Gerald Seymour - The Unknown Soldier

He winced. Ever since his supervisor had told him of the taxi-driver's release, the irritation had come to him in spasms. It was not a tidy wrap-up. He could go back in his mind to the first day of the vacation, up in the cabin by the lake, when the faces across his desk had been clear, clean images. He had identified something enigmatic about that subject: a tall young man, softly spoken, never shaken in his story. All the others who pleaded innocence, as the taxi-driver had, had tried to prove their non-association with Al Qaeda by naming men they'd 'met' or men they'd 'heard of' who were in the 055 Brigade, or men they'd 'seen'. This one, the taxi-driver, had never met an Al Qaeda member, never heard of one, had never seen one. It was such a small point, so trivial, and by the second day on the Wisconsin lake he'd forgotten it. It would not have resurrected in his mind if the Bureau and the Agency had not walked, in big boots, over his supervisor… It had made a niggling suspicion. He filed the signal.

He went to work. He walked between the block where his office was and the block used for interrogation. He could see the beach. The wind came off it. It should have been a place of beauty, but it wasn't.

It was a place of fences and cages, of howled misery and failure. He'd complained, more than five months back, to Arnie Senior about the numbing tedium of the interrogation sessions – but Arnie Senior had done his draft time in the Central Highlands of Vietnam where questioning was 'robust': 'Take 'em up in a chopper, three of them, get up to a thousand feet, make two take a hike and then ask the third some questions. Never fails.' Arnie Senior's eyes had glazed over, sort of manic, and Jed had never again talked about his work to his father.

The translator was from Pittsburgh, second generation American, Syrian stock, and Jed disliked him, didn't trust him. The translator lounged and pared his nails. The chair opposite the desk was empty; they waited for the Kuwaiti to be brought in. Jed had talked three times to the taxi-driver, sitting in that same chair. He had found him co-operative and word-perfect on his story. Each time he'd done the oldest of tricks, what they taught at the training of interrogators, go back suddenly over a fact given an hour before, but every time the taxi-driver's story had matched and the trick hadn't caught him.

Truthful, and he wouldn't have admitted it – not even to Brigitte he'd rather liked the young man, and the story of the family's death from the bombers had kind of hit him… He looked up.

The chained prisoner, between the guards, was shuffled into the room. His thoughts of the taxi-driver – where he was and what ground he walked – were shut from his mind.

He looked into the pleading face of the Kuwaiti.

The birds soared.

She flew the peregrine, the shahin, he flew the saker falcon, the hurr. They were high, specks in the sky.

Beth and her host, the deputy governor, were out for a day's sport, with four vehicles and a retinue of drivers, falcon-minders, and servants to pitch an awning when they broke for the picnic; there were bodyguards with rifles, and a tracker from the Murra tribe to bring them back to Shaybah if the GPS system failed. She would have preferred just her and him, one four-wheel drive and the two birds.

It could not be: the deputy governor, a prince of the Kingdom, required such a following as a symbol of his rank.

The birds, high enough over them to make her arch her neck and struggle to follow their flight, searched for prey.

Had they been alone, two persons in the wilderness of sand, she would have experienced what she loved: the solitude, the quiet and the serenity. The desert captivated her. Lawrence had written, three-quarters of a century before, that 'this cruel land can cast a spell', and she understood him. She was captivated by the emptiness and the infinity of the horizons. Its imprint, she knew, would mark her mind for the rest of her days.

She watched for the diving stoop of the peregrine, waited for it to spy out a bustard that would be condemned.

They were a dozen miles off the road running to the north alongside the pipeline; the meteorite impact site of Wabar was a hundred and twenty miles to the west. The deputy governor would have been apoplectic had he known that she went alone to the ejecta field, had found a route for her Land Rover. He believed she only travelled there when he authorized drivers, a back-up vehicle and servants for the camp she must have, with a cook, a tribesman from the Murra, and troops from the Border Guard; with that crowd she felt con-stricted and watched, unfree. She had no fear of the desert that Lawrence had called 'cruel'. Once a month, Beth slipped away on her own to walk among the black glass and the white stones, to map and examine them, and once every second month she took the deputy governor's deputed escort. She had been told by a Bedouin trader who had come to Shaybah of another place, south of Wabar, where the glass and stones had fallen from the heavens, and had been given landmarks, perhaps a place where no human foot had ever been. She would be there, alone, with the quiet – if her Land Rover could get her there.

The birds searched, had not yet found a prey below.

She was there because she had written the letter to the Saudi Embassy in London, and had requested a visa for scientific research of meteorite impact sites. She had, of course, exaggerated her academic qualifications and egged-up her field experience. Her mother and father had lectured her that the Kingdom was not responsive to foreigners, intruders. Three months later she had whooped when a positive response had dropped through the letter-box, signed in person by the deputy governor, instructing her to go to the embassy where a visa would be issued to her. Everyone she knew in London said it was a miracle that she had won admission to follow her studies.

The birds came down, but not in the dive to strike.

Their flight back to the cluster of vehicles was frantic and in fear.

Above them, distinct and threatening, an eagle hovered. The sport was finished: no bustard would be taken. The peregrine and the saker falcon would not fly again if an eagle dominated the sky. The picnic was laid out and the birds shivered in fear in their cages. She watched the eagle, felt its presence, a killer over the sands, danger where before there had been none.

He followed the example of the guide, Rashid, and the boy.

He must have the respect of Rashid. Caleb had seen, looking up the length of the caravan, that when Rashid glanced back there was no respect on his features for the men who rode the camels.

He stopped, bent, and unfastened the buckles of his heavy sandals. He let his bare feet sink into the sand, then hitched the sandals' straps to his waist. He took the first step. He must have respect, he was driven to find it. The heat of the sand scorched the flesh on the soles of his feet, the grains clogged between his toes.

The second step, and then he was climbing a dune's lee slope and each step set fire to the skin under his feet, which was pink and protected between the calluses and the new blisters, but his grip was better than it was with the sandals; his toes dug into the loose sand and he did not fall. The burning ran from his feet to his ankles and up to his thighs. Caleb gasped. His teeth locked on his lip. He would not cry out. They tumbled down the dune's reverse slope. He fell but did not scream as the pain surged.

The boy, Ghaffur, was gone. Caleb was alone, abandoned by the caravan's stampede down the reverse slope. He scrambled to his feet.

He saw the boy sprint, sure-footed, past the pack camels and past the camels on which Fahd, Hosni and Tommy clung, as if for their lives.

He plodded after them, the gap growing and the pain burning. The boy reached his father at the head of the caravan and tugged at his father's sleeve. Rashid seemed to listen to his son, then turned. Tears welled in Caleb's eyes. His bare feet gouged into the sand. He saw, through misted eyes, the moment of disinterested contempt on Rashid's face, heard faintly the cough and the spit, then Rashid resumed his march at the caravan's head.