The Walking Dead

Caution was inbred in him. He cursed the noise he made, but went quickly, had estimated how long it would take him to walk the beach, go past the shelter ahead, then climb back to skirt, the pier, descend again for the kilometre to the harbour's entrance. He would arrive when the checks took place for foot-passengers' tickets and passports in the last five minutes before the gates closed on the ferry's sailing schedule. Going this way, on the shingle and with the wall alongside him, he minimized the chance of being observed. If men sitting in a car on the far side of the road beyond the esplanade, or in the back of a van, were waiting for him, he did not think he would be seen. He had no reason to believe that surveillance teams were in place, but suspicion was a habit he would not break.

He smelt the tang from the sea. His feet crushed brittle shells. He checked the luminous face of his watch to see how many minutes remained to him to reach the harbour's gates…not to know how many minutes remained before the boy jostled for a position among the queue on the steps he had been shown. His mind was focused, clear of detritus.

In front of him he saw the roof of the shelter, and bright sunlight played on the faces of two elderly men. One had darkened spectacles, and they sat in silence. He dismissed them. Further ahead, beyond the shelter, was the black outline of the pier, and the waves broke against the pillars to which weed was attached. Near to the pier were more steps that he must climb.

Sudden fear caught him. He wanted to run. It was the sight of the pier and the shadowed depths below it, the slurp of the water against the pillars. He could not see under it because none of the sun's low brilliance reached there. Further out, at the end of the pier, the waves broke with force and tossed spume. He had no knowledge of the sea. In childhood, in northern Jordan and at the home of his grandparents, he had never been taken to the resort town of Aqaba far to the south. The sea and its force — its power as it broke against the pier's pillars — were alien to him. He checked himself.

Muhammad Ajaq despised fear in others.

Fear was corrupting.

He was so far from what he knew.

Coming closer to the pier, near to level with the shelter above him, he could no longer see the shape of the ferry, moored and awaiting him. It was his target and he craved to see it. With fear there was chaos. He had shot men who showed fear. Fear turned a man's mind. He had kicked the legs from under men who trembled, had the pallor of fear on their faces, aimed a rifle at the back of their heads and killed them. Fear destroyed a man. Now it captured him.

He knew it, he must not run. If he ran, submitted to the fear, he would reach the harbour checks with sweat on his forehead and hands, and he would not be able to meet the eyes of men who stared back at him from behind a cubicle desk…Fear would betray him. He had not shown fear when he had been in the brief captivity of the Americans and had used the bogus limp and the bogus papers to extricate himself. He gulped air to calm himself.

For a moment he stopped dead. He shook himself, tried to loosen the stress that tied his muscles and loosened his gut. He took a deliberate, steadying step forward.

He saw only what was ahead of him, the shelter where two men sat and the darkness of the pier. His mind was blurred.

Each step forward was harder than the last, but he did not run.

'He's coming.'

'No one's coming.'

'And I'm telling you, he's coming.'

'Don't you listen? No one,' Naylor said, with snapping impatience. 'I hear him.'

'The last time I tell you — I can see four hundred yards away, and it is empty. Is that clear to you? No one is coming. What I reckon is, you've made a major error of judgement.'

Dickie Naylor stared up the length of the esplanade, past streetlights and past benches. He saw gulls and blowing plastic bags. Surprising, really, with the sun out, but not a living soul was there. He scratched round his eyes, blinked, looked again. Of course the American wanted to believe his man was coming: a bloody reputation hinged on it. Two reputations in reality. He glanced down at his watch, did the mathematics.

'I'm as sorry as-you are, Joe. I can't conjure a man up when he's not there. That boat's going to sail without him. I've as much to lose as you, maybe more.'

'You don't hear him, but I do. I'm just going to sit and listen for the both of us.'

As if to humour a child: 'What can you hear, Joe?'

He was jabbed hard in the ribs with the stick's curved handle. 'I can hear feet on loose stones.'

Naylor stiffened and straightened. He heard the gulls' cries, the wind against the lamp-posts and the surf rumbling. He heard the feet slip and dislodge shingle and fracture shells. He stood. He stared down at the beach, at a man's head and the shoulders where the straps of a bag were hitched.

'There, Joe…' A panted whisper. 'On the beach, almost level, coming to us.'

'Description? Quickly.'