THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER (51 page)

Back in the living room, alongside the chair where the cat had taken refuge, Wroughton lifted the phone and dialled the call back.

The answer came in Arabic digits for the last number that had called.

He was about to write it on the pad beside the phone when he checked himself and scrawled it on the back of his hand around an abrasion that was now scabbed. He tore off the top sheet and slipped it carefully into the breast pocket of his last linen suit.

He rang his office in the embassy, gave his instructions to his assistant, told her the telephone number. Where had that call originated from?

Wroughton looked around him, saw the bareness of Bartholomew's life. Nothing there that was personal. Rented furniture, hired fittings - as if his soul had been eradicated. How could it have been different? It came to him like a jolting blow, as violent as any of the agronomist's kicks and punches: he himself had pulled his telephone plug from the wall socket, he had switched off his mobile while he had sat naked in his own room, among his own rented furniture and hired fittings.

On his way out of the living room, going past the settee beside the door, he lifted a cushion and threw it at the chair where the cat was, but when it landed the cat had gone.

Wroughton slammed the front door shut after him.

He asked, in the new language of his life, 'How long?' The dark had settled under the awning. He could barely see the doctor's face.

The voice from the shadowed mouth was crisp. 'Let's not fuck about. You speak the Queen's English as well as I do. I haven't the faintest idea what you're asking me. In your condition, and if you want my further help, I would suggest you end the charade. You're English - if you want answers you will speak in English. So, let's start again.'

Caleb shook. He thought the doctor knelt on the manual and that his thigh pressed the launcher against Caleb's good leg. As he remembered, he had last spoken English in the taxi on his way to the wedding. Through the dusty streets of Landi Khotal, bumping in the back of the taxi, squashed between his friends and nervous, he had spoken English - but not since.

As if he walked a new road, he spoke with soft hesitation: 'How long before I can move?'

"That's better, wasn't so difficult, eh? You spoke English when you were in extreme pain. How long? Depends what you want to achieve. If you want to get off these stinking unhygienic sacks and go have a piss, because you've drained out four saline drip bags, you could probably manage that now. I'm sure Miss Jenkins will support your arm while you do it.'

'How long before I can move away?'

'If you're going in Miss Jenkins's vehicle, I suppose you could move straight after you've had your piss.'

.

'By camel?'

'Still the adventurer. I believe I could have you hobbling around in the morning. If it was imperative, and you've slept, you could mount up and head for where the sunset will be - yes, in the morning . . . Is the pain bad?'

'I accept the pain.'

'I can give you morphine for it.'

'No. When I spoke, what did I say?'

'If you're intent on riding a camel tomorrow I suggest I inject you now intravenously with Ampicillin, an antibiotic, then another dose at midnight, another at dawn and one more when you head off. In addition I will give you what syringes I have, because you should take four a day for three days.'

'What did I say?'

'After that, because your arm will be a pincushion, you can take it orally - again it's five hundred milligrams a dose, four times a day.'

'You saw my face?'

'Difficult not to have, young man, when I'm bent over you and scraping that crap out of your leg - difficult not to have seen your face, and difficult not to have heard what you said. Right, let's get it into you.'

His arm was lifted and the fingers held his wrist just below the plastic bracelet. He felt the cool damp of the swab, then saw the movement, felt the prick of the needle.

The needle was withdrawn. He heard the grunting as the man pushed himself heavily up.

'You have to sleep. I'll jab you again at midnight, but you must sleep through it. Sweet dreams, my nameless friend.'

Caleb heard his shoes scuff away in the sand. He would not sleep and would not dream. He did not know what he had said, knew only that the doctor had seen his face. He tossed and the pain in his leg surged. He remembered the men who had seen his face, and all were gone. To see his face was to die. And he remembered the old man who had ridden the donkey, who had brought him to the opium smugglers - who was blind and had not seen his face - and he thought the lifeless eyes might have saved the old man.

To have seen his face was to be condemned. The doctor had.

