The Saint Of Baghdad

by Michael Woodman

  “And the site that I ran from?”

  “We found Alex’s torso and five bodies there,” she said. “We’d like you to talk about that if you can.”

  “I have memory issues. I was hoping you could tell me. You worked the forensics.”

  She hesitated. Cops never like giving information. All their reflexes are geared to getting it. But then she said, “O’Brien and two unidentified insurgents had multiple gunshot wounds, inflicted by .308-caliber rounds. We found one gun in the room, and one with you in the ditch.”

  “Who did I kill?”

  “I don’t think it’s that simple,” Ashford said, his voice cut with alarm. “There was a fight, bullets spraying everywhere.”

  “He’s right,” Colby said. “The bullet trajectories were consistent with random fire, like a weapon discharged in a struggle for its possession.”

  “Even so. My gun. Who got hit?”

  More silence and sharp looks.

  In the end, the answer came out of Colby.

  “All three of them.”

  CJ nodded, his face drifting down to the tabletop like he needed a moment to deal with it. And he did. He needed to make another futile effort to remember and also to shoo away the shadow of guilt. He didn’t shoot O’Brien. They’d fought for the gun, and Declan had caught a bullet in the chaos. He had something else to think about as well. Act Two was pending, and this information was a gift. All he had to do was work it into the script.

  “Is that how it was written up?” he said. “I’ve got no liability for O’Brien’s death even though my gun killed him?”

  She shook her head. “Absolutely not.”

  “Perish the thought, old chap.” Ashford reached over and patted him on the shoulder. “We’re on your team. We’re here to protect you, not blame you.”

  CJ acknowledged his gratitude with a dip of the head. “And what about the other two insurgents?”

  “Hussein Ahmed,” Ashford said. “He was on our target list. A recruiter, propagandist. Their computer guy. His neck was broken.”

  “And Jahil?”

  Another logjam.

  Why so timid?

  Most likely Doctor Sam had put the squeeze on them. Conditions, promises. Stern lectures about his fragile mind.

  “The details aren’t important,” Ashford said. “Jahil Hazem was the number three most wanted terrorist in the world and you killed him with your bare hands. That bastard is now rotting in hell. Bloody good job. Well done.”

  “It was close-quarters combat,” Colby said.

  CJ was about to raise the curtain on Act Two when a man appeared carrying a tray loaded with tea and cakes. VIP service. That was new too. Ashford poured the teas and inspected the cakes while Colby kept her eyes on CJ.

  “Why don’t you talk now?” she said. “Anything you like. Start anywhere. End anywhere. We have nothing special to ask.” She turned to Ashford. “Do we?” Ashford was lounging back in his chair, a cup and saucer perched on his belly. He was looking bored, like he was watching a game of cricket. He shook his head.

  Nothing special to ask.

  CJ thought about that. A nothing so unspecial they’d sent two intelligence agents, handpicked operatives with detailed knowledge. Colby had stressed her military background to make him feel comfortable, and Ashford had explained her away as working in a liaison role. But she’d obviously moved on to intelligence. And given her military background and the fact that she was hanging around with Ashford, she was most likely assigned to some special activities CIA group. It looked like Project CJ was shifting gears from science research to intelligence operations.

  Cue Act Two.

  “I have your guarantees.” CJ flipped a pointed finger from one to the other. “There’s no comeback on me about O’Brien’s killing.”

  “I don’t get it,” Colby said. “Why would there be?”

  “Because I’ve been lying. I do remember. I’ve been faking holes in my memory for the doctors. They’re not cleared for this.” He waited. All eyes on CJ. “They hacked off Alex’s head. Then they grabbed O’Brien. They were going to do us all. Three beheading videos. Like a movie festival for fanatics. But when they got O’Brien on his knees, he broke down. It was pathetic. Alex died like a hero. But O’Brien was a coward. He begged and screamed. He promised them secrets if they’d let him live. They didn’t believe him. So he whipped out this memory card he’d kept hidden. It was sewn in his shirt.”

  “Did he say what was on it?” Ashford leaned in close.

  “He said something. I wasn’t paying attention. I was working on the cuffs. Top-secret stuff, he said. How they could bring down the government with it. But it was encrypted.”

