THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER (19 page)

To his mind, rebellion was alive in the Kingdom and soon, pray God, the whole stinking edifice would come down. Bart had always been good at learning lines but, then, his talent was to play a part -

the part of a liar. Against the weeping anger of the widow he was able to recite in his mind, perfect recall: 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: / Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' The towers of glass and concrete, airports and luxury hotels, wide highways and people of such mind-numbing arrogance were floating on oil, and the edifice was crumbling. A bomb here and a shooting there, work for the executioner in Chop Chop Square, a frisson of fear eddying into the palaces. Each time he read of, or heard of, an atrocity a little raw excitement coursed in Bart. 'Round the decay / Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, / The lone and level sands stretch far away.' He hoped, damn it, that he would still be there to see the decay come to fruition, be able to scent it.

'His mother's on the flight tonight. What am I going to tell her? If her precious son hadn't been so bloody mean to me, his wife, he'd still be alive. Do I tell her that?'

Tomorrow would be worse for the widow. She would have his mother there, organizing her, and she would have her guilt. Post-traumatic stress syndrome would crucify her with guilt. If she had not wanted the bloody necklace, her husband would be alive, her kids would have a father. The guilt would churn like a whirlwind in her mind - poor little cow. Ann had never felt guilt, even when she had brought him to his knees. He went into the kitchen, where a maid cowered, poured a glass of water and carried it back into the room. The matriarch slipped a tablet into Melanie Garnett's mouth, then gave her the glass.

Bart waited until she was quieter, then left. Out in the compound, spied on by the neighbours, the sliver of independence deserted him.

He walked to his car, preparing what he would say to Eddie Wroughton. He was in fear of Wroughton, and knew it. He flopped into the back of the car and the driver took him away. He was as pliant as putty, and he knew no route for escape, no track that could free him.

He fumed, but his experience of recent years had taught Eddie Wroughton to mask fury. Had he shouted abuse at the Omani policeman, he would have lost him.

He had been driven a hundred kilometres or so west of the capital to Ad Dari, a trading town
en route
to the interior. He should have been at the police station, in an interrogation room. Instead, he was shivering - with anger and from the cold - in the refrigeration room of the hospital mortuary. The British staffer in Muscat city was green, so lacking in experience with the Secret Intelligence Service that Wroughton - on hearing of the arrest - had caught the first available flight from Riyadh.

The man he should have been questioning, with relish and vigour, was now a corpse, frozen solid. Death had come in a spasm of pain that the refrigeration plant had preserved. The attendants hadn't even closed the man's eyes, which were wide and staring.

'Cardiac arrest, there was nothing we could do,' the Omani intoned.

Yes, there bloody well was. He could have been properly searched on arrest, had goons in his cell and his hands manacled behind his back.

T h e autopsy will be tomorrow,' the staffer intoned emptily, like he thought it was his failure. 'Don't know what they'll find.'

Wroughton could have reeled off a list of poisons, right for self-administration, that were quick but painful while they did their work.

He turned away. He had no more need to look down at the trolley and the body. The man was late fifties, or perhaps early sixties, but his age would be confirmed over coffee in the policeman's office. His name and occupation were paramount, particularly the occupation, which had brought Wroughton scurrying off the plane. His last sight of the man was his fat fingers and the width of the two gold rings, one on each hand, over which the flesh bulged.

They walked along the corridor towards an office.

'It was a rumour, Mr Wroughton, from information we received.

We acted on it immediately,' the police officer said, ingratiating and ashamed. 'We heard that this prominent
hawaldar
had travelled a few days ago up-country. He was a wealthy man, prominent in his trade, and he had gone to a place where there is only poverty. We said, and I discussed this with your young colleague, that he must be arrested immediately.'

The staffer flinched because now the blame was shared . . .

