The Unknown Soldier

Chapter Ten

It was not the time to break for water, or for prayers. Rashid had halted the march, had put up his hand as a signal to them, had knelt his camel, dismounted, and walked forward alone. The boy had run back on foot and had caught each of the camels' reins; they stood motionless. The sun beat on them, and Caleb swayed on the Beautiful One. The blisters on his thighs, below his buttocks, had calmed in the night but had now reopened in the motion of riding.

'Why have we stopped?' Caleb asked Ghaffur.

The boy shrugged.

'For how long will we stop?'

The boy looked away, would not meet Caleb's eye.

He gazed around him. He sensed the camels were restless, even the Beautiful One, the most placid among them. Some raised their heads high and seemed to sniff, some bellowed, some spat out cud.

They were aware, Caleb did not know of what. Around him was a wide plain of sand, unlike any they had crossed before. It seemed crusted under a film of loose sand, and since they had come through a gully between dunes, a harsher sand had caked round the camels' hoofs.

Caleb squinted. Sunlight reflected up from the sand, seemed to burn the lids of his eyes. How long was it, he thought, since he had seen a scorpion or a snake's trail, the little furrowed track of a mouse, a locust hopping or a fly, a living bush or a grass blade? It was as if nothing could survive here. No creatures, no insects, no vegetation.

He did not know how far they had come, how far they had yet to travel. It seemed a place of death. It was hard for him to see as far as Rashid. The shape of the guide's body moved, shimmered. But he saw the post.

Caleb blinked.

A pace in front of the guide, and a little to the side of him, a length of old wood, without bark, stuck up from the sand and its snapped-off tip was level with the guide's knee. It could not have been there by any accident of nature. Rashid had his palm to his forehead shading his eyes, and stared out as if searching.

Then they moved. It was abrupt. Up to then, on the march, they had taken straight lines except where dune walls had blocked them and needed to be bypassed. Rashid veered to his right. The boy, behind him, had them all bunched close, and the pack camels, the bulls carrying the crates. When Ghaffur came level with Caleb, he would not look into his face and would not speak, but he slapped the Beautiful One's haunches to make him close up, and Caleb realized the order they took was changed.

He was no longer at the back.

A new order was formed. Rashid, Ghaffur, Caleb. Behind Caleb was Hosni, then Fahd. Caleb's place at the back of the caravan went to the Iraqi, Tommy. Not since they had started out, had crossed the border and moved down into the Sands, had Tommy taken the rear position.

Caleb saw Rashid's face when he turned to check behind him, and saw the face of the boy – felt a gathering tension, but could not place it, could not find a reason for it, but it clawed at him.

The march now was different from any other of the days crossing the desert. There was a second marker. The piece of wood protruded less than half a foot from the sand, and Caleb's burned eyes would have missed it, but at this marker Rashid set a new course to his left.

The heat dulled him. Too tired to shout a question at Rashid or at the boy, he clung to the saddle and the Beautiful One followed the camels in front, slow and lethargic, each hoof sinking into the tracks of the ones she followed. The heat was worse, the blister sores were worse. After what he thought was four hundred yards they went to the left and, after what he thought was another two hundred yards, to the right. Then they straightened, and the camels sniffed the warmth of the air and the bulls bellowed, but Caleb thought the sand around them was no different from how it had been every day. The angles that Rashid took confused him, but Caleb could not escape the sense of increasing tension.

He had barely noticed it when Rashid stopped.

Ghaffur took the lead position. Caleb followed the boy. He passed Rashid. He tried to focus on Rashid's face to read it, could not, his eyes wavered and could not lock. No greeting, no explanation, no word. The Beautiful One lumbered on. Behind him were the pack animals, then Hosni and Fahd, and last the Iraqi. He did not understand the tension that now held him.

Caleb turned, twisted on the saddle of sacking. The pain surged in his thighs from the movement: the sores had opened wider. Rashid was now behind Tommy, his camel's neck level with Tommy's camel's haunches. Caleb looked ahead. He took a point for his eyes in the centre of Ghaffur's back. Now the boy swung his camel to the right and the zigzag pattern continued.