  “Did he give them the password?” Colby said.

  “Give it to them? He wrote it down for them. They took off his cuffs and he wrote it down. He became their best mate. After Alex gave his life like that. I was enraged. That Irish bastard was ready to throw us all under a bus to save his own skin.”

  “So what happened?” Ashford said, tea and cakes forgotten.

  “With all this distraction, I’d been able to get my hands free. I grabbed a Kalashnikov off one of them and blasted. I made sure I got that son of a bitch O’Brien first. I got two more until they were on me. That’s the last thing I remember. Based on what you say, it must have turned into a brawl and Marine training saved the day.”

  CJ watched as his unexpected confession worked its way through their systems like a mega-dose of narcotics. They didn’t move. They didn’t react. They just stared at him. CJ helped himself to some tea and a chocolate cake. “I suppose you were wondering about it all,” he said, wiping chocolate from his lips with the back of his hand, “because you must have found the note with the password as well as the card.”

  The numbing effect of his startling revelation was beginning to fade, and Ashford and Colby were coming back to life. They looked at each other, then back at CJ, but said nothing.

  Ashford’s phone buzzed. He checked the screen, then left them on the terrace and walked around the lawn, poking in a message with one finger, leaving CJ to wonder about the timing of that call.

  It was quite a coincidence.

  Could it be that the wicked stepmother was listening in to their conversation?

  Almost certainly.

  Colby had recovered her composure and patched up her poker face. “Tell me about the run-up to the job,” she said, shuffling her chair closer to CJ.

  “We picked O’Brien up at the airport, and we went to the hotel bar that night and had some beers with him. The next morning, they woke us up at five thirty and told us to take him to the ministry.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “Sami. The interpreter. But he was just the messenger. Masterson was our boss. He showed up when we were kitted up. It was a quiet day. No gunfire. We were in Toyotas. Beat-up Land Cruisers like the locals. The Boers were in front. Me and Alex were behind with Sami and O’Brien. There were a couple of guards outside the ministry. Sami showed them our paperwork and we went right in. Alex and me. And O’Brien. The Boers stayed outside on point.”

  “And Sami?”

  “He came inside with us.”

  Ashford rejoined them. He seemed distracted, fiddling with his cup as he topped up his tea. CJ was glad he was back. He was just killing time with Colby. He needed both of them there for the final scene.

  “The militia showed up about an hour later. That’s the mystery part of the story. Sixty minutes to rustle up a hundred guys in police uniforms with Kalashnikovs and vehicles. Some sort of record that.”

  So that was it. He’d said it. Casually enough. And it was still half an inch shy of an accusation. But Colby read the subtext like it was on a billboard.

  “You think you were set up?”

  “What would you call it? Coincidence?”

  She glanced over at Ashford, who shrugged it off.

  “They must have been on standby,” he said. “They knew O’Brien was coming
sooner or later.”

  “Who’s they?” CJ said.

  “The Iraqis. The government. It was their ministry. Something leaked out. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “They didn’t control the timing. You did. So who did you tell?”

  It still wasn’t an accusation. At least, not an explicit one. Not taking it word by word. But CJ laced it with aggression, and it hit Ashford with the jolt of a hangman’s noose.

  “CJ.” Ashford arranged his elbows on the table and leaned towards him. “You were a distinguished officer in our armed forces. And although you were working for a commercial agency when this happened, as far as we’re concerned, you deserve all the support you’d get if you were still commissioned…” CJ let him drone on uninterrupted, and he’d gotten to conspiracy theories and something about kicking them into the long grass when Colby interrupted him.

  “It’s a can of worms,” she said, her hand reaching out to touch CJ’s arm. “Word got out. That’s all we’ll ever know. So many years down the road—it’s not the time to open that can.”

  “Did O’Brien tell you about his assignment?” Ashford said.

  “Sure. He was installing canaries. Software traps to catch the scammers.” CJ shot the answer out, delighted to recycle his newly acquired IT jargon into a fresh batch of bullshit. They exchanged a look loaded with innuendo. “Then the Shia police walked in. But softly-softly. Like it’s no problem. Alex spoke a bit of Arabic. More than me. But we weren’t getting anywhere. So we went outside to find Sami.”

