it was 'The Last Stand of the 44th Regiment at Gundamuck, 1842'. It showed fourteen Brit soldiers clustered in a little circle, rifles raised and bayonets fixed; a couple of them had sabres drawn, and plenty more Brits were spread round the group, dead or wounded, and the tribesmen were coming up the hill towards them. It didn't seem that the Brits had a single round left between them. Behind the tribesmen were snow-covered mountains. It was by William Barnes Wollen, born 1857, died 1936.
'That is a really cool picture.'
Marty grunted and pulled himself off the bed. It was the first picture he'd ever owned and it had cost him seventy-five dollars for the print, ninety dollars for the frame and $110 for shipment, but it had survived the transportation. In front of the men who were going to die, and knew it, an officer stood, sword in one hand, a revolver in the other, straight-backed like all Brits were supposed to be, and he wore a suede coat with fur lining. Under the coat the gold-decorated flag of his regiment was wrapped round him and worth defending.
The officer, Lieutenant Souter, had been spared because the Afghans thought him too important – he had the flag – to castrate and kill, so he'd been ransomed. Marty had done research on the Internet, but he didn't tell the duty officer.
'Has Lizzy-Jo been woken up?'
'Thought I'd give that pleasure to you…'
The duty officer left him. Marty swigged water from his bottle and spat it into the sink, then unhitched his robe from the door hook.
He knocked on Lizzy-Jo's door, heard her, went in. She sat up in her bed and didn't seem bothered that her pyjama top was open.
Marty said, 'We're being moved. We're pulling out in the morning, heading to Saudi Arabia, don't know for how long… George – God, and I wouldn't like to be near him – has gone off to get the birds in the coffins. The plane to lift us is being readied.'
She heard him out, then told him to switch off the ceiling light and turned to the wall. He went out. Only Lizzy-Jo could go back to sleep in the face of such crazy intrusion into the routine of their work – it would have taken an earthquake to frazzle her.
As the night ended, the flotilla broke formation. Five of the launches veered to the south, his carried straight on. The parting was at speed and the farewell shouts, the other crews to his, were drowned in the engine noise and the hull beating on the swell of the waves. He watched until the wakes of the five were gone, then subsided again into the corner of the low cabin where he'd wedged himself. He had been sick twice and his shoulders were bruised where he'd been tossed against the forward bulkhead of the cabin and its side wall.
The crew were two kids in jeans and windcheaters with long hair. He wouldn't have talked to them if they had wanted it, but they didn't.
He was as much a piece of cargo as the cigarette cartons they would bring back. He assumed they had been paid generously by the intelligence officer for transporting him and had no suspicion that when they returned to the harbour on the southern shore of Iran they would be arrested, then left to rot in prison cells. Above the engine he heard the shout. The one at the wheel had his hands cupped at his mouth, then pointed. He saw the excitement on the kid's spray-soaked face. He peered through the cabin's porthole.
He saw the great hulk.
A tiny bow wave parted as the aircraft-carrier edged towards the launch. It was grey against a grey sea and a grey sky. He saw its massive power. The other kid passed him binoculars and he steadied himself, elbows on the ledge below the porthole, focused and looked.
The image danced before his eyes. He saw sailors on the decks walking as if they were in a park, like in Jalalabad or by the zoo in Kabul.
He saw the aircraft stacked at the edge of the deck, some with their wings folded back. The kid at the wheel jerked them away from a closing course and he dropped back into his corner. They would have thought, walking on the aircraft-carrier's deck, that their power was invincible. He held his head in his hands.
Crossing the Gulf, wearing the white linen robe that had been given him, Caleb sensed the complexity of the plan to move him closer to his family. He had come to the village, pathetic in his weakness, and now – out on the sea and speeding towards a distant landfall – he understood the great effort made to return him to the family.
It lay as a burden on him, which only he could carry.
Chapter Three
The launch knifed into the surf of the shore and surged as if on a collision course with the beach. The final quarter of the sun balanced on the ridges of distant hills. Caleb watched the approach from the cabin's porthole. All through the journey across the Gulf the kids had not spoken to him and they had not fed him. His only contact with them had been when a canvas bucket filled with sea-water had been dumped at the entrance to the cabin. He had realized its purpose and rinsed out the vomit from his robe, then had used his hands to clean the cabin floor. Much of the time they had watched him but when he had looked up from his place against the bulkhead they had turned away their eyes as if they understood that – unarmed, alone – he had carried danger to them… As the sun fell below the hills, Caleb failed to see any movement on the shore. Three or four miles to the right, when they had been further out at sea, he had seen what he thought was a fishing village, but as they came closer it had disappeared.
Abruptly, the kid at the wheel swung it. Caleb was thrown across the floor. His shoulder thudded into the far wall and spray drenched him through the cabin's open door. On his hands and knees he crawled to a hard chair that was screwed down, and held tightly to it. Then the kid who was at the controls throttled down the two outboards, allowing the waves to carry the rocking launch nearer to the beach. The kid at the wheel jerked his head, gesturing for Caleb to come out of the cabin. He could barely stand, and he used the chair, then the edge of a table and the doorway to support himself.
He could see the beach where the surf broke, and he heard the little ripples of sound as the sea ran on sand and shingle, then fell back.
Fast, they had him by the shoulders and arms and propelled him towards the launch's side. Not only was he no sailor, he had never swum. He did not resist.
They had had time to learn every contour of his face. They could have described the shape of his nose, the cut of his jaw, the colour of his eyes.
He could have told them the fate of four men who trafficked opium who, also, had seen his face.
They lifted him up, his stomach scraping on the launch's side.
He told them nothing.
Had they stopped, pulled back his head by the hair at the last moment and looked into his face in the dying light they would have seen the harshness of his features – but they did not.
Caleb was pitched over the side. He saw the twin grinning faces, and then he went under. The shock of the water forced air from his lungs. He went down, into blackness. He was scrambling with his feet, kicking, and the salt water was in his mouth, his nostrils, and the pressure on his chest was leaden. His feet flailed into the sea bed.
When he broke the surface, gasping and coughing, the launch was already under full power, arrowing away from the beach. The limit of his memory was the few days in Landi Khotal and the wedding party – before that there was nothing, the same blackness as when he had gone under the water, and after that there were memories of Afghanistan and more memories of the camps at Guantanamo Bay.
Nothing in that cut-short memory told Caleb how to swim. He was a man who could fight with skill, with resolve, a man who could trek and endure the confines of a prison cage constructed to destroy a prisoner's soul, but he had never swum. He lashed at the water. The thrashes of his legs and arms, and the power of the waves, pushed him towards the beach. He felt no guilt that he had not told them of their fate. His mind was as cold as his body in the water. His feet hit the bottom. His sandals had stayed on. He stood at his full height and the waves broke against his back. He waded towards the shore.
When he was clear of the water, Caleb sank down on his haunches, then rolled on to his back and little pebbles pressed into his spine.
