‘He is still with you, Mr Gus.’
‘He is still with me.’
‘To shoot you, Mr Gus… I am so cold.’
‘We must keep you awake. It’s time for another story.’
The wind gusted abruptly onto his back. It seemed to knife into Gus’s shoulders, through the weight of the rucksack and the dangling legs of the boy. The wind went from moderate strength to fresh to strong… He would take the boy home. There was no clarity in his thoughts, and no clutter of passports, visas and immigration. He would take the boy home and put him in the spare room, find a chair for him at work, walk him on Saturday mornings in the high street, and drive him on a Sunday to Stickledown Range… The rain blustered on to his back. He would teach the boy to read the pennants that marked the wind on the range and the boy would call the deflections for the alteration on the windage turret of the old Lee Enfield No. 4, Mark 1 (T), and would lie beside him on the mat. The lightning split the skies around him – he did not look back because he knew that he was still followed – and the thunder boomed in its wake. With the boy beside him, he would win the silver spoons.
The rain came hard and sudden. He thought it had come too late, then heard again the whistle and headed towards the last ridge.
It was his agony: ‘Why does he follow me?’
‘You are the best, Mr Gus. If he kills the best then he is supreme. He follows you so that he will be the best.’
‘Is that important? Does it bloody matter?’
‘I think it mattered to Major Burnham, Distinguished Service Order, in the Matabele war, to be the best.’
Gus staggered towards the dawn and the last ridge, the rain and wind lashing at him.
Beyond the ridge would be the valley with steep-set sides, and beyond the valley would be another climb, then safety. He was lurching drunkenly towards the ridge and the dawn.
‘According to Major Hesketh-Prichard, the American – Burnham – was the greatest scout of that time. His finest achievement was to go through the entire Matabele army to shoot their leader, M’limo…’
‘Can I say something personal, Caspar?’
‘Be my guest. Shoot.’
In the darkness, under a buffeted umbrella, Caspar Reinholtz walked the shiny-faced man back to the shuttle for the flight to Ankara.
‘There are people at Langley – this is not easy for me – who doubt you, Caspar.’
‘That’s their privilege.’
‘Don’t interrupt, please, because this is, was, a problem for me. They say that Caspar Reinholtz went native, had gotten himself emotionally involved.’
‘Is that what they say?’
‘Had gotten more Kurdish than the Kurds, had lost sight of our aims.’
‘Do they say that?’
‘They told me that you, Caspar, would dump shit on the new plan. I want you to know that I am going to kick ass when I get back, and tell everybody, whether or not they want to listen, that you are on board and could not have been warmer and more supportive of the new concept.’
They were at the steps of the plane, shaking hands, while the rain spattered up from the apron. At least the bastard would have a turbulent roller-coaster ride, with his balls in his mouth, hanging on, thinking of Mother. He had not mentioned her, dead, or the sniper, missing, or the fuck-up that was RECOIL. With any luck, the bastard would be tossed from one side of the plane to the other.
Caspar smiled. ‘Do you know what Will Rogers said?’
‘What did Will Rogers say?’
‘He said, “We can’t all be heroes because somebody has to sit on the kerb and clap as they go by.”’
‘I like that – good for a seminar. I appreciate the hospitality and I appreciate that you’re not wallowing in what’s gone, that you’re right behind our plan. You’re a good and valued warrior, Caspar, a true Langley man.’
The man ran up the steps of the plane.
‘Have a good flight,’ Caspar shouted after him.
In those last hours, he could have said that the plan was a piece of crap, that it was a coward’s no-risk plan, and he, too, would have been on the shuttle out to Ankara. He had whitewashed it, said it was a fine plan. If he had been on the flight there would have been denied him the small chance to meet the sniper, go with him to a quiet corner, and hear how she had died – maybe put some flowers somewhere. He knew he owed it to her. The same rain, the same storm, over those goddam mountains, would be driving on the man who had seen her die. He wanted that chance.
Trudging and stumbling, falling, dragging himself to his feet, kicking his stride forward, following the dog, Major Karim Aziz did not consider that he might have turned back…
To have turned back was to face the past and the future. His concern, going forward, was to keep the rifle under his smock so that the working parts stayed dry. To stay awake, to be aware, to keep going forward, he recited the specifications of the Dragunov.
Cartridge: 7.62?54R, including 7N14 AP. Operation: gas, short-stroke piston, self-loading. Weight: with PSO-1, 4.3kg. Length : 1.225m, with bayonet-knife, 1.37m. Barreclass="underline" 622mm. Rifling: 4 grooves, rh, 1 turn in 254mm. The statistics helped him as he moved towards the ridge where the dog sat and waited for him. They were slow, grinding steps.
The raincloud scudded over him. Far behind him, a Very light was fired, and he knew that he, too, was tracked, that the line of soldiers had kept pace with him, that they had not halted for the night. The soldiers were his past and his future and, to blot them out of his mind, he dipped back into the comfort of the specifications. Muzzle Velocity: 830m/s.
Max Effective Range: 800m-1000m. PSO-1 Telescope: 4?24, 68mm eye relief, 6deg field of view. The cloud lay on the ridge in front of him, grey on black, and the rain ran on his face, the thunder clapping at his ears.
He heard, ahead, a great bellowed scream, an anguished cry of impotence, before the gale carried it beyond his hearing.
‘Does it go badly for you, my friend?’ Aziz muttered. ‘It goes badly for me. I respect you for what you have done, it is sincere respect, because it is harder for you than for me.’
Gus had known it since he had reached the ridge over the valley.
He had paused, gulped for air, wiped the rain from his face, tried to stand against the force of the wind, and known the boy was dead. He had laid him down, smaller – as if life was weight – and he had rocked and howled into the last of the night. The rain spat on the boy’s face and ran rivers into his staring eyes. He could have left him there for the dog to find, and the man; he could have left Omar and won himself precious time, because the man would stop and circle the corpse, then go close and examine it. He picked up the boy and heaved him again over his shoulder. Omar had said that the pit of the valley, under the ridge, was the ceasefire line beyond which the man would not follow.
It might have been a shepherd’s trail he found, or a track used by wild hill goats. The rain sheened its surface. He went down the path heavily, slipped clumsily because he had the boy on his shoulder and the rifle to keep dry. Other than the occasional rumble of thunder and the spatter of rain on him there was a great silence that not even his boots or the tumble of small stones broke.
There had been a moment when he had felt grief, but it had gone. He moved more easily with each descending step as if, again, the freedom were given back to him. The boy was dead, and she was dead: the burdens were lifted. If he survived, he might have time to mourn.
In the pit of the valley he had the rush of the swollen stream to guide him.
Gus found a big flat rock, hewn smooth by a millennium’s torrents, and laid the boy’s body on it.
He paddled in the water around the rock and arranged the body so that it lay on its back. It no longer had a meaning to him. The arms hung loose. He did not think that the rain would cause the river to rise enough to dislodge the body.