The Walking Dead

He held it by the collar and raised it so that its hem cleared the table. He saw himself, side view, in the mirror. It was against his body; his sweatshirt was hidden by it. The mirror was on a chest of drawers, old, stained and flawed, and the image of the sticks was thickened and the wires seemed to Ramzi to cascade into a tangle, and hanging loose, below the mirror's field, was the button switch.

Perhaps a mosque would have been named after him or a cultural centre. He would go to God with the love of his sisters. But the waistcoat was too small for his muscled shoulders, was meant for another and would not have fitted him. He panted, almost an exhalation of relief. He could not have worn it. A shadow crossed behind him. A hand was at his throat and he froze. He felt the fingers tighten and the breath was squeezed out of him.

He choked and he could not turn. Past the opening in the curtains he saw grass, then the hedge and an empty field. His strength from gymnasium weight-lifting did not help him. He could not break the hand's grip.

He was freed. Ramzi staggered back. The waistcoat was laid neatly on the table, but his hand, which went up to his throat, where the pressure had been, still had the tackiness on it.

He ran from the room, and in the corridor he heard the sound of a car's approach.

* * *

'I've less than five minutes, Joe, then I must rush. It's our A Branch, the surveillance people — not that I have anything to offer them for tracking but it's a matter of keeping them in the picture.'

'We were talking mistakes, Dickie. The Scorpion is the equivalent of a corporation's chief executive officer, except that he's not all warm and comfortable on the thirty-ninth floor, and he doesn't have Research and Development below him, or a finance section, or half a hundred from Media Relations or Human Resources. He has to do it all with couriers, use cut-outs, flit between houses, byres and holes in the ground under the stars for sleep. Yet, without a CEO's back-up, this guy is running us ragged. But, and this is important, when the business big-shot makes a mistake, he has minions to clear up the mess. Not my guy. He is alone, and more alone on your territory than if he had stayed in Iraq. What does he think of the people he has to work with here? A British Asian is from a different culture, has not been toughened by combat, is used to having sheets on the bed. He will think little of them. His mistake was ever to have travelled. I tell you, Iraq is a safe environment for him, but this is not. To make him pay, and dearly, for that mistake, we need one thing. That's the priceless commodity of luck…Now;off you go, Dickie, if you're not to keep those good folks waiting.'

* * *

'He could have damaged it.' The anger, cold and controlled, sparked in the Engineer's eyes.

'But was it imbecility or sabotage?'

He had come into the cottage, followed by Khalid. The driver had carried the box and the big plastic bottle, and before he had set them down on a chair, the Engineer had burst into the living area and made the accusation. For a moment, briefly, Ajaq had floundered. Now he had heard the story. His glance, withering, fell on Syed and Faria and they had turned away as if they believed the guilt of Ramzi was their responsibility too.

'Probably stupid, without thought, but handling it under no supervision could have damaged it, and I would not have known. What do I do? Do I check every fastening, unpeel every taping join? He could have broken it.'

'But it was not sabotage?'

'I don't think so.'

'If there is, in your mind, a whiff of the scent of that, then…'

The sentence was left unfinished. He did not need to speak it. If his friend, the Engineer, had harboured that suspicion the consequences were clear. A knife from the drawer in the kitchen Himself and his friend taking the creature away into the fields in the evening, when darkness had come, and one of them bringing a spade. A walk across the ploughed fields to the trees.

'He is stupid, vain, but a child.' The Engineer's voice dropped to a murmur and its pitch would not have reached Khalid, Syed and the girl. 'It is a shit place and they are shit people. They should not have been given to us. We should be out, gone.'

'Friend, when we are ready. Not here, later, we will talk…Where is he?'

'In his room. Probably he whimpers for his mother.'

'I will speak with him.'

He told Khalid to open the box, take out the contents and learn to work the camera. They scuttled with it to the kitchen. He slapped the arm of the Engineer in affection. They were colleagues, brothers, but far from home. He went out of the room, ducked his head under the beams and came to the door.