The Walking Dead

'Nice thought, but I reckon there ain't enough time for luxuries. Mr Naylor, you're in the eye of the storm.'

'I'm Dickie, please.'

'You're in the eye of the storm because I think you got the Twentyman here, and—'

'I don't understand — who or what is the Twentyman?'

'An Iraq-based insurgent commander. Uses suicide-bombers to effect. Has many names but that's mine for him. His attacks never fail to kill at least twenty, usually many more but that's a minimum. I'm here because I think the Twentyman is too and, if I'm right, that makes a real bad picture for you.'

Chapter 10

Tuesday, Day 13

'Ah, up with the lark, I see…' Dickie Naylor shrugged out of his coat. It was not yet eight o'clock, but his visitor was already in place, sitting comfortably in the easy chair, cradling a steaming coffee mug in his hands. '…and no problems, I trust, at the front entrance?'

'No problems. That feisty Miss Reakes smoothed the way. I didn't have to strip down this time. So as we don't lose time on minimalities, I'll cut to the chase. I want to share my knowledge with you, Dickie.'

'I'm going to have a rather busy day. I don't know how much time I'll have for—'

The American's voice had a lacerating whip in it. 'Now, I think you're going to have to fit me in, Dickie, where your "busy day" permits. Make phone calls and I'll stop, but play with your computer and I'll talk — you ought to get used to the idea that I'm with you and am staying…What I heard, when you guys were hit the first time, you concentrated investigations on the bombers and their identities, but you failed to get at the kernel of it.'

'We think we did tolerably well, and "fail" is not a word we care to bandy about.' He did not care if his irritation showed. Mary bloody Reakes had not brought him coffee. An interloper had intruded into his workspace. He felt himself, already, treated as an imbecile. 'And I have a meeting in ten minutes.'

He might as well have kept silent: he was not heard.

The voice drawled and rasped at him. 'I'm going to say it. There was, Dickie, a failure in that you have circulated no information on the facilitator, or on the bomb-maker. Your efforts were aimed at the foot-soldiers. You boys should get it into your heads that foot-soldiers are in plentiful supply. Facilitators and bomb-makers are where you hit pay-dirt. Cut down the foot-soldiers and another crop will seed and spring up. Locate and eliminate the facilitator and the bomb-maker and you hit the Organization where it hurts most. The facilitator is known to me as the Scorpion, but the Twentyman is my pet name, and I know the bomb-maker by the title of the Engineer. In the unlikely event that you could walk more than a couple of hundred yards outside the fence wire and the blast walls of any military encampment in Iraq, that's the Sunni part, or beyond the Green Zone in Baghdad, and not have your throat cut, then settle down in a coffee-shop, interrupt the guys reading their newspapers or watching Al Jazeera on the screen and ask a question, it would be "Who is most successfully carrying the war to the Coalition?" The answer you will get — assuming you don't have a company of marines round you, which you'd need if you wanted to keep your head on your shoulders — is that the Scorpion is the top guy, and alongside him is the Engineer. Kill them and you got yourself a real victory. Those men don't grow on trees. Look, Dickie, in Afghanistan and Palestine, Chechnya and Bosnia, there has always been one son-of-a-bitch who gives himself the Scorpion moniker. It ain't me, it's them. A wriggling, burrowing little shit with a sting. He has made a mistake, and that mistake may well prove to be of dramatic proportions. He has come off familiar ground, he is no longer if I am correct — in the heartland of Ar Ramadi or al-Fallujah or Baquba or any of those murderous little enclaves of the Triangle. Whether from vanity, obedience or his understanding of duty, he has come on to your soil. I believe that making the journey was his mistake Now the son-of-a-bitch is vulnerable.'

Naylor looked down at his watch. 'Sorry, but I've to go to that meeting.'

'No problem; I ain't going anywhere. I'll be here when you get back, and we'll talk some more.'

'Has he returned yet?'

It was the third time that morning that Ibrahim had left the loneliness of his room, come into the living area and asked the question. He interrupted the first snarls of the argument, watched from a low chair by Ramzi. The heap of dirty clothing was in the centre of the carpet.

Syed said, waspish, 'If he was back you would see him. If you cannot see him he is not back.'

Faria said, 'You will hear him when he comes. I told you yesterday and I told you today, he has gone to Birmingham. When he has finished, he will return.'

'Where is Birmingham? What is in Birmingham? Why has he gone to Birmingham?'

Looking away, not meeting his eye, Syed muttered, 'You don't need to know.'