The Unknown Soldier

Chapter Four

He was shaken.

Caleb had not slept well. The coughing, snoring and wheezing had prevented it.

Fahd stood over him, pulling at his shoulder.

It was still dark inside the room, but the light outside pierced the window where the plywood cover did not fit.

At the moment he was woken, Caleb had been in a restless dream world that nudged him to the limit of his memory, took him to the chasm, but would not let him step over into the void.

Hosni stretched and Caleb heard his joints creak. Tommy sat on his blanket and, without purpose, ran his fingers through his cropped hair as if that were his waking ritual.

They went outside for prayers. Fahd took the line for them and sank to his knees. The others followed. The first low sunlight caught the tips of the wadi's low boundary hills, and far beyond them was the Holy City, Makkah. He had said in the first training camp – near to Jalalabad, 'La ilaha ilia Allah, Muhammadiin rasoola Allah.' In old language, from back before the memory's void, he had known he said: 'There is no true god but God, and Muhammad is the Messenger of God.' He had said, facing the shooting range and the obstacle course, that he believed the Holy Qur'an to be the literal word of God, revealed by him, believed that the Day of Judgement was true and would come as God promised, accepted Islam as his religion, would not worship anything or anyone except God. He said the prayers taught him, and watched the others. Beyond his dream, where his memory did not go, there was no God. Hosni prayed quietly, as if it were a time to gather personal dignity. Fahd rocked forwards and backwards and his face contorted as if man's inability to match the demands of his God made an agony for him. Around Caleb were the whispers, mumbles and cries of devotion. He thought Fahd was the zealot, and marked it in his mind. There had been zealots in the trenches, and they were dead. There had been more zealots in the cages, and they were driven to insanity. Did Caleb believe the words he spoke soundlessly? He could not have answered. The prayers finished as the sun caught their faces.

He sat in the dirt against the mud wall and watched corridors of ants come to him, crawl over his ankle and pass on.

He was told they would move in an hour, was told transport would come.

The dream returned. Staring into the sunlight, his eyes were closed.

The dream was clear… the wedding. A veranda of wood planks in front of a small villa with white rendering on the walls, a garden with flowers, dried-grass lawns with chairs and rugs scattered among shrub bushes. Sharp in his mind. The bride was Farooq's cousin. The bridegroom was Amin's second cousin. Caleb was the Outsider. A feast. A celebration. Welcomed because he was the friend of Farooq and the friend of Amin, shown the hospitality that was true and warm. A feeling of liberation because he had made a great journey – but his memory no longer accepted where he had come from, from what he had been freed. He had been watched by a man sitting on a bench back from the veranda, among the shrub bushes, and who was dressed in a black turban, a long-tailed black shirt and loose black trousers. Guests came to the man and spoke quietly into his ear, and all who came near him ducked their heads in respect, but the man's one eye was fastened on Caleb.

He was only aware of the attention focused on him there, at the wedding party. He did not know that that attention had lighted on him when the message had come from far away to the town of Landi Khotal that Farooq and Amin were bringing their friend to this distant corner of the North-west Frontier of Pakistan. Could not know that, from the hour of his arrival, he had been observed, followed, tracked and noted. Neither could he have known that the interest he created in the days leading up to the wedding was sufficient for a message to be sent across the border into Afghanistan.

What was learned of him, and relayed in the message, had been enough for the man with the eyepatch and the chrome claw to have travelled to witness him at first hand at the celebration. A hawk's eye was on him, and he was in ignorance of it.

Once, when the bridegroom carried a tray of glasses filled with apricot juice to the man, the claw had hooked his elbow and pulled him lower. A question had been asked, the claw pointing at Caleb, and the bridegroom had answered it. Two Iambs had been killed for the feast, and a kid. Only the remnants turned on the spit over the fire of cut wood, but the scent of the meat drifted in the smoke to Caleb's nose – and the man watched him. As the dusk came, younger men drifted away and while Caleb struggled to be understood by the relatives from the village of Amin and Farooq, there were shots beyond the garden. The man came towards him. Farooq whispered in Caleb's ear that the man was from Chechnya, a hero of the war with the Russians, but Caleb knew nothing of any war. The man was at his side and reached down. The claw caught Caleb's arm and lifted him. No smile, no greeting, no warmth. Farooq had tried to follow, as if anxious about his friend, but had been waved away. The man from Chechnya led him to the fence that marked the extremity of the cultivated garden. Four men were there, with rifles. They fired.

The targets were a lentils can at the base of a dried-out thorn tree, and further back one that had held cooking oil wedged between stones, then far beyond, a fuel drum. Some bullets shook the targets, some caused little dust spurts near to them and the whine of ricochets. The man and Caleb could not speak, had no common language, but another came to Caleb's side and, with a guttural accent, translated the hero's words and Caleb's answers.

'Do you shoot?'

'I have never tried and no one ever showed me.'

