Jericho's War

by Gerald Seymour

  Rat swung from his stomach to his hip, faced Corrie, inches away. All pretty inevitable, and launched in a soft hiss. ‘It’s not personal. Take it how you want to. Not personal, but I don’t shirk truths.’

  ‘Have your say.’

  ‘Well, I’m a professional, I’ve done sharp-end stuff in Basra and in Helmand, five tours between the two of them. This is the sort of shit place where I work. I can smell a place like this; that means I can read it. You, my friend, what are you? You come out from an air-con office and maybe you’ve done a forty-eight-hour survival course, “simulated conditions” and down the pub in the evening. You wouldn’t know what it is to soak up pressure, handle it, so don’t come all heavy over me. You have to have been there, breathed it, you can’t get it out of a manual. Which is why the important decisions will be made by me. Because I’ve been here, behind enemy lines and with little back-up. I wanted you to know where we are.’

  He could have smoothed over the ‘misunderstanding’ and could have parroted some stuff about ‘all in this together’, but he didn’t. He would have sounded indifferent. ‘Is that right?’

  ‘You want to talk about others and identify a weak link, what jeopardises the lot of us. It might not be that girl down there, or the guy who’s undercover with that mob of psychos, and it might not be our guide – who I know nothing about. It won’t be Slime and it won’t be me, but it might be you, a desk chap. Me, I needed the money. Now, head off back, send Slime forward.’

  ‘Thanks, Rat, and if you can spare the time I’d be very grateful for some survival tips. You know, if the going gets rough, how I should best cope. I’d like to tap in to your first-hand experience. Be appreciated.’ He turned away, smiled – wintry. It was all ahead of them.

  Chapter 8

  Corrie drifted from sleep and dreams to gentle awakening, then to letting his thoughts run riot.

  Always a good time, that half-state of alertness, because he could not have said with accuracy where he was, why he was there, what he might achieve. The flies seemed calmer and the ants had not found him. The wind came under the scrim net and riffled his face and his shorn hair. The scrape was no more than a foot deep, and the centre of it was lined with the big rucksacks; the scrim was raised by them and anchored at the sides with stones. Its top was about six inches above ground level.

  Corrie had done the sums, the time here and the time in London. They’d be spilling out of Vauxhall station, off the underground and off buses, and arriving at the gate in Lycra. Few would have known his name and even fewer knew where he was. Probably no one cared. That train of thought was boring, took him nowhere. Better to have been in the village pub with the darts team, far removed from what he did.

  He felt secure. The guide sat cross-legged at the side of the scrim and watched the horizon nudging the far edge of the plateau. What Corrie saw there was the first breaking of the cloud ceiling, lighter shades piercing the relentless thickness. The wind was good, too much for the flies.

  Corrie remembered the girl’s face, its strength, and the way she had held the hammer and been ready to strike. The freckles, the small turn-up at the end of her nose, and the dull colour of her lips. Wielding the hammer, she had shown a ferocious determination – the same resolution he had needed to find in order to save himself.

  Corrie lay on his back. The scarf had not been hung out, and he had to wait: it was always hard, waiting. He remembered that day, he had been chained to the back wall of the garage. A crystal-sharp day. The escort had been different. A white-skinned guy had come with the usual hoods who did the damage on him. He wasn’t wearing a mask, and none of the others had a balaclava that day. The guy acted like all the rest of them. There had been muttering in Arabic as they’d come from the door and into the garage. They had stepped over the Italian and had been up close to Corrie. They would never have expected a naive ‘aid worker’, who looked out of his depth, would have attended language school in Beirut. The words were pretty simple to understand: they were discussing who was going to lift him and who’d unfasten the padlock. The guy was passed the key to the lock and said something anodyne, and his accent was from northeast England, easy to put a finger on. Corrie might have been a sack of old rubbish for all the care he had. Had his broken leg become infected? He hadn’t known. It had worried the hell out of him, and he’d done some serious moaning, and been entitled to, and the Canadian had told them that Corrie needed to see a doctor.

