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  The captain pressed a speed dial, waited a few moments, then beamed at Daddy Jesus.

  “Hello, Cobra? I hope you’re still having a nice day. Yes, yes, so are we. But listen: it’s about that washing machine. Something’s come up, and we need to get it back from you.” His smile broadened as he heard the reply. “Sold it already, eh? Of course you have, Cobra, of course you have.” He winked at Daddy Jesus. “Well, you’ll just have to refund the money to your customer and get the machine back. We need it for something.” The captain rocked with silent laughter as he listened to the reply. “Oh, I see. So you’ve already given all of the money from the sale to your men, and they’ve already spent it, so you won’t be able to get the money back from them. I suppose that means you’ll need us to give you some more money now so you can buy the machine back?” Daddy Jesus shook his head and tutted. The captain continued: “And how much did you sell the machine for, Cobra? Fifteen hundred euros, eh? Well, that is a good price. I congratulate you.” His face became sorrowful. “But here’s the thing: I can’t come up with more than three hundred right now. And I want that machine back right away or there will be some very unpleasant consequences.”

  He replaced the phone. “Unbelievable, Daddy Jesus! Cobra actually thinks he can play me! Sold the washing machine indeed—inside the Easy! We’ll let him stew for a while, and then he’ll be happy to give it back for whatever we offer him.”

  “Yes, boss. McDonald’s now?”

  “By all means. But first pass me that computer; I have a narrative that I need to deconstruct and recontextualize.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  New York was pleased. Bob Reilly was very pleased. And Felicity in London was so very, very pleased that she gave Joseph and Tony the rest of the day off. As if she normally knew, or cared, whether they were working or not. Joseph decided to visit the BBC bureau downstairs, which, rumor had it, had received some supplies that day. Tony took the Land Rover and drove back to the hospital.

  Gabriel, still sedated, was unattended in the children’s ward, so Tony left some candy by his bed and departed.

  Shadows were lengthening as he parked the jeep outside Flora’s building. The apartment door was unlocked, and after a series of timid advances down the hall, calling softly, he came upon Flora’s father alone in his workshop. Tony had to address him twice before the old man turned to look at him. His expression, Tony saw, was even more distant than usual.

  “Hello, Sam,” Tony managed. “I was just wondering, has Flora come back from the hospital yet?”

  “Hospital?” asked the old man, frowning, and Tony realized his mistake.

  “Did I say hospital? I meant university. I’ve brought a couple of things to help her study. Joseph sent them. There’s a new car battery so she can run her computer more often. And I’ve printed out the full game-play manual for that flight simulator she likes so much.”

  Sam smiled suddenly. “She used to want to be a pilot when she was little. But now she’s going to be a doctor.”

  The late sun shone yellow through the dirty panes above the door, picking out the fine dust that lurched aimlessly about the gulf between the two men. Tony found himself taking a step backward, out of the workshop.

  “I tell you what, Sam,” he said. “I’ll just leave the stuff for Flora in the hallway. When you see her, please tell her I said hello.” The old man’s smile became uncertain, and Tony realized he was now invisible in the darkness of the hallway.

  “Is there anything else I can do for you, Sam?” he called, and when there was no reply, he went on: “Well, good-bye, then. See you soon, I hope.”

  He went out to the jeep to fetch the things. Returning, stooped, with both hands straining beneath the heavy battery, he used his shoulder to nudge the front door. To his surprise, Sam was waiting just inside, frowning at him.

  “Anthony, I could use a favor if your offer still stands. I need a lift in your car, with one of my appliances.”

  The jeep’s rear door was just wide enough for them to slide in the washing machine tipped on its side, but the bench behind the front seats prevented the appliance from going in all the way, leaving five inches of white casing protruding into the street. Tony improvised a cradle from the jeep’s towrope so that the machine wouldn’t slide out when the Land Rover moved off. As they started up the hill, the noise of the exhaust pipe blasted in through the open rear door, deafening them.

