Lace (61 page)

The male press corps weren’t what Kate had expected. A serious, exhausted air hung over them at the Majestic bar, everyone looked under strain and nobody got drunk. There simply
wasn’t time. No one made passes at her; they were all too busy and too tired. Like them, Kate became wary, furtive and untrusting, guarding a possible lead as if it were a map of Treasure
Island. Like theirs, her head never stopped thinking, speculating, plotting, interviewing, translating, drafting copy and sending it off. She set off at dawn, never knowing whether she would get a
story, and thought herself lucky if she’d dispatched one by ten at night.

She concentrated on reporting the effects of war on human beings, perhaps in a town that was being bombarded, perhaps from the battlefield, using her interpreter—Ali, a twelve-year-old boy
who had been to missionary school and pretended to be a lot older than he was and know a lot more than he did—who trotted along behind his white woman like a devoted dog.

“Where King, Ali?” she said sharply one evening, as they stood in front of the Majestic. “Much, much money for Ali if Missus see King.” What Kate most wanted was an
interview with Abdullah, and she didn’t realise that this was impossible because nobody had told her that the King didn’t give exclusive interviews, only an occasional press
conference.

For two days there had been a lull in the fighting. After initially being taken by surprise, the Sydonian army had forced the Saudis back east, toward the border between their two countries.
They had pulled back behind a line of low hills that lay between the front line, now thirty kilometers east of Fenza, and the border, which was another forty kilometers beyond it. For two days,
nobody had known the whereabouts of King Abdullah. He had been at the front line leading his troops, but now he seemed to have vanished.

“King in eastern hills with Hakem tribe.” Ali beamed. “Now, money please, Missus.”

“But the eastern hills are behind the enemy line.”

“Yes, Missus, but enemy still in Sydon.”

“How do you know, Ali? I’m not going to pay you until I know it’s true.” It was one of the rumours floating about, but Kate wasn’t paying for rumours.

“I take Missus,” offered Ali.

“How can you? We haven’t got a car, and we can’t take a jeep farther than the front line because the Saudis would immediately fire on it!”

“Jeep to front line like before, then camel of my cousin you pay,” said Ali airily.

Camels! thought Kate. They might not fire on a woman and a boy and a couple of camels. . . . What was an expense account for, she thought, and started to argue with Ali about the cost of a jeep
and two camels.

The next day it took two hours to get to the front in the fly-ridden, buzzing, shimmering, sandy heat, along a track marked by empty gas cans, past which their outrageously expensive jeep
jerked, bumped, bucked and bounced. Kate hung onto the wheel with both hands, binoculars bouncing painfully against her breasts. Her stomach had been upset since the day she arrived, and now she
felt as if she was going to be sick as well, as they passed burned, blackened corpses, twisted like overdone kippers. They bumped past a hut for collecting the dead, then the field hospital that
lay ahead of it. At the hospital, a doctor and two orderlies were kneeling to attend to the wounded, and flies hung in a black-peppered cloud over men who lay silent, near dead, or screaming in
agony. There was a sickening stench of flesh and blood as their jeep lurched past.

Finally, Ali pointed to what had once been a small hut and was now a crumbling heap of rubble with a few gaping holes. Bullet scars on the dirty white walls testified to close fighting. The
green, tattered shred of the Sydonian flag still hung from one wall.

“Here?” said Kate, incredulous. “Missus see no camels here!”

“Here wait cousin,” said Ali firmly, so Kate stopped the jeep. For a moment she didn’t move, so great was the relief after the shaking jeep, then she climbed down and walked
toward the hut, followed by Ali. Two Sydonian soldiers smoking cigarettes leaned against the broken entrance. She waved and they all grinned at each other, then Kate climbed over the rubble and
went to where she saw a third soldier lying on his stomach, keeping watch through a gaping hole in the wall of the hut.

Suddenly Kate’s gut rumbled again and she shot out of the semi-ruin. Oh, the humiliation! It was the water, the other reporters said, but she couldn’t clean her teeth in beer. Wet
with sweat, she didn’t care that Ali was trotting along behind her as she scrambled for shelter behind a little heap of rubble and squatted to relieve herself. Then, unbelieving, she saw the
sand flicking up in spurts around her as hot, jagged shrapnel fragments flew through the air. A ping on her helmet made her flinch, and she wanted to fling herself down and hide. She held both
hands over her helmet, crouched lower and groaned.