'It is a gift from God, not taught. A man who shoots is a man who respects himself. Do you have respect for yourself?'

'I've never done anything of value to get respect.'

'A man who shoots well is a man who can fight. A fighter has supreme self-esteem. He is valued by his friends, trusted by comrades, loved.'

'I wouldn't know-'

'You would not know because you were never given the chance to be valued, trusted, loved… I was given such a chance.'

'To shoot?'

'To fight. I learned it close to here, against the Soviets. We ran, they followed us. We ran further and still they followed. We hid among rocks, they lost us. We were quiet as mice, they went past us. They stopped. We could shoot at their backs. We killed all of them – we killed all of them because we were fighters and born to it… and then we were valued and trusted and loved. Does my story frighten you?'

A great plunging breath. 'I don't think so – no.'

'It is precious to have self-esteem. Would you look for it?'

The breath hissed from his lungs. 'Yes.'

Caleb was given a rifle. He had never held a firearm. The translator had slipped away. He was shown, the sign language of the claw, how to hold it. The four men had stood back. Only Caleb and the Chechen had been at the fence. The whole hand had adjusted the sight. He had fired. The rifle stock had thudded against his shoulder. The can had toppled – his breathing had been steady. The sight's range had been changed. Caleb had seen the cooking-oil tin dance in the slackening light – his squeeze on the trigger bar had been constant. The sight had been altered. The fuel drum had rocked

– he had lowered the rifle and turned to receive praise. On the Chechen's face he saw grim approval. Away beyond the garden's fence, far above the targets, a hillside was spotted with boulders, cut with little ravines, and at the summit was a precarious hanging rock.

The Chechen had the rifle and pointed the barrel at it.

Caleb had understood. He had dropped off his suit jacket and loosened his tie. He had torn the seat of his suit trousers on the barbed wire as he had gone over the fence. He had run. He wore shiny shoes, polished for a wedding, that slipped on the rock surfaces, gave him no grip. At first there had been shots above him.

He had hugged rocks, had crawled into the clefts. The firing had become less frequent. His suit trousers had ripped at the knees, his shirt was sweat-soaked, dirt-smeared. He had reached the top, bright in the last of the sun. Exhilaration had swamped him. He had stood on the hanging rock, his arms outstretched, in triumph… and he had come down, sliding, stumbling, and making little avalanches of stones. The dream had been near to the waking moment when Fahd had killed it. Since the scenes of the dream he had never again worn suit trousers, a suit jacket, a clean shirt with a tie, polished shoes. He was a chosen man. At the fence, when he reached it, the Chechen's claw had gripped his shoulder and held him close, and he had known that – an Outsider – he was a man respected, and wanted.

Through that evening he had sat at the feet of the Chechen; Farooq and Amin had not come near him. In the morning, before dawn, he had left with him. He was the Chechen's man. It had been the start.

He was called. The dream was finished. He was the member of a family, and there had never been a family before.

He helped Fahd lift the boxes from the back of the building's one room.

They grunted under their weight, and their bodies were close as they struggled with each through the door.

'What do we call you?'

Caleb said that he had many names – did a name matter?

'What was the first name you were given?'

Caleb said that it had been 'The Outsider' – but he had been told the name did not mean he was without trust.

'Then you are the Outsider, not from a grouping or a faith or a tribe, but held in value. If it had not been for that value we would not be here. We call ourselves by the names of our enemies, better to remember them.'

The box was set down. 'Who is your enemy?'

'I am Saudi. Fahd was the king when I was blessed by God and received into Al Qaeda. His wealth was grotesque – it was twenty thousand million dollars. When he went on his holiday to Europe, he took three thousand servants with him. He allowed the infidel soldiers into the Kingdom, the crusaders of America. He is a hypocrite, an idolator, an apostate to permit the Americans in the Holy Land of the Two Cities.'

'And Hosni?'

'He is Egyptian. His enemy is Hosni Mubarak, who follows the Americans, is their paid servant, who tortures and hangs the true believers.'

In the room, Hosni folded the blankets, had washed the plates from the previous evening's meal, had prepared a breakfast of bread and fruit.

'And who is Tommy's enemy?'

'Do you not know about Iraq?'

'I know nothing about Iraq since I was taken to Guantanamo.'

'Do you not know what happened in Iraq?' Fahd's voice whistled in astonishment.

'We were told nothing in Guantanamo,' Caleb said simply.

'You did not know the name of Tommy Franks?'

'I have not heard that name.'

'Let him tell you.'

Tommy did not help them but sat on his haunches in the sun, cleaned the weapons and did not look at them. There was sour concentration in his eyes. They set down the last of the boxes.

'Are you here – and Hosni and Tommy – because of me?' Caleb asked.

'Because of you we waited here for twelve days.'

She had taken the early flight down from the King Khalid International airport at Riyadh, claimed by the Kingdom to be the most perfect in the world, and had arrived at the oasis of steel and concrete before the heat had settled on the sands around it. She had dumped her shopping in her two-room bungalow, changed, and had kept running. Beth had been ten minutes late for her first class of the day.

