Chapter 5

They went forward, and were into the third hour since they had trudged away from the drop-off point. Foxy Foulkes still led. There were no maps to follow and this was ground that Ordnance Survey did not cover. Anywhere he had worked in Britain or Northern Ireland there had been big-scale maps with signs marking telephone boxes, churches, pubs and points of interest, like the summit of high ground. There were no buildings and no elevated terrain. He was slowing but he’d be damned if he’d allow the younger man to pass him and take on the role of pace-setter.

There was emptiness and stillness. Both, in Foxy’s mind, were delusions and delusions bred a climate of danger. Among the reed beds and on the little mud islands that rose, perhaps, a metre above the waterline of a channel or an open space, or two metres above a dried-out bed, there would be the small villages of those marsh people who had survived the persecution of the dictator, the ebb and flow of the war fought along the frontier, an invasion of foreign troops, gassing, bombing and shelling, drainage, reflooding and drought. There would be tiny village communities that had TV screens but no schools or medical care. They could exist through murder and thieving, and by being paid for information. Foxy did not doubt that small craft, of which he had seen photographs in the intelligence reports at the interrogation centre seven years earlier, nudged through the passageways between the reed banks. He did not doubt that their progress, not as fast as when they had started out, left a track of sound. The sun was climbing.

It was now ‘bare-arsed ground’. He and Badger had, an understatement, insufficient cover, and no map that helped; the GPS handset guided him. They had been through water to their knees, in stinking mud to their ankles, and in reeds that towered over their heads. The option now was to walk in more water or climb a bank, scramble to the top on all fours, and get on a bund line, or it might be a berm – there was a difference. A berm was an earthwork thrown up by bulldozers as a military defence or a flood barrier, and a bund was a raised road. To go up would make an easier route but they would be exposed – ‘bare-arsed’ – which would break every rule in the croppie’s bible. He wanted water… Better, he needed water.

And speed. He realised he couldn’t set the pace required. To get onto the flat top of the bund, or the berm, would ignore one of the core basics – Foxy taught them when he was out with recruits: Shape, Shadows, Shine, Surfaces, Space and Silhouette. If he went up onto the bund, and took the young’un with him, he would be silhouetted against the skies, the reeds and the mud – might as well have brought a bull horn with him and shouted that they were coming. He stayed down.

His boots went through the water. It was a small satisfaction that their prints in the mud would be hidden by the water.

There was clear, quiet breathing behind him, like the guy had no problems with the weight of his bergen. If they were seen, they would be at the mercy of thieves, who lived off what they could steal and sell on. They would be stolen and sold on, and then they’d be right for the orange jumpsuits, and for what used to be called ‘the Baghdad haircut’ in the interrogation centre. The sun’s light and strength drained his energy, and the cloying mud sapped the muscle power in his legs. There would be plenty of groups ready to stand in an orderly queue for the chance to bid big money at any auction if a pair of Crusaders were up for grabs. Orange suits were the uniform for the camera shows where poor bastards pleaded for their lives and rubbished their politicians’ policies: the jihadists put them always in the same colour as the Americans’ prisoners wore at Guantanamo, as if that legitimised the killing. The ‘haircut’ wasn’t a short back and sides but the head wrenched back and the throat exposed so that the blade had an easier cut… and the same bloody camera would be running. The bastards in Luton and the West Midlands, Bradford and the north-west, who lived in the mean terraces and who – between their prayer sessions – flitted between the Internet sites that showed the beheadings, would likely get a hard-on if they had a fuzzy view of Foxy Foulkes’s head going back and the flash of the knife… Damned if it was him who was going to stop first, and he didn’t know how far they had still to travel to the frontier. The symbols and numbers on the GPS were blurred with the sweat dribbling off his forehead into his eyes.

They stayed in the lee of the bund, and there was a toppled battle tank ahead. His feet sloshed in water, and his stride was shorter. It was only the third hour and there might be another three to the border, then two more at least to where they would make the hide. He wore his gillie gear, and the bit that covered his head and face. A ‘gillie’ was a man who held the rods for the gentry on a salmon river, or guided marksmen towards deer; they’d been called up in the Great War from the estates to match the Prussian snipers with their skill in concealment, their knowledge of the elements and cover, and they’d developed their own suits, which gave them greater protection from searching eyes and lenses. The camouflage was good for the mud and dirt wall of the bund, but poor in the reeds. He listened for a gasp behind him – exhaustion, at the limit – but heard nothing.

