been built to last.
He knew the man.
He had seen the Emir General only once. Surrounded by his bodyguards, the Emir General had visited the second training camp to watch the recruits go through the assatdt course, with live firing. This man, with a lean, hungered body and eyes that never rested, had been on the left side of the Emir General. He had seen the man again a week after the bombing had started. Caleb and others of the 055 Brigade had been manning a checkpoint and a convoy of pickups had come through. The side rear windozvs of the third pickup had been curtained, but the convoy had stopped and the Chechen had climbed inside it. The bodyguard had stood at the back and a machine- gun was mounted on the cab roof. They had exchanged remarks, Caleb and the bodyguard, nothing talk, then the Chechen had left the pickup, and the convoy had gone on.
The cage beside Caleb's was unlocked. There were two more guards than usually escorted a prisoner. The bodyguard was pitched inside. At X-Ray they were moved every fourteen days, and put into cages where there were strangers on each side of them. Caleb understood: they did not allow relationships to build. The guards came in after him and two held batons threateningly as the prisoner's chains were taken off. They seemed to expect him to fight, seemed to want him to. The man gave them no excuse. They left him. Caleb thought they went reluctantly, cheated.
He sensed this was a prisoner of status.
The guards now came down the corridor every two minutes. Before the bodyguard's arrival it had been every ten or twelve. But everything about them was predictable. Caleb sat against his wall, and the bodyguard lay on his bed, both in silence and ignoring each other, until prayer time. The guards did not come down the corridors in prayer times, did not spy on them. When the call came on Delta's new loudspeakers, the bodyguard knelt and faced the direction ivhere they were told the Holy City was, his shirtsleeve pressed against the wire. Caleb came close. They were both kneeling. Their words were soft-spoken but were not the words of the Holy Book.
'Where have you come from?'
The bodyguard's head did not turn. 'From what they call the 'cooler', the isolation cell. I speak to a brother, encourage him, then I go back to the cooler.
In a few days they take me from the cooler and put me in another cage.
I speak more encouragement, then I go back to the cooler. If I stay in one cage I may damage the chance of a brother.'
'The chance of what?'
'Of freedom. They know my identity. I am a prize for them. Wlw are you?'
'I was at the training camp, I saw you. I saiv you also at a roadcheck we had, outside Kabul. We talked.'
'With the rocket-launcher, at the block. On the assault course at the camp.
Each time, you were spoken of… What do they know of you?'
'I am a taxi-driver.'
'Who can denounce you?'
Caleb murmured, 'All the men I was with, and the Chechen, were killed when I was taken by the Americans. When I am interrogated, I tell them that I, alone, survived, I am a taxi-driver. I do not believe they know anything else of me.'
'And you are strong?'
T try to be.'
Caleb had to strain to hear the bodyguard. 'Make a promise for me.'
'What do I promise?'
'If you are ever freed, you never forget. You remember your brothers. You remember the martyrs. You remember the evils of the crusaders.'
'I promise I will never forget, will always remember.'
There was a great calm about the man. He was thin, without a dominating stature, and his face was unremarkable, but his eyes burned.
'And you zvill fight. Whatever the barriers put in front of you, you will cross them. You zvill walk through fire. You will fight.'
The prayers ended. The guards tramped down the corridor. The bodyguard did not speak again, neither did Caleb, and they sat as far apart as the cage confines allowed. When food was brought, when the mosquitoes buzzed close to the ceiling lights, when the bodyguard's cage door was opened, he lashed out with his fool and caught the knee of the guard carrying his tray from the trolley, spilling the food. More guards came. Twice he was cudgelled with a baton, and he was blindfolded, then dragged away.
Caleb felt the new strength. He was no longer frightened. He was toughened, hardened by the encounter. He zvas a taxi-driver, but he had given his promise.
It broke quickly, without warning.
Silence, then raised gasping and exhausted voices.
Caleb scraped the crust of sand from his eyes. The Saudi, Fahd, high on his saddle, lashed his foot at Tommy's shoulder, toppling him. When Tommy stood again, Fahd worked the camel round so that he could return to kick again; he aimed for Tommy's head, but missed; the effort almost made him fall from the saddle. Tommy had hold of his leg and was trying to drag him down, but he lost the grip and sagged back.
A blade flashed.
Tommy had the knife. Fahd watched it. Tommy edged closer, the knife raised, ready to strike.
The guide, Rashid, came from behind Tommy and, with the speed of a snake's hit, snatched at Tommy's knife arm, held it, then twisted it behind Tommy's back, until the man's face grimaced in pain. The knife was loosed. As it fell, Tommy smashed back with his free arm and caught Rashid on the upper cheek. The arm was twisted tighter and Tommy dropped to the sand. Rashid bent to pick up the knife, took the reins of Fahd's camel and led it to the front of the column. The march resumed.
The boy was beside Caleb. 'Do you understand?'
'What should I understand?'
The boy's face creased as if in anguish. 'He hit my father. He struck my father. Because he hit my father, he is dead. Nothing else is possible.'
'But your father walked away, he did not kill him.'
'He will, at his own choosing. It was the worst insult, to hit my father.'
Caleb asked the question heavily: 'What did they fight over?'
The boy said, 'The one called the other a murderer of the faithful.
The other called the one a coward and a fool. It is what they said, and now the other is condemned.'
Caleb pushed the boy away, gently but with tired firmness. He thought death now trudged with them. His anger blossomed. Where they travelled there was no beacon of hope. Life did not, could not, exist. The sun burned and crushed them. Madness had made the argument. Impossible difficulties weighed them down, and now they had the new burden of the argument, and one of them was condemned.
He could have howled with his anger.
Most days a wrapped baguette, tuna and mayonnaise, with a can of Coke in his office passed for Jed Dietrich's lunch. He took the chance of the midday break to write up the assessment of the morning interrogation – increasingly fewer observations seemed relevant – and to prepare for the afternoon session. The secretary for Defense had called the men he questioned 'hard-core, well-trained terrorists'; the attorney general had said they were 'uniquely dangerous'. But neither the secretary nor the attorney sat in with Jed. There were six hundred inmates at Delta, and maybe a hundred of them were 'hard-core' and 'dangerous', and the Bureau and the Agency had care of them. Jed never saw them.
He binned the wrapping from his baguette, drained the can, wiped the crumbs off the table. As the minute hand climbed to the hour, the knock came on cue.
The prisoner was brought in.
Jed doubted he was even a 'foot-soldier'. God alone knew what questions he would find to put to the man. The prisoner, the file said, came from a small town in the English Midlands, was of Bengali ethnic origin, was one of the five per cent for whom anti-depressive medication was prescribed by the Delta doctor, had been studying Arabic and the Qur'an at a religious school up the road from Peshawar, and had gone into the net, had been handed over by the Pakistani intelligence people, who probably felt they needed to show willing and make up a quota number. If
