She looked from Ibrahim, her gaze warm and friendly and not at all suspicious, to Abbott, whereupon a cloud passed over her features. Not so much ‘passed’ as stayed there, threatening rain.
She shook her head. No. She knew nothing. Ibrahim thanked her. They moved on. At the next stall, Ibrahim had a longer conversation and when they moved off after another strike-out, he said to Abbott, ‘You may find this is a bit of wasted exercise, Mr Abbott. The people of Baghdad are used to watching without seeing. And they’re used to seeing without talking.’
Abbott came to a halt and held out a hand for Ibrahim to do the same. ‘Stop. Wait. If that’s the case, then you need to reassure them that this is not a military matter.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes. You.’
‘I am here as a favour to Mr Potter.’
‘Right, so do him the fucking favour and do right by me. Be clear to these people that it’s a personal matter. Nothing to do with the coalition. They’re not going to get picked up. Hoods dragged over their faces. None of that. All right, Ibrahim? Can you do that?’
Ibrahim looked at him coolly. ‘I see,’ he said. They moved onto the next stall but were waved away before Ibrahim had even had a chance to make his introductions. Abbott felt something rise within him: a mixture of panic and irritation, his hangover sawing away in his head. Aside from various assurances from Potter and Cuckoo that they would investigate on his behalf, he had nothing, literally nothing, to go on, and what was the fucking point of even being in Baghdad if he was helpless, unable to control the situation, at the mercy of a bunch of people whose language he didn’t even understand?
The news of Mowles had added yet another dimension. He was no nearer the truth – and yet somehow it was as though the truth was approaching him, ready to overwhelm him.
At the next stall, a rickety structure selling various oils in earth-enware jars, it seemed like they were going to flame out once again. This time, however, there was something more guarded about the woman’s response, something that made Abbott think that she knew more than she was letting on. Ibrahim had been holding the phone, but he snatched it away, holding it up close to the woman’s face. ‘This man. Have you seen this man?’ he barked. ‘It’s my son. It’s my boy.’ As Ibrahim tried to simultaneously translate, calm Abbott and reassure the woman, Abbott pointed a finger, moving it between the photo and his own face as though to highlight the family resemblance. ‘It’s my son. He’s missing.’
Right up in the woman’s grill, dimly registering how she recoiled from the booze fumes, he huffed in her face.
She took a step back, shaking her head furiously, her eyes darting from Abbott to Ibrahim and seeking help there, waving a hand at the same time. Abbott drew himself up, ready to insist that she told him what she knew, when he felt Ibrahim pull him away.
‘Does this sort of approach get results in your normal line of work?’ asked Ibrahim. He thrust his hands into the pockets of his suit. ‘If you want it to appear less of a military matter, then perhaps you should have made an effort to look less like a military man. You wear a sidearm and there’s no disguising that bulge at your side.’ He pointed. ‘These are people who are used to the itchy trigger fingers and the wild eyes of the Americans. The less they have to do with you, the less chance they have of getting shot. Look at the way you’re talking to me now. Look at their eyes on us. Look at how you just spoke to that woman. Perhaps, if you want their help, you should make more of an effort to appear less of an oppressor.’
Abbott took deep breaths, knowing that Ibrahim spoke the truth, cursing himself for having lost his cool. He held up a hand. ‘Translate for me,’ he said, and tried again with the stallholder. ‘I’m so sorry, ma’am,’ he said. Ibrahim translated. ‘Please accept my apologies. Do you have children yourself?’
He waited for Ibrahim to translate. The woman nodded yes. Abbott continued, ‘Then you know how important they are. My boy is missing, and I know he was here. He may even have been taken from this very street. Please, I’m begging you, please help me to find him.’
After a moment, she seemed to decide but directed her reply at Ibrahim, who nodded, thanked her and then turned to Abbott. ‘She saw Nathan,’ he said. ‘She saw him get into a car, a Mercedes, driven by a man.’
Abbott fiddled with his phone, finding a picture of Stone. ‘Was this him?’
She looked at the picture, shaking her head uncertainly, speaking to Ibrahim.
