Dancing the Code Part 10

Everything's under control, thought the Brigadier. I hope.

The Sahara desert wasn't very interesting, Jo decided. So far, it seemed to consist of mile after mile of dusty emptiness, broken by the occasional stunted tree. It hadn't even been sunny at first, although as they drove south the sun had slowly broken through the clouds and it had begun to get hot.

Abdelsalam had driven them at breakneck pace to what Vincent described as a 'safe house'. To Jo's surprise it had been in the French quarter, amidst tall white colonial houses, above a street cafe. There had been much shouting and rejoicing at their return, then the distant wailing of police sirens had sent them through a back alley to a garage where they picked up a Land Rover - old and battered, but ready-filled with petrol, water drums, and a couple of Kalashnikovs in the back. Camouflage jackets were found for Vincent and Catriona. Jo was given a yellow cotton headscarf to wear, and false papers saying she was the cafe owner's wife. Abdelsalam and Belqua.s.sim - whom they had left behind somewhere in the cafe - reappeared in full Kebirian Army uniform, complete with French-made machine guns. Abdelsalam got in the driver's seat, Belqua.s.sim had the other. Vincent, Catriona and Jo rode in the back on the bare metal platform. They heard sirens frequently and once Abdelsalam turned down an alley to avoid a traffic queue which might have led to a roadblock, but otherwise there had been no incidents.

Jo looked up at Catriona, but the reporter was asleep, her head lolling on her shoulder, her mouth half open. Jo saw that Vincent had placed a piece of cloth behind her head for a bolster, and was holding it in place with one hand.

He seemed so kind, she thought. And yet - It didn't seem possible that this was Al Tayid Al Tayid.

'Vincent,' she whispered.

The green eyes looked round, fixed on hers.

'Are you really a terrorist? I mean, I've seen your name in the papers, but - '

Vincent grinned. 'Stick to "revolutionary freedom fighter", eh?'

Jo blushed. 'Sorry. But -' she hesitated. 'Is that why you were in prison?'

Vincent looked away, said nothing. The Land Rover swung around a curve in the road, pus.h.i.+ng them all to one side. Catriona woke up, rubbing her eyes.

Vincent glanced at her, at last returned his gaze to Jo. 'I killed a little girl,' he said quietly.

Catriona, still rubbing her eyes, said, 'Vincent, you swore to me - off the record - '

'I killed her,' interrupted Vincent. 'It was an accident. I was aiming at her father.' He made a brief half-smile. 'I killed him too.'

Catriona had a hand over her mouth. She turned her head to Vincent. 'But Vincent, we had a campaign going, a pet.i.tion for your release. Mike Timms was going to get Leo to raise it in Parliament.

Paul Vishnya was going to write an open letter to the Secretary-General. And now you're saying you did it all along?'

Vincent looked away. 'I did it. It was a mistake, I tell you.'

'Like the bombing of the Cairo Hilton?'

'I tell you I will not go into that again!' snapped Vincent.

Jo remembered the Cairo bombing, it had happened in her first year at UNIT. She couldn't recall the exact death toll, but she knew it had been in double figures. She stared hard at Vincent, who was looking out over the tailgate.

'I don't think it's right to kill innocent people, whatever you believe in.'

Vincent swung around, his face tight with fury, his eyes staring.

'And you think that governments don't kill innocent people? You think it is okay, when soldiers walk into the camps of the Giltaz, murder the men, women and children? Or steal the children and make them slaves? You think that is "legitimate political action"? Your "United Nations", your UNITs and UNICEFs and UNHCR, they are all a sham if they do not stop these things. Your politicians, your peacekeepers, they're just to make fat westerners feel good, to let you play games with our countries, with our lives. It is all a waste of time, a joke, a farce.'

Jo swallowed, looked at the yellow cloth of the headscarf, which had come loose and was trailing over her arms.

'I still don't think you should kill civilians,' she said. 'That's just dropping to your enemy's level.'

