Appetite for Risk

by Jack Leavers

  ‘Ali. I’m British now, but I was born in Sulaimaniyah and lived there until ’91. You know, the war and the uprising. Soon I’m going back to check on our house.’

  I’d read Sulaimaniyah was the second main city in the semi-autonomous three-province region run by the Kurds. Although there was a Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) based in the ‘capital’ of Erbil, a Kurdish political faction called the PUK ruled the Sulaimaniyah province. They had their own government based in the city of the same name, including a prime minister and all the various ministries. Other than that, and various reports describing the region as the safest part of Iraq, I knew little else.

  For the next forty minutes as Ali drove me home, we chatted about Kurdistan, Iraq, London, Chelsea Football Club and family. Ali told me about the route through Turkey that British-based Iraqi Kurds used to travel back and forth to their homeland. It entailed a flight to Istanbul, a further flight to the south-eastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir, before a five-hour drive south and then eastwards along the Syrian border to the Habur customs post at the border with Iraq. Exactly the kind of information I was after. However, it was late, and I needed to keep my focus on completing the final report for the mystery shopper project, so we didn’t get into any discussions about future plans. I took a card from Ali with his number scribbled on the back, along with a wad of blank receipts for expenses, and assured him I’d be in touch soon.

  Chapter 30

  EPSOM — LATE DECEMBER 2004

  Christmas was fast approaching and the financial situation was miserable. The lap dancing job had been completed with the happy client now lighter by a couple of dishonest staff and unlucky girls. However, the seven visits and accompanying reports had been my only work since returning from Basra. They hadn’t generated enough profit to make for a relaxing festive break.

  The empty diary for the new year concerned me, but we always made sure our girls had a good Christmas one way or the other, and we had just enough cash to cover it this year. It was the one time of the year I did everything I could to be home with the family. Even in the military, I’d missed birthdays, anniversaries, and family get-togethers, but somehow never Christmas.

  The diary also indicated an unmistakable truth: Christmas Day fell on a Saturday that year; the day I attended the police station due to my bail conditions. On the last Saturday before Christmas, I checked whether they really expected me to report at 10.00am on both Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.

  ‘Yes sir. Those are your bail conditions and that’s when you must report.’ With a look and a tone that said, Unlucky – you’ve only got yourself to blame.

  Great. Claire still knew nothing of the customs decision to charge me or the bail reporting requirements, so I’d have to sneak off for half an hour when everyone would be in the middle of opening presents. The saving grace might be Claire’s parents and brother arranging to pop round in the morning to wish the girls a merry Christmas before we drove to my mum’s place for lunch with all the trimmings. I hoped it would cause enough of a diversion to enable me to enjoy the festive cheer from our local constabulary and get back before anyone noticed I was gone.

  With Pete still certain Customs and Excise would drop the case once it became clear it wasn’t part of an organised crime plot, I hadn’t seen much point in worrying Claire with the details of the charges and bail conditions. She knew something dodgy had occurred that night but hadn’t tried to delve into the possible repercussions. That suited me.

  *

  My extracurricular activities on Christmas Day passed without a hitch. The copper behind the counter unable to hide his smirk at my having to report that morning. Twat.

  ‘Merry Christmas, sir,’ he said without any festive cheer as I turned to leave.

  ‘And you, mate. What time are you finished?’

  Suspicion crossed his face as he answered, ‘I’ll be home by this evening.’

  ‘Well you have a great day. I’ll have a drink for you over Christmas lunch. Laters,’ I said with OTT cheerfulness topped off with a mock salute before I nipped out the door, the copper scowling as I left.

  The police station had been empty, so I’d been processed immediately and snuck back into the festivities at home less than twenty minutes after leaving. A short enough time that my disappearance went unnoticed.

  Christmas itself passed with the usual mayhem of wrapping paper, turkey, alcohol, and the mixture of laughter and tears from the children in the family. Along with our two girls, my sister had a young son and my brother three young kids. It was good to play games, goof around, and forget about Iraq, business, and Customs and Excise.