Should have concentrated. Had the orange suit in his head and a man – himself – pleading to a lens for mercy. Guys were behind with rifles and one had a knife. He went by the tank. Its body was intact and he couldn’t see the entry hole of an armour-piercing missile but one of the tracks was broken. It would have been a mine, then an internal explosion and fire. The plate on the turret was rusted by the wind and dark from the fire. It could have happened thirty years ago and they might still be inside. Thieves would have stripped the interior, the wristwatches and jewellery from the dead crew, if they were salvageable, but would have left the bodies. The thoughts of the jumpsuits and then the rotting dead brought him back to Ellie.

A car’s wheels on the gravel, its door slamming. A key in the lock, her coming in.

Him: ‘Hi, darling, where’ve you been?’

Her hesitating, then: ‘Up to see Tash – didn’t I tell you I was going?’

‘Do I know Tash?’

‘Course you do. She used to work with me. You never listen, love. Course I told you.’

‘Made it home earlier than I’d thought…’ He’d moved to kiss her, but she’d averted her mouth and he’d just caught the back of her neck, but he’d smelt the perfume, lovely scent. He couldn’t see her face.

A sort of distant voice: ‘I came back through Wootton Bassett, love, and got held up. They were bringing home one of the soldiers. The traffic was stopped. I couldn’t go anywhere. I watched. They’re all heroes, aren’t they? His coffin had the flag on it. The Legion was there. Everyone stood to attention. Old blokes had medals on. There was a family with flowers, people crying, loads of them. It was for a real hero, fantastic.’

He’d said, ‘Well, love, I’m not a hero but I negotiated the motorway all the way up from the far west and…’

It was a poor effort at a joke. She’d rounded on him and the rant had started. ‘You don’t bloody listen, do you? I’m talking about heroes; the bravest of the brave. Real men. It’s about sacrifice – a man told me that at the petrol station. Giving their lives for us. He called it ‘‘paying the ultimate price’’. That’s nothing to make some stupid remark about.’

And there had been a slammed door. The bloody irony of it. He was slogging through mud at the edge of a bund, had a bergen on his back and a gillie suit that about suffocated him, and he was doing hero stuff. His throat was parched, and he was dehydrating, and they’d not allowed him to send a decent text. Irony was cold comfort.

Two trucks had come off the bund and gone engine first down the sheer slope. Their bonnets were in the water. Maybe they’d been bulldozed off to make way for more tanks. The water was stagnant, and the smell was bad. He retched, and had to step further into the water until it was lapping his knees. He saw three legs of a creature stuck upright, and wondered where the fourth was. The carcass was of a water buffalo, and it was about fucking landmines. He was swaying. The heat and smell were destroying him. He started to sink.

‘It’s not the promenade at Bognor,’ a voice behind him mocked. ‘Shift it.’

He must have opened his hand, let it slip. The stink of the animal clogged his nose. He scrabbled for it, couldn’t find it. The weight of the bergen seemed to pull him back.

His voice croaked: ‘Give me a hand, Badger.’

‘You a passenger, Foxy?’

‘A hand.’

‘Want me to lead? That it? Do a donkey’s job?’

‘I want to stop. Rest.’

‘We have to get there before dark. That’s what the boss lady said.’

‘A drink, and some help.’

‘Say it properly, Foxy.’

‘Some help.’

‘Properly, Foxy.’

‘Please. Some fucking help, please.’

And his voice must have lifted. A flight of ducks lifted out of dried foliage on the far side of the lagoon, and he remembered what Alpha Juliet had said. He wondered, rambling, if they were Marbled or Ferruginous or White-headed Duck. A hand came under his arm. He felt himself propelled forward, and they rounded the sunken trucks, leaning behind the buffalo carcass.

With the hand in his armpit, the weight of the bergen lessened. They edged back under the bund. The mud seemed thinner now and the pace quickened. A water bottle was passed to him, and he swigged.

He couldn’t hide it. ‘Back there, I dropped the GPS. It sank. I lost it.’

No answer. Not even a look that killed. He passed the bottle back. He thought they were heading in the right direction.

The bloody irony of it. When could he have refused, stepped back smartly and walked away? The opportunities were never available for little people like Joe ‘Foxy’ Foulkes…

She was still in bed, alone. The central heating had failed in her workplace of the last two years, Naval Procurement in Bath, and the buildings on the hills south of the city were as little ‘fit for purpose’ as the communal boiler system. They’d shivered all through yesterday, and the decision had been taken to close down until the problems were fixed.

She heard, below the bedroom, the front gate squeal. It needed oiling. She’d asked Foxy to do it twice, reminded him only last week. A vehicle swung into the drive. Ellie got up, shivered, remembered she’d turned the heating up last night to twenty – Foxy didn’t like that, and said sixteen was high enough. But Foxy wasn’t there… She’d had the text.