His eyes were closed. He yearned for the next stop, for the quarter-mug of water. His eyes were tight against the strength of the sun. His throat was parched. Sand pricked at his face. He rolled, thought he might fall, forgot any concern for whatever happened behind him.

The embassy advised against driving alone.

Bart drove alone and took the shortest route.

Even with a chauffeur, the embassy advised, travel on a Friday in Riyadh should be made with extreme caution.

It was Friday.

Never on a Friday, advised the embassy, should an expatriate go anywhere near the Grand Mosque and the wide pedestrian square between the mosque and the Palace of Justice.

The call had come, it was an emergency and, it being Friday, there was no chauffeur available to drive Bart. He discarded embassy advice, and his mind mapped the most direct way from his compound to that from which the panic phone call had come. He came down Al-Malik Faisal Street, his speedometer needle on the edge of the limit, did not notice the drifting crowds of men, young and old, had no thought of what time prayers would have finished in the Grand Mosque and, when the city's old restored walls were ahead of him, he swung to the right into Al-Imam Torki Ibn Abdulla Street, and had to slow because the crowds thickened and filled the road. Then, crawling, Bart realized where he was.

The pedestrian precinct, bounded on the north by the mosque, on the south by the justice building, on the east by the souvenir shops and on the west by the Souq Deira Shopping and Commercial Centre, was known to expatriates. It was an endless source of fascination, gossip, speculation, and shivering horror. The embassy's security officer advised all expatriates, in the strongest possible terms, that they should never be near that part of the city on a Friday after morning prayers. To the expatriates, the precinct was 'Chop Chop Square'. Without prior announcement in newspapers or on the television-news broadcasts, after Friday-morning prayers the Kingdom's executions were carried out in Chop Chop Square. 'Don't ever want to gawp, don't ever be tempted… It is a place of extreme emotions at the time of a beheading… Stay clear. Give the place as wide a berth as possible

… Take no chances there,' the security officer at the embassy advised expatriates. But Bart had been called out on an emergency, and had not been concentrating on the embassy's lectures. Now he had to slow and the crowds flowed around him. He could see, between the moving sea of robes, past the side of the mosque and into the square.

It was an emergency, and emergencies paid well. Friday, no servants in the compound villa: in the main lighting unit of a kitchen a bulb had failed. The tenant, an American lawyer with no servant to do it for him, had put a chair under the unit, had climbed on to it for the purpose of changing the bulb. The chair had toppled, the lawyer had fallen and, with increasing hysteria, his wife had phoned all of the listed American doctors… Friday, and they were golfing or tennis-playing or visiting, and Bart's number had been given her.

The way she told it, in her panic, her husband's arm was critically damaged. Could he come? Like now. Like half an hour ago. Bart didn't golf, didn't play tennis, didn't do social visiting. He had scooped out a bowlful of food for the cat from a tin, grabbed his bag and hurried out. Expatriates, Americans and Europeans, dreaded accidents and had mortal fear of going alone to a Saudi hospital Accident and Emergency; Bart would be well rewarded for turning out on a Friday in the middle of the day.

The crowds refused to edge out of his way. He twisted among them. Why was he there? Samuel Algernon Laker Bartholomew's road led back directly to the day when he had stumbled from the surgery in Nicosia, and the man had been waiting for him on the pavement and had taken him for a drink. The man, who had so briefly entered his life, was Jimmy: no second name, no address, no telephone number, but a wallet and the minimal generosity of putting, at ten twenty-five in the morning, a double Jameson – no water – on the table in the corner of the bar. 'A man's down, and the whole bloody world gets in a queue to kick him – bloody unfair. This island's dead for you. Look on the bright side, I always say a glass is half full, not half empty. I happen to know where a highly qualified general practitioner, brimming with experience, can do really good work and be appreciated. How I'd put it, the sort of work that would enable a highly qualified and experienced doctor to stuff these unproven allegations down the necks of the bastards making them.

Let me run this one by you…' Unemployable back home, his bank account drained, marooned in Cyprus, Bart had actually thanked the man for his kindness. It extended to meeting his Nicosia hotel bill, providing petty cash for meals and an airline ticket for the short-hop flight to Tel Aviv. Two days later – and never to see Jimmy again -

Bart had been in Israel. God, so naive, such an innocent.