  When I switched on the TV late on Boxing Day, the channels were filled with news that a tsunami had devastated various countries bordering the Indian Ocean. A large part of the southern Indian coastline had been hit hard, including the proposed start location and initial routes for Football to the Summit. I knew right away this terrible tragedy would kill the project. Charity and aid funding now had far more pressing causes to resolve.

  The following day I received confirmation all activity was suspended and to be prepared for the project to be cancelled. After everything that had happened during the year, it was sod’s law my big hope for getting things back on track money-wise had been wiped out by a natural disaster. My problems paled into insignificance compared to the hundreds of thousands killed, injured and left homeless by the disaster, but I still had an overwhelming urge to commiserate my bad fortune with alcohol.

  *

  It was late, so I opened the front door quietly when I returned from a few beers with my youngest brother at the nearby pub. Maybe more than a few. The dog looked up and went back to sleep as I fished out my wallet and went in the first door on the left to leave it with my keys on the computer desk in the corner. I was surprised by the sight of Claire sat at the pine table which dominated the centre of the dining room. I wasn’t drunk, but I wasn’t sober either. She had a fierce look on her face that had me urgently checking through the memory banks to remember what I might have done wrong.

  ‘I was looking for some stamps in the bureau and I came across this.’ An escort agency business card from the summer job skittered across the table in my direction.

  Thank God for that. Just a simple misunderstanding. ‘Honestly that was work…’

  Claire cut me off and her voice climbed an octave. ‘And this was work as well was it?’

  The lap dancing club membership ID followed hard on the tail of the other card. I paused to get my alcohol-slowed thoughts in order and an image of Monique appeared from nowhere in my head. It might as well have been projected onto the wall behind me because Claire must have seen something she took for guilt.

  ‘You bastard.’ Said with a look of bitterness.

  ‘I can explain…’

  ‘And don’t think I didn’t notice you disappeared on Christmas morning. Where did you go?’

  ‘What, you think I nipped out to my other family down the road?’ I said with a laugh I would immediately regret.

  ‘Don’t you laugh at me. Where were you and what the hell are these?’ She pointed at the two cards.

  I tried to explain, but I wasn’t sharp enough to avoid falling into pitfalls that made everything sound worse than it should. Caught by surprise and unable to conjure up a plausible alternative to explain my Christmas Day disappearance, I revealed the Customs amd Excise saga hanging over me. Claire began crying and looked at me with a disappointment I’d only seen once before: when I was stupidly arrested for drink-driving while on terminal leave from the Corps seven years earlier.

  ‘I can’t deal with all of this now. You can stay down here tonight, but I want you to go in the morning and give me some space while I get my head round it,’ she said with a weary sadness which lay heavily on the room.

  I knew I wasn’t in a fit state to start arguing, so I simply said, ‘O
kay, if that’s what you want,’ and watched as Claire left the room. Taz joined me in the living room as I bedded down on the sofa and she made herself comfortable on the floor underneath me.

  ‘I’m in the doghouse now, Taz.’

  *

  If anything, the atmosphere felt even worse in the morning. Claire was working an early shift at the hospital and she stomped around the house hardly speaking before she left, apart from telling me her mother would be collecting Becky at nine, and I should be gone before she returned from work after three. Claire’s mum was her normal cheery self, so it didn’t seem like reports of my crimes had made the rounds. After she left, I rang an old bootneck mate of mine who lived down in Weymouth. I didn’t keep in touch with too many of the lads, but Rob and I went way back.

  ‘I fucked up mate, although more on a technicality than anything serious. Is it okay if I come down and we hit the spicers while I regale you with my latest highlights?’

  ‘Of course, mate. Come on down. You know you’re welcome anytime. I’ll get Sally to make up a bed for you.’

