THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER (49 page)

Layer upon layer of it he sliced away. He reached out, took the piece from her ankle and threw it further. The flesh, scattered behind him, brought flies in a feeding frenzy. He cut to pink, rosy flesh, and to clean skin.

He was weak when he finished. 'Well done.'

The whispered response through clenched teeth: 'I didn't do anything.'

'Well done for not thrashing around.'

'Would have made it slower, more pain for me and more difficult for you.'

Bart did what was forbidden, looked into the face. It was ravaged.

The eyes stared out, great lines furrowed the forehead and the muscles bulged on the neck. He thought that whatever this man, terrorist, rabid dog or freedom-fighter, set out to achieve he would succeed in it.

'I can't give you any more Lignocaine because that would kill you.

I'm going to close it up, not totally. Superficial sutures to hold the skin's edges, but it has to be open so that any further pus can get clear. Later we'll do an antibiotic injection, and if the pain is un-manageable by this evening I'll try a morphine jab.'

'Why am I still alive?'

Bart grimaced. 'Why indeed . . . '

Al Maz'an village, near Jenin, Occupied West Bank.

The helicopter belched the rocket. It had made one pass, a slow circle above the village, then steadied and fired. The flame creased behind the rocket, was vivid against the cloud. He had been locking his vehicle when he heard and saw it. He had watched its circle and known what would folloiv. The flame speared towards the village roofs.

Bart could not see its target, but knew it. The rocket - then another, then a third - dived, exploded, devastated, and threw up a mushroom cloud of dirt, dust and rubble.

He ran. It was expected of him that he should run. His cover demanded of him that he run.

He ran across the square and into a wide street, went towards the medical centre in the yard of the village's school. He knew what he would find in the alley, opposite the collapsed telephone pole. He did not look up, did not see the helicopter turn away. He would find a hole that smoked and burned, and around it would be collapsed rubble. The hole would be like the black gap when a tooth fell out. The rockets from the helicopter were always fired with precision. The crowd spilled from the alley, a wasp storm. A fist, where the crowd was densest, held up a mobile telephone. The scream of the crowd reached him. He saw her . . . tens of arms held her and snatched at her. She was supine and did not struggle. He thought of her as thirtyish, no more than forty. The hands had dislodged the scarf from her head. He did not know whether she was an agent, of lesser importance than himself, or whether she was merely an innocent who had used her mobile telephone while the helicopter had made its first circling pass. An agent or an innocent, she was doomed. Hysteria would kill her. He did not know whether she was a wife, a mother. She went with the crowd and Bart was pushed aside, half crushed into a doorway. She was taken towards the square. Bart saw her eyes. She was condemned but her eyes had peace. He thanked his God for it. He thought the shock of her capture had destroyed the fear. The moment that their eyes met was a split second, then she was gone, at the core of the baying crowd.

He went on.

At the collapsed telephone pole, Bart turned into the alley. The missing tooth had been a home, was now a crater, and the two floors of the homes on either side of it were exposed. Sleeping rooms were opened up. Beds hung angled over the crater, and more rubble had fallen in the alley. Dust had coated the lime-green Fiat. Men dug and crawled in the crater. He heard the low, keening moan and knew there was no work for a doctor here.

First two children were carried out.

A woman's corpse followed them.

With reverence, a man's body was lifted clear.

He saw the frozen face of the man who had sat in the rear seat of the Fiat.

It had been on the second page, at the top rank, of the most sensitive fugitives. Now the face was like a circus clown's, coated with the white dust of the plaster of the interior walls. The dust made a mask for the face and death had distorted none of the features. No wound disturbed it: strength was written on it, and he fancied there was honesty. Bart turned away, and pressed his hand against his throat to suppress vomit.

He did not dare to walk back through the square. He had not the courage to go past the scaffolding erected in front of the square's principal building.

An hour later, Bart sagged from the chair.

He went down on to the hut floor and the coffee he'd held spilled on to the boards.

He wept.

Only Joseph saw him.

