The Walking Dead

'I feel this place is a trap. It is like, in my mind, a trap we would place on the banks of the Euphrates, if we had chickens or ducks, to take a fox. If we trap a fox, we bludgeon it. I am not comfortable here, or with them.'

'You prefer home where there are many traps.'

'I think only of home and — God willing — my return.'

He punched the bulk of the Engineer's arm. He went inside, stooped under low beams and checked the rooms — his, the Engineer's, the girl's, and the room that was still empty. He saw the air-beds spread across the floor of the largest bedroom. Then he called them together, using the staccato voice of command. One, who seemed the youngest, with great thick spectacles on his nose and a clear-skinned face, said that it was time for his second prayer of the day, and could they wait until he had knelt and faced the Holy City?

Ajaq said, 'The war does not wait, and I do not wait. You want the opportunity to pray, then fuck off away from here and go back to your mother. Suckle her milk and pray. You pray when I give you the opportunity. First, you must learn obedience. Nothing that I say to you is for debate. I am to be obeyed. Where I come from, if a man or a woman falls me I kill them. I may kill them with my hand and break their neck. I may kill them with a knife so that their blood runs in the sand. I may kill them with a shot that disintegrates their skull. For disobedience, for the ignoring of my instructions, I kill. You may believe yourselves to be of importance, to be persons of significance. Then you are wrong. You do not have the importance of a single bullet. The desert sand I scoop up with my hand and use to wipe my arse, each grain of it has more importance than any of you. If you show vanity, I will beat you, and if I beat you, you win live in pain for many days. Remember it, you obey me. Do you have questions?'

There were none. The silence clung round him in the room. He looked into each of their faces, but none dared meet his gaze. He thought that the girl in the T-shirt and jeans had a good body but the scar spoiled her.

He went to a comfortable chair, sat and rested, and he waited for the last of them to come the escort and the Threatened Swan. Muhammad Ajaq slept. He dreamed of blood and wire, the whine of a ricochet and the clatter of a machine-gun, the vivid pure light of the exploding belt and the charcoal grey cloud that followed it. He slept deeply.

* * *

It was beyond the limits of her experience and she did not know how to respond.

They had been in the kitchen and Faria was at the sink, washing plates and bowls, when the sound of the car came labouring towards the cottage. None of them — Khalid the driver, Syed the watcher or Jamal the recce man — had helped her, or offered to dry what she rinsed. The washing-machine had been churning with their clothes when the first murmur of the car had been heard. She had put her own underwear and tight T-shirts in with their jeans, socks, sweatshirts and boxers. Later she would carry the damp load into the garden and hang it out. The strength of the sun and the breeze would dry it, and she did not care whether the men were offended by the sight of her flimsy white garments against theirs.

He seemed so small and vulnerable.

They had been in the kitchen, the quiet settled on them, since the lashing they had been given in the living room — and through the shut door came the gentle snore of a man at peace. The man who had built the bomb was in his room and there had been the sound of the door locking from the inside. What had made the lashing more terrifying was that the voice had never been raised. The intimidation, threats, had been spoken calmly and each of them, while they were battered, had cringed forward to hear him better. Faria understood it: they were in his control, doll figures held in the rough palm of his hand, and all could be crushed if he closed his fist.

He seemed to look round him, and across their faces, to measure their mood, then gave a smile of deep, genuine warmth.

On hearing the car, they had spilled out of the kitchen. The noise from the opening and shutting of doors, the slamming of the car's, had woken the man in the chair and he had started up with violence in his movement. His hand had snatched at the air above his lap — as if a weapon should have been there while he slept. Faria had seen, then, a flicker of annoyance on the man's features — as if he had betrayed himself. It was gone and the calm of authority bathed him.

Ramzi, the thug, was behind the boy. All of them, from the kitchen, had formed a crescent in front of him, but the boy looked past them to the chair, and the face there had softened and was unrecognizable from that of the beast an hour before. The face lit and the smile spread.