'Jo -' said Catriona in a warning voice.

But Vincent's anger seemed spent. 'We have no choice,' he said wearily. 'We've tried everything else. It is the only way, if there is ever going to be justice in the world.'

Jo looked up at him. 'But if you want justice, why don't you give the UN a chance? I don't think it's really fair what you said about them.'

She braced herself for another blast of anger, but to her surprise, Vincent laughed. 'We give them a chance. We write to them frequently. We have friends -' he clapped Catriona gently on the shoulder '- who speak for us. But it is the United Nations Nations, you see. It is governments. They are not interested in people who are not governments.'

'That's not quite fair, Vincent,' said Catriona. 'There are a lot of people at the UN who would like to change things, and you know it.

You also know that killing tourists in a hotel lobby doesn't help their cause or yours.'

'That was two years ago,' growled Vincent.

He did look a little ashamed now, thought Jo.

'So you admit it was wrong?' she asked.

'It happened.' Vincent shrugged. 'Right or wrong won't change that.

What I do not admit is that it was not justified.'

Jo felt herself getting angry. 'But you can't justify killing people who have never done anything to you!'

Vincent's eyes flashed.

'They are part of the conspiracy against the oppressed people of the world. They are part of the silence that allows it to happen. That is justification enough.'

Jo looked down at her knees again, then back up at Vincent. 'Then you should kill me,' she said. 'I've been silent. I haven't supported your party. So I'm conspiring against you. You should pick up one of those guns and shoot me now.' She gestured at the spare Kalashnikovs under their cover of tarpaulin.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that a broad grin had formed on Catriona's face. The reporter's gaze s.h.i.+fted from her to Vincent, in antic.i.p.ation of his reply.

Vincent had obviously noticed this expression. 'You can't understand, either of you,' he said in a disgusted tone. 'You live in the West, you played with dolls when you were children, now you play politics and you think it is the same. You have never had to kill anyone.'

'That's not the -' began Jo, but Catriona interrupted her.

'I've killed someone.'

Jo and Vincent both turned to stare at her. Her face had gone pale, making the bruise stand out sharply on her cheek.

'What, today?' said Vincent. 'But you didn't tell me!'

'I wasn't proud of it!' snapped Catriona. She was almost shouting. 'I shot one of the guards outside our cell.'

Jo remembered the shot, the woman falling. Remembered Catriona throwing a pair of shoes to her - the shoes she was wearing now.

Dead woman's shoes.

She swallowed, hard.

Catriona was still talking. 'I'd forgotten about it, when we were talking just now. Jesus Christ, Vincent, I killed another human being!

How could I forget about it? Even for five minutes?' She put her head in her hands.

'You didn't have any choice,' said Jo. 'We had to get out of there.'

But Catriona only repeated, 'How could I forget it, Vincent? How is it possible to forget?' Her voice through her hands was m.u.f.fled, almost choking.

Vincent reached out and took one of Catriona's hands, held it tightly.

'There are things you have to forget, sometimes,' he said. 'If you are to live at all.'

A single flat-topped thundercloud hung over the Mediterranean, capped with gold by the morning sun. From the forty-thousand-foot alt.i.tude of the Superhawk, the Brigadier could see over the top of the cloud to the receding brown-and-green ma.s.s that was Mallorca.

Another, even more foreshortened smudge of rock and mist near the eastern horizon might have been Sicily or Sardinia. On the other side of the plane, a brown wedge of land projected into the clear blue sea: Kebiria. If he looked over the Doctor's shoulder through the front of the c.o.c.kpit, the Brigadier could see more: a white sheet of cloud covering the Kebiriz coast, and dim shadows of mountains behind it, like frozen waves on a choppy sea.

The Brigadier fingered the talk b.u.t.ton on the intercom. 'Any luck raising Rabat?'

As navigator/bombardier, the Brigadier had a complete duplicate set of controls for the radio system, but after three failed attempts at raising UNIT's North West Africa control he'd asked the Doctor to give it a try.

