The Saint Of Baghdad

by Michael Woodman

  “So how did you both get to work for the same security company?”

  “I got an invitation to join Tratfors from another Brit, an ex-army officer called Masterson. Alex was back in California at the time. There was plenty of money to be made. So I called him.”

  “You invited him back to Iraq?”

  He’d never thought of it like that. The implications. But now she’d said it, the what-if at the heart of her question was spelled out for him in neon.

  “Are you okay, CJ?”

  He nodded, struggling to stay in focus.

  “So you worked together as a team in Iraq?” she said.

  “We were in CPP. Close Personal Protection. Taking care of VIPs. Me and Alex and two Boers. South Africans. We were a team.”

  “And you were all taken together?”

  He nodded again.

  “What happened to the South Africans?”

  “We were separated. They were killed some months later.”

  She waited. A solemn beat. But not to respect the dead—he could see that. She was figuring out how all this patched into his reformatted brain and fueled his Alex “hallucination.”

  “Do you ever see the South Africans?”

  He shook his head. “Just Alex.”

  “How about the men you killed? Any ghosts?”

  “Just Alex.”

  “Starts to make sense, doesn’t it?”

  “Only if you’re God. Or a psychiatrist.”

  “These apparitions—do they trouble you or comfort you?”

  “They clear my head. They remind me that someone in the Iraqi administration leaked our visit that day. Everything. The identity of the VIP. The nature of his job. The exact time we were due at the ministry. How else could one hundred Shia militia with vehicles, guns and cop uniforms show up? That’s not exactly spur-of-the-moment stuff.”

  “So how do you feel about that person?”

  “If you could bring him into the room here with us, I’d be delighted to show you.” He pointed down at the crutches on the floor. “Legs or no legs.”

  Doctor Sam’s face clouded over, and CJ cursed his lack of control. Anger was fine so long as he could keep it on the inside, driving his motor. But showing it off to Doctor Sam was a no-no, another sidebar in his medical report, another milligram or two of something to hide under his tongue.

  They left it there, with Doctor Sam recovering her cheery face and hitting a few upbeat chords as she keyed in her notes. CJ thanked her and hauled himself up on his crutches. He crabbed his way through the doorway and shuffled along the corridor with Alex striding solemnly at his side, his head resting on his palm with the fingertips of his other hand holding it steady. It reminded CJ of a statue he’d seen in some old church on a school trip to France.

  Back in his room, CJ lay on the bed, closed his eyes and played the meeting with Doctor Sam back like a video.

  The medical stuff was interesting. A bit scary in places. And the monkey part was a bummer. But all that was coded communication. What Doctor Sam was really telling him was that all those doctors and scientists were guessing. They had no idea how he’d gotten like this, or where he would end up. He was a New Age Columbus, a psych-sea navigator, lost without a compass. At least she’d been honest. He wasn’t part of an experiment. He was the experiment. But what about Alex? Could he really be a concoction of CJ’s own brain, a spectral fusion of guilt and busted synapses? CJ doubted it. If Alex was just a hallucination, then why were his visits so rare and always chosen to coincide with important events?

  Julian Ashford.

  That was today’s event.

  Someone from the Foreign Office, she’d called him.

  After all these years, they were sending a spook to debrief him. She’d written it off as box ticking, but she didn’t know Her Majesty’s Government like CJ did. To her, it was the benevolent nanny who took care of us all. To CJ, it was more of a wicked stepmother with a strict set of rules that you broke at your peril. This was no box-checking exercise. More like an agenda. And with multiple requests driving it forward, it had to be a priority on the to-do list of someone very important.

  He pulled himself up off the bed and made it to the dresser without crutches in a single wobbling step. He was reaching for the TV remote when he noticed a note on his scratchpad.

  Panorama 8.30

  He picked it up and stared at it. No question. It was his handwriting. But he had no recollection of writing it. He looked back suspiciously at Alex, who shrugged and tapped his watchless wrist, then pointed at the TV. It was almost 8:30, and the BBC’s flagship investigative journalism show was about to begin. CJ turned it on, stumbled onto the bed and settled down to watch. It was news alright. But not news to CJ. Foreign aid, corruption, fraud. It was the same old, same old. They quoted 28.9 billion dollars as the running total for Iraq. That was a lot of zeros—and a few more than CJ remembered—with little or none of it traceable. The report followed a journalist swaddled in Kevlar as he was hustled by anxious security agents from one perilous rendezvous to the next. CJ followed it all with professional interest, noting the latest crop of Iraqi politicians, jostling for a piece of the pie. They were all recycling drain-the-swamp speeches scripted by the crooks they were replacing, and CJ was about to doze off when a snatch of video jolted him wide-eyed. It was some new politician arriving at the ministry building where they had been taken. He drove into the square and headed up the steps surrounded by security, pausing and turning towards the camera to deliver a soundbite.

  That was their square, their steps, their ministry.

  The news story continued, signing off on the segment with a footnote about their own hostage taking ten years earlier.

  “That’s us, mate,” CJ said. “Not even a page in a history book. Just a bleeding line and a half.”

