strategist. If they had known, she would have kissed his cheeks.
He did not endure agonies of conscience as he lay on the sofa. He never had. Nor was he cold, unfeeling. He had been told that the resident psychiatrist attached to the unit regarded him as unique among his colleagues. Without remorse, rabid xenophobia, regret or triumphalism: like a man who worked in an abattoir and earned a monthly wage. An enigma, and not understood, but depended upon. There were some in clinics and others who beat their women, and a few who thought themselves so above the law that they hit banks and were now locked up.
He heard the tap of her stick against the door, must have dozed but was immediately awake. He rolled off the sofa and his bare feet slithered across the tiled floor. He heard the key go into the lock. She knew what he did, but never spoke of it, or of her own work at Camp Rabin, in Military Intelligence. She had been blinded in Lebanon by the shrapnel scattered in the explosion of an Iranian-built missile. The wounds inflicted were beyond the skill of surgeons, and she lived in a world of black and grey shadows. They hugged and the love shone.
‘You’re good?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘I brought supper.’
‘Wonderful.’
They clung and kissed.
‘Are you home for long – if you can answer?’
It was possible, in what she did at the ministry, that she helped choose the targets allocated to him. She might have worked on the selection of individuals of Hamas, Hezbollah or the Fateh Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade who were thought of sufficient importance.
‘Perhaps, and perhaps not. Soon I will know. I am home tonight.’
They were lovers, and she was Leah. She could not have said what name, in their bed, he would answer to.
The pool in the Zone had a bad end-of-season look about it. If she had been a holidaymaker and paying good money to lie beside it, with her book, she would have thought the place was up for sale, or that the maintenance money had run out, or that this was yesterday’s destination.
There was a better-kept pool in the embassy’s garden but she preferred the dowdiness of this one. The weeds that grew between the tiled and paved surfaces gave it more of an office feel and negated any guilt at apparently skiving off for the day. She was happy, anyway, to be far from her office in the secure section, distanced from the interminable gossip of the diplomats and their support staff. Her guards were not permitted at the pool and had to sit in an air-conditioned shed by the entrance to that sector of the Zone. The book, actually, was interesting.
On one side of her, quietly snoring, a towel across his face, was Hamfist, his flak vest beside him with the rucksack in which his gear was stowed, and an AK-47 assault rifle, with a magazine loaded and another taped to it. Her mobile lay on her thigh, the back smeared with sun cream. She took breaks from the book to make calls and check texts. Hamfist was a Scot, a ‘clumsy sod’ – as she called him – with any refined equipment other than one that fired a high-velocity shell. He had been in a Scottish infantry unit, had done nine years that included a spell in al-Amarah up on Highway 6. He had come through a mild load of post-traumatic stuff – better than the clap – but civilian life had not welcomed him. Instead he had signed for Proeliator Security and close protection for a Six officer. She thought he took more pride in wearing the newly washed and ironed T-shirt with the logo of the Jones Boys Band than almost anything else. She read about the birds in the marshes, on either side of Highway 6, that stretched in places to the border dividing Iran from Iraq. Pretty birds, majestic birds, endangered birds, some so small she’d need a telescope to spot them.
On her other side was Corky, not from the south-west of Ireland and County Cork but from the Andersonstown quarter of west Belfast, but there was no logic in acquired military names. He had been mentioned in despatches for his reaction in an ambush in Basra seven years back, and was in awe of her, but he allowed her to help him choose birthday and Christmas gifts for a son in Colchester aged eleven, and a daughter in Darlington, aged five. Her phone vibrated, and she raised her eyebrows – gold, the colour of her hair – lifted it, read the message and cleared it. She had organised the paperwork by which part of his salary was paid by Proeliator Security to each of the mothers. He had the same gear as Hamfist except that his rifle was an M16A1, with a muzzle velocity of 3,200 feet per second and a catastrophic hydrostatic shock effect on tissue when it hit, which Cork swore by. He wore a rumpled T-shirt, camouflage trousers, big wraparound shades, his boots, and was always a tousled mess.
