Gerald Seymour - The Unknown Soldier

The pathetic gratitude was the act Caleb had mastered.

He had absorbed the routine. The days of his week were governed by his exercise session, two days away, and by his visit to the showers in three days. He had not been interrogated for twenty-nine days, and the only break in the routine would be if he was summoned again. Some men in the block were destroyed by the routine, had their minds turned by it or whimpered because of it, or screamed in the frustration that it brought. He played the part of the model prisoner, whose imprisonment was a mistake.

The plastic food tray was slipped through the hatch at the base of the barred door to the cell. He ducked his head in submissive thanks. The men with red necks and shaven heads, huge in their uniforms, towered in the corridor. Two of the four carried wooden truncheons, and the hand of one, who stood back from the trolley, fidgeted restlessly over a pistol holster.

Caleb smiled inanely and waited for them to move on; then he would crawl over the floor to the tray.

A guard said, loud, 'We got Independence Day, son, to celebrate.

You got special food today. You, son, enjoy the day as much as we do…'

The voice dropped to conversational. 'Goddamn gook doesn't understand a single goddamn word. Goddamn pitiful, aren't they? Goddamn pieces of shit.'

Caleb treasured the few hours spent close to the bodyguard and still fed off the strength given him. The guards and the food trolley moved on; he was superior to them, believed it, despised them. The success of the deceit gave him raw pleasure. His head bobbed, he showed his gratitude. They were despised and they were hated.

The strength gave him attention to detail. It might be a year away, or two, or five years – his freedom – but he prepared for it. Word had seeped through the wire mesh sides of the cages that four men, the first, had been released.

His life in the cage was consumed by the detail.

Primary in the detail was the removal, the scrubbing clean, of all traces in his mind of an earlier life; the final relegation of nationality, culture, upbringing, work, all gone. Second was the creating of two compartments for his life: in the privacy of his soul he was Abu Khaleb, fighter in the 055

Brigade, and in the eyes of the guards who fed, exercised and escorted him he was Fawzi al-Ateh, taxi-driver. But the detail went deep into the heart of the deceit. He prayed five times a day. When he whispered to the prisoners in the next cells it was about a dead family and a bombed village, and a childhood among orchards; he assumed there would be 'plants', informers, among prisoners rotated round the cages. He assumed also, and the belief bred paranoia, that microphones were buried in the cell back wall and that hidden cameras watched him. He conformed, utterly, to the image he created – the taxi-driver's. If there had been suspicion of him, or if he had been denounced, he would have been subjected to ferocious interrogation, but he was not. The detail protected him.

The guards moved on and the trolley squealed to the corridor's end. Then they came back and one whistled cheerfully. They could not see into his heart, could not read the hatred.

He lived the lie, did it well, and the second Fourth of july of his imprisonment faded as the dusk came and the bright lights shone down on the block.

'Something'll turn up,' Lizzy-Jo said, gently 'You look all stressed out. Something always turns up.'

He was crouched over the workbench and his fingers toyed with the joystick. The muscles in his shoulders were stiff, knotted, and his neck was tight so that the veins and throat tubes stood tall. His eyes behind the thick spectacle lenses had pricks of pain.

Marty said, flat, 'Let's just hope so.'

He used his forearm, wiped the sweat off his forehead. On manual control, First Lady quartered a box whose nearest point to the Ground Control at Shaybah was three hundred and twenty land miles.

At four and a half miles altitude she crossed the desert floor at eighty-four miles per hour. But when she was up there, silent, secret and fragile, the cross-winds were fierce. The upper-air turbulence dictated that Marty should fly manual, and the extra load of the two Hellfire missiles – two hundred and thirteen pounds weight – one on each of the fragile wings, made her sluggish to commands. If the winds First Lady encountered at that altitude had been across or down the runway, she would still be under the awning shelter and grounded. He had to fly her, and each time the high winds tossed her, and the picture rolled, rocked and jerked, Marty heard the sharp intake of Lizzy-Jo's breath, her irritation.

'You know what? – Bosnia and Afghanistan were walks in the park compared to this place.'

'Were they?' His hands were on the joystick, his eyes were locked on the cascade of figures of wind speed, wind direction, wind force in front of him, and the screen above that showed the sand, the damn sand. The sweat ran on his back and over his stomach. 'That is a comfort.'

'But we are here. Here in this goddamned awful place. We have to make it work.'

'You sound, Lizzy-Jo – forgive me – like you're full of shit from Human Resources or Admin. They send you that speech?'

The hardest thing about arguing with or insulting Lizzy-Jo was that she just laughed. She laughed loudly. He always wondered if her man, back now and minding the kid, had ever argued with her or insulted her about her determination to put Agency work in front of rearing the kid and putting his dinner on the table when he came back from selling life-and-death policies. He probably had, and she'd probably laughed at him.

When her laugh subsided, she pulled a face – her serious one. That face made her downright pretty, and the sweat that glistened on it made her prettier. 'We were given a difficult assignment, as difficult as it comes. We are doing our best. What more can we do? What does not help our best is you sulking like a kid without a Krispy Kreme.

Lighten up, Marty, lighten up and spit it out.'

'Spit what out?' He knew he was playing awkward. He edged First Lady on a gradual turn to port side, and the picture of the sand under the real-time camera blurred. Each time he made an adjustment, dictated by wind speed, and deviated from the straight line of flight a handkerchief of sand below the lens was missed… and maybe the handkerchief was big enough for camels with boxes, for men, for a target. But if he did not fly into the wind, when it had mean strength, he risked damaging the bird, like the guys back at Bagram had lost one, and it had been down on the ground, broken and smashed, a sight to make a man's eyes water. An instructor at Nellis had said that the Predator, MQ-1, with Hellfires under the wings, was like a butterfly out in the rain – could fly, but not fly happy. 'What do you want from me?'

'Give me the skinny. Whatever's pissing you off, tell me.'

He gave it to her. 'Well, for one, the head honcho comes down, spiels crappy intelligence, expands the search area… We are in a no-hoper, that's my-'

'It's what we got to work with. Next.'

Marty stumbled, stuttered: 'My picture. I shelled out for that. It got sand in it, the storm, it got sand between the glass and the print – and it's got condensation, hot days and cold nights. It's the only picture I ever wanted, and it might just be fucked up.'

She said, sweet and soft, 'I'm sorry. I never had a picture. Maybe when we get out of here it can get repaired… I'm sorry. Next.'

He rallied. 'The air-conditioning's going down. It's half strength.

We are both dripping wet.'

There was a bleep beside her and a green light blinked.

'Just think about it, if the air-conditioning fails, we're fucked.

We're gonna bake.'

She hit keys, made alive a blank screen on which a message flickered.