Holding the Zero (15 page)

Mike thought she was always saddest when she was earnest. ‘Forget it, Gretchen. Just enjoy the beer, the expenses, and the dazzling brilliance of the company around you.’

Dean said, ‘We’re all in the same shit, but attacking it separately. I don’t usually share.’

Mike was twisting and semaphoring to the waiter. ‘When it’s sharing your money you’ve stitched-up pockets.’

‘No way I’d share if I had a half-chance of screwing you deadbeats. I’m sharing because I can’t, as you can’t, get across that border.’ His voice had dropped, more from habit than the proximity of the Turkish plain-clothes police at a nearby table with their glasses of orange juice. ‘I was talking to one of the Turk lorry drivers who goes across, runs food loads for the UN. I offered him five hundred bucks to take me with him.’

‘You tricky bastard.’

‘You’d have left us here?’

‘Damned right I would. Didn’t do me any good. You know what he said, big bastard with no teeth? He asked me how I knew he wouldn’t drop me off on a God-awful lonely road where an Iraqi agent could take good care of me and give me a lift all the way to Baghdad. He said he’d get ten thousand dollars as bounty for an American illegal – be the same for a Britisher. Sorry, it’d be less for a German lady. Kind of nixed the negotiation.’

‘Is this story going anywhere? If it isn’t I’m off to force our bloody order down little Peach-bottom’s throat.’

‘He said there was a rumour of fighting down south on the ceasefire line.’

‘There’s always that rumour.’ Gretchen scratched at her armpit.

‘This afternoon he said a Kurdish army was being led south by a woman.’

Mike laughed loud. ‘Are you winding me up?’

‘A
young
woman, good-looking, with tits and an ass.’

‘Jesus, I wish I believed you.’

‘Why not a woman?’ Gretchen scowled. ‘Why should a woman not lead an army?

Why cannot men be led by a woman?’

Mike said solemnly, ‘Because it’s Kurdistan, lovely lady, because this is the Stone Age. Because women are in the home to cook, clean and open their legs on a Saturday night. I’d lead the bulletin, might even get a special out of it.’

Gretchen laughed. ‘I’d get the cover and ten pages inside.’

Dean stood. ‘After a lifetime of alcohol abuse, Mike, you are a total fucking failure at ordering drinks. You want something in this life, you have to do it yourself.’

‘Hey, it’s just a wet dream, because the border’s closed. What a way to go out from the last war zone. So, no Pulitzers for you.’ Mike caught the American’s arm and mimicked his accent. ‘“As dusk fell tonight over a vista of carnage and destruction, your correspondent stood beside the newest general to confront the awesome power of Saddam Hussein. She is a woman of soft beauty, who said her hero was the Duke of Wellington

…”’

‘Wrong … Schwartzkopf – no question.’

‘I’d love to think it’s true – two brandies, one straight Scotch, doubles. Go on, hurry up, you try and get some action here. A woman, leading an army, now that would be some story …’

In the quiet of the night, she came to the place by the wire where Gus sat.

‘The best tale in Major Herbert Hesketh-Prichard’s book is about the cat. There was a German trench that was thought to be disused, but this lieutenant from the Royal Warwickshire Regiment – with his telescope – saw the cat sunning itself.’

‘He’s asleep, Gus.’ There was the tinkle of her quiet laughter. ‘I think the cat will have to keep until tomorrow.’

He had known the boy was asleep. He was telling the story for himself, for comfort.

She sat close to him. He put his arm lightly around her shoulder and remembered how he had felt when the boy had told him she was down.

Chapter Seven

‘Without your grandfather, his friendship for my grandfather, I would be a peasant.’

‘Has your wound been treated?’

‘Without his books I would not be able to read. I would be in a village with children, animals, a small field and a man – and I would have nothing.’

‘Stop talking for a moment and answer me. Has anyone looked at your wound?’