He hooted impatiently. He looked to the side where the bodies came closer to the vehicle doors. He saw faces that were alive with emotion, and the anger around him seemed to grow. He might have been in an air-conditioned cocoon, but the anger, the emotion, seemed to swell. Shouldn't have bloody hooted. Before he had hooted, the crowd had seemed barely to notice him. Now faces were pressed against the windows and the bodies made a wall in front of the bonnet. Against the noise of the air-conditioning, through the closed windows and locked doors he could detect a slow chant.

The interior seemed to darken as the weight of bodies came closer.

Then Bart recognized the one word. It came endlessly repeated, with growing force.

'Osama… Osama… Osama… Osama…'

Now hands were on his vehicle. It shook, they rocked it. The voices matched the faces, anger and emotion. He bounced in his seat.

Without the restraint of the belt his head would have hit the ceiling.

He felt light-headed, not afraid. He was rolling and the chant reached a new pitch of intensity. Then came the siren.

The crowd melted. As the street cleared, a police wagon drove down it at speed. Extraordinary, but the sun shone through the windows and light bathed Bart. Another few seconds, if the siren had not made the crowds run, he would have felt the fear – he was no hero. He looked to the side, no particular reason, just checking it was clear for him to accelerate away. He could see past the Grand Mosque. A black wagon was pulling away from the square's centre.

A man scattered sawdust from a sack, threw it on to the ground, then moved on, chucked more handfuls down and did it again. He thought that the executioner would already have cleaned his sword, would already have gone. He drove away.

Three men's heads had been severed from their bodies. The bodies and the heads would now be in the black wagon. The crowd had chanted an icon's name. The condemned would not have been rapists, murderers or drugs traffickers. The crowd had chanted the name of Osama.

Bart felt, could not hide from it, a creeping sense of excitement.

The proximity of death, the name of Osama bin Laden, the power of the crowd made that excitement course in him. He hated the place, the regime, the country, the life he led, the blood now covered with sawdust, the wagon, the chant and the hands that had rocked his vehicle. He was confused and the adrenaline pulsed – gave him a wild message. It thrilled him. Everything he hated he shared with that crowd. He had no loyalties, he identified… Bart gasped. He drove fast. But the voice echoed in his head: 'You leave when I say so

… You are going, Bart, nowhere.'

He went to see a man who had fallen off a chair while changing a lightbulb.

To Juan Gonsalves, a telephone call was the better medium for a problem than an electronic message. Electronics left a non-erasable trail and settled for eternity in a man's or a woman's records. He called Wilbur Schwarz on a secure line at six thirty in the morning, Washington DC time, and his confidence that Schwarz would be at his desk was justified. Schwarz oversaw the Agency's counter-terrorism operations in the Kingdom from a windowless office at Langley, was close to retirement and his dedication would be missed.

Gonsalves trusted him.

'Wilbur, I am not making a complaint. It is off-the-record, and I don't want it to go formal. You shipped in a team with Predators to Shaybah – OK so far? It seems accepted they are doing test flights to examine extreme heat over a desert… Yeah, yeah, it is some desert. Trouble is, they've been shorted. One pilot and one sensor operator. These kids are great but they're low on fuel and they don't have back-up. They're working round the clock, and then some. I was down yesterday and they were dead on their feet. You have to understand that desert. It didn't get to be called "Empty Quarter" for no reason. It is empty. You want sand, you got it. Anything else, you haven't. They spend hours just watching sand. I suppose the first day the sand looks pretty, not after that… Now, get me right, I am not saying they are already inefficient, that's too big a word. I am saying too much is being asked. Not for me to tell you what sort of help they need, or what is possible in the budget. What I am telling you is that they are liable, in my opinion, to make an error, to miss something.

