barefoot in it. You wouldn't have lasted in it a day, not half a day. I'm going through it because my family's waiting for me… That's a proper family. I belong to my family.'
Bart loaded a syringe with Lignocaine, the local anaesthetic.
'When you hear my name, all of you bastards, it'll be because I've done what my family wants of me. Anything…'
Caleb exposed his mind, made his mind as bare as the wound on his leg.
Camp Delta, Guantanamo Bay.
'This is him?'
'This is al-Ateh, the taxi-driver.'
'Have we done him?'
'No, the Agency haven't interrogated him. The Bureau have hut not for eight months. The DIA done him since eight months back. These are their transcripts.'
He stood with his head bowed in docility. In front of him were two men he had not seen before. He had learned well to give no sign that he understood what they said.
'Who did him last, from the DIA, which of those creeps?'
'Dietrich. You know Dietrich, Jed Dietrich?'
T know him. What does he say, Harry?'
'He doesn't say anything – he's on vacation. And won't say anything – not back till after the due date, if this jerk goes.'
The chain manacles bit at his wrist, and the shackles at his ankles. He stared at the floor, made a target of his feet and did not watch them as they shuffled paper between them. The interpreter stood beside them, an Arab, and his respect for them told Caleb of their importance.
'It's the quota, that's what matters. Two old guys, a middle-aged guy and a young guy to make up a quota minimum of four – if they're clean.'
'Too many of them are clean.'
'I hear you, Wallace. Try not to think about i t… You going to the club tonight, that concert?'
'Marine brass band – woiddn't miss… OK, let's go process this guy.'
The interpreter translated. The one called Harry told him that the United States of America had no grievance against the innocent, the United States of America valued the freedom of the individual, the United States of America was committed only to rooting out the guilty. The one called Wallace told him that he was going home, back to Afghanistan, to his family then had checked as if a paragraph in the file about the iviping out of the family by B-52 bomber had been, for a moment, forgotten. He was going back to the chance of making a new life with his taxi.
Through the interpreter, Harry asked, T hope, young man, back in Afghanistan you won't come out with any lies about torture?'
The meek answer. 'No, sir. I am grateful, sir.'
Through the interpreter, Wallace queried, 'You have no complaints about your treatment here?'
'No, sir. I have been treated well, sir.'
Through the interpreter, both of them: 'You take good care, young man, of the opportunity given you… You help to build a new Afghanistan…
Good luck… Yes, good luck.'
The guards' hands were on his arms, and the waist chain was tugged back.
He heard Harry say, 'Pathetic, aren't they, these jerks? He's lucky to be out. I reckon the lid's going to come off this place.'
He was being led out through the door. Wallace said, 'Too right – discipline's cracking, more suicide tries and more defiance. When the . tribunals start up and when that execution chamber comes on line, the lid could come off big-time. What time is the concert?'
He was shuffled away, the chains clanking on his ankles.
He had contempt of them, had beaten them. He would hear them scream, wherever he was. When he had returned to his family, he would hear them scream in shrill terror.
'I think I'm going to ask you to help me.'
'Of course.'
'And it's best if I educate you to my equipment.'
'Yes.'
She followed Bart out from under the low awning, stretched and stood tall. 'What should I know?'
He hissed, 'Not what you should know, what about me knowing something? When did you realize this man was a fully fledged terrorist, and British? May we begin there?'
'What do you want? A confessional?'
'The truth would help.'
'What he is and what I knew, does that determine what treatment you give him?'
'My decision, Miss Jenkins, not yours.'
She told him, haltingly, what had brought her to this unmapped corner of the greatest desert in the world and what she owed this man. He thought, himself, he owed nothing. 'That's it – are you going to walk away?'
Whatever he was, Bart was not an idiot. If he walked away, went back to the awning, collected up his boxes and packages, carted them to the Mitsubishi and loaded them, the rifle on the older Bedouin's lap would be up to the shoulder and would be aimed. The eye behind the sight would be brilliant with hatred, and he'd hear the clatter of it arming; he would die in the sand. He pondered on all those who had wrecked his life, had walked over him.
'In about half an hour,' Bart said, 'I'll start to work on the leg wound.'
'I trust you.'
From the sky, the heat cascaded on him, and the sweat ran on his body and collected in the folds of his stomach. 'That's good, because you have to.'
*
Gonsalves rang the bell.
Wroughton checked him in the spy-hole then opened the door. He held his hands across his privates.
Gonsalves walked inside, had half skirted the black bin-bag, then stopped at it, put down his briefcase and tipped the bloodstained clothes on to the floor.
'Your people, when I called them, they said you had a flu dose.
When I asked if a remedy for flu was taking a phone off the hook, your people didn't know.'
Wroughton said, 'It seemed easier to say flu than that I'd walked into a door.'
He hadn't washed. The bruises on his body, thickest at his groin, were a technicolour parade of black, mauve and yellow. The blood had dried around his nose and at the split in his lower lip. He dropped his hands away from his privates, away from where he was shrivelled up, because modesty didn't seem to matter.
'You could help me, Eddie, you could tell me where to look on your face for an imprint of a door handle, because I don't see it. Did the door handle have a wife?'
'I'm not expecting flowers or an apology – my father used to tell me, never explain and never apologize – but I expect to be cut in/
'Where's your maid?'
'When she came to the door I told her to get lost.'
'I'll make some tea.'
Gonsalves went to the kitchen and Wroughton slumped into his chair. The voice boomed through the rattle of the mugs and the opening and closing of cupboard doors. 'I think I heard you right. 'Cut in?' You hear me. You are a junior partner in our endeavour. We use you when we need you, we ignore you when we don't. Did you get big ideas because Teresa does pizza for you, and you're Uncle Eddie to the kids? Shouldn't have done. It's a tough world out there. You're a taker, Eddie, but you don't have much to give. It's why I cut you out. We were running a secure operation down in the Rub' al Khali.'
'I think you told me you had 'big boys' toys' there,'
'In the Rub' al Khali we had something special going, and -'
'And I told you – 'not much to give', I'm sure – about a caravan going out of Oman and a direction route.'
