No Call Too Small
Page 10
DEAR SON,
That’s a good day’s work, but don’t get too cocky. Just when you think you know Muj, he’ll change the game on you. They’re called cowards in the news here because they won’t stand and fight, but they’re fighting the only war they can, choosing the only tactics available to an outmanned, outgunned, inferior force. To paraphrase Rummy, you’ve got your known unknowns and your unknown unknowns. You should be worrying about the latter here. Confidence is great around the men, but be humble in your thoughts and never stop learning about the country, the people.
DEAR MA,
The 5th just found one of our trucks loaded with money inside a gated compound. They sent for me because they thought I would know what to do. I didn’t know what to do, Ma. I just sat there sweating in the back of the truck with the flap closed, staring at three pallets of shrink-wrapped American hundreds, and not a single thought came into my mind. Eugene raised the flap for a peek after ten minutes but dropped it again when I glared at him. I sat there steaming away in my gear, staring at all the bundles held down by pretty yellow cargo nets, a thick layer of dust on the plastic. They all have TBD written on them in black marker, which Eugene thinks is short for To Be Determined. There you have it Ma, 50 million dollars, or maybe it’s 500 mil, filed under “Other.” It makes sense that there’d be someone looking for a pile of cash this high, but I got a feeling there’s no one chasing after this. It’s not missing; it’s lost.
DEAR SON,
I’m sure you’ll do the right thing here. I know you must be tempted, but nothing good can ever come of this. I don’t know why you think no one is looking for this money. You might have a good week or a good month. Years might go by, but one day there will be a knock on the door and they will have figured it all out, all the fragments, rumours, and facts that led directly to you. There are already too many people involved. You’ve lost control of the information. This is not a game.
DEAR MA,
I don’t think you’re getting it. Iraq is a hole in the desert that we fill with money. If a little is skimmed before it gets dumped in the hole, what’s the damage? Everything is under control. I worked out a schedule so that squads from the 3rd and the 5th can take turns guarding it, and every hour, the 6th detours one of their Predators to scan the neighbourhood for trouble. There has been no activity. No one is coming to pick up their lunch money. There is no intel, no notice, no bulletin, no frantic recovery mission through normal lines of communication or back channels. No one cares. I know what you mean about losing control though. It’s been two days and already we have leakage. The nearest pallet load has been cut open and is missing about a cubic foot of cash.
DEAR SON,
Some things can be overlooked, and some things will never be forgiven. Do you want to find out the hard way how this will turn out? It’s not too late to salvage this situation. Just say you delayed in reporting the money because you were using it as bait to catch some Muj. You’ll get into trouble for not reporting it earlier, but the fallout will be relatively minor.
DEAR MA,
Let’s be clear: I’m not stealing. This is redirected operational money. We’re running a smarter war now. No one is better at killing Muj than another Muj. Our translator hooked us up with Fareed, a local who’s plugged in to everything, including the twenty-odd groups fighting for power here, our troop rotations, patrol routes, and a whole lot of other stuff he shouldn’t know. Now that we’re buying local, we’ve been turning this town upside down. We are branching out, letting some of Fareed’s friends handle our problems directly. Why endanger ourselves when we can hire local mercs? Leakage continues, but I can’t really hold it against the guys. The war machine makes more money than God here, and even the snake eaters make a grand a day. Why should we expect these clueless meat shields to take it in the nuts for nothing? They deserve a little bonus for good performance. Our operations are so effective they’re five to a cell in the Al Baatra Prison.
DEAR SON,
There’s comes a point when even Mama can’t help. If you continue down this road, you’ll be on your own. There are people there who care about you, about your future. How much cash are we talking about?
DEAR MA,
I don’t know. The pallets are square and come up to my waist. Each bunch of hundreds is about an inch thick. You figure it out. My sources tell me some idiot just paid his buddy a grand to get him a cheeseburger from the mess hall. WTF. Monkeys, I tell ya, all of them. Monkeys. It really does make you think differently about your pay with these Baghdad Bucks floating around. Money doesn’t mean what it used to. There are even some bills starting to show up on Iraqi locals. I suppose I should have told these monkeys to shut their dick traps, but now everyone wants to visit the money truck. Was I wrong to expect more of them, Ma?
DEAR SON,
Do all the rigid rules, traditions, and protocols start to make sense now? We need them to maintain order. Power isn’t the same as authority, Son.
DEAR MA,
Friday night was race night. I sat in my chair with a six-pack and looked up at the stars while Painface played on my iPod. It was Predator vs. Alien and everybody was pretty excited as the drones did their laps around the markers, everyone looking down at the pilot’s laptop and then up at the sky. There were friendly bets with cigarettes and beer, until one of my flunky idiots pulled out a bundle of Baghdad Bucks. The hush was only temporary and soon the bills were flying. I work with monkeys, Ma. No discretion. I don’t know why I thought the guys would be smarter than that. This queasy feeling, I would assume, is caused by having my fate controlled by morons. I didn’t stop it, because gambling is important here. It lets them win at something. Everybody is screaming as Team Alien takes the final lap. The winner has to fly under the finish line, a wire seven metres off the deck we’ve strung between two poles. Team Alien is blocking the approach, so Team Predator tries to get underneath him and plows their drone into a tree. $5,000,000. I hear the guys have started to weigh money instead of counting it, like it was cocaine or something. I reckon the drone is about 10 kilos of Baghdad Bucks. Some thought repair might be an option, but when we got to the site it looked like a bag of smashed assholes. Then a fight broke out, one beefy MP doing serious damage with his Semper Fu.
