He stared at me anxiously, mopping his face with a soiled handkerchief. I was intrigued. For one thing, he’d called me mister, certainly the first time that had happened, and he was worried about me-too worried. It didn’t really make sense, but Husseini arrived before I could take it further.
His Land-Rover scattered the sheep a hundred yards on the other side of the village and braked to a halt outside the guard post. Husseini got out and came to-wards me. He stood perhaps ten yards away, staring up at me, his eyes full of hate, then turned abruptly and went into the guard post.
The sheep arrived, flooding in between the houses, spilling across the square as they pushed towards the pool on the far side. The boy I had noticed earlier was perhaps ten or eleven, small and dark and full of energy, running up and down whistling and flapping his arms in the air to keep them on the move. His three companions were typical Bedu in shabby robes, each man with his burnous folded across his face as a pro-tection against the heavy dust raised by the sheep.
They passed by, heads down, pushing the flock hard, minding their own business, bells clanking in the still-ness. It was very quiet, the sun half-way below the horizon now. Another thirty minutes and the gang would be returning from the pier and their day’s work.
The sheep were at the water, fighting each other for the best positions and the shepherds squatted against a wall watching them. The door of the guard post opened and Husseini emerged and came towards me, the two soldiers at his heels. When they cut me down, I col-lapsed in a heap on the ground. He said something or other, I couldn’t quite catch what it was, and they picked me up between them and followed him across the square to Tufik’s place.
The fat man lived alone except for some old woman who came in each day to cook and wash for him, and the house he had commandeered doubled as an office. There was a roll-top desk, two wooden chairs and a table. Husseini barked an order and the two soldiers sat me on one of the chairs and bound my arms firmly.
It was then that I noticed his whip, real rhino from the look of it, guaranteed to take the flesh from a man’s spine. He took off his tunic and started to roll up his sleeves very carefully. Tufik looked frightened to death and sweated more than ever. The two soldiers stood against the wall and Husseini picked up the whip.
‘Now, Jew,’ he said, bending it like a bow in his two hands. ‘To start with, a dozen. After that we shall see.’ ‘Major Husseini,’ a voice said softly in English. Husseini turned sharply and I lifted my head. Be-yond him in the doorway stood one of the shepherds. His right hand went to his burnous, pulling it away, revealing a tanned, wedge-shaped face and the kind of mouth that looked as if it might twist into a smile at any moment, but seldom did, grey eyes, cold as water over stone.
‘Sean?’ I croaked. ‘Sean Burke? Could that be you?’ ‘As ever was, Stacey.’
His left hand came out of his robe holding a Brown-ing automatic. His first shot took Husseini in the shoulder, twisting him round so that I looked into his face as he died. The second blew away the back of his head, driving him past me and into the wall.
The two soldiers stared stupidly, eyes widening in horror, their rifles still slung from their shoulders and died that way as a machine pistol smashed through the window and cut them down in two long bursts.
There was a kind of silence and Tufik was the first to speak, the words falling over themselves to get out. ‘I was worried, terribly worried. I thought you weren’t coming, that something might have gone wrong..
Burke ignored him. He came forward slowly and leaned over me. ‘Stacey?’ he said and touched my cheek gently with his left hand. ‘Stacey?’
There was pain on his face, something I had never seen before, and then that terrible killing rage for which he was so notorious. He turned on Tufik.