It was coming up on her fast, the bug-out from Baghdad. Soon enough there would be the round of parties – her people, Agency staffers, the embassy, hand-chosen Iraqi army officers and intelligence men, and a general melee of multi-national spooks. The best part would be the knowledge, shared in a tight circle, of the ‘taking down’ of an Engineer. It would be a pleasure to know he was dead, and that she had played her part in it. There would be an office car from Heathrow to her home, and she would sign the docket and have the driver lift the bags to the front door, then fish out her keys and step inside her home, alone. She wondered if that evening, when they hit the Basra road, Highway 6, there might be a swap of mobile numbers, done in the lead Pajero, if he would be there – giggles about where it had been last time and…
Corky said, ‘Because their gear is forward they need darkness to get it back. Shouldn’t be long.’
‘I have to say it, Corky – I’d have been tempted to ditch the stuff, and we’d have been out of here seven or eight hours ago, if they’d made good time.’
The crowd had gone, drifting away in the wake of the dust cloud from the big BMW in which the sheikh rode. There would have been what Corky called ‘dickers’ who watched them, but for now the wads of banknotes had bought emptiness round the perimeter. The light on her communications kit hadn’t flashed. No message from London, no acknowledgement and nothing to tell her that a hit was on course. Nothing from ahead, from beyond a horizon of dirt and soft-coloured reeds.
They had spent their day cleansing the building they’d used. Now it was as they had found it, every fag end picked up and bagged. The vehicles were loaded with the sleeping bags and mosquito nets, the spotter ’scope for bird-watching, the spare weaponry and ammunition. She had done the rounds and was satisfied. She had paused in the doorway of the room where he had slept and seen a smooth part of the concrete flooring where the dust had been swept away by the motion of his hips. She regretted nothing.
‘Only thing, miss, that’s worse than ditching gear and leaving it behind is doing that to a comrade, your mate.’
‘I think I understand that, Corky.’
‘You don’t, young ’un, interrupt or contradict me.’
Badger reckoned he was composed now, ready. ‘Heard you.’
‘You’ll watch my back and I’ll retrieve the stuff.’
Badger didn’t interrupt, or contradict.
‘I’ll go in about fifteen minutes when the light’s gone. It’s not acceptable to leave the gear, so we won’t. We get the stuff and leave the hide covered. We have to hope it’ll stay that way long enough. The goon’s watched the bird all day. He’ll have seen the cable and now he’s gone back to where his guys are. His own people are poor quality, but I doubt he is. You saw the limp, which means he’s been injured – I’d imagine it was a combat wound. He may act with his own people or, more likely, he’ll have sent for decent back-up from down the road. When it’s dark, I’m going.’
Badger lay on his stomach and listened. The sun tipped the tops of the reed beds in the west, and the skies over the palm trees across the lagoon and the house, where nothing moved and few lights showed.
‘When I come back to you, I may be coming fast, and we don’t fuck about, young ’un. We’re going for speed and distance, and I’m thinking that the first quarter of a mile is the critical bit. We manage that and use the comms. We try to find, without bloody drowning, the extraction point. That’s what’s going to happen.’
Still no contradiction, no interruption.
‘I’ll go forward to retrieve the stuff because I don’t know what’ll be waiting there. When I don’t know, I won’t ask anyone else to do what I should be doing. In case there are any misunderstandings between us, young ’un, don’t ever forget that I’m in charge. I lead and I decide. You don’t. Before you ask, my memory of the plug from the cable into the microphone is that it’s a straight socket, not robust. Giving the cable a yank will do the business and they’ll come apart – surprised the pigs didn’t manage it. I’m going, and you’ll have everything, the bergens and the rest, ready for a fast break-out.’
‘You’re not capable of it.’
‘I’m going forward – it’s the burden of leading.’
‘Because getting a cable and a microphone back from fifty yards is dangerous? That’s rubbish.’
‘It’s dangerous – which you’d know if you had eyes. And-’
‘And what?’
There was a pause.
‘It’s better that I do it.’
‘For Christ’s sake, Foxy – you’ve got a wife, a home, respect. Love.’
‘Wrong.’
‘My home’s police quarters, a dump. I’m a squatter. I don’t have a woman.’
‘You have Alpha Juliet and something might just-’
‘You have a wife – a wife. A home and a wife. Why-’
‘Try this proverb by John Heywood. He wrote it in 1546, which was the last year in the life of Henry the Eighth. “An old fool is the worst kind of fool – as in, he’s marrying a woman fifty years his junior.” Actually only eighteen years, but I’m the worst kind of fool.’
‘What’re you saying, Foxy?’ Badger cursed himself. He knew what Foxy meant and should have buttoned his lip.
A quaver in the voice. ‘There’s an ex-policeman who transferred a few years back to Ministry of Defence security at Bath. He told me. The guy she’s with is in Accounts. All of Naval Procurement knows, and probably most of Accounts, but I was one of the last. She’s shagging him. You want some more, young ’un? My wife isn’t likely to be at home, sitting in front of the TV with a supermarket meal for one, yearning for me to be home. She’s more likely to be in my bed, drinking my cellar dry with her legs spread. It hurts more than anything I’ve known. I pretend, I talk about her, and it’s all lies.’
‘You didn’t have to tell me, Foxy.’
‘They watch me at work, people who know I’m married to her and who’ve seen her picture. I know I’m drawn, pale, and they snigger that it’s because I’m getting it night after night. But they’re not from Naval Procurement – they know. It’ll be their daily soap-opera episode. She goes to Bassett – you know what I mean? Wootton Bassett. She sees them bring the soldiers back from Afghanistan, up the High Street, and uses it to taunt me. These are “heroes”, and I’m the old fool who gives lectures and is half buried in the bloody past. I think they have sex when she’s claiming to be sick and doesn’t go to work. She goes through Bassett on the way home. It’s like she thinks you’re not worthwhile unless you’ve earned a Bassett job for yourself. Don’t ever forget it. No fool like an old fool. I think that’s enough, young ’un.’
‘You didn’t have to.’
‘I’m grateful to you for listening.’
The light had slipped some more.
The binoculars no longer showed him the bird, and the dim lights on the far side of the lagoon only outlined the walls of the house. The big lamp, the high one in front of the barracks, had come on, but there seemed to be no movement. Badger wondered if that indicated the guards’ mealtime. He didn’t know whether he had missed things he should have noted, or whether Foxy had lost his marbles through heat and dehydration. No one, before, had confided in him like that. He felt uncomfortable. They would get to Kuwait City together, then split and be in different rows in the aircraft. They’d head for the Green Channel separately, and cars would take them in opposite directions. He thought also there was an evens chance that he’d be going into the water to get Foxy back. No one, before, had ever talked to him with such raw unhappiness.