Holding the Zero (41 page)

Each step was harder. The hours were crawling away but he could sense no end to the night. Aziz had had to crawl on his stomach from a bog into which he had strayed. Those had been nightmare moments. The sinking mud had clung to his legs, higher than his knees, and he had only been able to use the one hand to claw his way free because the other had held the rifle clear of the filth of the bog. He could have died there, exhausted, watched by the dog, unable to pull himself out. The nightmare had edged towards panic before he had been able to get a grip on a stone at the edge of the bog and lever himself out. He did not think of his family, but the panic had surged because he had thought he would not fire the Dragunov again. Everything in his life, which might have ended in waste in the bog, was preparation for the long hunt of the fugitive and then the long shot on the target.

Aziz looked more often now behind him. He watched for the encroaching mass of cloud. It had not yet reached the moon’s half-light, which enabled him most of the time to avoid the bogs and the stones, and to see the dog ahead of him, but twice he had heard the thunder peal and once the ground had been lit by a sheet of lightning. In its flash, he had seen the man perhaps half a kilometre ahead. It had been a fleeting glimpse. He had seen the weight on the man’s shoulder and the narrow outline of the rifle barrel stretching up past the hooded head. The man had not taken advantage of the moment to look behind him, and had trudged on, bent under the burden. He already had respect for the man’s skill – the shooting, the fieldcraft and the dedication – but Aziz did not understand why the man had not dropped off the burden, laid it down, put a handgun or a grenade in the child’s fingers, and moved faster and freer.

The bog’s mud, clinging to his boots and his trousers, further slowed him, as the clouds closed behind him. The panic of the struggle to escape the bog was replaced by a new fear: of the clouds and the rain that could wipe out the scent the dog followed.

He murmured, ‘Is that what you are hoping for, friend, the rain? Do you hope that the rain will cheat me? … How do you find the strength – in the name of God, where do you find it? If the rain does not come you will have to turn … You understand, friend, that it is not personal? I believe that a man such as you, a man I respect in all sincerity, would know that it is not personal …’

There was no past in his mind and no future. There was nothing of his family, and nothing of his own salvation. The present ruled him, was each slow step forward, and the bounce of the dog ahead of him, the struggle to hold the pace, and the glimpse of the burdened man in front of him, the massing of the clouds behind.

‘It is the last ridge, Mr Gus.’ The voice was beside his ear, quiet.

‘Say that again.’

‘It is the last ridge.’

A coal-black line was ahead of him and above it was the grey mass of the mountains.

He had not noticed the dawn come. The whistle was in the air some way behind him. He did not know how far he had gone in the night hours, how many miles of slopes, screes and muddy pools he had climbed and crossed. He had lost the pain, killed by his tiredness.

‘He is still with you, Mr Gus.’

‘He is still with me.’

‘To shoot you, Mr Gus … I am so cold.’

‘We must keep you awake. It’s time for another story.’

The wind gusted abruptly onto his back. It seemed to knife into Gus’s shoulders, through the weight of the rucksack and the dangling legs of the boy. The wind went from moderate strength to fresh to strong … He would take the boy home. There was no clarity in his thoughts, and no clutter of passports, visas and immigration. He would take the boy home and put him in the spare room, find a chair for him at work, walk him on Saturday mornings in the high street, and drive him on a Sunday to Stickledown Range … The rain blustered on to his back. He would teach the boy to read the pennants that marked the wind on the range and the boy would call the deflections for the alteration on the windage turret of the old Lee Enfield No. 4, Mark 1 (T), and would lie beside him on the mat. The lightning split the skies around him – he did not look back because he knew that he was still followed – and the thunder boomed in its wake. With the boy beside him, he would win the silver spoons.

The rain came hard and sudden. He thought it had come too late, then heard again the whistle and headed towards the last ridge.

It was his agony: ‘Why does he follow me?’

‘You are the best, Mr Gus. If he kills the best then he is supreme. He follows you so that he will be the best.’

‘Is that important? Does it bloody matter?’

‘I think it mattered to Major Burnham, Distinguished Service Order, in the Matabele war, to be the best.’

Gus staggered towards the dawn and the last ridge, the rain and wind lashing at him.

