She held her line, Harding reckoned, and he held his.
She said she was trained in the preservation of wildlife. He did not accuse her of being in the employ of Britain’s intelligence service.
She sparkled and flattered. He had mischief in his eyes and humour.
She remarked that the charity backing her could be generous to those who smoothed paths. He responded that the marsh people would always be grateful to those who showed meaningful generosity.
It was, to Harding, obvious that her cover story wasn’t believed, nothing of it.
They liked each other. The sheikh let her know he had a brother who sold real estate in California, and that another brother had been hanged by order of the old regime in the Abu Ghraib gaol, that he himself had been imprisoned, then released, and allowed to return to lead his people but – of course – had never willingly served Saddam Hussein and the Ba’athists. Harding watched the dance played out. The sheikh could drive away, head for the army camp at al-Amara, report her presence and earn credit for future favours. Also, he could send someone across the border to the first road-block on the Ahvaz road and tell the men manning it that he had brought a message for an officer of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. That would earn him money and he’d be repaid also with safe passage for smugglers bringing him opiate paste for onward selling.
Harding, seven years with Proeliator Security and fourteen with the American marines, did not play cards for money – never had. The aunt who had raised him regarded any form of gambling as the devil’s work. Card games, he assumed, were about bluff and trickery. Who, now, tricked whom? Who could depend on a bluff not being called? He watched, listened, and his mind flitted from the sheikh sitting on the crate and his Jones lady now cross-legged in the dirt. His thoughts had moved on… Strange guys, neither to his liking. He didn’t think that the older man or the younger one would have joined him on the whore hunt in Dubai, or would have been with him when he shivered at night on street corners or shared the lie he lived. Neither would have made him laugh or drunk with him until they were unable to stand, but he would go to his Maker defending them. Why? Loyalty was the creed he lived by. As loyal as the men from a marine platoon had been who’d fought their way through towards four of them holed up in a house as crowds gathered and cut off a retreat route. Loyalty was a duty. Whether they could stay in place and exercise the loyalty owed to the two men who were forward depended on her ability to negotiate.
The radio stayed silent, and the guys up ahead had nothing to report. Hours ticked by and little time was left. He could imagine a scrape, the weight of the camouflage gear, the flies, ticks and mosquitoes, the smells, hunger and thirst.
The sheikh might sell them to his own military or to the Iranians across the border, and be well rewarded by either. She might buy them time. They negotiated: a local leader of education and authority over a swarm of peasants and an officer of an intelligence agency; they were equals. He didn’t play card games but had watched others: she had only a fistful of dollar bills and a sweet, girlish charm.
He couldn’t say how the game would play out. He thought hard on the guys up ahead and the moon had risen high, and the mosquitoes had gathered in droning clouds. If the sheikh reckoned a better deal lay elsewhere, pushed himself up off the crate and walked back towards his car, then it was over for all of them, and loyalty to the guys, far forward, was well fucked and bust.
‘It is deniable because…?’
‘It is deniable because it is illegal.’
‘Who sanctioned it?’
‘From high up, someone sitting on the top of the mountain, but don’t look for a written minute, young ’un. You’ll not find an electronic trail, and don’t imagine there’s schedules of meetings. Look back at it.’
‘What am I looking back at?’
‘Start with the people you met, the transport there and the place, then focus on the people. The transport was unmarked and you can lay good money, or bad, that somehow the flight records have been mislaid, and no flight path was filed or can be found for the chopper, and the big house takes guests but nobody signed a register. Anyone goes back to that house and tries to prove we were there in the face of bland denials, it won’t be provable. Their grandson was killed by one of those bombs, side-of-the-road IEDs, and they’d rather like the bastard who built it to be killed, put on a flat slab of granite in a wilderness, left as carrion for the birds. Are you getting the picture?’
‘What about the people?’
‘Was there anybody of seniority, anybody who cut the mustard – had authority, was natural with power, expected to be listened to? If this had been a police operation there would have been a commander, perhaps an assistant chief constable. They weren’t there. Nobody of rank was. .. Had one of them been allocated he would have called in sick. Any bastard with a career worth preserving, a pension to look after and the hope of a gong, would have stayed away – and they did.’
‘You called him Gibbons and I called him “Boss”. What was he?’
‘A journeyman. They’re stacked shoulder to shoulder, that type, at the Box and Six. They’ve reached a plateau of promotion, going no higher and too bloody frightened to quit, walk out and find a job in the marketplace. They hang about, do what they’re told. They thank God they’re still coming up to London on a commuter cattle truck, allowed to have a bloody briefcase with EIIR in old gold on it and still – just about – belong. Maybe, in his time – forgiven, not forgotten, held in the files – there was one of those messy little matters that he could be reminded of when they wanted someone to go down into the sewers. The American was Agency, would provide the cash and be looking for one last hurrah before heading to Florida and condominium life. Then there was the Israeli, humourless little bastard, the liaison for the hit – it’s sub-contracted out and the Israelis are happy to slot Iranians of sufficient sensitivity, likely queue up for the chance. The major is exactly that, not a general or brigadier but a man who will have dirtied his hands in the sand defusing those bombs. What I’m saying, young ’un, is that these are the people who fight wars, not the ones who start or finish them. Then there’s us.’
‘What are we?’
‘We’re deniable. We never existed and never came here, and there’s no record of us… And then there’s only the lovely Alpha Juliet. I wouldn’t hold your breath.’
‘Hold my breath for what?’
‘For the belief she’s different from any of the rest.’
‘Explain.’
‘It’s her shout. Miss Alpha Juliet’s the instigator. Put it together. Give you a good ride, did she, young ’un?’
‘None of your business.’
‘My business, that she handled the recovery of a device from which DNA could be extracted, and put assets on the ground to verify that this target matched the sample. Why not have those same folk keep hanging round there and listening for the gossip, whatever? Because they’re dead, and because the likes of them have fast burn-out. Luckily dead because they were thieved from, could have been worse. There’s a security apparatus in Ahvaz, down the road from here, where they’re skilled at doing things to fingernails and testicles. They know where the body shows up most for pain. In case you listened to the rubbish talked at home about torture, truth is that it works. Locals don’t have fieldcraft – they don’t have the backbone of training and skills, so they bring in you and me. I’m vain and like to be asked, and you’re an idiot who doesn’t know what questions to put. The whole operation is down to pretty Miss Alpha Juliet, who’s hard as pig metal and would lie through her teeth for the cause.’