At Risk

31

Outside the bungalow, the woman sat in near darkness in the driver’s seat of the Vauxhall Astra. Her head leaned comfortably against the head rest, and her face was faintly underlit by tiny pinpoints of blue and orange light from the car’s hi-fi system. The local radio station’s midnight news had just finished, and the only mention of the Gunter murder had been a recorded comment by one DS Whitten to the effect that enquiries were ongoing and that the police hoped to bring the person or persons responsible to justice as soon as possible. The on-the-hour news had segued into a medley of easy listening and cocktail tunes.

The police know nothing, she told herself, snapping off Frank and Nancy Sinatra mid-croon. They have no coherent line of inquiry. As far as she could tell there had been no CCTV system at the Fairmile Café, and even if there had been they would have had trouble identifying the Astra. Black cars gave a notoriously poor signature at night, which was why the planners had told her to insist on one. But she was pretty sure that there hadn’t been a CCTV system there anyway; it was one of the principal reasons, she guessed, that the place had been selected for the RV in the first place.

The only possible weak links in the chain were the spent PSS round and the truck driver involved in the pick-up from the German ship. And the truck driver’s business surely depended on his absolute discretion; to betray his cargo would be to betray himself. On balance, she told herself, they were safe from the truck driver. It was the PSS round that worried her, as she was certain it would worry the police, and without doubt the anti-terrorism organisations too.

She had explained this to Faraj, but he had shrugged fatalistically and repeated that their task had to be performed on the appointed day. If the waiting increased the likelihood of failure, and of their own violent deaths at the hands of the SAS or a police firearms unit, then so be it. The task was immutable, its parameters unalterable. He had told her the bare minimum, she knew. Not out of mistrust, but in case she was taken.

Acceptance, she told herself. In acceptance lay strength. Remote-locking the Astra behind her with a muted electronic squawk, she walked quietly into the bungalow. The door to the bathroom was half open, and Faraj was standing stripped to the waist at the sink, washing.

For a moment she stood there in the centre of the room, staring at him. His body was narrow as a snake’s, but corded with muscle, and a long pale scar ran diagonally from his left hip to his right shoulder blade. How had he acquired a disfigurement like that? Certainly not in the operating theatre; it looked more like a sabre slash. Without the smart British clothes that she had brought him, he looked like the Tajik that he was. The son of a warrior and perhaps the father of warriors. Was he married? Was there, even now, some fierce-eyed mountain woman praying for his safe return?

He turned then, and stared back at her. Stared with that pale, incurious assassin’s gaze. She felt naked for a moment, and self-conscious, and a little shameful. She had begun to realise that, more than anything else in the world, she wanted his respect. That she was not wholly indifferent to his regard. That if this was the last human relationship she was to enjoy on this earth, then she did not want it to be a thing of lowered glances and self-abnegating silences.

Raising her chin a millimetre or two, she returned his gaze. Returned it with something like anger. She was a fighter now, just as he was. She had the right to a fighter’s recognition. She stood her ground.

Unhurriedly, he turned away. Dragged his wet hands through his cropped hair. Then walked towards her, still expressionless, and stopped with his face inches from hers, so that she could smell the soap that he had been using, and hear him breathing. Still she neither lowered her eyes nor moved.

“Tell me your Islamic name,” he said in Urdu.

“Asimat,” she answered, although she was sure that he already knew it.

He nodded. “Like the consort of Salah-ud-din.”

She said nothing, just stared forwards, looking over his shoulder. In contrast with the weathered brown of his face, neck and hands, the skin of his torso was pale, the colour of bone.

Something in the sight froze her. We are already dead, she thought. We look at each other and we see the future. No gardens, no golden minarets, no desire. Just the darkness of the grave and the cold, pitiless winds of eternity.

His hand rose by his side, taking a hanging strand of her hair and looping it carefully behind her ear.

“It will be soon, Asimat,” he promised her. “Now sleep.”