It's a steaming mess and Jesus Christ only knows what'll happen.

Mine's a Jack Daniel's. Double.

Well, since you insist, Brother-of-Mine, here's the back-story. The day before I flew home, I was on guard duty in the Eski – that's the interview room at the base. Hot as hell during the day, the Eski ... Used to be a storeroom, and still looks like one, but we put in a one-way window. Come night, you freeze your tits off in there. Toseland – that Toseland – was interviewing this local doctor, with Sergeant Bax. The doctor's name was Shariba, and he'd been brought in about a militiaman who'd been killed a few days earlier. The militiaman's face'd been … Well, 'dismantled by spanners' was one phrase what cropped up. After being tortured, he'd been shot in the heart, and left for dead. But the bullet, see, just grazed the heart, so he didn't die straight off. This taxi driver, who'd just stopped for a piss in a ditch, found him and took him to hospital. Doctor Shariba'd operated on him, but his haemorrhaging was too chronic. But just before he died, he said the crew who'd done him over'd been taking orders from a British officer who'd looked like – I josh not – David Beckham.

With me so far?

Doctor Shariba'd trained in frigging Canterbury, of all places. Spoke English better than me, and knew a foreign journalist or two.

He'd spoke to one of them about his mutilated patient.

So this hack, being a hack, sniffed around till he'd unearthed a few witnesses who'd seen – or claimed to have seen – the militiaman being bundled into an armoured Red Cross vehicle, and before you know it, there's a piece in a paper back home asking if the War on Terror now includes Death Squads, and one of the minister's aides'd cut short our Major Dane's beauty sleep with orders to 'establish the facts'.

Which is why Doctor Shariba was sitting there in the Eski.

Thing is, the facts Toseland and Sergeant Bax wanted weren't the same as the facts the minister was after. They'd cuffed the doctor, like a common prisoner, and were asking him how many militiamen he'd patched up and sent on their merry way to slaughter innocent civilians and our peacekeepers.

'Slaughter is your business,' says Shariba, 'medicine is mine.'

Toseland says that's very saintly, very Martin Luther King, but had he forgotten that the hospital he worked in was paid for by Coalition funds?

Shariba asks Toseland if he'd forgotten that the hospital he once worked in was razed by Coalition bombardment?

Bax asks Shariba if he'd enjoyed his five minutes of fame in a British newspaper.

Shariba says no, the article'd made his stomach churn.

''Cause it misrepresented you?' checks Bax.

The doctor replies, 'Because it represented the facts on the ground so well.'

Toseland asks why he'd 'germinated' rumours of 'death squads' instead of raising the matter with the appropriate authorities?

Shariba half laughs, and is like, '"Appropriate authorities"? Where?'

Then Bax says, dead casual, he understands Shariba has twin boys.

Bax looks, and sounds, and is, a 100% frigging ASBO from an inbred rat-nest on the Isle of Man. He'd often boasted he'd be serving life somewhere if a borstal officer hadn't steered him to the army recruitment office.

But Shariba wasn't intimidated.

He'd seen so much death, I s'pose. Even more than us.

Calm as you please, Shariba just asks Bax if he is threatening his family.

Toseland says of course not, oh of course not, my colleague was merely pointing out that if the good doctor wants his children to grow up in a lawless shithole run by crazed Allahintoxicated thugs answerable to no one, elected by no one, then inciting violence against the forces of reason is the right way to go about it.

Shariba just raises his wrists and rattles his handcuffs.

'Standard procedure,' says Toseland, 'for everyone's protection.'

'My point,' says the doctor, 'precisely.'

Bax asks Shariba who put him up to it. Which faction.

Which cleric.

Shariba says, 'Does my conscience count as a faction?'

Toseland tells him he's being used as a propaganda pawn.

Shariba says he's got a duty to highlight abuses, and a right, as per, he says, 'the Universal Declaration of Human Rights'.

Bax is like, 'Come a-frickin-gain?'

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Then Shariba actually starts reciting it. There and then. This legal document.

Toseland and Bax are stunned as mullets. Then they shit themselves laughing. Toseland's like, 'We thought this was the ninth century, camels and opium and ragheads with AK-57s as far as the eye can see, but no: it's High Court at the Old Bailey. What's next? An application for Legal Aid and a Frappuccino?'

