‘Leave it,’ Luke said. ‘That’s an order.’
‘This is insane,’ Finn spat. ‘We hit a roadblock and it goes noisy, half the Republican Guard are going to be on our tail. It’s daylight. They’ll be able to see us from fucking Syria.’
Luke looked back at Amit. The guy was leaning, exhausted, against the car.
‘We’ll find a lying-up point,’ Luke decided. ‘Wait till nightfall and work out what to do. Let’s get him covered up.’
With obvious reluctance Finn fished the burka and headdress out of the boot. Amit didn’t really seem to register what they were doing as the two SAS men struggled to get the robe over him and the headdress on, before Luke helped him into the back of the car again. By the time Amit was sitting down, his head lolling at a slight angle and his face obscured behind the veil of the headdress, it was impossible to tell if he was awake or asleep. Hell, it was impossible to tell if he was even still alive.
Luke put the bonnet down, got back into the car and turned to Abu Famir, who was still in the front passenger seat. The Iraqi had calmed down and was looking defiantly at Luke over the top of his little round spectacles.
‘I will have great influence in the new Iraq,’ he announced with great self-importance. ‘I will see to it that you are well rewarded . . .’
‘Fuck your rewards,’ Luke replied. ‘Who is he?’
‘My deputy,’ Abu Famir stated flatly. ‘And I will not see him killed. ’
Luke glanced at Finn. You might not get a fucking choice, he thought to himself as he started the engine. Abu Famir was still talking. ‘I know your Prime Minister Stratton well. We have spoken on the telephone. He has great respect for my judgement . . .’
They set off again. They’d been travelling for five minutes when Luke became aware of a sound from the back seat. He looked over his shoulder. Amit was moving – shaking his head – and muttering to himself. ‘What’s he saying?’ he asked Finn.
‘Fuck knows. Delirious.’
‘He must see a doctor,’ Abu Famir declared.
‘Thanks. I’ll phone for a fucking appointment.’
A couple of minutes later Luke hit the brakes. Something had caught his attention. He and Finn got out of the car. The terrain to the right was rough and undulating, and 500 metres away there was an outcrop of bare rock, about the size of a small house. A thin wadi ran towards it, alongside which was a rough dirt track that fed off the road on which they were travelling about thirty metres forward of their position.
Luke took the wheel again. They trundled slowly towards the track, turned right along the wadi and made their way to the rocks. The closer they drew, the higher the rocks loomed. He stopped ten metres from them.
‘Let’s recce,’ he said to Finn. The two soldiers grabbed their carbines and started walking round the rocks. The sides were smooth and weathered; to start with, they looked like they offered little in the way of protection, but on the far edge, out of sight of the car, they found a crevice about three metres wide and ten high. It was dark inside – from the opening Luke and Finn could only see a couple of metres in.
‘Cover me,’ Luke said.
Finn nodded, and aimed his rifle into the crevice while Luke stepped in.
It smelt musty. The temperature was a couple of degrees lower than outside, but it was dry and the ground was flat. As his eyes grew used to the gloom, he saw that the crevice was about twenty metres deep and – crucially – unoccupied. No doubt the desert dwellers of this area knew of it, but as somewhere to lie up for the day it would do. He walked outside and nodded to Finn. ‘We can get the motor in,’ he said. ‘Let’s do it.’
Finn didn’t look happy, and he started to reason with Luke. ‘Look, mate, don’t tell me you can’t see there’s something strange going on here. We can still ditch him. He could still die of his wounds. Abu Famir doesn’t have to realise, nor do the Ruperts back at base.’
Luke looked back across the bleak expanse of the desert. It looked totally empty, but he knew that danger could appear almost from nowhere: desert patrols, Republican Guard troops investigating the shoot-out back at the village, even innocent Bedouin wanderers stumbling across them. Their situation was dangerous, no doubt about it. Sometimes, though, you just had to go with your gut. This was one of those times, and Luke wasn’t going to waste Amit until he knew exactly who he was.
