Gerald Seymour - The Unknown Soldier

'Won't she wave?'

The pilot said, 'She doesn't know we're up above. We're on loiter at twenty-four thousand feet altitude, that's four point five four five miles. She can't hear us, and if she looked up she couldn't see us.

Why we wanted to show her to you, Mr Gonsalves, if there's camels with military crates we can identify them.'

'You got Hellfire on?'

She said they had not.

'Don't ever fly another day without Hellfire on, don't ever.'

'It's riot control they're doing, Mr Wroughton. Five days a week of riot-control training and preparation to counter a breakdown of law and order, that's the truth.'

Wroughton never took a note in the presence of an informer. To have taken a shorthand precis would have made the informer believe his information was interesting, important. His face was a study of disinterest. They were in the lobby of a small hotel that was rarely used by expatriates, and the chairs they used and the table with their juice were shielded by potted plants from the swing door and the reception desk. In any case, his cufflink was a microphone, and the recorder was under his jacket in the small of his back. God, the wretch came cheap.

'Every man and officer in the National Guard who is not on essential priority duties is now being sent on riot-control training.

They are crapping in their pants – if you'll excuse me – Mr Wroughton. It's gas and plastic bullets at the moment, but SANG units now have access to live ammunition. I know it's only a little detail, but all the armoured personnel carriers in the National Guard barracks must have full fuel tanks at all times. It's like they know the place is crumbling.'

Some handlers became fond of informants, treated them like way-ward children, pretended they were almost a valued part of the intelligence-gathering process. Eddie Wroughton would never make that mistake. Samuel Bartholomew was a creature he despised. Kind words, encouragement, unless laced with a tone of sarcasm, had no place in the relationship.

' I gather it's coming out of the mosques. Not the big ones, the party line rules there, but the small ones whose customers are hard hit by the new austerity. The Americans are gone, their troops have left, but my patient says the poison out of the lesser mosques is now directed at the royals. It's the fall in the standard of living that's doing it, my patient says – oh, yes, the armoured personnel carriers are full-time loaded up with gas and plastics, but they also have heavy machine-guns mounted. They're running scared. I hope this is valuable to you, Mr Wroughton. I've been very dedicated for you, Mr Wroughton, haven't I?'

Wroughton's lip curled. He thought he knew what was coming and he pushed away his near-empty glass with fruit in the bottom.

He smiled limply, then stood.

'Please, please, just hear me out.' Then the blurt. 'What I'm thinking, Mr Wroughton, your people can get access to buildings, can't they? And files, can't they?'

They did. 'I'm not following you, Bart.'

'There's files on me. I-'

'Files on all of us, Bart,' Wroughton teased.

'My files at the Devon and Cornwall police and at the BMA, I'm wondering…'

Wroughton played the idiot. 'What are you wondering?'

'After all I've done, you know, all the help – well, couldn't they just get lost?'

'Lost,' Wroughton mimicked. 'Lost? Are you suggesting that we might burgle police premises, and the offices of the British Medical Association, and remove files concerning criminal investigations? Is that what you're suggesting?'

The wretch cringed. 'I think I've done my time. I want out. I want a new start without those bloody files blocking me. That's reasonable, surely that's-'

Always dominate an informant, keep him under a steel-shod shoe. Wroughton said, 'You leave when I say so. Files go walkabout when I decide it – and that's not now. You are going, Bart, nowhere.'

A little dribble of spittle appeared at Bart's mouth.

Anger, Wroughton could have respected. Fight, he could have warmed to.

The doctor caved in. 'Yes, Mr Wroughton.'

There was no spine in the man. He waved him away, watched him cross the lobby and go through the doors. Then he saw her. If he hadn't watched Bartholomew going out of the hotel he would not have seen the woman. Quite elegant – a little plump – well dressed.

Silk blouse and skirt. Not young but well cared-for. She turned the pages of a magazine, but her attention was not on the pages. He caught her eye… Eddie Wroughton was expert at reading the boredom factor in middle-aged women. She had a wedding ring on her finger. Married women were always the better targets – they were always more bored. She'd caught his eye, and had held it. He thought she matched his own interest. He stood, paused for a decent moment, then eased across the lobby towards her.

A quarter of an hour later, when he had learned she was Belgian, that her husband worked up-country, and her home telephone number, he left her with her magazine.

*

Jed staggered like a drunk. He came off the ferry that linked the accommodation area with Marine Corps administration from the Delta Camp and thought he might fall. He knew that the eyes of every civilian, officer and enlisted man who had sailed on the ferry were locked on him.

A headcold had gone feverish and forced him to his bed. Two whole days, two nights, and part of a third day he had been tossing under the sweat-damp sheet, dosed with pills, twisting, cursing.

Then frustration had forced him up and into his work clothes. He was unshaven, unsure whether he could manage a razor with his shaking hand. A lumbering shadow of himself, Jed made his way off the ferry and towards the shuttle bus.

The mission he had set out 011 hooked him. He had gulped down more pills, dressed haphazardly; the stubble on his face and the unbrushed hair gave him the appearance of a vagrant. He heard titters of laughter. He said nothing, but hauled himself heavily up the bus steps, then flopped on to the nearest seat.

He was dropped off at Camp Delta. He showed his card at the gate. 'You all right, sir?'

'Just fine, thank you, Corporal.' He wasn't 'just fine', he felt goddamn foul. Swaying, he made his way to a store shed, far in the wrong direction from the block where his office was. It was the territory of a giant-built Afro-American sergeant, a man to be treated with respect or steel shutters would block any chance of co-operation.

He gave the name of Fawzi al-Ateh. 'What's the classification, Mr Dietrich?'

He said that the classification was Not to be Continued With, and that the subject had been released. 'You're asking a lot of me, Mr Dietrich – for me to find an NCW who's not even here.'

He asked whether the NCW files had been pulped or shredded and his voice was deferential. He was told where they were, an annexe. He thanked the sergeant. He did not suggest the man put aside his magazine or his two-litre Pepsi bottle, or pull himself up and get himself into the annexe. He said he would be happy to go look himself for what he wanted.

'Don't mind me telling you, Mr Dietrich, but you're not looking your best.'

He went through the door behind the sergeant's desk, and closed it.

Jed passed the racks that held the current files of transcripts, floppy disks and audiotapes. Ahead of him was a wooden door that squealed as he opened it. After more than two years of Camp X-Ray and Camp Delta, the annexe was still under-used. He flicked the switch and a dull ceiling light came on. The Not to be Continued With files and tapes were in sacks on the floor, not separated in any alphabetical system. He shared the annexe with a cockroach, more spiders than he could count and travelling caravans of ants. He had opened fifteen sacks before he found a date on a file that corres-ponded with that on which Fawzi al-Ateh had been bussed from Camp Delta to the airfield. He had checked nine envelopes, the thin brown pouches used for government service, before he unearthed the transcripts and audiotapes of the taxi-driver. He shoved the envelope under his arm, and left the annexe a little more of a mess than he had found it. It was an effort to walk between the store shed and the office block, and once he had to stop and lean against a fencing post.