If they had only known the truth of his life, the patient and her husband might have felt sorry for him. He counted out thirty daazepam tablets, bottled them and wrote the dosage on the label. He was more trapped, incarcerated, than they were. He showed them out. All their problems were money, but Bart's were far beyond that level of simplicity. He closed the door after them.
AI Maz'an village, near Jenin, Occupied West Bank.
Bart braked.
If he had not slammed his foot on the pedal, crushed it against the floor, had not swerved and come to a grinding halt as he emerged from the side turning, he would have run straight into the armoured personnel carrier.
There were three more behind the one he had missed colliding with.
They rumbled down the street, but the machine-gunner on the last swivelled the mounting and kept the barrel aimed at him until they were gone. He sat behind the wheel and the sweat poured off him. Outside the four-wheel drive it was cold enough to freeze the sweat. He could no longer see them but he heard the racing whine of the carrier's tracks and the street was pitted where they had been. Where had they gone? He knew. Dozvn that street a patient, a child, was suffering from acute diarrhoea, and in the patient's home there was a back kitchen and a yard beyond it. In the yard there was a shed… Jesus. He heard gunfire. He sat with his head in his hands and tried to blot out the sounds that crashed in his ears.
After the gunfire there were the explosions of grenades.
Men and kids were running in the street in front of him. More shots. He was recognized. More explosions. His door was opened, he was pulled out by a clutch of hands and his bag was snatched off the seat beside his. He was propelled forward. Across the street in front of him an armoured personnel carrier was slewed and the same machine-gun now traversed on to him.
That day he was wearing, over his anorak, a white sleeveless jerkin with a red crescent symbol at the front and a red cross on the back. His bag was pushed into his hand. From beside the carrier two shots were fired into the air. The crowd stayed back but Bart advanced. The barrel of the machine-gun was locked on him. There was a shout, first in Hebrew then in English. He was to stop or he would be shot. He was alone in the street. Behind the armoured personnel carrier there was sudden movement. Soldiers burst from an alley dragging what might have been a sack of grain, but the sack had legs and a lolling, lifeless head. Bart saw the head, only for an instant, as it bounced on the street's mud. The engines revved, the troops jumped for the rear doors of the carriers, and they were gone.
Screaming filled the street. He saw a brightening bruise on the mother's cheekbone and blood dribbling from a cut on the father's forehead. He wondered if they had tried to block the troops' entry, or whether they had attempted to hold on to the dead body of their son and been beaten back with rifle butts. God might forgive Bart, no other bastard would. He reached the door and the crowd had thickened behind him. He did what was necessary, bathed the bruise and staunched the cut, and all around him was the wailing of misery. He realized it: he was a trusted as a friend.
Three hours later he was at the checkpoint, and while his vehicle was searched methodically, and while the pretence was made that he was questioned in the hut, he drank a mug of strong coffee.
Joseph said quietly, 7 don't think you are a military man, Bart – a s a man of medicine you are a man of healing and peace – but, I promise you, what we do is for the preservation of peace. Terrorists are the parasites that feed off people. We have to destroy those parasites or there can never be healing.
You saw a body. The body was defenceless. You saw but you did not comprehend. He made the belts and the waistcoats that are used by suicide bombers. You have seen the buses that are destroyed, you have seen the markets where they kill themselves, you have seen the cafes where they detonate the bombs. He was good at his work. What you have done, Bart, is save lives. Sometimes a suicide bomber kills maybe ten, but it has been as high as thirty, and for every death there are five more innocents who lose their sight, their limbs or their mobility. Because of you, many innocents have been given the chance to live a whole life. You should feel good, you have removed a major player in what they call their armed struggle. I salute you.'
He did not want to be saluted or congratulated. Some time, on the decision of others – and it had been promised him – his life would begin again, but only when others permitted it.
Bart swallowed hard. He blurted, 'I saw him. I was in the house. Surely there will be a security investigation. How was it known he would be back at his home, that he was using his home? I was there. Too many people know I was there. What about me?'
Joseph smiled and his hand rested in reassurance on Bart's shoulder. 'We take great care of you. You are a jewel to us, so precious. Have no fear.'
He left his coffee half drunk. He was pitched out of the hut and his feet slithered in the mud. When he had his balance he swung and shouted at the troops by the hut door. He was watched by the Palestinians who waited for processing at the checkpoint and he heard the applause, the fervent clapping.
Some chanted his name.
He drove away.
They talked of the complicated and intricately webbed world they inhabited.
'You're not bullshitting me here, Eddie?'
'You can count on it. I was there. I found the prime eyewitness. He wouldn't have known how to lie. The body of the paymaster, I saw it, on the slab. It's about as far from bullshit as you can get.'
They were at the kitchen table. Juan Gonsalves and Eddie Wroughton shared the table with his children, their crayon-coloured drawings, and pepperoni pizza fresh from the microwave. The children ate and drew, Teresa tried to separate sheets of paper from the food, Wroughton talked and Gonsalves scribbled notes.
Separated from his work, Gonsalves could laugh, but he never laughed when he worked. Wroughton understood the pressures now lying on the shoulders of every Agency man in the field: the disaster of failed intelligence analysis before 9/11 dictated that every scrap should be written down, passed on and evaluated. The life of a Langley man who ignored a warning was a cheap life. The pressures on Wroughton were lightweight, he thought, by comparison.
'The caravan was a Bedu, his son and four strangers. I don't have the exact number of camels, but they carried enough water and food for a long trek into the Empty Quarter. They are important enough to be using about as remote a piece of the border to cross as there is. No Omani or Saudi border patrols, and camels rather than trucks and pickups.'
'Who'd walk, or get camel sores, when they could ride in a vehicle?'
'People of exceptional value. For the Organization it would be a major setback if men of that value were intercepted on either side of the border.'
Theirs was a good friendship, that was Wroughton's belief. Most politicians in London deluded themselves they had a special relationship with the White House… but, here, on the Gonsalves kitchen table, the relationship was indeed special. Wroughton's report of his journey up-country in Oman was now being studied in London; in a week, when desk warriors had rewritten it, the revised report would go in the bag to Washington; in another week, the report would be passed to the sister agency at Langley; a week later, after further revisions and rewriting, a version would be sent in cypher back to Riyadh and would land in Gonsalves' office. The real relationship, between two dedicated professionals, was across a clutter of crayons and paper, and was dictated above a babble of excited kids' voices.
'He said quite specifically that the camels were loaded with six packing cases, crates, whatever – they were painted olive green, military. Dimensions are estimated but seemed to be the eyewitness's arm span, both arms. Machine-guns wouldn't be in crates. The weight of the crates is a handicap going into the Empty Quarter, so we are looking at something that cannot be exposed to the elements, also that requires cushioning.'