‘We lie up here till dark, then we go,’ he told Finn in a tone of voice that offered no argument, and the two of them hurried back round to the other side of the rocky outcrop to collect their car and their strange pair of passengers.
Chet and Suze headed west, then north. It was slow going. When Chet first pulled over, Suze looked alarmed. ‘What’s wrong? What are you doing?’
‘Checking for tails.’
He repeated this every twenty minutes. Occasionally he would do a U-turn, retrace his steps and take another route. A good tail, he knew, would drive past him when he pulled over, reduce their speed and then wait for Chet to catch up. He needed to try to scupper any tricks like that. It wasn’t foolproof, but it was the best he could do. Suze only asked him what he was doing once. After that they sat in awkward silence.
They stayed off the main roads, driving south of Oxford then north up towards Birmingham before bearing west towards the Welsh border. When he saw the first sign for Hereford, Chet had to fight the urge to follow it. He had friends there, of course. If he made a couple of phone calls, there’d be a welcoming committee for him at Credenhill. But a welcoming committee wasn’t what he wanted. Chet was going dark – for how long, he didn’t know.
The weather started to change around 15.00 hrs. Big black clouds billowed in from the west and the windscreen started to become spotted with rain.
‘A storm’s coming,’ Chet murmured. Suze didn’t respond.
As they crossed the border, thunder boomed across the sky and the rain fell more heavily. Ten minutes later it was a torrent. Every time there was a crack of thunder, Suze jumped in her seat. She was like a timid animal, ready to bolt but not knowing which way to go. Chet had no words of comfort for her. His mind was on other things. With the windscreen wipers going full pelt and everyone’s headlamps on, it had become more difficult for him to keep an eye on anyone following. Not good – but at least it was equally difficult for anyone trying to tail them.
The light was beginning to fail when he headed south, passing through several grim mid-Wales towns, their streets deserted because of the insistent rain. And it was almost dark when his headlamps lit up a signpost that read: ‘brecon beacons national park’.
‘Nearly there,’ he told Suze, like he was talking to a child at the end of a long journey.
Chet knew the geography of the Beacons better than he knew anywhere. He’d lost count of the number of nights he’d spent there, freezing his nuts off in the months approaching SAS selection, and many times subsequently on exercises. Every peak and valley was familiar to him; every road and every stream. When people are on the run, they return to places they know well. Chet’s pursuer might be expecting him to go back to his little flat off Seven Sisters Road; but in fact the rugged landscape of south-east Wales felt more like home than any shitty little corner of north London ever could.
The quieter and more winding the roads became, the more relaxed Chet felt. There were no cars now. Nobody following. No risk of vehicle identification cameras or unexpected police patrol cars. Just the Beacons, the heavy rain and a few hardy, bedraggled sheep. When he saw their final destination – the lights of a single, solitary farmstead a couple of hundred metres away, he felt more relieved than at any moment since he’d awoken on his birthday. And that seemed like weeks ago.
‘Where are we?’
It was the first thing Suze had said for a couple of hours. Her voice was cracked and quiet.
‘A B&B. We should be able to get a room here for the night. Stay under the radar.’
A pause.
‘We’ll tell the owners we’re married.’
Suze frowned. ‘What? Why?’
‘Because nobody remembers boring married couples. And because I want you in the same room as me, where I can see you. And where we can talk.’
Suze swallowed hard. ‘Right,’ she said, and they drove in silence up towards the farmhouse.
The rain was still heavy, and although it was only a short run from the car to the front door, they were half-soaked by the time they got there. They sheltered in a shallow porch where an old sign said ‘vacancies’, and they had to ring the bell twice before anyone answered. The door was opened by an elderly lady – seventy-five, perhaps older – with wispy grey hair, half-moon glasses and hearing aids on both ears. She peered at them suspiciously, as though guests were the last thing she expected at this bed and breakfast, while a floppy-eared cocker spaniel sniffed around her feet.
‘Yes?’