On his knees and on his elbows, his body quivering from the tears, he heard the beat of Joseph's words. 'You did well. For us you are a jewel. A man who was a murderer was liquidated because of your bravery. You are responsible for the saving of many lives. Listen, Bart, we regret the deaths of two children and a woman in the house. We regret also that a lynch mob has killed a woman they believe guilty of treachery to their society. Two children and two women are set on the scales against the lives of many. You are a hero to us. I tell you, Bart, beside Jerusalem's Mount Herzl is the Yad Vashem memorial where we remember our own and their suffering, and also remembered there are the honoured foreigners who have helped our survival, and your name—'

'I don't want that fucking crap,' Bart sobbed. 7 am gone. I'm finished.'

T thank you for what you have done.'

Back at his home, he packed. One suitcase for his clothes, a medical bag, a cardboard box for the cat and a plastic bag of tinned food for it. He wrote the note and pinned it to the door. 'Mother seriously ill in England.

Returning there. God watch over you. Your friend, Samuel Bartholomew.'

He had arrived on an untruth, had lived on an untruth, and left on an untruth. He was gone before dusk fell on the village, driving with wet eyes, and two patrol vehicles discreetly escorted him down tracks and along roads and he was only clear of them when he had gone through the checkpoint. All the way to Tel Aviv, blazoned in his mind, was the image of the dust-coated face, at peace, of the fighter he had killed.

The book dropped from his hands. Beth saw the pain break over him.

She looked around. If he had cried out it would have helped her, yet he did not. He lay on his back and gasped. At a distance, beside the knelt camels, the guide watched, and close to him was the broken-open crate from which the manual had been retrieved. The face was in shadow and she could not see the eyes or the mouth and did not know what he thought. If a spotlight had been shone on his face she doubted she would know what he thought. Further back, erect and statue still, was the boy.

.

Did it matter what anyone thought? Beth, as teenager and adult, had never cared for advice, counsel, guidance. She knew her mind: it did not tax her if a road or a street flowed past her and mouthed disapproval, if the crowds of a town, a city, condemned her judgement.

She was her own person and the innate stubbornness of character brooked no criticism. She was beside a killer whose eyes had closed.

She slipped away from him, out from under the awning, and went towards the drone of the snoring.

At his vehicle, where the doctor lay on the seat depressed to its full extent, she snapped open the door. His mouth was open, gaped wide, and the snoring brought spittle to his mouth. The shirt clung to his body and on his lap was a chocolate-bar wrapping, not shared with the rest of them. She punched his arm. He snorted, convulsed and then was awake.

'God - what did you do that for?'

'He's in pain,' Beth said.

The arm smeared the sweat off his face. 'Of course he's in pain. A bloody great hole like that, the flesh I took out of it and its depth -

what do you expect if not pain?'

'You talked about morphine.'

'Talked about morphine this evening. My experience, Miss Jenkins, pain seldom kills. Morphine does, often.'

'He doesn't cry out,' she said, a trill of bewilderment.

'And further experience tells me, Miss Jenkins, that the reaction to pain explains more about the patient than about the injury.'

'I don't understand what you're saying.' She was unsure, her voice was small, her guard was down.

He attacked. 'That's rich - like my favourite Christmas present. I am introduced by you to a war casualty who talks in delirium and confusion about mass murder. By you, I am nagged to save this creature's life. And you don't know who he is, don't know what mayhem he plans to inflict - don't know anything except you've an itch you want to scratch. What do you think he's going to do when Icve got him up on his feet and hobbling forward? Is he going to give you a loving kiss? Get you to wrap your thighs round his neck? Or walk away from you like you never existed?'

She trembled. 'How much morphine would you give him?'

He clutched her hand and she felt the slithering wet of his palm.

.

'None, if I can get away with it. If I decide that he must sleep, cannot because of the pain, then I will inject between ten and twenty milligrams.'

'Not more, if the pain's bad?'

'It's an equation, Miss Jenkins - it's about getting the sums right.

