crow and the ivy tree. The bird stayed down, and he knew its search was over.
Chalmers leaned across the sleeping man, ruffled the hair of his dogs' necks, murmured his order to them, and slipped into the water. He moved away from the shore-line, where Markham slept and the dogs watched, without sound. He had the line to guide him. He half swam, half walked and although the water was icy against his body he was not aware of it. He kept the line in his mind. He felt no anger, no passion, no hatred. The shore was behind him, hidden from him by the reed-banks. He went quietly, slowly, along the line his mind had made.
Cathy Parker said to Fenton and Cox, 'He's complacent and conceited. It's not what he said but it's his body language. Littelbaum thinks he's walked all over us like we're the hired help.'
Twice he had flapped his arm at the bird, the second time more feebly than the first. He could not drive the bird away from him. If Vahid Hossein could have reached it, the bird he loved, he would have caught it, held it while it clawed his hand and gouged at his wrist, and he would have throttled the life out of it, but he could not. When his hand came close, the bird fluttered further away, eyeing him, and flew and circled him, but when it came down it was always beyond his reach. To survive, he would have killed the creature he loved, and all the time the silence grew around him. Again, digging for strength, the pain surging, he lunged. He was on his knees and groping at air. The bird mocked him, danced in front of him.
As he sagged back, his face screwed in pain, he saw, in the far distance, the man walking towards him. On the raised pathway, coming closer, alone and unprotected, was his target. The photograph had fallen from his hand when he had reached for the bird, floating on the muddy water near to him. He gripped it, looked once more at the crumpled photograph and at the man. The pain in his body told him it was not the delirium that comes to the wounded before sleep and then death. The man walked towards him. Vahid Hossein thanked his God and grasped the launcher in his hands as firmly as he could.
'Is that you, Fenton? Penny Flowers here. Did you know our esteemed American allies were already counting their chickens? They're planning to go public as soon as there's a corpse or a prisoner. They reckon, a little bird tells me, that it's going to be their day, which is in direct contradiction of what I understand to be our policy on this. Thought you should know… He walked in the beauty of the landscape and did not believe he deserved to.
Meryl was dead, the woman he had slept with, loved with, bickered with, lived with, was lying on a tray in the mortuary's racks. Because of him… When they had walked on that path together, after going to the beach, she was always on his right side so that she could better see the water-birds in the marshland. His right arm dangled at his side and his hand was open, as if she were about to take it and hold it, as she did when they were alone and together.
The sun warmed his cheeks, but his body was cold, insensate. He had not taken a coat out through the toilet window, but had escaped in the pullover that had been warm enough for the house. As he'd walked on the beach, the self-pity had dropped away from him and now, on the path going towards the marshland, he remembered only what he had done to friends… For Frank Perry, friends had been the rock of life. And she was gone because of what he had done to friends, burned them to death. He could remember each meeting with them, and how he had bought them. He had purchased his friends, and they were burned to death because of him. And Meryl had paid the final price.
In a quiet, private voice, he asked for her forgiveness, and the agony of his crime distracted him from the beauty all around him.
Poor Meryl innocent, ignorant Meryl – Meryl who knew little of the world beyond her door, for whom Islam was a mystery. Into her home, he had carried history and Faith, terror, warheads and a killer, and he tried to ask for her forgiveness.
She had been innocent and ignorant, and happy with it.
It was a country and a culture, a people, an aspiration of power of which she had known nothing and wanted to know nothing, and he had dragged it into her life, and that nothing had killed her. His friends, too, were in his mind, their faces, their kindnesses, their laughter and their burned bodies, and she was dead and she had not known them. She was gone from him..' too late to ask for her bloody forgiveness. Life went on.
He said it out loud to make it real.
'Life goes on… The dogs pounced at him from hidden ground below the pathway, came through the old sagging fence beside the water where it turned towards the church tower.
'Life bloody goes on.
The dogs tripped him from his dream state. He lashed at the nearer one with his shoe and it danced clear of him. He peered over the fence and saw the sleeping minder, Markham. He could have walked on. The man lay and slept in the sunshine and breathed easily. Markham had told him the consequence of his actions. Enough of asking for forgiveness and enough of thinking on friends, because life bloody well went on, like it or not. He stepped over the fence, slipped down past the leafless willows and crossed the short-cropped grass. The dogs snarled and cuddled down beside the sleeping man, Markham. He crouched, shook the man's shoulder. Eyes opened, the face contorted in astonishment.
'What the hell what the fucking hell are you doing here?'
Markham looked around him fast the empty grass, the still water, the unmoving reed-beds and he reached up and dragged Perry down.
'I could ask you the same question. Nothing better to occupy yourself? What are you doing?'
'Shit… because he's here…' Markham stared out into the impenetrable mass of slow-swaying reeds, then glanced down at the dogs.
'Because the tracker's gone in there after him… Get down.~ The sarcasm was wiped from his lips. Perry lay on his stomach beside Markham.
'Here? So where are the guns?'
'There are no fucking guns, there's just an unarmed civilian tracker in there searching for him,' Markham spat.
'What the hell are you doing out of the house?'
He said weakly, 'I wanted to be alone. I went out through the toilet-'
'You're serious?'
'I wanted to think.'
'That is about as irresponsible as is humanly possible.'
'I'm just a parcel, nobody cares.'
'You're a bloody symbol. Men protect you because of your status as a symbol. Christ, you weren't idiot enough to think it was personal, were you? We're not here because we bloody like you. It's our work, it's what we do. What were you thinking of?'
'I thought you were as much my friends as the men who burned to death. Where is he?'
'Somewhere out there, being hunted.'
He lay on his stomach. Nothing moved ahead of him to disturb the peace. He closed his eyes and pressed his head down on to the short-cropped grass. The sun was on his neck, and he felt only the chill of regret. In his mind, he saw the burned bodies.
Cox said to the secretary of state, 'If our American friends, our dear and closest allies, are allowed to run with this, then we sail on uncharted waters and among unknown reefs. We will be sucked into their vortex. Do we want that? Are we prepared to be tugged along by the nose, at their beck and call and in the interests of their propaganda coup? It's a huge step..' so often the quiet passing of a covert signal achieves more than the beating of cymbals. But, sir, it is your decision…'
Pandemonium broke loose.
In the domestic routine, plates clean, food finished, washing-up done, the principal had been forgotten.
Where in God's name was he?
The kid had been the centre of attention and the requirement to distract him, and the military were doing their thing and that had softened the alertness. It was only when the nanny policewoman had gone to the downstairs toilet, and shouted back that it was locked from the inside, that he had been remembered.
They scattered: Blake upstairs to check the bedrooms, Paget going out to search the garden, Rankin hustling through the ground floor, Davies scanning the green and the road and not a sniff of him. As they pounded around her, the nanny policewoman told the kid it wasn't anything to worry about.
Paget broke down the toilet door. The window was open, the sunlight streaming in. They were gathered behind him to look.