A blackboard behind her, workers from Saudi, Yemen, Pakistan and the Philippines in front of her, she taught English language. The majority of her pupils were older than her. They were engineers, chemists, construction managers and surveyors, and the English she taught them was not that of polite conversation but would enable them better to scan manuals and technical work. The workers were the cream of the Kingdom's oil-production personnel; the site where they brought up extra-light crude from one hundred and twenty-five wells was called the most advanced in the world, and was praised as the most ambitious.

They were good students, determined to learn.

Other than the three nurses in the medical centre, Beth was the only woman at Shaybah. Standing before her class, she wore a long, plain dark dress that hid her ankles, the shape of her body, her wrists and her throat; a scarf covered her hair. If it had not been for the patronage of the province's deputy governor, she would not have been there… but she had that patronage. In Riyadh, Jedda, Ad Dammam or Tabuk, it would not have been acceptable for a lone woman to teach men – or to drive a vehicle, or to eat and use the library in the compound's club – but the pioneering site at Shaybah, deep in the Rub' al Khali desert, was beyond the reach of the mutawwa. The religious police of the Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice had no remit at Shaybah, and it was known throughout the compound that Beth had the patronage of the deputy governor. The job, teaching English oil-extraction language, allowed her to pursue the love of her life. The love was in the study of meteorite geology and far into the sand dunes from Shaybah, but reachable, was the meteorite impact site at Wabar, considered by scholars to be the most remarkable on the earth's surface. The job and the patronage enabled Beth to fulfil her passion.

Apart from the nurses, Beth Jenkins was an only woman among some seven hundred and fifty men. The compound was two hundred and fifty land miles from the nearest habitation. The living accommodation, offices, the club, the high-rise constructions of the gas-oil separation plants, the towers of piping and the airfield covered forty-five hectares of desert. Production exceeded half a million barrels per day. Shaybah was the jewel in Saudi ARAMCO's crown. The statistics were daunting: 30 million cubic metres of sand had been moved; 638 kilometres of pipeline carried the extra-light crude to the refineries in the north; 200,000 cubic metres of concrete had been poured; 12,500 tonnes of fabricated steel had been shipped in to make 735 kilometres of interconnecting pipes. Beth thought herself blessed to be there. The men she taught came and went, worked short spells away from their families, took the shuttle flights out whenever they could, griped about the harshness of the climate and the conditions. Beth did not complain.

She would have said that she wanted nothing more of life. She would have claimed she could hack the heat and the isolation.

She would have refuted the mildest suggestion that she was isolated. She would have been perplexed to know that she was described, behind her back, as brutally rude and aloof. Away from the classroom, in her little bungalow where her clothes were strewn, she kept her books and study papers on the Wabar meteorite site, all she cared for. One day, Beth Jenkins would write the definitive paper on the site where black glass and white stone had rained down with the explosive force of a primitive atomic detonation on to what science called an 'ejecta field'.

She had the class reciting, in unison as if they were the kids way back at an Ascot convent school, the phrases 'proven reserves', 'API gravity', 'gas compression plant', 'well-head', 'stabilization and separation' and… She looked out of the window. The haze was thickening. The runway that linked Shaybah to the world outside was indistinct and hard to focus on. At the far end, deep in the haze, there was a small collection of tents and vehicles, two satellite dishes mounted on trailers and wide canvas awnings. She had not seen them when the flight had come in, had been asleep till she was rocked awake by the landing. Momentarily, she wondered why they were there, at the extreme end of the runway, by the perimeter fence.

Then she began to set the work for her students to be done before she next met them.

They filed out. Another class came in.

No, she was not alone and inadequate. Yes, she was blessed.

The queue failed to move. Bart hissed, moved his weight from foot to foot, whistled his frustration through his teeth, coughed, but the queue did not shift. He needed a new iqama. It was renewal time for his resident's permit. He had with him the one that was about to expire, his driver's licence, a certificate from a colleague of a satisfactory eye and blood test, the document confirming employment by his local sponsor at the hospital and a further fistful of bureaucratic crap. In front of him, beside and behind him, corralled in a narrow corridor flanked by ornate rope, was a collection of the foreigners who took the Kingdom's shilling and were treated for their efforts with all the respect shown to a dog with mange… God, he loathed the place.

But there was no way round the queues, no avoidance of them.

The key word was patience. Bart knew all the stories of expatriates who had filled in their forms and sent a minion down to the ministry to avoid the queue. The bastards at the desks always found fault and sent them back. The highly placed and low-ranked had learned that the only way to get a resident's permit renewed was to stand in the damn queue.