Caleb shuddered and the pain racked him. So had the woman.

It was the start of the last day. Caleb was jolted from his sleep. A hand lifted his arm. It had been a fitful sleep, without calm. The swab wetted the skin. From instinct, because he was touched, he flinched and tried to break the grip.

'Easy, young man, easy. Don't fight me.'

The doctor's voice was soft in his ear. Then the needle went in. He gazed up and saw the outline of the man's face and above it the dark ceiling of the awning.

'Had you slept long?'

Caleb nodded.

'That's good. Funny, but sleep is a better healer than any drug. It's good that you slept and you must sleep again.'

The needle was withdrawn. His arm was lowered gently.

He remembered what he had thought before the sleep had caught him.

' Why do you help me?'

The shape towered above him. 'The question, young man, is becoming repetitive. You care not to tell me your name, and I care not to burden you with reasoning for my actions. You get your next injection at dawn. Go back to sleep.'

Caleb started up, tried to push himself higher on his elbows, to raise his back. 'That's not good enough.'

'It isn't good enough that I don't know your name, don't know where you come from, don't know where you're going and what your intentions are when you get there. Don't tell me, young man, what's "good enough" and what's not.'

He was gone. Caleb sagged. The body of the launcher was against his leg. When he had slept he had forgotten it and the pain in his leg, and he had forgotten that to see his face was to be condemned.

The kindness of the doctor and the devotion of the woman who had brought help to him did not compete with the demand of and his obligation to the family. It would be weakness if he did not destroy them. He lay on his back under the awning and felt the throb in his leg and the hammer of the pulse from the antibiotic injection. The doctor and the woman were trifles when set against the importance of the family: they had seen his face. They were condemned. They stood between him and his duty. He let his hand fall beside him, and beyond the edge of the sacking bed, his fingers lifted a pinch of sand grains and he held his hand above his chest and the sand ran from it, fell on him - not one grain of sand but a thousand. A great crowd, not one person but a thousand, passed him and among them were the doctor who was kind and the woman who was devoted. He could not cherry-pick among the crowd he walked through with a suitcase or a grip bag or a rucksack, could not say that some were his enemy and some were not - could not extricate the doctor and the woman from the crowd. To do so would be a betrayal of the family, would show weakness.

In the morning, when the doctor had given him the strength to stand and when the woman had supported his first hobbling steps -

as hesitant as when the chain shackles had been on his ankles at Camp Delta - he would go to the guide, take the rifle from him, arm it, and do what was necessary to prove to the dead, to Hosni, Fahd and Tommy, that he was not weak.

He drifted back towards sleep.

He was at peace, because the strength had not deserted him. He felt no shame because he would not have recognized the man he had been before. He was his family's man.

*

'Tell me about him.' It was not a request from Lovejoy but an instruction.

They were at the table alongside the one at which Lovejoy and the American had eaten. Farooq's father had taken their order and Parooq had served them. They had eaten slowly, then lingered over I heir coffee as, around them, the restaurant had cleared, and father, son and other waiters had wiped down the tables and tilted the chairs. The shadows had closed on them and only their tablecloth, cups and empty glasses were lit. Lovejoy could play polite and could play domination. When the last customers had paid up and gone out into the wet night, when only they were there, Lovejoy had raised his hand and snapped his fingers imperiously for attention. The father had hurried to them. Lovejoy had said, 'We can do this here or we can do it down the road at the police station under anti-terrorist legislation. We can do it comfortably here or we can do it after they have spent a night in the cells. I want to talk to your son and to your son's friend, Amin. If you try to bluster me with lawyers sitting in, it will be straight down to the police station. You do it the straight-forward way or you do it the difficult way . . . and my colleague and I would like more coffee. Thank you.' The friend had been sent for, looked as though he had been roused from his bed.