Wroughton understood. The western members of the Financial Action Task Force regularly and predictably targeted the Gulf states for the movement of money that benefited Al Qaeda. There had been a gesture of action, and the action had led to catastrophe. The
hazval
system was the nightmare, money moving without paper or electronic trace. And big sums were not needed - an investment of $350,000, wisely spent on flying lessons, simulators and cheap motels, would cost the Americans $200 billion, for the rebuilding of the Twin Towers and the economic losses post the hijackings. What was required was money to follow, to track. Breaking into the
hawal
networks was as big a priority as existed in Eddie Wroughton's life -

and the man was dead, the bastard was a stiff. Guilt was proven. A man who took a pill after only cursory questioning was a man harbouring a big secret, a man who would die rather than face in-depth interrogation.

'I'm sure you did the right thing,' Wroughton said, without charity.

There would, of course, be mobile and landline telephone records to work on, but he doubted they would show up anything beyond inconsequential dealings.

They sat. The first coffee was poured into a thimble cup. He sensed a nervous energy building in the staffer. They talked of the
hawaldar'
s connections, his links, they hacked at his Special Branch file . . . It was nearly an hour before the staffer's energy burst out.

'There is something else you should know, Mr Wroughton. An American Navy helicopter came in here recently with a CasEvac. A crewman needed facilities they didn't have on board the carrier. I met the navigator off the helicopter. He just told a silly story - we were talking smuggling. You know, cigarettes going from here to Iranian fishing villages - fast speedboats. Maybe it wasn't much of a story.'

'Well, if it's "silly", keep it short, please.'

'Yes, of course. The navigator explained how they regularly track the speedboats, keep them on radar - because of suicide attacks.

They were following this formation when it broke. One speedboat detached from the main group and took a line that was going to bring it close to the carrier. The navigator's helicopter was put on immediate intervention alert. It was all armed up, missiles live for firing. They didn't have to take off. The single speedboat headed away, and they tracked it. It went right in to the Omani coast, then up the shoreline and rejoined the others. On the return trip there was the same number of them as with the original formation. Have I explained that? Well, it was the day before the rumour put the money-lender up-country, where there was nothing for him that we can identify. I thought you ought to know.'

Wroughton didn't thank him, did not praise him. He hid the increased pulse beat in his heart.

He asked for a map. It was spread across the table. He asked where the speedboat from Iran had hit the Omani coast, and he made a cross at that point with his pencil. Then he asked where rumour had put the
hawaldar
up-country, and he made a second mark. Could they, please, bring him a ruler? When the ruler was given him, Wroughton made a line that linked the coast and a road junction, took the line on and traced it right to the Saudi border.

He was in a good humour. The corpse and the frustrations were forgotten. He told the police officer and his staffer what he wanted from the morning, and at what time they should leave. In the privacy of his hotel room, Wroughton would manage a large drink, damn sure, he would study the map and dream of what the line told him.

The guide, Rashid, had set a forced pace. Caleb had thought, when they came to the dune wall, rising in front of them, an almost sheer slope, that they would rest there for the night. The sun was low, the half-light treacherous. Soft-spoken, but harshly, Rashid gave his orders. His son sulked, but obeyed. Only Tommy was the exception, but for this one evening only. The camels were unloaded. The waterskins and the crates were lifted down from them. Two at a time, Rashid led the camels up the near vertical slope with their hoofs kicking for, and failing to find, a grip, and Tommy scrambled after him on hands and knees.

Fahd carried waterskins. Hosni struggled with food pouches.

One at a time, Caleb and the boy took the boxes. With ropes, they dragged them to the dune's ridge line, gasped for air, were glowered at by Rashid and went back down for more. There was no encouragement from Rashid, only contempt at his thin and bloodless lips.

Three times, Caleb heaved a box to the ridge, then slid back down the slope. The last time he went there were no more boxes at the base of the dune, but Hosni was there with the last two of the food pouches.

He did not think Hosni saw him until he was beside him. Caleb lifted the last two pouches on to his shoulder and snatched at Hosni's hand, put it against the belt of his robe and felt the fingers tighten.

They went up together - it was family, they were brothers. He would not have done it for Fahd, or for Tommy, only for the Egyptian.

Twice, on the last climb, the dune's sand cascaded away from under his toes and he fell back, cannoned into Hosni and felled him. Twice he picked himself up, each time realizing that the fingers still gripped his belt, and they went back up. He took Hosni to the ridge.