There were footsteps on the gravel, and two men’s voices. One was by the front door, the other beyond the gate. She hooked on her dressing-gown and parted the curtains. A man was leaning on her gate and his car half blocked the lane. Her eyes tracked across the drive, and there was Foxy’s car. The bell rang.

She had had the text two mornings before: Hi, love. In a hurry – have to be away, work, don’t know how long. Verboten to phone. Luvya Foxy. She had rung his mobile eight, ten, twenty times, but it was switched off.

She went downstairs. It was a decent cottage, in a country lane in a village outside the Wiltshire garrison town of Warminster, pretty with climbing roses over the porch, wisteria on the front walls, small mullion windows, a garden, three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a new kitchen she’d chosen. When they’d met, she’d been coming out of a divorce, with most of her savings gone in legal fees. She’d probably have ended up in a studio flat, if Foxy hadn’t offered her the lift down from the north-west. No way she could have afforded a chocolate-box cottage in the country. She had something to be grateful to Foxy for, but over the last two years that ‘something’ had become vague – almost out of sight since she’d met Piers.

She opened the door. The man wore a white shirt, a chauffeur’s style black tie, probably with an elastic band round the neck, and an anorak. He held out the keys. ‘Your husband’s, Mrs Foulkes.’

Half asleep, early in the morning and no alarm set: ‘What?’

‘Bringing back your husband’s car. We picked it up from the car park where he left it. Sorry we couldn’t manage it yesterday.’ He was turning away.

It was a forlorn chance. ‘And where is he? Where’s he skived off to?’

In mid-stride he paused, angled his face to her. A laugh without a chuckle. ‘Don’t imagine they tell me things like that. Not for the likes of me to know. Just a thought – if he’s away more than a couple of weeks, I suggest you turn the engine over, so’s the battery’s not flat when he gets back.’

She closed the door on him, failed to thank him. Upstairs, she checked an Internet site, a town hall’s page, learned a date and a time, then called the guy who did accounts at the Naval Procurement offices.

He stood under a palm tree and gazed out over the marshes.

They were a source of fascination to him, an endless pleasure. He enjoyed little in his life. Mansoor was in his thirty-first year. He should, by now, have been prominent in the al-Quds Brigade, looking for further promotion and higher command, but the chance was denied him because of the explosion of the Hellfire missile fired from the Predator drone, neither seen nor heard, and giving a warning in fractions of a second as the light stream and the roar of power fell from the sky.

He could stare out over the marshes, watch the wind move the reeds and ruffle the trees on the island across the lagoon, see the hunting herons and kingfishers, the ripples on the water when the fish rose and always there was the changing weather – threatening, benign, calm, dramatic – and the light. No two days were similar.

He would not advance because of the injuries. Muscle, tissue, even some bone had been torn from the back of his left leg, above and below the kneecap. He would have recovered better if he had been close to medical aid: he had not. Numb with pain, Mansoor had been carried on a litter from northern Iraq across the mountains. The hospital where he had received the first serious treatment had been in the Iranian city of Saqqez. There had been traces of gangrene in the poorly bandaged wounds and the surgeons had deemed it necessary to take as much again of the remaining muscle, tissue and bone as the missile had. His limp was pronounced and his future as a combat officer was finished. He had been sent to the marshes on the border as security officer to the Engineer, Rashid Armajan.

He would not have believed it possible. He knew the names of the birds that flew over the water and nested in the reeds, those that were gentle and harmless and those that had sharp talons and wickedly curved beaks. He knew also where the otters lived and bred, where there might be pig with young, and which island had the greatest infestation of poisonous snakes. He also knew that in these marshes, half a century before, there had been striped hyenas, wolf packs and, rarely, a leopard. Crippled, he provided security for the Engineer and learned about the beauty and life of the marshes.

At first, while his wife continued to work as a computer operator at the Crate Camp Garrison, he had loathed the prospect of guarding this man. He had, almost, considered leaving the al-Quds. He had arrived at the house, had been billeted in the barracks that fronted onto the lagoon, had come to know the family, and the wild life of the marshes and could not have said now which mattered most to him.

There were godwits and a small swimming group of pygmy cormorants and babblers, and he kept Japanese binoculars hanging from his neck. It the birds panicked he would look hard to see if a pig had disturbed them, a large dog otter, even a leopard or a wolf. It might be pilgrims going to and from Najaf across the border, or smugglers bringing opiate paste from Afghanistan and crossing Iranian territory. The birds were, almost, the sentries that watched over the little community, and more efficient than the men he commanded. With time, he had realised he was honoured to have responsibility for a man as important in the defence of his country as the Engineer.