  “I thought he went inside with you,” Colby said.

  “He’d gone outside for a smoke. But when we got down there, he was nowhere around. It was just the Boers. And suddenly we’ve got a hundred guns pointing at us. We were disarmed and bundled into the back of a van. Then we got split up in three groups. The Boers, me and Alex, and O’Brien. He was taken off by himself. We were moved every few days. We never saw the Boers again. And we never saw O’Brien until we were swapped.”

  “What happened on that day?” Colby said. Now all the questions were coming from her. Ashford had lost interest, his mud-colored eyes flitting around like his mind was elsewhere. It occurred to CJ that these two might be on the same team, but shooting at different goalposts.

  “They drove us for hours,” he said. “Then they pulled us out of the van and took off our blindfolds. We were in an open space between bombed-out buildings. O’Brien was there already. Then more vans showed up, driven by Sunnis. They dragged out a bunch of Shia militia prisoners. Nine of them. And they traded them for the three of us. So we ended up as prisoners of Al-Qaeda instead of the Shia militia.” He looked back and forth between them and shifted his chair, about to get up. “Is there anything else? I have a physio session.”

  “Just one more thing.” Colby stopped him. That hand again. MP training. Firm this time. “Enya O’Brien. She’s been a frequent visitor.”

  It was a comment, but they were both expecting an answer.

  CJ smiled. “I think she fancies me.”

  Colby slid her hand off his arm. “And what girl wouldn’t? But it’s strange. Especially in light of what you told us about her brother.”

  “She doesn’t know about that. She’s not responsible for him. I felt sorry for her. So I lied to her. I told her he was a hero. What I told you—that’s for your ears only.” He pointed at Colby. “You told me they’d be no comeback.”

  “And there won’t be,” Ashford said. “No one’s going to open an enquiry. Forget that.”

  “It’s an odd situation, though,” Colby said. “You were hired to protect her brother, but he was killed. And yet she befriends you and even lies to the staff here to get close to you.”

  “She wanted to ask about her brother, and they wouldn’t let her in. So she was a bit sneaky about it.”

  “So many visits,” Colby said. “And so many years. I’d call that motivated, not sneaky.”

  “What did she ask you about her brother?” Ashford said.

  “Just how he died. They were twins. Carbon copy DNA. It’s natural. Why are you so interested?”

  “We’re just concerned about your welfare,” Ashford said. “You’re safe in here, but—”

  “You’re kidding me.” CJ stood up, scraping his chair noisily back over the tiles. “I survived the Iraq War, covert operations behind enemy lines, and years of Al-Qaeda’s hospitality. Plus, I got my brains blown out and grew them back. And you think I’m going to get slotted by Freckle Face.”

  “She’s a woman with an agenda,” Colby said, stabbing her point home with a jab of her index finger. “You can trust me on that.”

  “Thank you both for coming,” CJ said. “All points noted.”

  He felt their eyes drilling into his back as he walked off the terrace. Enya was right. Their nothing special was the memory card, and he had to thank her for that. She’d inadvertently given him the Act Two gambit. The moment she’d said, “You mention the CIA, secrets, and passwords and they’ll swing you by the balls”—that was when he got it. That was exactly what he wanted them to do. Or at least, take their best shot. It was the only plan that made sense. If the suspects were inside the US/UK intelligence community, then they were untouchable. He’d have no chance of sniffing them out. He had to flush them out. That meant taking risks and going on the offensive, and today’s massive disinformation dump was the opening salvo. As expected, it had knocked them sideways. Even Colby had maxed out her incredulity seismometer. As for Ashford, CJ had read it all over his face… this guy must be brain-damaged to make a confession like this. Exactly. It was perfect casting. He’d wanted to come across as angry and confused, but naive and trusting. Someone with a damaged memory who was still recalling way too much. A cannonball rolling loose on the deck. First they’d worry, then they’d plan. Exactly what direction those plans would take depended on what they knew about the card and on whose desk his disinformation dump ended up. He was counting on the guilty party having no choice but to stop that cannonball.

