The Unknown Soldier

'I tell you what it's got,' Lizzy-Jo chuckled, 'it's got sand. There's not enough sand here so they're hauling it down from the north what you think?'

In the dulled light inside the Ground Control – easier to see the screens – George's entry was not noticed. They were both laughing: Lizzy-Jo thought they needed laughter as a distraction to stay awake, keep working.

George said, 'What you got is a visitor.'

He told them. The laughter went cold. She snapped upright, listened to all of it, then she called up Langley. Oscar Golf was on the headsets. George hadn't the authority to challenge a visitor. Marty was flying Carnival Girl. Lizzy-Jo said she'd do it, the challenge, and Oscar Golf would take over the sensor operator's controls via the satellite link. Effortless transition. Oscar Golf told her to take the guy on the perimeter-gate bar with her.

'Lizzy-Jo, go careful. Don't start a war, and don't give a yard.'

'Hearing you, Oscar Golf. Out.'

She took a swig from the water bottle, did up a couple of the lower buttons of her blouse and followed George down the steps, into the night. He'd been working on First Lady. The wings were off, and the engine was being stripped, the camera units already taken out.

By the time it was daylight, First Lady would be ready for her coffin.

The transport plane was due in at ten hundred and was scheduled for lift-off at twelve ten hours, and for Carnival Girl to be stashed and loaded in time for lift-off, then her sister craft had to be packed and crated in the coffin. George's people swarmed round First Lady.

George left her when they reached the armourer, who had a stubby rifle hanging across his spine from a strap, but his hand was hooked back and had hold of it.

The armourer pointed up past the gate in the razor wire, then handed Lizzy-Jo his night-sights. The binoculars were heavy in her hand, and she took a moment to get the focus right. A Mercedes was parked two hundred yards up from the gate bar, with a chair by the front passenger door. On it sat an Arab. He was middle-aged, had an austere, thin face and trimmed moustache, wore a dark outer robe, an under-robe of white brilliant enough to flood her glasses, and a headcloth held in place with woven rope. Around his neck, hanging from straps, were his own binoculars. Behind his chair the Mercedes' rear doors were open and three men stood close to the body of it. She gave the night-sight glasses back to the armourer.

'You reckon they've got hardware?'

'In the back – yes, Miss. An arm's reach away.'

'What you got?'

'An M4A1. We call it a close-quarters battle weapon, Miss. It uses ball ammunition and it has an attached M203 grenade launcher. And I got – '

'Jesus, is this going to be fucking Dodge City?'

'It's their call, Miss, what it gets to be.'

'Where are you going to stand?'

'I'll be, Miss, right behind you.'

'Don't mind me saying it, but I'd prefer you a yard to the right or lo the left. Wouldn't want to be in the way of a close-quarters battle weapon,' Lizzy-Jo said, dry.

The armourer lifted the bar for her. She walked forward. Lizzy-Jo was a sensor operator, not a diplomat, a negotiator or a soldier. She felt the cool of the night air, a little wafting wind, on her bared thighs and shins, on her arms and face. The man stood as she approached and the guys with him seemed to inch closer to the open doors. She heard, against the tread of her footsteps, very soft, the click of oiled metal behind her and knew the armourer's weapon was armed. The man moved a little aside from his chair and motioned that she should sit.

'No, thank you, sir.'

'Would you like water?'

'Sir, no, thank you. What I would like to know is why, at seventeen minutes past three in the morning, you have binoculars on us.'

'You should button your blouse. In the night cold it is possible to contract influenza or a headeold if one is insufficiently covered. I am a prince of the Kingdom, I am the deputy governor of this province.

Each time I am in Shaybah, since you came, I watch you, but before from a distance. I have a question for you too: why are you flying at seventeen minutes past three in the morning?'

She said, parrot-like, 'We're doing mapping and evaluation of flying performance over desert lands, as we stated when permission was granted us.'

She heard the mockery in his voice. 'With a military aircraft?'

Lizzy-Jo might have been a corporate recorded message. 'The General Atomics MQ-1 Predator has dual purpose military or civilian use.'

'For mapping and for evaluation of performance do you need to carry, without the Kingdom's authorization, air-to-ground missiles?'

In the darkness he would not have seen her rock. 'I think you must have mistaken the additional fuel tanks carried under the wings for missiles.'

'When you came the fuselages of your two aircraft were without markings. Yet the one being dismantled now carries a skull-and-crossbones – once the symbol of a pirate, now a warning of death or danger – on the forward fuselage. I ask, why would such a symbol be on an aircraft preparing maps and evaluations?'

'Sir, I can only refer you to our embassy in Riyadh.'

'Of course.'

'And I am sure that, inside office hours, any query you have will be answered. Actually, sir, we will be gone in less than nine hours.'

'With your mapping finished, your performance evaluation completed?'

'No, sir,' Lizzy-Jo flared – should not have done, but did. 'Not completed – because some jerk shoved his nose in, and screwed things for us.'

He stared at her. She heard the hiss of his breath between his lips.

In the darkness, his body seemed to shake.

The words were chill. 'Maybe you are from the Air Force, maybe from Defense Intelligence, maybe from the Central Intelligence – maybe you were never taught to dress with correctness and decency, were never drilled in the virtues of truthfulness and the values of humility… but you are American, and how could it be different?

You lie to us because you do not trust us. You have no humility because you believe in your superiority over us. When you have been expelled, in less than nine hours, take this message back. We fight terrorism. Al Qaeda is our enemy. We are not the wet-nurse to the fanaticism of bin Laden. Together, and with trust, you would have been able to fulfil your mission. Your arrogance destroys that possibility. It is why you are hated and why you are despised, and why your money cannot buy affection or respect. Take that message home with you.'

She bit her lip. Anyone who knew Lizzy-Jo – knew her in New York or at Bagram base – would not have believed that she could resist a response. She turned on her heel. She walked back to the armourer and kept going. She went past George and his team, who were struggling to crate the engine of First Lady, and past her tent, which was now folded with her possessions stacked, and past Marty's tent – and past the boxes of the Hellfires that would not now be needed. Alone untouched, because Carnival Girl still flew, were the Ground Control and the trailer attached to it that carried the satellite dish. She climbed the steps.

Flopped beside Marty, she called Oscar Golf. 'Lizzy-Jo here. It was just some local rubbernecker, it was nothing. I'm taking over, but thanks for helping out.'

Marty said, smiling, 'I got bored watching that lorry. Wasn't sand it was carrying. I reckon it was pretzels.'

She snapped, 'Just watch your fucking screen – watch it till we finish.'

It was as if he was building a wall of information. Eddie Wroughton's way, when trying to make sense of intelligence, was always to pretend that he was building a wall of coloured bricks. He sat cross-legged on the floor, had pushed aside the rug to give himself a firm surface and spread out sheets of paper. He had used his highlighter pens to ring each of the sheets – red and green, white and blue, and yellow.

He had started to build the wall.