  Cobra lashed his donkey as hard as he could, but even on level ground it would never do better than a trot, and the road to Sam’s home sloped steeply upward. A hundred yards short of his goal, he could see quite clearly the washing machine sticking out of the Land Rover’s back door. But then the jeep was moving off, its driver deaf to Cobra’s shouts and threats, blind to his waving pistol. As it turned a corner and vanished, he gave up the chase, dealing his donkey a flurry of blows to reward it for its failure. Then, after a few moments of reflection, he drove on again, turning his cart into an alley across from Flora’s building. Tipping his cap over his brow, he settled down to wait.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  It had been full daylight when Moon staggered away from the truck stop, but by the time he reached the base’s perimeter fence it was already so dark that he struggled to find the gap in the wire. As he crawled through it, a barb snagged his carrier bag, ripping it open. Both bottles of vodka spilled into the gloomy bushes along with—unnoticed—his cell phone. As he gathered the two bottles, Moon saw that one was already a third empty. Stumbling up a low dune, he unscrewed the top and took another gulp.

  The crest of the dune gave a view across the small-arms range to a farther line of sand dunes—higher, built anew each day from windblown sand—that masked the beach. Dusk had blown the sky clear, the stars had yet to appear, and the sun lingered low in a vacant horizon.

  In front of Moon, the path continued down the face of the dune and then split left and right. The Slob’s billets lay along the path to the right, and beyond them reared the high dunes that entombed the command bunker. Above them a hard red eye, the light on the radio mast, winked at Moon knowingly. There were people over there, he remembered, who would want to congratulate him for having set the unit’s new high score that day. He saw again the scenes from that morning—in real time on his computer screen or later in slow motion on the foreign news channels—and was again gripped by nausea. The vodka wasn’t working yet.

  Moon turned left, away from the Slob, onto a path he had never taken before that rose steeply away toward a patch of pine forest. Beyond that forest, he knew, lay the camp’s eastern gate and the infantry units. It was fun to go exploring. But the sun soon dipped behind the dunes, shadows welled from the ground, and Moon had gone only a short way before he could no longer see the pine trees. Instead, he found himself twisting and stumbling through a maze of sandy humps and overgrown wet hollows. Was that still a path beneath his feet or merely dirt too fine for weeds to root in? He tried to retrace his steps, steering by the light in the west, but the ground baffled his already vague intentions. He had always assumed, having seen it only from a drone’s video feed, that the terrain around here was flat and featureless. But it threw ditches in his path, and banks of loose soil, and it scratched him with thorns and snared him in bushes. His bottles, clutched in either hand, hampered him further. Branches lunged at his eyes from the gathering darkness, and he was already beginning to panic when, on the crest of another sandy ridge, his heels flew suddenly out from beneath him. Crashing through branches, Moon slid on his back, feet first, down a nearly vertical bank of sand. Then his shoes planted themselves in loose dirt, jarring his knees painfully, and he found himself on the edge of a wide, gloomy plain of sand and gravel, shaken but still somehow upright. All was silent apart from the hiss of the breeze in the bushes above and, closer to hand, a melodic gurgle: vodka escaping from the open bottle held tilted in his hand.

  Moon decided that he must have been traumatized by his fall and took another big hit from what was left in
the bottle. He was lucky not to have been injured. But where could he go from here? Behind him was an eight-yard bank of dirt bulldozed almost vertically from the dunes, stretching north and south until it vanished in the gloaming. He was, he realized, standing on the edge of the base’s vast sunken tank park, where ranks of canvas-shrouded hulls loomed out of the dusk. To Moon, in his impressionable state, they seemed to be alive but sleeping—fat carnivorous larvae, their olive cocoons splitting to expose segmented tracks, bristling aerials, the probing stingers of their guns. Perhaps his intrusion would wake them. Terror seized Moon, and he dropped his bottles and tried to claw his way back where he’d come from. It was no use: he might make it one yard, perhaps two, up the bank, but then the soft, yielding dirt would bear him back down again, sweating and gasping, his nails clogged and raw. He lay there, panting, facedown in the soil. Then one of his hands found a bottle—the unsealed one—and, turning on his back again, he unscrewed it and took another slug. The armored vehicles were as he’d last seen them, motionless.