They are searching a hundred thousand square miles of fuck-all… I don't want to predict disaster here, but in my view that's where we are heading. Wilbur, can we do something here? First thing I had to do when I was down yesterday was lift them, get their morale up – not easy. You got me, Wilbur, will you crunch some numbers and come up with something that eases the load? Try…'

Caleb knelt. He could not have matched Fahd's cries, or the simple devotion of Hosni, or the dignity and belief in God of Rashid and his son, but he tried. Sapped by exhaustion, burned, suffering the pain of his sores, asking for strength, Caleb felt comfort in his prayers.

Only the Iraqi, Tommy, sitting away from them, cross-legged, his back to them, was not a part of them.

When the prayers were finished, when the sun was directly above them and the only shade was between their feet, the guide measured out their midday water ration. It was poured with great care, Ghaffur holding the mug and Rashid tipping the water bag over the mug.

There was no line drawn or scratched on the inside of the metal mug, but Caleb sensed the accuracy with which Rashid doled it out.

Not a mouthful, more or less, for any of them.

When they had all drunk, the voice burst over the sand.

'You, here, you come here.'

Rashid was beside Tommy's camel. The voice had been a command. Rashid's arm pointed at the Iraqi, who swore, then spat into the sand beside him.

'You obey me, you come here.'

Caleb remembered the tension that the prayers and the water, and his own tiredness, had filtered from his mind. The Iraqi was now the target of the guide's anger.

'You are to obey me, and you are to come to me.'

Tommy pushed himself up, brushed the sand off the seat of his trousers and started a slow, indifferent walk towards Rashid and his camel. Fahd watched him and Hosni, and the boy.

Caleb strained to hear.

The voice of Rashid was quiet, but with poison. 'How many water bags do you carry?'

The surly grudging response. 'I carry four.'

'How many are on the camel?'

'Four, of course.'

'Count them, show me there are four.'

Caleb saw Tommy shrug, as if he dealt with an idiot. He counted aloud as he moved round the camel. 'There is one, there is two… here is three, and here is…'

The savage interruption. 'Where is four?'

The shoulders crumpled. 'I don't know where is four.'

'You are responsible for the water bags you carry.'

'I am responsible… I do not know where it is. All the bindings, before we started, were secure.'

'I show you where is the fourth water bag.'

'I tested all the bindings.' Then defiance. 'If you know where the water bag is then why ask me? I don't know.'

With his arm, Rashid gestured back where they had come. Caleb struggled to follow the line, on their zigzag path, of the arm. The light from the sun bounced back from the sand. He thought he saw a speck, dark against the red of the sand, but could not know at first whether his eyes tricked him. He held his hands over them, shaded them, opened them wider, peered and saw the speck again. The wind moved the surface sand, seemed to make a slight mist over the desert floor. He saw it clearly, held it for a few seconds, but then the brightness in his eyes and the pain in them made him look away. He did not understand how a water bag could have fallen from Tommy's camel four hundred yards back or more. He blinked, screwed his eyes together to cut out the pain.

'There is your fourth water bag.'

'I see it.'

'Go, pick it up, bring it to us.'

The Iraqi had no fight in him. He could not shout or bluster or beg.

To have done so would have denied his dignity, destroyed his pride.

Caleb saw him reach up and snatch the hair at his camel's neck, lock his fingers in it, then try to drag it down to the kneeling position.

Caleb remembered how the order of march that morning had been changed. He had no longer taken back-marker, had been replaced at the tail of the march by the Iraqi. And, he remembered how Rashid had stopped, let the rest of them pass him and dropped back until he rode alongside Tommy, then had come up fast to regain his position at the head of them.

'You don't take the camel.'

The Iraqi spat his answer. 'Am I to walk?'

'You are not to waste the strength of the camel, you walk. The camel did not lose the water bag.'

'Fuck you.'

'It is your responsibility. You walk back and pick up the water bag.'

'I will not.'

'You pick it up and you bring it back to us, and then we will go on.'

The pitch of Tommy's voice rose. 'I am a man of importance. I have a role in this fucking idiotic journey – you are paid to escort me.'

Rashid's voice had quietened, was hard for Caleb to hear. 'If you do not go back, pick up the water bag and bring it to us, then we leave you. We ride the camels and go on. You will run after us for a hundred strides, then you will fall back. We will be gone over a horizon, and you will be alone. Which way do you choose?'