  Later, when they had hoisted him off the mattress and had him hobble on one leg, he’d heard this guy called Towfik, and Corrie had managed to look a long time into the bastard’s face. A big part of what they did at Six, in VBX and from the field stations, was trying to keep a handle on the people who bought into the cause and went off to get an AK in their hands and to shag jihadi girls, or watch porn. Corrie despised them, and a double dose for the white guys who came on board as converts, and who were the most dangerous. They were ‘bastards’, because it was simple for them to get a good razor and shave off the straggling beard, and put the nightshirts in the incinerator and go back into mainstream UK life, whereas access was denied to a Muslim kid of the same age. He thought all of them inadequate psychologically, inept in social relationships, crushed by imagined grievances.

  The guy, as Corrie was moved, said nothing to him, nor did he make eye contact. There had been a doctor in the main room of the villa, and Corrie had been dumped down on to a settee. The doctor was young but not particularly pretty; he wondered if she had been trained at St Thomas’s or University College or in the Gulf somewhere. She was not gentle and reached to his belt and unfastened his trousers and jerked them down. She did a quick examination of the place where his leg was discoloured, in rainbow shades. She seemed to regard him as a commodity for selling on at useful profit, showing no interest in his welfare. She pronounced him fit enough to go back to the garage. Was there gangrene? She said there was not, which was great, because if he’d had a leg chopped off in one of their field hospitals, the chance of him coming through without sepsis was minimal. If he croaked then they would not get the payday they were looking for: a British aid worker, even a naive idiot, had a higher price on his head than an Italian, an Austrian or a Canadian. She had felt around the leg, shrugged, then gone to a bag and pulled out a length of tangled bandage. Corrie thought it had been retrieved from the limb of a fighter who hadn’t lasted long after an operation. She bound it tightly around the leg, where the break was; all the time, the guy Towfik watched him, but did not intervene and did not speak.

  Corrie had been taken back to the garage. He had not thanked her and she had not wished him well. She would have been a ‘believer’. Maybe there had been a boyfriend incinerated by a rocket dropped on him by a USAF plane. Maybe she had no reason to do anything beyond her job. The English boy, from the northeast, stank. Probably Corrie did too. That told him that the guy was new to the villa, where they had showers for the guards and most of them used wash lotions. So, first day here. Corrie had hobbled back to his prison, the garage, and the guy had taken most of his weight and Corrie had felt good. He had a target, a specific one. It was not the time to speak, not yet, but the next time or the time after. He felt better than at any time since he had been held. A chance. He would not have had a chance with the doctor. None. He felt a little moment of elation, something to work on.

  Remembered it all, and the shadow came close to the scrim net and he jerked upright and his head tangled in the material. He saw Slime.

  Slime bent low, ‘Rat wants you.’

  ‘Does he?’

  Slime shook his head, and there was raw anxiety on his face.

  ‘Sorry, Boss, not a time for messing. He wants you now.’

  From the trench, Henry could see their movement; no one noticed her focus on the far distance. Her two Yemeni boys from the museum in Sana’a carried on with their work. The ground was hard and they went slowly, and at that moment she hardly seemed to notice their lack of progress. Lamya hung out those it
ems of Henry’s clothing that could be displayed – no undergarments. She would soon start cooking a meal. The troops idled; some smoked and some dozed and all were aware that, while she was there and while they turned a blind eye to fighters who came in the night to see her, their safety was ensured. None wished their minute corner of a spluttering war to become heated: a quiet life suited them.

  They were tiny figures. A long shaft of sunshine had broken the cloud ceiling and it speared down, and came to rest on the incline that blocked off the plain surrounding Marib and its cordon of villages. It was a spotlight, highlighting them.