Too little, and the pain continues. Too much, and respiration is fatally slowed and the myocardium, that's the heart muscle, is depressed, ceases to operate and death follows.'

'Yes.'

'It is not my intention to overdose him on morphine.'

'No.'

'If it's not a problem to you, I would like to resume my rest.'

His eyes had closed and his head was averted, his chin sagged and his mouth opened. She left him. She went past the boy, who did not look at her, stayed intent on his concentration. She looked up and saw only the clearness of the sky, blue, and she raked it till her eyes burned on the sun. The boy's father ducked out from under the awning, but did not meet her gaze. She realized it: she was alone. She skirted the camels and bent to go under the awning. He was propped up and had the pieces on his lap, and the manual. When he saw her, he waved her away - like she was flotsam.

He had the manual and the pieces. Across his lap was the launch tube with a missile inserted, and the battery coolant unit; he looked for the slot into which it would be inserted. Beside him, on the sacking, was the beltpack that housed the IFF interrogator unit, and next he would find the plug in the grip stock where its cable went.

He beat the pain.

The wound oozed but did not bleed.

He had seen the disappointment cloud her face. He had no interest in her. He did not see where she went, where she sat. He had no need of her.

When Caleb had found the slot and the plug socket, he rehearsed the firing procedure. His eyes flitted between the grip stock and the manual.

His finger rested on the impulse-generator switch, then the button controlling the seeker uncage bar. Then it rested gently on the trigger.

He read of the less-than-two-second response time between the trigger pull and the missile's launch. He imagined the fire flash and the lurched first stage of the missile's ejection from the tube, then the blast of the second stage, then the climbing hunt for the target.

Again and again, his pain controlled and his finger steady, Caleb rehearsed the preparations for firing. Without the missile he would not reach his family . . . but he did not know whether its time wrapped in an oiled covering had decayed it.

Getting to his family was his goal, his reason for survival.

The courier had been and had gone. The sentry, low down in the rocks in front of the cave's entrance, scanned the desert's expanse.

The courier had reached the cave after the first prayers at dawn and had left before the prayers at midday. He had brought with him a sealed, lead-encased container - the size of a water bucket - and had taken away with him finely rolled cigarette papers on which coded messages were written in minute script.

The heat shimmered the sands in front of the sentry, but he squinted, looked ahead and watched for them.

For midday prayers, men had emerged blinking from the cave, and one had held up the compass so that the direction of Makkah would be exact and not an estimation. They had prayed, then returned to the dark recesses.

The sentry had watched the courier in, had watched him out and away over the emptiness of the sands, and had not prayed. He had stayed hidden among the rocks with the rifle always in his hand and with the machine-gun, loaded with belt ammunition, close against his knee. During prayers, an eagle had wheeled high over the escarpment where the cave was. The sentry's eyes ached as he looked for a sign of their coming.

If they came in daylight he would have long warning of them.

He would see a speck of movement, then the shape of a small caravan would materialize. If they came in darkness he would see them, from three or four kilometres away, on the night vision glasses, Russian military, that hung from his neck. They were late.

They were late by four days.

But four days mattered little to the sentry and to the men inside the cave whom he guarded. The war was without end. He did not doubt that they would come, but he hoped fervently that they would come during his long watch, not after he was relieved. His eyes scraped over the sands and little images danced in his mind, small hallucinations, but he did not see the caravan. Their importance was to be measured by the ordeal they endured, crossing the Empty Quarter for secrecy and the preservation of their security. He wanted to be the first to greet and welcome them.

He watched for them, as he had watched for each of the four days since they had been due. He searched the sands that were without limit for the caravan. But he saw only the desert and the dunes, heard only the silence .. . They would come, he was sure of it. Their importance, in the war without end was too great for them to fail the journey . . . and the one of greatest importance, he had heard it whispered while he rested in the cave's depths, was the one who would carry the suitcase when it was loaded with the content of the container the courier had brought that morning. That was a man to be greeted and welcomed.