'Nothing there at all, Brigadier.' The Doctor's voice was crackling on the intercom, which was odd since he was only about four feet away. The Brigadier wondered for a moment whether the plane's radio systems might have developed a fault. 'I've tried Cagliari, too,'

added the Doctor. 'But I can't get a clear signal from them either. It might be that storm, you know.' He gestured at the cloud, now falling behind them.

The Brigadier grimaced. He was beginning to smell a rat; the Doctor was being altogether too helpful. He glanced at the navigation radar. 'Doctor, we enter Kebirian air s.p.a.ce in three minutes. You should start to turn now - west, I would suggest, so that we can make a landing at Cagliari.'

'Turn, Brigadier?'

I knew it! thought the Brigadier. I should never have let him pilot this thing - I should have flown him out here trussed and bound - Aloud he said: 'Doctor, may I remind you that when we last spoke to UNIT control they had still not had permission from the Kebirian government for this mission to enter their national air s.p.a.ce. You know perfectly well that if we don't turn round they're quite likely to shoot us down.'

'Oh, I expect they've given permission by now, Brigadier. And anyway if this plane is anything like a Martian Exploder we should be in there and down on the ground before they even know what's happening.'

The Brigadier took a deep breath. 'Doctor, as your commanding officer I order you to abort this mission and set a course for Cagliari.'

'Really, Brigadier! I am not a member of your brigade, nor even of HM armed forces. I am an independent advisor - '

'And you're flying an Air Force plane! I order you to turn back!'

There was a short silence. For a moment - just for a moment - the Brigadier contemplated pulling the Browning from his flight jacket and putting it to the Doctor's head.

Then he remembered.

'Well, I doubt it would do any good anyway,' he muttered.

'What was that, Brigadier?'

'We're entering Kebirian air s.p.a.ce,' said the Brigadier. He looked at the main radar, which was showing two fast-approaching blips. 'And it looks like they're coming up to say h.e.l.lo.'

Nine.

FJo hadn't expected Vincent's base to be a permanent settlement.

But even from more than a mile away, it was apparent that it was in fact a full-sized town: a town of mud-brick houses, camel-wool tents and green, irrigated gardens. The largest building was draped with two huge canvases, bearing the shapes of the Red Cross and the Red Crescent. Men and women walked in the streets, and Jo saw a bicycle winding its way between the tents. The entire settlement was surrounded by a roughly lozenge-shaped wall and ditch; Jo saw sandbagged defensive positions set into the wall, men in khaki clothes and turbans crouching behind angular, canvas-shrouded objects which could only be weapons. Beyond the walls was flat shale desert, black as tar in the afternoon heat.

Belqua.s.sim came up beside her. 'Welcome to Free Giltea,' he said, his tobacco-stained teeth showing under his dark moustache. 'Do you like it?'

Jo blinked grit out of her eyes. 'It's pretty well organized,' she admitted. She glanced over her shoulder. Vincent and Catriona were sitting on the bonnet of the Land Rover, talking quietly. Abdelsalam was still in the driving seat, smoking a cigarette and reading a newspaper. Vincent had told them that the road was mined from here on; the only safe access to Free Giltea from the Kebirian side was on foot, a route through the minefield that Vincent and his fighters kept a strict secret. The aid workers and the civilians came in from the Algerian side. The settlement itself was technically in Algeria, but in practice the Algerians ignored it and had placed their border posts about five miles away.

'We have more than ten thousand people here,' said Belqua.s.sim proudly. 'And another three thousand fighting in the desert.'

'Why can't you beat the Kebirians then?'

Belqua.s.sim looked hurt. 'The Russians gave them planes, after the revolution. The Moroccans give them money and guns now, because they help against Polisario in the south. No one gives us anything, except the Libyans, a little. And we don't trust them them.' He smiled again, suddenly. 'But we will win, one day, even so.'

'Why?'

'Because the land is ours.'