'Thank you, Miss Reakes — that's kind of you.'
'Again, I'm going to apologize about the front entrance.'
'Water under the bridge, Miss Reakes, and no offence taken.'
'I was totally ashamed,' she babbled to Naylor. 'They wouldn't let Mr Hegner inside the security barrier until he'd gone through the metal-detector arch. Had his coins from his pocket, his glasses and his watch, his stick because it has a metal tip, and still wouldn't pass him through. It was a disgrace.'
Below the spectacles a grin of mischief formed. 'I still got an ounce, that's an estimate, of a bomber's shrapnel in me. So I said, "You want to see the scars?" He didn't answer so I dropped my pants and lifted my shirt. That seemed to satisfy him. I don't take it badly when a man's got to do his job, but I doubt I look like a goddamn wannabe Islamic martyr.'
'It was quite uncalled-for,' she said. 'I'll make some coffee, proper stuff.'
They were alone.
Naylor stumbled, 'I thought you'd have done the embassy and a hotel first, had a bit of sleep after a night flight.'
'Nice thought, but I reckon there ain't enough time for luxuries. Mr Naylor, you're in the eye of the storm.'
'I'm Dickie, please.'
'You're in the eye of the storm because I think you got the Twentyman here, and—'
'I don't understand — who or what is the Twentyman?'
'An Iraq-based insurgent commander. Uses suicide-bombers to effect. Has many names but that's mine for him. His attacks never fail to kill at least twenty, usually many more but that's a minimum. I'm here because I think the Twentyman is too and, if I'm right, that makes a real bad picture for you.'
Chapter 10
'Ah, up with the lark, I see…' Dickie Naylor shrugged out of his coat. It was not yet eight o'clock, but his visitor was already in place, sitting comfortably in the easy chair, cradling a steaming coffee mug in his hands. '…and no problems, I trust, at the front entrance?'
'No problems. That feisty Miss Reakes smoothed the way. I didn't have to strip down this time. So as we don't lose time on minimalities, I'll cut to the chase. I want to share my knowledge with you, Dickie.'
'I'm going to have a rather busy day. I don't know how much time I'll have for—'
The American's voice had a lacerating whip in it. 'Now, I think you're going to have to fit me in, Dickie, where your "busy day" permits. Make phone calls and I'll stop, but play with your computer and I'll talk — you ought to get used to the idea that I'm with you and am staying…What I heard, when you guys were hit the first time, you concentrated investigations on the bombers and their identities, but you failed to get at the kernel of it.'
'We think we did tolerably well, and "fail" is not a word we care to bandy about.' He did not care if his irritation showed. Mary bloody Reakes had not brought him coffee. An interloper had intruded into his workspace. He felt himself, already, treated as an imbecile. 'And I have a meeting in ten minutes.'
He might as well have kept silent: he was not heard.
The voice drawled and rasped at him. 'I'm going to say it. There was, Dickie, a failure in that you have circulated no information on the facilitator, or on the bomb-maker. Your efforts were aimed at the foot-soldiers. You boys should get it into your heads that foot-soldiers are in plentiful supply. Facilitators and bomb-makers are where you hit pay-dirt. Cut down the foot-soldiers and another crop will seed and spring up. Locate and eliminate the facilitator and the bomb-maker and you hit the Organization where it hurts most. The facilitator is known to me as the Scorpion, but the Twentyman is my pet name, and I know the bomb-maker by the title of the Engineer. In the unlikely event that you could walk more than a couple of hundred yards outside the fence wire and the blast walls of any military encampment in Iraq, that's the Sunni part, or beyond the Green Zone in Baghdad, and not have your throat cut, then settle down in a coffee-shop, interrupt the guys reading their newspapers or watching Al Jazeera on the screen and ask a question, it would be "Who is most successfully carrying the war to the Coalition?" The answer you will get — assuming you don't have a company of marines round you, which you'd need if you wanted to keep your head on your shoulders — is that the Scorpion is the top guy, and alongside him is the Engineer. Kill them and you got yourself a real victory. Those men don't grow on trees. Look, Dickie, in Afghanistan and Palestine, Chechnya and Bosnia, there has always been one son-of-a-bitch who gives himself the Scorpion moniker. It ain't me, it's them. A wriggling, burrowing little shit with a sting. He has made a mistake, and that mistake may well prove to be of dramatic proportions. He has come off familiar ground, he is no longer if I am correct — in the heartland of Ar Ramadi or al-Fallujah or Baquba or any of those murderous little enclaves of the Triangle. Whether from vanity, obedience or his understanding of duty, he has come on to your soil. I believe that making the journey was his mistake Now the son-of-a-bitch is vulnerable.'
Naylor looked down at his watch. 'Sorry, but I've to go to that meeting.'
'No problem; I ain't going anywhere. I'll be here when you get back, and we'll talk some more.'
'Has he returned yet?'
It was the third time that morning that Ibrahim had left the loneliness of his room, come into the living area and asked the question. He interrupted the first snarls of the argument, watched from a low chair by Ramzi. The heap of dirty clothing was in the centre of the carpet.
Syed said, waspish, 'If he was back you would see him. If you cannot see him he is not back.'
Faria said, 'You will hear him when he comes. I told you yesterday and I told you today, he has gone to Birmingham. When he has finished, he will return.'
'Where is Birmingham? What is in Birmingham? Why has he gone to Birmingham?'
Looking away, not meeting his eye, Syed muttered, 'You don't need to know.'
Staring at the ceiling, Faria blustered, 'It is better you stay in your room. You should be in your room.'
He retreated and shut his door on them. Nothing was as he had believed it would be. Again, and it was the same each day and each evening, they isolated him. From the moment he had been chosen in the desert and had sat close to the Leader, he had believed that he would be asked to express his desire as to the sort of target he would walk towards, and also asked what he wished to achieve by the sacrifice of his life…but he was shut away. His desires, wishes, were insignificant.
He could hear the movements in the room next to his, where the waistcoat was prepared, and he remembered the feel of its weight on his shoulders. Then, beyond his door, the argument broke again.
Syed's voice: 'I am telling you, do my washing.'
Faria's voice: 'Do your own washing, I have the meal to make.'
'You did his washing. You will do mine.'
'I will not.'
'My mother or my sister does my washing.'
'Then take it back to them and they can slave for you.'
'You take his washing, so why is mine different from his?'
Faria's voice, rising: 'Because — because he is different. Are you an idiot? Can you not see that? Different—'
Syed's voice, yelled anger: 'Women should do washing. You should do my—'
A door opened. The shout of the man who had so calmly, like a tailor, checked the fall of the waistcoat over his chest and stomach: 'Can you not be quiet? Do I fucking care who washes, who does not? I do my own washing. I have work to do, intricate work, and you disturb me. Where I am, I wash my own clothes — maybe in the river, maybe at a well, maybe under a stand pipe, maybe in a ditch. I wash my own because my wife is dead, killed by my enemy, and where I fight I do not have a servant. Get that fucking washing off the floor. I tell you, where I have come from you would not, any of you, survive a single day as a fighter. Your only use to me would be with a belt round your waist, and then I would not care whether there was filth on your clothing, whether you smelt like a fox's arse. And a fucking minute after the explosion of the belt I would have forgotten your name, your face.'