'Did you leave the other gun in the ambulance?'
I didn't expect her to have time to answer: she hadn't heard about any other gun and anyway she'd be thrown because I'd just been told not to speak in English and here I was doing it.
He came round very fast, Hassan, and his teeth flashed in the light as the animal mouth delivered its speech, the expression more explicit than the words.
If you talk to the woman in English again we will kill you, I will not have my commands disobeyed, if you do it again you will die, so forth.
But I'd got the information I'd wanted because the other three had closed in on me almost by reflex action when they'd seen him swing round, and their sub-machine-guns had come up to the aim. So they didn't understand English and Hassan didn't understand it either or he'd have told them to search the ambulance for the 'other gun' instead of telling me off.
I just hoped Diane would work things out and make a careful note: I'd told her they wanted to interrogate me and she knew you can't interrogate a dead man so if we had to talk to each other urgently we could do it in English.
Hassan was still glowering at me and I could see he'd like to shoot me here and now just for disobeying his orders: he was terribly nervous about the whole situation and didn't really trust in his ability to keep me subdued.
'Oh come on, Hassan, I bet you talk a bit of English, if it's only Coca-Cola.'
He spat, not too far from my shoe. We could hear a car somewhere, its exhaust-note muffled by the phalanx of palms, and he jerked his headto listen, watching the end of the avenue. I was worried because there was so little time and because this situation couldn't be expected to improve. One man and one sub-machine-gun would be enough to keep us immobilized, and this force-already overwhelming — would be augmented as soon as Ahmed arrived.
And I didn't like the thing about Diane.
I could only save her by getting her away and I didn't think I could do that. Once they'd got us in the confines of an interrogation chamber she wouldn't' have a chance. Nothing very important of course would happen: a fledgling agent seconded from an embassy to an active cell would go into the reports as fatally injured during the course of a mission and the incident would be passed on to those responsible for spreading the blackout. Two young gentlemen with diffident voices and polished nails would call at the flat in Lowndes Square to break the news, bearing the personal sympathy of the Foreign Secretary and hoping it might be a consolation to know that this very courageous civil servant sacrificed her life for the sake of others, adding that since her duties had been of an exceptional kind it would be unfair to her memory if any demand were made for enquiries that could only prove abortive and at the same time undo much of the work she had so assiduously accomplished in the cause of active diplomacy.
We never really found out. It was sort of — hushed up, all very strange. They say there were just some Arabs, and it was night-time, and — well we don't let ourselves think too much.
The avenue was still empty: the car was moving at right-angles to it, a good mile away, its note rising and falling as the sound was trapped and released among the buildings. Hassan turned back to us and fumbled quickly for a cigarette, breaking the first match before he could light it.
Nothing very important and it happens two or three times a year to experienced executives like O'Brien and Fyson and we never know how many smaller fry are neutralized. It was infinitely more important that when she began sobbing I should remind them that I hadn't yet been able to locate Tango Victor, that when she first screamed I should repeat that I was only a freelance without a local base, and that when she failed to respond to resuscitation I should tell them they'd been wasting their time simply because they hadn't believed me, and that they would only waste more time if they put me through the same treatment because if I didn't know where the freighter had crashed then I couldn't tell them.
Hassan went and leaned into the Citroen GT and put the headlights down to dipped so that he could watch the road without having to move away from us beyond the glare. The smoke from his Egyptian cigarette drifted on the air, tarry and perfumed. He was smoking it nervously, flicking away the ash before it had time to form more than a millimetre. I watched his cigarette.
Diane was yawning quietly, being afraid. It happens in the trenches and behind thebarrera of the bull-ring: the intake of oxygen for the muscles, the release of thyroid secretion for the nerves. I looked at her and nodded and said:
'Okay?'
'Yes, thank you.'
Hassan jerked his dark head to look at me but okay was international and that was why I'd used it and he didn't slam into me this time. I said in Arabic:
'The woman doesn't know anything. Why don't you let her go?'
He shook his head again, taking me seriously. 'We will find out what she knows.'
I let it go at that and moved my feet around a bit, as he was doing, my hands behind me. The snouts of their guns moved, keeping me lined up. I wished I could help her get through the waiting, saying a word or two; but she wasn't meant to understand Arabic and if I spoke English again he might tell one of them to go for the face or the diaphragm to make sure I understood and that wouldn't do any good: I didn't think I could save her but it wouldn't make her less frightened if she saw how helpless I was.
I stopped moving about and leaned with my back against the little Fiat, listening to the faint sounds of traffic on the far side of the town where the highway linked the airport with the drilling camps. I couldn't hear the sound of any particular vehicle nearing. Hassan was listening too and I thought it probably wouldn't be long before he used the radio to ask his base where Ahmed was.
That was the principle of the thing, anyway: whatever they did to her, I wouldn't give them information. Whatever they did to me, I wouldn't talk. They could afford to work on her as far as the point where life ceased and the odd thing was that I was absolutely certain she'd hold out for as long as I did: it hadn't occurred to me that they'd get anything out of her. I could of course have been wrong but I didn't think I was.
She was watching me and glanced away but realized I'd seen her and looked at me again, one eye clear and amethyst, the other in deep shadow, the down on her face silvered in the light from the Citroen, her soft hair shining. One day she'd be a beautiful woman, would have been,yes, as you say, a beautiful woman, but there we are and I suppose there aren't many families without something to grieve for, it's Angela, really, who felt it the most, they were very close you know, terribly fond of each other, almost like twin sisters, but I mustn't go on like this the minute you arrive.
A query in the quiet regard: what's going to happen?
I don't know.
Cursed them again till the sweat came and I looked away from her because I ought to have reassured her but couldn't manage it, cursed them for bringing in a child just because the machine they'd set up was running too fast, sweating in the cool night air, not wanting to make the effort I would have to make and very soon. Not only her life involved, butterflies are pretty too, you find them flattened in window-jambs and the world goes whistling on, but my own life as well, not that I've ever thought of dying in bed, thank you. Two lives and a mission. Made you sweat.
Physical condition not up to standard: the bruising had left me wanting to keep still, every movement making it feel as though something was going to snap, a bone, a tendon. Mentally fed-up of course, the horror still there at the fringe of consciousness, their talons hooking and the farmyard stink of them, quite apart from the worry about what was going to happen. Put it this way, the organism wasn't in awfully good shape for survival.