them. There are two stages. On the basis of what I find tonight I will know whether I can operate. I may believe I can but I offer no guarantee of success if I decide to do so. If I do not feel I have anything to give you, I will tell you so, with honesty. They are waiting for you. Maria will escort you. I assume, Naghmeh, that you do not speak English or German.’
She shook her head. He tried to smile, and reassure her. Why? They came through his consulting rooms at the university in Lubeck every week, people who were frightened, defiant, clinging to some small hope and trusting in him. Why? It was about the dignity of her face, about courage, and there was something of the Madonna in her features, as depicted in the statue that his wife and daughter knelt before each Sunday during services at the Marienkirche. There was depth in her eyes, and majesty. He had no mother or anything of her to treasure beyond vague memories from when he was a small child; a few photographs had been left behind in Tehran and would now be lost. He thought Naghmeh was how he would have wanted his mother to be.
The nurse came, took the wife’s arm and led her out of the room. The husband began to follow but was brusquely turned away by the nurse. The door closed.
He said, with aggression, ‘What work do you do in Iran that warrants such secrecy – or am I not to be told?’
Already he knew part of the answer. The man did not have the stature of a soldier. He was not old enough for high rank in the Revolutionary Guard Corps, and did not possess the chill in the eyes that the consultant presumed would be evidence of work in intelligence. When he himself had spoken of MRI scans and hydrogen atoms, there had been no confusion on the man’s forehead. He was a scientist or an engineer.
‘My work is to ensure the successful defence of my country – of our country.’
The patient would be gone for three-quarters of an hour. The consultant sensed he kicked an open door. ‘Nuclear work? Are you a builder of a nuclear weapon?’
‘Not nuclear.’
‘Chemical, microbiological? Do you work with gases, diseases?’
‘No.’
‘What is left? What is so sensitive that you travel across Europe with false papers and have no name, with embassy people running errands for you? What else is there?’
‘My wife is a good woman.’
‘Obvious.’
‘She heads the committee responsible for clearing minefields in the sectors of Ahvaz and Susangerd.’
‘Fine work.’ He had not expected to confide, was drawn to it. The Farsi bred confidence and suspicion ebbed. ‘My father and mother were killed during the recapture of Khorramshahr. They were together, both doctors, treating front-line casualties. They were martyrs. Your wife does noble work… And you?’
The man hesitated. The consultant had noted his fingers, the stains. He asked the man if he wanted to smoke, accepted the nod – there were days when he himself yearned for the scent of fresh tobacco smoke – and led him out of the office, past the empty desks of the support staff. He took him to the back fire escape and let him out onto a steel-plate platform. A cigarette was lit and smoked. Sleet spattered their shoulders and ran on their faces.
‘What do you do?’
A simple and unemotional answer: ‘I make the bombs that are put beside the road.’
‘Good bombs? Clever bombs?’
‘I am told the counter-measures, electronics, are difficult, that I am ahead of the American scientists, and the British. I am told I am the best.’
‘I understand why you travel in secrecy, then, and have no identity.’
‘To what purpose to be the best while my wife is dying?’
‘You are right to go in secrecy, without a name. Iraq and Afghanistan?’
‘More sophisticated in Iraq, but we teach the Afghan resistance about basic devices. There, they do not need such advanced devices as I made for the Iraq theatre, my best work, but I have influence on what is used in Afghanistan.’
‘And we see on the television many funerals in NATO countries because of the bombs beside the road. If they knew of you they would kill you. Do I approve, disapprove, of what you do? I do not interfere in matters I cannot influence. You should have no fear that I will allow any feelings to dictate my decisions concerning your wife. Thank you for allowing me to breathe the smoke.’
The moon was at its height and there was good light over the clear ground. Badger caught two rats on the periphery of his vision, extreme right side of the 150-degree arc he was capable of. When the moon went down past the horizon, Badger would take the two bergens and leave nothing to show he had been present, a witness to the place. The rats came from the reed beds to his right and straight towards him.
There were people who did not like rats, and people who were scared shitless by them. There were people who saw rats as vermin, to be slaughtered.
Badger did not feel strongly about them. They scurried towards him and the one behind gave slight squeaking sounds. He couldn’t have said if it was twenty minutes, half an hour, longer or shorter, since he had last heard the scream – it had been weaker the last time. The lights in the house were out, but the security ones were lit. There was no movement beyond the pacing of the two guards who watched the single-storey building, and another guard – uniform and assault rifle – who sat under a tree. One more leaned against the outer door of the barracks. He could see the guard at the door clearest because he was in the range of the most powerful light, which beamed down from the lamp-post.
They came towards him.
The smaller one, greyer than the other, came to Badger’s side, skipped onto the small of his back and was over him and gone without a backward glance. He had barely felt its weight. The other had a more russet coat and a longer tail, well scaled and as long as its body. It was down to training that Badger could observe and note every moment of an event that seemed, at the time, insignificant. They said that, in the world of the jihadists and of the high-value targets in organised crime, the little moments that seemed to hold no significance were those that might put a puzzle piece in place. Unlikely that there would be importance in the movement of a rat across his body, but he noted it. It came on a slightly altered track and had veered towards his shoulders. It came onto Badger’s arm, went over his armpit with a brief sniffing stop, was on his right shoulder, then the nape of his neck. It paused there, was close to his ear, and there were the sounds, faint, of its breathing. It went forward, crossed the crown of Badger’s head and a claw seemed to catch in the netting of his headpiece. It came down onto his forearms, then his hands, covered with camouflage cream, which held the binoculars. It stopped there, he saw the glint of its eyes, a yellowed amber. Perhaps it was aware, at that moment, of larger eyes watching it or felt the beat of Badger’s heart, but it was not fazed. It moved off him and went by the image-intensifier, laid on the ground, and was gone. He had had many such encounters and The scream came.
It didn’t matter to Badger that the sound was even fainter than before. He clutched the binoculars, had nothing else to hold on to.
The rats, together again, were exposed on the open ground in front of him and the moonlight was on them. The difference in colour was lost, their size seemed to merge and the length of their tails. Badger could have sworn that both rats stiffened at the scream, like it was a sound alien in their world.
He listened for the scream to come again, shared the pain a little. And he saw the faraway lights across the lagoon. Then his attention was taken by the rats: they had found the carcass of the bird. It was tugged between them and feathers flew. He watched them maul and mangle it, but another scream did not come.
He understood that he had fainted. He had no sense of time gone. His first image was of the bucket. The goon held it, swung it, and the water doused him. It would have been the second or third bucket because water cascaded off him towards a growing pool in the corner. It was aimed at his head and came in a wall towards him, splashing hard. It went up his nose, into his mouth and some forced a passage into his eyes, which were slitted with the swelling.
Foxy must have lifted his head. An automatic reflex gesture, not one he controlled. His vision was distorted, and although he looked up into the face of the goon he couldn’t see the expression: anger, frustration, panic that his prisoner might have croaked on him? There was laughter. Foxy didn’t know whether it was humour, or manic.
A barrage of questions was thrown at him, none new. He didn’t know how long his fainting had protected him. The questions bludgeoned him, but he had no chance to reply. He thought the goon as weak as himself and…