‘We need a room.’ Chet’s voice was abrupt.
‘A room?’ The old woman had a faint Welsh accent. She looked up at Chet’s scarred face with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.
Chet was about to reply, when Suze butted in. ‘We’ve travelled a very long way,’ she said, in much more friendly tones. ‘Might you have somewhere for us?’
The old lady’s face softened slightly now that Suze was talking to her. ‘Ah well, you’d better come in,’ she said. She took a few paces back, and the two of them walked into the house. ‘You can leave your rucksack in the porch,’ she told Chet. ‘We don’t want it dripping all over the floor now, do we?’
‘It’s dry,’ Chet told her. It was also heavy on account of the alabaster figurine he’d stashed in there.
Stepping into the farmhouse was like stepping into another century. Heavy oak beams traversed the low ceiling of what appeared to be a large reception-room-cum-kitchen, and a fire smouldered in a blackened inglenook. There was a very old gas oven along one wall, tired-looking floral worktops on either side, and a large butler’s sink, cracked and stained yellow. Heavy flagstones covered the floor and the whole place smelt of woodsmoke.
The spaniel started investigating Suze, sniffing round her feet and nuzzling her ankles with its nose. She bent down to scratch its ears and this seemed to please the old lady, who directed her conversation only at Suze. ‘She likes you,’ she said, in the slightly too loud tones of the almost-deaf.
Suze smiled and stood up again. ‘She’s beautiful.’
‘How many nights, dear?’
Suze glanced at Chet, who covertly held up a single finger.
‘Just one,’ she replied, and the old lady took a leather-bound guestbook from the heavy mahogany sideboard.
‘I’ll be needing your names.’
‘Carter,’ Chet said quickly. ‘Mr and Mrs Carter.’
The old lady ignored him. ‘I’m sorry, dear,’ she said to Suze. ‘I’m a little hard of hearing . . .’
Suze smiled and helped write the name in the guestbook. Moments later they were being led across the flagstone floor, into an adjoining hallway and up a wide, winding, stone staircase that led to the first floor. The old lady climbed it with difficulty. ‘I can’t be doing with stairs at my age,’ she complained. ‘I only come up here for guests.’
The landing had threadbare rugs and creaking floorboards. They passed one room on the right-hand side of the landing before the old lady showed them into a second room. Suze took one look at it and, still in buttering-up mode, said, ‘It’s perfect. We’ll . . .’
But Chet interrupted her. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not this one.’
‘Why ever not?’ asked the old lady.
He glanced up to the ceiling where there was a removable panel, presumably leading to an attic. ‘What else have you got?’
The old lady looked offended, but she led them back along the landing towards the first door they’d passed. This room was much more basic than the other. Frayed curtains, a lumpy, iron-framed double bed. Next to the bed was an occasional table with a beige, functional telephone on it. The adjoining bathroom had mildewed grout between the tiles and an avocado-coloured suite stained white with limescale.
Chet checked the window. The frame was thin and rotten, but it was locked and it looked out on to the front where he’d parked. There was no attic hatch.
‘This will do,’ he said.
‘I can’t give you anything to eat, you know,’ the old woman announced. It sounded like an accusation. ‘And there’s nowhere nearby.’
‘Please, don’t worry,’ Suze told her. She clearly had a way with the oldies. ‘We’re glad for the room. You’re very kind to . . .’
‘Is there a key?’ Chet interrupted.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘
A key?
’
The old woman looked at him as if he’d made a lewd suggestion. ‘Oh no . . . no, there’s no key.’
She shook her head and left the couple, muttering to herself and leaving the door ajar. Chet closed the door, then stood with his back against it. He gave Suze a piercing look – one that she couldn’t withstand for long. She sat on the edge of the bed and put her head in her hands.
‘Are you sure we’re safe here?’
He walked over, grabbed a high-backed chair that was against the wall and lodged it under the door handle. ‘As safe as we can be. But if that woman who’s chasing us is the person I think she is, we won’t stay safe for long.’