  Rob and I had known each other for years and still got together occasionally to drink spiced rum and talk shit till the early hours. We both had daughters rather than sons and our two families got on well when we all met up. As the drinks flowed, Claire and especially Rob’s wife Sally, an ex-Wren, usually made disparaging remarks about our current drinking prowess and general capabilities. Compared that is to the alcohol-boldened tales we spun of commando derring-do, huge quantities of ale quaffed, and fist-fights won.

  *

  Sally opened the door. ‘What have you done?’

  ‘Hi Sally. Honestly, it wasn’t my fault.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m sure. He’s in the kitchen champing at the bit to start on the beer. Don’t you go taking advantage of my good nature and leading him astray tonight. The pair of you can’t drink any more like you think you can.’

  ‘Don’t worry. We’ll take it easy.’ But my grin said we wouldn’t.

  Sally expressed her clear disapproval after overhearing my lurid tales of escort girls and especially some of the lap dancing nights.

  ‘I’ll leave you both to it.’ Warning Rob with, ‘Don’t wake me up when you come to bed,’ she left the kitchen with a glass of water and a pantomime scowl in my direction.

  ‘So, things are okay between you and Claire then?’ asked Rob.

  ‘They should be, mate. It all sounds much worse than it is. A couple of days and I’m sure Claire will calm down.’

  I didn’t think it was anything too serious, but sometimes things have a way of escalating out of control in a way no-one intended.

  ‘Well you’re welcome to stay as long as you like. You know it’s my birthday on New Year, and we’re having a fancy-dress party again on New Year’s Eve like the rest of Weymouth.’

  I called Claire each day and we engaged in awkward, lukewarm conversations. I told her I was staying down for Rob’s birthday bash and would drive back on New Year’s Day. She was non-committal about my likely reception, but then she might have remembered I had to be back in Epsom that day to report for bail.

  *

  The fancy-dress party on New Year’s Eve turned out to be an absolute riot and just the kind of hilarious, crazy night I needed. But waking up bleary-eyed on New Year’s Day I knew I’d fucked up. Epsom was nearly three hours away and I would be in no fit state to drive until later that afternoon at the earliest. I had to report for bail in an hour. Shit.

  I got through to the duty sergeant at Epsom police station after a lengthy wait on hold. My panic subsided when he thanked me for phoning in and said I could report the next day instead. The Alka-Seltzer was probably doing the rounds at the station that morning and they sounded grateful for one less visitor to process.

  Chapter 31

  EPSOM — EARLY JANUARY 2005

  ‘Will you be back in time for Becky’s birthday?’

  Did I detect a hint of hope in Claire’s voice; perhaps a sign our frosty relations might be warming? Not the moment to admit I’d forgotten about Becky’s second birthday later in the month.

  ‘I’m going to try, but her birthday is only a few weeks away and the details of the trip aren’t fully agreed yet. It’s not even a hundred per cent we’ll be going. I’m meeting Ali tomorrow and it’ll all be clearer then.’

  ‘Okay.’ In a quiet voice, impossible to decode.

  I smiled and searched her face for a sign she understood I wanted to make amends. And just maybe I caught an encouraging crinkle at the corner of her mouth as she turned away and began sorting the dishwasher.

  *

  Ali had been very enthusiastic when I’d called him the previous afternoon. ‘Yes John, we must meet. We should travel straight away.’

  ‘Okay. Let’s meet tomorrow at Victoria Station. By WH Smith.’

  If he was late, it would give me a chance to browse for a new read with the book token I’d received for Christmas from Claire’s mum.

  Our only previous meeting had been the forty-five-minute taxi ride home from the Hammersmith lap dancing club, but Ali greeted me like a long-lost brother when he finally turned up. The cheeky git even looked at me as I walked out of WH Smith with a new book in hand and grinned broadly as he said, ‘A bit late. Not English time then.’