Suddenly the hut in front of her seemed slowly to collapse to the left. Kate yanked at her jeans and, zipping up, ran back to what was left of the hut.

The three jolly soldiers at whom she had been waving were just empty bodies. One lay spread-eagled on his back, disinterested eyes staring at her, his stomach spilling red, glistening
snakes.

Frozen with horror, Kate heard noises and shouting from beyond the hut. She was terrified, but in a quick instinctive movement, she crouched and grabbed an assault rifle from the hand of one of
the corpses. She had to untangle it from his limp arm. Just get the gun and then crawl up over the rubble, keeping your head down, she thought. Christ, I hope what’s left of these walls
isn’t going to cave in. She carefully checked to see that the weapon was cocked.

She heard scrabbling sounds from the other side of the rubble and suddenly her backside felt naked and vulnerable. Oh, Christ, suppose someone came around the back and shot her up the ass.

Now she could hear heavy breathing, gasps and a grunt as someone scrambled up the rubble in front of her. Then, like a khaki egg, slowly, the rounded top of a helmet appeared. Fraction by
fraction it rose, then a dirt-streaked brown forehead appeared over the broken bricks. Kate saw two young, surprised black eyes under heavy eyebrows as she gently squeezed the trigger.

The face exploded into a carmine hole, then disappeared. She heard noises on the rubble outside. Oh, God, was that more of them, she wondered, or was that the one she’d just shot? She
waited, tense and grim, ready to shoot again.

But the enemy hadn’t expected to find anyone alive in the ruin, and the two remaining soldiers swiftly scrambled back toward their own line.

Kate heard nothing. She lay waiting, unable to take her eyes off the top of the rubble, oblivious to the fact that she was lying on top of the soft, warm shreds of a body. Then, from behind, she
heard Ali call softly in his singsong voice, “Missus, Missus! Bad man all run away!” He stumbled toward her.

Kate was shaking. His eyes. He’d looked right into her eyes and then she’d shot him. For nine months his mother had carried him; for years she had cared for him and loved him; and
now in ten seconds Kate had just destroyed somebody’s son. Those surprised eyes had looked into hers and she’d just squeezed. No doubt he would have shot her first if he’d had the
chance, but Kate knew she had just taken a life and found it a terrible thing to think about. She sat staring into the rubble, agonised, ashamed of what she’d done, sternly reasoning with
herself (be sensible, it was him or you), then weeping as she thought of his family and then of Nick.

Ali fidgeted behind her, not understanding why she was upset. “She one good Missus, she kill Saudi soldier!”

Two hours later, much to Kate’s surprise, they saw three specks on the southern horizon that in due course turned out to be a very old man riding a mangy camel and leading two more. Much
money changed hands—three hundred and twenty dinar, which was enough to buy camels, rather than hire them. More money was offered, but the old man refused to accompany them. He hissed at the
camels to couch them, helped Kate onto the carpet-covered leather saddle, and hissed again for the camels to rise. Then he handed a thorn stick to Ali, nodded and remounted his own camel, which
started to lurch south again.

“What did he say?” Kate asked Ali.

“He say camels back here in one day or Missus pay more money. He say Western machines no good for desert, camel still goodest. Camel eat very little, only drink once in five days, carry
big loads.”

“You’re sure you know where you’re going, Ali?”

“Yes, yes, to hills, Missus.”

They lurched off under the hot sun. At first Kate thought she was going to be seasick; she’d never be able to stand it, this awful, heaving gait, but after ten minutes she found it quite
soothingly similar to a rocking chair.

It got hotter and hotter as they made their leisurely way over sand, thorn bushes and withered, gray grass, heading for the low smudge of hills now visible on the horizon.

As dusk fell they reached the lower slopes and shortly afterward found themselves lurching along the bottom of a small boulder-strewn ravine. “Now Missus in eastern
hills.” Ali beamed. “Now Missus find King.”

“No. Ali take Missus to King,” said Kate sharply.

Ali stopped beaming and looked rather frightened. “Ali know King in hills, but Ali not know where belong in hills.”