Just then Toseland's cell phone goes off.

He and Bax're required elsewhere, he says, for a little while.

So out they go. The Eski door clangs shut. Bolted.

With some interviewees – ones with murder instead of eyeballs – you keep your hand near your gun. Doctor Shariba, though, is not low risk, he's no risk. So I just stand in my corner and watch a foot above his head.

A minute passes.

Maybe there's the sound of a Hercules coming in, maybe not.

Insects sort of tick in the walls, like clocks.

Doctor Shariba speaks. He says, 'What part of the Disunited Kingdom are you from, Private?'

I tell him sentries can't speak with interviewees.

He guesses, 'Somerset? Dorset? I went to Stonehenge, once.'

I can't reply and I don't.

He says, 'I expected stars and druids. I found fog and a motorway.' Then he tells me how one time a Sikh physio from Newcastle upon Tyne came to work at his hospital. Nobody in

the place understood a word he said. A nurse from Glasgow had to be his interpreter till all the staff got used to him.

Then I coughed. I'd waited for this cough to clear up for a month, but it'd never. Didn't want to gob it out on the floor, so I sort of spat it into a bit of paper.

Shariba says, 'Bronchial infection is my guess, Private.'

I s'pose I said, like, 'Oh yeah?'

He says it's probably viral, but precautionary antibiotics wouldn't hurt.

I mutter, 'Okay.'

Some more minutes go by.

We was sweating like roast pigs. The midday heat there, is ... like the sky is one massive sun, one massive ... halogen bulb. Swear to God, you piss through your skin-pores. There's a ceiling fan, but it's a pile of shite what just paddles heat around. There's some bottles of mineral water on a shelf, and Doctor Shariba asks, 'May I have some water? Otherwise your medic will have to use a solution of electrolytes, ideally via a drip ... assuming a clean needle would be spared for a raghead.'

I brought him a bottle, unscrewed the cap and held it to his lips.

He glugged down half of it, and thanked me.

He'd seen my wedding ring and asked if I was married.

If Bax or Toseland was in the Observation Room, they'd've flayed me, so I daredn't answer.

Next up, Doctor Shariba asked if I knew Canterbury.

Again, I did my Coldstream-Guard-ignoring-a-tourist bit.

'Nice place, Canterbury,' he said. 'No IEDs hidden in animal corpses. No illegal checkpoints. No legal checkpoints. A park for footy and frisbees, the cathedral, a cinema, a nice Sainsbury's with a clever roof. Good place for children. You have children, don't you, Private?'

He clocked my surprise and said how our 'Enlistment by Nature' – being a father, he meant – shows up, even on young faces. He asked if I'd got a boy or a girl. He wasn't expecting an answer, but that was cool. Separation from a wife and child is hard, he said, like he meant it, and knew it ... maybe it was lucky we was in the Eski, 'cause if we was ... here, say, in a cubby hole in the Black Swan, I might've ended up telling this Muslim stranger all about the twins, all about Chloe, all about Chris-in-Sales, Chris-on-42K, Chris-Who-Lives-In-Worcester-and-Not-In-A-Portakabin-In-A-War-Zone, and how Chloe says, 'Oh, he's got a heart of gold but he's not my type at all', but won't meet my eye.

Fuck it, none of this is about that.

Another Jack Daniel's, Brother-of-Mine. A double, yeah.

If Doctor Shariba sounds cocky, he weren't: he just had guts.

Or p'raps he was talking ten-to-the-dozen to keep himself calm.

Wish I'd just risked it and asked him why he hadn't stayed put. In Kent.

Why wasn't he playing footy with his kids in a park in Canterbury?

Most of the Western-trained professionals got out before the invasion.

Had he come back just to help, where his people needed him most?

'Cause if that ain't heroism, what is?

Any road, the Eski door's unbolted: in tromp Bax and Toseland.

Toseland orders me outside with a nod, and follows me.

I'm shitting my cacks he's going to bollock me for giving the prisoner some water, but no, he just takes me next door, to the Observation Room. Toseland says how Shariba's acting

the cunny funt just 'cause he speaks a bit of Legalese. He says how Sergeant Bax is now going to perform his Oscar-winning role of Uniformed-Thug-On-The-Edge-Of-Breakdown.

