That morning he had been called by his father, an informer for the Revolutionary Guard Corps. He was a part-time postal official and also helped with the executions at the city gaol. He was a man of few talents and many interests, who let it be known that his son had failed to fulfil expectations. His father would have expected to ride on the back of his son’s successes; he had been uninterested in the medical prognosis after a section of his son’s leg had been gouged out by a missile, and more concerned with his return to authority and influence. That day his father had telephoned him from the prison with details of the public hanging of two Arabs. He had been the link between the hangman and the crane drivers in their cabs, telling them when to hoist the arms. He had enjoyed the morning; it had gone-well. From his father’s knee, through his time as a recruit of the Guard Corps, during his selection for the elite al-Quds, and lying on a makeshift stretcher to be hauled across mountain tracks, he had honed a hatred for all enemies of the state, whether Arabs in Ahvaz or the distant operators of the remote guided Predators. He could not salve his loathing of the Great Satan, take revenge for his damaged leg, but the Engineer had hurt them, which enhanced Mansoor’s loyalty.
In the evening, he might bring out his fishing rod to catch a carp and then, too, he could watch the marshes. He was devastated by what he knew of the illness of the Engineer’s wife. He was, he thought, almost a part of their family.
There was stillness in front of him, safety. The lenses of the glasses roved over the water and the flourishing reed beds. No creature moved sharply or thrashed to escape.
In the heat of the afternoon, the police came. They had two battered pick-ups. Corky had alerted her when the dirt trails were still more than a kilometre away. She had shrugged into a robe and her face was part covered with a scarf. Both Corky and Hamfist had done this territory with their regiments and would have regarded the police as deceitful and treacherous – they had probably sent a few to martyrs’ graves. They had talked this through and the drills were understood. Two spotter ’scopes up on the bund line round the wrecked drilling camp looked down into the marshes that surrounded the site. Harding was behind one and Shagger had the other; both had bird books and pamphlets beside their stools. Abigail had not seen an individual come close to the camp, and none of the Jones Boys had warned her of a ‘dicker’ looking them over from cover. They would have been told, and they would have come. The routine was that she would explain in her halting Arabic that they were a part of a UNESCO-sponsored eco-watch, additionally funded by National Geographic. They had the full support of the ministry in Baghdad, and the provincial governor’s office. She had the papers of each organisation to prove her point: a clutch of ‘To Whom It May Concern’ letters, all with impressive headings, a fifty-dollar bill attached to each one. She had anticipated that after each paper was examined the money would have gone. She knew what they earned, and remarked that she and her colleagues were grateful to the local police for watching over them. She could bore, and did so: her anxiety about the potential for oil pollution of this amazing habitat, unique in the world to Iraq; the species of bird and animal life here, needing monitoring, which were not found anywhere else in the world. Iraqis, from across the country, could be proud of it. Had they not been told she was coming with colleagues and an escort? She had the smile and her appearance was harmless, but the policemen would have seen the two men gazing out over the marshes through ’ scopes, breaking off to write in notepads. They also had cameras, while two more carried automatic weapons and were in the shadow of the buildings. When she had bored them enough, they left.
She said to Harding, ‘That was probably good enough for today, and maybe for tomorrow, but they’ll be back. I don’t think in a couple of days they’d manage enough links to unravel it at Baghdad or Basra level. Three days, maximum four, would push against the limits.’
He nodded. Truth was, she liked him more than the others. The original quiet American, he spoke rarely but, of them all, he was the one Abigail trusted with her life.
She said, ‘I doubt the Fox and the Badger will be in much shape after three or four days.’
Was it flawed? Two men who might have been inserted too late and find the bird flown, or had gone in too early and would be unable to sustain the watch. They might be there too long and show out. She had liked the scrapping between them. There was no way other than to have men on their stomachs, peering through lenses with earphones clamped to their skulls. It couldn’t be done with satellites on the electronics in the drones. It would be their shout. The mission depended on them. She had thought the antipathy, at each other’s throats, more likely to raise the competitive streak that would dominate their relationship. Too cosy, and they wouldn’t be efficient. It was personal to Abigail Jones because she had examined Badger’s bruising and had worked a leg over his pelvis to see it better. He had said something about the smell of her body, then the taste, and she had done as much stripping as he had. She had made a complication where there should have been none. She always kept a couple in her wallet, and when she had gone at first light to clear her system the condom had gone into the hole with their rubbish for burial. All a complication, but Abigail Jones did not do regret.
It couldn’t last more than three or four days.
He met his wife, Catherine, in a coffee shop on Regent Street.
She told him what was in the bag. Two shirts, three pairs of underpants, four pairs of socks, and a new pair of pyjamas. Len Gibbons thanked her, awkward – he had been since they’d first clapped eyes on each other thirty-five or so years earlier.
He couldn’t tell her how it was going. She could ask him nothing about what kept him in London, or why he needed changes of clothing. He couldn’t tell her how long he would be there. She couldn’t ask when he would need replacements and whether he would need another suit brought up, heavy- or lightweight. Nothing to say about the garden because of the weather, and she hadn’t heard from either of the children, both students. The job ruled him, not that it had treated him well. Another woman, in her place, might have harboured doubts about her husband’s staying up in London and sharing an office with Sarah, the faithful assistant. She didn’t – had actually said so last year. Catherine Gibbons thought that, most days, he didn’t notice what his assistant wore, probably hadn’t registered what she, his wife, had dressed in. She was a widow to the Service. They sipped coffee and nibbled shortbread. He looked at his watch twice, and flushed when she caught him at it.
Naughty of her, but she challenged him: ‘Important, Len, is it?’
He surprised her, didn’t change the subject or sit in silence. ‘Important as anything over my desk in years, and we have no idea how it will end or where. We’ve people out at the end of a line and… Does that tell you anything?’
Her eyes were bright and mischievous: ‘Is it legal?’
He didn’t bat her away. ‘Most would say it’s illegal. No one would say it’s legal. A few would say they don’t bloody care… Thanks for coming up.’
She persisted: ‘Those people at the end of the line, do they know whether it’s legal or not?’
‘They know what they need to know. Yes, I appreciate your coming up.’
He left her, had already outstayed the time he should have been away from his phone. He knew Badger and Foxy had been dumped, would be moving forward towards their lie-up and soon be at the border – which was, sort of, a defining moment. Legal or illegal, he didn’t bloody care – as long as it stayed deniable. It would be a huge step, as big as anything he had handled since he was a ‘greenhorn’. Should it have been asked of them?