Around him the need for patience would be muttered in a dozen tongues – in Arabic and German, Urdu and Dutch, Bengali and English. A few, the more important, had bodyguards, who idled in the chairs away from the queue. Bodyguards were a barometer of the deterioration in the security situation in post-war times. Bart paid only lip service to security in daylight hours, but would not have walked a street at night, certainly not in the areas where the Kingdom's new reality of economic depression had spawned beggars and the women who raided refuse bins for food scraps.

The servants of the Kingdom, bought with petro-dollars, shuffled and wheezed, and watched the painfully slow progress towards the counters.

At the end of the queue there were four desks. Two were occupied by men in the traditional flowing white thobe. On his head each wore a ghutrah, held in place by rope, the igaal that, in former times – when they were all in the sand and not in concrete and glass follies – was used to hobble a camel; now they rode, not on a camel's back, but in Chevrolets. Men worked at two desks. The other two were empty.

Why were the desks not taken when the queue stretched back to the bloody door? Bart boiled. Some of the expatriates occasionally wore a thobe, and thought the gesture impressed their hosts. Did it hell!

The days when expatriates were the chosen elite of the Kingdom were long gone – there was even talk that income tax for expatriates might be introduced. They were not wanted, only tolerated, and they were made to queue.

But that day God favoured Samuel Bartholomew, Doctor of Medicine. Five hours in the queue, patience rewarded, and at the head of the queue just before the break for lunch.

He produced an oily smile, presented his papers, remarked in his passable Arabic what a delightful day it was outside. He was good at doing lies: his life was a lie. He had done lies well since childhood.

The son of Algernon Bartholomew, accountant, and Hermione (nee Waltham) Bartholomew, housewife, he had told the lie often enough about a happy childhood in a loving home in a rural village near the Surrey town of Guildford, and maintained the lie of contented boarding-school life. At the school, about as far away in the West Country as they could afford to send him, put him out of their sight and out of their minds, he had learned the law of survival: never explain, never apologize, never trust. Poor at games, unloved and lonely to the point of tears, he had comforted himself with lies. It served him well. As he walked back down the line, the stamp on his renewed iqama, a little smile spread on his mouth.

Caleb saw it but could not hear it.

The argument was about the boxes. He sat on one. On the old olive-green paintwork was the stencilled legend: Department of Defense

FIM-92A. (1.) There was a date, seventeen years back, when he had been a child, now blacked from his memory. He knew the weapons loaded into the boxes, had handled one briefly in the training camps, had felt its weight on his shoulder, and had seen one fired in the trenches, but he did not know its workings and guidance system.

There were six boxes and they had created the dispute. Caleb sat with Hosni and Tommy, and watched the argument between Fahd and the farmer. Away to the right, barely visible, was a village with surrounding irrigated fields, clumps of date palms and lines of bright washing. Further up the watercourse, taking no part in the argument, a man and a boy squatted beside the legs of six camels.

There were three more camels with Fahd and the farmer, and the price for them was contested.

Six camels were sufficient, just, to carry a guide, his son, Fahd, Tommy, Hosni and Caleb, with food and water, to their destination.

But the six camels could not also carry the six boxes. For that more camels were needed. The farmer had more camels, and a price for them. Fahd had to have the extra camels but bridled at the price – the farmer was a 'thief' and an 'extortioner'. Each time he was insulted the farmer moved away and Fahd had to chase after him. They had been more than an hour, sitting with the boxes, in the full heat of the day. Caleb stared at the camels that were needed. He said, 'Why is it him who negotiates?'

Hosni shrugged. 'Because we are close to Saudi, because he is Saudi, because he speaks the same language, because that is his job.'

'But he fails.'

Hosni picked up pebbles, threw them down. 'Each of us has a responsibility in this matter. It is Fahd's.'

'Why not you?'

Hosni sniggered, as if the question were an idiot's. 'I am from Cairo, from a city. I know nothing of camels. As a child I played at the Gezira Club. Camels were for peasants. I would not know a good camel from a bad camel, a lame one from a whole one. I do not take responsibility.'

'Why not him?' Caleb eyed Tommy.

Hosni snorted. 'Where he came from, what he did, he would only have seen a camel from behind the closed window of a Mercedes saloon.'

'Where will the guides and the camels take us?'

'Into the Sands and across them.'

'What are the Sands?'

The Egyptian shuddered. He was the eldest among them. He had frail, bony shoulders and there was no weight in his arms or at his stomach. His check jacket, which was torn at the elbows and frayed at the cuffs, hung loose on him, and his beard was sparse and untended. Caleb assumed the Gezira Club, in Cairo, was for the rich and he thought the Egyptian had made great sacrifices and had given up comfort in the name of A1 Qaeda, and that the sacrifice had weakened him.

'You will find that answer.'

'And what is across the Sands?'

When Hosni spoke the breath wheezed in him. 'Across the Sands, if we can go through them, are the people who wait for us, who have called for us. Especially they have waited and called for you.'

'Thank you… Why do we not shoot the farmer and take his camels?'

