Gerald Seymour - The Unknown Soldier

'He was spotted, he was picked out,' Lovejoy nudged.

'A part of the family is from across the border, from Jalalabad in Afghanistan. We think now, Amin and me, that word of Caleb in Landi Khotal had reached Jalalabad before the wedding day. A man was watching him. I have never forgotten that man. Late in the wedding party, the man had Caleb called to him. We believe he was already chosen, but a test was given him. It is a wild place on that frontier, a place of guns and fighters… I tell you, sir, I am prepared to go to a mosque in Birmingham and to listen to the fire of an imam, but I would not be prepared to go into those mountains and to fight.

The test was that he should shoot a rifle and then that he should climb a hill and use the cover of the bushes and rocks on it while men fired live ammunition at him. He shot well and he reached the top of the hill – but he had already been chosen. The test confirmed the choice. It was the decision of the man who had called him forward.

We were told what we should say.'

'What were you told?'

'We were to go home, come back here to the jubilee estate, and we were to say that Caleb had decided to travel on. Thailand was mentioned, then a final destination of Australia. That is what we were told to say. He had passed the test set for him, had been chosen.

He was with the man. His suit was taken from him, and his shoes and shirt. I saw him being given the clothes of a tribesman, then his clothes and shoes went on to the fire. I saw them burn and I saw Caleb's face in the firelight. It had a happiness that I had not seen before. He left soon after that. He went away in the back of a pickup and he never turned to look for us, to wave goodbye to us. We left the next morning, by bus, for the flight home. I have nothing more to tell you.'

'Who was the man who chose him?'

'A brute, a man who made fear.'

'How did he create fear?'

Amin took up Lovejoy's question. 'What he did, and his appearance, they made fear.'

Four years, less a month, before, and Lovejoy saw that the fear still ruled as sharp as on that day. 'Tell me.'

'When Caleb went up that hill, using the cover of the scrub and the rocks, he did not only fire in the air. He aimed when he fired. He tried to shoot Caleb. He tried to kill Caleb. He was from Chechnya, he had an eyepatch and a claw, he was a brute. He took our friend away from us.'

Across the table from him, Lovejoy had seen the American stiffen.

The American spoke: 'Thank you, gentlemen, I think we've heard all we need to hear.'

Lovejoy paid the bill, gave a decent but not generous tip, and pocketed the receipt. They left the darkened restaurant and went out into the rain-drenched night. They walked, not quickly, up the street to where the Volvo was parked. Dietrich told Lovejoy of the link now made. Many of those questioned at Camps X-Ray and Delta had spoken of the Chechen, who was recognizable by his eyepatch and the artificial hand. He had been killed in an ambush set by American troops of the 10th Mountain division, had died in a commandeered taxi-cab. The taxi had been driven by Fawzi al-Ateh, recently freed from Guantanamo Bay.

'We reckon anyone associated with the Chechen, certainly anyone who was chosen by the Chechen, to be of elite quality/ Dietrich said.

'Jesus, man, are you following me? That is the scale of the disaster.'

It was past one in the morning of a new day. On his mobile, with the scrambler attached, Lovejoy rang Thames House, spoke to the operations room. He was an old warhorse, a veteran of the Service, but it was hard for him as he made his report to stifle the tremor in his voice. He felt exhilaration briefly, then a burdening, nagging apprehension. He thought he walked with the fugitive but did not know on what road or where he was led.

'Will you get a citation for this?' Dietrich asked.

'I wouldn't have thought so – more likely get kicked. In my experience, few of our masters regard a messenger bearing bad lidings favourably – about as bad as it can get, wouldn't you agree?

As – I say with confidence, Jed – you'll find out at first hand.' .

In the small hours of the night, a signal passed electronically from Thames House on the north side of the river to the sister service's headquarters at Vauxhall Bridge Cross on the south side.

The night duty officer chewed his sandwich, sipped his coffee and rang the home number of an assistant director, woke him, smiled grimly at the stuttered response, and thought: You may not be awake now, you old fart, but in fifteen seconds you'll be active as a ten-year-old with a tantrum. He knew all assistant directors had a loathing for the bombshell careering down from a clear blue sky, except that the night skies over London were cloud-laden and spewed rain.

He spoke the name, the history and pedigree of Caleb Hunt.

The dream soaked him in sweat but he could not wake, could not lose it. Sprawled across the front seats of his Mitsubishi, Bart rolled in his sleep and pleaded – pleaded for escape. Not even the thudding blow of his chin against the steering-wheel, jarring him, was enough to break the sleep and the dream.

Abandoned by his embassy, forgotten by Eddie Wroughton, the doctor of medicine – Samuel Algernon Laker Bartholomew – was lifted down through the back doors of the black van. His bladder was going, his sphincter was loosening. His hands were tied behind his back and just before the back doors had opened they had blindfolded him. But the cloth across his face had slipped and he was aware of fierce sunlight replacing the gloom of the van's interior. He stumbled but the hands held him and he did not fall. Like the waves on the pebbles of Torquay beaches came the murmur of a host of voices. He wore a prison robe, not the Austin Reed slacks that were his usual dress in the consulting room or the shirt from the same brand that his maid starched and ironed, and the robe was pressed against his body by the breeze that carried the voices. No man spoke for him, he had no friend. The heat blistered his face, above and below the headcloth.

He walked – sandalled feet scraping the ground but held up – a dozen paces, then was stopped in his tracks. He felt the weight of the hands pressing him down -not so that he should lie prostrate but so that he should kneel. His weight pressed down on the skin of his knees, the voices were stilled and he heard the silence.

The dream slipped back in time, but Bart did not wake.

Departures at the airport of Riyadh. He stood in the queue.

Around him there were families, adults grumbling and complaining, children sulking and whining. He edged towards the desk and used his toe to push forward his bag. The flight non-stop home was fully booked, and Bart queued for the KLM aircraft to Amsterdam. He thought only of escape, and the slow progress of the line towards the desk fuelled his fear and impatience. A woman behind him, bowed down by a lifestyle of bags, tried to tell him how her servants had wept before she'd left for the airport, but he ignored her. The desk came imperceptibly closer, and beyond the desk was the departure gate, then the lounge, the walkway, the aircraft cabin's door. He was sweating, could not hide the mounting fear… It was almost a relief.

Men came behind him. Nasally, in accented English, he was asked his name, and hands lifted up his bag, other hands were at his arms.

He was out of the queue. He was gone. The escape had failed.

The dream was without mercy.

He cringed. There was the slither of feet on the concrete of the corridor floor beyond the steel-faced door. Low sun threw from the barred window dark shadows the length of the cell. They always came for him in the early evening. When the sun went down, the beatings began. They were late for him: already he could hear screams that pierced his head. He had seen a man, two days before, through an open door as he was led to his own interrogation, suspended from a pole by his wrists and ankles – like a pig on a spit