unreliable agent at every level. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t speaking the truth on this occasion.” She hesitated. “It didn’t sound made up to me. He sounded scared stiff.”
“If that’s your judgement,” said Wetherby, returning the pencil to a stoneware jar that had once held Fortnum and Mason marmalade, “then I agree that you should go. Having said that, there’s only that 7.62 rifle round to suggest that the killing wasn’t the result of a falling-out between drug-dealers. Or a people-smuggling operation gone awry. Perhaps drug-smugglers have started carrying assault rifles. Perhaps Gunter was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, and saw something he shouldn’t have.”
“I hope that’s what happened,” said Liz.
He nodded. “Keep me informed.”
“Don’t I always?”
He looked at her, smiled faintly, and turned away.
I n the tiny bedroom at the east end of the bungalow, Faraj Mansoor slept in unmoving silence. Was this something he had learned to do? the woman wondered. Was even this aspect of his life subject to control and secrecy? Slung over the bedhead was the black rucksack that he had been carrying when she met him. Would he trust its contents to her? Would he be open with her, and treat her as a partner? Or would he expect her, as a woman, to walk behind him? To behave as his subordinate in all things?
In truth, she didn’t care. The essential thing was that the task should be executed. The woman prided herself on her chameleon nature, her preparedness to be whatever she was required to be at any given moment, and was happy to assume whatever role was required of her. At Takht-i-Suleiman, to begin with at least, the instructors had barely acknowledged her existence, but she hadn’t minded. She had listened, she had learned, and she had obeyed. When they had told her to cook, she had cooked. When they had told her to wash the other recruits’ sweat-stinking combat fatigues, she had carried the baskets uncomplainingly to the wadi, squatted on her haunches, and scrubbed. And when they had tied her eyes with a scarf and told her to field-strip her assault weapon, she had done that too, her fingers dancing fast and fluent over the machined parts whose names she had only ever known in Arabic. She had become a cipher, a selfless instrument of vengeance, a Child of Heaven.
She smiled. Only those who had undergone the experience of initiation knew the fierce joy of self-nullification. Perhaps— inshallah —she would survive this task. Perhaps she would not. God was great.
And in the mean time there were things to do. When he woke Mansoor would want to wash—the smell in the car the night before had been of stale body-odour and vomit—and he would want to eat. The water was heated by a temperamental Ascot which seemed to gasp and die every five minutes—half a box of spent matches lay in the bathroom bin—and the Belling electric stove looked as if it was on its last legs too. The salt air, she guessed, probably shortened the lives of these kind of goods. The fridge whirred noisily but otherwise seemed to work, and after Diane’s departure the day before she had driven into King’s Lynn and stocked up with oven-ready meals from Tesco. Curries, for the most part.
Her name was not Lucy Wharmby, as she had told Diane Munday. But what she was called no longer mattered to her, any more than where she lived. Movement and change were in her blood now, and any kind of permanence was unimaginable.
It hadn’t always been so. In the far beginning, in a past over which a kind of frozen unreality now shimmered, there had been a place called home. A place to which, with the simplicity of a child, she had thought she would always return. She could remember, in great detail, isolated moments from this time. Feeding stale bread to the greedy, snappish geese in the park. Lying in her paddling pool in the tiny south London garden, looking up at the apple tree and pressing her neck
“If that’s your judgement,” said Wetherby, returning the pencil to a stoneware jar that had once held Fortnum and Mason marmalade, “then I agree that you should go. Having said that, there’s only that 7.62 rifle round to suggest that the killing wasn’t the result of a falling-out between drug-dealers. Or a people-smuggling operation gone awry. Perhaps drug-smugglers have started carrying assault rifles. Perhaps Gunter was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, and saw something he shouldn’t have.”
“I hope that’s what happened,” said Liz.
He nodded. “Keep me informed.”
“Don’t I always?”
He looked at her, smiled faintly, and turned away.
I n the tiny bedroom at the east end of the bungalow, Faraj Mansoor slept in unmoving silence. Was this something he had learned to do? the woman wondered. Was even this aspect of his life subject to control and secrecy? Slung over the bedhead was the black rucksack that he had been carrying when she met him. Would he trust its contents to her? Would he be open with her, and treat her as a partner? Or would he expect her, as a woman, to walk behind him? To behave as his subordinate in all things?
In truth, she didn’t care. The essential thing was that the task should be executed. The woman prided herself on her chameleon nature, her preparedness to be whatever she was required to be at any given moment, and was happy to assume whatever role was required of her. At Takht-i-Suleiman, to begin with at least, the instructors had barely acknowledged her existence, but she hadn’t minded. She had listened, she had learned, and she had obeyed. When they had told her to cook, she had cooked. When they had told her to wash the other recruits’ sweat-stinking combat fatigues, she had carried the baskets uncomplainingly to the wadi, squatted on her haunches, and scrubbed. And when they had tied her eyes with a scarf and told her to field-strip her assault weapon, she had done that too, her fingers dancing fast and fluent over the machined parts whose names she had only ever known in Arabic. She had become a cipher, a selfless instrument of vengeance, a Child of Heaven.
She smiled. Only those who had undergone the experience of initiation knew the fierce joy of self-nullification. Perhaps— inshallah —she would survive this task. Perhaps she would not. God was great.
And in the mean time there were things to do. When he woke Mansoor would want to wash—the smell in the car the night before had been of stale body-odour and vomit—and he would want to eat. The water was heated by a temperamental Ascot which seemed to gasp and die every five minutes—half a box of spent matches lay in the bathroom bin—and the Belling electric stove looked as if it was on its last legs too. The salt air, she guessed, probably shortened the lives of these kind of goods. The fridge whirred noisily but otherwise seemed to work, and after Diane’s departure the day before she had driven into King’s Lynn and stocked up with oven-ready meals from Tesco. Curries, for the most part.
Her name was not Lucy Wharmby, as she had told Diane Munday. But what she was called no longer mattered to her, any more than where she lived. Movement and change were in her blood now, and any kind of permanence was unimaginable.
It hadn’t always been so. In the far beginning, in a past over which a kind of frozen unreality now shimmered, there had been a place called home. A place to which, with the simplicity of a child, she had thought she would always return. She could remember, in great detail, isolated moments from this time. Feeding stale bread to the greedy, snappish geese in the park. Lying in her paddling pool in the tiny south London garden, looking up at the apple tree and pressing her neck
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