That morning he had been called by his father, an informer for the Revolutionary Guard Corps. He was a part-time postal official and also helped with the executions at the city gaol. He was a man of few talents and many interests, who let it be known that his son had failed to fulfil expectations. His father would have expected to ride on the back of his son’s successes; he had been uninterested in the medical prognosis after a section of his son’s leg had been gouged out by a missile, and more concerned with his return to authority and influence. That day his father had telephoned him from the prison with details of the public hanging of two Arabs. He had been the link between the hangman and the crane drivers in their cabs, telling them when to hoist the arms. He had enjoyed the morning; it had gone-well. From his father’s knee, through his time as a recruit of the Guard Corps, during his selection for the elite al-Quds, and lying on a makeshift stretcher to be hauled across mountain tracks, he had honed a hatred for all enemies of the state, whether Arabs in Ahvaz or the distant operators of the remote guided Predators. He could not salve his loathing of the Great Satan, take revenge for his damaged leg, but the Engineer had hurt them, which enhanced Mansoor’s loyalty.

In the evening, he might bring out his fishing rod to catch a carp and then, too, he could watch the marshes. He was devastated by what he knew of the illness of the Engineer’s wife. He was, he thought, almost a part of their family.

There was stillness in front of him, safety. The lenses of the glasses roved over the water and the flourishing reed beds. No creature moved sharply or thrashed to escape.

In the heat of the afternoon, the police came. They had two battered pick-ups. Corky had alerted her when the dirt trails were still more than a kilometre away. She had shrugged into a robe and her face was part covered with a scarf. Both Corky and Hamfist had done this territory with their regiments and would have regarded the police as deceitful and treacherous – they had probably sent a few to martyrs’ graves. They had talked this through and the drills were understood. Two spotter ’scopes up on the bund line round the wrecked drilling camp looked down into the marshes that surrounded the site. Harding was behind one and Shagger had the other; both had bird books and pamphlets beside their stools. Abigail had not seen an individual come close to the camp, and none of the Jones Boys had warned her of a ‘dicker’ looking them over from cover. They would have been told, and they would have come. The routine was that she would explain in her halting Arabic that they were a part of a UNESCO-sponsored eco-watch, additionally funded by National Geographic. They had the full support of the ministry in Baghdad, and the provincial governor’s office. She had the papers of each organisation to prove her point: a clutch of ‘To Whom It May Concern’ letters, all with impressive headings, a fifty-dollar bill attached to each one. She had anticipated that after each paper was examined the money would have gone. She knew what they earned, and remarked that she and her colleagues were grateful to the local police for watching over them. She could bore, and did so: her anxiety about the potential for oil pollution of this amazing habitat, unique in the world to Iraq; the species of bird and animal life here, needing monitoring, which were not found anywhere else in the world. Iraqis, from across the country, could be proud of it. Had they not been told she was coming with colleagues and an escort? She had the smile and her appearance was harmless, but the policemen would have seen the two men gazing out over the marshes through ’ scopes, breaking off to write in notepads. They also had cameras, while two more carried automatic weapons and were in the shadow of the buildings. When she had bored them enough, they left.

She said to Harding, ‘That was probably good enough for today, and maybe for tomorrow, but they’ll be back. I don’t think in a couple of days they’d manage enough links to unravel it at Baghdad or Basra level. Three days, maximum four, would push against the limits.’

He nodded. Truth was, she liked him more than the others. The original quiet American, he spoke rarely but, of them all, he was the one Abigail trusted with her life.

She said, ‘I doubt the Fox and the Badger will be in much shape after three or four days.’

Was it flawed? Two men who might have been inserted too late and find the bird flown, or had gone in too early and would be unable to sustain the watch. They might be there too long and show out. She had liked the scrapping between them. There was no way other than to have men on their stomachs, peering through lenses with earphones clamped to their skulls. It couldn’t be done with satellites on the electronics in the drones. It would be their shout. The mission depended on them. She had thought the antipathy, at each other’s throats, more likely to raise the competitive streak that would dominate their relationship. Too cosy, and they wouldn’t be efficient. It was personal to Abigail Jones because she had examined Badger’s bruising and had worked a leg over his pelvis to see it better. He had said something about the smell of her body, then the taste, and she had done as much stripping as he had. She had made a complication where there should have been none. She always kept a couple in her wallet, and when she had gone at first light to clear her system the condom had gone into the hole with their rubbish for burial. All a complication, but Abigail Jones did not do regret.

It couldn’t last more than three or four days.

He met his wife, Catherine, in a coffee shop on Regent Street.

She told him what was in the bag. Two shirts, three pairs of underpants, four pairs of socks, and a new pair of pyjamas. Len Gibbons thanked her, awkward – he had been since they’d first clapped eyes on each other thirty-five or so years earlier.