DEAR SON,
Remember when you were seven and I forbade you from riding your bike on the street, but you did it anyway? Remember how I came out and starting screaming at you for pedaling out into traffic when I told you to stay in our yard? I took your bike away and told you I was going to sell it. Later, after I had calmed down and was sure you understood the dangers of riding on the road, I forgave you for your defiance and let you ride again. Do you remember that? The forgiveness and compassion I showed you? You don’t get any of that in a military prison.
DEAR MA,
These Muj, Ma, they kill me. One of Fareed’s tips led us to a crappy hovel in the southeast corner of sector 8. We set up, front and back, and waited. They’re getting better with booby traps, so I don’t like entering places much anymore. No need for it really. Ali Baba comes flying out at us with his knife held high, screaming Allahu Akbar this and la-la-la-la that, yammering on how they do about God being great and let’s go hole another American. I look behind him, around him, not fooled by his diversion. To come at us like that he would have set up snipers on the roof, his backup in the shadows of a dark doorway on our flank. I was ready to fire my 40 mike-mike into every open hole, but there was only this one guy taking on our whole squad with his knife, like the boys in the last scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, surrounded, outnumbered, doomed. I figured one shot to the chest would do it, but no, he didn’t even flinch, so everybody opened up on him, until someone’s lucky bullet bit into something vital and he crumpled to the ground. He had that look that I’ve seen so many times before, as he lay there sucking his last sharp breaths, relieved to die like that, to bleed out into the sand. Now there’s a guy who believes in Heaven. I just don’t know what to
do with these fuckheads. They’re fearless, they keep coming, and there’s an endless supply. Even if we could press a button and magically vaporize all the Muj in Iraq, there’s another batch of fourteen-year-olds being trained in northern Pakistan. Shooting them down is like shooting at flies in a pig barn.
DEAR SON,
Your father used to talk about VC being like mosquitos. They were small and easily squashed but they came on in clouds and bled you dry, one small bite at a time. We will win this with superior firepower and technology. There are 15,000 predators in use. I guess 14,999 now, thanks to the boys! It won’t be long before you’ll be able to fly your drone over Iraq from the comfort of an apartment in West Virginia. Stay the course. The tide will turn.
DEAR MA,
The tide may turn, but we’re in a desert. Last night, friends of ours wanted to show us what a good job they were doing. Fareed’s associates were eager to show their appreciation for all the Baghdad Bucks that were flowing into their circle. We entered the ground floor of a house, where they had a bad guy bound and gagged on the floor. He looked pretty out of it, like he had been drugged. I like a show as much as the next guy, Ma, but I barely had time to sit in the seat of honour before they whipped out a knife and carved off his left hand. Then his right hand and both feet. He was wriggling a little but not much, considering, and the way they had tied cord tightly at the joints there was hardly any blood. They didn’t want him to bleed out, of course, because the whole point was that he would live without hands and feet. That’s better than a simple execution. I didn’t even have time to think, completely ambushed by these savages, and I smiled the smile of anyone receiving a gift from an important person. I’m pretty sure Eugene threw up a little bit but then swallowed it, recovering nicely, realizing what was at stake. All I could think was how sharp a knife would have to be to cut through joints like they were nothing.
DEAR SON,
That’s not you. That’s nothing to do with you. I’m sure they didn’t even tell you what your digitless friend did. How do you know Fareed isn’t part of a hard-core faction that is settling old scores and getting paid by you to do it? That’s what I would do if I were in his position. Are you finding bomb gear and RPGs in those houses you’re tossing, or is it just the odd AK in the closet? That’s the equivalent of a 9-mil in the night-table drawer in America. You have no way of verifying who’s AQ and who’s not, do you? What happened to playing detective? You were doing so well on your own, and now it sounds like you are totally dependent on Fareed.
DEAR MA,
Last email for a while. Things are getting a little complicated here. Undoing is a little harder than doing, you know? I spent most of the day waiting for the right wind, as you probably know by now. Conditions were calm until later in the afternoon, and when we caught the breeze, I ordered the money truck to its new location on the outskirts of the city. The EOD guys strapped some charges to the chassis, and we backed off 500 metres, behind a rocky outcrop. Then your crusty old friend found me, standing above me where I lay on the ground, his fat head blocking out the sun. He was hilarious, standing there in full military dress, his chest full of medals sparkling in the sun. Where did you dig up that old coot? He said, looks like you got yourself a real bag of dicks there, son, but we can fix this. It was impossible to ignore his words, low and rumbling like a freight train. He had command mystique, giving low, smooth orders that simply had to be obeyed. I turned to my EOD guy and said, Blow the truck, and instead of following my orders, he looked up at the silver hair for approval. I said, Blow the truck, Specialist Murphy. It rained money on Baghdad for twenty minutes. I can’t confirm or deny, I have no knowledge but mostly, Ma, I don’t remember.
