He named the village, the town, the province. The Pashto of the questions was poorly phrased, as if the interrogator had learned the basic language on a brief intensive course. A little of the fear was lost. Everything he had learned in the van, he told. He stumbled through his answers. A pause. He heard water poured into a glass, then it was drunk.
The voice said, the same drawled English: 'You never know, with these ragheads, whether they're lying through their teeth or whether they're snivelling the truth. Give him another dance, and I'll call him back – give him some more. Victim of circumstance or a killer – how do I know? God, get me a beer.'
A door closed. The noise started again. At least twice he fell, and each time he was hoisted up, and he could smell the breath and the sweat on the men who lifted him and threw him back against the wall. The noise wailed around him and he coidd not shut it out.
A second time, the questions were asked. They were in Pashto, and he cherished the little victory.
Slumped, held up by their fists, unable to swing his shackled legs, he was taken back to his cage. He had told his whole story. He was Fawzi al-Ateh, taxi-driver, he had been driving at night and alone when his combi-van had been seized by armed men. He had never seen those men before. He had driven them at gunpoint. If they had not been so tired or if they had known that part of the province, they would have killed him and driven themselves.
The cage door was opened and he fell inside. Some had shivered, some had huddled at the back of the cage, some had wept and some had cried for a loved one… Caleb lay on the mattress and slept.
Because, for the first time, he had lost a little of the fear and was able to sleep.
The white-painted Cessna, twin engines, circled once then levelled out for a slow approach.
Marty watched it yaw in the headwind. The same wind, blowing in his hair, threw up a screen of sand from the edges of the runway.
Everything the pilot had told him on the transporter was seared in his memory, though he didn't believe the Air Force flier would have realized how deeply he'd drunk in the information. Cross-winds, heat making a density- altitude barrier, and upper turbulence had all played in his mind overnight; he'd barely slept. Lizzy-Jo had: she didn't take responsibility for keeping First Lady and Carnival Girl up and operational. Lizzy-Jo was back in the Ground Control Station, would be checking out the camera and satellite systems after the journey. Behind him, he could hear George Khoo lecturing the ground crew under the slung tarpaulins as the wings were bolted back on the fuselages of his girls. He watched the landing, saw the Cessna waver before it set down. Here, at this oil dump, he would have no wise head to feed off when he flew the girls. At Nellis or at Bagram there had always been a veteran pilot to take into a corner and quiz about conditions. That he had been awake in the night was the mark of his anxiety. The Cessna taxied.
He went to the door of the Ground Control Station. He rapped the door.
'Lizzy-Jo – the head honcho's down.'
A man climbed awkwardly from the Cessna's hatch. He was big, bloated, and his shirt-tail flapped out of his trousers in the wind. He was unshaven, was mopping his forehead already in the few short yards he had walked across the Tarmac, and was clinging to a briefcase, as if it held his life savings, holding it against his chest. He came towards the little ghetto of tents, awnings and vehicles that George Khoo had made in the night at the extreme end of the runway.
George worked the men hard, and the noise had disturbed Marty nearly as much as the worries about flying conditions.
'You Marty?'
'Yup, that's me, sir.'
The man looked at him quizzically. It wasn't said, but the man gave him the feeling that he had expected Marty, the pilot, to be ten years older, or fifteen – not looking like a student just out of high school; it was the way he'd been looked at by the other Agency guys and the Air Force men when he'd first pitched down at Bagram. He was getting used to it, but it still annoyed him.
'I'm Juan Gonsalves – God, flying's a bitch. We were tossed around like rats in a sack. Wish I could do your sort of flying.'
'What is my sort of flying, sir?'
'Just sat in a cabin, air-conditioned – no air-pockets and no turbulence… Hey, I'm not suggestin' you don't do the real thing.
Look, where can we talk, where are there no ears? I mean no ears.'
'There's people at Ground Control. Back in the tents, there's people sleeping, sir. I'd say there's no ears right here, sir.'
Marty waved expansively around him. They were a hundred yards from the tents and the awning shelters where the wings of First Lady and Carnival Girl were going on to the fuselages. The sun was high, at the top, and his shadow was around his feet. Lizzy-Jo came out, hopped down the steps. He introduced her and Gonsalves broke off from the mopping to shake her hand, then took a map from his briefcase, spread it out on the dirt and put small stones on the corners.
'You been in this sort of heat before, Marty?'
'No, sir.'
'We're lookin' at one hundred and twenty degrees. Christ, do you know what pisses me off, Marty, more than the heat?'
'No, sir.'
'It's being called 'sir'. Call me Juan. I may not be prettier than you, son, but I am your superior. Funny thing is that great temple, our mutual employer, has given you a job that I can't do, and me a job that you can't do… so today, that makes us about equal. Nice to meet you, Marty, and how d'ya do, Lizzy-Jo? What else you need to know about me is that the love of my life is Teresa and our kids, and the hate of my life is Al Qaeda. I'd like to say I live and sleep Teresa and the kids, but I don't. I live and sleep Al Qaeda. Each time we nail one of those A-rabs, I get a hard-on… Nothing personal, you know, it's not that anything has happened to anyone I know, but it's the obsession that rules me. What I say to anyone who raises an eyebrow, thinks I'm a freakin' lunatic, is 'If we don't throttle that organization right now, then we'll sure as shit end up on our backs with their boots on our throats,' that's what I say.'
Marty gaped at the intensity. The sweat now ran on the man's face and he squinted as the sun came back up off the dirt and the map.
His thinning hair was plastered wet. Gonsalves pressed on: 'I am a technophobe and an intelligence officer. I do not own a power drill but I understand the cell-system intricacies of Al Qaeda. In my house, Teresa has to change the lightbulbs, but I know the way the mind of A1 Qaeda works. And don't ever try to blind me with the science of your machines. I don't care… Let's do the map.'
Marty saw that the nails were short but still had dirt under them, and the first two fingers of the right hand were nicotine-stained. The hand splayed out and passed over the map of the southern quarter of Saudi Arabia.
'What I predict, and here's where I'm gonna stick my neck out, is that this is the next big war zone. Forget Afghanistan, most particularly forget the stuff in Iraq, you're looking at the new ballpark.
It is the Rub' al Khali, which is the Arabic for 'Empty Quarter' – it is what the Bedouin simply know as 'the Sands'. It's bigger than you or I can comprehend, amigo, it is as hostile as anywhere on the good Lord's Earth… You see, it's where I'd crawl to if I'd taken a bad punch and was down and the count had started, except I'm going to beat the count, and I want the bell, I need to hunker down in my corner and get my breath and focus. I'd go to the Rub' al KhaTi. It's where I'd be, and I'm confident I know their minds… Believe me, it's where they are, and I bet my shirt on it.'
He grimaced.
'I don't take everyone at Langley along with me. They still want paratroops and mountain forces and Rangers tramping in the Pakistan tribal lands and the Afghan mountains, but I say that's history. What I say is, they're right here right now. They are wounded, hurt, as dangerous as a maimed bear. They are supplied by couriers, they have no phones and no electronics… And do you think I can call on the Saudis for help? Hell, no. First off, they're suspicious of anyone telling them what to do, second, they're not capable of doing it, third, man, they're so insecure, I tell them nothing and they tell me nothing… Well, I beat on the temple's door often enough for the Langley people to get freakin' sick of me, you know, they want to shut me up. Get me nice and quiet, so they sent you.'
'What are we looking for?' Lizzy-Jo was subdued and staring at the expanse of the map now covered by a film