He couldn’t tell her how it was going. She could ask him nothing about what kept him in London, or why he needed changes of clothing. He couldn’t tell her how long he would be there. She couldn’t ask when he would need replacements and whether he would need another suit brought up, heavy- or lightweight. Nothing to say about the garden because of the weather, and she hadn’t heard from either of the children, both students. The job ruled him, not that it had treated him well. Another woman, in her place, might have harboured doubts about her husband’s staying up in London and sharing an office with Sarah, the faithful assistant. She didn’t – had actually said so last year. Catherine Gibbons thought that, most days, he didn’t notice what his assistant wore, probably hadn’t registered what she, his wife, had dressed in. She was a widow to the Service. They sipped coffee and nibbled shortbread. He looked at his watch twice, and flushed when she caught him at it.

Naughty of her, but she challenged him: ‘Important, Len, is it?’

He surprised her, didn’t change the subject or sit in silence. ‘Important as anything over my desk in years, and we have no idea how it will end or where. We’ve people out at the end of a line and… Does that tell you anything?’

Her eyes were bright and mischievous: ‘Is it legal?’

He didn’t bat her away. ‘Most would say it’s illegal. No one would say it’s legal. A few would say they don’t bloody care… Thanks for coming up.’

She persisted: ‘Those people at the end of the line, do they know whether it’s legal or not?’

‘They know what they need to know. Yes, I appreciate your coming up.’

He left her, had already outstayed the time he should have been away from his phone. He knew Badger and Foxy had been dumped, would be moving forward towards their lie-up and soon be at the border – which was, sort of, a defining moment. Legal or illegal, he didn’t bloody care – as long as it stayed deniable. It would be a huge step, as big as anything he had handled since he was a ‘greenhorn’. Should it have been asked of them?

Bit bloody late, Len, to be worrying on that.

He was like a donkey refusing to go any further, its hoofs stuck into the mud. He thought of Foxy as a stubborn, thick-skinned ass, but the guy had stopped, and he was a hell of a weight – heavier when the momentum was lost. Badger swore softly. He tried to take the next step but couldn’t tug Foxy forward. He turned. His face was in the older man’s, whose lips moved.

There was more water ahead of them, but they had stopped on a small raised platform of mud and rotted vegetation. Foxy’s right trouser leg was caught on a strand of barbed wire. His lips kept moving, but Badger couldn’t hear what he was saying. He had been thinking about Alpha Juliet – and that their approach through the shallow water and scattered reed beds had been about the most feeble and unprofessional he had ever attempted.

Foxy’s lips were still moving. Badger bent and freed the trouser leg, tearing it. The lips moved.

‘If you’ve something to say, then say it.’

‘Nothing to say to you.’

‘Who to, then?’

‘Myself.’

‘How knackered you are, and unfit? Not up for it?’

‘Something you wouldn’t understand.’

‘Try me.’

Foxy said, ‘Try, smart-arse, “ Halae shomaa chetoreh? ” Answer, khoobam mersee. I asked how you are and you told me you’re well and thanked me… We’re at the border, and there’s something called the Golden Hour, which you wouldn’t know about. We’re going to stop and rest for an hour, Golden or not. Got me?’

‘We don’t have an hour.’

‘Then you can go on ahead, and when you find a friendly policeman you can say, “ Raah raa beman neshaan daheed mehmaan-khaaneh, otaaq baraayeh se shab ”, but it’s unlikely he’ll drop you off at a hotel where you can book a room for three nights. It’s – don’t curl your lip at me – Farsi, which is spoken from where we crossed that wire. It’s why I’m here: I speak the language. You’re just the fucking pack animal that helps me to get close to the target. I matter, you don’t. If I want to rest then-’

‘Then you rest.’

It was a quick movement. A twist of the shoulders, a half-swivel of the hip and a step to the side. Badger extricated himself from Foxy’s weight.

He took a pace forward, then another. He was over the wire – would have given a hell of a lot to have Ged alongside him, quiet, authoritative, more than able to take his share. He spoke not a word of that language, and neither did Ged. There was a channel in front, sliced through the reed banks, and open water beyond it. He thought it would be a kilometre and a half to where the cross had been on the GPS screen, their destination. He detested the man he was shackled with, but Badger had no Farsi. He took another half-dozen steps, stopped and heaved off the bergen. He tilted his knee, rested the pack on it, out of the water, and rummaged. He found the packaging, ripped out the plastic inflatable and fired the air canister. It hissed, grew and floated.