  She saw the herdsman who had the rifle slung over a shoulder and saw the dog that was close to his heels and saw the goats as they went higher. The boy would not stop the animals climbing the incline: why would he? In the time that she had been in the Marib Governorate, Henry had learned of life as it had been lived in the days of the great queen, and of the amazing ingenuity of the engineers who had left the legacy of their buildings, and the extraordinary ambition of their dam, and the wealth she had carried to Jerusalem to impress Solomon. She had also learned something of how people lived here today, their culture with its limits and simplicities. A boy safeguarding his goats would not seek to control and corral them. In a flock there would be a leading animal, and where he went the others would follow. If the leader decided to climb an incline because there was likely to be better foraging on the slope, or above, then the boy would go with it. They were not large animals, far smaller than the goats that Henry knew from home: these were wiry, with little flesh on their bones, and sure-footed. The climb up the incline for the animals and the boy was no hardship. They went so slowly and, because the sunlight caught them, Henry easily followed their progress, transfixed.

  Little by little, the goats and their escort edged up the slope, and towards its rim. It was where he would be. He had come into her life, put there by Jericho, was indifferent to the chaos he left behind him. She was recruited because she was convenient. It was assumed she would be the good little girl and fall into line. He would be at the top of the slope and would be watching her, maybe with binoculars and maybe with a scope, and she did not know what protection he had: all she had seen in his belt was the dark shape of a pistol – no machine gun, no bazooka, no armoured vehicle, no platoon of Marines. He would only have a small team with him. The boy had a rifle and had a dog and below – either side of the tent camp – were the villages into which the Al-Qaeda group had infiltrated. Scores of men would hear the crack of a rifle shot if the boy fired, and scores would also hear the shot that brought him down. If the boy screamed into the skies, the blow of the wind would carry his voice, faint but clear. And if the boy saw them and turned and ran from them and gave an alert, then scores of them would swarm up there in pursuit.

  It had become her problem – too damn right, her problem.

  If he were taken, disarmed, and brought down the slope, knives and clubs would be used on him. Obvious. She knew nothing of counter-interrogation seminars, presumed that men and women gave up information when broken by pain. The first coin in their treasury would be ‘associates’, including her. And the chance of the small detachment of troops, stationed there to give her security, offering up their lives in an attempt to turn back those who came for her – a whistle in the wind. And she seemed to see lines of smiling people standing at the doors of an aircraft and waiting to be ushered onboard – and fucking doomed. And the goats went higher, and the dog, and the herdsman, an illiterate boy holding so many lives in his thin hands.

  A little of her broke. She twisted around to look at the two young men who chipped uselessly at the hard earth and made such slow progress. They were decent lads and near worshipped her. She lashed out at them.

  ‘Is that the best you can do? Are you just lazy or stupid? Do I have to do everything myself?’

  Her voice was raised and her pitch shrill. She saw them both flinch back, fear in their eyes. They would have thought themselves privileged to be alongside her, and she’d savaged them.

  ‘Can you not work faster, harder? You want me to come and do everything?’

  Shock, total. Troops rose from where they sat to gawp at her. The helpers understood the English well enough, but the soldiers could only register the anger in her voice.

  She pictured the man. He had not blushed when he had seen her, had not looked away; he had stared ahead as if evaluating her. All he had cared about was that she did not cry out. He was not the kind of a man who would give up her name to avoid pain. He carried scars on his face and a slight limp. She had sold him short. She ducked her head and faced her two helpers.

  ‘I am truly sorry. Please forgive me. Sometimes I bend under the strain of living here, working here. I apologise . . .’ She tried to smile and did not know whether, ever again, they would trust her. She lied, ‘We have a phrase, call it “cabin fever”. We’ll drive this afternoon. Let’s go to the ruins at Sirwah, to the Almaqah temple where the Germans used to be.’

  Then she turned and looked again. The goats were higher on the slope, and the herdsman with the rifle, and she shook and shivered. It was hard not to look.

  Belcher knew the man only by sight. He hadn’t spoken to him, but believed him to be one of the new Syrian intake. He was running on the rough ground, past the place where the cross had been; he stumbled and fell because his boot lace was untied. Stretching out a hand to break his fall, he’d twisted his wrist, damaging a ligament. A replacement for him was needed. Belcher did not volunteer. There would be many others who would stand in line for a chance to fight, shoot and kill.