The night was around them, and the quiet. The scant moon’s light shimmered on the wire of the fence in front of them. Gus held her shoulder loosely, as if she were a sister or a loved cousin. At home he had neither. He smelt the stale sweat of her body and the dankness of her clothes. No radios played behind them, and he heard no voices. Gus thought the village was stilled by mourning and exhaustion.

‘I know from the books, Gus, of the workings of the engine of a Hastings aircraft of Transport Command and the armaments carried by a Vampire jet bomber. I do not think that many peasant women have such knowledge. I know the history of the Peninsula war, and the campaign of the British in North Africa. I know of the lives of Montgomery and Haig, Kitchener and Wellington, and why William won at Hastings, Henry at Agincourt.

I read the books well that your grandfather gave to my grandfather. How could I be a peasant?’

‘If you’re wounded, it must be looked at and treated.’

‘How could I work in the fields, clean children, cook, watch goats and sheep, when I have read the many books given to Hoyshar? I think it was destiny, Gus.’

‘It has to be looked at.’

‘I felt the weakness when I fell. It was God’s mercy that very few of the men saw I was hit. If they know I am hurt, believe I cannot go forward, they will be gone by the morning. It would be the end of the destiny. Do you not understand, Gus? I cannot go for treatment where the wound is seen.’

He asked quietly, a murmur in her ear, ‘Will you allow me to look at the wound?’

‘But you would not tell? You must not …’

There had been a fierceness in her voice when she had spoken of destiny. When she spoke of the wound there was, Gus recognized it, a timid slightness about her. The wound made her young, frightened. He understood. Destiny would carry forward the cold, hard, cruel men of the
peshmerga
– the pain of the wound and her fear would cause them to go.

If she could not go forward then he, himself, would turn. He would go back to his grandfather, back to Meg, back to Stickledown Range, back to the offices of Davies and Sons; he sensed the burden she carried.

Gus said, ‘I’m sorry, I know very little about medical treatment. I’ll do what I can.’

‘But you won’t tell?’

‘I promise.’

He slipped his arm from her shoulder and walked across the dead, darkened ground between the wire and the homes of concrete blocks. He stumbled against the carcass of a dead sheep, sloshed in the mud of a sewer, moved past the low houses where muted lights burned. He went into the command post, where Haquim was crouched over the captured maps. He told Haquim what he wanted, and saw anguish crease the face of the fighter, ageing him.

Haquim stood awkwardly, as if the pain had settled again on his old wound, and was gone. If her injury was serious, if she was living on borrowed time, it was all finished.

Gus sat amongst the dark debris of the command post. All finished, for nothing … The minutes slipped by. He would return home and the one thing in his life that had seemed to him to be important would have been dogged by failure. He would carry that failure to his grave. Haquim returned.

Gus carried the saucepan of boiled water, the sealed field dressing, the small wad of cotton wool, the narrow roll of bandage gauze and the torch out into the night.

He set down the torch, knelt beside her, and did what no man had done. His fingers trembled as he reached under her tunic, unbuttoned the waist of her trousers and drew down the zip. She was looking into his face and he saw trust there. He put his arm around her waist, lifted her to drag down her trousers and felt the spasm of pain grip her. He saw the clean skin of her thigh, the caked blood and the livid colour of the bruising. He tore off small pieces of cotton wool, dipped them in the water and began to separate the blood from the bruising.

Three years before, Gus had been the first driver to reach a motor accident – chest injuries from the impact on the steering wheel. He had run a hundred yards to the nearest house and demanded that an ambulance be called. He had gone back to the car, held the woman’s hand until the paramedics arrived and had vowed to replace his ignorance with the basic skills. He had driven away with good intentions on his mind, and had never enrolled in an evening first-aid course.

He cleaned away the blood, edged his hand high on her thigh to hold her still when she squirmed in pain, and found the wound. An inch to the left and the bullet would have missed her; an inch to the right and it would have nicked an artery or shattered her femur.

He worked faster as the water cooled. The wound was a deep furrow in the flesh of her thigh. It was worst for her when the cotton wool touched the rawness, and then he held her tightest, but she never cried out.