He worked the bergen onto his shoulders again, turned and beckoned to Foxy. The heat blistered up from the water, and the gillie suit was one more burden. He didn’t know how much more of his strength he could depend on – but he was not about to show weakness. Foxy came to him. Another gesture, for Foxy to get into the dinghy. The little craft – not much bigger than a child’s on a beach – bucked under his weight. Badger lifted off Foxy’s bergen and dumped it on the man’s lap. There was a length of nylon rope, which he slipped across his shoulder and pulled hard. He walked, skirting the channel’s edge. The water was level with his knees. They went by a collapsed watchtower, which would have been felled three decades before. Two of the wooden legs were out of the water and half of the platform. They rounded a sunken assault barge.

He asked, from side of mouth, ‘What’s the Golden Hour?’

‘You want to know?’

‘Wouldn’t have asked if-’

‘It’s army speak. It’s the time the back-up should take to reach an FOB – that’s a forward operating base – when it comes under sustained attack and risks being overrun. The men know that back-up will reach them within the hour, by land or by helicopter. It’s the pact between the military units, an article of faith. At the FOB they have to hunker down, hang on in there, and know that within sixty minutes the cavalry will be coming over the horizon. That’s the Golden Hour – there’s other uses, like getting treatment to the wounded, but that’s the relevant one.’

‘And her and her lads, they’d get to us inside an hour?’

Almost droll from Foxy, like he enjoyed it. Like he had hold of the balls and squeezed them. ‘Do you want it gift-wrapped? Grow up, young ’un.’

‘Meaning?’ There might have been a tremor in Badger’s voice, but he swallowed hard and hoped it was hidden.

‘They’d get to where that watchtower was, and the wire – the border. They wouldn’t cross it. That’s how far they’d come forward in the Golden Hour, not a metre further. They won’t cross into Iran. They won’t discharge firearms at personnel inside Iran. They’ll lift us out from behind the border but won’t come in and get us. They’ll be there within the hour, was the promise. Maybe now you understand why I was reluctant to take the next step – and why only an idiot would rush on. Got me?’

‘Yes.’

‘God… Did you take it all on trust? Didn’t you think of asking one important question? Like “Where’s the back-up?” ’

‘Took it on trust.’

He started again to pull the nylon rope, and the water deepened. It was at the top of his thighs, clammy in his groin. In England, on operations, the back-up was never more than ten minutes away. Here, to hold out for the Golden Hour, they would have to retreat to the border, and there they would have handguns, one each with three magazines, gas, fists and boots. It had an emptiness to it, ‘take on trust’, that echoed in his head.

‘I asked. It mattered to me because I’ve a wife… Didn’t you ask that woman, the clever bitch?’

‘No.’

The van was driven into the car park at the rear of the hostel, and a car followed it. To both drivers, it seemed a desolate place of stained, weathered concrete and – late morning – it was deserted. Most of the windows had the blinds up but no interior light on; a few had the blinds down. They might have wondered whether this anonymous block, with no name, only a street number, was the correct destination, but a woman came out of the doors in part of a police uniform, which matched where they were supposed to be. The door clattered shut, and was self-locking. The van driver was sharp enough to register the difficulty and called to her.

He’d brought a car back. And?

He’d need somewhere secure to leave the keys.

He had a name, Daniel Baxter.

Was she supposed to have heard of him?

He’d kick the door down, if he had to, to find somewhere to leave the keys safely. The policewoman grumbled but took them. They were attached to a ring with a picture of a badger’s head. She punched the door’s code and dropped them into one for each resident’s locked boxes, and was thanked. She ran for her own wheels.

The van driver said to his colleague, ‘I don’t know where he’s gone, Baxter, but I’d bet my best shirt that nobody here’s even noticed he’s away.’

The consultant came out of the doorway, hoisted his umbrella and started to run. He saw the man. His principal theatre was in Hamburg, but he also had a clinic in Lubeck, at the University Hospital and Medical School, with scanning equipment, where he could see patients. His was a new block, but there were many old buildings on the campus that had stood for more than seventy years. On the far side of the street was the cafeteria to which he liked to slip away in the middle of the day for a baguette and coffee and to glance through the day’s paper – the Morgenpost. The football reports cleared his mind before he returned for the afternoon. The man, not a German, was in front of the cafeteria.

It had been raining all morning. If the consultant had kept running, heading for the cafe’s door, he would have had either to sidestep or collide with the man. He slowed in the middle of the street and found himself anchored there. A delivery van hooted at him. The man had no umbrella, no raincoat. Water glistened on his short hair and the shoulders of his jacket. The shirt under the jacket had no collar and was buttoned at the throat, and the cheeks were swarthy. He thought the man was from the east, perhaps Baluchistan province. The trousers were baggy at the knees and the shoes dulled by wet.