The young men, Farooq and Amin, had shivered as they sat at the table beside them, and Farooq's father had hovered at the edge of the light before Lovejoy had waved him away. He played domination. He was brusque to the point of rudeness because that was the lactic he had decided on. He could hear, very faintly, the slight squealing howl of the turning tape that was on the American's knee, hidden by the tablecloth. His companion's arm was stretched out, lying, apparently casually, on the cloth but close to where the young men sat. The microphone would be inside his cuff.

Lovejoy said, 'I want only the truth. If you lie you'll be going straight to the cells. If you are honest with me you will sleep in your own beds after I've finished with you . . . I start with you, Amin. Tell me about Caleb Hunt, tell me about him before you went to Pakistan, everything about him.'

The response was hesitant and frightened.

He learned about the jubilee estate of houses built to com-memorate the first fifty years of Queen Victoria's reign and how

.

Asian families lived in all the homes of ten streets, but there was one street of terraced houses where four white families lived. He heard about a white schoolkid who had first walked to school with Asian schoolkids, and moved on with them to the Adelaide Comprehensive.

'Caleb was our friend. We didn't have other white friends, just him. But, then, he didn't have white friends - we were his friends. He stood by Farooq when he was bullied. Didn't make any difference, skin colour. Most of the kids at the Adelaide didn't have Asian friends. We kept to ourselves, but Caleb was with us.'

Lovejoy felt that he peeled away layers of skin.

'We had scrapes, nothing much,' Amin said. 'We had trouble -

graffiti and sometimes a car radio, and there'd be fights - but he was with us, not the skinhead bastards. We did everything together. Yes, we messed about, we had fun - but not bad trouble. We didn't go into his house. He wasn't happy with that, or his ma wasn't, but he came to our house. We left school and it was different then.'

Lovejoy probed. How was it different?

'I went to college, to get the A levels for a law course. Farooq came here to work for his dad, and Caleb went to the garage. It started about a year later, after I'd got the A levels and I was waiting to go on and do the law bit. We started up again, but we were older, more aware. I mean, you go to the mosque and sometimes there are guest
imams
and they tell you about Afghanistan and about Chechnya, about all the places where Islam is and where it's fighting against oppression, and he used to take Fridays off. He wasn't a Muslim, no.

If we went to a mosque in Birmingham, where he wasn't known, then all he had to do was follow us, do what we did and listen. You see, we'd changed. I suppose when we were kids, Farooq and me, we'd rebelled against the Faith. We smoked and drank alcohol, thieved a bit - but we finished that. He came on board with us, did what we did. We were the only friends he had and it was like we were his family, not his ma. We did the evenings together, and if there was a big
imam
speaking in Birmingham we'd collect him from work and we'd drive down in Farooq's car. We heard about the war in Afghanistan, and saw videos of it, and there were more videos of Chechnya and what the Russians were doing to Muslims. Please, you have to believe me, Farooq and me just listened and tried to be better Muslims and have more faith - but he'd come out of the mosque, Caleb would, and he'd be all tensed up. He was most tensed when he'd seen a video of fighting.'

As each layer of skin came away, Lovejoy thought he came nearer to the hidden, reddened mass that held the poison.

'He used to say he was so bored, used to say that was real excitement, doing fighting. Yes, we'd talk about it, but didn't take it serious. He hated it here, that's what he told us. He was coming from nowhere and going to nowhere. It all happened quick. We'd heard this
imam
speak about Afghanistan and the need for fighters there, and a couple of guys had gone up, gone forward, at the end of the talk. They weren't boys we knew, and afterwards Caleb said they were the lucky ones, because they were going to get real excitement.

I didn't think anything of it, what he'd said. A couple of days later my father had the invitation to this wedding. I suppose we talked about it. We must have told him that Farooq and me were going, and he was all crestfallen, like he was shut out of something he wanted.

I suppose we talked about where we were going, the mountains and a wild place .. . Farooq said that he could come with us, why not?

Farooq said he could carry our bags, joked it. It was just two weeks.

He really wanted to come.'

Lovejoy said, 'Thank you, Amin. Take it up, Farooq, and only the truth.'