  He switched off the TV. The program had triggered an echo that he couldn’t get out of his head.

  Doctor Sam’s question.

  So how do you feel about that person?

  He’d shot back an angry response. But even then, he’d downplayed it. The unedited version was homicidal. He'd sworn it to Alex. He was duty bound now. No wriggle room. Not that he wanted any. He just wanted to get on with it.

  But all these years down the road, could he make good on his oath?

  He crawled down on the floor and lay on his back. The first step had to be recovery, getting his strength back and getting out of the hospice. He pulled his heels up to his buttocks, crossed his arms on his chest and did crunches until he was too weak to lift his head. It dropped back on the carpet and his eyes closed, his thoughts patching in and out before fading to dark…

  Spooks. Secrets. Alex.

  Three

  One Month Later

  Catching up. It was a full-time job for CJ, and his new laptop was his launchpad. He was hunched over it, sitting at a tiny desk in the corner of his room. He could have done it much sooner by using the computers in the library, but there were too many eyes down there—nosy eyes—and he wanted privacy.

  The world he found through the laptop’s lens was still recognizable, but in the years he’d been AWOL, it had rebuilt itself. New technologies and new rules. But most especially, new gods. Social media had been in its infancy back then, and smartphones hadn’t been half as smart as the computers now lining everyone’s pocket and purse. He browsed through pages of new gadgets and technologies before moving on to politics and major events. He already had the big picture from the TV news, but he wanted to drill down on the detail. It was all interesting stuff, and he soon had plenty of fodder for a lively debate in a pub. But CJ had more important catching up to do. He wanted a snapshot of the kidnaping and the events around it. According to Declan, his job had been to update the accounting software to stop the thieving. So CJ started by compiling a list of potential scammers made up of the Iraqi politicians and administrators who’d been running the show at that time. But he soon gave up. There had to be a better way. The list was inf
inite. Besides, there was someone far more interesting he needed to check out.

  CJ Brink.

  He typed his own name into Google and scrolled through the results. There were a lot. Mostly tabloid newspapers and social media comments calling him a hero.

  Bravo!

  No complaints about that. But he was looking for details. He wanted the fine print on what had happened that day and how he’d been found. His appointment with Julian Ashford was pending, and he didn’t want to walk into it like a dummy. He was thinking about that meeting, as his eyes scanned the search results, when he noticed a disclaimer at the bottom of the page. It said that some search results had been removed due to EU Data Protection Law. That was something else new.

  He copied and pasted it into the search bar, and thirty minutes later he was an expert on the right to be forgotten, an EU law empowering individuals to get search results about them removed. That was all well and good. But he hadn’t asked anyone to remove his results. So who had asked and why? He did the research. Google had a removal process, but it wasn’t algorithmic. It involved human judgment on an application made by an individual, but not necessarily the individual. That gave it flexibility according to Google. So maybe a UK government letterhead might work, or a statement signed by a doctor.

  But why?

  He took his wallet out of the jacket hanging off the back of his chair. Money was no issue for CJ. His bank accounts were still stuffed with the rich pickings of his dangerous but highly paid profession. So all he’d had to do on his recovery was get new plastic. He checked out some security blogs before signing up to a VPN, a virtual private network based in Switzerland that touted its independence and no-logging policies. Minutes later, he was in the USA—at least his IP address was—and he was drilling through additional pages of results. But as he scanned through page after page, he realized that what he was really looking for was something that he hoped never to find. That video. The one recorded by Hussein. The one of Jahil sawing through Alex’s neck.

  Could it possibly exist?

  The camera had been rolling, but what had happened to it since? Had it died that day along with Alex and everyone else, leaving nothing but the shot-up laptop? Or had it survived, rescued by insurgents and posted with pride on some dark corner of the internet? He switched the search to video and went for it, trying different keyword combinations, using Alex’s name as well as his own. But that video was nowhere to be found. Either it didn’t exist, or the security services had gotten hold of it and buried it in a top-secret archive. He was disappointed, but he was relieved too. He’d come a long way since his minestrone mind soup days, but they weren’t so far behind him that he could take chances with his sanity.

  He checked his watch. It was Saturday afternoon and Enya was due. She came every Saturday as a rule, but he hadn’t seen her for over a month as she’d been working in the US. It was tough for him to admit it, but he’d missed her. He was about to shut down the computer and head downstairs when he noticed some Arabic scrawl at the bottom of the page and he clicked on it.

  No. It wasn’t that video.

  Not the one he was looking for. But it was more than good enough to do the same job—to fire his rage and steel his determination. Some Iraqi bystander must have captured it with a phone. It was just a snatch. Twenty seconds or less of jerky images, blurring in and out of focus.

  CJ was running. He was in a debris-strewn street of bombed-out buildings. He was soaked in blood, the white of one eye barely visible in the red mush of his face. In one hand was a Kalashnikov and in his other was the severed head of Alex Solo, held by a scruff of his hair. Alex’s teeth were bared in a snarl and his eyes were wide and sparking with incongruous life.

  CJ stiffened up, his fists balled, his heart exploding as a groan rippled up from his guts into a deep-throated roar. In an instant, he was back there, and that same feeling hit him, the force that had fueled his strength that day.

