THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER (22 page)

Twenty minutes later, Eddie Wroughton left the plateau, came back along the ledge, then started the descent to the riverbed. To break his fall, he snatched at the little bushes, slid on his backside in an avalanche of dust and stones. Those who had bought camels from a farmer had not looked up and spied a goat high above them. His suit jacket was torn at the elbows, his trousers at the knees and seat.

It mattered nothing. The boy had seen the men and their voices had carried faintly to him. They had been strangers. The camels had waited in the riverbed and had dropped their dung while an argument had raged over the price of the three more camels needed to move boxes, six boxes. Ten of the twenty minutes with the boy were taken with his questioning, so softly done, over the size, shape and colour of the boxes. Five of the twenty minutes concerned the detail of the features and physique of the young man who had closed the negotiations.

Unrecognizable to those who knew him, unwashed and his clothes not changed, Eddie Wroughton boarded the last flight of the day out of Muscat. At the back of a near-empty aircraft, he thought of the centuries-old trail that had been the route of the frankincense traders half a millennium before. His pencil had traced a line beyond the watercourse, over the hills, into the Empty Quarter. Nine camels,- a guide and his son, four men and six crates of weapons were now on the trail. He had much to be cheerful about, but pride of place went to the boy's description of a young man unlike any Arab he had seen before.

On the screen, the image of the Land Rover flashed for a moment, and was gone; then the camera was tracking over sand again.

Lizzy-Jo didn't point out the Land Rover, painted blue with two vivid green stripes running diagonally up its sides and over its roof.

Marty was doing a banking left turn. She did not want to disturb him while he made the manoeuvres to bring
First Lady
on to the line-up for landing. She'd been in the Land Rover, been driven from the shop to the club in it - where she'd been lectured about meteorites; Lizzy-Jo grimaced. Marty was hunched over his stick, and his eyes, magnified by the thickness of his lenses, squinted in concentration.

The former Air Force pilots for whom she'd done sensor work in her first days with the Agency had flown the newer Predator MQ-ls like they'd have driven cars on a quiet country road up-state, but Marty always had the look on him that it was life or death.

He made a good landing.

She always clapped when he brought
First Lady
or
Carnival Girl
down. It was her routine, had been since the first time they'd flown together out of Bagram. The sound of her clapping reverberated in the Ground Control Station. He blushed, as he had the first time. She reached over and squeezed his upper shoulder, as if she could loosen the tensed muscles.

He taxied her back. He cut the pusher engine. They had flown
First
Lady
for eight hours, covering some six hundred nautical miles. The camera had photographed sand and more sand and nothing but sand: flat sand, steep sand and sloping sand. On the workbench, between them, was the big map with the squares on it and she put a Chinagraph cross over two more. There were six squares now with crosses on them, and ninety-four without. The big man from the embassy had talked of thousands of flying map boxes, but that was because he did not understand the Predator's capability. Lizzy-Jo had divided the desert into a hundred squares. Her eyes ached from gazing at the screen. She stood and arched her back.

She opened the trailer door. The heat blasted into the air-conditioned interior. It blanketed her, seemed to suck the life from her. A plastic bag lay, roasted, on the step. None of the ground crew was permitted entry to the trailer. She looked inside, then let out a little whoop of gratitude, and thought of the Land Rover the camera had seen. She murmured her thanks - then ran for the toilet.

Five minutes later, she wandered back towards the trailer. She passed the awning where George and his team already had the engine cowling off
First Lady.
He called to her: 'How did she go?'

'Good.'

'No thrust problem?'

Marty was on the top step at the trailer door and answered for her:

'No problem, she was sweet. Eight hours today, twelve or thirteen tomorrow - don't reckon Lizzy-Jo and I can take more than that.'

Lizzy-Jo said, 'Yes, we can do twelve or thirteen tomorrow, then maybe take
Carnival Girl
up the day after and—'

George shook his head decisively. 'Not tomorrow, not thirteen hours or one. The forecast's a fucker. You're not going anywhere tomorrow. Better believe it - nowhere.'

