himself as he studied the ground on the valley’s far side. There was a symmetrical shape to it. He estimated that the twin ridges bounding the valley were 1,300 metres apart. Both then fell sharply before flattening to a more gradual incline that in each case, at its limit, almost made a level plateau. On his side, looking across the cloud floor, he was close to the lip of that plateau. He reckoned that its forward edge on the far side, matched and dotted with trees, occasional protruding rocks, bushes and weather-flattened bracken, was 700 metres from his position. Below the lip, where he looked from and where he looked to, were cliff faces that fell into the cloud, tumbled stones and rare paths where animals or shepherds had made precarious tracks. There were fissures now in the cloud floor below and he could hear more distinctly the roll of a water torrent among rocks. Directly facing him was a rambling track that led up, across the plateau and then towards the far ridge, similar in every way to the one on his side down which his dog had led him before he had veered off and stumbled into the cavity below the slab.
From the side of his mouth, he whispered to the dog, ‘You have to be very strong and very patient, but I think my friend is there. In this life, nothing can be guaranteed, but I do not think the man, my friend, would run from me. My concern is the casualty he carried and his desire to find help for the child guide, but he is very tired. He has carried the child, who must have been precious to him, for a great distance – I could not have done that – but I cannot believe he would have had the strength in the time that was available to him to take the casualty up the first difficult climb, then across the easier plateau, then up the second climb. But, more important, I do not think that such a man would pass over the chance to face me. We are solitary people – I laugh when I say it, we are also possessed of a great arrogance – and we wait for the day when we can confront an equal.
What else is there, in this life, but to take up a challenge that is offered? I do not think he will have cheated me.’
He passed a biscuit to the dog, the last and damp from the bottom of the backpack, and apologized that he had not brought more food for it.
A shaft of sunlight broke the mist cover below him.
He saw the body, laid out on a smoothed wide stone around which the swollen river funnelled.
There was a dark stain high on the shoulder. It had been laid there with dignity and he saw, through the binoculars, that the eyes had been closed and that the arms had been laid at rest at the sides, and he thought the young face was at peace, the pain gone.
The body was where he was guaranteed to see it. The sun blazed down, destroyed the mist. He had not been cheated. He had not doubted the man, his friend.
Very carefully, concerned that he should not make sudden movements, Major Karim Aziz began to scan the steep slopes and the plateau across the valley, over the body.
‘Oh, by the way – I should have told you this morning, just didn’t get round to it – last night on my voicemail, my leave has come through,’ Ms Manning said. ‘All the days in lieu that I’m owed, two weeks – thank God.’
‘What are you going to do with it?’ Willet looked up from the console that he had just switched on.
‘I’ve got to see my mother, she’s had a bit of bronchitis, and I thought of a week’s sunshine break, Tenerife or-’
‘That’ll be nice,’ he said heavily. He pointed to the screen. ‘What do I do with this?’
‘Slam it in, and get on with other things. It’s finished, as far as I can see – look, it’s been good working with you, but there’s no-one else to see. We did what we were asked to do.’
Willet said coldly, ‘I don’t suppose there is anyone left to see.’
‘This sort of business always ends with a whimper. I don’t like it any more than you, but it’s what happens. Maybe we’ll meet up again.’
Willet gazed into her face. ‘He’s a victim. Won’t anything be done about the people who used him?’
‘Shouldn’t think so,’ she said. ‘They’re always forgotten, always hidden, always protected, those people.’
‘A victim, for Christ’s sake…’
She fidgeted for a moment, awkward, then said, ‘I don’t deal the cards. It’s been good knowing you. My advice, meant kindly, type it up, hand it in, and start at something else.’
‘He deserves more…’
She pulled the door closed behind her with the firmness of finality.
His fingers rattled on the keyboard.
AUGUSTUS HENDERSON PEAKE
9. (Conclusions after interview with George – (identity unknown),
SIS
Vauxhall Bridge Cross, conducted by self and Ms Manning, transcript attached.)
VICTIM: AHP in my opinion was manipulated by SIS. A man of limited intelligence and sparse experience, he was encouraged to travel to northern Iraq and involve himself in a harebrained scheme where other more powerful forces might win, where he would most certainly lose.
BLAME: There was a trail of Open Doors. SIS was at the heart of a programme aimed at deceiving AHP. The trail, and direct responsibility for it, leads to SIS. They and many others should take accountable responsibility for the utter precariousness of AHP’s position.
SUMMARY: For a raft of reasons, AHP was allowed to travel to northern Iraq with a ‘slim to non-existent’ chance of survival, in order to push forward matters of HMG policy. He was an innocent. His inevitable fate is a matter of public scandal.
TO BE COMPLETED
Irritably and impatiently, he flicked into the file for the number. When he had dialled it, and it had been answered, Willet had to wait a full four minutes for the junior-school teacher, Meg, to be brought to the telephone in the headmistress’s office.
He blurted breathily, ‘It’s Willet here, I met you on that disgraceful early morning when we barged into Mr Peake’s home. You should know that he is currently in northern Iraq, being hounded by a pursuit force of the Iraqi army. There are many who are culpable for his situation, but you should also know that you are one of the few without blame. I apologize for disturbing you… It’s not your fault but it’s in the hands of the gods now.’
There was a shocked, stunned silence, then the phone rang off.
He would deal first with those who were without blame. He dialled the number of a vicarage built in the countryside under old trees, but the phone was not picked up. Then he rang the number for the modern bungalow behind the vicarage, and heard a faint, aged voice.
‘Wing Commander Peake? It’s Willet, from MoD – I came to see you with Ms Manning of the Security Service. I have to tell you that I have a very poor view of elderly men sending the young to their deaths. Your grandson is somewhere, at this moment, behind Iraqi lines and hunted like a dog – because of you. You indoctrinated him with that rubbish history of your “friendship” with Hoyshar, the Kurd. You fed it like bacteria into his system. You took him back there ten years ago and further infected him. You passed on to him the letter that has probably killed him. You, because of your background at Habbaniyah and in the Kurdish region, had occasional contact with the Secret Intelligence Service, and I believe that you informed them of the letter. You set this process in motion. Where doors should have been locked in the face of your grandson, they were opened and his journey was made possible. What you couldn’t achieve yourself, you sent someone else to do. I hope you can live with that, what you’ve done to your own blood. Good-day, Wing Commander.’
The line of troops had bivouacked in small cluster knots for the night, and endured the storm.
At dawn they’d been caught in the cloud and had had to wait until it dispersed.
The line had formed again, and pressed on. They had reached the ridge and seen the body. The officer, on the radio, reported back to Fifth Army in Kirkuk that, beyond boot marks in the mud at the summit of the ridge, there was no sign of the foreign sniper, or of Major Karim Aziz, and that the valley below him seemed at a cursory glance to be empty
… except for the body. The officer said that the body confused him: it was not abandoned, not dumped, but laid out as if it were a sign or a symbol that he did not understand.
The troops around the officer squatted down and began to eat their rations.
He lay across the line they took.
They had red-brown bodies and were twice the size of what Gus knew from home.
Each of them, each of the thousands, found him blocking their track, crawled onto his body, then diverted in