Total eedjit I am, I ask Toseland what is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?

Toseland just mutters, 'Who gives a rat's turd, Private Yew.'

He nods at the observation window. 'Watch a Master at Work.'

Sure enough, Bax is already flashing his MK1.

Toseland says this technique is permitted, sort of, as long as the cartridges are blanks. 'Like water-boarding,' he says, 'without the water.'

'The beauty is,' Toseland adds, 'Raghead thinks they're live.'

Bax is faking losing it really well. His veins're bulging.

Over the crackly intercom, he's all effing and blinding and I do this for a living and I know when you're lying 'cause I've heard the same fucking lies day after day after day after fucking day and I've had it up to here with your bullshit excuses and your bullshit country.

Doctor Shariba doesn't take his eyes off the gun.

'Where's your "declaration of human rights" now, Sunshine?' murmurs Toseland.

Toseland asks me if I know what dramatic irony is.

I say No, Sir, but the captain doesn't enlighten me.

Bax sort of ... wags the pistol, like it's a stubby finger, going you, you, you ...

Doctor Shariba says, 'Is this what you call "winning hearts and minds"?'

Then Bax's gun goes off.

The doctor's still there, his eyes shut in shock, and I'm like, Okay, it's okay, he's okay, it was only a blank ...

But then why'd Bax give away his own bluff so soon?

This red hole in the doctor's forehead opens up, like a new eye.

His chair sort of squeaks ... and his head cracks the table.

A live round'd got mixed up with blanks.

Bax is ... y'know ... like ... something half-melted in Madame Tussauds.

Toseland sort of hisses, like a puncture. He says, 'You Royal Fuck-up.'

Time for my therapy with Doctor Jack Daniel's: cheers.

Well, what a strange beastie is the British Army.

It'll issue us with binoculars so shit that I have to get you to buy a decent pair from Argos in Malvern sodding Link and send them out. It'll patch up VHF radios twenty years older than us – I josh not – so we have to use our mobiles. Great security, that. It'll order five hundred men from A to B but forget ground transport, so we have to scav Unimogs – think of a tin box on a tractor – off of the Estonians for Chrissakes. But give the British Army a nice cover-up, give it a rash of suicides at Deepcut Barracks, give it a juicy Bloody Sunday, then oh, just watch – world-class gold medal performances all round.

First thing Toseland did was to lock me in a cleaning cupboard.

Straight up. 'View this as a Pause Button, Private,' he said.

Two hours later, he brings me into the Eski. It stinks of disinfecting fluid, and it's spotless. Toseland tells me how Doctor Shariba left the base alive and well and cheerful at 16:00 hours after helping us establish the facts.

Toseland made me repeat it, three times, like we was Freemasons.

Alive and well and cheerful.

Toseland isn't a man who gives, like, explicit threats.

Explicit threats are for pussies.

My leave gets shoved forwards. My clobber's even packed for me, so I can't mingle with Brooksy and the others: not so much as a 'See ya in a month, Cocksuckers.'

Waiting for the transport plane, sat on a pile of tents in a hangar, humble Private Yew gets a visit from Major Dane. Major Dane tells me how some truths are – get this – 'curative' but others are 'toxic', and he'd heard I'd witnessed a truth of the toxic variety, a 'toxin' what'd 'exacerbate tensions' if it ever reached certain quarters of the media. Do officers go on a special course, 'How to Speak Utter Wank'? There are journalists, says Major Dane, who'll exhibit war's uglier faces, say 'What a fearless fellow am I' and then fuck off to a tenured post in a College of Journalism before the retaliatory mortars come raining down on the regiment – not to mention the civilians, 'as innocent in all of this, Private Yew,' he says, 'as Chloe, Jim and Jess.'

Major Dane said their names like he was their uncle.

Me, I just wanted to belt the smug git one.

Three days and three planes later you, Brother-of-Mine, and Dad meet my train at Worcester Shrub Hill. A month's leave. Bosom of my Darling Wife. Home comforts. That afternoon in the Eski was all a bad dream, cleaned up and taken care of, and everything's hunky-dory, right?

Right?

