Gerald Seymour - The Unknown Soldier

We target them to kill them,' Ariel had murmured in his ear, as he turned the pages of the books. He had been walked in Tel Aviv down Ben Yehuda and along the seafront, and had seen restaurants, cafes and discotheques with guards outside them. 'If we are lucky, at the last moment, as the bomber hesitates and steels himself, or creates suspicion because he wears a coat to hide his bomb and it is hot, the guard may intervene in time, but we need great luck – if we know the bomb planner, and his movements, and his factory, if we strike him then we do not need luck. More highly than luck, we value intelligence. If you help us, Dr Bartholomew, you would be a proud servant of peace, and honoured,' Ariel had whispered in his ear, as they had threaded between the pavement crowds. He was not a brave man, not then and not now.

When he was called in, forty minutes after the time of his appointment, he did not meet his landlord. The villa was owned by a prince of the blood, and the tacky work of negotiation was done by a hireling, the prig in the white robe and red-checked ghutrah who pared his nails with a chrome file and waved him casually to a chair.

That evening Bart surprised himself.

Not bravery but bloody-mindedness ruled. Everything they preached at the embassy and the Chamber of Commerce about patience was abandoned. He launched in with a blatant untruth: 'I don't mind sitting in the waiting room for forty wasted minutes, but my patients mind. I am late for home calls to two patients who are unwell, who need my attention. You are dealing with a busy man.

Now, I seek an extension to my tenancy of six months. I note that five of the villas in my compound are currently empty because of the security situation. If a sixth villa is not to join them, bringing in no rent, then I require a discount of twenty per cent for that half-year. I believe that should be acceptable or I will go elsewhere.'

He leaned forward. His expression, carefully nurtured and fraudulent, was of concern and anxiety. 'Have you seen a doctor recently?

Your neck looks a bit swollen to me. Had any pain in the glands in your neck, pains or aches? I'm not saying you should be worried, but I really do advise that you book an appointment with your doctor and get him to give you a run-over. Nasty things, when they go wrong, glands. Best caught early.'

Masterful, and the little prig had blanched. His fingers were under the hang of the ghutrah and were massaging a naturally plump neck.

'Right, I've two appointments to cover, so I'll be on my way. I'm looking at a six-month extension with a twenty per cent reduction in rent – and, of course, my sincere best wishes to His Royal Highness.

I can see myself out.'

He went out into the evening. A harsh wind snatched at his trousers. The chauffeur flashed the headlights. As Bart walked to the waiting vehicle, he reflected that – at long last – he had stood his corner… not on anything that mattered, but he felt better for it.

There was a spring in his step. The bloody wind caught his tie, snaked it over his shoulder.

Beth heard the wind beat on the windows. Outside, the palm trees' fronds shuddered. She held up the book. 'Everyone got it, Sonnet Eight? I'll start, first two lines, then each of you, to a stop or a colon, from the right. "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate." N e x t… '

In front of her, hanging on her words, were her four most advanced pupils. Shakespeare for them, not the technical language of petroleum extraction. Her finger wavered towards the chemist from Pakistan.

It was risque for her to have chosen a sonnet of love: it was at the limit of religious correctness. One day, when she had her flight out booked, confirmed, she might just get round to The Merchant of Venice, give them Shylock's lament. For now, love was challenge enough, and taught by a woman.

She cued in the pipeline engineer. The man read and stuttered to a halt. 'Miss Bethany, I do not understand it.'

The men laughed, she grinned. She could have done Lear with them, or the speeches at Agincourt, or given them Coriolanus.

She had chosen love. A nun, a permanent virgin, at the convent school had made the class learn the sonnet by heart. Not a full hour of the day had gone by when she had not thought of him… and the wind outside now whipped the sand and she wondered where he sheltered, huddled, and how hard it went for him.

'You will, when we're through it. OK, on we go…' She pointed to the airfield manager.

He had not left her. He had been with her in the shower in the morning, no time for a bath, and as she'd gulped down her breakfast.

He was with her now. She heard the beat of his breath as he had dug with the shovel. She saw him stare out the men who would have killed her. His voice was with her, as he had gone away with the boy:

'You never met me, I was never here… You never saw my face.' He was never away from her.

The warning of the deputy governor was wrong, she decided. She would not accept it. He had said that illegal and dangerous men travelled in the Sands. She had lied, she had said she met no one, saw no one. But the warning was a saw's blade on a plank nail, and she could not escape it.

'Right, excellent – questions.'

The pipeline engineer asked, 'It is very fine, Miss Bethany, but what is Shakespeare writing of? Is it lust? Is it infatuation? Is it love?

How can we read Shakespeare's mind? Is it about love?'

'Read it to your wife when you are next at home, and ask her,' Beth said. 'For myself, I think it is not infatuation or lust. No, it is about love.'

The wind outside was worse, fiercer – where he was.

They were in darkness. Only a thin light washed down from the moon. He thought, was not certain of it, that the route of the march was no longer straight but that it curved along the line of a crescent.

His eyes were slitted against the sand the wind pelted him with, and sometimes – against the strongest gusts – he lifted the cloth that covered his mouth and protected his eyes. When he went blind, or when he peered ahead, he could only make out the rump of Ghaffur's camel in front of him. He could not see Rashid, but he sensed that the guide took them on great lengths of quarter-circles, then corrected, then took another curved course.

Was the guide lost?

He thought Fahd slept, and Hosni. Both men were tied to their saddles. Three times, after they had restarted the march, when the moon was highest, Caleb had lost sight of Ghaffur and the boy had gone forward and must have talked with his father, but each time he had dropped back and taken a place again in front of Caleb, and then

– each time – the route had swung into another gentle long and arching turn.

What if they were lost?

The guide had no map, no instruments, and in the darkness he could not see the features of the greater dunes – if there were any.

His mind had drifted back into his memory. He had seen a room.

There was a bed, unmade, and a green coverlet was crumpled on the floor. The carpet was thin and pale brown and magazines tossed down shared it with the coverlet. Motorcycles and cars were the photographs on the opened magazines. Girls – big hips, small swim-suit bottoms, big breasts – were on the walls. The room was gone from Caleb's mind.

He tried to remember from what direction the sand hit him, didn't know, was too confused, too tired, too thirsty, hungry and bruised by the day's heat, and now chilled by the night. Each of the Beautiful One's strides dragged her closer to collapse. He had set in his mind that they were lost, that they had doubled back on sand covered the previous day, or the day before. He croaked the question: 'Does he know where he's going, Ghaffur, does your father know?'