  There had to be a way out of this place. He levered himself to his feet, swaying. Carefully, so as not to make too much noise, he began to make his way around the edge of the tank park, keeping the bank to his left.

  It was not too much later, probably, that he finished what was left of his first bottle. He hurled it expansively off into the darkness, where it smashed against a metal hull, tinkling pleasantly. The bank still rose, an unbroken rampart, on his left-hand side. Somewhere ahead, he supposed, perhaps very close now, would be the quarters of the combat units, and beyond them the border with the Embargoed Zone. Perhaps, the vodka whispered, it was time to make his pilgrimage to the wall.

  It was a suggestion worth considering, at least, and Moon stopped, unscrewing the top of the second bottle, and leaned back against a tank track. His eye was caught by a dim blue light that flickered from a hatch that stood half open on the next tank.

  He heard muttering voices and then one of those harsh, flat splashes of sound that computers make when refusing an order. Somebody cursed. A dark shape appeared in the turret, and a match flared, replaced moments later by a glowing red point in the darkness. Moon took another nip of vodka to help concentrate his thinking: it was time he sought some help.

  “Hello?” he called to the figure on the turret. “I’m sorry to bother you. I’m just looking for directions.”

  There was a yelp, and the red point spiraled off into the night. A beam of light sprang from the turret and wavered in the darkness. “Who’s that?” hissed a voice.

  Panic seized Moon again. He saw the flashlight beam stabbing toward him. Then, just as it fixed him, his brain dredged up something he had heard long ago in his brief basic training.

  “Er . . . friend?”

  “What do you mean, friend?” demanded the man in the turret. “I’ve never seen you before!”

  “Friend, as in not foe. You’re supposed to ask me, ‘Who goes there?’ and I’m supposed to say, ‘Friend.’ It’s what you do when a sentry challenges you.”

  “Challenges you?” The light clicked off, and Moon heard the stranger mutter: “It’s just some idiot who’s got himself lost. He thinks we’re on guard or something. Thank God: I thought it was Captain Smith or that Daddy Jesus. Isn’t that thing back online yet?”

  “It’s rebooting now,” another voice whispered. “Go and find that little number you rolled before it burns down any further. I’m wise to your tricks, Johnny. When you roll, you always supercharge the first couple of inches, because you know you’ll be smoking first.”

  A dark figure plummeted down from the turret and landed beside Moon. The flashlight clicked on again, and the tanker spoke, almost in his ear. “So who are you, pal?” The flashlight searched in vain the bare cloth of Moon’s tan sleeves, then went up to his lieutenant’s bars, then winked out again.

  “Oh, sorry, sir. What are you, some kind of pilot?”

  Moon thought of the events of that morning. “Yes. That’s right. Some kind of pilot.”

  “Hey, Lenny,” said the tanker, raising his voice, “guess what: it’s a pilot!”

  Another figure thudded to earth on the other side of Moon. “No way, Johnny! What would a pilot be doing way out here in the tank park at night?”

  Moon straightened his back and hooked both elbows behind him so they were supported by the tank track. The open vodka bottle, still almost full, was clutched in his right hand. “I’m out for a little stroll,” he declared. “A spot of ground liaison. My own personal inspection.”

  There had been quite a few S’s in that speech, Moon reflected. Too many, perhaps. There was a silence, and then Lenny spoke again. “Is that a bottle you have there, sir?”

  “Indeed it is, soldier.” Moon’s new companions had a pleasant, herbal smell. “But you don’t have to call me sir,” he went on, passing the bottle to Lenny. “Why should we let differences of rank spoil a nice evening? By the way, I can see that thing you’re looking for. It’s still burning, just over there.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Stifling a yawn, Captain Smith moved his computer so that its screen was visible both to himself and to Flint Driscoll, seated on the other side of his desk. Driscoll hunched forward in his chair, notebook open.

  “Before we go any further, Captain,” he said, “I take it that this alleged footage was produced by a local-hire camera crew and not by regular 24/7 staff from outside the Embargoed Zone.”

