He had names but no identity. He had been Anwar Maghroub, born into affluence in a suburb of Alexandria, but the character of the child was lost.
The voice behind him beat at the back of his head.
'What I'm telling you, Dean, and true – I'll be so damn bloody pleased to be finished with this. If you'd told me, anyone had, a month ago that I'd be flogging myself through this place, cold like I've never known it and hungry, I'd have told them to go jump.'
He had also been Sami, a student of engineering, with a girl and with friends who understood the rigour of sacrifice, but the personality of the pupil had gone.
'A month ago, I wouldn't have thought I could do this, go through it and still be on my feet – wouldn't have been able to, not without having a friend with me, and it's because I'm tough. It's what makes me a leader. Others come to me and know that I'll lead them. Lazy sods, all of them, and feeding off me. They feed off my brains and my energy.'
He had been Abu Khaled, conspirator and activist in the Organization, who had studied and learned the lessons of success in attack and failure in security, but that man's mind was outdated and finished with.
'Because of you, what I've learned from you, I am telling you that things are going to be different when I'm back, up and running – damn different. No passengers in my team and no bloodsuckers. Slim and lean, that's what you are, and that's what I'm going to be, and ahead of the game. In my crowd, they'll have one chance and if it's blown then they're out, out on their bloody arses. Best thing that ever happened to me was meeting up with you, and that's
God's truth. I'm surrounded by passengers and suckers, but not for long. They'll scream, but I won't be listening.'
He had been Dean, goalkeeper for a team he had not heard of, who listened without response to the ramblings of an idiot, but the character, personality, mind of that fantasy had never existed.
'I've got my cousins, three of them, giving me grief.
I've got old Percy, who's all disrespect, and what I know is that he loathes me. I've got Mikey and Sharon, that's my parents, and they live bloody well off my back. I've got Joanne and Wayne, he's only a kid and doesn't know better, but she's got the hump with me… and there's a bloody great crowd like a spider web. They all live off me
… I'm telling you, there's changes coming. I like a lot about you, but I like most that you go alone. I reckon it's class to go alone. You and me, it's good we're together.'
He was, now, Milan Draskic who held a Slovenian passport and was a co-ordinator and sent to erase failures of security and to drive home success in attack, but he had not yet learned to live inside the thoughts and skin of that man, and- They had come past the five marker cloths he had left on branches. He stopped dead, and gazed forward – not at the whitecaps and the surf, not at the horizon – and the idiot cannoned into him. He saw, at the top of the dune in front of him, the three legs of his tripod, but not the flashlamp.
'What's up?'
He said, quietly, with his hand shielding his voice, that the flashlamp, as he had left it, was gone from the tripod.
'What's that mean?'
He said, his words protected from the wind, that he had built the tripod in daylight so that it would be secure, fastened the flashlamp to it and aimed its face to the sea. He had lashed it in place by daylight so that its beam would be steady when it was used. He heard the first sliver of the idiot's panic.
'Well, you didn't tie it tight enough, did you? Got to bloody find it, haven't you? Didn't allow for the bloody gale, did you?'
He sank down into the softness of the sand and felt with his hands and the grains ran through his fingers, but the flashlamp was not at the base of his tripod's stakes.
'Got to be there, hasn't it? Got to be. Can't have bloody walked off, can it?'
The idiot was beside him, on his knees, and his hands were sweeping at the sand, and the idiot squealed.
'Cut my bloody self on glass. It wasn't the wind -
Christ, it wasn't – that shifted it.'
His fingers found the flashlamp, buried, and they ran over shards from its face, and touched the broken end of the bulb where it went into the socket.
The panic became more shrill. 'No light! How the fuck are they going to find us? Out in this shit-heap, how they going to get to us? What'll guide them? You fucked up, putting the light up and leaving it, fucked up big-time. No light, how they going to bring the boat in?'
He had only the pencil torch and a beam with a range of only a few metres.
'It's all round us. Don't know where. The old jerk you shot. The guy who came over the fence, and I lied about him. All round us, and we don't know how close… Can't bloody see them… Watching us
…
How we going to get off of here? You know it and I know it, they're watching us and round us… maybe close enough to bloody touch us. What we going to do?'
He pulled the radio set over the sand, slipped the clasp on the case, opened it, threw the switch, reached out and dragged the idiot close. He felt the shaking fear – and he listened. He heard only the set's static whine and the wind's buffeting.
'You are taking a hell of a chance, Dad. A chance with me in the dinghy, with my boy, with the boat, with yourself. You know that, Dad. And now you're saying they've no light. Going in with that dinghy, it's going to be six shades of hell. I reckon it's one run, that's all. I can't be stooging there, not in that surf.
They'll have to be out in the water, deep enough so I don't snag the outboard, and have to be ready. How am I going to find them if there's no light? Is the money that good? Have you thought, Dad, of just turning round and getting on home?'
What Harry Rogers knew, as he listened to the carp of his son, was that he required two fathoms minimum of draught under the keel of the Anneliese Royal, and twelve feet of water would put him a minimum of four hundred yards from the beach. The dinghy would need three feet of water and it would not come closer than a hundred yards from the beach
… The trawler and the dinghy would both be bucking in swell. The low clouds and the rain's mist would screw his view of the TG15 buoy and the Accumer Ee light and he needed both to get in near. He reckoned he was three hours from getting far enough to the island to launch the dinghy, and the chart in the wheelhouse showed him sunken wrecks, sunken obstructions, and supposedly cleared areas of dumped explosives. There were gas pipes and telephone lines under them, and if they snagged one of those bastards by going off course, they were screwed.
They were on the northern edge of a section marked as Submarine Exercise Area, not that – in these sea conditions – a periscope would be slotting up. The boat yawed, fell into troughs and climbed waves, and his grandson was again retching at the bucket.
Harry said, 'I thought about it, yes, ditching them – but that's not my way. I'll use my light, keep it on you while you're taking the dinghy in, and they'll have to shift themselves and come to you… That's what I told them. Can't do better… You want to hear me say it? I'll say it – I would not dare to ditch Ricky Capel, and that's more important than the fact that I gave my word.'
He was close enough to hear them.
Malachy thought it the perfect battleground.
He had been drawn to the right place, alone, to stand and fight, unseen by any witness. He felt a great calm, and peace, and he thought a road ended here and that he was within sight of a pyramid's summit.
He rested his fingers on the dog-tags at his throat.
Chapter Twenty
He saw the light. Riddled with cramp in his stomach, pain in his hips and knees, sand in his throat that he had to endure and not cough out, Malachy saw the light's blast out to sea. Not a brilliant light but one that was misted and confused by cloud and rain, but a clear enough beacon to those watching for it.