She and Marty went to the awning. The forecast printout was given to them. The orders were strict, about as strict as they could get: a Predator should not be hazarded in extreme weather conditions unless for vital operational necessity. There was no argument.

She was perplexed. She thought of the Land Rover picked up by the camera as it headed away from the Shaybah compound and into the emptiness. She held the package of tampons under her arm and murmured to herself, 'If the forecast was that bad, why'd you think she'd be driving off into that nowhere?'

The camel roared and swung its neck. Caleb was behind Tommy, who was against the camel's flank, as if clinging to its body's shadow. The camel's movement threw Tommy clear and water spilled from his mouth.

More water cascaded on to the flank of the camel. Its great tongue flailed to catch the drops. Ghaffur shrieked for his father. Rashid ran back, the camel snorted and Tommy crouched down.

The truth came to Caleb. The Iraqi had not walked beside the camel for its shade: he was there because his head was against a goatskin of water. They were all fighting exhaustion: all their heads were down, their feet and the camels' plodded. They knew nothing of the water being stolen, but the camel had smelt it. Perhaps, as Tommy sucked at the neck of the skin holding the water, a little had dribbled from his mouth on to the camel's flank. For days the animal had not drunk, was slowly using up its reserves from the well at the start of the Sands. Water, clear, clean crystals of it, fell to the sand.

Enough for one cup, or two, then for three cups and more .. . The camel's neck was arched round as its tongue tried in desperation to reach the drops.

Rashid plugged the skin's neck, then retied the loosened thong round it.

He said nothing, but his gaze on the Iraqi confirmed that Tommy was condemned.

Caleb thought at least two days' water had been lost from the slack skin. The sight of it had worsened the dryness in his throat.

At the night stop, the Iraqi sat away from them. Only the boy went to him with food, uncooked bread because there were no roots for a fire, and the measured cup of water, but Fahd and Hosni sat with their backs to him.

As the darkness fell, Caleb crawled away from the others, went to Tommy and sat beside him. His voice croaked, 'You were called a

"murderer of the faithful". Who did you kill?'

There was defiance, almost pride. 'I was the hangman. At the Abu Ghraib gaol, the gallows were mine. I could hang three men at a time, or three women. First I was the assistant, then I was the hangman, then I was the supervisor. I hanged the principals of the Shi'a who rebelled in 1991, and I hanged the agents of America in the north in 1996. I hanged men or women who were spies, who plotted against the regime, who told jokes that mocked the President. I could hang them so that death was instant, or hang them so that death was slow it depended on the order I was given. There was always a note on the execution order that said how it was to be. The scaffold was my place, it was where I worked. In the morning I would dress in a clean uniform, always clean and pressed, and my driver would take me to the prison. Some days I was idle, some days I was busy. At the end of each day I went home to my wife and my children.'

The voice softened, a little of its guttural quality left it.

'After I had hanged the Kurds who followed the CIA's instructions, in 1996, I left the Abu Ghraib, the prison in Mosul and the prison in Basra, and I was given a new posting. I became a security officer for the Republican Guard's Nebuchadnezzar Division. I gave up my ropes, my pinions and my hoods, left them to the men I had trained as my assistants. In the division, I was the officer who said nothing and heard everything. If there was doubt about a man's loyalty, I sent him to those men who had been my assistants. Then came the war. Then came Tommy Franks. Then came the disaster. I fled. I took my wife and my children and drove them by back tracks to the Syrian border. I was one of the first to go. Later the route was closed. Now my wife lives in a two-roomed apartment at Aleppo, and my children, and they have citizenship, and they will never see me, or talk of me, again. If I had stayed in Iraq, if the Shi'a or the Kurds, or the families of officers and guards in the Nebuchadnezzar Division had caught me, I would have been hanged from a lamp-post or from a tree.'

The voice quavered.

'Don't have the arrogance to judge me. I looked into the eyes of men, put the hood on them, the rope, worked the lever. Could you?

Can you?
I don't know at what time or in what place you will look into a man's eyes, or a woman's, or a child's, and pull a lever. It is why you are chosen . . . It is why you walk with us in this God-fuck place, in secrecy so that your safety is preserved. If you judge me, then you must judge yourself. I will go back to Iraq and kill Americans, a few . .. You will look into hundreds of eyes, perhaps thousands of eyes, the chosen man . . .'