'Then all the village knows we have been here. They make a blood feud against us. They send for soldiers and police… Then we are dead, and you do not reach those who wait for you.'

Caleb thought it a good answer. He stood and stretched, and the heat bathed him. The weight of the pouch was in the inner pocket of his robe. He walked away from Hosni and Tommy. He went to the guide who sat as if uninterested, and his hand ruffled the hair of the child, and he said that the child was a fine boy, a boy to be proud of, and he asked if the camels were capable of the journey The guide nodded but did not speak. Caleb went back down the watercourse to the farmer, Fahd and the hobbled camels. He led Fahd a few paces away, so that their voices would not be heard by the farmer, and told him to go and sit by the boxes. He looked into Fahd's eyes, into their brightness and fury. He gathered his strength, took hold of Fahd's hand and pushed him away, back towards the boxes. They had not yet started out on the journey – a journey that made Hosni shudder

– and Caleb knew he would travel with an unforgiving enemy. Fahd stumbled away from him.

Caleb sat beside the hobbled hoofs of the camels and smelt them and he stroked the leg of one. Then he took the pouch from the inner pocket and on a flat rock he spilled out all of the gold coins that the hawaldar had given him, on trust. He told the farmer that he wished to buy the three camels and he asked the farmer to take what coins they were worth. A fortune lay close to the farmer's gnarled, calloused hand. Sunlight danced on the coins. Trust counted, trust showed friendship. The hand hovered over the coins, pecked at them, lifting and dropping them. Trust. The farmer took three coins, then gazed up into the impassive face confronting him. He took three more coins, smuggled the gold into the pocket of his trousers, then reached out his hand. Caleb took it.

In his life, as far back as his memory took him, it had never been hard for Caleb to lead.

He retrieved the remaining coins from the flat stone and dropped the pouch back into his hidden pocket. The farmer kissed him and started to remove the camels' hobbles. Caleb waved for the guide to come to him.

An hour later, with all the camels loaded, they started out.

Camp X-Ray, Guantanamo Bay.

He squirmed back into the recess of the cage.

Each day, others had been taken. Hours later, as long as a day later, some had come back shivering, some had been pitched into the cage and had huddled with their heads bent on to their knees; some had wept or cried for their mothers – one had spat at the guards when they returned him, had been dragged away again and rechained. Caleb had not seen him since.

He had waited his turn, and the fear had built.

Three men and a woman crowded into the cage. They were huge in their uniforms and they towered above him. The chains were for his ankles, waist and wrists. Hostile faces, reddened by the sun. He seemed to read in all of them, but most particularly the woman, that they wanted him to fight. He thought he had been in the cage for three weeks but on a few of the days, as dusk had gathered and the arc-lights had brightened, he had forgotten to scratch the little mark with his fingernail on the back concrete wall to mark the passing of that day.

The fear was bad, worse than the shock of capture, worse than the beatings or the disorientation. The fear held him as the big hands, and the woman's, reached forward, seized and heaved him to his feet. Up to now, they had only taken him out of his cage for the first processing and photographing, for weekly exercise and showering ~ but he had been exercised and showered the day before. The fear caught in his stomach and he knew the little routine that he had learned was broken. The chains were tight on his ankles and wrists, and further chains were linked to the one that circled his waist. Then he was blindfolded.

They took him out.

He was a taxi-driver. The fear was in his mind and his body. He was Fawzi al-Ateh. The fear made his bladder burst. The wife of Fawzi al-Ateh, and the children, his parents and hers, had been killed by the bomber that made the trails in the sky. The warm wetness ran down the inside of his legs and he heard the sneering laughter. He was from a village in the hills above a town where he drove his taxi.

He was taken into a building. The blindfold stayed on. His feet were kicked apart. He was pushed forward, a blow in the small of his back and his fingers took his weight against a concrete wall, and when his feet wriggled closer to the wall to relieve the weight the boots hacked at his ankles to drive them back. His weight was between his toes and his fingers. A screeching sound filled his ears. He was a taxi-driver. The sound blasted into him, penetrated his skull and his mind. He was Fawzi al-Ateh. He could not escape the noise and the pain grew in his fingers and toes. The sound blistered him, but again and again he repeated silent words that alone could save him. He fought the wail of the noise. He did not know for how many hours he stood against the wall.

Then silence.

Then a new voice drawled, 'All right, hand him over.'

He tried to fall hut hands caught his overalls and he was propelled back up, and he took the weight again on his toes and fingers and his bladder again burst.

'Give me your name.' The demand was in English. He felt each grain of the concrete against his fingertips. He bit his tongue.

'I said, give me your name.' Arabic. He closed his eyes behind the blindfold and bit harder on his tongue.

'What is your name?' Accented Pashto, as if from a classroom, not spoken with the softness of the people he had known.

'I am Fawzi al-Ateh.'

'What is your occupation?'

'Taxi-driver.'

'Where are you from?'

