Jock, NCO and officer who had been tasked for house searches since the late-afternoon patrol of 13 January – its recovery had been an unfulfilled priority. He gave it to his sergeant for checking and making safe.
The interpreter murmured in his ear, 'The gentleman, Mahmoud al-Ajouti, has heard that the British persons are going back to their country and thought it correct this weapon be returned… It is his apology that it has not been done before.'
'Please tell Mr al-Ajouti that I am grateful.'
He remembered, with the clarity of yesterday and not of three months before, what he had seen that day and what he had been told, and the gist of what he had said: 'Put him somewhere in isolation where he can't infect anyone else…
I don't know how you'd ever get shot of it, being called a coward
… I can't imagine there's any way back.' The man had been sitting on a chair outside the command bunker, head hangdog, expressionless, silent. He had heard, from the vine, that the man had been shipped home, but his failing was talked of, still, in every mess and barrack room used by the battalion.
'Would you ask Mr al-Ajouti in what circumstances the rifle came into his possession?'
What he was told, through the hesitant voice of the interpreter, first confused the major, then rocked him.
'The soldiers came up the street where Mr al-Ajouti lives above his place of business, a bakery shop. They knew, everybody in the street knew, that an ambush was prepared, was ready, for the next soldiers, the next patrol, to come on the street. His son, his son is called Tariq. He had brought heavy stones, football-sized stones, into the home above the shop and had a window open enough to throw them down.
Mr al-Ajouti did not know of the stones and he was in the back of his home with his wife and his younger children.
Tariq is the eldest of his children. He does not think blame should be given to his son, Tariq, because all of the older children in the village are encouraged by men of the Mehdi army, followers of the imam, to hate soldiers – he regrets that. A soldier stopped outside Mr al-Ajouti's shop. His son told him afterwards, that is how he knows it, the soldier was lying on the ground, and his son, that is Tariq, threw down a stone and it hit the soldier's neck, which was not protected by the edge of his helmet. The stone, the size of a football, stunned the soldier – that is, he was made unconscious. It was just after a grenade had been fired into the wall near the window where Tariq was. His son – Mr al-Ajouti, at the back, did not know this at that time – went down the stairs and opened the door of the shop. He took the rifle and took the stone back into the shop. The rifle, it was hidden under his bed, and the stones he took to the yard at the rear where they had come from, from a wall that had fallen. For sixteen weeks the rifle was under his bed, because his son was frightened of having taken it, and was frightened of giving it to the Mehdi army. Yesterday, Mr al-Ajouti's wife found the rifle. Yesterday he questioned his son. Yesterday he found the truth, is certain it is the truth, of how the rifle came to his son's room, and of how the soldier was made senseless. He begs forgiveness for his son. He is ashamed for what his son did. He begs it is not spoken of in the village, his returning the rifle. If it is spoken, his life will be taken by the Mehdi army. He hopes it is enough that he has returned the rifle, that his son will not be punished. Later, children came. They took the soldier's helmet and the coat against bullets. It is the flak-jacket. Mr al Ajouti apologizes for the action of his son. He wishes you well on your return to Britain, to your families.'
The major said curtly, 'I am grateful to Mr al-Ajouti, and I can assure him that his son will not be punished, and that the taking of the rifle will not be spoken of.'
From his hip pocket, the major took a wad of dinar notes, probably the equivalent of what was put over the counter in a village bakery in a week, and pressed them into the bone-ribbed hand. The old man bobbed his gratitude, then turned, then started out on the raised road to return to the village, his bakery shop, and his home.
The major strode towards the sandbags, the machine-gun and the gate. His words snapped from the side of his mouth:
'I think, Faisal, it is a matter that is dead, buried. If you were to speak of it you would betray the trust placed in you by the British army, and your employment would cease.
Understood? Hamish, it is a business best forgotten. I think your role, and mine, in the affair concerning allegations made against Mal Kitchen, would not now sustain close examination. Yes, best forgotten.'
'Forgotten, sir, already forgotten.'
'Found on wasteground, hidden there, handed in by a local who was unable to give an exact location – that'll fit the paperwork… No medals for digging up the past.'
'None, sir. I'll see the word goes round, found on wasteground.'
They walked back through the gate. Bravo's major returned to his bunker and the preparations for withdrawal.
He had names but no identity. He had been Anwar Maghroub, born into affluence in a suburb of Alexandria, but the character of the child was lost.
The voice behind him beat at the back of his head.
'What I'm telling you, Dean, and true – I'll be so damn bloody pleased to be finished with this. If you'd told me, anyone had, a month ago that I'd be flogging myself through this place, cold like I've never known it and hungry, I'd have told them to go jump.'
He had also been Sami, a student of engineering, with a girl and with friends who understood the rigour of sacrifice, but the personality of the pupil had gone.
'A month ago, I wouldn't have thought I could do this, go through it and still be on my feet – wouldn't have been able to, not without having a friend with me, and it's because I'm tough. It's what makes me a leader. Others come to me and know that I'll lead them. Lazy sods, all of them, and feeding off me. They feed off my brains and my energy.'
He had been Abu Khaled, conspirator and activist in the Organization, who had studied and learned the lessons of success in attack and failure in security, but that man's mind was outdated and finished with.
'Because of you, what I've learned from you, I am telling you that things are going to be different when I'm back, up and running – damn different. No passengers in my team and no bloodsuckers. Slim and lean, that's what you are, and that's what I'm going to be, and ahead of the game. In my crowd, they'll have one chance and if it's blown then they're out, out on their bloody arses. Best thing that ever happened to me was meeting up with you, and that's
God's truth. I'm surrounded by passengers and suckers, but not for long. They'll scream, but I won't be listening.'
He had been Dean, goalkeeper for a team he had not heard of, who listened without response to the ramblings of an idiot, but the character, personality, mind of that fantasy had never existed.
'I've got my cousins, three of them, giving me grief.
I've got old Percy, who's all disrespect, and what I know is that he loathes me. I've got Mikey and Sharon, that's my parents, and they live bloody well off my back. I've got Joanne and Wayne, he's only a kid and doesn't know better, but she's got the hump with me… and there's a bloody great crowd like a spider web. They all live off me
… I'm telling you, there's changes coming. I like a lot about you, but I like most that you go alone. I reckon it's class to go alone. You and me, it's good we're together.'
He was, now, Milan Draskic who held a Slovenian passport and was a co-ordinator and sent to erase failures of security and to drive home success in attack, but he had not yet learned to live inside the thoughts and skin of that man, and- They had come past the five marker cloths he had left on branches. He stopped dead, and gazed forward – not at the whitecaps and the surf, not at the horizon – and the idiot cannoned into him. He saw, at the top of the dune in front of him, the three legs of his tripod, but not the flashlamp.
'What's up?'
He said, quietly, with his hand shielding his voice, that the flashlamp, as he had left it, was gone from the tripod.
'What's that mean?'
He said, his words protected from the wind, that he had built the tripod in daylight so that it would be secure, fastened the flashlamp to it and aimed its face to the sea. He had lashed it in place by daylight so that its beam would be steady when it was used. He heard the first sliver of the idiot's panic.
