Her hand reaches out and douses the candle he had given her.
Mind torn by contending emotions, she takes a step towards the wall in the perfect darkness, to find out.
*
Casa is going through a stand of acacia trees when he hears a small sweet-edged noise. Coming to a standstill, he lets his hearing pierce the darkness. The noise is like metal coming into contact with something, giving a small ring. A blade or iron nail. He becomes still and parts his lips slightly — a hunter’s trick to increase the sharpness of hearing. The world is full of homeless ghosts, and it is said that by the time a house has a roof on it, it has a ghost in it. He switches on his flashlight, sending its gaze — and his own alongside it — out into the night. He sees the gun pointed at him in the high grass and weeds. There are others, he now sees, ranged in a circle around him, each a black grasshopper the length of his arm.
They are flintlock guns, resting on foot-high tripods in the undergrowth, concealed in the foliage. He identifies the tripwire stretching across his path. Two more steps in the darkness and his foot would have landed on it. The gun that this taut wire is attached to would have swivelled on the tripod and fired into his shin.
The entire grove is crisscrossed by these lengths of wire. Each gun has three of them fastened to its trigger, the central coming at it from the base of the tree directly in front, and the other two reaching it diagonally. To kill jackals or wolves or wild boar, or to maim thieves. These things were first employed during the times when there was a British presence in these parts.
He raises a foot and places it carefully on the wire before him, just holding it there for a few seconds before starting to release the weight onto the metal filament. The branches and leaves of the acacia trees are moved by a sudden breeze just then. It passes and the trees are still again, as though the angel of death had flown down into the grove.
He continues to press downwards with his foot until, to his left, a gun turns towards him like a magnetised needle inside a compass. With extreme caution he lifts the foot off, suddenly aware of the weight of his limbs. A Russian PMD6 mine — just 250 grams of TNT in a cheap wooden box with a detonator — could blow off your legs. Someone he knew had stepped on one, and as Casa had braced himself to lift him onto his shoulders, he had learned at the upward swing that the man had become shockingly lighter.
Knees raised high, he goes over the wire but then stops. What is that noise, the small metallic chime? It has never really stopped, some variation of it always present in his hearing. He looks up with the beam — the light separating into shards of seven colours on his eyelashes — and sees the dagger hanging from a cord fifteen feet above him, gently swaying. There are others, dozens of them, and they flash in the canopies when the wind sends them towards the rays of moonlight pouring through the leaves. When one of them occasionally meets a branch it makes a noise.
A second trap.
A moth has appeared, as soft-looking as a pinch of rabbit fur, attracted by his light. He still hasn’t worked out how the second trap will be activated when his weight sets off some buried mechanism. The blades are released in unison all through the grove as though they are pieces from a mirror shattering overhead. One of them almost enters his flesh, cutting through the thin blanket wrapped around his body. There is a gust of wind, powerful enough that had it been daytime the bees in the grove would have been thrown off their flight paths.
When he moves forward to avoid the falling knife, he loses his balance and ends up on his knee in shock, his turban falling into the grass. He continues forward because of momentum so that his hand snags the tripwire attached to one of the guns. The result is a blinding flash and an explosion. The hot ball of lead shoots out in a shower of sparks and grazes the back of his skull, tearing off skin and tissue, the dry grass bursting into a line of flames towards him.
*
Lara’s eyes are open in the darkness as she lies beside David, his hand on her rib. She feels a measure of safety here against him, though her mind is at the dacha with Stepan in the grip of his killers.
‘Who’s that out there? You said you were here alone, that your wife was back in Moscow.’
She had slipped away then, leaving the corridor and rushing upstairs to hide. They began to hurt Stepan, so that his cries would force her to reveal herself.
‘Just like my brother was tortured to call me back to Chechnya.’
Of course she presented herself to them, unable to bear it any longer, Stepan’s mouth hoarse from shouting at her to stay where she was — to run away into the snow and ice outside — and then just from screaming.
*
There are tough calluses on many areas of his skin as though part of his body is shell. He can survive this. Under the white lantern moon he runs down the alley away from the acacia grove, casting a long sharpened shadow before him. He feels the night itself had come alive to attack him back there, the air clotting into predator muscle, into bone and razor. The noise of the guns going off will bring men who will give chase. He is not sure whether the sounds he can hear are his own thoughts or something outside him. With one hand he is holding a fold of his blanket to the back of his head to staunch the blood flow, his fingers wet. Allah is on his side. We have created the human being in the throes of loss. But does he think no one is watching over him? Haven’t We made for him two eyes, a tongue, and two lips? And guided him to two places of safety in distress? He must find somewhere to tend to the wound, mustn’t lose focus. His blood bellowing in his ears. Two places of safety. He is very cold as though his skeleton is made of ice. Now suddenly he knows where he must go: towards the house that belongs to a doctor — he had pasted a shabnama on the metal signboard outside it. He’ll go and ask for — or demand — help with his injury. As he runs his head spins. The peripheries of his soul don’t feel bound within his body.
*
‘How big is the Cosmos Oak?’
‘Say that again. My mind was elsewhere.’
‘Nothing.’
David is standing at the window.
We and others like us will never stop until we have covered ourselves in glory by reaching Jerusalem and blowing up the White House, says the Night Letter.
He has dressed, and she is sitting on the bed wrapped in a sheet, hugging herself with the fingers that had gently slid into his hair earlier, when they were both searching for themselves in each other.
When he touched her he felt it was not in the present. He was as though a ghost, watching himself place his hand on her shoulder, his mouth on her thigh. Either a ghost or a memory. He is not young enough to believe that a moment can be seized, no longer a child who looked at the hundred clocks in his grandfather’s workshop without seeing that the hands were moving like scythes.
‘I’ll see today if I can find James Palantine and talk to him,’ he tells her, moving towards the door. ‘He’ll talk to Gul Rasool to find out about Benedikt.’
‘Who is James Palantine?’
‘His father, Christopher, was someone I knew, though I know him too. He is friends with Gul Rasool — an “associate” is probably a better word. He is responsible for Gul Rasool’s security. I knew Christopher Palantine back in the 1980s in Peshawar.’
‘When you were in espionage?’
A hesitation.
Both Christopher and he were. He thinks of the CIA’s motto. From the Gospel of John: And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.