Gerald Seymour - The Unknown Soldier

The American's voice was muffled, as if distant from the microphone.

'The people in your village, Fawzi, what do they think about Americans?' the voice of the man behind him drawled, bored.

Lovejoy had been told the tape was from one of the last interrogations, when hope of live intelligence was dead, fulfilling a schedule that said prisoners must be questioned once a month. 'Can you tell me how the people in your village regard Americans?'

In a pretty poor light, Lovejoy thought. He had read the file in his room last night, and the file said that the family of Fawzi al-Ateh, taxi-driver, had supposedly been pulverized by the bombs from a B-52 aircraft… except that the taxi-driver was bogus and came not from a God-forsaken village in Afghanistan but from here. The woman's translation was similarly distorted.

The voice played in the hushed area of the library. They strained to hear it. They leaned forward, and one reached inside his jacket to tweak the control of his hearing-aid. He thought them all humble, decent, generous people. Their new clothes would have come from charity shops and their old clothes would have been repaired with needle and thread. He depended on them. The voice was the target of the microphone, was sharp. One woman, deep in fierce concentration, reached out over the table and made a twisting gesture, and Lovejoy turned up the volume dial. Camp Delta swamped the section of the library. The voice died away.

The question came. 'Before the accident, Fawzi, and we very much regret accidents – accidents are inevitable in modern high-technology warfare – did your village people welcome the intervention of the United States against the repression of the Taliban, and against the terrorism of Al Qaeda? Did t h e y…?' He switched off the machine, had been concentrating on the faces and had not intended the tape should run into the second question.

'Ladies and gentlemen, that's a first playing and I can play it as many times as you want. Where's he from? Where's that young man from?'

Some were certain of where he was not from.

'He's not from Moxley.'

' 'Tisn't Ocker, I'd swear on that.'

'Not from Dudley.'

'And I'll tell you something else – he's speaking Asian, but he isn't.

May speak Asian, but he's not.'

'Right, Alf – Asians can't do the V, can't get their tongues round it.

Asians say "wehicles", they say "wery", can't do V… And it isn't Tipton, or Upper Gornal.'

'Not Lower Gornal, neither – you're right about what Asians can't say, Alf.'

'But it's south from Wolverhampton.'

Lovejoy, so quietly that it was barely noticed, intervened. He'd reckoned – taken the gamble that he was not wasting his morning – that the elderly whose lives were lived south-west of Wolverhampton, stuck in the concrete of their streets, immured in their communities, would have a knife-sharp recognition of strangers. They would know where the stranger came from. He interrupted: 'Let me play it again to you. Can you tell me where you think he comes from?'

They listened, transfixed, to the voice, and he sensed the start of recognition.

'It's more like Deepfield.'

'Don't you mean Woodcross?'

'I think it's sort of Ettingshall.'

What about Lanesfield? What you reckon, Alf?'

There was always a leader in any group. In the Internet Familarization group, the leader was Alf. A heavy man, bald, his trousers held under his gut by a broad leather belt. 'It's not Ettingshall and not Lanesfield, but that's close. I'm reckoning it's up Spin Road from Coseley, but not as far as Ettingshall. It's where your cousin is, Edna, the one with the pigeons.'

Wonderful birds, champions – ever so many rosettes.'

He doesn't want to know about pigeons, Edna. He wants to know where that young chappie's from. I'm saying he's from between Coseley and Ettingshall.'

'I think you're right, Alf, between Coseley and Ettingshall.'

'You've got it, Alf – funny, him speaking Asian but not being. that's it, between Coseley and Ettingshall. Definite.'

Lovejoy picked up the cassette player, took out the tape and passed it to the American. He smiled his thanks, then told them how much they had helped his project. He shook Aggie's hand, and left them chattering happily about Edna's cousin's racing pigeons.

The American trailed after him and out into the car park. They ran in the rain, dived into the Volvo, and Lovejoy snatched the newly purchased map from the glove-box and began to spill through the pages.

'Was that scientific?'

'No,' Lovejoy said. 'It was better than science could give you. If they say it, I believe it. White and not Asian.'

'Which is going to blow the roof off Delta – Jesus Christ.'

Lovejoy's finger found the page, then pointed to and rapped down on the names. 'Ettingshall and Coseley, about a mile and a half apart.

That's where your man's from. Bet your pension on it.'

'I can only tell you, Eddie, what he told me.' Teresa leaned against the door and two of her kids, the youngest, hung from her skirt. The other two were shouting inside. 'He wasn't proud of it, you getting the turnaround in the lobby, but there were things – what he told me

– that were too grand to cut you in on.'

'I see.'

'For God's sake, Eddie, surely there are things you wouldn't share with the Agency, even with Juan.'

'Maybe.'

'He's sleeping down there. Nathan, his sidekick, came round for his spares. When Juan rings, shall I tell him you called by?'

Wroughton said evenly, 'I wouldn't want to bother him, wouldn't want to disturb him.'

She couldn't see behind his tinted glasses but she fancied his eyes would have blazed. 'Come on, Eddie, you know what it's like.'

He seemed not to hear her, had already turned his back. She watched him walk briskly away across the lawn and past the Pakistani garden boy. She was not prepared to incubate a feud so she stayed in the doorway and waved to him, to a friend, as he drove off, aggressively fast. She was still in the doorway when he went through the guarded entrance gates and pulled out into the traffic. She saw a red Toyota car come up behind him, brake, then follow him away. She watched and waved until Eddie was gone.

Inside, the kids' shouting had become screaming. She closed the front door and went into the kitchen to play peacemaker – it upset her that there was not peace between her husband and his best friend, and she did not know what was too critical for sharing between them.

He heard the voice in his headphones, like it caressed him. 'No better time than the present. At your own pace, guys. Oscar Golf, out.'

It was fourteen minutes since the camera slung to the belly of First Lady had found them. Inside the Ground Control the heat baked them. The desultory conversations between Marty and Lizzy-Jo had died. George was behind them with the water. The screens were in front. of them and their focus was on the central picture beamed down to them.

The tactic of the target had changed.

From an altitude of twenty-three thousand feet and a ground speed of seventy-one knots, the picture was transmitted to the middle screen, the largest. Marty held her steady – optimum weather conditions – on figure-eight passes over the target, and she went through the programmes that changed surveillance to target acquisition, The water George had poured on to his head, which ran down his back and stomach, had cooled him. He felt good, had the right to.

Marly could stand alongside the former Air Force pilots who flew for the Agency out of Bagram. Because he had killed, he thought himself a veteran.

She had not spoken about the sex, hadn't touched him, hadn't brushed against him – like she'd distanced herself from him. Her Mouse was undone again to her waist and he'd seen the water run down to the flesh folds of her stomach… She had the target on camera, followed it and never let it go while he made the figure-eight passes and thought she seemed older than before, more clinical than he'd known her.