Gerald Seymour - The Unknown Soldier

'If they go over us, they have five chances of seeing us, or six. We should make it one chance only.'

Caleb had spoken quietly, with patience. But his mind was made up, the decision was taken. He had led a section of the 055 Brigade.

The decision was as clear to him as when he had squatted in the cages of X-Ray and Delta and had promised himself that he would fight. The Chechen, with the dead eye behind the patch, had seen the quality of a leader – the interrogators, guards and escorts had not. If he had needed it, the proof of his ability to think on his feet was on his wrist: the plastic bracelet with the reference number: US8AF-000593DR He did not discuss, did not talk it through with the guide, did not ask the guide's opinion. He spoke it as if he were giving an Older, but did so with politeness. He would not argue, he would lead.

'You will say that if we are close and they find us that one missile lulls us all. I say if we are close the chance of them finding us is . mailer. I respect you as my brother, but please do it.'

Caleb showed his patience. He dropped back and for half an hour he rode alongside the leading bull camel. He could read the batch number of the manufacturer, the stencilled name of the factory from which it had come, and the designation of the weapon, in the language he had thought he had lost, on the wooden crate it carried.

In half an hour, the guide rose on his saddle and waved for Hosni to come forward, for his son too, for them to bring the camels close.

They were together. The heat burned them. The sun's light, reflected up from the sands, was cruel in their eyes. The shadows were tiny beneath the lumbering hoofs. Caleb did not look up. To search the skies would have brought a weakening of his determination. Each could touch the other. He was strong.

Bart spoke and Wroughton listened.

'The pilots are all right, that's what he's saying. The pilots are fine, very professional, but they're not trusted. They know it and resent it.

Of course they know it, and it hurts. Morale is poor throughout the Air Force, he says, but especially so among the pilots. He was told – one of them spilled it all out for him – that the lack of trust stems from their training. They go to California or Arizona, they're off to the land of the free where they get their introduction to what I think is called "fast jets". They live among Americans and that marks them down, in the regime's eyes, as potential for contamination. They are beyond the reach of the great theocratic state during the training, are exposed to influences. Good pilots, yes – but how reliable? Is this useful?'

Wroughton nodded, but Bart thought his attention was far away.

They were on familiar territory, on the low seats behind the palms in the corner of the hotel lobby. Normally Wroughton varied their meeting-place, did not create a pattern, and it had puzzled Bart when this location was named. It was the first time Bart had ever reported on the Air Force and he'd expected a keener reaction… it was the first time that Bart had seen Wroughton appear haggard – tired, drawn, his tie not over his collar button, and his shoes not immaculately polished.

'Useful, but I think we've heard all this before.'

'Have you now? Well, what about this? Armaments. I suppose it follows on from what I told you I'd had from the National Guard man – you remember, the chap training them in riot control, yes? If they do practice bomb runs, then they fly up north. Up north, they load the bombs, but they have fuel restrictions. They don't carry enough fuel to fly back down to Riyadh with a bomb, only to get to the range and let it go. Then they have to land again, but up north.'

'I expect our air attache would have known that.'

'Would he? I can only offer, Mr Wroughton, what I'm told. When they are flying within range of the palaces they are not armed. Sorry if you already knew that. The fear, of course, is that a pilot may have been poisoned psychologically while training in America. Two sorts of poison, my patient says. Could be that exposure to America, its culture – McDonald's, Coca-Cola and pornography – has driven him into the fundamentalists' arms… Could be that he realizes the Kingdom is backward, living in an aged mind-set and that a bomb down the chimney of the King's palace would get the place going forward. Whichever, no armaments.'

'As I said, nothing there that's new.'

Wroughton had eased up from his seat. Bart wondered what had happened in the bastard's life. He was pleased he'd come, delayed two appointments, and had seen his tormentor fazed. Wroughton dropped a banknote on the bill.

'I just try to help, Mr Wroughton,'

'Keep in touch.'

Left alone, Bart finished his juice, gulped down what Wroughton had left, then sauntered across the lobby. At the swing doors, he realized that the banknote left to cover the price of their two juices would have paid for five and a handsome tip. Extraordinary, through the doors, he stood on the step and looked for his driver. A red Toyota saloon was parked in front of him, its engine idling and a European at the wheel. Wroughton drove out fast in his Discovery with the CD plates, and – Bart would have sworn to it – the red saloon accelerated, followed him out, then nestled into a lane two vehicles behind Wroughton. It could have overtaken and did not. bloody hell, a tail on Eddie bloody Wroughton. Bart was certain of it.

In Bart's past there had been briefings on how to recognize surveillance and a tail.

Al Maz'an village, near Jenin, Occupied West Bank.

God, if only there were more people like you Bart. If only.'

He walked at the end of the little column into the central square. She was Austrian. She would only be in Al Maz'an for twenty minutes, en route between Jenin and Nablus. The column was peopled by these representatives of a Munich-based medical charity and their Palestinian escorts. When Bart had heard that they were to come to Jenin for a morning's study, then drive on to Nablus, he had suggested to the organizing committee that a visit to the village, however brief, would be welcome.

'I do what I can. Sadly, I can do very little.'

'Tell me again what are the principal complaints of your patients?'

'Well, their overwhelming complaint is the savagery of the military occupation. All the hardship stems from it. Obstruction at every turn by the Israeli Defence Force, refusal to allow the entry of medical supplies, harassment of doctors and nurses and ambulance crews, even me… but that is not what you meant.'

She was pretty, earnest, and her face was a study of concern. Two Palestinian doctors were behind them, within earshot. An official of the Palestine Authority was in front. Her colleagues in the delegation were further ahead, fanning out into the square.

'I have here rampant bacterial diseases. E. coli, salmonella, typhoid, the constant threat of a cholera outbreak – you name it. I treat amoebic dysentery and toxoplasmosis. There is hepatitis A and B. Then I have the insect-vectored illnesses that you will have been told about in Jenin – dengue fever, filariasis and a particularly powerful strain of schistosomiasis where the parasites settle in the bowels, rectum and liver. Here, in the Occupied West Bank, Miss Hardenberger, we're looking at what your ancestors would have encountered in fifteenth-century Vienna. It is so unnecessary. Without the brutality of the Occupation all of them woidd be eradicated.'

Every word he said was heard, was meant to be. The scaffolding was still up. In the seven weeks that had passed he had not seen again the woman whose son had been hanged from that upper cross pole. In the seven weeks he had been three times to the hut at the checkpoint and had played out his charade of abusing the troops who searched his car. He had had nothing to report to Joseph and had sensed, the last time, a frisson of impatience.