The man had the appearance of a guest-worker in the northern German city. He could have been a bus driver, a plumber, a construction-site worker, or a book-keeping clerk in a warehouse – and would have been a ranking intelligence officer, working under diplomatic cover. He was rooted in the road, and a car swerved past to his left. A trio of students on bicycles trilled bells at him. The man had dressed, the consultant realised, to emphasise the old world of an orphan in Tehran, and of a student who had prospered because the state had paid his way.

There was a smile from the man, as if they were old friends. He came across the street with his arms outstretched. He ducked under the canopy of the consultant’s umbrella and kissed Soheil on both cheeks – not Steffen. There was a whiff of a spicy sauce on the man’s breath and a hint of nicotine. He would have been an official of Vezarat-e Ettela’at va Amniat-e Keshvar, and any official of VEVAK was to be feared. He had not told Lili of the call, and through that morning he had thought only twice of the contact.

He blurted, ‘I’ve just come out for a sandwich. I have little time, and-’

‘I have driven from Berlin and you have – distinguished Soheil – as much time as I need you to have. So, do we stand here and cause an accident or go somewhere? Your office? Can’t someone go out and fetch coffee for you, juice for me, some food? Will you entertain me in the rain or in the dry?’

Would he take an Iranian intelligence officer into his sanctum? Hang up a wet jacket beside a radiator? Introduce him? My friend here is from the Ministry of Intelligence and State Security in Tehran. Everybody knows – don’t they? – that I’m not really German, that I’m Iranian by birth. My education was subsidised by the Ministry of Health in Iran, and now the debt has been called in. They want a favour from me. Please, make him feel at home and bring him juice and a sandwich – salad with fish would be best – and see if his shoes need yesterday’s newspaper in the toecaps. He took the man’s elbow and led him towards the cafe.

There was a table by the window, and three chairs. They took two and the official kicked away the third so they had the table to themselves. From the wet on the man’s face, hair and jacket, the consultant thought he had waited for him for at least a half-hour, and knew he would have stayed there all day if necessary. No appointment had been made, but that screwed the pressure tighter.

He brought the tray with coffee and juice, a sausage baguette for himself and another with salad and fish. The man was reaching into his pocket and a cigarette packet emerged. The consultant – Soheil or Steffen – hissed that smoking was forbidden on all the university sites.

The man smiled. ‘We can bring the patient at any time now.’

He was known for his cool head, and was said to be as sure as any in the big Hamburg hospital if he was faced with potential catastrophe in theatre. He stammered that he had not yet had the chance to check the availability of facilities. The stammer became meandering waffle: he did not know what was required, would not know until he saw the patient, had read the case history and examined the scans. The man let him finish. He might have fought, called a bluff, but he didn’t dare.

What he did dare was to ask, ‘My patient, who is he?’

The smile was laughter. ‘Who? We have not yet decided on a name for them.’

The man took the consultant’s hand. As a surgeon he was reputed to be slick and fast, which kept anaesthetic times to a minimum and lessened the dangers of internal bleeding. Now the pressure on his fingers showed him how vulnerable his talent was.

‘I will see the patient.’

‘I didn’t doubt it.’

‘And I will look into the availability of theatre and scan equipment. I know we are heavily booked, but I will look into it.’

‘You will do what is necessary.’

His hand was freed. He was given a card. The man’s baguette was finished, his own not started. The juice glass was empty, and his coffee cooling. They could come with a hammer, force his hand onto a table, or one of the low walls around the canals of Lubeck, and break every bone. They could destroy him. The man stood up. The printed card had a first name only on it, with the address and numbers of the embassy in the Wilmersdorf district of Berlin. The man put euros on the table, as if it would sully him to accept the consultant’s hospitality, and slipped out through the door into the rain.

Back in his small clinic, the consultant checked the availability of scanners in Lubeck and the theatre in Hamburg. Then a patient was shown in. He forced a smile. His daughter had a toy marionette: he understood the way it danced to its handler’s tune. If they had not yet determined the identity of the patient it was a security matter, sensitive… He thought his life teetered as a chasm yawned.

It had been a day like many others. He had finished the debrief – had enjoyed the session with the psychologist – and had been shown a file that told him little. Then he had walked out of the building into the winter sunshine of the Mediterranean, pleasant and clean, and had gone to eat on his own.

Gabbi did not have a living soul in whom to confide. Had he been dependent on company – his wife’s, the regulars in a bar, even others making up the numbers on the team – it would have been noted and the information tapped into his file. Any form of dependency, alcohol, bought sex or company, would have been noted and he would have been sliding fast out of the unit’s building, down the steps, across the car park, past the sentries and into the street. It would have ended.

It would end one day. It was not a pensionable activity. Long before old age caught up with him, he would be gone from the unit. There was no ‘former employees association’, no reunions on the eve of public holidays, no gossip opportunities with veteran campaigners. It would end when exhaustion dulled his effectiveness, and the psychologist would call it ‘burn-out’. He would be gone, and might get a job in a bank, or sell property, or just waste his days on the beach. His work for the state of Israel would be complete, and his pension earned.

