The Walking Dead

He walked briskly. There was no rain and a pleasant, cool sunshine played on his face. It was because of a British boy from the city of Leicester, to the north, that Ajaq had gone early that morning to the coach station close to the Victoria terminus, had bought the ticket and boarded the bus to the town of Bedford. That boy had been with him for a night and a half-day, four weeks back, after being collected at the market point along the frontier with the Kingdom. A few hours earlier, the courier had come back from the mountains of the Tribal Areas and had delivered the detail of instructions as to how he should travel from Iraq to the place from which he should launch this attack of importance. He had stripped that boy's mind and memories of anything that might be of use, the siting of cameras and the levels of surveillance, and had decided then that the closest observation was on trains and on the capital's underground railway. Because of what he had learned from the boy he had used the bus network, first for a long-distance coach, then for the connection — painfully slow — to the village. After that night and half-day, when he had leached what he thought significant from the boy, Ajaq had sent him on his way, towards a Shi'a district of Baghdad, with four kilos of military explosive under his loose robe.

He had talked of the matter with his friend, and the Engineer had scowled drily at what was asked of him, and the device was remotely controlled. The boy might have frozen at the moment of detonating the device against his chest, or panicked at the sight of the security men round the recruits' queue outside the police station, might have remembered a girlfriend or a mother, might have sweated too much; it was not possible, after what he had asked the boy with his incessant questions, that a bomber should fail, be captured, then interrogated. The Engineer had killed him, from a vantage-point two hundred metres away, by sending a dialled electronic signal to the mobile phone encased in the bomb against the boy's chest. Twenty-two dead in the queue and, more importantly, the knowledge of travel inside the enemy's territory gained.

From the village bus shelter, with his bag hitched on his shoulder, he had followed directions and gone past shops and small businesses, a house used by a dentist, another by accountants, and fine homes. Then he had hit open road. A small pink-painted cottage, with rose briars clambering on the walls but not yet in flower, was the final building in the village, and a man shuffled on the grass on hospital sticks but did not see him. There were flat fields on his left and a hill with bare-branched trees to his right. Cars sped past and did not slow because he was unremarkable…as unremarkable when he walked away from the village as Muhammad Ajaq, the Scorpion, when he moved in the crowds of the Triangle's towns. How many times had he been through the roadblocks of the Americans, his face disguised and his papers doctored? So many times. Then his demeanour was humble and filled with respect for the soldiers.

He saw grazing cattle. He saw a tractor far away in a field and thought it planted seed or scattered fertilizer. He saw peace that was total and without danger. And in the middle of that peace he saw the small, low, white-painted building, and turned down the lane. There was a sign: Oakdene Cottage.

Mud was splashed on his trouser ankles and puddles soaked his shoes. He approached the cottage, then saw movement at a window. He came to a wooden gate, straightened his shoulders and lengthened his stride so that, from the beginning, he assumed an image of authority. Where he fought, Ajaq would have had a weapon. His authority, there, would have been backed by a loaded rifle or pistol, or by a knife sharpened on a stone, and by the reputation of his name — the Scorpion. Here, in a cottage in the English countryside, that authority would rest on his bearing and in his eyes, and from the respect his voice demanded.

The door opened in front of him. The Engineer greeted him.

They hugged as if it had been weeks, not hours, that they had been separated.

He was not led inside, where shadows hovered, but was walked into the garden, the Engineer's arm in his. They went to a corner where the hedge was high and they were hidden from the farmhouse across the fields.

His head flicked towards the window. He knew that, there, they would be watching. 'How do you rate them?'

'They are both shit and satisfactory.'

'How are they satisfactory?'

'What they were asked to provide was provided. I can build it and I have started on it.'

'How are they shit?'

'So soft, with no hardness, and they talk. All the time they talk…

I tell you, I trust none of them. The girl cooks well but she and all of them are inquisitive. They believe themselves to be important. You should whip them.'

'What else?'