Spinning on his heel, the sand scuffing at his feet, Tommy turned to each of them. Who backed him? None did. Who spoke for him?

None did. Not Hosni and not Fahd. Caleb stared back at him. With a brutal kick, Tommy heaved sand up on to Rashid's legs, then started to walk.

He took a straight line, not the zigzag path right and left that Rashid had led them on after finding the first of the two marker posts.

Caleb asked of the boy, 'Would your father leave a man here, walk away from him?'

The boy said, 'If we had no love for him, no trust for him, then, yes, we would leave him.'

The beat of the tension grew. Tommy walked upright and there was a roll in his stride. Hosni ducked his head down as if his eyes could no longer follow him. The heat seared all of them. Fahd seemed to shiver. The sand around Tommy shimmered. They had gone far to the right in the zigzag, and when they had cut back to the left they had not been near the direct line that Tommy took as he tramped, never looking back, towards the speck that was the dropped water bag. Rashid did not look over his shoulder but his face was close to Tommy's camel's head and he murmured soft words in its ear and stroked the hair of its neck. Tommy was half-way to the water bag, the speck. Caleb did not know what would happen, only that the Sands were a place of death, a cruel place, a place with as little mercy as a hangman's shed. Tommy walked the straight line.

He was the only one, Caleb realized it, who did not know what would be the end of it. He had been away from the camp for a whole night, and away from the march for most hours of a day. Through that morning's march, after the marker posts, every turn that Rashid had made had been planned, and he would have gone back to the tail of the caravan and ridden beside the Iraqi, and the Iraqi would have been dead to the world astride the camel with the sun beating on his head and the torpor of the endless vista of the sand sea would have dulled him. The Iraqi would not have known that the guide's fingers released a water bag from the baggage and then tossed it aside, left it to lie on the sand, left it where it could just be seen when the halt was called for water and prayers.

The cry came back to them, carried on the wind.

Caleb thought Tommy a smaller man – shorter, cut off, stunted.

There was a little squeal from the boy. For a moment, as Caleb saw it, the Iraqi stood and tried to walk, but could not, and fell. All around him, the sand was clean, unmarked. It was where the zigzag trail had not crossed. The cry became a scream. Caleb remembered: 'Because he hit my father, he is dead… Nothing else is possible.' The Iraqi tried to stand, but Caleb could not see his shins or his knees. The arms flailed, and with each struggling movement the Iraqi sank.

The first cry had been shock, then anger. The last cry, the loudest, was terror.

He went to Ghaffur, grabbed the boy's arm, held it so that the boy could not break loose. 'You knew of the quicksand?'

'My father knew.'

'It is not by chance that we came past it?'

'Since he struck my father we changed the route. We came this way for a purpose.'

'To kill a man.'

'He struck my father.'

'How much time have we lost, to kill a man?'

'Perhaps a day – half a day.'

He freed the boy. The cry came again, louder and shriller. There had been bogs in Afghanistan: once he had seen a goat sinking in mud, had heard its bleating, but then the grass carpet covering the bog had been of a deeper, brighter, more treacherous green. Then, one of the Arabs with Caleb had fired a single shot from his assault rifle and the bullet had disintegrated the skull of the goat. It had not been shot to end its misery but to stop the bleating. Caleb would not have thought of quicksands, the same as a bog, in the desert where it might not have rained for ten years, fifteen. To the noses of the camels, there would have been a scent of the buried moisture under the surface of the sand, and the guide had known the purpose of the marker posts. .. it had been a killing as planned and prepared for as any execution.

He saw the chest of the Iraqi and his head and his arms.

The man struggled. Caleb thought Tommy struggled so that he would sink quicker, finish it faster.

He looked around. Rashid had the camels kneeling and was waving to them to join him. Caleb now had his back to Tommy. He walked past Fahd, perched on the hump, as his camel awkwardly stood, and heard the Saudi's sneer. 'Do you want to help him as you helped the woman?' He understood more. He, too, was tested. His strength, or his weakness, was tested. He climbed on to his saddle and gave, gently, the command he had heard the guide use and the Beautiful One rocked him, shook him, and stood.