He had sat on a bench and watched the sea, had had a book open on his knee but had watched the sails beyond the surf, the fitness joggers and dog walkers, the young soldiers who had their rifles hitched across their backs. He knew the case histories of the great failures of the unit’s work – he knew more about the failures than the successes. He could talk through, if he had to, the minute by minute intricacies of Lillehammer in Norway: wrong man shot dead, the team captured by local police – catastrophic. Could relate the disaster of the botched poisoning of Khaled Mashal in Amman: a toxic substance, lethal, squirted into the ear, but the unit’s people being held in police cells and their government having to deliver the antidote that would save the bastard’s life – humiliating. A wry smile, because the killing of the state’s enemies could be complex. But he did not make judgements, and the file he had been shown would carry the same importance as that of the man, buried the previous day in Beirut, who had stood outside a Maltese hotel. It was always best when he stood in front, blocked the path, looked into the face.

He headed for home and would reach it only a few minutes before she was due back. It was a day like many. The shadows fell, the sun dipped on a far horizon, and he would wait, as he did so often, for his pager to bleep or his phone to ring.

At last light they had their view.

Foxy was beside him.

It seemed so ordinary, so close and yet so remote. He could not have said, without hesitating, what he had expected.

‘You all right, Foxy?’

‘Fine.’

‘Just that you sound clapped out.’

‘I’ll manage.’

‘Good.’

‘And don’t bloody patronise me.’

The evening cool didn’t penetrate the gillie suit. The hood was like a heated wet towel on his head, and his hair would be flat and wet under it. Not only ordinary, but dreary and cheap, the sight gave out no atmosphere of danger, or of a place where an enemy of importance was bedded in. An enemy. A target, like any other. Could have been organised crime, or a serial-rapist inquiry, or a training camp for the rucksack guys or the vest ladies. Just a target, and the only difference was that the Golden Hour would be a fine-run thing, if push came to shove.

They had come past a herd of water buffalo that had gone on grazing while half immersed, and there had been no herdsmen with them. They had seen small columns of smoke to the left, the north, and once there had been voices, kids’, and the sounds of distant life carried across the marsh. He had dragged the inflatable, with Foxy and Foxy’s bergen, and if he hadn’t they would still have been back at the wire. They had gone slowly and twice he had been up to his chest in the water. Once he had gone out of his depth and had had to cling to the side of the craft and grip Foxy’s sleeve. There was a narrow strip, going north to south, of land and they had come onto it. He had gone forward and dared to stand beside the sole tree there. He had gazed out and seen enough, then gone back for Foxy and found that the inflatable had been folded away and was tucked into the top of a bergen. They were together, on their stomachs. The tree was beside Foxy and they had a view that went through slow-waving reeds, then across water and over the brow of an island that was some eight or ten feet above the waterline. A lake stretched away, perhaps three hundred yards across and then there was a steep bank, palm trees and buildings.

To the right there was a group of huts, put together crudely with concrete blocks. Badger had his glasses on them, the start of his traverse, going south to north. There were men in uniform at the huts with infantry weapons. They wandered and smoked, sat and talked, hugging the shade. He scanned to his left and followed two children who kicked a ball without co-ordination. One of the soldiers joined them and squeals of delight carried to him. Tracking further left brought him to the mooring in front of the house where a uniformed man squatted and fished. The lenses picked up a little red dot on the water, a float. There was a block-house building behind the man, and its front was in shade, but Badger could make out a woman sitting in shadow. She was on a hard-backed chair and held a stick. The bright colours close to her were a child’s plastic tractor and a tricycle. He thought where they were now was safe, a decent distance from the target zone. In the last light, a vehicle’s headlights lit the dullness, and the man who was fishing reeled in his line, stowed the rod on the bank and hurried towards the single-storey house. The kids abandoned their game and ran to the woman on the chair. She pushed herself upright with the help of the stick. Where they were was safe, and useless. He didn’t have to ask Foxy’s opinion on it. It was useless because it was too far back, and they would have been voyeurs there, wasting their time.

‘We have to do it now.’

‘You asking or telling me?’ A snarled whisper.

Badger said he was ‘telling’. He was rummaging in a bergen for the audio-direction stuff and a spool of fine-coated cable when the car pulled up and they saw him.

Quite a good-looking guy, hurrying from the car to the woman and hugging her.

It couldn’t be left to the morning. It would be hard in the darkness but he had to hack it, get closer to the guns and where the kids played and the woman had sat. He watched them and they had their backs to him. They went inside… a good-looking guy.

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