was up on the landing zone, harsh and clear, and it would be several hours later and when the sun had climbed that the pastel haze would settle over the battlefield. By then the sentences would have been carried out.
They lifted off. It was a French helicopter, and new, and mounts had been welded on at the open doorways to take heavy machine guns. To avoid ground-to-air missiles from their enemy the helicopter pilot flew low over the rear area of the battlefield. It was a killing zone to the east of the Iraqi town of Basra, much fought over. The Mullah, strapped in his canvas seat, his back against the hull, was a young man in anguish. There had been that morning, as the red sun had slipped above the flat horizon, an artillery barrage. Some of the worst of the casualties were on the deck of the helicopter, their stretchers against his feet, and medical orderlies holding drips, but the casualties were only those who had been hit close to the landing zone, the fortunate few. When he twisted his head the Mullah could see through the dust-smeared portholes of the helicopter, and when he looked straight ahead he could see past the torso of the machine-gunner in the open doorway. They hugged the flat and featureless ground. He saw the old trench lines that had been disputed four, five, six years before, where that dawn's shells had burst. He saw the angular dead, and he saw the stricken faces of the wounded and he saw the stretcher parties running towards them. He could see the tanks hull down, sheltered in revetments, that would stay hull down until there were spare parts.
Nothing grew upon this battlefield. Where there had been fields there were now just the patterns of the armour tracks.
Where there had been trees there were now only the shell-broken stumps. Where there had been marsh weed there was now only a yellow mat because the weed had been sprayed with herbicides to kill potential cover for an enemy. The helicopter scurried over a rear camp, tents and bomb-proof bunkers, and it flew sufficiently low for the Mullah to see the faces of the troops who squatted on the ground and stared up.
They were the same faces that he had seen further forward at the front the night before. The sullen gaze that had greeted his speech of exhortation. Pressed troops, afraid to ask with their voices, bold enough to demand with their eyes: where is the air support, where are the tank parts, where is the victory, when is the end?
That same morning he had sat in judgment of fifteen recruits who had held back in the last assault on enemy lines. Young men, eyes downcast, denounced in monotone by their officers and sentenced by the Mullah to field execution. There could be no tolerating cowardice.
The Mullah had won his spurs in the service of the Imam as one of the investigators of the coup attempted by air force officers of the Nouzeh barracks at Hamadan. He had seen the tears and the pleading of the pilots, and he had not been diverted.
He had achieved good results, satisfactory enough results for him to be chosen above many to unravel the plot woven around the Great Satan's attempt to fly a commando force into the country for the release of prisoners from the Nest of Spies. So many traitors to be found, and he had found so many. He had found those who would have driven the lorries, and those who would have made the airbase available, and those who had switched off the defensive radar. For himself, he thought the plan of the Great Satan was an absurd plan, bound to fail.
The Mullah was a devotee of the Revolution, a child of the ferocity of the Revolution. He knew no other way.
When they were out of range of the Iraqi ground-to-air missiles, the helicopter climbed. It would fly first to a field hospital. After that, with two further stops for refuelling, the helicopter would fly on to Tabriz. At the front, close to the artillery exchanges, he had slept badly. On the way to Tabriz he dozed fitfully, and the straggling thoughts in his mind were of a man known as Dolphin.
Brian Venables was late leaving home. He was late because the guest had been in the bathroom when it should have been clear for him, and he was late because his wife had forgotten his breakfast. Too busy scrambling eggs for the guest. And to top it all, the look on his Polly's face across the kitchen table had been shameless, damn near brazen.
Brian Venables had not brought up his daughter to have her bring home a foreigner and then have that foreigner creep in the small hours across the landing into his Polly's room.
That was clean out of court, and they would talk it out this evening. Oh yes.
He went down his neat front path to the newly-painted wrougt-iron gate. The last of the blossom was still on the trees in the road. Once Wellington Street had been a quiet and respectable street, but the riff-raff were closing in. He slammed the gate shut behind him.
He walked down the pavement.
He saw the two scruffs inside the car. Brian Venables was a founder member of Neighbourhood Watch in his road. Two scruffs sitting in a car and watching the houses. He had listened to every word that the WPC had told them when the Neighbourhood Watch had been introduced. They wait for the man to go to work, for the children to go to school, for the wife to go shopping. Well, those two youngsters were in for a shock. He swung on his heel.
They were watching the house. They had seen the man come out on to the pavement, with his raincoat and his briefcase, then stop, turn to go back inside. Corinthian had said that he had probably forgotten his sandwich box. The patrol car came up fast alongside them, from behind.
Park swore softly. There was the rap on the driver's window.
'Driving licence… '
'Piss off,' Corinthian mouthed.
' O K, laddie, out.'
Corinthian just reached inside his anorak and lifted clear his Customs and Excise I/D card. He held it up to the uniformed constable's face. 'Do get lost.'
The constable stiffened, full height, full authority of his uniform. 'Down at our Division, have they been informed you are on our patch?'
'Please, just go back to your canteen,' Corinthian said.
The constable tried for a long, hard stare, didn't find it easy, but he went back to his patrol car.
Park had his radio against his mouth. His voice was terse.
'April Five to April Nine and April Seven… I don't know how bad it is, we may have shown out, may not. On your bloody toes for Christ's sake. Out.'
'What do you reckon?' Corinthian asked.
Keeper was thinking what Bill Parrish would have to say to his little Keeper if they were blown by the plods. He wasn't liking what he was thinking.
Charlie came down the stairs.
He had heard the telephone ring while he was packing the rucksack. He felt pretty good. Not having slept too well, that didn't matter. She was a great girl, and her Mum was good, and the breakfast had been brilliant. Not as brilliant as Polly, Polly was marvellous, and her father was a pig. He hesitated at the bottom of the stairs because he'd thought Polly's father had left, and now he could hear his voice on the telephone, ending a conversation.
He heard Polly's mother querying Polly's father. He put down the rucksack and listened.
Polly's father said, ' N o, the police were not complaining, and they had no cause to complain. That's what they're there lor, that's what crime prevention is all about. Two men sitting in a car watching our street, that certainly entitles me to know what is going on. They have our street under surveillance, that's what the police said, the Health and Social Security have our street under surveillance, looking for those loafers who work on the black, cleaning windows and such, and then draw unemployment. That's what the police said. I'm off, then. And I trust that your gentleman friend will be gone by this evening.'
Charlie beamed at Polly's father as they passed in the hall.
He thought the man was pretty shaken when he knew he'd been overheard. The door banged. Polly's mother, starting to wash up, said, 'That's quite ridiculous. You can't get a window cleaner round here for love nor money.'
The smile was gone from Charlie's face. Polly's father had said surveillance. He felt he had been kicked in the stomach.
She came into the hall and she had a happy light in her face.
He felt the shiver in his legs and the sweat on his stomach.
Surveillance. He heard the clatter of the dishes.
'What's at the back?'
' The garden and the garage.'