He named the village, the town, the province. The Pashto of the questions was poorly phrased, as if the interrogator had learned the basic language on a brief intensive course. A little of the fear was lost. Everything he had learned in the van, he told. He stumbled through his answers. A pause. He heard water poured into a glass, then it was drunk.

The voice said, the same drawled English: 'You never know, with these ragheads, whether they're lying through their teeth or whether they're snivelling the truth. Give him another dance, and I'll call him back – give him some more. Victim of circumstance or a killer – how do I know? God, get me a beer.'

A door closed. The noise started again. At least twice he fell, and each time he was hoisted up, and he could smell the breath and the sweat on the men who lifted him and threw him back against the wall. The noise wailed around him and he coidd not shut it out.

A second time, the questions were asked. They were in Pashto, and he cherished the little victory.

Slumped, held up by their fists, unable to swing his shackled legs, he was taken back to his cage. He had told his whole story. He was Fawzi al-Ateh, taxi-driver, he had been driving at night and alone when his combi-van had been seized by armed men. He had never seen those men before. He had driven them at gunpoint. If they had not been so tired or if they had known that part of the province, they would have killed him and driven themselves.

The cage door was opened and he fell inside. Some had shivered, some had huddled at the back of the cage, some had wept and some had cried for a loved one… Caleb lay on the mattress and slept.

Because, for the first time, he had lost a little of the fear and was able to sleep.

The white-painted Cessna, twin engines, circled once then levelled out for a slow approach.

Marty watched it yaw in the headwind. The same wind, blowing in his hair, threw up a screen of sand from the edges of the runway.

Everything the pilot had told him on the transporter was seared in his memory, though he didn't believe the Air Force flier would have realized how deeply he'd drunk in the information. Cross-winds, heat making a density-altitude barrier, and upper turbulence had all played in his mind overnight; he'd barely slept. Lizzy-Jo had: she didn't take responsibility for keeping First Lady and Carnival Girl up and operational. Lizzy-Jo was back in the Ground Control Station, would be checking out the camera and satellite systems after the journey. Behind him, he could hear George Khoo lecturing the ground crew under the slung tarpaulins as the wings were bolted back on the fuselages of his girls. He watched the landing, saw the Cessna waver before it set down. Here, at this oil dump, he would have no wise head to feed off when he flew the girls. At Nellis or at Bagram there had always been a veteran pilot to take into a corner and quiz about conditions. That he had been awake in the night was the mark of his anxiety. The Cessna taxied.

He went to the door of the Ground Control Station. He rapped the door.

'Lizzy-Jo – the head honcho's down.'

A man climbed awkwardly from the Cessna's hatch. He was big, bloated, and his shirt-tail flapped out of his trousers in the wind. He was unshaven, was mopping his forehead already in the few short yards he had walked across the Tarmac, and was clinging to a briefcase, as if it held his life savings, holding it against his chest. He came towards the little ghetto of tents, awnings and vehicles that George Khoo had made in the night at the extreme end of the runway.

George worked the men hard, and the noise had disturbed Marty nearly as much as the worries about flying conditions.

'You Marty?'

'Yup, that's me, sir.'

The man looked at him quizzically. It wasn't said, but the man gave him the feeling that he had expected Marty, the pilot, to be ten years older, or fifteen – not looking like a student just out of high school; it was the way he'd been looked at by the other Agency guys and the Air Force men when he'd first pitched down at Bagram. He was getting used to it, but it still annoyed him.

'I'm Juan Gonsalves – God, flying's a bitch. We were tossed around like rats in a sack. Wish I could do your sort of flying.'

'What is my sort of flying, sir?'

'Just sat in a cabin, air-conditioned – no air-pockets and no turbulence… Hey, I'm not suggestin' you don't do the real thing.

Look, where can we talk, where are there no ears? I mean no ears.'

'There's people at Ground Control. Back in the tents, there's people sleeping, sir. I'd say there's no ears right here, sir.'

Marty waved expansively around him. They were a hundred yards from the tents and the awning shelters where the wings of First Lady and Carnival Girl were going on to the fuselages. The sun was high, at the top, and his shadow was around his feet. Lizzy-Jo came out, hopped down the steps. He introduced her and Gonsalves broke off from the mopping to shake her hand, then took a map from his briefcase, spread it out on the dirt and put small stones on the corners.

'You been in this sort of heat before, Marty?'

'No, sir.'

'We're lookin' at one hundred and twenty degrees. Christ, do you know what pisses me off, Marty, more than the heat?'

'No, sir.'

'It's being called "sir". Call me Juan. I may not be prettier than you, son, but I am your superior. Funny thing is that great temple, our mutual employer, has given you a job that I can't do, and me a job that you can't do… so today, that makes us about equal. Nice to meet you, Marty, and how d'ya do, Lizzy-Jo? What else you need to know about me is that the love of my life is Teresa and our kids, and the hate of my life is Al Qaeda. I'd like to say I live and sleep Teresa and the kids, but I don't. I live and sleep Al Qaeda. Each time we nail one of those A-rabs, I get a hard-on… Nothing personal, you know, it's not that anything has happened to anyone I know, but it's the obsession that rules me. What I say to anyone who raises an eyebrow, thinks I'm a freakin' lunatic, is "If we don't throttle that organization right now, then we'll sure as shit end up on our backs with their boots on our throats," that's what I say.'

