Later that night, at the bottom of the hill, the battalion left Dr Sick handcuffed to the jeep and adjourned to the café.
‘You play poker?’ asked a very merry Nikolai, addressing Samad and Archie as they entered the room.
‘I play anything, me,’ said Archie.
‘The more pertinent question,’ said Samad, taking his seat with a wry smile, ‘is: do I play it well?’
‘And do you, Captain Iqbal?’
‘Like a master,’ said Samad, picking up the cards dealt to him and fanning them out in his one hand.
‘Well,’ said Nikolai, pouring more Sambucca for everyone, ‘since our friend Iqbal is so confident, it may be best to start relatively small. We’ll start with cigarettes and let’s see where that takes us.’
Cigarettes took them to medals, which took them to guns, which took them to radios, which took them to jeeps. By midnight, Samad had won three jeeps, seven guns, fourteen medals, the land attached to Gozan’s sister’s house, and an IOU for four horses, three chickens and a duck.
‘My friend,’ said Nikolai Pesotsky, his warm, open manner replaced by an anxious gravity. ‘You must give us a chance to win back our possessions. We cannot possibly leave things as they are.’
‘I want the Doctor,’ said Samad, refusing to catch the eye of Archibald Jones, who sat open-mouthed and drunk in his chair. ‘In exchange for the things I have won.’
‘What on earth for?’ said Nikolai, astonished, leaning back in his chair. ‘What possible use-’
‘My own reasons. I wish to take him tonight and not to be followed, and for the incident to go unreported.’
Nikolai Pesotsky looked at his hands, looked round the table, and then at his hands once more. Then he reached into his pocket and threw Samad the keys.
Once outside, Samad and Archie got into the jeep containing Dr Sick, who was asleep on the dashboard, started the engine and drove into the blackness.
Thirty miles from the village, Dr Sick woke up to a hushed argument concerning his imminent future.
‘But why?’ hissed Archie.
‘Because, from my point of view, the very problem is that we need blood on our hands, you see? As an atonement. Do you not see, Jones? We have been playing silly buggers in this war, you and I. There is a great evil that we have failed to fight and now it is too late. Except we have him, this opportunity. Let me ask you: why was this war fought?’
‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ blustered Archie, in lieu of an answer.
‘So that in the future we may be free. The question was always: What kind of a world do you want your children to grow up in? And we have done nothing. We are at a moral crossroads.’
‘Look, I don’t know what you’re on about and I don’t want to know,’ snapped Archie. ‘We’re going to dump this one’ – he motioned to the semi-conscious Sick – ‘at the first barracks we come across, then you and me are going our separate ways and that’s the only crossroads I care about.’
‘What I have realized, is that the generations,’ Samad continued as they sped through miles and miles of unchanging flatlands, ‘they speak to each other, Jones. It’s not a line, life is not a line – this is not palm-reading – it’s a circle, and they speak to us. That is why you cannot read fate; you must experience it.’ Samad could feel the morphine bringing the information to him again – all the information in the universe and all the information on walls – in one fantastic revelation.
‘Do you know who this man is, Jones?’ Samad grabbed the Doctor by the back of his hair and bent his neck over the back seat. ‘The Russians told me. He’s a scientist, like me – but what is his science? Choosing who shall be born and who shall not – breeding people as if they were so many chickens, destroying them if the specifications are not correct. He wants to control, to dictate the future. He wants a race of men, a race of indestructible men, that will survive the last days of this earth. But it cannot be done in a laboratory. It must be done, it can only be done, with faith! Only Allah saves! I am no religious man – I have never possessed the strength – but I am not fool enough to deny the truth!’
‘Ah, now, but you said, didn’t you, you said it wasn’t your argument. On the hill – that’s what you said,’ gabbled Archie, excited to have caught Samad out on something. ‘So, so, so – so what if this bloke does… whatever he does – you said that was our problem, us in the West, that’s what you said.’
Dr Sick, watery eye-blood now streaming like rivers, was still being held by the hair by Samad and was gagging, now, on his own tongue.
‘Watch out, you’re choking him,’ said Archie.
‘What of it!’ yelled Samad into the echoless landscape. ‘Men like him believe that living organs should answer to design. They worship the science of the body, but not who has given it to us! He’s a Nazi. The worst kind.’
‘But you said – ’ Archie pressed on, determined to make his point. ‘You said that was nothing to do with you. Not your argument. If anyone in this jeep should have a score to settle with mad Jerry here-’
‘French. He’s French.’
‘All right, French – well if anyone’s got a score to settle it’d probably have to be me. It’s England’s future we’ve been fighting for. For England. You know,’ said Archie, searching his brain, ‘democracy and Sunday dinners, and… and… promenades and piers, and bangers and mash – and the things that are ours. Not yours.’
‘Precisely,’ said Samad.
‘You what?’
‘You must do it, Archie.’
‘I should cocoa!’
‘Jones, your destiny is staring you in the face and here you are slapping the salami,’ said Samad with a nasty laugh in his voice, and still holding the Doctor by the hair across the front seat.
‘Steady on,’ said Archie, trying to keep an eye on the road, as Samad bent the Doctor’s neck almost to breaking point. ‘Look, I’m not saying that he doesn’t deserve to die.’
‘Then do it. Do it.’
‘But why’s it so bloody important to you that I do it? You know, I’ve never killed a man – not like that, not face to face. A man shouldn’t die in a car… I can’t do that.’
‘Jones, it is simply a question of what you will do when the chips are down. This is a question that interests me a great deal. Call tonight the practical application of a long-held belief. An experiment, if you like.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I want to know what kind of a man you are, Jones. I want to know what you are capable of. Are you a coward, Jones?’
Archie brought the jeep to a shattering halt.
‘You’re bloody asking for it, you are.’
‘You don’t stand for anything, Jones,’ continued Samad. ‘Not for a faith, not for a politics. Not even for your country. How your lot ever conquered my lot is a bloody mystery. You’re a cipher, no?’
‘A what?’
‘And an idiot. What are you going to tell your children when they ask who you are, what you are? Will you know? Will you ever know?’
‘What are you that’s so bloody fantastic?’
‘I’m a Muslim and a Man and a Son and a Believer. I will survive the last days.’
‘You’re a bloody drunkard, and you’re – you’re drugged, you’re drugged tonight, aren’t you?’
‘I am a Muslim and a Man and a Son and a Believer. I will survive the last days,’ Samad repeated, as if it were a chant.
‘And what the bloody hell does that mean?’ As he shouted, Archie made a grab for Dr Sick. Pulled his now blood-covered face near his own until their noses touched.
‘You,’ Archie barked. ‘You’re coming with me.’
‘I would but, monsieur…’ The Doctor held up his handcuffed wrists.
Archie wrestled them open with the rusty key, pulled the Doctor out of the jeep and started walking away from the road into the darkness, a gun pointed at the base point of Dr Marc-Pierre Perret’s cranium.
‘Are you going to kill me, boy?’ asked Dr Sick as they walked.