Gerald Seymour - The Unknown Soldier

A woman's corpse followed them.

With reverence, a man's body was lifted clear.

He saw the frozen face of the man who had sat in the rear seat of the Fiat.

It had been on the second page, at the top rank, of the most sensitive fugitives. Now the face was like a circus clown's, coated with the white dust of the plaster of the interior walls. The dust made a mask for the face and death had distorted none of the features. No wound disturbed it: strength was written on it, and he fancied there was honesty. Bart turned away, and pressed his hand against his throat to suppress vomit.

He did not dare to walk back through the square. He had not the courage to go past the scaffolding erected in front of the square's principal building.

An hour later, Bart sagged from the chair.

He went down on to the hut floor and the coffee he'd held spilled on to the boards.

He wept.

Only Joseph saw him.

On his knees and on his elbows, his body quivering from the tears, he heard the beat of Joseph's words. 'You did well. For us you are a jewel. A man who was a murderer was liquidated because of your bravery. You are responsible for the saving of many lives. Listen, Bart, we regret the deaths of two children and a woman in the house. We regret also that a lynch mob has killed a woman they believe guilty of treachery to their society. Two children and two women are set on the scales against the lives of many. You are a hero to us. I tell you, Bart, beside Jerusalem's Mount Herzl is the Yad Vashem memorial where we remember our own and their suffering, and also remembered there are the honoured foreigners who have helped our survival, and your name-'

'I don't want that fucking crap,' Bart sobbed. 7 am gone. I'm finished.'

T thank you for what you have done.'

Back at his home, he packed. One suitcase for his clothes, a medical bag, a cardboard box for the cat and a plastic bag of tinned food for it. He wrote the note and pinned it to the door. 'Mother seriously ill in England.

Returning there. God watch over you. Your friend, Samuel Bartholomew.'

He had arrived on an untruth, had lived on an untruth, and left on an untruth. He was gone before dusk fell on the village, driving with wet eyes, and two patrol vehicles discreetly escorted him down tracks and along roads and he was only clear of them when he had gone through the checkpoint. All the way to Tel Aviv, blazoned in his mind, was the image of the dust-coated face, at peace, of the fighter he had killed.

The book dropped from his hands. Beth saw the pain break over him.

She looked around. If he had cried out it would have helped her, yet he did not. He lay on his back and gasped. At a distance, beside the knelt camels, the guide watched, and close to him was the broken-open crate from which the manual had been retrieved. The face was in shadow and she could not see the eyes or the mouth and did not know what he thought. If a spotlight had been shone on his face she doubted she would know what he thought. Further back, erect and statue still, was the boy. .

Did it matter what anyone thought? Beth, as teenager and adult, had never cared for advice, counsel, guidance. She knew her mind: it did not tax her if a road or a street flowed past her and mouthed disapproval, if the crowds of a town, a city, condemned her judgement.

She was her own person and the innate stubbornness of character brooked no criticism. She was beside a killer whose eyes had closed.

She slipped away from him, out from under the awning, and went towards the drone of the snoring.

At his vehicle, where the doctor lay on the seat depressed to its full extent, she snapped open the door. His mouth was open, gaped wide, and the snoring brought spittle to his mouth. The shirt clung to his body and on his lap was a chocolate-bar wrapping, not shared with the rest of them. She punched his arm. He snorted, convulsed and then was awake.

'God – what did you do that for?'

'He's in pain,' Beth said.

The arm smeared the sweat off his face. 'Of course he's in pain. A bloody great hole like that, the flesh I took out of it and its depth what do you expect if not pain?'

'You talked about morphine.'

'Talked about morphine this evening. My experience, Miss Jenkins, pain seldom kills. Morphine does, often.'

'He doesn't cry out,' she said, a trill of bewilderment.

'And further experience tells me, Miss Jenkins, that the reaction to pain explains more about the patient than about the injury.'

'I don't understand what you're saying.' She was unsure, her voice was small, her guard was down.

He attacked. 'That's rich – like my favourite Christmas present. I am introduced by you to a war casualty who talks in delirium and confusion about mass murder. By you, I am nagged to save this creature's life. And you don't know who he is, don't know what mayhem he plans to inflict – don't know anything except you've an itch you want to scratch. What do you think he's going to do when Icve got him up on his feet and hobbling forward? Is he going to give you a loving kiss? Get you to wrap your thighs round his neck? Or walk away from you like you never existed?'

She trembled. 'How much morphine would you give him?'

He clutched her hand and she felt the slithering wet of his palm. .

'None, if I can get away with it. If I decide that he must sleep, cannot because of the pain, then I will inject between ten and twenty milligrams.'

'Not more, if the pain's bad?'

'It's an equation, Miss Jenkins – it's about getting the sums right.

Too little, and the pain continues. Too much, and respiration is fatally slowed and the myocardium, that's the heart muscle, is depressed, ceases to operate and death follows.'

'Yes.'

'It is not my intention to overdose him on morphine.'

'No.'

'If it's not a problem to you, I would like to resume my rest.'

His eyes had closed and his head was averted, his chin sagged and his mouth opened. She left him. She went past the boy, who did not look at her, stayed intent on his concentration. She looked up and saw only the clearness of the sky, blue, and she raked it till her eyes burned on the sun. The boy's father ducked out from under the awning, but did not meet her gaze. She realized it: she was alone. She skirted the camels and bent to go under the awning. He was propped up and had the pieces on his lap, and the manual. When he saw her, he waved her away – like she was flotsam.

He had the manual and the pieces. Across his lap was the launch tube with a missile inserted, and the battery coolant unit; he looked for the slot into which it would be inserted. Beside him, on the sacking, was the beltpack that housed the IFF interrogator unit, and next he would find the plug in the grip stock where its cable went.

He beat the pain.

The wound oozed but did not bleed.

He had seen the disappointment cloud her face. He had no interest in her. He did not see where she went, where she sat. He had no need of her.

When Caleb had found the slot and the plug socket, he rehearsed the firing procedure. His eyes flitted between the grip stock and the manual.

His finger rested on the impulse-generator switch, then the button controlling the seeker uncage bar. Then it rested gently on the trigger.

He read of the less-than-two-second response time between the trigger pull and the missile's launch. He imagined the fire flash and the lurched first stage of the missile's ejection from the tube, then the blast of the second stage, then the climbing hunt for the target.

Again and again, his pain controlled and his finger steady, Caleb rehearsed the preparations for firing. Without the missile he would not reach his family… but he did not know whether its time wrapped in an oiled covering had decayed it.