Marty gaped at the intensity. The sweat now ran on the man's face and he squinted as the sun came back up off the dirt and the map.

His thinning hair was plastered wet. Gonsalves pressed on: 'I am a technophobe and an intelligence officer. I do not own a power drill but I understand the cell-system intricacies of Al Qaeda. In my house, Teresa has to change the lightbulbs, but I know the way the mind of A1 Qaeda works. And don't ever try to blind me with the science of your machines. I don't care… Let's do the map.'

Marty saw that the nails were short but still had dirt under them, and the first two fingers of the right hand were nicotine-stained. The hand splayed out and passed over the map of the southern quarter of Saudi Arabia.

'What I predict, and here's where I'm gonna stick my neck out, is that this is the next big war zone. Forget Afghanistan, most particularly forget the stuff in Iraq, you're looking at the new ballpark.

It is the Rub' al Khali, which is the Arabic for "Empty Quarter" – it is what the Bedouin simply know as "the Sands". It's bigger than you or I can comprehend, amigo, it is as hostile as anywhere on the good Lord's Earth… You see, it's where I'd crawl to if I'd taken a bad punch and was down and the count had started, except I'm going to beat the count, and I want the bell, I need to hunker down in my corner and get my breath and focus. I'd go to the Rub' al KhaTi. It's where I'd be, and I'm confident I know their minds… Believe me, it's where they are, and I bet my shirt on it.'

He grimaced.

'I don't take everyone at Langley along with me. They still want paratroops and mountain forces and Rangers tramping in the Pakistan tribal lands and the Afghan mountains, but I say that's history. What I say is, they're right here right now. They are wounded, hurt, as dangerous as a maimed bear. They are supplied by couriers, they have no phones and no electronics… And do you think I can call on the Saudis for help? Hell, no. First off, they're suspicious of anyone telling them what to do, second, they're not capable of doing it, third, man, they're so insecure, I tell them nothing and they tell me nothing… Well, I beat on the temple's door often enough for the Langley people to get freakin' sick of me, you know, they want to shut me up. Get me nice and quiet, so they sent you.'

'What are we looking for?' Lizzy-Jo was subdued and staring at the expanse of the map now covered by a film of sand.

'Wish I knew.'

Marty said, 'We have to know what we're looking for. It's one mother of a playing field, more map boxes than we've ever tried to cover. We have to know.'

Age, tiredness seemed to lodge on Gonsalves' face. Marty craned to hear him better. He spoke as if he knew what he said was inadequate. 'Well, not wheels… not big groups in caravans… not on roads because there aren't any – there's only one track that goes nowhere. .. Small groups, maybe three or four guys and three or four camels. .. out where nothing exists… A pinhead in a dump truck of dirt. .. Maybe the camels are carrying gear, maybe they aren't. People where they shouldn't be. This is not a refuge for low-life but for the leadership – they must send and receive messages and retain control. Only a very valued few will be summoned to their hole in the ground, people they need to see… Can't help any more than that.'

Lizzy-Jo said, 'We'll give it our best shot.'

He pushed himself up and shook the sand off the map, then folded it and made a mess of that, gave it to Marty. He told them what their cover would be, and he said he'd get down again as soon as was possible but meantime he'd speak each day. Gonsalves started to walk back to the Cessna, his head down, as if he knew he'd failed to convince. He stopped. 'It's good, this equipment you've got?' He waved his arm airily at the birds under the awnings.

Marty said, 'We got the best. If they're out there then we're gonna find them, sir.'

Lizzy-Jo said, 'Our two, First Lady and Carnival Girl, are the oldest UAVs the Agency has deployed. They're nearly ready for a museum.

This cries out for Global Hawk or for an RQ-4. We've got MQ-1 – that's the way it is.'

Marty savaged her with his glance.

Gonsalves didn't pause, ripped at him with his hoarse voice: 'But you've brought Hellfire?'

Marty nodded. 'Yes, we've brought Hellfire.'

'Then let's hope you get to use i t… Any last questions?'

Marty said softly, 'What sort of guy do you think is gonna come to this shit hole?'

'The man they need. The man that can hurt us most, with gear.'

Gonsalves went to the Cessna, clinging to his briefcase. They watched the plane take off and fly away low over the sands that were without end. Neither Marty nor Lizzy-Jo spoke. There didn't seem anything sensible to say. Then she punched his arm and said she'd go make some coffee.

The new idea of the director general, the new broom, was to expose senior officers at the London headquarters building of the Security Service to external opinions and to encourage more lateral thinking.