He flopped, and Hosni collapsed beside him. Only a quarter of the sun was left and the desert, darkening, stretched away beneath them, below, at the base of the gentler slope of the dune, Tommy held a tangle of the camels' reins, and Rashid was loading the boxes on to their backs.

They started down.

Rashid, again, set the pace.

The boy, Ghaffur, was beside Caleb. Caleb walked, dead, saw nothing. He did not know from where the boy found the cheerful laughter.

'Look, look.'

The boy had hold of his sleeve, tugged it for attention, then pointed.

Thirty yards from where they walked, to his left Caleb saw the crazily formed white shapes. In the half-light, he could not identify them, but the boy dragged on his arm and led him from the path made by the camels' hoofs.

'You see them? Yes, you do.'

He could make out the backbones, skulls and ribcages, half buried in the sand. The leg bones were covered where the sand had drifted, but the four sets of bones were clear. Flattened empty skins lay on the ribcages, the same size as those holding water that Fahd had carried up the dune. The black leather of the skins lay on the bones'

whiteness.

'Shall we find the bones of the men?'

'No.' Caleb pulled himself free of the boy's hand.

'If the camels died, the men died - don't you want to find them?'

'No,' Caleb grunted over his shoulder.

'After the camels died, the men would have finished their water.

At first they would have hoped another traveller would find them.

But when the water was finished, and no traveller came, the thirst would have destroyed them and they would have tried to walk away. Their bones will be near here.'

Against his instinct, Caleb turned. The darkness was coming fast, but the bones were highlighted.

He heard his own voice, breathy, anxious. 'Do we have enough water?'

'Only God knows.'

They hurried to catch up; the light of a small fire guided them when they could no longer see the camels' trail. Caleb felt the pain in every joint of his body. He sank down. Water was passed to him, his measured share. He drank it down, the last drop, then scraped his tongue round the mug's sides. He imagined travellers who had finished their water and on whom the sun had blazed. Every joint of his body was alive with pain.

He waited to be fed, huddled by the fire under which the bread cooked, and felt the cold settling on him.

The heat drained life, energy, from Caleb. The sun was not yet high but still scorched him. Rashid made no allowance for weakness, offered no encouragement, no reassurance, but he had slowed the pace. Even Ghaffur had lost the cheerfulness and stayed close to his father. The camels trudged on but the spring in their stride was gone.

Tommy preferred to walk in a camel's shadow rather than ride and be unprotected from the sun.

An hour back, they had passed a little square of baked black sand

- where earlier travellers had made a fire - but there was no trail of hoofprints or footmarks, no sign of when they had been there, a week or a year before.

Caleb retched, and dizziness forced him to cling to the straps holding the boxes on to the camel's side. He thought he would fall.

He was the back-marker. If he fell, would any of them know?

Would they walk on and not realize he had fallen? They did not look back. The camels would not have cried out if he had fallen. Two more hours, at least, before the stop for the
dhuhr
prayers. Each step was harder, each stride fractionally shorter. The sun, rising, towered over him.

Abruptly, he was lifted.

The sand was caked round his eyes, hard like concrete from the tears, but he saw it.

Away to his left, level with him, was a patch of green. Living, luscious, wet green confronted him. It seemed to call to Caleb. If he let go of the strap, started out over the sand, went to the left of the struggling column, kept going, then the green and the coolness of it would be closer. He heard the ripple of water falling, and smelt it, and he saw the waving of branches heavy and bowed by leaves . . .

It was not Afghanistan. In his mind he saw jumping, dancing pictures. He clutched the strap and his head rolled. The green of a park and the shrieks of kids kicking a ball, a fountain of old stone where the water spiralled up then fell back into a pool filled with the debris of potato-crisp packets and . .. Caleb gripped the plastic bracelet, held it so tightly that his fingers hurt with the pressure against its edges. As he squeezed his bracelet, he closed his eyes and the sand's crust pricked them. He shut it out. There had been a green grass park where the kids played football in the rain; there had been a fountain to an old queen on whose head and crown the pigeons crapped, and the water from the fountain came down on a filthy pool. He obliterated it. Only when the memory of the park and the fountain were gone did Caleb loosen his hold on the bracelet and open his eyes.