. . . Lizzy-Jo, please, could you give me a zoom, right in close? I reckon it's a target.. . Good flying, guys. Oscar Golf, out.'

  Bart carried the coolbox from the tail of his Mitsubishi, walked well and steadily. The vehicle was fuelled up and he'd discarded the empty cans by the tail.

  He felt almost a slight disappointment in the young man: How's he going to get his name up in lights, murder half a city, if he can't blow us away? Not that he wanted to be dead, his thorax blasted, his spinal cord broken, lungs and heart punctured by bullets fired on semi-automatic, not that he wanted his blood coagulating in the sand and the flies clustering. He recognized the scale of the failure and it left him with a trace of sadness . .. The two men in the village, fingered by Bart, they would have shot him, would not have failed. He saw, to his right, that the guide and the boy had their animals loaded. He was not sure whose life had tipped the balance, had won his survival. He walked over to the young man who had the launcher on his shoulder and seemed to wait irresolutely by his camel, as if expecting help to mount it.

  He reached him, put down the coolbox that held the drugs, syringes and dressings, and looked into the face.

  'Can I pay you?'

  Bart shook his head. There was, because of the traced smile, a charm about the face he had not registered before. The pain that had twisted it was gone. The shake of Bart's head was expansive, as if mere mention of remuneration cheapened him. He saw the cut of the chin, the delicate shape of the nose, and the brightness seemed back in the eyes. To Bart there was, in that short moment, an image of wildness, of freedom, of magnificence. Rambling, old boy, he thought. Rambling and getting bloody stupid. The bugger should have ended you .. . And it was what she had seen, little Miss Bethany Jenkins.

  He turned away. He saw, fleetingly, that the guide's boy had moved a few paces from his father and a frown laced the young skin of his forehead.

  She intercepted him, came towards him, and the sand kicked from her boots with the urgency of her stride. Nothing sweet about her, and her mouth was puckered in a suppressed anger. She stood in front of him, blocked him. 'You could have put him down.'

  A sheepish smile, a shrug.

  'He wouldn't have known - you could hav
e squirted half a gallon of morphine into him.'

  But he hadn't. He had patched him up, had brought him to his feet

  - and had faced his rifle.

  'Why didn't you?'

  .

  He snapped at her, 'Miss Jenkins, don't ever presume to look into a man's mind, search it and strip it. The exercise might cause you to put your delicate head between your knees and vomit.'

  'That is pathetic.'

  'It's what you're going to get and—'

  The shout came, shrill, keened across the sand, rooted him. He saw the boy, one hand cupping an ear and the other pointed up. Bart's head jolted up to the sky, clear blue, and he saw nothing. He heard nothing. The boy howled the warning.

  Bart stammered, 'What does he say - saying what - what?'

  'The aircraft, up there - scatter - get clear.'

  The guide's arms flailed. Right and left, in front of him and behind.

  Now the boy ran, and the guide, and she had ducked her head and charged for open sand, and the camels caught the panic, except one.

  The man, his patient, knelt beside his camel and held tight to its strained harness, had the launcher at his shoulder. Bart was alone.

  He looked a last time into the sky, and then the sun was in his eyes and he was blinking, blinded. He was alone and stumbling towards his vehicle, groping towards it. He had no cover. He seemed to see himself grotesquely magnified, trapped by a hovering eye. He blundered towards the vehicle's cab, reached it, threw open the door.

  Fumbling, grasping for the keys, twisting them, stamping on the clutch, then the accelerator - crying out in fear. He felt the power under him. The wheels spun, whined, then caught. He did not know whether he faced the track and headed for it, or went away from it.

  He did not consider whether he could, lumbering across the desert, escape the aircraft's eye. He did not look at the speedometer, which would have told him that his pace over shifting sand was not more than twenty-five miles in an hour. Bart went in little surges on caked sand, then slowed in loose drifts. His eyes were misted from the sweat and the sun's power bounced at him from the Mitsubishi's bonnet. He could not see where he went, what was in front of him.