I SEE A MAN
FOR A WEEK THERE’S DRIZZLE WITH A chance of drizzle from the Vancouver sky, but today it’s sunny and cold, with frost where the sun can’t reach. My car idles in the airport parkade with my fingers still on the ignition. House calls change the relationship. I shouldn’t have come, but Paul is desperate to resolve conflicts with his father that have festered since childhood. He’s fifty-four.
Sometimes I suggest reading material to clients. Sometimes I wish I had a book with a spring-loaded boxing glove that would pop out and punch Paul in the head. I have this un-counsellor-like wish more often than I’d like. When I think of this in the middle of a session, my diaphragm starts spasming with laughter and I have to cough to cover it. I wonder if I have more unprofessional thoughts than the average counsellor. Here’s another unprofessional thought: I really want to meet Paul’s father, and not only to resolve Paul’s issues. Sedrick Prudhomme has his own Wikipedia entry and hundreds of other articles and interviews about the rise of his Bezaruti fashion line. Paul is waiting on a bench in the US Departures area, splitting his attention between CNN and a crumpled list of talking points. We sit and wait for the great man.
Ninety minutes later, a woman in her thirties marches toward us and abruptly stops. She asks if he is Paul Prudhomme, although she seems to have no doubt. She may not be perfect but I can’t see any flaws, from the photo-shoot-ready black hair to the crisp navy-blue suit that hugs her shape, the skirt tapering down to naturally tanned legs. We follow her to the limo, her diamond-hard calves popping out with each step. In the limo my search becomes more desperate, scanning her face now for a tiny glob of mascara, some sand in her eye, a crooked tooth. Her scuff-free shoes look like they’ve never touched the ground, the heel height somewhere between call girl and accountant, the stitching precise and measured, not hastily yanked through a sewing machine by a Chinese wage slave.
—Can I help you with something?
I look up from her shoe.
—Are those Jimmy Choo?
—No.
Apparently there are rules we should follow when we meet with Sedrick at the South Terminal, where the private jets land. The meeting will end at exactly 1600h. The following topics are off-limits: money, loans, gifts, business opportunities and charity. We should know we are quite fortunate that Mr. Prudhomme has granted a full hour of exclusive one-on-one access.
—You know he’s my father, right?
—I know that and many other things about you.
We get a tight, sharp smile before she continues with the briefing. Under no circumstances are we to interrupt Mr. Prudhomme while he is talking. If we have something to say, we should raise our hands. During our meeting, Mr. Prudhomme may be called away for a variety of reasons. This is unavoidable. We don’t get to the jet until 3:15 p.m., the hangars casting long shadows in the weak November light. It is impossible to ignore the symbolic power of getting out of a limo and into a private jet, even if it’s someone else’s and we won’t be leaving the ground. Sedrick once told Paul that a measure of status among the rich was having a jet with headroom. How much do we grow past our childlike selves? As much as the world demands of us. A top-heavy monster in a suit intercepts us before we can step up the ladder. He pats us down and makes us take off our shoes while an old man watches from the window. Sedrick plays host as we step on board, shaking his son’s hand.
—Can I get you something?
—Yeah, I’ll have my dignity back, and a gin and tonic.
We are finally introduced to our escort, Simone, and it looks like she’ll be staying with us for the meeting. Sedrick says Simone is with him everywhere, always. As what, I wonder. Memory? Conscience? Massage therapist? Courtesan? All of the above? How many years before she’s replaced by a newer model a decade away from crow’s-feet?
Sedrick has slicked-back hair like some greasy spit-combing preacher from the South. The suit is probably his own design, very nice with a black shirt and no tie. I’m drawn to the shoes but pass on closer inspection. It’s unfair to judge him instantly, but it looks like nothing good has ever come from that mouth. The hardened embouchure of his lips has issued battle cries, it has punished, insisted, threatened, chastised and fired. It’s hard to imagine those lips gently kissing a baby’s cheek, that mouth whispering so
mething kind to a lover. He did not shake my hand, offer me a drink, or even look at me. That’s how he controls. If Sedrick does not look at me or talk to me, I don’t exist.
Paul starts to lay it all out and I want to touch his arm and tell him to stop, retreat, it’s a trap. I made the following assumptions about Sedrick: fashion, artistic, sensitive, open. The reality of Sedrick is fashion, artistic, sadistic, closed. Nothing will stop Paul as he reviews injuries of the past: The house was always full of busy people, and he learned early on that everyone else’s needs were more important than his own. If they were short a chair for dinner, he would give up his and sit on the kitchen bench. If there were overnight guests from Munich, he would give up his bed and sleep on the couch. Soccer game or fashion show, the winner was always clear.
Sedrick made a great show of democracy, running family meetings where each one had a say, but somehow the votes were never counted. What Paul wanted was not important. The early lessons of childhood are still remembered as he drives along the highway, often checking the mirror to see if he’s slowing someone down, ready to pull to the side, or in the grocery store, always making sure he doesn’t block someone else’s path with his cart.