Beyond the ridge would be the valley with steep-set sides, and beyond the valley would be another climb, then safety. He was lurching drunkenly towards the ridge and the dawn.

‘According to Major Hesketh-Prichard, the American – Burnham – was the greatest scout of that time. His finest achievement was to go through the entire Matabele army to shoot their leader, M’limo …’

‘Can I say something personal, Caspar?’

‘Be my guest. Shoot.’

In the darkness, under a buffeted umbrella, Caspar Reinholtz walked the shiny-faced man back to the shuttle for the flight to Ankara.

‘There are people at Langley – this is not easy for me – who doubt you, Caspar.’

‘That’s their privilege.’

‘Don’t interrupt, please, because this is, was, a problem for me. They say that Caspar Reinholtz went native, had gotten himself emotionally involved.’

‘Is that what they say?’

‘Had gotten more Kurdish than the Kurds, had lost sight of our aims.’

‘Do they say that?’

‘They told me that you, Caspar, would dump shit on the new plan. I want you to know that I am going to kick ass when I get back, and tell everybody, whether or not they want to listen, that you are on board and could not have been warmer and more supportive of the new concept.’

They were at the steps of the plane, shaking hands, while the rain spattered up from the apron. At least the bastard would have a turbulent roller-coaster ride, with his balls in his mouth, hanging on, thinking of Mother. He had not mentioned her, dead, or the sniper, missing, or the fuck-up that was RECOIL. With any luck, the bastard would be tossed from one side of the plane to the other.

Caspar smiled. ‘Do you know what Will Rogers said?’

‘What did Will Rogers say?’

‘He said, “We can’t all be heroes because somebody has to sit on the kerb and clap as they go by.”’

‘I like that – good for a seminar. I appreciate the hospitality and I appreciate that you’re not wallowing in what’s gone, that you’re right behind our plan. You’re a good and valued warrior, Caspar, a true Langley man.’

The man ran up the steps of the plane.

‘Have a good flight,’ Caspar shouted after him.

In those last hours, he could have said that the plan was a piece of crap, that it was a coward’s no-risk plan, and he, too, would have been on the shuttle out to Ankara. He had whitewashed it, said it was a fine plan. If he had been on the flight there would have been denied him the small chance to meet the sniper, go with him to a quiet corner, and hear how she had died – maybe put some flowers somewhere. He knew he owed it to her. The same rain, the same storm, over those goddam mountains, would be driving on the man who had seen her die. He wanted that chance.

Trudging and stumbling, falling, dragging himself to his feet, kicking his stride forward, following the dog, Major Karim Aziz did not consider that he might have turned back …

To have turned back was to face the past and the future. His concern, going forward, was to keep the rifle under his smock so that the working parts stayed dry. To stay awake, to be aware, to keep going forward, he recited the specifications of the Dragunov.

Cartridge
: 7.62×54R, including 7N14 AP.
Operation
: gas, short-stroke piston, self-loading.
Weight
: with PSO-1, 4.3kg.
Length
: 1.225m, with bayonet-knife, 1.37m.
Barrel
: 622mm.
Rifling
: 4 grooves, rh, 1 turn in 254mm. The statistics helped him as he moved towards the ridge where the dog sat and waited for him. They were slow, grinding steps.

The raincloud scudded over him. Far behind him, a Very light was fired, and he knew that he, too, was tracked, that the line of soldiers had kept pace with him, that they had not halted for the night. The soldiers were his past and his future and, to blot them out of his mind, he dipped back into the comfort of the specifications.
Muzzle Velocity
: 830m/s.

Max Effective Range
: 800m–1000m.
PSO–1 Telescope
: 4×24, 68mm eye relief, 6deg field of view. The cloud lay on the ridge in front of him, grey on black, and the rain ran on his face, the thunder clapping at his ears.

He heard, ahead, a great bellowed scream, an anguished cry of impotence, before the gale carried it beyond his hearing.

‘Does it go badly for you, my friend?’ Aziz muttered. ‘It goes badly for me. I respect you for what you have done, it is sincere respect, because it is harder for you than for me.’

Gus had known it since he had reached the ridge over the valley.