  “Of course. We’ve complained about them countless times and asked 24/7 to shut down its Easy bureau in view of its clear proterrorist bias. But something tells me that this latest incident might be the final straw.”

  “It will be if I have anything to do with it.”

  Captain Smith rubbed his eyes and then, supporting his cheek with an elbow propped on the desk, reached out to activate the computer’s media player.

  “It really is hard to know where to begin, there are so many issues to address.” Smith fast-forwarded through the first few seconds of 24/7’s broadcast, then stopped. “Now here, you see, is the first big question mark. As I’m sure you’ll know from the movies, air strikes produce large explosions of orange and black flame and big eruptions of dirt and debris.” Driscoll nodded and made a note.

  “But here the so-called explosion”—the captain played it through again—“looks nothing like that. All you have is this puff of smoke and dust and a ring of flying dirt.” He replayed it again. “Now, if it had been a real air strike, you’d also expect to see these bodies catapulted twenty or thirty feet through the air, but instead they just fall over and lie around. It’s not very convincing, is it?”

  Driscoll lowered his pen. “I think I can see where you’re going with this.”

  This time the captain did yawn. “I’m sure you can, Dr. Driscoll. You’re a very shrewd man.” He reactivated the media player.

  “Now, as you’ll see here, in the second after the explosion the camera zooms in so that you can see nothing but the dust cloud. The jerkiness of the image and the garbled soundtrack—the apparent sound of the cameraman whimpering above a background of purported screams—make this seem authentic. But watch closely.” He played a few more frames of the clip. “Now, there you saw the camera zoom out again from the dust cloud, and as the cloud clears, you can see dead terrorists lying together, mutilated and covered in blood. And all in one continuous shot. Right?”

  Driscoll stared back at him expectantly. The captain waited, measuring the appropriate pause, and then plunged ahead. “Right? Well, let me sketch out a little scenario for you, Doctor: when Alfred Hitchcock was making Rope, he wanted the movie to look like it was filmed in one long continuous shot. But in those days a film camera could only go ten minutes before it had to be reloaded. So in Rope the camera zooms in every few minutes, for no apparent reason, on somebody’s jacket, or on a blank wall, or whatever, and then zooms out again. Of course, these zooms were used to conceal the edits made when the film had to be reloaded. Just as the ter
rorists could have used the dust cloud in this shot to hide their own trickery.”

  “I want you to spell it out for me,” Driscoll said grimly.

  Smith shuffled his hands, miming a conjuring trick. “Consider this scenario: the terrorists film a shot of some of their younger cadres posing as children. Then they detonate a large concealed firework to create the first dust cloud. Then they shut off the camera and rearrange their youth members—heavily made up or perhaps actually killed and mutilated by their own leaders for extra verisimilitude—lying on the ground. Then they start the camera again and set off a second firework, so that when the dust clears, the bodies are seen lying there as if stricken by one of our missiles. Then, hey presto! All the terrorists have to do is edit the two dust clouds together, remove any footage that was shot between them, and they are left with what looks like the before and after of a missile strike!”

  “Why, the dirty lying scum!”

  “They hate our freedoms, Doctor. I’ve been fighting terrorism for more than twenty-five years now. I guess in your own way you have too.” Driscoll nodded. The captain leaned forward and frowned. “But you know, I still sometimes have to ask myself, Doctor: Where does this evil come from? This hatred? These lies?”

  He fixed his guest with a look of grim resolution. “But evil and lies will not prevail, will they, Doctor? The terrorists are smart, yes, but they always slip up, as they did again today.” He played back the footage. “To give only one glaring example, here you can hear the cameraman screaming, ‘They’re dead, they’re dead, they’re all dead.’ Yet when you look more closely, you can see that this one here—the one pretending to have had his legs blown off—is twitching. Which proves that the whole incident was fabricated. And it gets worse: I want you to pay particular attention to this actor here, the midget, who is being dragged off by this young female terrorist. In the corner of this later shot”—he clicked forward—“you can even see her embracing him. They are probably congratulating themselves on their part in this charade.”