Fast forward to this evening when I'm doing Jimbo and Jess's bath. Jimbo's on about Chris-in-Sale's Toyota Landcruiser and their day at Legoland for the gazillionth time, and I'm like, That's nice Jimbo, and my mobile rings. It's either you or Dad 'cause this phone's new and nobody knows the number.

Captain Toseland is who it frickin' is.

He sort of ... sings, deadpan, Knowing Me and Owen Yew; Ah-haa; There is nothing we can do. When I'm not exactly laughing my tits off, he asks what Abba ever did to me. I tell him I heard the joke a few times in my life, Sir, and he says, 'I'll bet you have, Private, I'll bet you have.' He's phoning from the base to keep me in the loop, he says, prior to my 'homecoming' next month. Sergeant Bax is reassigned: that's Intelligence-heads, here today, gone tomorrow. Sadly, the valued member of the medical fraternity, Doctor Shariba, who left our base alive and well and cheerful was abducted and shot through the head. Some gang of ragheads did it. Wouldn't be the first time they'd killed a doctor for being a stooge of the Occupiers. Or for being educated. Or speaking English. Or shaving. Take your pick. Toseland then asks me if I share his fascination for Linguistics.

I said I gave up French when I was 14 'cause I was crap at it.

Toseland says it's always fascinated him how there's so many words for the same thing ... 'whistleblower'; 'informer'; 'grass'; 'backstabber'; 'Judas'. Didn't I find that fascinating too?

I say, 'Yessir.'

He says I've got a promising future. End of call.

Chloe comes in, sees my face, and asks who it was. I said it was you, saying you might be a bit late.

Sorry, Bro. You might have to lie for me.

Swear to God, Toseland's a mindreader, even halfway round the planet.

I mean, look. This is all wrong.

It's so wrong, it's not even wrong. It's ... poison.

It's here ... under my ribs. I can feel it. It's a stone.

What happened was an accident ...

Stupid and terrible and tragic, but to pretend it never happened, like, for my regiment, for Granddad's regiment, just to say, No, we never did nothing, Sir, we never saw nothing, Sir, it was one of the other boys, Sir ...

That's what a coward does.

Who gives Doctor Shariba's twins their bath, now, eh?

S'pose I do keep my mouth shut?

What's the difference, then, between me and Bax?

But s'pose I speak up?

S'pose I find that same reporter and tell him, 'Sergeant Bax shot Doctor Shariba by mistake and the army covered it up?'

Will that bring anyone back from the dead?

Maybe make an article in The Guardian, below the sudoku.

The news guy on Radio 4'll say, 'How awful, army running amok as usual, and now, with news of Liverpool's first serious title challenge since 1991, here's Colin ...'

Toseland made it pretty plain what he'd do to me.

He'd make sure Brooksy and the boys'd know what to think, too ...

We'd die for each other. We do die for each other. Remember Granddad banging on about how your platoon's the tightest family you'll ever have? Dead right: that's why so many of us end up divorced. Back home, when you talk about the shit, the bad shit ... and the bad dreams that go with the bad shit, people – civilians – Dad, Chloe, even you – you say, 'It's okay, Owen, I understand' ... and you ain't lying, you think you do get it, but No. You fricking don't. Sorry. You can't. Pray to God you never do know. Only other squaddies get it.

Were things this fucked-up for Granddad, in Egypt?

P'raps it's easier to justify shitty means in a clean good-versus-evil war?

Uncle Tom in the Falklands, even. Bad start, nasty middle, clear end ...

What would you do?

'Cause I just dunno, Brother-of-Mine. I do not know.

Looked up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Learnt it off by heart, I did.

Want to hear it?

David Mitchell is the author of Cloud Atlas, Number 9 Dream and Black Swan Green.

This short story is taken from Freedom: Short Stories celebrating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Amnesty International / Mainstream), a collection of short stories by some of the world's greatest fiction writers to mark 60 years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Contributors include AL Kennedy, James Meek, Marina Lewycka, Joyce Carol Oates, Walter Mosley, Ariel Dorfman, Amit Chaudhuri, Petina Gappah, Xiaolu Guo, Ali Smith, Kate Atkinson, Banana Yoshimoto, Helen Dunmore, Paulo Coelho and Chimanda Ngozi Adichie.