Somewhere behind her, out of view, Harding and Shagger would be on plastic chairs or hunkered on their haunches, ready to go. She knew she merely had to hitch a leg off the lounger and drop the book – Field Guide to the Birds of the Middle East – into her bag, on top of Birds of Iraq, and they would be on their feet. By the time she had draped the towel around her legs and knotted it at the waist, all four would be wearing their flak vests and rucksacks, with their weapons in their hands. When she stood and lifted the bag, Shagger would come forward with her own vest and hold it up so that she could shrug into it. When she quit Baghdad, at the end of this show, took the Six shuttle flight down to Kuwait, then headed for the Towers, she reckoned they would be devastated. Not her problem, but it nagged. She thought often – with relief or ruefully – that the Jones Boys ensured her celibacy. It would be a rare bastard who ambled towards her and began a chat-up routine: Hello there. Do you believe in love at first sight, or should I walk by you again? Or, Excuse me, I’ve left my wallet behind. Do you mind if we share an armoured personnel carrier home? If an officer, American or British, Latvian or Australian, a diplomat or an administrator, had tried to get his hand in her pants, most likely he’d have ended in a Casevac tent. There were times when she ached for She had long legs, tight waist, fair bumps, pretty mouth and a good sun-kissed complexion, but no man. She called quietly, ‘Guys, can you come over? Guys, please.’
She had the four around her. ‘Don’t get me wrong, this is serious and not bull. We’re concerned about the survival prospects of the Basra Reed-warbler – smart name is Acrocephalus griseldis – the Black-tailed Godwit, the Greater Spotted Eagle, the Sacred Ibis, Threskiornis aethiopicus, and a few others, how they’re dealing with drought and what effect renewed oil exploration in their habitat will have. Two supposed surveillance experts are taking off tonight and will hit here tomorrow. The ecogame is the cover. Questions?’
There never were. They relied on her to tell them what they needed to know, and she gave them more than was necessary, which showed her trust in them. In their world, and hers, trust was a big factor, sometimes the biggest.
‘And there’s people we have to see and bits of paper we have to collect. What do I think of it? Doesn’t matter. We’re back, they’re forward and over the frontier, at what you guys call the ‘sharp end’. We’re supposed to be their support, but easier said than done. Rather them than me. It’s all a bit old-fashioned, a bit of a shout from the past – but I’m up for it. Anyway, if the birds get oil on their wings, they’re bollocksed.’
She went to get dressed in the female changing area, where they wouldn’t follow her, and now felt challenged. She sensed she was heading, roller-coaster, towards an end-game more hazardous than anything she had experienced before, and that the risk factor had ratcheted.
The piper played what he assumed was a lament. Their host and his wife were on the front steps. In their foreheads, the positioning of their eyes and the push of their jaws, Foxy Foulkes thought he could read something of the grandson in the photograph. The old man and woman had shaken hands as they’d left. By chance Foxy was last out of the door, and they had gripped his. Might have been because he was the last, or that small morsels had dropped from the table and they knew a little of what was planned in the Iraqi marshlands. Maybe intuition told them that in their home an act of revenge was plotted against someone, anyone, who had worked to kill the grandson who might one day have taken over this pile of damp grey stone. It was grim stuff that the piper played. A light rain fell on his shoulders, and there was a stag in the field that seemed forlorn, lost. The dogs ignored the helicopter and chased furiously after crows that flew away from them. The grandmother held Foxy’s hand and shook it. Foxy didn’t know whether he should thank them for their hospitality or… They willed him forward. A murmur of ‘God keep you safe’ from her and a growl from him: ‘Remember us, and go after them wherever you find them.’ It was all theatre, had a majesty to it – decayed but there – and the piper’s cheeks puffed with his efforts and the dirge was fit for a funeral but went mostly unheard as the rotors gathered speed.
He raised his voice: ‘We’ll do what we can.’
It was rare for Foxy Foulkes to feel that his words, drowned by the helicopter’s engine and the piper’s efforts, were utterly vacuous. Felt it then, could have bitten his lip. What he thought of as banal was a beacon to the
