1998 or 1999 for a period of training and planning. And you managed to get a copy of one of those pictures. You were there. I’m right, aren’t I?’
‘You’re forgetting that I’m a Shi’ite.’ He said evenly. ‘The people in Afghanistan were all Sunni Muslims, like Karim.’
‘That’s a detail. The point about your war is that it’s not really about religious practice, despite all that bullshit about jihad; it’s about the inequalities between the West and Islam. That’s what you’re fighting against, although the foot soldiers like Khan really have no notion of this. You don’t believe it’s a religious war any more than I do. It’s about economics.’
‘You’re wrong,’ he said.
‘But look at your life in New York – the material wealth, the women, the fornication. What does the Koran say? “Approach not fornication; surely it is an indecency and evil as a way.” But that is your way. Or is this just the sacrifice you’ve made to create a convincing cover? I think not. I think you genuinely bought all that stuff and you’re such a fucking freak that you manage somehow to reconcile it with your other lives.’
He shrugged good-naturedly. ‘You think I am a split personality, Isis.’
‘Nothing so simple. You have compartments with communicating doors. Each side is conscious of the other and fully aware of what it is doing, but you can close the doors.’
‘Maybe you see into me a little.’
‘And The Poet?’ she said rhetorically. ‘The Poet doesn’t exist, not in any relevant way today. But I do believe there’s another man you have been protecting, an individual whom Khan knows but doesn’t, or didn’t, see the importance of. He gets it now because you have been schooling the answers he gives me.’
He shook his head. ‘You won’t be asking Karim any questions now.’ He looked down. ‘But since you have chosen to press the issue, which is certainly an unwise course for you, I can tell you that The Poet exists – it was the name we used in Bosnia when this individual, as you call him, refused to tell us his real name. This lasted a matter of days and when we learnt his real name we stopped calling him The Poet.’
‘And this man is running your organisation – another Shi’ite perhaps?’
‘I cannot answer you.’
‘From Lebanon?’
He grinned. ‘I can’t tell you these things, Isis.’
‘But you can. What good is it to me now? I know what you intend here. What is his name?’
He thought for a moment and smiled to himself. ‘His name is John.’
‘John?’
‘Yes, John.’ He laughed. ‘Now, we do have some unfinished…’ He looked down. A small green frog had hopped into a pool of light on the floor and remained there, blinking. This was the moment she had been readying herself for. She launched herself from the edge of the bath towards his stomach, but he had anticipated the move. He stepped out of the way, caught one of her arms and pulled her round like a rock’n’roll dancer into his chest. Then he lifted her with a strength that took her by surprise and placed her on the side of the bath, forcing her legs apart.
‘No! Not like this,’ she shouted out.
He stopped and held her by the shoulders. The gun was pointed at her right temple. ‘Then you will behave.’
She shook her head, thinking only of how she could wrest the gun from him.
Then he did something odd. He stroked her face, brushing his hand across her lips and eyebrows. He considered her once more. ‘You are a real beauty, Isis. You have a secret beauty. That’s it – a secret beauty.’ He pressed his mouth to hers hungrily and moved between her legs. ‘You understand,’ he said under his breath. ‘I didn’t want it this way. I wanted us to make love like equals.’
The gun had slipped down and now she was sure it must be pointing at the wall behind her. She put her arms around his neck. As she did so a triumphant smile flickered at the corners of his mouth and he kissed her neck.
‘Tell me you want me,’ he said.
‘I want you,’ she replied.
He was touching her breasts. She now felt such loathing for him that she was prepared to risk anything to stop him. The only way that presented itself to her was to use the purchase she now had on his shoulders to headbutt him. But she was slightly above him, and any blow would only connect with the top of his head. She had to get him to look up to her. ‘I want you,’ she said, smiling with as much acquiescence as she could muster and drawing back as though to see him clearly.
‘I knew you desired me all along,’ he said.
Then she hit him, not with her head, but with a chop of her hand at the carotid artery. He fell back but still managed to hold onto her with his left arm. And then she felt the incredible, athletic energy of him as he spun her round so that she was facing the bath, and forced her head down to within a few inches of the water. He was cursing, pulling her robe up and working her legs apart.
It was then that the first explosion occurred.
Herrick was thrown upwards and flipped over like a leaf so that she landed half in the bath, her body bent backwards. The blast seemed to have caused the room first to depressurise and then fill with a second deafening thunderclap. She knew nothing for several seconds, but then recovered enough to tell herself that she was still alive. She rolled into the bath and covered her head with her hands, concerning herself only with the masonry and timber falling from the roof. She had heard a cry from Loz at the moment of the explosion, but that was all.
A few seconds later there was another, equally demonic explosion, but this time another part of the area was hit and she was able to better comprehend what was happening. There were three distinct stages after the initial impact: a huge reverberation that must have been heard twenty miles away, a whoosh of air, and a short time afterwards, sounds of collapse and pulverisation.
She waited for a third blast, now convinced that the island was under bombardment from the bank of the river. But nothing came, and the only noise she could hear was a fire taking hold somewhere across the courtyard. She began to push upwards against a mass of debris that was trapping her in the bath. It was no good. For minutes on end she grappled with a beam and what seemed to be a large chunk of plaster attached to some stone, which lay across the top of the bath and gave her room to manoeuvre. All the time she could smell the fire taking hold. She lay back in the water, deciding that her best chance was to work at an opening she had found with her foot near the tap. This required her to bunch her legs to her chest and force herself forward in a somersault. It took many contortions and compressions of her frame before she managed it and then she was so out of breath that it was several minutes before she began working to enlarge the hole. At length she thrust her head and right shoulder through it and was able to start shifting larger pieces of stone and wood. A few minutes more and she was free, scrambling through the roof of the bath-house to see the damage in the light of two fires.
The first explosion had occurred in the rotunda and completely obliterated the structure, together with the stairway and the rooms either side. The second had hit the buildings on the far side of the courtyard. Where Harland and she had sat talking the first night, there was now a crater measuring thirty feet across. The wooden terrace and building had been atomised. She clambered down, cutting her foot on a piece of metal, and reached the ground. Two figures were running towards her from the north end of the island shouting her name. She sank to the ground, and before she knew what had happened, she was looking up into the anxious faces of Philip Sarre and Joe Lapping.
‘Are you all right?’ said Sarre.
‘Yes… I think so. Where the fuck… did you?’ she stopped, spat the dust from her mouth and wiped the blood and sweat from her face. Her eyes and hair were caked in a kind of clay. ‘Where did you two come from?’
‘We were over there,’ said Lapping pointing to the east bank.
‘Since yesterday. We were told to keep our heads down while you were getting so much from Sammi Loz.’
‘But what the hell happened?’
Sarre shook his head. ‘Joe’ll explain – where are Loz and Khan?’
She pointed to the bath-house. ‘Loz was in there with me. He must be dead. Khan might be alive. He’s over there in the part that wasn’t hit. I don’t understand,’ she stammered. ‘What happened?’
‘We think it was friendly fire,’ said Lapping. ‘It looks very much as though you were hit by a couple of Hellfire missiles delivered by a Predator. We heard it earlier and were halfway across the river when we saw the first
