the family, but the village men recognized it, and the women, and they stared at him as he stood in the robe while the fires' last flames showed their awe of him. Each of the village men came to him, hugged him, kissed his cheeks. He was the chosen one.
The next morning, the old man had taken Caleb a half-day's walk from the village. At a point where a path into a mountain pass climbed away, he had held Caleb's hand in a skeleton's grip. Tears had run from his dead eyes, and he had left him. He had sat for an hour on a rock, then watched the little column of men and mules emerge from the pass. A few words spoken, a few sour gestures, and he had gone on with them. For nine days he had been with them as they led him with great caution away from the village and to the west. They hugged the foothills, but had also gone higher where the night air was frosted. From the beginning he had known what cargo they guarded in the bulging sacks strapped to the mules' backs. He could smell the opium seeds. They were villainous men, he had seen no charity in their faces. They carried curved knives at their waists with which they could have mutilated him. From the moment of their reluctant greeting, Caleb had doubted that they acknowledged the code of pukhtunwali. They shared food grudgingly, they did not talk to him or show any interest in his identity. If he had fallen back he did not think they would have waited for him. He had never complained, had never lost the pace of the march, had never feared them.
But on the eighth day he had seen the slightest softening – an extra morsel of dried meat, beyond his own ration, had been tossed at him during the evening halt, and a water-carrier just filled in a mountain torrent had been passed to him; later, an extra blanket had been thrown in his direction as he had lain between rocks trying to shelter from a fall of sleet. He sensed, that last night, he had won their respect. When the grey light under the sleet's clouds dipped, he saw that the four of them watched him, as the villagers had – as if something set him apart. He did not know by whom he was set apart, or for what reason. That ninth morning he had sensed the tension among them. In the afternoon they had gone more slowly and one of the four had been a quarter of a mile ahead, the furthest distance at which his shrill all-clear whistle could be heard. That evening they had cocked the rifles in readiness, and had told with new nervousness of the dangers ahead as they came close to Iranian territory.
With the greatest suspicion they had approached the frontier where the rendezvous was to be made to which they had been paid to bring him, where there were frequent and heavily armed border patrols.
They had been in a gully, going slowly so that the mules' hoofs would be quieter, when the light had snapped on and caught them.
Caleb raised his hands. The beam reflected off the white robe, now stained with sweat, mud and the blood from scratches on his arms.
A voice called to him from behind the beam's source – first in Pashto, then in Arabic, he was given the instruction to come forward.
Caleb could not see beyond the light. He walked and kept his arms high. Behind him he heard the retreat of the men and the mules. The voice had authority – the command beat off the gully walls around him. In front of him he should hold out his right arm so that his wrist should be seen. The light licked at the plastic bracelet, and at the photograph, and caught the print of the taxi-driver's name. He was pulled forward and ordered to lie down. He lay on the stones in the track. There was a final command, in a language he did not know. At the edge of his vision, he sensed the light's beam move on, rove further away… Then the machine-gun started.
The tracers spewed over him, bursts of six, seven shots, then a moment's pause, then more firing. There were two answering rounds, the detonation of one grenade from a launcher, and silence.
The machine-gun replied. The men who had escorted him for the last nine days were trapped between the walls of the gully. Caleb wriggled his body so that he might make a pretence of burrowing down into the stones and dirt of the path. Boots came past him, a brisk march of power, and he heard the final execution shots that would have finished the men and put the mules beyond further pain.
The boots came back behind him. A fist clamped into the back of the robe and he was hauled to his feet. His right arm was snatched and he felt fingers on the plastic bracelet.
'You are welcome.' There was no care in the voice.
Not as a reproach but as a matter of fact, Caleb said, 'They treated me with respect, with courtesy, they shared their food with me. They brought me.'
Now he saw the man who welcomed him, an officer in neat uniform with a polished belt. Attached to the belt was a holster. He smelt the cordite. The officer was dapper in build and on his upper lip was a trimmed moustache. By the markings on his shoulder flaps, Caleb thought him at least a major, perhaps a colonel. The officer led him past the troops to two lorries and a Mercedes car with smoked windows. A driver snapped out of the Mercedes and ran round the back to open the rear door. The officer flicked his finger for Caleb to follow him.
The Mercedes pulled away.
Bumping on a dry track, in low gear, they left the gully and headed into flat lands beyond. A packet of cigarettes was offered, but Caleb declined. The officer lit a cigarette, then kept the lighter's flame burning. His delicate fingers lifted Caleb's wrist and he examined the plastic bracelet. 'Who is Fawzi al-Ateh?'
'He was a taxi-driver. He is dead.'
'You took his name?'
'I did.'
'You were brought, with his name, to the American camp at Guantanamo.'
'Yes.'
'The interrogators at Guantanamo did not break your story, that you were a taxi-driver?'
'They did not.'
'That is remarkable.' His laughter fluttered across Caleb's face. 'So, I consider two possibilities. You defeated the best of the interrogators at Guantanamo. You were released to spy. I hang spies, I am a good friend of those who defeat Americans… What I immediately like about you, you do not ask questions without invitation. I invite you.'
'Why were they killed?'
The voice hardened. 'They were not killed because they were traffickers in narcotics, criminals, they died because they were witnesses. It is a mark of the importance with which you are regarded that they were condemned – I do not know who you are, why you are so valued. They saw your face.'
'So did the villagers where I stayed for a week.'
The cigarette was ground out. The officer put back his head and his breath relaxed. Caleb thought that within minutes he would be asleep… He thought of the village and the trust of its men.
Anonymously, the name of the village would be passed by this officer to American agents, and bombers would circle over it and death would rain down from the high skies – because there they had seen his face. He thought of the blind old man and he prayed to his God that the old man, who had been unable to see his face, would live.
'Where are we going?'
The officer murmured, 'You are going where you will be of use, if you are not a spy.'
'I am a fighter.'
The Mercedes took him far into Iran, and the night was nearly spent when they reached a high-walled villa where heavy gates of steel sheet opened to take him inside.
He was a bloodstained step closer to his family.
Night lay on the far-away desert. The moon was up, pitted with stars' patterns, and the quiet was total.
Two camels, one ridden by a Bedouin, moved on the desert sand, going fast and away from the escarpment and the cave's mouth. A message had been brought and a reply sent.
Far at the back of the cave, by candlelight because the generator was switched off at night to conserve fuel, a man worked at the interior of a new Samsonite suitcase – described on its sales tag as an Executive Traveller' – that had been purchased seven weeks before at the open market of the Bir Obeid district of San'a, capital city of Yemen; at the frontier roadblocks, the soldiers had laughed raucously when they had found a shiny new suitcase being taken home by a vagrant tribesman from the desert and had let him pass and head away into the Rub' al Khali. The man working on the suitcase, positioning the circuitboard behind the case's lining, ignored the quiet conversations around him. He had the knowledge gained from a university degree in electronic engineering in Prague.
His eyes ached in the dim interior. He knew nothing of where the suitcase would be taken when his work was
