dunes, the high points and the flat expanses.
She looked for the camels, the men, for tracks… There was nothing.
Lizzy-Jo punched up the forecast. She swore.
Marty's head rocked in exhaustion. His eyes blinked shut, then opened. She mashed her fist into the small of his back. She said,
'Doesn't let up, does it? The forecast is for stronger winds, westerly, tomorrow. If the forecast's right, there's no way we're flying tomorrow…'
Lizzy-Jo was only a handful of years older than Marty but she felt, more often since they had come to Shaybah, as if she was his aunt and he was her kid nephew. She was fonder of him, a little more each day, since they had shared the Ground Control, just them together.
She hoped the wind speed, up there four miles above the desert, would strengthen, and then the kid could sleep. She cared for him, wanted him to sleep and shed the exhaustion.
He smiled ruefully, and her hand, which had belted him, rested on the skin of his forearm and…
The voice said, 'This is Oscar Golf. We fly tomorrow, we fly every day. If you didn't know it, this is priority We ignore the manual instructions on what is possible. Until that target is found, we fly to the limit. Oscar Golf, out.'
'Are you sure? Are you telling me, man, you are sure?'
'Sure, and no argument. It's tied down.'
His supervisor, Edgar, had been off Guantanamo for two days, back at the Pentagon for sessions on the preparations for retirement.
The Pentagon had a good programme for readying long-service men in the Defense Intelligence Agency for the cold-shower shock of waking up on a Monday morning and having no work to go to. Jed watched his superior's eyes twitch and his fingers fidget. He might as well have rolled a hand grenade, pin out, across his supervisor's desk.
Maybe Jed should have felt a tinge of sympathy for the man. The physical reactions were clear enough signs that his supervisor had taken on board the seriousness of Jed's message. Those two days, while the supervisor had been lectured on pension income, the tax implications of part-time employment in the civilian sector, the psychology of switching allegiance from government service to a golf course, had been well spent. The audiotapes of the voices of the supposed taxi-driver and the British 'unlawful combatant' had been edited together and the nasal similarity could not be argued with.
'You are saying…' The supervisor's voice eddied away, as if he could not stomach the enormity of a truth now striking him.
Jed said, 'I am saying we freed the wrong man. I am saying that Fawzi al-Ateh, taxi-driver, was a bogus identity. We freed a man who was smart enough, sufficiently intelligent, to deceive us.'
'He was flown back to Afghanistan, so what's the problem? Round him up, bring him back. It's a cakewalk.'
Jed pushed across the desk the signal from Bagram, from Karen Lebed. The eyes scanned it, and the fingers could not hold the paper steady. There was a long sigh, like it was personal pain.
'God Almighty – did we deserve this?'
'Can't say, but it's what we've got. The supposition is that we released a British-origin prisoner who, most likely, never drove an Afghan taxi in his life… I suggest you look on the bright side.'
The supervisor was dulled. 'I'd like to but where do I look?'
All the times when the Agency and the Bureau guys had let him know they were the chosen people flashed in Jed's mind. Every little insultt, each put-down, every sneer, each patronizing quip floated by him. He might have felt regret at his supervisor's discomfort, but not at any shit that landed on the Agency and the Bureau. Jed grinned. 'I think other guys took that decision. I'd say we're clean.'
The supervisor's gloomy response: 'I sat in.'
'Only to rubber stamp. I don't want to be offensive, but you wouldn't have been in the loop.'
The supervisor brightened. 'It was just a list of names put down in front of me. They'd already done the list… Jed, are you aware of the ultimate potential end-game of this?'
'I know it'll be a bad day for the Bureau and the Agency.'
The supervisor's fist tightened on the pencil he held. 'There are bigger things in the world, Jed, than turf wars. Look at it… The implications of the release of a man who has gone to that deal of trouble to disguise his identity mean, to me, that he is a dedicated and committed activist. We are not looking at some guy who is just anxious to get himself home. We are talking dedication, commitment. That is a prime man, a man capable of inflicting maximum danger. There could be consequences, Jed, real bad consequences.'
'But they're not in our ballpark.'
'Christ, there is a bigger picture.' The supervisor's shoulders dropped as if a burden weighed down on him. 'And that picture is a verified homeland threat. A British-born and -reared fighter, with a shitty little heart filled with hate, can go to places an Arab cannot
… No name.'
'Then we go find a name.'
The supervisor's pencil was stabbed close to Jed's face. 'I wouldn't want this plastered all over the walls.'
Jed threw his last card, the ace card: 'Shouldn't I get on a plane?'
'Give me time.'
'Thought we don't have much time.'
'Leave me to do this, Jed, and my way. I am not having a situation where my last days here are in a conflict zone with the Bureau and the Agency, I am not.'
Jed scraped his chair back. Between grated teeth, he bit back,
'Don't bury this. If you are going to bury-''
'I am not. I need twenty-four hours of time.'
'After twenty-four hours, I should be on a plane. Don't think this can be buried and don't think I can be bounced off it. It's mine.'
He left the file and the audiotapes on his supervisor's desk. He closed the door and left his man to work a strategy. He walked back to his office and heard the noise of the camp around him; the sun hit on him and he smelt the sea. He did not know where the matched voices would take him, if he was allowed to get on a plane. He felt proud, as if at last in his professional life he had achieved something of value. He strode past the open doors of the Agency team, and past the doors of the Bureau men.
He went into the interrogation block where a prisoner, an escort and an interpreter waited for him, and he thought of the chaos he had let loose. He sat in front of the prisoner, a Yemeni, but another face was there. The Yemeni's features were gone, had merged into those of a taller man with a strong nose and a powerful jaw that the cringing protestations of innocence could not hide, and he thought of the skill of the man who had deceived them all.
The woman was forgotten, as Tommy was. Danger was forgotten.
Only survival counted. His mind was deadened and his memory gone.
The sun was in Caleb's eyes. The dried air scraped his throat and the growing wind lifted sand from the hoofs of Hosni's camel, which pricked his face. His eyes were squeezed shut against the grains. If he opened his eyes, blinked, he saw Hosni's back low across his saddle. He rocked on the hump of the Beautiful One, and he thought lhat only her courage carried her forward. She moved with leaden slow steps over the soft sand. More often than on any other day, he thought he would fall, and he yearned for the evening and the smaller portion of water that his tongue would move round his mouth, and the cold of the night, the uncooked dough, the handful of dates, and then sleep. He had heard Fahd fall behind him and the shouts of the boy, but he had not stopped, had let the boy get Fahd hack on to his camel. At the last stop, when the sun had been highest, fiercest, when they had remounted the kneeling camels, Rashid had put a rope round Hosni's waist and had knotted it to the saddle.
Hiss survival depended on himself.
The anger billowed in him.
Caleb recognized it, understood it.
The anger came in sharp surges… It was the same anger as in the camps. In X-Ray and Delta, the target of
