also remembered there are the honoured foreigners who have helped our survival, and your name-'
'I don't want that fucking crap,' Bart sobbed. 7 am gone. I'm finished.'
T thank you for what you have done.'
Back at his home, he packed. One suitcase for his clothes, a medical bag, a cardboard box for the cat and a plastic bag of tinned food for it. He wrote the note and pinned it to the door. 'Mother seriously ill in England.
Returning there. God watch over you. Your friend, Samuel Bartholomew.'
He had arrived on an untruth, had lived on an untruth, and left on an untruth. He was gone before dusk fell on the village, driving with wet eyes, and two patrol vehicles discreetly escorted him down tracks and along roads and he was only clear of them when he had gone through the checkpoint. All the way to Tel Aviv, blazoned in his mind, was the image of the dust-coated face, at peace, of the fighter he had killed.
The book dropped from his hands. Beth saw the pain break over him.
She looked around. If he had cried out it would have helped her, yet he did not. He lay on his back and gasped. At a distance, beside the knelt camels, the guide watched, and close to him was the broken-open crate from which the manual had been retrieved. The face was in shadow and she could not see the eyes or the mouth and did not know what he thought. If a spotlight had been shone on his face she doubted she would know what he thought. Further back, erect and statue still, was the boy. .
Did it matter what anyone thought? Beth, as teenager and adult, had never cared for advice, counsel, guidance. She knew her mind: it did not tax her if a road or a street flowed past her and mouthed disapproval, if the crowds of a town, a city, condemned her judgement.
She was her own person and the innate stubbornness of character brooked no criticism. She was beside a killer whose eyes had closed.
She slipped away from him, out from under the awning, and went towards the drone of the snoring.
At his vehicle, where the doctor lay on the seat depressed to its full extent, she snapped open the door. His mouth was open, gaped wide, and the snoring brought spittle to his mouth. The shirt clung to his body and on his lap was a chocolate-bar wrapping, not shared with the rest of them. She punched his arm. He snorted, convulsed and then was awake.
'God – what did you do that for?'
'He's in pain,' Beth said.
The arm smeared the sweat off his face. 'Of course he's in pain. A bloody great hole like that, the flesh I took out of it and its depth what do you expect if not pain?'
'You talked about morphine.'
'Talked about morphine this evening. My experience, Miss Jenkins, pain seldom kills. Morphine does, often.'
'He doesn't cry out,' she said, a trill of bewilderment.
'And further experience tells me, Miss Jenkins, that the reaction to pain explains more about the patient than about the injury.'
'I don't understand what you're saying.' She was unsure, her voice was small, her guard was down.
He attacked. 'That's rich – like my favourite Christmas present. I am introduced by you to a war casualty who talks in delirium and confusion about mass murder. By you, I am nagged to save this creature's life. And you don't know who he is, don't know what mayhem he plans to inflict – don't know anything except you've an itch you want to scratch. What do you think he's going to do when Icve got him up on his feet and hobbling forward? Is he going to give you a loving kiss? Get you to wrap your thighs round his neck? Or walk away from you like you never existed?'
She trembled. 'How much morphine would you give him?'
He clutched her hand and she felt the slithering wet of his palm. .
'None, if I can get away with it. If I decide that he must sleep, cannot because of the pain, then I will inject between ten and twenty milligrams.'
'Not more, if the pain's bad?'
'It's an equation, Miss Jenkins – it's about getting the sums right.
Too little, and the pain continues. Too much, and respiration is fatally slowed and the myocardium, that's the heart muscle, is depressed, ceases to operate and death follows.'
'Yes.'
'It is not my intention to overdose him on morphine.'
'No.'
'If it's not a problem to you, I would like to resume my rest.'
His eyes had closed and his head was averted, his chin sagged and his mouth opened. She left him. She went past the boy, who did not look at her, stayed intent on his concentration. She looked up and saw only the clearness of the sky, blue, and she raked it till her eyes burned on the sun. The boy's father ducked out from under the awning, but did not meet her gaze. She realized it: she was alone. She skirted the camels and bent to go under the awning. He was propped up and had the pieces on his lap, and the manual. When he saw her, he waved her away – like she was flotsam.
He had the manual and the pieces. Across his lap was the launch tube with a missile inserted, and the battery coolant unit; he looked for the slot into which it would be inserted. Beside him, on the sacking, was the beltpack that housed the IFF interrogator unit, and next he would find the plug in the grip stock where its cable went.
He beat the pain.
The wound oozed but did not bleed.
He had seen the disappointment cloud her face. He had no interest in her. He did not see where she went, where she sat. He had no need of her.
When Caleb had found the slot and the plug socket, he rehearsed the firing procedure. His eyes flitted between the grip stock and the manual.
His finger rested on the impulse-generator switch, then the button controlling the seeker uncage bar. Then it rested gently on the trigger.
He read of the less-than-two-second response time between the trigger pull and the missile's launch. He imagined the fire flash and the lurched first stage of the missile's ejection from the tube, then the blast of the second stage, then the climbing hunt for the target.
Again and again, his pain controlled and his finger steady, Caleb rehearsed the preparations for firing. Without the missile he would not reach his family… but he did not know whether its time wrapped in an oiled covering had decayed it.
Getting to his family was his goal, his reason for survival.
The courier had been and had gone. The sentry, low down in the rocks in front of the cave's entrance, scanned the desert's expanse.
The courier had reached the cave after the first prayers at dawn and had left before the prayers at midday. He had brought with him a sealed, lead-encased container – the size of a water bucket – and had taken away with him finely rolled cigarette papers on which coded messages were written in minute script.
The heat shimmered the sands in front of the sentry, but he squinted, looked ahead and watched for them.
For midday prayers, men had emerged blinking from the cave, and one had held up the compass so that the direction of Makkah would be exact and not an estimation. They had prayed, then returned to the dark recesses.
The sentry had watched the courier in, had watched him out and away over the emptiness of the sands, and had not prayed. He had stayed hidden among the rocks with the rifle always in his hand and with the machine-gun, loaded with belt ammunition, close against his knee. During prayers, an eagle had wheeled high over the escarpment where the cave was. The sentry's eyes ached as he looked for a sign of their coming.
If they came in daylight he would have long warning of them.
He would see a speck of movement, then the shape of a small caravan would materialize. If they came in darkness he would see them, from three or four kilometres away, on the night vision glasses, Russian military, that hung from his neck. They were late.
They were late by four days.
