The door opened – the front door.
The goon was walking from the barracks towards the house. Lights had been switched on inside and, faintly, a radio played. The door was wide open and the kids spilled through it. Then the case was lifted out. Maybe it was the Engineer who brought it, maybe the older woman.
The case didn’t bulge. It had a green ribbon tied to its handle. Badger saw that the small girl was crying and the boy went to the water’s edge, threw in a pebble from the track, watched it bounce. The bird was hunkered low on what was left of the foliage. Maybe it thought this was a place to stay, where frogs were available on order. Maybe it was not about to shift out. He jabbed Foxy.
Him and Foxy? Between them now a sort of tolerance existed, like a ceasefire. Not peace and not war. When the car came, the suitcase was loaded and they drove away, the mission was done, whether they had anything to radio or not. He doubted he and Foxy would speak much on the way back to extraction, or while they were driven to the base, and not at all when they were helicoptered to Kuwait City. Likely they’d be in different rows on the flight, which Foxy might demand and he himself might insist on. There might be a handshake at the terminal but it would be transitory and neither would go on the other’s Christmas-card list. They’d never meet again.
One jab was enough. He passed him the headset. When the bird had kicked, noise, explosions, had been in his ears, but the bird’s chest – small mercy – did not cover the microphone tip and he could hear the little girl crying.
There was more wind, then a murmur about needing to piss, then the question: how much water was left? None. Then the statement: without water they were screwed. The headset went on Foxy’s ears and Badger whispered about the bird. ‘… and can’t do much about it. The goon has it in his glasses, looks excited enough to do a jerk-off. What is it? Not anything I’ve ever seen.’
‘It’s called an African Sacred Ibis. Pretty rare. Big in Egyptian mythology. Do me a favour, just shut up.’
Foxy looked wan, weak, about played out. A day wouldn’t have gone by in the last ten years without him shaving and examining his moustache in a mirror, without him putting on a clean shirt and polished shoes. He looked sad and a frown cut his forehead. Then he grappled in his pocket for the notepad and flicked the switch to light the screen.
The wife came, and the children ran to her. The Engineer peered up the track and past the barracks, then looked down, savage, at his wristwatch. The goon gazed at the bird. She had the children against her knees and bent awkwardly, held them tight and tried to comfort them. What comfort, Badger wondered, could she offer?
The car would come and the bird would fly. The noise of the car and the crying of the boy would be too much for it. Many weeks, several months, Mansoor had dreamed of seeing the bird, Threskiornis aethiopicus, merely fly low over the reeds and be in the lenses for a few seconds, half a minute, but it was down and he had a fine view of it, and could not believe that the moment would last, but she comforted the child.
He heard her. He had no children. He did not know if it was his fault that his wife was barren or hers. She said, in their bedroom at the back of the house that was owned by his father, in a low voice, so she should not be overheard, that he was responsible for her inability to become pregnant. He could not believe that. He refused, of course, to go to a doctor and have tests done on his wife, Safar, and himself. So, with no child to look after, she went each morning on a shuttle bus from their home in Ahvaz to the Crate Camp Garrison on the road to Mahshar, came back each evening and helped his mother to prepare a meal, then did cleaning and went to bed. They had sex every weekend, quietly so as not to disturb his parents, but her period never missed. He saw how Naghmeh, wife of the Engineer, comforted the children. He had looked away from the bird that was on what seemed to be flood debris that had snagged at the end of a mud spit.
‘You should not be frightened.’ She held tight to the children. ‘There is nothing for you to be frightened of.’
He thought she did not cry because it would have frightened the children.
‘We go to see a very clever doctor, and he will make me better.’ He looked up but the bird had not moved.
He did not know if he would ever see her again.
‘We will bring you back sweets, because you will be very good when your grandmother cares for you…’ If she died in Germany, the children would go to her mother, and their father would be found an austere room in the Crate Camp Garrison. He would visit them only at the end of the week and on public holidays, and would bury himself in the papers and circuit boards on his workbench. ‘The reward for being good and brave is very special sweets.’
Then Mansoor would be recalled to the ranks of the al-Quds Brigade and most likely a desk would be found for him, papers to process and a keyboard to hit. He might be in Tehran or Tabriz or in the mountains on the Afghanistan border… if she did not come back. She had quietened and calmed them. The car was late. It reflected on him. It should by now have been at the house.
‘We are going to a far-away country, to Germany. There is a town in Germany where they make wonderful marzipan…’ The sun edged higher and he saw that Naghmeh no longer shivered. Its first warmth fell on him – and on the bird. It was a clear two hundred metres from him, but he could sneak the binoculars to his eyes and see its markings. It had been venerated in ancient Egypt, had been thought so valuable that it was sacrificed to appease gods, and in one archaeological site the mummified remains of a million and a half ibises had been uncovered. He believed himself blessed, and turned away from it. The weapon hanging from his neck clattered against the magazines in the pouches of his tunic. ‘… which is made from almonds and sugar.’
She looked up at him sharply. He had not seen it before. She seemed to despise him. It might have been the weapon that caught her attention, or the magazines into which the bullets were pressed, or the two grenades at the webbing on his waist, or the flash of the al-Quds shield sewn on his olive sleeves. It might have been because she knew his father helped to hang men, or because his wound crippled him – or because he had produced no children. He wanted them gone, but the car had not come.
‘The best marzipan is made in the town we go to, Lubeck, and there we will go to the shops and buy marzipan sweets for you, because you will be good and you will look after your grandmother. Your father says Lubeck is a very pretty town, and is famous for the marzipan we are going to bring home. You will be very good.’
He walked away from her and the children, and went to the Engineer. He shrugged and said that the car was not late for its departure time, but should by now have arrived. If a few minutes more passed without it coming he would get on the radio and demand an answer. The Engineer looked at him as if he was dog’s mess on a shoe heel. The sun rose, carrying the day’s warmth with it, and the bird was still on the mess of leaves. He thought he heard a car, far away.
It was repeated by Foxy, the third time. ‘I heard it. I don’t doubt what I heard. “The best marzipan is made in the town we go to, Lubeck.” She said that. Also she said, “Your father says Lubeck is a very pretty town, and is famous for the marzipan we are going to bring home.” About as clear as it could be.’
‘You going to send it?’
‘Of course I’m fucking well going to send it.’
It was like a new man had materialised beside Badger. A bloody kid had scored a goal. Foxy had learned where a targeted man could be killed, and Badger wondered if that counted for more than scoring the goal.
‘Illegality, deniability, extra-judicial killing.’
Dismissively: ‘Do me a favour, young ’un, and pass the kit.’
His hands burrowed into the bergen beside him and Foxy was flicking his fingers in front of his face, as if time was not to be wasted. Badger felt dazed. A moment of truth had come, missile speed, from the clear blue skies above the scrim net. There were the seconds when a crisis developed – armed police had told him – when anticipation and training were overtaken by actuality. One thing to think about it, talk about it or practise it, another when it happened. It had been Badger’s job to look after the communications: the comms should have been ready, kept in place for immediate transmission, only needing the battery to be activated. They were not. Foxy’s snapped fingers and the irritation said they were there, flying high, and his voice had been quiet but he had made no effort to hide his elation: I heard it. I don’t doubt what I heard… Of course I’m fucking well going to send it. Badger had the comms gear in his hand and was levering it out of the bergen.
‘What’s the matter, young ’un? Just shift it.’
He had to push aside a bottle half filled with urine, and two sheets of the tinfoil that was there in case the Imodium wore off. He brought the kit up under his stomach and then his chest.
Badger could have done it himself – could have thrown the button, let it warm, made the link, sent the stuff,