‘She’s not sure,’ relayed Ibrahim. ‘This man had a thinner face. And a beard.’
Abbott brandished the photo of Stone, complete with stubble. ‘The guy in the picture’s got a beard.’
‘Yes, but this man’s beard was—’ Ibrahim mimed on his own face.
‘A goatee beard?’
‘Yes, a goatee beard. And very neat. Very carefully trimmed.’
It didn’t sound much like Stone, thought Abbott. But then a thought occurred to him: it couldn’t be Stone. Because if Stone was taking some R & R in the Kurdish mountains, a trip apparently cut short by dying, he couldn’t also have been in Baghdad meeting Nathan.
‘A military man?’ he asked. ‘This man with the goatee beard. Was he a military man?’
Ibrahim asked the question, listened to the answer. ‘She thinks so, yes. Dressed like you, she says.’
‘Thank you,’ said Abbott to the woman. ‘Thank you so much,’ but she was already waving him away, having reached the limit of her patience with his plight, and Abbott was left wondering about the importance of what he’d just learned. As in, did it mean anything? Or was it nothing? Gradually, as he stood there, a feeling crept over him. A feeling of being watched, and he felt a pair of eyes upon him. He looked around. The stall-holders had gone back to their business. To them he was invisible once more. And then he saw them. A pair of eyes, watching him.
CHAPTER 37
‘Is everything all right, Abbott?’ Ibrahim said. The pair of them had moved away from the stalls and to a line of parked cars, dusty and shabby.
‘We’re being watched,’ said Abbott simply. He stopped, rested his hand on the butt of his Sig, gaze travelling across the front of the prison, and then turning to look around him. At the same time, he found himself acutely aware that he didn’t want Ibrahim involved in any trouble. The translator was, after all, acting on a favour for Potter. ‘You go, Ibrahim,’ he said, clapping the other man on the shoulder. ‘Go with my thanks for your help.’ He pulled an apologetic face. ‘And for your patience.’
Ibrahim nodded, sensing that trouble might be about to rear its ugly head. Sensing, also, that any trouble involving Abbott might well involve the gun at his hip or the one that hung at his side and was best avoided. He shook Abbott’s hand, wished him well in his search for Nathan, and left.
And then Abbott saw it. Crouched by the wooden struts of a stall selling blankets, rugs and throws, was a kid. Was it the same kid who had visited him last night? Difficult to see. No doubt about it, though. This kid was watching Abbott like a hawk.
Moving casually, trying to give nothing away, Abbott came closer. He waited for a beaten-up old Peugeot to pass and then crossed, turning to his left and walking parallel to the wall, which brought him closer to the kid’s hiding place.
He glanced to ensure the kid was still there. Their eyes met, and the kid got the message. He emerged from beneath the stall, threading his way between the legs of customers, and began moving quickly away, not quite running but faster than a walk.
‘Hey, kid,’ called Abbott. He felt last night’s encounter wash over him like a physical event that was half bad memory and half his hangover reasserting its presence as he began walking in pursuit. ‘Hey, kid.’ Heads turned his way and he remembered what Ibrahim had told him. ‘Hey, kid,’ he repeated, putting so much lightness in his voice he sounded like a nursery-school teacher.
The kid glanced behind him, their eyes locked again.
Yes, definitely the same kid.
‘You wanted to speak to
me last night,’ called Abbott, still in hey, guys, it’s play time mode. ‘Well, here I am now. Let’s speak. Come on, kid. Look, I’m sorry, I know I was rude last night.’
Kid could speak English, right? He was speaking English before. But whether the kid understood him now or not, it was difficult to say. Either way, he knew he was being summoned and took off now at full pelt.
Behind, Abbott grimaced, steadied the rifle at his side and started off after him, not caring about the inevitable stares he attracted, or the excited chatter he left behind. A car honked its horn, but if it was for him or not he didn’t know. Instead, he kept running.
Stupid to run in the centre of fucking Baghdad. Way to get shot. Still.
The kid took a sharp right, dashing down an alleyway strung with low-hanging washing lines.
Abbott followed, ducking the sheets, trying not to touch anything out of respect but needing to keep pace with the kid.
