But the figure was scanning the bankside vegetation, and completely ignoring the MGB standing by the bridge. There was another shower of raindrops from the trees, and a small, nondescript bird flew from under the bridge and alighted on the broken stem of a bullrush. Smoothly and unhurriedly the binoculars swivelled to focus on the bird, and now a smile was visible on the face of the hooded figure in the kayak. It was a young man, probably a teenager, and his lips seemed to be moving in soundless appreciation of the bird.
Her heart thumping with the sick, dragging ebb of tension, Jean thumbed on the Malyah’s safety and glanced sideways to see if Faraj had registered that the young man was not a threat. The bird must have caught her slight movement, because it swung quickly away from its perch and darted back beneath the bridge. The young man looked after it for a moment, lowered his binoculars, paddled himself forwards into the bridge pool, reversed his kayak, and disappeared the way he had come.
They watched his progress, or at least the movements of the reeds, until nothing could be seen. For ten agonisingly extended minutes they waited by the car in case he should return, but the fenland landscape out of which he had so unexpectedly appeared had reclaimed him.
“We’ve got to get rid of the car,” Jean said eventually. “Those were military helicopters we saw earlier, and it’ll show up through the trees on their thermal imaging cameras.”
Faraj nodded. “Let’s do it.”
Leaning into the car, he checked that it was in neutral and released the handbrake. They pushed from the rear. The old MGB was heavier than it looked, with a very low centre of gravity, and took several seconds to budge in the rain-slick mud. Then it nosed as if unwillingly to the top of the steps, lurched over the first of them, and with a loud grating noise stuck fast. “Axle’s caught,” muttered Faraj. “Bastard thing. We have to keep pushing.”
They pushed, their shoulders to the MGB’s chrome back-bumper, the cleated soles of their boots digging deep.
At first nothing happened, and then everything happened. The cement facing of the brickwork steps cracked, the rear of the MGB swung upwards, flipping Jean off balance so that Faraj had to grab her to prevent her skidding into the river, and the car commenced a slow-motion descent of the steps. At the bottom, with something close to stateliness, it somersaulted on to its roof with a crashing displacement of water and began to sink, coming to rest upside down with a single rear wheel exposed.
“Bastard thing,” repeated Faraj, releasing Jean and wiping river water from his face. Moving down the cracked wet steps he sat himself on the bottom one and, reaching out with his feet, braced them hard against the exposed nearside wheel. Straightening his legs, jamming his back against the steps, he pressed with all his strength. The car rocked a little, but otherwise refused to budge.
“Wait,” Jean ordered him. Pulling back her wet hair, she climbed down beside him, put an arm around him and grabbed a fistful of his jacket to brace herself. Hesitating for a moment, he did the same. She felt the heavy pressure of his arm against her. “On three,” she said. “Now!”
They pushed until they were trembling and the steps at Jean’s back were cutting agonisingly into her spine. At her shoulders, she could feel Faraj’s arm quivering with strain. Against her heel, the faint give of the tyre.
“Almost,” muttered Faraj, panting. “Once more, and this time don’t stop.”
She dragged new air into her lungs. Once again the cracked cement-covered brick drew agonising stripes across her back. Her body was shaking with the strain, her ears were roaring and her head was dizzy. “Don’t stop!” gasped Faraj. “Don’t stop!”
Slowly, almost thoughtfully, the inverted car moved from its obstruction, seemed to drift for a moment, and sank on the current into the deep water below the bridge. Gasping for breath, her chest heaving, Jean watched as the chrome of the bumpers faded, became invisible.
Slowly they climbed the steps again, and Faraj checked the biscuit tin containing the C4 charge.
“OK?”
Faraj shrugged. “It’s still there. And we’re still here.”
Jean took stock. She was cold, filthy, hungry and soaked to the skin, and had been so for several hours. On top of this the day’s terrors-the repeated jolt and ebb of adrenalin-had shocked her into an almost hallucinatory exhaustion. She sensed, as she had for some days now, an implacable pursuing figure. A figure that dragged at her like a shadow, that matched her pace for pace, whispering hell and confusion in her ear. Perhaps, she thought, it was her former self, trying to reclaim her soul. At that moment, and in that place, she would have believed anything.
Faraj, by contrast, appeared untouched. He gave the impression that his physical state had at some point been unharnessed from his will, so that neither pain nor fear nor tiredness played any part in his reckoning. There was just the mission, and the strategy required for its execution.
Jean watched him, and insofar as she was capable of a response at that moment, the austerity of his self-control impressed her. It also profoundly frightened her. There had been times, particularly at Takht-i-Suleiman, when she had been certain that faith and determination had empowered her in the same way. Now, she was sure of nothing. She had been reborn, certainly, but into a place of utter pitilessness. Faraj, she realised, had occupied that place for a long time.
Distantly, perhaps five miles away, the pulse of a helicopter. For a moment neither of them moved.
“Quick!” said Jean. “Under the bridge.”
Leaving the rucksacks beneath the tree, they scrambled down the steps to the narrow towpath, and hurled themselves at the sodden canopy of brambles. Thorns tore at Jean’s face and hands and then they were through, crouching in near darkness beneath the arch. There, but for the echoing drip of water, all was silence. She could feel blood on her face.
After about a minute the sound of the helicopter returned, louder this time, perhaps three or four miles away, and even though she knew herself invisible and far from the range of their viewing equipment she shrank against the bridge’s curving brick wall. The pulse was steady for a few seconds, and then the sound fell away.
As Faraj looked into the shadowed dimness of the river, Jean peered through the arch of the bridge and the dark hatching of foliage at the sky. The light was going fast. Close to tears of exhaustion, shaking with cold, she began picking the thorns from her cheek and the back of her hand. “I think we should get the bags down and lie up here for the night,” she said tonelessly. “They’ll keep the helicopters up, but their infrared cameras can’t read a heat signature through brick and concrete.”
He glanced at her suspiciously, detecting the defeat in her voice.
“If we’re caught in the open,” she pleaded, “we’re dead. Dead, Faraj. Here, at least we’re invisible.”
He was silent, considering. Eventually he nodded.
51
Liz was about to go online and decode her e-mail when, from the corner of her eye, she saw Don Whitten fold forward and bury his head in his hands. He held the position for perhaps a second before, his face contorted and his fists clenched, silently swearing at the distant roof of the hangar.
There were now eighteen men and three women in the hangar. Six of the men were Army officers, and all of these except Kersley, the SAS captain, were in combat dress. Of the three women one was a Royal Logistics Corps officer, one was local CID, and the other was PC Wendy Clissold. As one, they all fell silent and stared at Whitten.
“Tell us,” said Dunstan, levelly.
“Young man named Martindale, James Martindale, has just reported a twenty-five-year-old racing-green MGB stolen from outside the Plough pub in the village of Birdhoe. Could have happened any time after twelve fifteen this lunchtime when he arrived at the pub.”