radius from the pencil mark on the border was just short of five hundred land miles.
He said emptily, 'It's the best HumInt I've got. What are you trying to tell me?'
'About needles and haystacks. Take a look, Mr Gonsalves.'
She pointed up to the bank of monitors. He saw the sand, miles of it. Sand that was without an horizon. Flat sand, humped sand, ridged sand and dune sand. He saw true emptiness. Then her finger was on the map, inside the widest of the half-circles.
'We are flying Carnival Girl today. Out behind you there's a piss-bucket. We don't leave here when a bird is flying. Marty and I, we're like a fist and glove, we are together. He wants to piss, he stands over the bucket. I want to piss, I squat over the bucket. Why? Because if one of us went out to piss and the other's head was rocking we would miss, on the wide angle, any sort of caravan, let alone a few camels. We get brought sandwiches and we get brought water. We are here as long as the bird is up. We should have at least one more relief shift, but we don't. We should have a stand-by sensor operator, but we don't. Why am I telling you this, Mr Gonsalves? So you appreciate this is a big haystack, and the needle you're giving us – the 'best Humlnt I've got' – is tiny. Don't take offence. You are trying and we are trying. You are giving it your best shot, and so are we.
I hope you have a good flight back.'
He stared at the sand on the screens, stared till the picture distorted his vision. He thought that the pilot and the sensor operator should have relief every two hours if their concentration was to hold, and he thought they were prisoners in the Ground Control for twelve or fifteen hours at a time. The nightmare gathering in his mind: they would fly the UAV, Carnival Girl, right over a camel caravan that carried six boxes of importance and at least one man of significance, and they would not see either a trail of beasts or that man.
'Do what you can,' Gonsalves said weakly. For a moment, on his arrival, he had lifted them. Now their shoulders had flopped again.
He went out.
The heat hit him, seemed to stifle his breath.
He walked towards the jeep that would drive him back to the Cessna. It was the life he knew… A counter- intelligence officer encountered rare highs and frequent troughs. He fought in what was now dubbed in the smart current-affairs magazines back home the War without End. The customers expected goddamn miracles. He remembered what had been said after the Riyadh attacks last year:
'They're saying, 'We can get you any time, anywhere.'' It had been good information, but quietly trashed as they had shown him the desert pictures and the half-circles on the map, and all the time his enemy was regrouping… Savagely, he kicked a stone from his path to the jeep.
His name was called. He turned, went back, climbed the steps into the Ground Control.
She pointed to a screen.
He saw two tiny shapes. A vehicle roof was at the screen's side and a minuscule figure was in the centre. She played her tricks, the zoom started. He identified the Land Rover, then a woman. The zoom lost the Land Rover as it closed on the woman. She was bending. He could see a clipboard on the sand beside her and bright stones reflected up, then she crouched. Her hair was fair – damn it, he could see the colour of her hair, and of her blouse.
'I just wanted you to know, Mr Gonsalves, what the gear did, if we can find a target.'
'Who the hell do you think she is?'
The sensor operator grinned as she took the picture fractionally closer. 'She's two people. She's a meteorite expert, a scholar. She is also my supplier of tampons. And she's also the only living person, thing, we've seen all day.'
'Won't she wave?'
The pilot said, 'She doesn't know we're up above. We're on loiter at twenty-four thousand feet altitude, that's four point five four five miles. She can't hear us, and if she looked up she couldn't see us.
Why we wanted to show her to you, Mr Gonsalves, if there's camels with military crates we can identify them.'
'You got Hellfire on?'
She said they had not.
'Don't ever fly another day without Hellfire on, don't ever.'
'It's riot control they're doing, Mr Wroughton. Five days a week of riot-control training and preparation to counter a breakdown of law and order, that's the truth.'
Wroughton never took a note in the presence of an informer. To have taken a shorthand precis would have made the informer believe his information was interesting, important. His face was a study of disinterest. They were in the lobby of a small hotel that was rarely used by expatriates, and the chairs they used and the table with their juice were shielded by potted plants from the swing door and the reception desk. In any case, his cufflink was a microphone, and the recorder was under his jacket in the small of his back. God, the wretch came cheap.
'Every man and officer in the National Guard who is not on essential priority duties is now being sent on riot- control training.
They are crapping in their pants – if you'll excuse me – Mr Wroughton. It's gas and plastic bullets at the moment, but SANG units now have access to live ammunition. I know it's only a little detail, but all the armoured personnel carriers in the National Guard barracks must have full fuel tanks at all times. It's like they know the place is crumbling.'
Some handlers became fond of informants, treated them like way-ward children, pretended they were almost a valued part of the intelligence-gathering process. Eddie Wroughton would never make that mistake. Samuel Bartholomew was a creature he despised. Kind words, encouragement, unless laced with a tone of sarcasm, had no place in the relationship.
' I gather it's coming out of the mosques. Not the big ones, the party line rules there, but the small ones whose customers are hard hit by the new austerity. The Americans are gone, their troops have left, but my patient says the poison out of the lesser mosques is now directed at the royals. It's the fall in the standard of living that's doing it, my patient says – oh, yes, the armoured personnel carriers are full-time loaded up with gas and plastics, but they also have heavy machine-guns mounted. They're running scared. I hope this is valuable to you, Mr Wroughton. I've been very dedicated for you, Mr Wroughton, haven't I?'
Wroughton's lip curled. He thought he knew what was coming and he pushed away his near-empty glass with fruit in the bottom.
He smiled limply, then stood.
'Please, please, just hear me out.' Then the blurt. 'What I'm thinking, Mr Wroughton, your people can get access to buildings, can't they? And files, can't they?'
They did. 'I'm not following you, Bart.'
'There's files on me. I-'
'Files on all of us, Bart,' Wroughton teased.
'My files at the Devon and Cornwall police and at the BMA, I'm wondering…'
Wroughton played the idiot. 'What are you wondering?'
'After all I've done, you know, all the help – well, couldn't they just get lost?'
'Lost,' Wroughton mimicked. 'Lost? Are you suggesting that we might burgle police premises, and the offices of the British Medical Association, and remove files concerning criminal investigations? Is that what you're suggesting?'
The wretch cringed. 'I think I've done my time. I want out. I want a new start without those bloody files blocking me. That's reasonable, surely that's-'
Always dominate an informant, keep him under a steel-shod shoe. Wroughton said, 'You leave when I say so. Files go walkabout when I decide it – and that's not now. You are going, Bart, nowhere.'
A little dribble of spittle appeared at Bart's mouth.
Anger, Wroughton could have respected. Fight, he could have warmed to.
The doctor caved in. 'Yes, Mr Wroughton.'
There was no spine in the man. He waved him away, watched him cross the lobby and go through the doors. Then he saw her. If he hadn't watched Bartholomew going out of the hotel he would not have seen the woman. Quite elegant – a little plump – well dressed.
Silk blouse and skirt. Not young but well cared-for. She turned the pages of a magazine, but her attention