Ahead, the kid hung a left, dashing along an even narrower corridor that ran along the back of a row of houses. This one was strewn with bags of litter, even a discarded bed, and signs of bomb damage were everywhere, walls blackened and scorched.
At the end, the kid turned right, and Abbott felt last night’s booze rise up his throat in bile form as he reached the exit, almost losing his footing as he, too, went right, scanning the street ahead. This one was wider, a busy thoroughfare, but he spotted the kid up ahead as he reached another junction and darted left.
By the time Abbott reached the junction he knew where they were. They had left the Kadhimiya district and were entering – or, in his case, re-entering – the Al Mansour district, once known as Baghdad’s upmarket quarter.
There were more people here, including a pair of patrolling GIs who held their guns low, trying to provide a comforting, reassuring but absolutely non-aggressive presence. And if it was a trick that they failed to pull off, well, that was hardly surprising when the diplomats who gave them their orders were also failing at it.
They looked sharply at Abbott and he slowed to a fast walk, giving them a wave as though to say, ‘Nothing to see here, folks,’ and they nodded and moved on. He continued, mindful of the lined faces and watchful eyes of the locals upon him.
In front of him he saw a familiar sight and knew where he was at once. He caught sight of the kid turning a corner up ahead. Sure enough, when he did the same, the walls of Mahlouthi’s villa stood before him, instantly recognisable, thanks to the greenery that covered almost every inch, a sudden, verdant explosion of plant life in what was otherwise a world made entirely of stone and sand and dirt.
Hanging back now, Abbott watched as the kid entered the villa through a wicket door at the front. He considered simply marching up and banging on it himself – after all, the invite had already been extended – but decided against it. If this was the trap, he was in no mood to be the mouse.
So …
At the side of the villa, he knew, was a service hatch for access to the irrigation and heating systems below the complex. He went there now, dragging out his keys at the same time. There on the keyring was a special attachment, the kind of thing that back home he’d used to bleed the radiators, in a time when he carried out domestic, homely tasks such as bleeding radiators, except this one was slightly bigger.
It still fit the service hatch. He unlocked it, raised the metal cover and let himself down the ladder beneath, reaching up to close the hatch behind him.
Some steps later he was bent double as he made his way along a walkway to a door at the far end, his head brushing the piping above.
The same key worked again. He stepped through.
Now he was in the belly of the villa, in a small corridor behind the kitchen. As he knew, Mahlouthi had let most of his staff go during the war. For a while, the villa’s only residents had been Mahlouthi and the four SF guys, and it was only a sense of order instilled in them by the army that had kept the place from falling to rack and ruin. Even then they’d grown sick of all the domestic chores, and after plenty of rumblings about being soldiers not cooks and cleaners, they’d insisted that Mahlouthi employ a guy to help run the household, which he did. A bloke called Tommy.
Standing at the kitchen door, Abbott tried to remember the location of the door compared to the layout of the room, weighing up his options: try sneaking in, or go in quick and take whoever was in there by surprise?
He went for option B, holding the Sig two-handed, sweeping the sight around the large room as he stepped smartly through.
Nothing.
The kitchen, as large as he remembered it, ordered and tidy, yawned emptily at him. At its centre was the table around which they’d sat during the evenings, sinking beers and taking the piss out of each other, sharing war stories and – in Stone’s case, at least – making big plans for the future.
Was that where it had all gone wrong between them? he wondered. In the army, your main consideration was sticking together and following orders. The soil simply wasn’t rich enough for individual personalities to flower. Afterwards, however, was when your horizons didn’t so much broaden as alter, and all those different aspirations became apparent.
What had Abbott wanted? Enough money to finance his booze habit and pay maintenance. But beyond that? He wasn’t sure then and even less sure now. Something different to Stone, that much was for certain.
Now, he thought. To business. If Nathan were in the villa – and Christ, yes, please let Nathan be in here somewhere – then where would he be? He knew the entrance to a wine cellar. He knew that very well, of course. Gently, he opened the kitchen door, seeing another but much more opulent corridor in front of him.
