Somewhere behind her, out of view, Harding and Shagger would be on plastic chairs or hunkered on their haunches, ready to go. She knew she merely had to hitch a leg off the lounger and drop the book – Field Guide to the Birds of the Middle East – into her bag, on top of Birds of Iraq, and they would be on their feet. By the time she had draped the towel around her legs and knotted it at the waist, all four would be wearing their flak vests and rucksacks, with their weapons in their hands. When she stood and lifted the bag, Shagger would come forward with her own vest and hold it up so that she could shrug into it. When she quit Baghdad, at the end of this show, took the Six shuttle flight down to Kuwait, then headed for the Towers, she reckoned they would be devastated. Not her problem, but it nagged. She thought often – with relief or ruefully – that the Jones Boys ensured her celibacy. It would be a rare bastard who ambled towards her and began a chat-up routine: Hello there. Do you believe in love at first sight, or should I walk by you again? Or, Excuse me, I’ve left my wallet behind. Do you mind if we share an armoured personnel carrier home? If an officer, American or British, Latvian or Australian, a diplomat or an administrator, had tried to get his hand in her pants, most likely he’d have ended in a Casevac tent. There were times when she ached for She had long legs, tight waist, fair bumps, pretty mouth and a good sun-kissed complexion, but no man. She called quietly, ‘Guys, can you come over? Guys, please.’
She had the four around her. ‘Don’t get me wrong, this is serious and not bull. We’re concerned about the survival prospects of the Basra Reed-warbler – smart name is Acrocephalus griseldis – the Black-tailed Godwit, the Greater Spotted Eagle, the Sacred Ibis, Threskiornis aethiopicus, and a few others, how they’re dealing with drought and what effect renewed oil exploration in their habitat will have. Two supposed surveillance experts are taking off tonight and will hit here tomorrow. The ecogame is the cover. Questions?’
There never were. They relied on her to tell them what they needed to know, and she gave them more than was necessary, which showed her trust in them. In their world, and hers, trust was a big factor, sometimes the biggest.
‘And there’s people we have to see and bits of paper we have to collect. What do I think of it? Doesn’t matter. We’re back, they’re forward and over the frontier, at what you guys call the ‘sharp end’. We’re supposed to be their support, but easier said than done. Rather them than me. It’s all a bit old-fashioned, a bit of a shout from the past – but I’m up for it. Anyway, if the birds get oil on their wings, they’re bollocksed.’
She went to get dressed in the female changing area, where they wouldn’t follow her, and now felt challenged. She sensed she was heading, roller-coaster, towards an end-game more hazardous than anything she had experienced before, and that the risk factor had ratcheted.
The piper played what he assumed was a lament. Their host and his wife were on the front steps. In their foreheads, the positioning of their eyes and the push of their jaws, Foxy Foulkes thought he could read something of the grandson in the photograph. The old man and woman had shaken hands as they’d left. By chance Foxy was last out of the door, and they had gripped his. Might have been because he was the last, or that small morsels had dropped from the table and they knew a little of what was planned in the Iraqi marshlands. Maybe intuition told them that in their home an act of revenge was plotted against someone, anyone, who had worked to kill the grandson who might one day have taken over this pile of damp grey stone. It was grim stuff that the piper played. A light rain fell on his shoulders, and there was a stag in the field that seemed forlorn, lost. The dogs ignored the helicopter and chased furiously after crows that flew away from them. The grandmother held Foxy’s hand and shook it. Foxy didn’t know whether he should thank them for their hospitality or… They willed him forward. A murmur of ‘God keep you safe’ from her and a growl from him: ‘Remember us, and go after them wherever you find them.’ It was all theatre, had a majesty to it – decayed but there – and the piper’s cheeks puffed with his efforts and the dirge was fit for a funeral but went mostly unheard as the rotors gathered speed.
He raised his voice: ‘We’ll do what we can.’
It was rare for Foxy Foulkes to feel that his words, drowned by the helicopter’s engine and the piper’s efforts, were utterly vacuous. Felt it then, could have bitten his lip. What he thought of as banal was a beacon to the couple. He saw their eyes blaze and wetness formed in the grandfather’s. She stood tall and kissed his cheek – roughly shaven that morning in tepid water. He freed his hands and scurried past the piper. The crewman waited on the lawn for him, near to an old rose bed. The others had boarded. He thought the American would have paid in cash for the privilege of using the house and that there would be no paper trail. The helicopter’s flight plans would have been listed as ‘training exercises’ and the flying logs would have perpetuated the lies. There would have been, Foxy realised, elderly men and women the length and breadth of the country who mourned grandsons cut down by the bombs left at the side of a straight road traversing a desert, men and women who had lost children, young women whose husbands had come home in coffins, and children taken to full military funerals who had no father. He was as trapped as if they had taken him to a pathology theatre at the John Radcliffe in Oxford where the corpses were brought, to the military hospital in Birmingham or the Headley Court rehabilitation clinic. He could never have refused. The crewman put a gloved fist under Foxy’s arm and heaved. He flopped into the cabin.
The others were already belted to their seats, and he saw the looks of impatience because he had delayed them – for a minute and a half.
He wondered what he would tell Ellie, what sort of phone call was permitted, how long and how detailed… where the kit would come from, and what the duration of the operation would be. He knew so little and there was an almost infuriating calm about the little beggar sitting across the cabin from him. They were airborne, and there was a view of the once grand house, the couple on the steps who waved, the castle keep, the grey sea, the grey rocks and the shingle beach. Then they smacked into the grey clouds – and the little beggar showed no sign of letting the lack of information fester in him. Of course, he hadn’t been there.
The helicopter shook and the pilot made no concessions to the comfort of his passengers. If ‘Badger’ Baxter had been to Iraq, he might not have been slumped in his seat, apparently relaxed about close support, how near they were expected to get and – Foxy’s knowledge of the language raced in his mind – what the quality of the directional audio would be. Had he been able to reach across the width of the cabin, he might have kicked the little beggar’s shin and wiped the calm off his face. It was his language skills that had done for him.
They powered through dense cloud. The Cousin and the Friend talked into each other’s ears, protectors lifted. Foxy could not read their averted lips. The Boss, Gibbons, sat upright, hands tight on the frame of the canvas seat. Foxy met Badger’s glance. Hadn’t intended to. Was rewarded with a brief smile, as if they were equals and shared authority, responsibility. He wouldn’t tolerate that. They were not equals.
He shivered. Couldn’t help himself. He hoped the thick coat wrapped round him would mask it. He shivered at the thought of the reed beds, the water in the lagoons and channels, the heat and the hatred – and saw again the faces, some bloodied but not pleading, some bruised but not begging, in the interrogation rooms of the Joint Forward Intelligence Team. God help them if they were taken because of the hatred that had been incubated in that fucking place.