He smeared the last strands of trouser cotton out of the wound. The field dressing was old British Army surplus, would have been sold to the Iraqi military at a knock-down price. When he held her, and hurt her, the warmth of her chest was arched against his face and she bled from her bitten lip. He read the faded instructions on the dressing, then stripped it out and fastened it. He lifted the slight weight of her thigh higher and wrapped the bandage round the dressing.

There was a guttural cough behind him.

Gus pulled her trousers up over her thighs and hips, and buttoned them. She sagged away from him and lay on her back.

He lifted the torch and the beam speared into the darkness. The men sat silently in a wide crescent, their backs to him and to her. No man looked at her, had seen her nakedness.

The softness passed from her eyes. The trust was a memory. She dragged herself up and picked up the torch.

Meda walked freely among them and kept the torch on her face so that they could see that she felt no pain.

He was bound to her. Where she walked, he would follow.

AUGUSTUS HENDERSON
PEAKE
.

3. (Conclusions after interview with Henry Peake (father of AHP) conducted by self and Ms Carol Manning – transcript attached.) MINDSET: In a solitary childhood, AHP received a grounding in countryside lore and hunting. He would have learned to kill and, more important, would have become familiar with the basic techniques of stalking and tracking. In my opinion it is impossible for a sniper to operate successfully unless he has the hunter’s MINDSET. However, my assessment of AHP’s chances of medium-term survival (slim to nonexistent) in the northern Iraq theatre are unchanged. The MINDSET is good, as far as it goes, but a teenager’s ability to shoot rabbits and pigeons does not compensate for lack of MILITARY TRAINING. Also, I have no evidence of AHP possessing the necessary TEMPERAMENT that differentiates a sniper from a target marksman.

Ken Willet read it back to himself in the quiet of his London living room. It would be on the desk of Ms Manning’s line manager in a few hours, would be read and then filed into dusty oblivion.

Four years earlier he’d failed a sniper’s course at the Infantry Training School at Warminster. It had been the only minor setback to his army career, and at the time it had hurt. Not any more. There were five parts to the final examination and he had passed in two, Camouflage and Concealment along with Observation, and failed in three, Marksmanship, Stalking and Judging Distance. To have won a sniper badge he’d needed passes in all disciplines. From his own teenage years he already had the mindset, he’d also been a good shot against rabbits and pigeons, but had realized in the second of the course’s five weeks that his temperament was inadequate. And there was nothing he’d yet found, as the character of Augustus Peake was laid bare, to convince him that this civilian had a temperament to withstand the physical and psychological pressures that would close on him.

Ken Willet had failed the course, along with nine others out of the dozen starters. He’d had a fast beer, and driven away from the Infantry Training School. Forty-eight hours later he had been back with his platoon in Belfast. Easy. If Peake failed, there was no beer and no commiserations, and no drive out. He would be dead in a bloody foreign field.

As he started for bed, Willet thought that the man must be damned arrogant to imagine that, without a sniper’s temperament or training, he could waft into a faraway war and make any sort of difference.

They had left Omar and the
mustashar
behind, sulking and resentful. No explanations offered, she had walked out of the village at first light. Only Gus was with her. A dozen men had pressed forward, claiming in a babble that they should go with her, and she had flashed her wide smile, then told them they were not needed.

They had walked for two hours, then crawled forward. She had walked well, but the crawling was tough. They had crossed two ridges and the valley separating them. The further valley, now ahead, was steep-sided and rock-sprayed. She should have been in bed, or at least resting, but he didn’t bother to tell her. She’d stumbled once, the wound taking the force of her fall against a stony outcrop, and had let out a shrill cry. When they had pressed forward on their knees, she had twice had her backside in the air to keep her weight off the wound, and each time Gus had belted her buttocks without ceremony.

They were at the rim. Below, there was a track on the valley floor, insufficient for a vehicle, perhaps used by a goatherd or shepherd but not since the last summer. He soaked up the wild quiet of the place, and the small clumps of flowers.