“But, Ali, you said you would take me to the King’s camp!”

“No, no, Ali say Ali take Missus to eastern hills.” Ali now looked sulky.

Kate was aghast. The trip had taken far longer than she had expected, it was too late to turn back, Ali obviously had no idea where he was and they were behind the enemy lines.

“Couch my camel please, Ali. We’d better stop here for the night. It’s so dark I can hardly see you.”

Ali hissed at Kate’s camel, which took no notice of him and continued to amble along the rocky bottom of the ravine.

“Ali, stop this damn camel!”

Suddenly, there was a slither, a click, and shadowy figures sprang out of the darkness. One of them tugged the camel reins away from Kate and she found herself looking into the muzzle of a
submachine gun.

Through sobs, Ali answered in Arabic the questions that were spat at him from the darkness. His hands were tied behind his back and he was roped to Kate, whose hands were also
bound. There was a muttered discussion and then, still roped together, they were roughly prodded over the ravine and then along a narrow path that led upward, then downward until Kate lost all
sense of direction.

Suddenly, they turned around the hillside shoulder and moved downward into a shallow, bowl-like area covered with low, black goatskin tents. After a muttered discussion outside the tents, Kate
and Ali were roughly shoved inside by their captors, and Kate, to her astonishment, found herself pushed onto her knees in front of a man she knew. Although she had never seen him wearing white
desert robes, Kate couldn’t mistake that lean, hard face.

“Suliman Hakem!” she said, astonished.

Her first feeling was relief that they weren’t in enemy hands, swiftly followed by the sharp realisation that Suliman was never more than two steps away from Abdullah.

“What are you doing here?” Suliman asked sharply, in English. So he also recognised her, Kate thought.

“I’m a newspaper correspondent. I was looking for King Abdullah, because . . . I have a private message for him.”

“How do we know that you are not spies?”

“If someone could untie my hands, I’ll get my press pass out of my pocket.”

Kate’s hands were not untied, but a man emptied her pockets and Suliman Hakem studied her press pass.

“How do I know this isn’t a forgery?”

“If you’d only get a copy of the
Globe,
you’d see my printed copy and byline and my photograph,” said Kate, thinking that a nearby newsstand was unlikely.

Suliman barked a few guttural words. Their hands were untied and they were pulled to their feet. “You’ll be returned to Fenza at dawn, under escort,” Suliman said shortly.
“Your camels and the boy will be cared for. Think yourself lucky that the sentry didn’t shoot you.”

As he strode out of the tent in his flowing robes, Kate found it hard to believe that this man had attended one of the world’s smartest boys’ schools and that he had then been
trained at Sandhurst.

A moment later Suliman came back into the tent. “You will be guarded all the time you are in this camp. Now you will wash and eat.”

By herself, Kate was led to a small tent and a guard was posted at the opening. A bowl of water and a cloth were brought to her, followed by a boy in a white robe who carried a tin jug of water
and a tin tray piled with rice and chunks of roast lamb. Kate suddenly realised how hungry she was, as she sat cross-legged in the carpeted tent, eating the food with her fingers. Through the slit,
Kate could see the moon casting black shadows over the silver sand, and beyond the flames of a campfire she could see the necks and swaying heads of a camel herd silhouetted against the sky.

After Kate had finished her food, two more guards suddenly appeared, wearing white crumpled robes and red, black-banded headdress; each man carried a rifle in his hand and a curved scimitar at
his side. They said nothing, but jerked their heads toward the tent slit. Kate rose and followed them into the night, past yellow circles of light around campfires that cast shadows up into the
lean faces of the shaggy-haired men who surrounded them.

She was led into a tent thirty feet long. Richly patterned carpets had been laid on the desert sand and heaped with tasseled cushions upon which, alert and straightbacked, sat King Abdullah. He
gestured to the guards and they withdrew, leaving Abdullah and Kate alone.

Self-assured as ever, Abdullah’s watchful eyes moved warily, arrogantly. His tawny skin was stretched tight over the bone, his winged black eyebrows rose above a nose that curved like a
falcon’s over his wide mouth. He looked at her. “How the hell did
you
get here, Kate?”

She told him as quickly as she could, thinking that he looked older, gray and tired, which wasn’t surprising.