world, and scrabbled in the sand after meteorites and did not listen to the radio, didn't watch the satellite TV and didn't read newspapers. You did not concern yourself with the Twin Towers or with Bali or Nairobi or a hundred bombs around the world. You did not care about rows of coffins and about the weeping of victims' loved ones. You did not know about the hatred because you'd closed your mind to everything other than your own demands. It'll take some getting out of, Miss Jenkins, where you've put yourself. Unless you're very smart – smarter than you've ever been – you are destined to end up as a casualty, and you'll call for people to help you but they'll not come running.'
Through a pane of glass, she saw them. She dreamed. They were together and she rode beside him, rocking on the camel hump, and the emptiness of the desert stretched away in front of her. She did not feel the heat, or the dryness in her throat, or exhaustion, and she was aware only of her happiness to be with him in a place of beauty, and free, and it was her future and his.
A shot was fired. She heard the rifle's crack, then the breaking of the glass.
She no longer saw herself clearly, and did not see him.
The voice was in her ear, replaced the ring of the shot.
Beth woke, blinked in the darkness.
The boy was above her, his face was silhouetted against the sunken moon.
'Please, Miss Bethany, do not make any sound.'
'What… what?' She lay on the sand, a single blanket wrapped round her, beside the Land Rover's wheel.
'What my father says…'
'What does your father say?'
'My father says you should go.'
'Go?' Beth stammered. 'Go? Where to?'
'My father says you should go, and leave, drive away.'
'Yes, in the morning. More injections. When he can stand, ride, when he leaves…'
'Go, my father says, go now.'
'I made a promise,' Beth said bleakly. 'I gave my word. I cannot break my word.'
'My father says you should go.'
The boy slipped away. She heard the rustle of the camels' harnesses, their endless grinding chewing, and Bart's snores.
She felt small, frightened, and she knew by how far she had overreached herself. She had given her word, had made her promise.
She would not sleep again, would not dream again… There would be no happiness, no place of beauty, and she thought the simplicity of love was snatched.
Beth rolled in her blanket, swore, lay on her stomach, swore again, and beat her fists down against the sand.
He slept. He heard nothing, saw no movements. The great body of the Beautiful One, beside him and close to him, soothed his sleep.
Caleb slept because the pain had been beaten back, slept as the first light of dawn broke.
Chapter Nineteen
'Do you want morphine?'
'No.'
He had taken the injection in his arm. Caleb had lain on his back while the doctor had examined the leg wound, then replaced the lint dressing.
'You can have morphine either intravenously or by ampoule, for the pain.'
'I don't want morphine.'
'It's a free world.' The doctor smiled grimly. 'You take it or leave it.'
He did not want morphine because he thought the drug would cloud his mind. Back at home, in the old world that he sought to forget, there had been heroin addicts – the world came back more often to him, nestled with him, disturbed him – and in the summer they went down the canal towpath to the bridge that carried the rail link between Birmingham and Wolverhampton, and they huddled in the gloom below the bridge's arches and injected themselves. To feed it, they stole, mugged and burgled. Going to school, going to the garage, going in the car to Birmingham for the mosque, he had seen them shambling, pale, their minds lost. He needed control, that day above all others. .
The doctor hovered over him, rubbing his eyes as if tiredness overwhelmed him. Caleb had slept. The sweat ran from the doctor's forehead and down into the stubble on his cheeks… The doctor had saved him, but had seen his face.
'Actually, I'm rather pleased with it.'
The low light seeped under the awning that swung and jerked from the growing restlessness of the hobbled camels. In an hour he and Rashid and Ghaffur would be gone, the ropes would be unfastened and the animals would be loaded, and they would move.
Morphine would derange his mind when he needed clarity.
'It's clean, there are no indications of infection. Oozing, that's expected, but no pus. It's what's going to happen next that you have to think about.'
Only the high-flying eye could find the vehicles, and then by chance. They might not be found for weeks, months, a year. If a storm came, at any time in the weeks or months, the contours of the dunes would shift and the vehicles would be buried – and the bodies.
'What you've got now is temporary. With clean dressings, it'll last three or four days, but then – if you've kept the infection out – you'll have to have it stitched tight. I'll be frank with you. The speed of your recovery, from trauma and dehydration, astonishes me. You've done well, or been lucky. But you will need a professional for the stitches.'
He would not bury the bodies. He would abandon them to rot in the sun and decay, and the clothes would degrade, and the flesh would be burned off the bones, but the first storm would bury them.
His strength would be safeguarded.
'I'm going to do you some extra dressings, and I'll leave eight Ampicillin syringes, enough for two days, and then the same in tablets – just swallow them. Twenty pills will keep you going for another five days. You'll need proper care in a week. I'll put out some morphine as well, and two syringes of Lignocaine anaesthetic if you have to take a penknife to the wound – I don't think you will. There's not much more I can do for you, but you've had my best effort.'
'Why?' Caleb asked.
The doctor giggled at him, then wiped the smile. 'I don't think we need to talk about that. I'll get it all ready and packaged up. No . sudden movements, no exertions, no walking unaided, and when you ride one of those bloody creatures you should keep the pace steady and slow. You, my friend, are a fragile petal.'
He watched the doctor walk away. There was, for a brief moment, a shiver of anger in him that his question had not been answered. A brief moment. It did not matter. He bent his body, levered his back up and looked out from under the awning. He saw the doctor head towards his vehicle. The woman was sitting against the wheel of the Land Rover, her knees drawn up to her chest and her head down on them, sitting against the wheel where he had laboured to dig out the sand. Beyond the guide, who was hunched down with his rifle laid across his lap, the boy stood with his head still and listened. He brushed his hand against the furred skin above the nose, and the Beautiful One nuzzled his arm. He caught her harness and dragged himself up. The pain shimmered through his body. He stood, his head against the awning's ceiling, used the launcher as a crutch, his hand tight on the grip stock.
He went, slow step by slow step, out from under the awning and towards the guide.
Camp Delta, Guantanamo Bay.
They sat on the bus. They were all blindfolded, and the chains were on their wrists and ankles and round their waists. He heard guards' voices from outside the bus windows and the hammering of construction workers and