A scream came on the wind. Tommy's upper shoulders, his neck, head and arms would still be above the sand's level, but Caleb did not turn. The cry was for mercy, and for help, the cry was to him.

They rode away. The guide now ruled them. They were in his hands, dependent on his skills. The Iraqi, their brother in arms, had been condemned and none of them – Hosni, Fahd, or Caleb – had fought the guide for his life. He rode beside Rashid.

Caleb asked bleakly, 'When you took the water bag from Tommy's camel, was it full? To kill him, did you waste a bag of water?'

Rashid said, 'It was filled with sand. At that distance, had it not been full, it would not have been seen. I did not waste water.'

The last scream burst behind them, called him, then was stifled and died. There was the sound of the wind against Caleb's robe, the rustle of the loose sand it blew and the thud of the camels' strides. He never looked back.

Camp Delta, Guantanamo Bay.

The guards swaggered behind the orderly ivho pushed the food trolley along the cell-block corridor. He was at the back of the cell and he wore pathetic gratitude on his face. Earlier, there had been the sounds of a military band playing and singing and cheering had been carried into the block by the wind off the sea. It was the second Fourth of July since he had been brought to the camps. From the scale of the music, singing and cheering, he thought there had been a bigger parade than the previous year when he had been held in X-Ray. Through his dropped eyes, he saw the aggression of the guards, and he thought the music and their love of their country had been primed by the day.

The pathetic gratitude was the act Caleb had mastered.

He had absorbed the routine. The days of his week were governed by his exercise session, two days away, and by his visit to the showers in three days. He had not been interrogated for twenty-nine days, and the only break in the routine would be if he was summoned again. Some men in the block were destroyed by the routine, had their minds turned by it or whimpered because of it, or screamed in the frustration that it brought. He played the part of the model prisoner, whose imprisonment was a mistake.

The plastic food tray was slipped through the hatch at the base of the barred door to the cell. He ducked his head in submissive thanks. The men with red necks and shaven heads, huge in their uniforms, towered in the corridor. Two of the four carried wooden truncheons, and the hand of one, who stood back from the trolley, fidgeted restlessly over a pistol holster.

Caleb smiled inanely and waited for them to move on; then he would crawl over the floor to the tray.

A guard said, loud, 'We got Independence Day, son, to celebrate.

You got special food today. You, son, enjoy the day as much as we do…'

The voice dropped to conversational. 'Goddamn gook doesn't understand a single goddamn word. Goddamn pitiful, aren't they? Goddamn pieces of shit.'

Caleb treasured the few hours spent close to the bodyguard and still fed off the strength given him. The guards and the food trolley moved on; he was superior to them, believed it, despised them. The success of the deceit gave him raw pleasure. His head bobbed, he showed his gratitude. They were despised and they were hated.

The strength gave him attention to detail. It might be a year away, or two, or five years – his freedom – but he prepared for it. Word had seeped through the wire mesh sides of the cages that four men, the first, had been released.

His life in the cage was consumed by the detail.

Primary in the detail was the removal, the scrubbing clean, of all traces in his mind of an earlier life; the final relegation of nationality, culture, upbringing, work, all gone. Second was the creating of two compartments for his life: in the privacy of his soul he was Abu Khaleb, fighter in the 055

Brigade, and in the eyes of the guards who fed, exercised and escorted him he was Fawzi al-Ateh, taxi-driver. But the detail went deep into the heart of the deceit. He prayed five times a day. When he whispered to the prisoners in the next cells it was about a dead family and a bombed village, and a childhood among orchards; he assumed there would be 'plants', informers, among prisoners rotated round the cages. He assumed also, and the belief bred paranoia, that microphones were buried in the cell back wall and that hidden cameras watched him. He conformed, utterly, to the image he created – the taxi-driver's. If there had been suspicion of him, or if he had been denounced, he would have been subjected to ferocious interrogation, but he was not. The detail protected him.

The guards moved on and the trolley squealed to the corridor's end. Then they came back and one whistled cheerfully. They could not see into his heart, could not read the hatred.

He lived the lie, did it well, and the second Fourth of july of his imprisonment faded as the dusk came and the bright lights shone down on the block.