‘Watch for me.’

It was an instruction. He was no longer the man who had tended her wound. ‘What am I looking for?’

‘If there is a threat to me, to take me, then shoot.’

‘Yes.’

‘Your promise, Gus, if they try to take me, shoot me.’

‘I promise.’

‘Shoot me – promise it, on your grandfather’s life.’

‘I will shoot you, Meda. Don’t move, stand still, don’t break my aim. Don’t make it hard for me to get a clean kill.’

Could he shoot her? Circumstances had shifted once more. From killing an enemy to shooting a friend. And each time they changed, he was further involved. She had not told him who might take her, or what was the threat. Could he measure the distance, make the windage adjustment, find her body on the T-junction of the reticule in the ’scope, hold his hands steady and squeeze the trigger?

She slipped away. He crawled off to his left, then began a slow search with his binoculars to find a position where he could lie up. She slithered down the sloped wall of the valley, kicking up dust, carelessly cascading stones in her wake. There was a place that was blanketed by old yellowed grass – well away from a tree stump that was the obvious position of concealment, two dozen paces from a small cluster of rocks that was the second most obvious. He spent several minutes tearing up similar strands of the grass and wove them into the hessian loops of his gillie suit, over his back, his shoulders, onto the hood, and put the last pieces into the hessian bandaging the rifle.

He armed the rifle and depressed the safety. She was on the floor of the valley, sitting on a smoothed rock with a child’s innocence. She was picking tiny flowers and he saw her slide them across her nose. The one thing she feared, he thought, was capture. He had been brought with her because she could not show the men, or the
mustashar
, the smallest sign of fear … She started up, no longer the child. He watched as she transformed herself once more into the warrior. He could not see who approached her. As he had told her, she did not take a step forward. The sight was on her. She was unbending, magnificent. Gus’s finger rested on the trigger guard.

The gloved hands came first into the tunnelled vision of the ’scope, reaching for her, then Gus saw the arms in drab military olive green, then the insignia of rank on the shoulders, and then the pocked sallow face with the black brush of the moustache, the beret.

Gus’s finger lay on the cold metal of the trigger. He watched as Meda’s cheek was kissed by a senior officer of the Iraqi army. They sat together and a map case was opened between them.

His cook-boy came with two buckets filled with dried earth as Lev Rybinsky unravelled the hosepipe at the side of his bungalow home. The water gushed out, he doused the buckets, hurled the mud at his car and sent the cook-boy for more.

His car was a 500SL Mercedes saloon. With old newspaper Rybinsky smeared the dripping dirt over the panelwork, the lights, the bumpers and the windows. When more mud was brought to him, he threw it against the body of the car. The day before, the cook-boy had spent the whole afternoon cleaning and polishing the Mercedes, but that was before Rybinsky had heard the whispered rumour.

Eight buckets of mud went onto the car before he was satisfied that every trace of polish had been removed. Rybinsky wiped a small part of the windscreen clear, enough for him to see through, shouted for the cook-boy to follow him and went back inside the bungalow. The hall and the living room were filled with packing cases. There were more in the kitchen, each stamped with the names of aid organizations. He skirted around them, went into the rear yard and unlocked the heavy padlock on the steel door of a concrete shed. His two Alsatians leaped at him from their chain tethers.

From the shed, with the cook-boy’s help, he carried out a new, never-fired DShKM

12.7mm heavy machinegun. The cook-boy took most of the weight, and would return to the shed to bring out the ammunition, while Rybinsky had the light wheels as his second load.

Preparing to set out on a journey, Rybinsky would ordinarily have filled his Mercedes with oil, crates of corned-beef, sacks of pasta or flour, packets of computer chips or cases of whisky. He had them all, but because of the rumour he took only the machine-gun, which had an effective range of 1,500 metres and the ability to penetrate 20mm-thick armoured plate, from the arsenal of military weapons stored in the shed.