The voice dropped. The defiance and pride had fled.

'Thank you for sitting with me.'

It hissed on to them, swept in with a sudden force that devastated them.

The storm burst over the dune wall beyond the caravan's pitched camp. In the dawn's half-light, the wind surged over the rim. The warning of its coming was brief, a few seconds, then it hit them.

Caleb was outside his tent, had slept only fitfully, was stretching and massaging his leg and shoulder muscles, facing the first peep of the rising sun, when he heard the whistle of sound, as if a tyre's valve was released. He turned. The cloud of sand careered over the dune and buffeted him. He rocked, could not stand, sank to his knees. For a moment he stared at the cloud that followed in the wind's wake, then the grains were in his mouth and nose, and pierced open his eyes. If he had not already been down on his knees, he would have been felled by the wind. The noise deafened him. The sand scraped the skin on his upper cheeks and round his eyes, his wrists and

.ankles, and ripped at his robe. It came in waves that seemed to belt the breath out of him. Caleb twisted away from it and snatched at the loose sand to prevent himself being carried away by the gale.

A tent went past him, chased by bedding.

He heard the screaming of the Saudi.

The camels, hobbled, struggled to escape the wind's force but could not.

Another tent followed the first. Its canopy was caught, and it floated, then sank, raced over the sand's surface, was lifted again and ripped. After the bedding went the cooking pot and plates, the mugs from which they drank water, and clothing. A rucksack ran with the wind.

Through slitted eyes, Caleb watched the destruction of the overnight camp as the pieces billowed away from him. Tommy howled abuse at Rashid. 'You are a fool, an idiot. Did you not know it was coming? Were you not paid to know?'

The camels tried to flee the gale and the thickening cloud now blotting out the sun. Caleb heard their shrill bellowing. They could not run: their hobble ropes held them. They skipped, fell, rolled, and their long legs thrashed before they could stand again. Watching them, Caleb realized the scale of the catastrophe that had hit the caravan. While the others had still slept, Rashid and Ghaffur had begun loading the camels. Some had the crates already fastened to their backs, others had the water bags and food sacks roped to their flanks.

Caleb forced himself up, was tossed forward and tumbled, then crawled towards the two shadowed figures in front of him going in wavering strides after the camels.

Without the water they were lost. Bones in the sand. Without the camels they were lost. Bent double, Rashid and Ghaffur were in pursuit of the camels. On his hands and knees Caleb followed them.

Sometimes the cloud of whipped sand was too dense for him to see them. Sometimes he could see them clearly, father and his son, staggering after the camels that carried the water bags. The camels that carried the crates were ignored. Water was the lifeblood of travellers in the desert. Whenever he stood, thrust himself up, Caleb was immediately tossed down on to his face, and ate the sand grains.

He called out to them that he was coming, following, but the distance between them and him widened.

The wind came with a new force, stronger, hitting harder. Its cry blasted at his ears, and the grains scoured his body. He did not know for how long he crawled. He could no longer see Rashid and Ghaffur, or the scattered camels. The darkness spread over him. The only light in his mind was that of the whitened bones of a camel's ribcage.

It was gone as suddenly as it had come. His eyes were closed, the sand was loose under his hands and knees. His robe fell back over his buttocks and thighs. The sun, as harsh as on any day before, beat on his face and eyelids.

Caleb wiped the sand from his eyes. He stood and was not felled by the wind. The sun blazed at him. The cloud was in the far distance.

Stone-faced, eyes glinting in anger, Rashid came towards him leading three camels, with two more following. Away to the guide's right, the boy brought more. Two water bags, deflated and empty, lay in Caleb's path. He saw Ghaffur bend and pick up another, heard the triumphant cry that signalled that the binding on the neck had held.

Caleb called after Rashid, 'How much have we lost?'

There was a snarl in the reply pitched over the guide's shoulder:

'Too much. We have lost too much.'

The storm hovered at the horizon.