“Giving orders already? Now you've had me?”
“Go first, then, if you like.”
“We'll both go.” She tightened the coat over the nurse's uniform, scrunched out of the cave mouth and turned right along a string of rocks overseeing the trail. He waited a minute, then went left, also working toward the trail.
No one was visible across the whole broad ridge of snowy dark boulders. The other men's tracks had been softened by wind and half-filled with new snow. Mohammed followed them and met Rosa in the middle. Girl-like, she cocked up her head. “Let me go a hundred yards ahead?”
“Who's giving orders now?”
“We spread the ambush distance, and you're clear of mine shrapnel, if I hit one.”
“I'd be the world's worst coward!”
“You're the one I came here to protect, not me.”
He moved past. “Just stay in my steps, a good way behind.”
There's no point in worrying about the mines, he'd wanted to say, because if it's fated for me to step on one then, in'salah, I will. It won't do any good to worry. And if I do step on one, I'll be either dead or maimed, and if I'm maimed you'll have to shoot me.
Chances were there would be no mines in this path, only elsewhere. Chances were those men had mined below, then come up this path. She'd said they were carrying shovels but he hadn't seen them. No experience – she'd take anything for a shovel.
NICOLAS’ and Samantha's house was dark. Neill let himself in the back door and climbed the stairs to his room. Loudspeakers echoed in the street. He lit a candle and sat on the bed, poured a glass of Black Label, put out the candle. If Layla was going to send for him, it wouldn't be tonight. It was damn cold, the wind sucking through the empty windows, constant rumblings of war. Your heart gets numb, all these dying people weighing it down. He saw the woman's burning face, felt it melting on his hand, saw his building in the souk explode, him and Layla inside it. He went to the window. Only two flights if he fell but the concrete down there could crush your skull. No point in worrying about jumping because he wasn't going to jump. The dark hole leered up at him. You will if I want you to, it seemed to say.
And if he'd been with Layla, all these years? He saw her walking up the path toward College Hall past Marquand House, so slender and unconsciously lithe in her slim skirt and blouse and long dark hair, with a new black bag over one shoulder, smiling toward him, into the sun. He saw her in the crowded souk, holding up a dented brass coffee-maker with a carved bone handle. “It's real Bedouin!” she whispers in English, so the grizzled Druze shopkeeper won't understand.
Downstairs the back door squealed, Nicolas and Samantha's footsteps in the corridor. He put the Black Label under the pillow, lit the candle, and went down.
Nicolas and Samantha were holding each other, broke apart as he came into the room. “What's new?” he said, slowing, trying to sound jovial.
“It fell through.”
Neill snickered, wanting to inoculate them against defeat. “It would've been what – the seventeenth failed ceasefire?”
“It's not that. Every day without fighting's a success.”
Neill started to speak, held it. A fist hammered on the plank front door. Nicolas waved them down on the floor, went into the hall. “Who is it?”
“Hamid! For Dickson. Get him out here!”
Nicolas looked at him helplessly. “Maybe you shouldn't go.”
“It's to see her,” Neill answered. “Any message?”
“No,” Nicolas smiled. “Not after all these years.”
“Be careful,” Samantha said.
Neill went down the back stairs and round through the dark garden. When he got to the pavement it wasn't Hamid but two mujihadeen. “Let's go,” one said in English, jerking his gun.
“Where's Hamid?”
“You're coming with us.”
“Hamid sent you?” he said in Arabic.
“Don't be such a pussy,” the first answered. “Who else would want you?”
“Wait!” Neill gestured at the house. “Let me tell them –”
“Nothing doing.”
They fitted a black hood over Neill's head and walked him into the street. “Beat it!” one called, and someone's steps scrambled away, high heels.
“Don't!” a woman screamed.
“He's just going for a visit,” the mujihadeen said. “He'll be right back.”
They trotted him down the street, tripping over cracks in the concrete. One gripped his burned hand and when he tried to pull away held tighter. They stopped, a car door snapped open and they shoved him in between them, a wide plastic seat smelling of fish oil, rust and dust. The car lurched forward pinning him to the back of the seat. A Mercedes diesel’s rough roar, the shocks gone, wheels banging in holes, jolting him left, then right, up the hill and over the top, down and up other streets, no end, once an ambulance screaming by, the smell of hot honey and spices – a shop somewhere. He tried to remember the turns but lost track, the car bottomed through ruts then jerked to a stop, a hurried conversation with someone through the driver's window. It lurched forward, uphill, always uphill now, stink of open-air sewers, burned rubbish, dead animals – he was back in Shatila.
Up an alley, round something in the middle of the street, the driver cursing, the car tipped, sliding Neill against one of the mujihadeen, the driver revved and pulled through, tires screeching, the car braked hard, dumping them forward then back then forward again as it drove over a mound and stopped. They walked him up seven steps and across a concrete porch into an empty-sounding room with a low, echoing ceiling. A door clicked shut.
“Take it off,” a woman said.
Fingers yanked the cord at the back of his neck, pulled off the hood. He held his hands over his eyes to shield the light. “You have five minutes,” she said.
He faced her, blinking. “You could have just given me the damn address. Why this hush-hush? This silly blindfolding? I'm not your enemy.”
She was two dark eyes out of a dark slit. “You've used fifteen seconds.”
36
“HOW ARE you, Layla?”
“We're here to discuss my husband.” Her voice, which he remembered so sweet and light, came deeply out of the black gown.
“Every day, Layla, for more than twenty years –”
She shook her head. “We'll only speak Arabic, so Feisal and Rastaf understand.”
He glanced at the two mujihadeen who'd brought him. “Then I'll speak English. Just to say your name, Layla –”
“You now have four minutes.”
“Do you remember, Layla?”
“If you're this crazy I'll tell my husband not to see you.”
Every time she said “my husband” his heart clenched. “You're the love of my life, the brightest happiness. The greatest pain.”
“Has so little happened in your life,” she snapped in English, “that you're willing to live in such a tiny part of your past?”
“It's where you lived!”
She stood. “That's insane!”
He caught at her arm, her cowl slid back and underneath it her hair was lustrous chestnut black; she swerved aside holding her veil, and it seemed crazy to