The embassy man shouldered forward to lift the bag on to the scales and was smarming the girl at the ticket desk. He liked to think he had a reputation as a fixer, and eased the formalities. His arm was round Littelbaum's shoulder as they walked together across the concourse, and his voice had the hushed whisper of confidentiality.
'I hear you done really well, Duane, that's why I bust my gut to get you the upgrade. You're not up to speed on the news? I just got it. State Department's lining up, trumpets and drums, the briefings. Everything'll come out of Washington. It's gonna be our show. There's decks being cleared. I reckon you'll have a personal call from the director tonight, that's what Mary was saying, could even be a call from the secretary. It's our shout, and we're going to milk it.'
'Do the Brits know?' Littelbaum grinned.
'They'll be told, when they need to be.'
'I did well better, actually, than I thought.'
'You're too modest, Duane.'
He enjoyed the admiration.
'Good of you to say that, Fonsie. I said at the start it would take a week, and this is the seventh day, and it's pretty much all wrapped up.~ 'Soon as the State Department get the word he's in chains or a body bag it'll be the big blast, coast to coast, round the world, live TV…'
Littelbaum said gently, 'I've been working for this for so long. What I've finally achieved, Fonsie, what nobody else has achieved to the same degree, is the fracturing of the code of deniability. Tehran's deniability is crucial in their operations, and it's broken. It's been the screen they've hidden behind and we're taking the screen down.'
'And going public.'
'And hold on to your seat, Fonsie, hold on tight, because the repercussions can be ferocious. What I'm saying, we have the mullahs by the balls.'
'Too right, Duane.'
'Whether the Tomahawks fly, whether it's resolutions and sanctions at the Security Council backed by teeth, it's going to be a hell of a rough ride but we've the evidence of state-sponsored terrorism, we've gotten the smoking gun. But you know what? The massive repercussions of the breaking of deniability have turned on events in some shitty backwater Fonsie, you wouldn't believe that place. It's been played out among folk with clay on their feet, Nowheresville.'
'I think I have your meaning, Duane. Shame about the casualties… 'Irrelevant, you got to look at the big picture. You don't have casualties, you don't win. I kicked the Brits in the right direction -what surprised me, they bought the crap I gave them, ate it out of my hand. What I say, for what was at stake, the casualties came cheap.'
'You'll be top of the pile, Duane.'
'I think I will be do we have time for a drink?'
The slick in the water lapping against him was an ochre mix from the mud he disturbed and the blood he dripped.
Vahid Hossein had gone to the limit of his strength to reach his hiding-place. A filthy handkerchief from his pocket had been used as a field dressing to staunch the wound when he had left her.
After the woman had screamed and her dogs had snarled, when the beam of her torch had found him then bounced away as she had fled, he had pushed himself up from her body. He had not realized he had bled on her until the torch showed him the blood. He had gone away into the night and pressed the handkerchief into the wound but it had pumped blood on to his vest, his shirt, his sweater and his camouflage tunic. He had known that he must absorb it, not permit it to fall on the ground he crossed, because there would be a trail for dogs to follow. In the darkness, he had gone though the pig-fields, skirted between their half-moon huts, smelt the disgusting odour of the creatures. Guiding him was the call of the sea-birds and the soft motion of water ahead. It was as he reached the water, went down into it, that the numbness of the 4 wound gave way to the pain in his chest, and with the pain came the exhaustion.
There had once been a track leading through the heart of the marsh, an old pathway long since flooded. Under the pathway, in dense reeds, a culvert drain had been built of brick. Lying on his side, Vahid Hossein kept the wound above the level of the water.
The pain came in rivers now. If the marshes had been at the Faw peninsula or on the Jasmin Canal, if he had been with colleagues, with friends, the pain would have been lessened by morphine injections. There were no colleagues, he was far from the Faw and the Jasmin, there was no morphine. The pain sucked the strength from his body.
If he lost consciousness, he would sink lower in the drain's water and drown. He reached into his pocket for the muddied, soaked photograph, held it in his hand and gazed at the small, distorted face of his target.
The sun shone on the water at the entrance of the drain, dappling among the reed stems. If he drifted to sleep, if he sank into unconsciousness, he would drown; if he drowned he would never look into the face. But, sleep unconsciousness would kill the pain. The bullet had been from a handgun. One low-velocity bullet, fired at the extreme of range was still, misshapen and splintered, somewhere inside the cavity of his chest. The entry wound was low under his armpit and he had not found an exit wound. The bullet had struck the bones of his ribcage and been diverted deeper into the chest space.
He coughed. He could not help himself. It came from far down in his lungs. He writhed in the confines of the drain. He needed space, air, and couldn't find it. He held his sleeve against his mouth to muffle the sound of his cough and he crawled towards the segment of bright light at the mouth of the drain. He saw the blood on his sleeve and it eddied from the coarse, soaked material into the flow of the water.
Vahid Hossein did not know how he would survive through the sunlit hours. He prayed for the darkness and prayed to his God for strength. With darkness, with strength, he would go for the last time to the house. The blood and the mucus ran from his hand and over the photograph he clutched, and into the water… They would be waiting to hear of him, and learn of what he had achieved. He thought of Barzin, and her body in darkness, the awkwardness with which she held him, and he wondered if she would weep. He thought of the brigadier with the bear-hug arms, and the laughter that was between them, the trust, and he wondered if the tears would come to the cheeks of his friend. He thought of Hasan-iSabah and the young men who had gone down on the narrow, steep rock path from the fortress at Alamut and who would never return. He thought of them and they all, each of them, succoured his strength.
The image of the young woman, living or dead, was never on his mind. She was past. The sun was on his face. Protected from sight by the waving reed-banks, he eased his head, and the shoulder above the wound, out into the light. He was so tired. He wanted so desperately to sleep. It was not an option. He recognized the delirium that snatched at his concentration, but could not resist the call for him to show strength and courage. They were all around him, the people he knew in his heart and in his mind. He heard their words, and they cried to him from close by. He reached above the drain, his fingers groping in soft mud against the reed-stems, for the launcher. The voices, near to him and shrill, told him he must hold the launcher through the sunlight hours, and never sleep, hold it until night came… It was blurred, small.
The bird cried out above him and flew its search over him. The pain was back, the dream was over. He saw the bird searching for him and heard its cry in the silence. It was the same silence he had felt before, when he had believed a man watched for him. He struggled to get back into the recess of the mouth of the drain, but he did not have the strength, and his fear was the same as hers had been when she was under him and choked and scratched at his face. The bird hunted him.
Chalmers saw the bird dive.
The man, Markham, slept beside him, lying on his back with the sun bathing him, sheltered from the wind, and the dogs were close to him. Andy Chalmers had heard the bird call and it had not been answered. He saw it tuck its wings against its body and plummet, a stone in freef all, bright light shimmering on its wings.
He watched it, for the briefest moment, pull out from its dive and spread its wings to cushion the impact of the fall. He heard its cry. For a few seconds, it hovered over the reeds, then dropped. As a marker, he took an old, withered tree that rose above the flood marsh, dead branches with a crow perched on it. The bird came up, sky danced over the reeds, then dropped again. A faraway tree draped in ivy, which was alone among the willow saplings on the distant extreme of the marsh, was his second point. His mind made the line between the perched
