There had once been a track leading through the heart of the marsh, an old pathway long since flooded. Under the pathway, in dense reeds, a culvert drain had been built of brick. Lying on his side, Vahid Hossein kept the wound above the level of the water.
The pain came in rivers now. If the marshes had been at the Faw peninsula or on the Jasmin Canal, if he had been with colleagues, with friends, the pain would have been lessened by morphine injections. There were no colleagues, he was far from the Faw and the Jasmin, there was no morphine. The pain sucked the strength from his body.
If he lost consciousness, he would sink lower in the drain's water and drown. He reached into his pocket for the muddied, soaked photograph, held it in his hand and gazed at the small, distorted face of his target.
The sun shone on the water at the entrance of the drain, dappling among the reed stems. If he drifted to sleep, if he sank into unconsciousness, he would drown; if he drowned he would never look into the face. But, sleep unconsciousness would kill the pain. The bullet had been from a handgun. One low-velocity bullet, fired at the extreme of range was still, misshapen and splintered, somewhere inside the cavity of his chest. The entry wound was low under his armpit and he had not found an exit wound. The bullet had struck the bones of his ribcage and been diverted deeper into the chest space.
He coughed. He could not help himself. It came from far down in his lungs. He writhed in the confines of the drain. He needed space, air, and couldn't find it. He held his sleeve against his mouth to muffle the sound of his cough and he crawled towards the segment of bright light at the mouth of the drain. He saw the blood on his sleeve and it eddied from the coarse, soaked material into the flow of the water.
Vahid Hossein did not know how he would survive through the sunlit hours. He prayed for the darkness and prayed to his God for strength. With darkness, with strength, he would go for the last time to the house. The blood and the mucus ran from his hand and over the photograph he clutched, and into the water… They would be waiting to hear of him, and learn of what he had achieved. He thought of Barzin, and her body in darkness, the awkwardness with which she held him, and he wondered if she would weep. He thought of the brigadier with the bear-hug arms, and the laughter that was between them, the trust, and he wondered if the tears would come to the cheeks of his friend. He thought of Hasan-iSabah and the young men who had gone down on the narrow, steep rock path from the fortress at Alamut and who would never return. He thought of them and they all, each of them, succoured his strength.
The image of the young woman, living or dead, was never on his mind. She was past. The sun was on his face. Protected from sight by the waving reed-banks, he eased his head, and the shoulder above the wound, out into the light. He was so tired. He wanted so desperately to sleep. It was not an option. He recognized the delirium that snatched at his concentration, but could not resist the call for him to show strength and courage. They were all around him, the people he knew in his heart and in his mind. He heard their words, and they cried to him from close by. He reached above the drain, his fingers groping in soft mud against the reed-stems, for the launcher. The voices, near to him and shrill, told him he must hold the launcher through the sunlight hours, and never sleep, hold it until night came… It was blurred, small.
The bird cried out above him and flew its search over him. The pain was back, the dream was over. He saw the bird searching for him and heard its cry in the silence. It was the same silence he had felt before, when he had believed a man watched for him. He struggled to get back into the recess of the mouth of the drain, but he did not have the strength, and his fear was the same as hers had been when she was under him and choked and scratched at his face. The bird hunted him.
Chalmers saw the bird dive.
The man, Markham, slept beside him, lying on his back with the sun bathing him, sheltered from the wind, and the dogs were close to him. Andy Chalmers had heard the bird call and it had not been answered. He saw it tuck its wings against its body and plummet, a stone in freef all, bright light shimmering on its wings.
He watched it, for the briefest moment, pull out from its dive and spread its wings to cushion the impact of the fall. He heard its cry. For a few seconds, it hovered over the reeds, then dropped. As a marker, he took an old, withered tree that rose above the flood marsh, dead branches with a crow perched on it. The bird came up, sky danced over the reeds, then dropped again. A faraway tree draped in ivy, which was alone among the willow saplings on the distant extreme of the marsh, was his second point. His mind made the line between the perched crow and the ivy tree. The bird stayed down, and he knew its search was over.
Chalmers leaned across the sleeping man, ruffled the hair of his dogs' necks, murmured his order to them, and slipped into the water. He moved away from the shore-line, where Markham slept and the dogs watched, without sound. He had the line to guide him. He half swam, half walked and although the water was icy against his body he was not aware of it. He kept the line in his mind. He felt no anger, no passion, no hatred. The shore was behind him, hidden from him by the reed-banks. He went quietly, slowly, along the line his mind had made.
Cathy Parker said to Fenton and Cox, "He's complacent and conceited. It's not what he said but it's his body language. Littelbaum thinks he's walked all over us like we're the hired help."
Twice he had flapped his arm at the bird, the second time more feebly than the first. He could not drive the bird away from him. If Vahid Hossein could have reached it, the bird he loved, he would have caught it, held it while it clawed his hand and gouged at his wrist, and he would have throttled the life out of it, but he could not. When his hand came close, the bird fluttered further away, eyeing him, and flew and circled him, but when it came down it was always beyond his reach. To survive, he would have killed the creature he loved, and all the time the silence grew around him. Again, digging for strength, the pain surging, he lunged. He was on his knees and groping at air. The bird mocked him, danced in front of him.
As he sagged back, his face screwed in pain, he saw, in the far distance, the man walking towards him. On the raised pathway, coming closer, alone and unprotected, was his target. The photograph had fallen from his hand when he had reached for the bird, floating on the muddy water near to him. He gripped it, looked once more at the crumpled photograph and at the man. The pain in his body told him it was not the delirium that comes to the wounded before sleep and then death. The man walked towards him. Vahid Hossein thanked his God and grasped the launcher in his hands as firmly as he could.
"Is that you, Fenton? Penny Flowers here. Did you know our esteemed American allies were already counting their chickens? They're planning to go public as soon as there's a corpse or a prisoner. They reckon, a little bird tells me, that it's going to be their day, which is in direct contradiction of what I understand to be our policy on this. Thought you should know… He walked in the beauty of the landscape and did not believe he deserved to.