When the sun edged over the horizon, she felt the first of the day’s warmth on her wings and back, white-feathered, and on her neck and head, black-feathered and with a black beak. The sun encouraged her to beat her wings harder, and soon she found a rivulet to follow. Then it became a stream, and a different smell seemed to come from the ground. There were reed banks.
She flew lower.
Beyond the reed banks there were expanses of water, not clear and dark as it would have been if the level was deep beyond the length of her wading legs. She looked for water that reflected the skies and in which she could see the mud bottom, not thick weed.
She saw a building that had small lights around it, the green of the reeds and a bare space of dried dirt on which debris had accumulated, and she saw a little promontory just above the water and at the end a mass of dried leaves. She made a clumsy landing because of the time she had been flying. She settled, had barely steadied herself, then readied to strike. She was listed as a bird deserving the status of ‘conservation concern’ and ‘threatened’. In the last survey of the marshlands, while warfare raged around the dedicated lovers of the ibis, it was estimated that only twenty-six adults lived in this habitat. She hit with her beak. The strike was brutal, fast: she had a frog.
It was a fat frog and it struggled, but its existence was already forfeit. It was put down on the reed fronds, and held by the beak until the claws at the foot of the bird’s left leg could pinion it down.
It was eaten, swallowed whole and alive. Digestion would take time, and the water level around the place where she settled was good for her wading.
She squatted, preened herself, pecked at insects real and imagined. She gazed around her and felt comfortable.
Badger watched. He had had the glasses on the bird as it circled the landing place twice, each time lower on the circuit. He wondered what species it was, but thought it pretty – and effective in the art of killing.
The bird, hunched down, lancing its body feather with its beak, was welcome – a relief to Badger from the options, from breaking disciplines and scratching bites. The mosquitoes had gone now, the flies were gathering, and the wind coming from Foxy was foul. Twice he’d elbowed the man’s ribcage to stop the snoring, but then the options had been uppermost.
A man of ethics? A police officer bred on morality? Badger didn’t know if he was or not. He believed in getting a job done and not much more. He had never fabricated evidence, had never claimed not to have seen another constable strike a man with a baton, and had never fiddled expenses. He had never done anything he would be ashamed of, had never risked his career with a criminal action. The rip-off culture at the police station in Bristol where he had started out had passed him by. Almost, in fact, he had been bollocked for insufficient arrests, relying on cautions and verbal warnings rather than hoicking the arrest statistics for the division. He had a moral code, not flaunted when he was in uniform or out of it, not based on any religious teaching and not worn on his sleeve. The code gave him – he recognised it now – a sort of naivete. Maybe the naivete had come on heavier since he had gone into rural surveillance and after he’d nagged Human Resources for the chance to go on the CROP course. Options? They had nagged at him through the night, while Foxy slept, and the one factor making the matter bearable was that nothing had materialised for him to report. He was watching the bird scrabble with its big feet for better grip on the reed fronds he had put there. More serious than ‘options’, it was kicking at the camouflage he’d made.
The bird hacked hard, thrust dried stuff back and seemed anxious to work down to a hard surface. The glasses showed him the slim, long body of the microphone and, once, the drive of the right foot lifted the cable… If the bird kept going, the microphone would be pushed into the water. Down to options that mattered. Out of his mind went I was, sir, only following orders that I believed to be legitimate. No more baggage about I’m not prepared to be involved, Foxy, in extra-judicial murder. I’m not some fucking Israeli. I will not allow any message that contributes to the target’s killing to be transmitted. Pushed down the agenda was I’m walking out now and having no further part in this, and at the bottom of the heap was I’m a moron and ignorant, and I didn’t understand. More important, top of the pile, was how to stop a pretty bird – a bloody nuisance bird – kicking out the microphone and drowning it. Couldn’t stand up and shout, couldn’t go walkabout to look for a stone and lob it. Once more it scratched. The shape of the microphone was clear now and the cable was well visible and… It stopped, seemed to compress itself down.
The door opened – the front door.
The goon was walking from the barracks towards the house. Lights had been switched on inside and, faintly, a radio played. The door was wide open and the kids spilled through it. Then the case was lifted out. Maybe it was the Engineer who brought it, maybe the older woman.
The case didn’t bulge. It had a green ribbon tied to its handle. Badger saw that the small girl was crying and the boy went to the water’s edge, threw in a pebble from the track, watched it bounce. The bird was hunkered low on what was left of the foliage. Maybe it thought this was a place to stay, where frogs were available on order. Maybe it was not about to shift out. He jabbed Foxy.
Him and Foxy? Between them now a sort of tolerance existed, like a ceasefire. Not peace and not war. When the car came, the suitcase was loaded and they drove away, the mission was done, whether they had anything to radio or not. He doubted he and Foxy would speak much on the way back to extraction, or while they were driven to the base, and not at all when they were helicoptered to Kuwait City. Likely they’d be in different rows on the flight, which Foxy might demand and he himself might insist on. There might be a handshake at the terminal but it would be transitory and neither would go on the other’s Christmas-card list. They’d never meet again.
One jab was enough. He passed him the headset. When the bird had kicked, noise, explosions, had been in his ears, but the bird’s chest – small mercy – did not cover the microphone tip and he could hear the little girl crying.
There was more wind, then a murmur about needing to piss, then the question: how much water was left? None. Then the statement: without water they were screwed. The headset went on Foxy’s ears and Badger whispered about the bird. ‘… and can’t do much about it. The goon has it in his glasses, looks excited enough to do a jerk-off. What is it? Not anything I’ve ever seen.’
‘It’s called an African Sacred Ibis. Pretty rare. Big in Egyptian mythology. Do me a favour, just shut up.’
Foxy looked wan, weak, about played out. A day wouldn’t have gone by in the last ten years without him shaving and examining his moustache in a mirror, without him putting on a clean shirt and polished shoes. He looked sad and a frown cut his forehead. Then he grappled in his pocket for the notepad and flicked the switch to light the screen.
The wife came, and the children ran to her. The Engineer peered up the track and past the barracks, then looked down, savage, at his wristwatch. The goon gazed at the bird. She had the children against her knees and bent awkwardly, held them tight and tried to comfort them. What comfort, Badger wondered, could she offer?
The car would come and the bird would fly. The noise of the car and the crying of the boy would be too much for it. Many weeks, several months, Mansoor had dreamed of seeing the bird, Threskiornis aethiopicus, merely fly low over the reeds and be in the lenses for a few seconds, half a minute, but it was down and he had a fine view of it, and could not believe that the moment would last, but she comforted the child.