'Something'll turn up,' Lizzy-Jo said, gently 'You look all stressed out. Something always turns up.'

He was crouched over the workbench and his fingers toyed with the joystick. The muscles in his shoulders were stiff, knotted, and his neck was tight so that the veins and throat tubes stood tall. His eyes behind the thick spectacle lenses had pricks of pain.

Marty said, flat, 'Let's just hope so.'

He used his forearm, wiped the sweat off his forehead. On manual control, First Lady quartered a box whose nearest point to the Ground Control at Shaybah was three hundred and twenty land miles.

At four and a half miles altitude she crossed the desert floor at eighty-four miles per hour. But when she was up there, silent, secret and fragile, the cross-winds were fierce. The upper-air turbulence dictated that Marty should fly manual, and the extra load of the two Hellfire missiles – two hundred and thirteen pounds weight – one on each of the fragile wings, made her sluggish to commands. If the winds First Lady encountered at that altitude had been across or down the runway, she would still be under the awning shelter and grounded. He had to fly her, and each time the high winds tossed her, and the picture rolled, rocked and jerked, Marty heard the sharp intake of Lizzy-Jo's breath, her irritation.

'You know what? – Bosnia and Afghanistan were walks in the park compared to this place.'

'Were they?' His hands were on the joystick, his eyes were locked on the cascade of figures of wind speed, wind direction, wind force in front of him, and the screen above that showed the sand, the damn sand. The sweat ran on his back and over his stomach. 'That is a comfort.'

'But we are here. Here in this goddamned awful place. We have to make it work.'

'You sound, Lizzy-Jo – forgive me – like you're full of shit from Human Resources or Admin. They send you that speech?'

The hardest thing about arguing with or insulting Lizzy-Jo was that she just laughed. She laughed loudly. He always wondered if her man, back now and minding the kid, had ever argued with her or insulted her about her determination to put Agency work in front of rearing the kid and putting his dinner on the table when he came back from selling life-and-death policies. He probably had, and she'd probably laughed at him.

When her laugh subsided, she pulled a face – her serious one. That face made her downright pretty, and the sweat that glistened on it made her prettier. 'We were given a difficult assignment, as difficult as it comes. We are doing our best. What more can we do? What does not help our best is you sulking like a kid without a Krispy Kreme.

Lighten up, Marty, lighten up and spit it out.'

'Spit what out?' He knew he was playing awkward. He edged First Lady on a gradual turn to port side, and the picture of the sand under the real-time camera blurred. Each time he made an adjustment, dictated by wind speed, and deviated from the straight line of flight a handkerchief of sand below the lens was missed… and maybe the handkerchief was big enough for camels with boxes, for men, for a target. But if he did not fly into the wind, when it had mean strength, he risked damaging the bird, like the guys back at Bagram had lost one, and it had been down on the ground, broken and smashed, a sight to make a man's eyes water. An instructor at Nellis had said that the Predator, MQ-1, with Hellfires under the wings, was like a butterfly out in the rain – could fly, but not fly happy. 'What do you want from me?'

'Give me the skinny. Whatever's pissing you off, tell me.'

He gave it to her. 'Well, for one, the head honcho comes down, spiels crappy intelligence, expands the search area… We are in a no-hoper, that's my-'

'It's what we got to work with. Next.'

Marty stumbled, stuttered: 'My picture. I shelled out for that. It got sand in it, the storm, it got sand between the glass and the print – and it's got condensation, hot days and cold nights. It's the only picture I ever wanted, and it might just be fucked up.'

She said, sweet and soft, 'I'm sorry. I never had a picture. Maybe when we get out of here it can get repaired… I'm sorry. Next.'

He rallied. 'The air-conditioning's going down. It's half strength.

We are both dripping wet.'

There was a bleep beside her and a green light blinked.

'Just think about it, if the air-conditioning fails, we're fucked.

We're gonna bake.'

She hit keys, made alive a blank screen on which a message flickered.

'The outside temperature is one hundred and twenty degrees, we're gonna cook. We've got an intolerable-'

Lizzy-Jo said curtly, 'What we have got, Marty, is a visitor. I am going to channel eight.'

