Gerald Seymour - The Unknown Soldier

'You reckon they've got hardware?'

'In the back – yes, Miss. An arm's reach away.'

'What you got?'

'An M4A1. We call it a close-quarters battle weapon, Miss. It uses ball ammunition and it has an attached M203 grenade launcher. And I got – '

'Jesus, is this going to be fucking Dodge City?'

'It's their call, Miss, what it gets to be.'

'Where are you going to stand?'

'I'll be, Miss, right behind you.'

'Don't mind me saying it, but I'd prefer you a yard to the right or lo the left. Wouldn't want to be in the way of a close-quarters battle weapon,' Lizzy-Jo said, dry.

The armourer lifted the bar for her. She walked forward. Lizzy-Jo was a sensor operator, not a diplomat, a negotiator or a soldier. She felt the cool of the night air, a little wafting wind, on her bared thighs and shins, on her arms and face. The man stood as she approached and the guys with him seemed to inch closer to the open doors. She heard, against the tread of her footsteps, very soft, the click of oiled metal behind her and knew the armourer's weapon was armed. The man moved a little aside from his chair and motioned that she should sit.

'No, thank you, sir.'

'Would you like water?'

'Sir, no, thank you. What I would like to know is why, at seventeen minutes past three in the morning, you have binoculars on us.'

'You should button your blouse. In the night cold it is possible to contract influenza or a headeold if one is insufficiently covered. I am a prince of the Kingdom, I am the deputy governor of this province.

Each time I am in Shaybah, since you came, I watch you, but before from a distance. I have a question for you too: why are you flying at seventeen minutes past three in the morning?'

She said, parrot-like, 'We're doing mapping and evaluation of flying performance over desert lands, as we stated when permission was granted us.'

She heard the mockery in his voice. 'With a military aircraft?'

Lizzy-Jo might have been a corporate recorded message. 'The General Atomics MQ-1 Predator has dual purpose military or civilian use.'

'For mapping and for evaluation of performance do you need to carry, without the Kingdom's authorization, air-to-ground missiles?'

In the darkness he would not have seen her rock. 'I think you must have mistaken the additional fuel tanks carried under the wings for missiles.'

'When you came the fuselages of your two aircraft were without markings. Yet the one being dismantled now carries a skull-and-crossbones – once the symbol of a pirate, now a warning of death or danger – on the forward fuselage. I ask, why would such a symbol be on an aircraft preparing maps and evaluations?'

'Sir, I can only refer you to our embassy in Riyadh.'

'Of course.'

'And I am sure that, inside office hours, any query you have will be answered. Actually, sir, we will be gone in less than nine hours.'

'With your mapping finished, your performance evaluation completed?'

'No, sir,' Lizzy-Jo flared – should not have done, but did. 'Not completed – because some jerk shoved his nose in, and screwed things for us.'

He stared at her. She heard the hiss of his breath between his lips.

In the darkness, his body seemed to shake.

The words were chill. 'Maybe you are from the Air Force, maybe from Defense Intelligence, maybe from the Central Intelligence – maybe you were never taught to dress with correctness and decency, were never drilled in the virtues of truthfulness and the values of humility… but you are American, and how could it be different?

You lie to us because you do not trust us. You have no humility because you believe in your superiority over us. When you have been expelled, in less than nine hours, take this message back. We fight terrorism. Al Qaeda is our enemy. We are not the wet-nurse to the fanaticism of bin Laden. Together, and with trust, you would have been able to fulfil your mission. Your arrogance destroys that possibility. It is why you are hated and why you are despised, and why your money cannot buy affection or respect. Take that message home with you.'

She bit her lip. Anyone who knew Lizzy-Jo – knew her in New York or at Bagram base – would not have believed that she could resist a response. She turned on her heel. She walked back to the armourer and kept going. She went past George and his team, who were struggling to crate the engine of First Lady, and past her tent, which was now folded with her possessions stacked, and past Marty's tent – and past the boxes of the Hellfires that would not now be needed. Alone untouched, because Carnival Girl still flew, were the Ground Control and the trailer attached to it that carried the satellite dish. She climbed the steps.

Flopped beside Marty, she called Oscar Golf. 'Lizzy-Jo here. It was just some local rubbernecker, it was nothing. I'm taking over, but thanks for helping out.'

Marty said, smiling, 'I got bored watching that lorry. Wasn't sand it was carrying. I reckon it was pretzels.'

She snapped, 'Just watch your fucking screen – watch it till we finish.'

It was as if he was building a wall of information. Eddie Wroughton's way, when trying to make sense of intelligence, was always to pretend that he was building a wall of coloured bricks. He sat cross-legged on the floor, had pushed aside the rug to give himself a firm surface and spread out sheets of paper. He had used his highlighter pens to ring each of the sheets – red and green, white and blue, and yellow.

He had started to build the wall.

In the red brick was the telephone number that had called Bartholomew's home. The number's code identified it as coming from the extreme south-east of the Kingdom, and his assistant's unpraised work had found that it was listed in the name of Bethany . . Jenkins. He remembered her from a party – tall, a picture of healthy endeavour, well muscled, tanned – and from a casual meeting at the embassy. Something about meteorites and something about the oil-extraction plant at Shaybah. She had called Bartholomew late in the evening, and he'd gone, disappeared.

He had run the fine dark sand granules across the indented sheet that he had taken from Bartholomew's notepad beside the phone.

Pretty basic, what they taught on the recruits' induction courses, about as sophisticated as invisible ink pens – and they still lectured on the use of them. Scribbled words came to life after the granules were tipped from the indent marks. 'Military action… missile attack

… head wound and a leg wound… Highway 513. Route 10. Harad, south. To Bir Faysal (petrol station).' That was the green brick.

The white brick was Shaybah, from where Gonsalves' people flew Predator unmanned aerial vehicles that were armed with twin pods for Hellfire missiles.

The blue brick built the wall higher. Wroughton reached behind him for the photographs taken by the Predator's real-time camera.

With a magnifying-glass – could have done it on the computer with the zoom, but preferred old ways and trusted practices – he studied those who were identified as dead, and the one who was not accounted for. A young man, head up and erect, and the magnifying-glass – at the blurred edge of its power – seemed to show a strong chin. He laid the photographs on the blue sheet.

Two and two did not make five. The worst sin of an intelligence officer was to leap to untested conclusions. Conclusions must always have foundations, his father used to say, as any wall must. What he knew… Bethany Jenkins had rung Samuel Bartholomew from Shaybah. At Shaybah there was an Agency search-and-destroy operation, which had searched and destroyed, but there was a target still not accounted for. Bartholomew had driven away in the night, with fuel and medical supplies, after being told of a patient injured in 'military action'. The stupidity of the woman – Jenkins – astonished him. The involvement of Bartholomew bewildered him