He lay in a pool of his own blood. It was smeared across the carpet from each time he had manoeuvred himself to the firing position. It came from a chest wound and from his shattered knee. To kill the pain, he had only his faith in God and the image of his wife, and the thought that the man would use well the time given him. It was an hour, more than an hour, since they had last approached the door when he had expended a whole magazine from the machine pistol, and a handful of minutes since he had thrown a fourth grenade through the slit of the open window. Of course he would die in the little room on the top floor in a city far from his home and the family he loved. He had no fear of death. The only uncertainty in the mind of Muhammad Iyad was that he had not given the man the time that was needed.
Before they had come – in the night – before he had heaved the barricade into place, he had cleaned the apartment. With water and soap, he had scrubbed down every surface where the man's fingers might have rested, plates he had eaten off and cups or glasses he had drunk from. The bedding in which he had slept, the clothes from the man's bag, his toothbrush, razor, and spare trainer shoes were piled in a loose heap in the room's centre. They were there because Muhammad Iyad was one of the few in the Organization who understood the power of the enemy. The skill of their fingerprint experts and the quality of their ability to examine for microscopic particles of DNA were known to him. No trace of his man was to remain when the ability to fight – not the will for it – had seeped from Muhammad Iyad's body.
There were new sounds beyond the barricade – scraping noises, as rats might make, and he thought they chipped away stones from the dividing wall under the roof tiles and sought to come at him from above.
He knew about the grenades with the thunder noise that deafened and the flash that blinded, and about the gas that choked. Too long – if he waited for them to come, waited too long, and he was unable to light the fire… but every second he delayed, each minute, every hour he bought, gave the man more time. They were closer, more urgent in their work.
Muhammad Iyad hoped that prayers would be said for him. He trusted that in his village, in the far-away mountains of Yemen, men would speak well of him.
There was a story of the dying moments of the great prince Saladin, who had defeated the Crusaders on the hill of Kurn-Hattin. He had been told the story, as a child, by the imam of the village: when Saladin lay dying he called for his standard-bearer and ordered him to ride round the limits of the city of Damascus with a torn-off rag from Saladin's shroud on the tip of the standard-bearer's spear, and to shout out that Saladin had gone with no more of his possessions to his grave than his shroud. It was fitting to be so humble, and Muhammad Iyad hoped to ape the great prince. Nothing would go to his unmarked grave, the body buried in the dead of night, but his faith in God, his love for his family and his sense of duty to his brothers and friends. He fired an angled burst into the ceiling, towards where the scraping had been, and heard the rats squirm back. An oath was muffled by the stonework and the ceiling's plaster cascaded down to whiten him and make a film over the blood in which he lay, like the snow of the Afghan mountains. He reloaded, tossed away the empty magazine and called instructions, as if he was ordering another man where to be and when to fire.
He felt the weakness growing – knew that God and Paradise beckoned. If he delayed, if the weakness overwhelmed him, the DNA would not be destroyed.
He took the last grenade from the black bag and the last magazines, and a box of matches. He laid the grenade on the whitened floor, put the magazines on top of the heap of bedding and clothes, then made a little burrowed space at their base. He tore up scraps of paper from the bag, the coded instructions for each move forward in the journey. He struck the first match, and the paper lit.
Then he struck a second match, lit the paper better, and a third, and blew lightly on the fire; blood from the chest wound was at his lips.
When he saw the flames climb and spread,
Muhammad Iyad pulled the pin from the grenade and slid it under his stomach, his gut held down the lever.
If he moved, or was moved, the lever would fly free and seven seconds later the grenade would detonate.
The smoke gathered in the room and the wind from the open window fanned the fire.
When the bedding and clothing under the magazine caught and the heat reached furnace point, the bullets would explode and career round the room and into the walls and the ceiling, which would win more minutes; if he shifted away from the fire the grenade would explode.
He did not think he could have done more to win the man time to get clear and resume the journey to the north German coastline.
He had something that day to tell his wife.
The wind came in low off the sea and caught the wires that divided the gardens of the properties in Westdorf. The homes, the few that were occupied all year and the many that were opened and aired only when the tourist season started, were now packed close together. When Oskar and Gertrud had come to the island of Baltrum, in their flight from his family's past, it had been a perfect refuge. Now every handkerchief of open ground in Westdorf, and in the twin community of Ostdorf, was packed solid with buildings. He, the complainant each time there was a whisper of new foundations going in, was now overlooked each summer and swamped by visitors; he hated them. If Oskar had not been so old, and the arthritis in his knees had been less acute, he told himself he would have moved to the neighbouring island of Langeoog, or even to the more deserted Spiekeroog, but it was a fantasy. Gertrud was at Ostdorf, and he would never leave her.
Oskar Netzer lived in an old house in the heart of Westdorf. Homes on the island did not have names but were identified by numbers. The lower the number, the older the house. A hundred years before, his would have been the home of a fisherman. Its number was 23A, but around him and prying into his life were 248, 212,179 and 336. All were empty, locked and shuttered, and would stay that way till Easter week; he loathed Easter, when the hordes returned.
No one visited Oskar at house number 23A. No guests were invited in. Anyone who called could state their business at the door even if the rain lashed on them. In the years since Gertrud's death, not a single person had seen the inside of his living room or gone up the stairs and witnessed the state of the bedroom or been led into the kitchen for a welcoming mug of coffee. The house was enveloped with grime. His living room was littered, table, chairs and floor, with planning applications for development. He rotated the sheets on his bed every three or four weeks, and hung out the dirty ones in summer or winter to be washed by the rain; the winds took away their smell.
In the kitchen, pots, plates and pans were encrusted with fat. It was – and his neighbours were loud in their complaints when they arrived for their summer vacations, from Bremen or Hamburg, Cologne or Dusseldorf – a pig-sty. Their opinions did not concern him, and the filth of his home had little effect on his health. The resident doctor on the island had opined that Oskar Netzer was not mentally unstable, merely eccentric. The secret of his past, the shame he carried through blood, was known only to him and had been shared only with Gertrud, who was dead now.
In a month, there would be a mass of wild flowers that he could pick from his overgrown garden lawn, which was never mown, and take to the cemetery.
That day there were daffodils for cutting. The wind snatched at his overalls and heavy coat, ripped at his old Frislander's cap and rifled against his face.
He left his front door flapping open.
A councillor came out of the supermarket. Oskar had opposed the building of the second supermarket, had succeeded in delaying it for two years before permission was given. Behind the supermarket were the high floodlights of the public tennis courts. Oskar had fought them, and their building had been postponed for twenty-eight months, until his objections were overruled. To the mainland side of the tennis courts was the monstrosity of the Fitness Studio, his greatest defeat. But for every failure there had been successes: a block of holiday apartments, permission reluctantly refused by the council, an all-weather football pitch and eight new homes – and now the extension to the pasta and pizza outlet.