Quietly he moved forward – and then stopped. At his neck was the barrel of a gun.
CHAPTER 38
The voice was Cockney by way of Oz. ‘Mockstralian’, you might call it. And Abbott recognised it immediately. ‘Well, how about that?’ it said, ‘It’s the Monk.’
As a nickname, Monk had never really stuck with Abbott. Not like Badger for Mowles, Fingers for Stone, or the nickname they had given to Burton, the guy holding the gun on him now …
‘Biscuits,’ said Abbott, angling his neck away from the barrel of what he knew would be an AK-47. Burton had never met an AK he didn’t love. ‘Still working for Mahlouthi, eh?’
There was a chuckle. The gun came away. Relaxing now, Abbott holstered his sidearm, and turned to face Burton, who pulled the AK into the crook of his arm and saw Abbott’s eyes on it. ‘AK-forty-seven is the tool.’ He grinned.
‘Don’t make me act the motherfucking fool,’ finished Abbott.
Grinning, the two men embraced, Abbott pulling apart to appraise Burton more carefully. His old mate had ‘gone native’ with his long beard and flowing clothes. His hair had grown too, of course, and his sun-weathered skin crinkled as he smiled, only adding to the effect. ‘Yeah, still working for Mahlouthi. Still providing personal security. It’s a living, yeah?’ He gestured. ‘Keeps me off the streets. Personal security. Which includes dealing with intruders – like your good self, mate.’
Nevertheless, noted Abbott, Burton was not at all surprised to see him. Which figured. If Mahlouthi knew he was back in the city – and had even dispatched an envoy to speak to him – then Burton would, too.
‘You were expecting me?’
Burton shrugged. ‘Sooner or later.’
‘Mahlouthi told you.’
‘He tends to share little details like that with his chief security officer.’ Burton smiled sardonically. ‘What I don’t know is what you’re doing in Baghdad.’
‘I’m looking for Nathan,’ said Abbott.
‘Nathan …’ Burton looked confused, trying to place the name. ‘Nathan, my son. Nathan. Is he …?’ No, of course he’s not here. ‘Have you heard anything about him?’
One side of Burton’s mouth pulled upward. ‘Ah, no. Why would I have heard anything about Nathan, mate?’
Abbott told him, finishing by asking if the description o
f a security guy with a neat goatee meant anything to him. ‘No, mate, can’t say it does,’ said Burton. He shrugged. ‘I mean, a lot of guys have those kinds of beards, you know?’
‘Do they? Most people can’t be arsed with fussing around, can they?’ Abbott ran a hand over his own beard. ‘OK, what do you know of Stone or Mowles?’
‘Well, Stone’s—’
‘Dead.’
‘You heard.’
‘I also heard that Mowles is the same way.’
‘Really?’ Burton was floored. ‘Christ. How?’
Abbott explained, watching Burton carefully as he did so. Burton’s mouth worked as he absorbed the news. ‘That’s not right, mate,’ he said at last. ‘Badger wasn’t the type to jump out of a plane with dodgy equipment. No fucker would.’
Abbott was nodding. ‘And Stone?’
‘What about him?’
‘Does that sound like an accident to you?’
Biscuits’ face said that he didn’t much care what had happened to Stone. ‘Look, mate. Me and Fingers had what you might call a parting of the ways. A month or so after you—’ He stopped, encountering a memory that curdled in his mind.
‘I’m sorry about that,’ interjected Abbott.
‘All right, mate, sure you had your reasons.’
‘Baghdad was the reason,’ said Abbott, hoping the explanation, airy as it was, would suffice.
‘Well, yeah, mate, I’m not saying you were the glue that held us together, but things got a bit fractious after you went, yeah? Me and Fingers, we kinda fell out and I haven’t heard from him since.’ Abbott’s mouth opened to ask the obvious question, but Burton was ahead of him. ‘Why did we fall out? Were you still around when he was going on about Executive fuckin’ Alliance?’
‘Yeah. I was and I’ve heard that he’s since done very well with it.’
‘You hear about Farlowe and Hercules?’ ‘Yeah, I heard.’
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