‘That’s Iraqi Army, likely from al-Qurnah – and that’s heavy fire-power they’re carrying. We’re between a rock and a hard place, miss, or a lump hammer and an anvil.’
She said that the Black Hawks were in the air, which meant little. She was shivering, couldn’t halt the tremors, and no longer had certainties.
A truth had come to Mansoor. The quiet allowed his thoughts to collect. Truth won through against his exhaustion and hunger, the heat of the high sun, and he realised the enormity of his failure. He saw the Engineer, whom he had been ordered to protect, leave home with his wife to go abroad in secrecy and on a journey where, if his arrangements were known, he would be vulnerable to attack. He saw, also, the man in camouflage who had been dragged from the water and had resisted interrogation. He could not justify his failure to alert senior officials immediately after the capture. Who would understand his motives? He doubted that, in the length and breadth of Ahvaz or from one end to the other of the garrison camp, he could have rooted out one man prepared to say that his actions had been reasonable, given the pressures he faced.
He was like the dog that searched for a rabbit’s scent. Had it, held it, lost it and searched again for it. He could not see him. The fierce light mocked him. Often he would have sworn an oath on the Book that he saw movement in the heaps and humps of dirt that stretched away from him. Three more times he fired and heard only the report of the bullet.
The man he hunted had destroyed him. He might as well have exposed himself and urinated on Mansoor’s boots. The heat of the day had come and the shimmer of the ground made a greater confusion. He sank to his knees. For a minute, no more than two, he had lost the trail. Here the ground was dry dust and he had to search for a place – no larger than a piastre – where the crust was broken. He followed a new line and went closer, imperceptibly, to a raised spur on which two heavy white vehicles waited. He saw a woman there, whose skirt moved in the wind, and men, all with the same T-shirt decoration, stood around her.
They pointed beyond him, and when he turned and saw the extended cordon line approaching, he knew little time was left him.
‘You have been most patient.’ The consultant leaned forward, his elbows on the desk, and peered into the face of his patient. ‘A few of those who consult me are able to match your patience, but not many. I have explained in detail the size of the tumour, where it is located, what it is adjacent to and the importance of those areas in terms of speech, mobility and quality of life. You have listened and not interrupted. For that I am grateful. You will appreciate that it is my duty to take you through these matters. Now I can conclude.’
He smiled. It was the first time he had allowed any signal of his professional opinion to be on display. He saw her jaw drop.
‘I would use what we call the gamma knife – more simply, that is surgical radiotherapy – to extract the problem area under general anaesthetic. It is a technique that we have used with good results in Germany.’
Her husband had caught her arm and seemed to crumple in the shoulders.
‘Nothing is foolproof and nothing is guaranteed. Success is based on skill and experience. Enough to say that we feel optimistic of a good outcome. When I was called out of here, while I was explaining our diagnosis, it was to hear the opinions of others to whom I had given access to the scans. Their opinions, broadly, matched mine. We can do the operation. The alternative is that you will be dead within two months.’
Why did he persist? Easier, by far, to say that surgery was no longer an option and tell the patient to go home and spend her remaining days with her family. He could not have been gainsaid. But there was about her something magnificent that had captivated him. He had thought her husband a rat-faced bastard, and a regime man, but the man’s face was wet with tears.
‘We would start the necessary pre-operative examinations tomorrow, and I believe I could have access to surgery time, at the university medical centre, in Hamburg-Eppendorf, within a week.’
Had this been a German woman, she would probably have reached out her hands, held his cheeks and kissed him. It happened often. This woman’s expression remained stoic and her fingers stayed clasped on her lap. He thought her beautiful. She might have been the price of his marriage and have cost him a place in the upper echelon of Lubeck society. Others now would be sitting in his waiting room, showing, perhaps, less fortitude.
‘If you ring my receptionist this afternoon she will advise you of a schedule. We will need details of how the account will be settled and will give you a breakdown of costs. In the meantime, you should hope the weather clears so that you can enjoy the old quarter of the city, but do not tax yourself too greatly. I will see you to your car.’
He stood. The man – an Engineer who made bombs that killed and mutilated troops far from their homes – blubbered like a child, but she was composed.
The tide was sliding away and the beach showed a damp ribbon of sand. He stood where it was dry and could see miles along the coast line… as he had that day. It was where the border had run from alongside the Dassower See, and its shore, then cut across the peninsula at its narrow point, leaving Priwall in the west, Rosenhagen and Potenitz in the east. It had come down from the sand dunes, now a nature reserve: Naturschutzgebiet – Betreten verboten. Then, the wire, the minefields and barricades had crossed the beach and gone far out into the waters of the Lubeckerbucht. It had been an early-summer day, with a brisk wind but clean sunshine.
The pastor had brought him.
The Lutheran priest had worn jeans, an open-necked checked shirt and heavy sandals, while the youthful Len Gibbons had dressed in grey slacks, lightweight brogues and a sports jacket of quiet herringbone. It had been the pastor’s invitation. He wants to see you once more, see the man he works for whom he trusts. His friend’s cousin is a border guard and it is arranged, but you must give no signal, and you will see him only very briefly, but it will be, for him, as if you touched hands. They had walked on the beach and had gone towards the fence, where it dropped down into the dirty Baltic water. A watchtower overlooked that section, and a patrol boat was out in the Bight. It had been a naturist’s beach, and they had gone among the flapping bosoms and shrivelled members of elderly males and had seen the guards, behind the fence or up in the towers, clicking their cameras; there had been a joke about porn stocks in the guards’ camp being low. They were the only clothed people on their side of the wire.
On the far side, every man was uniformed and armed, big dogs had howled at them, and Gibbons had seen him. Maybe for a half-minute, and at a distance of some three hundred yards, a young, slight-built figure had come from the gorse behind the dunes and walked towards the sea with a guard. Antelope had stopped close to the waterline, and gazed towards the barriers, then turned away. Gibbons and the pastor had gone back through the naturists and the young SIS officer had felt bonded with his asset, more trusting.
Two months later, the message had come through that new courier arrangements were required and Gibbons, to his desk chief, had spoken up on behalf of the asset’s request. Contacts had been supplied. Three at least, because of Gibbons’s naivete and his superiors’ lack of due diligence, were dead, and their lives would have ended unpleasantly. The experience had made Len Gibbons – surviving by fingernail grip – fight as he had been fought. He had been taught, in a front-of-the-class seat, the value of ruthless application of his government’s policy. No sentiment intruded into his professional life, no qualms were permitted. Morality? He wouldn’t have known how to spell it.