He had paused, gulped for air, wiped the rain from his face, tried to stand against the force of the wind, and known the boy was dead. He had laid him down, smaller – as if life was weight – and he had rocked and howled into the last of the night. The rain spat on the boy’s face and ran rivers into his staring eyes. He could have left him there for the dog to find, and the man; he could have left Omar and won himself precious time, because the man would stop and circle the corpse, then go close and examine it. He picked up the boy and heaved him again over his shoulder. Omar had said that the pit of the valley, under the ridge, was the ceasefire line beyond which the man would not follow.

It might have been a shepherd’s trail he found, or a track used by wild hill goats. The rain sheened its surface. He went down the path heavily, slipped clumsily because he had the boy on his shoulder and the rifle to keep dry. Other than the occasional rumble of thunder and the spatter of rain on him there was a great silence that not even his boots or the tumble of small stones broke.

There had been a moment when he had felt grief, but it had gone. He moved more easily with each descending step as if, again, the freedom were given back to him. The boy was dead, and she was dead: the burdens were lifted. If he survived, he might have time to mourn.

In the pit of the valley he had the rush of the swollen stream to guide him.

Gus found a big flat rock, hewn smooth by a millennium’s torrents, and laid the boy’s body on it.

He paddled in the water around the rock and arranged the body so that it lay on its back. It no longer had a meaning to him. The arms hung loose. He did not think that the rain would cause the river to rise enough to dislodge the body.

On the far side of the stream, as he started to climb, he heard the distant whistle.

There was no pain in his body, no aching, no hunger or thirst.

An hour of darkness was left him. Gus scrambled up from rock to rock, stone to stone, catching at stumpy bushes that took his weight.

He could have gone on, he had the strength. He could have reached the ridge on the far side of the valley, could have left the man and the dog far behind him.

Halfway up the slope, he crabbed off the path. He moved slowly on his side and carefully, without the awkwardness of his descent, worked to lodge himself between the stems of the bushes so that he would not crush them.

When he settled he took the rucksack from his shoulders, wrapped his one towel from it around the length of the rifle, and then, with his penknife, he started to cut short sprigs of bilberry and dead bracken from around the place he had chosen. When he thought he had sufficient he began to hook them into the straps of hessian that the women, an age ago, had sewn to the suit.

All the while, the rain relentlessly beat down on him.

‘I’m George. Very good to meet you, Carol. It’s not often enough that we have the chance to share snippets with our sister service. And you’re Ken, right? Ministry of Defence? Very pleasant to meet you.’

He stood and shook their hands. There was a gushing charm to the greeting that Willet thought worse than insincere. The Security Service would be lesser beings, and Ministry personnel would be primitives. The security staff at the building’s main entrance had directed them to the bench on the embankment. Willet had been rather looking forward to gaining admittance to the secure sanctum of the Secret Intelligence Service, something to gossip about when he was back at the Ministry. But no conference room was offered them, no opportunity for rubbernecking the interior. They had been told they were expected at the fourth bench, going east towards the Festival Hall on the river’s south-side embankment. George had been waiting for them, and was lighting a cigarette as they approached.

‘I hope I don’t have to apologize for meeting you out here, but it is a nice morning and I always say the view of the river is delightful. It’s not that I’m a fresh-air freak but we have a Fascist correctness inside. Can’t have a little puff indoors. I was once on night duty, dying for a gasp, and I crawled underneath my desk and lit up. I was right under the desk but the bells still went, and the gauleiters came charging in … Now, how’s the young man doing? Is that what you want to know? I don’t mean to be rude, far from it, but is Augustus Peake any concern of yours?’

‘We think so,’ Ms Manning said.

Willet challenged. ‘If a British passport holder, with a bloody great rifle, is tramping around northern Iraq – with the consequences that entails – yes, it is a legitimate concern.’

George was fifty-something. He wore a loose cardigan that had been knitted for him, Willet thought, by a woman who had overestimated his size. He had a blotched face and thinning hair, and he coughed on his cigarette. It was early in the morning, bright and cold, and the wind came up off the river. Office workers, hurrying to be in before nine, strode meaningfully past them, and were interspersed with joggers pounding along the embankment. Willet hadn’t thought to bring a coat and shivered. He thought making them use a public bench was the height of rudeness, and calculated.