By taking their equipment, the shepherd had sold himself.

He pulled on his loose-fitting trousers, knotted the string at the waist, then drew over his head that week’s shirt and a thick woollen sweater, gently unravelling where the thorns had plucked at it, then a heavy coat. He sat on the bed and slid into his still-wet shoes. He wound a turban loosely around his head. From a hook beside the door he took the Kalashnikov and the binoculars that had come with the equipment. She gave him his first coffee of the day in a chipped cup. He grunted, drank it, belched, and returned the cup to her. He lifted an old television set from the floor – wires snaked from it across the room and climbed the walls before disappearing into the ceiling – pressed down the button and waited for the picture to form. It showed, in black and white, a steep-sided valley, and at the bottom of it were the gouged lines of a vehicle track. It was the same each day, and each night, deserted. But he checked it many times each day. The shepherd was conscientious because he valued the things given him when he had sold himself.

He went out into the dawn light. He cut along the side of his home, shielding his eyes from the low slant of the sunlight, and hurried to the small building of concrete blocks that protruded from the end of the one-room house. He rapped three times on the wood door, the signal, heard the footfall within, then the grate of a bolt being withdrawn. The door was opened. As he did every day at the end of the night watch, his son embraced him, kissed both his cheeks.

The shepherd stepped inside. There were no windows in the room. The generator chattered in the corner. In the dim light the dials of the military radio glowed brightly.