Michael Lovejoy sat in the auditorium's back row; he always chose a back row when he had not volunteered. Behind his folded newspaper, his study of the crossword interrupted, he yawned – but he listened as he scanned the clues.

The psychologist, from a north-east English university, gripped the lectern tightly. 'What we have to understand – a disturbing and unwelcome truth but nevertheless a truth – is that terrorist leaders have a better understanding of "profiling" than the people charged with countering political violence. On your side, ladies and gentlemen, you look for obvious and naive stereotyping – not so with your opposition. They – in particular Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants

– have refined a skill in identifying young men of varying social backgrounds and economic advantage who are prepared to make supreme sacrifices for a cause. They look for men who may be willing to die, may want to die as a price for the attack's success, but whether suicidal or not will drive home that attack. We are fond of using the word "brainwashed" about our enemy. It is inappropriate and erroneous. They are patient and work by gradual progression to the stage where a man is prepared to crash an air-liner into a public building, plant a bomb in a crowded concourse, carry a suitcase filled with explosives and lethal chemicals or microbes into the heart of a city. They lead him towards that goal. They do not hurry. They set ever greater hurdles for him to climb – and all the time he is wrapped in the familial culture. Isolated in training camps or in a wilderness of desolation, he loses contact with any world other than that which is close to him. The family becomes the only society he knows, and he will develop intense pride in that association. They are better at spotting the right man than you are.'

There was a little sucking intake of breath in front of Lovejoy. He was an old hand with the Service. Insults no longer disturbed him.

The psychologist had his interest – and fifteen down, 'The patrician of Coriolanus', eight letters, went unanswered. It was only the newspaper's quick crossword.

'You look upon the terrorist groups, and Al Qaeda specifically, as parasites that lure young men into their ranks. You have the catch-all word of "loner". I imagine you search through your Special Branch files looking for these "loners". Friendless and inadequate boys, who are impressionable, drifters, and therefore may easily be drawn towards commitment to terrorist outrages, are your targets. Have you done well? I don't think so… Al Qaeda has stood a quantum leap in front of you. "Loners" may be satisfactory as foot-soldiers, good enough to wash the plates in Afghanistan, but quite inappropriate for the war that I guarantee stretches for years ahead of you. Look for a simple stereotype and, please believe me, you will fail.'

The psychologist paused, gazed balefully at his audience, then sipped from the glass of water on the table beside the lectern.

Lovejoy imagined irritated frowns settling on the foreheads of the younger generation who had taken forward seats: the profiling of loners was taught as a creed in D Branch. He thought he rather liked the cut of the academic.

'I've taken up most of your lunch-hour, and I know you're busy people, but may I leave you with a final couple of thoughts? A retired soldier recently wrote to me and his notepaper was headed, along with his address, "A beaten path is for beaten men." The stereotype of the "loner" is a beaten path, and if you follow it you will be the beaten men and the beaten women. I urge you to look elsewhere.

Where? For quality, for ability, for the best – because it is those young men that the lieutenants of bin Laden search for. Imagine, also, the excitement of being a part of that select fugitive family, picture the personal self-esteem, conjure up a sense of the adventure and purpose. No, no, I promise you, the young man who can damage us, wound us to the quick, revels in that excitement – his true religion – and in the adventure that life brings him. Thank you.'

As quiet, polite applause rippled in front of him, Lovejoy wrote

'Menenius' in fifteen down.

The watercourse was far behind them. They had climbed and scrambled up a steeper slope and now, on the summit, the wind whipped them and their shadows splayed out beyond. The sun sank.

Fahd prayed. He cried out, as if for help, and his eyes were closed, as if the view ahead overwhelmed him. The Saudi was tall and gangling and he seemed to plead to his God, as if God alone could save him. Beside him, the guide knelt, the boy at his side. Tommy made no pretence of worship but had his old army boots off, and his socks, and massaged his feet. He moaned. Hosni did not pray but sat on a rock by the camels, who shredded the feebly growing thornbushes. Caleb sat close to the Egyptian and thought he had not heard such passion in prayer since the first days at X-Ray and Delta when despair was greatest.

He gazed in front of him.

'How far do we go?'

'Only the guide knows – perhaps a thousand kilometres.'

Caleb said, 'It's late to ask it, but why don't we drive?'

'Where there are roads for a vehicle, there are blocks and checks.

The military has blocks and checks… They wait for us, for you, those who have called us, in a place of death where there are no roads, no eyes to watch for us. It is a place of death but also a place of dreamers and fools.'

'Are you a dreamer?'

Hosni said, in a murmur, 'I think I am a fool.'

The guide collected together the camels, and Tommy hurriedly pulled on his socks and his boots. They went down the hill's reverse slope, past a cairn of stones that was the border. Ahead of them, limitless, stretching towards dusk's infinity, was the desert that was made red gold by the sun. Caleb saw the Empty Quarter, where his family waited for him.