  He took a chance. At the back of the village, under cover of tarpaulins, was a workshop. Vehicles were repaired or tuned there. It was a sensitive place, under the watch of the security people. He could walk past once. He took the risk of doing so because time was marching on and he had called down the ‘dogs’. They were in place, but there was nothing further to report. The vehicles – cars or pick-ups – were key. A drone could not be fired at a closely populated area, not where homes were clustered. They could let loose the Hellfire missiles when a vehicle was on the road and it was identified as carrying a target of value. He had glimpsed the Emir, but never for long. Once he thought he might have seen the Ghost. But word was that a meeting would come soon, and he’d be summoned and that the Emir and the Ghost would attend. He did not know where, what day, or how they would arrive.

  A year back, a man had been put to death after using his son, aged ten years, to sidle close to a car and drop something, perhaps a toy. In that moment he had slapped a magnet bug on the vehicle. A commander had been killed when the drone had fastened on to the bug’s signal. The child had confessed. His father had died, the child had not. It was said that he’d been paid by the Americans and had used the child. Belcher could make one pass of the area under the tarpaulin, be within feet of it for a few seconds, and try to remember what he saw. It was a risk, but he didn’t want to go back to the girl with the freckled face and ruddy cheeks and open gaze and tell her that he hadn’t discovered anything important. Everything that had happened to him since his recruitment in Syria had built towards this day or the next, the coming hours.

  Three men were under the tarpaulin. Belcher saw a Hilux and a Nissan pick-up. The bonnet of the Toyota Hilux was up and a man was working on it by the light of a torch. The vehicle was end on and it was hard for him to see the colour of the bodywork. They were changing the front tyres of the Nissan. A man approached him quickly, suspiciously. Belcher had a cigarette in his hand, and could not see if there were plates on either vehicle. He asked for a light for his cigarette. He rarely smoked and knew it would burn his throat. The Nissan was mud-smeared and dusty. It might have been dark green or might have been deep blue, and he thought the Toyota was black – and Marib Governorate was packed with utility vehicles in those dark colours. The man said, hostility wreathing his face, that he did not smoke and had no lighter, and it was not good to smoke, was against the teac
hing. A short, sharp lecture followed. A stiff brush and pan lay on the dirt beside the Nissan, which meant it was being cleaned: why? He put the cigarette back in the packet, lingering a moment more before stepping back and wishing the man well. Belcher had no business being there, but he smiled and played the idiot and looked surprised at the lack of a greeting. As he turned away, his heart pounded.

  To walk past the area where the cars were maintained had taken a real effort of courage. He thought of the cleric who had come to take prayers on a Friday on the landing where the Yemeni men were held in HMP Holme House. Did he want to sit in? No reason why not. He had much to be grateful for. He had watched, listened to the ritual of the prayers they said, heard their devotion, and it had resembled a brotherhood. The Yemeni kids seemed to have purpose, even in prison, where the hours were long and there was little to do. The cleric had talked to him; he gave the impression that everything he said was of value. He told him that the true religion was a privilege extended to very few outsiders – and devotion was required. A warder had said to him, ‘You want to be careful, young fellow, about how far you let this go. Seems a good idea for now, and none of the perverts can get their hands on you, but you still have to be careful. Why do they want you, that’s what you have to ask yourself? They have recruiting sergeants just like every other group. Is it a friendship based on your wit and intelligence? Is there going to be a time when a debt’s called in? Are you going to fall in love with the idea of holding an assault rifle? A bit like a spider’s web – you get caught and it’s difficult, impossible, to break free. I haven’t the time to look after you, only to urge a bit of caution.’ But he’d ignored the advice and it seemed as if he were drawn towards what he had not known before – a family. He’d noted that the staff showed some deference to the group. And they’d spent time teaching him about their faith. In the evenings they talked about the war in Syria, and where the enemies of the Faith were to be found. His new friends doubted that the prison staff would have the time or energy to burden themselves with further work by telling the Security Service that there was a white boy on the wing who’d found safety with the Yemeni crowd. There’d been no suggestion that he should shave his head and grow a beard; he didn’t look that much different to the guy who had walked out of the prison wagon and stepped inside. They all talked, between prayers, about the war far away. He’d go there, and they’d told him he had much to contribute. They promised people would meet him when he came out and he would be looked after.