A second shot echoed back.

Two Grizzly APCs had pulled up at the gates, and men with automatic rifles were disembarking.

She needed to get away from here right now.

She looked for the jeep.

It was gone.

Faulkner must have been moved on by the security detail.

The short battle was over now, and the Manage Risk men were beginning to round up the protesters.

A meat wagon drew up.

More armed men disembarked.

Beatrix couldn’t afford to be arrested.

The girl slipped her small hand into hers and pulled her away from the gates.

“We must get away from here,” she said, as if reading Beatrix’s mind.

“Where?”

“Come with me.”

Chapter Eighteen

Beatrix followed the girl. She walked quickly, with a determined stride, and led her a quarter mile away from the facility, heading south. She didn’t speak. Beatrix fixed the ripped abaya as best she could, managing to obscure the fact that she wasn’t local. A couple of extra Grizzlies rumbled past, but the girl reached up and took Beatrix’s hand again, and they paid them no heed. Beatrix’s face was obscured by the shawl, and they would have looked like a mother and her child.

“Who are you?” the girl asked her as they walked.

“My name is Beatrix.”

“You are not Iraqi.”

“No.”

“American?”

“English.”

“You speak excellent Arabic.”

“Thank you. I’ve had a lot of practice. What’s your name?”

She looked across at her doubtfully, as if her name was something to be guarded. “It is Mysha,” she said at last.

“Hello, Mysha. Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For helping me. That was getting very unpleasant.”

“No. I must thank you. I was going to be trampled.”

“You shouldn’t have been there. How old are you?”

“Twelve.”

“Then you definitely shouldn’t have been there.”

She ignored that. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Why were you there?”

“I’m a journalist.”

“The television?”

“Yes.”

“You were there to report on it?”

“That’s right.”

She was quiet, as if musing on Beatrix’s answer.

Another Grizzly went by, and then a series of police cars, lights flashing and sirens howling. Beatrix knew she had to get off the street. If Duffy had seen her, and that was more than possible, then he would put men into the area to look for her. Her disguise was rudimentary, at best. It wouldn’t hold up. She had to get into cover.

They walked on and reached one of the small shantytowns that Beatrix and Faulkner had driven through earlier. It was comprised of sun-baked mud huts and lean-tos that looked like they would collapse with the faintest breath of wind. Some had corrugated metal roofs; others were wrapped over with mismatched tarpaulins. The houses were penned in by piles of scrap metal and bright green lakes of raw sewage. The streets were thick with rubbish, sickly sweet as it rotted in the heat. There would occasionally be a break in the line of huts, and the gap would be stacked high with trash, black plastic bags that had been ripped open by hungry animals, spilling their fetid contents into a thick, cloying soup. A mangy dog slunk across the road, his belly on the dirt. Two rats followed him. They passed a girl drinking from a broken water pipe. There was a woman perched on the piles of trash, picking out and emptying plastic bags. The other women wore hijabs, many in colours other than the usual black, perhaps in an attempt to inject a little vibrancy into what must have been a monotonous, difficult existence.