Foxy led; Badger let him.
They walked, him three paces behind, towards the woman and the vehicles.
He heard Foxy mutter, ‘Could have opened his door – could have damn well stepped out to meet us.’
‘Yes,’ Badger said, barely audible. He was not used to meeting Six officers and didn’t know what to expect.
‘He’d better be bloody good, as good as he’s arrogant.’
‘Can’t argue with that.’
‘Do they think we’re temporary staff for the kitchens, washing up or- Him not being here to meet us is just bloody ungracious. Discourteous prat. Christ, this bloody sun… I won’t be quick to forget Alpha Juliet’s breach of manners, and I expect your backing when I take him to task.’
They were close to her. Her hands were on her hips and she swayed a little on the balls of her feet. Badger thought she had control, and could have described it as authority. There was a wildness about her appearance that appealed, a raffishness, and he made that judgement in spite of the full robe, the trainers that peeped out below it, the headscarf and the dark glasses.
‘Welcome here, gentlemen, and thanks very much for making yourselves available. I’m Abigail.’
Badger was alongside Foxy, and said softly, ‘So that makes you Alpha?’
‘Alpha Juliet, correct.’
‘I’m Badger, and he’s Foxy.’ He grinned. ‘We’re the sweepings off the floor.’
‘Pleased to meet you, Badger – and good to meet you, Foxy.’ She’d shaken Badger’s hand first, briefly, then took the older man’s. Badger saw the confusion and near embarrassment in Foxy. The cussed old thing would be wondering how far his voice had carried in the stillness once the helicopter’s rotors had shut down. There was something about her mouth that was mischievous and he’d have bet that behind the glasses there was a sparkle – might be fun, amusement or even contempt. Before he had gone off to work for the Box, and he’d been a croppie with his local force, a judge had been under threat during an organised-crime trial. He was wanted off the case and violence was in the air so the surveillance team was holed up for days at the back of the property on the edge of a Cotswold village. The judge had a younger wife with a flash of cheekiness in her smile and she’d brought them, in the hide, at the start of the second week of observing fuck-all, a tray of tea and shortbread. She’d had that gravel growl in her voice, sort of husky and deep. She hadn’t cared that she might have blown the exercise. The voice had said old money. It had been raining and Badger and his oppo were well into their stag, cold and wet and… Old money, good breeding and the rule of instincts. It was the only time he’d ever climbed out of a hide in his gillie suit, pushed back his camouflage headpiece, sipped a mug of tea, dunked a biscuit, offered thanks and told a woman to ‘bugger off out of it’.
Foxy said, ‘Good of you to meet us, Abigail. Appreciated.’
She took them to the vehicles.
Foxy said, ‘We’d like a chance for a wash, maybe something to eat – light, a salad – then some sleep and-’
‘Could be a problem, the bit about sleep.’
‘We’re very tired. I have to say, Abigail, that we haven’t been treated well since being dragged into this mission. The briefings have been general in the extreme, all detail excluded. What’s called for now is rest, then a comprehensive evaluation of the ground, the equipment, back-up and the time scales – that’s after we’re satisfactorily acclimatised and-’
‘Sorry and all that, but those scales are pared down to the quick. I can do you the shower and some cam- clothing. Everything else is on the hoof.’
Maybe it was his tiredness, maybe the heat or the weight of the blazer, but Foxy barked, ‘It seems pretty much of a shambles to me, and we deserve better. The man in UK – Gibbons, he called himself – who put this together, he warrants lynching. It screams wishful thinking and incompetence.’
She had the door of the back Pajero open for him. Foxy seemed to huff, then slid on to a back seat strewn with weaponry, magazines and vests.
She said, like it was no big deal, ‘I put it together, it’s my shout. If it fouls up and you lose your head, it’ll be my neck on the block for decapitation. It’s the best I can do.’
The door was slammed on Foxy. With a thumb she gestured for Badger to follow her to the lead vehicle. He had to burrow for a space on the back seat. When she was in and the doors were shut, they were driven away. He didn’t catch her eye, didn’t see the point in trying, and kept silent. Best to stay silent as he couldn’t picture where the road led or who it led him to.
The Engineer’s car had diverted in the city of Ahvaz, off the route that was shortest, quickest, to the camp. It had crossed the Karun river and gone to the principal clinic in the town where his wife’s medication awaited collection. But the painkillers were not on the usual shelf and the man administering the pharmacy had not come to work that day. The woman who replaced him was unfamiliar with the stock held in storage, and there was a delay. By the time the plastic bottles containing the pills and capsules were in his hand, he had lost the first half-hour of an appointment awaiting him when he reached his workplace.
Not his driver’s fault that they were late, but the man – his driver for nine years, loyal and fully aware of the importance of Rashid Armajan to the al-Quds Brigade – went now for a back-street cut-through to get them onto the main highway out of the city. They were away from the wider boulevards and the big concrete housing blocks, the post office and the railway station were behind them, and the homes were smaller, more roughly constructed. Cyclists, men on scooters, women walking with children and carrying water cans from or to the standpipes blocked and slowed them. The driver blasted the horn.
Rashid knew Ahvaz, had spent three years at the university in the city, but this was a district he had not been in, and the size of the Mercedes in the narrow streets made it an alien object. He warranted, as a senior man, tinted windows and blinds that covered the back windscreen: none of those who peered resentfully into the back of the car could have seen him, but the Engineer could see them, and when the Mercedes nudged the rump of a donkey or made children skip and women stumble aside. They would have known from the car that its passenger was esteemed by the regime.
At a crossroads, three policemen stood warily by an open jeep, holding carbines. Another was behind the wheel and had the engine running, fumes spilling out of the exhaust. The Mercedes braked sharply and the Engineer was jolted forward. Some of the papers he was trying to read spilled onto the floor by his shoes. Through the front window there was a brief exchange between the driver and the police sergeant, who pointed away from the direct route the driver was headed on. His arm made the sweep gesture of a long diversion. The Engineer could not hear them above the noise in the street, but the driver shook his head vigorously, as if rejecting advice, and the sergeant shrugged. The window powered up, and they went over the crossroads.
He asked what had been said.
The driver did not turn, was concentrating and weaving through obstructions. They were on the route to the gaol, the most direct way out of the city. There was a demonstration at the gaol, and they must pass it. To have taken the diversion would have added twenty minutes to the journey, and they were late.
A high-ranking official would be waiting for them, but the Engineer had been instructed never to use a mobile phone. There were satellites above that trawled for calls, did voice recognition and located the source of calls and their destinations. Mobile phones were the enemy of a man seeking discretion. The Engineer did not know of any specific threat to his life but the security officials had emphasised to him that anonymity was his best protection. The official who had come to see him from Shiraz would have to kick his heels and sip coffee or juice and… Why would there be a demonstration at the gaol?
The police had not said.
It was an Arab quarter they had been through. The street widened and they were edging clear of the alleyways. He reckoned his driver had done well to ignore the sergeant’s directions. The gaol’s wall was ahead and there was a rumble in front of them, like tyres on an uneven surface, but muffled because the windows were up and the air-conditioning was on. They came round the corner.
A crowd enveloped them.
He saw the faces through the windscreen. Arab faces, not Iranian. Ahvaz was the city of Arabs, and the Sepidar gaol was their prison.
It was as if the car was not seen and the mass of chanting, shouting men had their backs to the bonnet. The driver edged forward, and ahead the yellow-painted arms of two construction cranes jerked upwards. The men