  There was a van outside the entrance with something about medical waste written on it. CJ turned back there to check the terrace. Ashford and Colby were gone, replaced by a thrush finishing off the cakes. Inside at the reception desk, there was a delivery man showing some papers to Enya’s friend, the sixties girl band reject. The delivery man was brandishing a dispatch note while the receptionist was digging into emails on her computer. CJ wanted to know if George had left him the list of visitors he’d asked for. He was going to interrupt her—it was a simple question—easy to answer. But she’d probably report him for being rude or disrespectful or—God forbid—inappropriate. So he went back to his room, where he was changing into his gym kit when he heard a car start up. He glanced out of the window and saw a Ford Mondeo leaving the parking lot with Ashford and Colby on board. He noticed the van he’d seen downstairs too. It had pulled up at the end of the building, and two men in baseball caps were hauling a medical waste bin down a ramp. CJ knew what it was because it was written on the side in huge red letters. CYTOTOXIC WASTE. He had never come across the word cytotoxic before, and he wondered what it meant. It sounded terrifying, the last trash bin in the world anyone would poke around in looking for a leftover sandwich. He made a mental note to check on its meaning and made his way to the gym. But ten minutes later, in a heavy sweat on the rowing machine, the note was already forgotten and his thoughts were revisiting the charade he’d played with Ashford and Colby. A job well done. Now all he had to do was catch the first bugger who made a grab for his balls.

  Five

  After dinner, CJ passed by reception and picked up the visitors list. George had removed Enya’s visits, so the list was short. Eight names, with the most frequent visitor being Phillip Masterson, the Tratfors man who had run their unit in Iraq. He’d visited every year in January, and on each occasion he’d left a note to be informed if there was any change in CJ’s condition.

  Phillip Masterson?

  That was a surprise. Th
ey’d been friends. Sort of. But not buddies. They’d fought in the same war. And they’d been part of the same security team, although Masterson’s role was invariably administrative as in anywhere but the firing line. CJ had always felt that Masterson looked down on him because he’d come up through the ranks, whereas Masterson was “officer class.” Class wasn’t supposed to mean anything in modern Britain, but for people like Masterson, it still meant something. CJ speculated about his motivations. A regular visit. Once a year. Maybe it was a legal thing. Insurance papers that needed a signature, something like that. CJ made the call. Phillip was out. This was explained to him by a woman with a posh accent who broke away from their conversation twice to tell someone called Ophelia to leave Snuffly alone.

  CJ left a message that he would call again and moved on down the list.

  Six friends. It was a sad commentary on his life. All of them from the war. He got through to three of them, the ones who had left numbers that were still good. All three conversations followed the same pattern. A joyous moment when they realized who was on the line, followed by incredulity that he was still alive. It was all sincere stuff and CJ didn’t doubt any of it. Voices and names that took him back to a warmth of camaraderie he’d all but forgotten. That was followed by invitations—no dates, no times—just a stream of we must meet up and we must do this. But then, he’d hear voices in the background. Wives, sons, daughters. And their tone would change, and the conversation would drift away from the good old days and bounce around real-life topics. The school run. Parenting. Pregnancy. He’d taken a snapshot of the world with his laptop that morning, and he’d learned that it had moved on. These old comrades had done the same thing. So everything was left as it was, warmth and amity intact, with promises to meet that everyone knew were made to be broken.

  He turned on the TV and watched journalists raging about Brexit and the US president’s Twitter feed, but he soon got bored. So he muted the sound, closed his eyes and worked through the self-hypnosis routine he’d learned from Doctor Sam. By this point, he’d learned it by heart. All he had to do was throw some switch in his head and he could hear her voice. Not her normal speaking voice—this one was deeper, warm and frothy like a cup of hot chocolate on a cold winter’s night. It led him down to a river and he walked by its waters before turning off into woods filled with sunlight. His legs swished through banks of wildflowers until he reached a giant oak tree with a door in it. He opened the door and went down a spiral staircase inside the tree and into a room where he sat at a table with a glass of milk and a saucer with two pills on it. One blue, one red. This was the creepy part, a page from one of those spooky Alice books. He finished off the session and tested his sense of touch by scraping the remote on the soft skin of his belly. There was definitely some improvement. He could sense something more, the beginning of tactile. All he had to do was keep at it.