  I held up my carrier bag. ‘I’ve been here half an hour already, mate. I just nipped back in to grab this when I thought you weren’t turning up.’

  Instead of just a quick meeting, we spent the whole day together. First at his older brother’s flat in Victoria, then driving over to his place in Kensington, shared with another (younger) brother, or two. I outlined what I’d been doing business-wise down in Baghdad and Basra. My efforts in the simmering cauldron of Iraq seemed to be regarded by the Kurdish audience as validation of my suitability as a travelling companion for one of their own.

  The discussion soon moved to practical arrangements regarding flights and dates. I agreed to take care of our flight bookings to get us as far as Diyarbakir in south-eastern Turkey, and Ali said he would arrange everything for our travel by land from Diyarbakir across the Turkish-Iraqi border to Sulaimaniyah in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region.

  Over the previous twenty years, more than 30,000 people had been killed in south-eastern Turkey during a guerrilla war fought by the PKK, a Kurdish separatist movement. Ali’s plan to overnight in Diyarbakir and punch out in the morning by taxi for the Iraqi border, 300 kilometres and five hours away, made my spidey senses tingle like mad.

  ‘What’s the security situation for that route?’

  He hadn’t been in the region since the nineties, but I hoped he’d been able to acquire plenty of useful and current inside information.

  ‘Don’t worry. People do it all the time. It’s not a problem.’

  He spoke with a reassuring confidence and his face displayed a certainty that I wanted to believe, despite suspecting it might be based on blind hope and naivety.

  ‘We have friends, so it’s not a problem. And once we reach Kurdistan… then you will see.’

  I sought clarification. ‘So, we get a taxi to the border and once we get through, there will be people waiting?’

  ‘Not people, Peshmerga,’ said with a flourish and reciprocal smiles all around the room.

  ‘Peshmerga are the fierce Kurdish fighters who have fought Saddam, Ansar al-Sunna, and now al-Qaeda. They are the reason Kurdistan is safe.’

  I knew about the Peshmerga reputation so that sounded promising. Peshmerga literally stood for ‘those that face death’ and, operating as guerrillas from the mountains against Saddam’s forces over the years, many Peshmerga had died fighting against the oppressive Baghdad military – as had many more of their enemies. The only fly in the ointment was the armed Turkish-Kurds, the PKK, who were also called Peshmerga, but with a Marxist agenda and a different set of objectives focuse
d on their struggles with the Turkish government. I needed to be careful not to become mixed up with those guys.

  ‘It sounds like you’ve got transport and security arranged. Can we get a visa on entry at the border?’

  ‘No. We must go to the Iraqi Consulate tomorrow morning. Early.’

  He stressed the last word as though it hadn’t been him who was late that morning.

  ‘Good. What do we need for the visa process and how much are they?’

  The plans for the Turkish side of the border were underwhelming but mixing with the Peshmerga once inside Kurdistan appealed to my sense of adventure. Yet again events were moving forward in a seemingly unstoppable current. I hardly knew them, but I liked these Kurdish guys and their attitude. All the brothers lived in London, held British passports, spoke good English, and came across as easy-going and friendly. It was as though I’d been accepted into a small fraternity.

  It took a painful few days of shocking queues, intransigent officials, and finally some assistance from an insider at the consulate to get our Iraqi visas. The trick was a secret knock on the door in the afternoon when the office was closed to the general public. This was when all the press organisations and diplomats had their applications processed. As I walked through the quiet room on my way to the visa interview, I could see the crush of the mornings was for amateurs.

  I was waiting to hear back from Ali to confirm our travel dates when I received a call from Pete. He didn’t want to speak on the phone and asked me to come over to the office instead. What with the festive period and preparations for the trip to northern Iraq, I hadn’t seen him since before Christmas. I agreed to go over that afternoon.

  As ever, Pete was still supremely confident that customs were going to drop the case. Then, after a few minutes of mundane talk, he told me why he’d asked to meet.