As they slowly descended, the crows were still wary of the feast presented to them, but were gathering courage as their shadows swept the stone slab, and the body lying on it.
On one side of the valley, facing the watchers, the shadows were lengthening and were darker. On the opposite side, where other watchers searched for a target to hold their attention, the sinking sunlight stripped the ground of cover.
None of the watchers believed that they had long to wait.
The dissembling heat was long gone as Aziz, relentlessly and remorselessly, searched the far slope with his closest focus on the plateau.
It surprised him that he had not yet seen the man. He knew that his own stamina would not survive another night and into another day, that he must force the issue in that late afternoon while the light gave him advantage. The skill of the dog would not last without food through another night, and nor would he. He reflected that the time was close when he must push his luck and his fortune. And he reflected, too, on the core conditions of the counter- sniper. The words he used in the lecture room at the Baghdad Military College, and on the range outside the city, played in his mind. Pro-action or re-action. The counter-sniper could either locate his target and fire the first shot in the combat, or he could lure the enemy into shooting at a false target, identify the firing position, then strike back. It was the great dilemma, but the choice was not his, because he had failed to locate the target, and the issue must be forced.
He ruffled the dog’s collar. The panting was not so fierce, it was now cooler in the cavity under the stone. His tiredness and his hunger worried him. If he did not shoot soon he was anxious that his hands, in fatigue, would shake and his eyes would be misted, and that – from the hunger – his concentration would waver. He talked softly to himself, and to the dog, as if that would calm the shake, clear the mist and hold the concentration. He imagined that he stood at the lectern in the lecture theatre at the Baghdad Military College, with students arrayed in front of him.
‘It is a lonely world, and a world where only the strongest win. It is a world of physical strain and psychological stress. It is a world of vendettas, inhabited by eccentrics and solitary men who have, above all, the hunter’s spirit, who chase the challenge from which they cannot escape.
‘It is a world where time has stood still, where the past is the present and the future is not recognized. More than eighty years ago, a tank first saw combat and in that time the tank has changed beyond belief, in armour protection, mobility, firepower. The artillery has developed since those days and now relies on laser sights, night- vision equipment that highlights targets believing themselves invisible, and the accuracy given by the computer’s chip. But, in my world, the sniper’s world, little has changed.
‘I glory in the age of my art. I am soft-skinned, without armour. My ’scope, the barrelling of my rifle and the quality of my ammunition have changed little in those eighty years. I do not hide behind the advances of technology.
‘I live because I employ the old arts of fieldcraft and concealment, because of the patience I can muster, because of my skill.
‘I belong to myself.’
There were always blank and baffled faces staring at him from the raised seats in the lecture theatre.
He would do it in a few minutes, send the dog, because the lowering sun would make it the optimum time for success.
Aziz could see, when he raised the elevation on his ’scope sight, broke the search at the level of the plateau, a small knot of people – men and a woman in a pink blouse – sitting on the distant ridge, beyond the range of the Dragunov. *** He tried, and tried without success, to control the clutter of his thoughts.
The view through the ’scope’s lens, over the rocks, grass, slopes, shadows, bracken, bushes and a jutting slab of stone, threw up the faces. A shepherd gazed at the peace around him… A lieutenant paused in the sunshine as he emerged from the darkness of a bunker… The officer was going into the command post… But the faces were of the dead.
He was responsible. Was he evil? Psychopathic? Could he shelter behind the comfort of the excuse that he served a cause? He had not known them. He had killed men whose names he did not know. Was it wrong? There was no-one to tell him, no-one to give him an answer. Not his grandfather, or the people who had helped him. No message from good old George, smoking himself to bloody death. No-one could say to Gus Peake whether he had done wrong and he didn’t know himself.
He saw the pale features of Omar and then they were blocked from him by the fluttered wingspan of the boldest crows. Then he saw the beak rise and fall on the face, and others came and fought around the boy’s head.
He tilted the sight savagely and the view ravaged over the valley wall and the plateau, up to the ridge beyond. There were soldiers in combat uniform there, and a small slightly built man in olive fatigues who stood apart.
He knew again that he had much for which to be grateful to the boy. The faces were gone, and the guilt at their deaths had been put aside.
‘Come on, sir. I think you are hurt worse than I am… And you have travelled with a reputation, while I have only silver spoons. I think the reputation must make it harder for you. Be quick, because soon the sun is in my lens. Hurry it…’
Rybinsky had the sandwiches and passed them round, but Sarah watched the crows at the body and refused. Joe ate and shared his water bottle with the Russian.
Rybinsky, between mouthfuls, said, ‘They are here, I know that because the body is here. The body is the glove of the challenge. I have two to one against the foreigner from the Mossad on the hill, I am prepared to take other bets. Sarah, I give you evens on the Iraqi, I think that is fair. What do you want, Joe, Augustus or the Iraqi? The odds I offer are good. The Mossad wagered fifty American dollars.’
‘You are a pervert, Rybinsky,’ Sarah said.
‘I am merely a man who enjoys an entertainment. Joe?’
Joe thought for a moment, as if he weighed the form. ‘Twenty on the Iraqi.’
Sarah grimaced. ‘I feel ashamed of myself and disgusted by you but twenty-five on our man at two to one against, yes?’
Their hands met; the bets were sealed.
Rybinsky frowned. ‘What confuses me, why is he here? Why is the foreigner here -for what? I am here to make money, Sarah is here because she has compassion, and she can smoke grass, Joe is here because his inflated wage is tax-free and he lessens a little the chance of children being maimed. The Mossad on the hill is here because Iraq is the enemy of his country. We all have the best of reasons for being here, except him. Why is he here? I do not understand.’
Joe took a sandwich and offered his water. He said grimly as he gulped, ‘If either of you sees him, makes a gesture, points, identifies or distracts him, I’ll kill you – with my own hands.’
It had been a long journey for the commander. He had travelled by car on the metalled road, then by jeep up rough tracks, then on foot. That he had embarked on the journey was a record of his nervous anxiety. He recognized the vulnerability of his own situation.
The man had been in his hand, had slipped through his fingers. If the man escaped him, it might be whispered by the many who hated him that the escape had been facilitated. The many who had cause to loathe him could whisper that the loyalty to the regime of Commander Yusuf should be questioned. If his loyalty were to be investigated, his life was threatened. Suspicion was sufficient for the taking of a life, and those of a family. He thought, in his extreme anxiety, of the men searching a room, stripping the possessions of two sweet small children.
‘Who will win?’
Perhaps the officer hated him. Perhaps – and he would not know it – he had interrogated the father, brother, cousin or friend of the officer and was loathed.
‘It is not in our hands,’ the officer said quietly. ‘It is in God’s hands.’
He had known where he would find him, and was not disappointed.
Willet saw the solitary figure on the bench and the wreath of smoke blowing from his face. He strode forward, along the embankment, through the crowds who pressed around him and scuttled for their trains and buses home.