Against the grinding purr of the failing air-conditioning came a clear, calm voice, brought by satellite from across the world. The voice was Langley's.

'Hi, Marty, and greetings to you, Lizzy-Jo. My call sign is Oscar Golf, that's how you'll know me. You may both feel out on the end of the line, but that is going to change. All the time that First Lcidy and Carnival Girl are airborne and transmitting material, from camera and infra-red, we will be monitoring the output. You are not alone, we are right behind you. If you need comfort breaks, meal stops, rest, and the Predators are up, we are here and ready to step in. That's what I wanted to say, over and out.'

The sound feed was cut. Marty slumped. His hands were off the joystick and held his head.

'They don't think we're capable,' he said, his voice a murmur through his fingers. 'Like we're not professional. Shit, and it's all I wanted, to hit, to win-'

'What we both want, Marty, both of us.' Her fingertips brushed against the back of his neck and slipped in the sweat to the tight knot of his shoulder muscles. She was broad Bronx, like she was in a truckers' bar. 'Fuck 'em.'

There was an unused plate, and one portion less of water was poured into the mug.

When they had halted, the boy had searched for an hour but had found neither dead wood, nor roots. When the sun had sunk and the cold came they were without a fire's warmth, and the bread could not be baked. The travellers ate the uncooked dough and dried dates, drank the water in silence, were subdued, but Rashid spoke quietly to his son from the far side of the circle they made and his voice was too indistinct for Caleb to hear. The cool nestled his body, and he seemed to hear the scream of the man whom the quicksand had taken. It pealed in his ears, shrieked for his help.

Caleb broke the quiet. 'That was a game, each move planned. A game was played and Tommy was killed. Why did it have to be a game?'

He heard Fahd's cackle. 'Do you wish to be told? Is it important?'

'It is important to know why one of our family was killed in an entertainment.'

The wind sang around them and Hosni's words were frail against it. 'He struck the guide. That condemned him. After he had hit the Bedu, Tommy was dead… I negotiated the death. Whatever Tommy's value to us, to Fahd and you and I, he was dead. If we had tried to protect Tommy, the guide with his son would have left us. It is the duty of Fahd and I, and especially of you, to achieve the end of our journey. .. you in particular, because of your value. Do you understand?'

'I do not understand why it was a game, an entertainment.'

Again Fahd chuckled, again Hosni answered. 'He was your friend, you talked to him, you heard of the life of a hangman, and you identified with him… and you stayed with the woman who had seen us and who endangered us, and you helped her. It was not an entertainment, it had a purpose. We watched. Would you go to save him? Would you run across the sand to him? Would you lie on your stomach, where the sand softened, and reach with your hand for his?

Very closely, we watched you. You did not look at him. You turned your back on him. He called for you. He faced death and he called for the only one among us whom he thought would help him. It was Tommy's judgement that you were not strong enough for what is asked of you. He called you. You turned your back on him and rode away – you showed us your strength.'

Caleb whispered hoarsely, 'If I had helped him, if I had pulled Tommy from the quicksand, if I had brought him back, what then would have happened?'

Hosni's voice was sharp. 'The guide would have shot you both, but you first. We would have had our answer. Because you would have been of no use to us, the guide would have shot you. It was agreed.'

Caleb sat a long time in the darkness. He saw the patterns of the stars and the moon's mountains, and he felt the freshness of the wind on his body. He shivered, sat hunched with his arms close round him

… Rashid told a story to his son of a warrior in the history of the Bedouin and the boy was against his knee and rapt in his listening.

He thought of a man whose cries he had ignored and the death of that man in the sinking sand. The voices eddied round him and the wind snatched at his robe and the sores below his buttocks itched in pain. He thought of his promise, that he had not made a mistake in helping the woman, and the test set for him.

Hosni leaned across and jabbed his finger into Caleb's chest.

'Tomorrow is a new day. It is the day we start to recall your past, make the old life live.'

Caleb said, 'I killed the old life, forgot it.'

The old body shook. Hosni's voice had the keenness of a knife.

'You breathe on it, reclaim it.'