  Save Alex. Kill ’em all. Never stop.

  He snapped down the lid on the laptop and leapt to his feet. He was sweating, wet with it. For a moment, he thought it was blood and the flashback ran in his head. He stumbled backwards on his newly reconstituted legs, knocking the chair aside and grabbing the dresser to catch his fall. He struggled, determined not to lose it, digging back into the strength he’d found that day. He pulled himself together and was cleaning himself up when he recognized a familiar sound, filtering it out of a myriad of noises. A car engine. Nothing special about that. But this was the one he’d been listening for, the gutsy growl of Enya’s souped-up Mini Hatch. He threw on his jacket and went downstairs to meet her. He’d made great progress since he’d last seen her, and he was looking forward to showing her what his new legs could do by taking her on a brisk walk around the grounds.

  She was still outside parking the car when he reached the reception area, so he went to the desk to talk to George. He was one of two receptionists who alternated the early and late shifts. He had his head down, fiddling with a phone in his lap, his face hidden by curtains of black hair. CJ would have known it was George from the other end of the corridor as the sticky aroma of potent pot oozed out of his pores.

  “Hey, George.”

  “CJ.” He looked up and tapped his phone. “Chelsea are playing.”

  CJ leaned over the counter. “I’ve got a favor to ask. Can you print me out a list of all the visitors I’ve had since I’ve been here?”

  “I can tell you now. It’s a list of one. Your sister.”

  “No, I mean way back. Those first weeks. Before they all knew I was in a coma.” CJ had made some great friends in the Marines, and some of them had surely come by. But there was a more compelling reason to get that list too. He wanted to know if any government types had come calling.

  “Okay. Sure.” He nodded at Enya as she pushed the doors aside and strode into reception.

  CJ and Enya hugged each other, full of smiles, then headed outside. As they walked, Enya talked about her trip, and after a few circuits of the grounds, they sat on a bench by the pond. It was a genteel moment, and CJ was enjoying it. Too bad he had to wreck it. No choice about that. First there was the sister thing, lying to the staff. Then there was the Alex thing, shooting her mouth off about his “hallucinations.” He had to bring it all up, but he didn’t want it to degenerate into a confrontation. It was such a lovely afternoon. So somehow, he had to transition from this genteel moment to a prickly one and get back to genteel without any broken bones. That was the challenge. The prickly part was unavoidable. Months of Enya O’Brien had taught him that. Freckles and smiles she had aplenty, but all that was camouflage. Underneath it, she was Ms. Pushback, and whatever he started, she was bound to finish.

  “Why do you keep looking at me like that?” she said, suddenly aggressive and he hadn’t even started yet.

  “Like what?”

  “Sliding your eyes over me like a crocodile sizing up its next dinner. It’s creepy.”

  He grunted out a blast of air like a boxer heading into the twelfth round. He hated that, the way she read him like he had a public announcement scrawled on his chest.

  “It’s your goddamn mouth.”

  “What?” Her hand darted up, fingers hovering inches off coral-pink lips, her face clouding with confusion. But then it dropped away and she looked him in the eye.

  “To hell with you. I was right to tell her. It’s not normal to see a dead person. Even your best friend. Wake up! Your mind’s not right. You shouldn’t lie to your doctors. It’s plain stupid. You should thank me for looking out for you.”

  “That’s what sisters are for, isn’t it?”

  She did a double take on that before her eyes drifted away to the pond, where a drama was playing out between angry ducks.

  “I had no idea you were comatose when they brought you in here. I wanted to ask you about my brother, but the receptionist—it wasn’t George—it was that blond bitch with the permed hair, the one who looks like a refugee from
a sixties girl band. She said to me only relatives are permitted, and she said it like… piss off, Irish. So I told her I was your sister, and she said… he’s an orphan and an only child. She was calling me a liar. No other way to put it. That’s when I became your half-sister, and even then I had to browbeat her into submission. And after all that—what a letdown. You were a potatohead.”

  “But you kept coming back?”

  “I had no choice. I made the mistake of asking your doctor about your prognosis. And she was like… thank God, a relative. All sorts of questions and decisions. About a year later, some pen pusher wanted to pull the plug on you to save a few measly pounds. So they asked me for permission. And by the way—I said no.”

  “Really?”

  “No, I made that part up. But I would have said no. And the half-sister stuff is true.”

  “But it’s still not enough to explain why you kept visiting me all these years.”

  “I’m Declan’s twin. The day he died I didn’t even know he was dead, but I fell ill. They thought I’d had a stroke. I posted a selfie online with one of the nurses as soon as I came around. You can check the date on it if you don’t believe me. You don’t have a sister or a brother. You can’t even understand what it means to have a sibling. Never mind a twin. We had our own language. When I started a question, he’d finish it. When he thought something new, I’d say why not before he even opened his mouth. Part of me died with him. That’s how it feels, and I can’t accept it. You were the last person to see my brother. You’re all I have left of him.”

  CJ nodded and let it lie. If he pushed her any further, he’d be seeing the back of her for the last time, and he didn’t want that.