The Girl in Green

by Derek B. Miller

  ‘How?’ Tigger says.

  ‘By seeing Thomas.’

  ‘Did you sleep with Thomas Benton last night?’ Tigger asks.

  ‘Yes,’ Märta says.

  ‘How was it?’

  ‘Nice.’

  ‘So you gave him a car and Jamal, and sent him to a dangerous area because of schoolgirl feelings?’

  ‘I agreed before I slept with him.’

  ‘Which does not disprove my theory, but … why?’ Herb says, leaning forward in the thinking chair.

  ‘I felt this sense of possibility I haven’t felt in a long time. They wanted to fix something that everyone else had written off for lost. It was … well, it was like the minefield and that boy, remember?’

  ‘Of course we remember,’ Tigger says. ‘But there is a difference between watching someone walk into a minefield and sending someone—’

  ‘—specifically, Jamal,’ Herb says.

  ‘—in one of our cars. You should have run this by us.’

  ‘You’re right, and I was wrong. Is there anything else?’

  ‘No,’ says Tigger. ‘Herbert and I have been looking into matters for the past two hours. Let’s all get started.’

  ‘I guess the first question is, do we know they survived the explosion?’ Märta says.

  ‘We don’t,’ Herb says, ‘but we think probably they did. Ahmed, in the radio room, talked to the chief of police in Mosel. The Iraqi police are out in force over there now. They killed four of the attackers, captured one, and if there was anyone else, they’re gone. One of the cops found our car a little ways off the road. There were bullet holes in the wheels, but no blood and no bodies. So they are out there. Somewhere.’

  Herb is in his late forties, and has maintained a soldier’s physique. Unlike Tigger, who is long and sinewy, Herb is muscular, big, and athletic. He speaks with a soft and deep voice that Märta has grown to find comforting.

  ‘My read is that they tried to escape in the car, got shot at, got out, and that’s when they disappeared,’ Herb says.

  ‘There are only two ways to disappear in the desert,’ Tigger says, reaching over to the coffee table for a Diet Coke. ‘Voluntarily and involuntarily.’

  Märta drinks her beer with her left hand tucked under her right armpit. She has let her hair down. It falls to her shoulders. She is barefoot. ‘We should build out the scenarios,’ she says.

  ‘If they got away on their own, they would have called by now,’ Herb says.

  ‘Yeah. We should be thinking they’re captured and being held.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Tigger says. ‘Anyone hungry?’

  ‘I don’t eat after seven,’ Herb says. ‘And how can you be thinking of food?’

  ‘I’m always thinking of food. It’s the irony of thin people.’

  Märta reaches behind the counter, extracts a bag of mixed cocktail nuts, and pours them into a small ceramic bowl. She reaches forward and hands them to Tigger, who immediately targets the cashews.

  ‘What groups?’ Märta asks.

  ‘They could be criminals looking for money. They could be jihadists,’ Tigger says. ‘They could be jihadists looking for money. We should hope they are financially motivated. Otherwise, I don’t know.’

  ‘Something that’s worked for us before in Pakistan with jihadists,’ Märta says, ‘was contacting some of the Muslim world’s more respected scholars of jihad, and having them talk to the kidnappers, to let them know that the notion of Islamic struggle, even at the most extreme, does not apply to the humanitarian organisations. It hasn’t always worked, but it has worked. The International Committee of the Red Cross and the local Red Crescent can be helpful here, too. The ICRC has a mandate to serve as a neutral intermediary, and they can extend their good offices and serve as mediators when the time comes. Maybe Louise can back us up. But this isn’t the Taliban. Say they were captured by al-Nusra, al-Qaeda, or ISIL. What does that look like?’ she asks.

  Herb looks at the bowl of snacks, and sits further back in his red chair. ‘We’re not sure whether Nusra and ISIL have broken with al-Qaeda yet. There’s so much internecine fighting that looking for a pattern is to overlook the actual pattern that it’s all a mess. They’re posting their murders and massacres on YouTube. Everyone’s jockeying for position.’

  Märta sits on a stool by the counter, her blue skirt cutting across her shin. She is still holding the beer, but is no longer drinking it.

  ‘Why post that stuff?’ she says. ‘Why put on display that you’re murderers? Aren’t they repelling people with their violence?’

  ‘On the contrary,’ Tigger says. ‘It shows strength and conviction. Maybe not to us, but to many others. Sometimes it is hard to accept that people are fundamentally different, but the simple proof is that foreigners are confusing. The reason it’s working, since you asked me, is that in the West we take military action, and then wrap a communications strategy around it to win hearts and minds. The jihadists have a communications strategy, and they wrap a military strategy around it to show they are serious about what they say. You see the difference? Our ways of warfare are not asymmetrical. They are opposite. We are entering a new era of warfare with the non-Western world, with non-Western rules and non-Western methods. We are unprepared.’

  ‘We don’t need Big Theory, Tigger,’ Herb says.

  ‘I disagree. It would have been good to have a better theory before invading Iraq in the first place. Of course, this is all a pantomime, because we all knew this in 1991, which is why we didn’t take Baghdad in the first place.’

  ‘Louise thinks Arwood might be CIA,’ Märta interjects.

  ‘Do you?’ Tigger asks.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’ Herb asks.

  ‘Yeah. Why not?’ Tigger asks.

  ‘I talked to Louise about this already. The CIA is a formal administrative system. I don’t think he fits.’

  ‘Whether he’s CIA or not, I don’t trust him. He’s got bad paper,’ Herb says.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Märta asks.

  ‘It means he’s got a dishonourable discharge, or something close enough to it. He was kicked out of the army after Desert Storm. It means that for one reason or another his country thinks he’s a disgrace, and I’m not about to question that judgement until I’ve got a good reason to. I know the army. I gave my career to the army. It gets the benefit of the doubt over Arwood Hobbes.’

  ‘Benton trusts him, and I trust Benton,’ Märta says.

  ‘I don’t see why,’ Herb says. ‘I also don’t understand their relationship. None of us have been in touch with either one of them, and I haven’t been keeping tabs on ’em. You said this morning that Benton hasn’t been in touch with Hobbes, so I don’t think even he really knows what he’s getting into. All we really know for a fact is that Benton’s been working a steady job at the newspaper since Margaret Thatcher. Otherwise, I think you’re too close to this with your … you know—’

  ‘Vagina?’

  ‘I was going to say “lover,” but OK. Vaginas don’t scare me. I realise sex doesn’t mean a thing to you sophisticated French and Scandinavian types, but my experience tells me differently. Be that as it may, I want to be on record here about one important thing: I’m here because Jamal is missing. The boy’s one of ours, and that’s what I’m here to help with. The others put themselves in harm’s way for whatever reason, and those reasons sound dubious. So that’s on them. Meanwhile, Jamal didn’t ask for this, and he has a family we know, and he shouldn’t have been out there. And, quite frankly, I’m a little sick and tired of national staff being treated like they’re disposable or second-class citizens in their own countries that we invaded. And when I say second-class, you know what I’m really saying.’

  ‘That’s not fair, Herb.’

  ‘It is fair, Märta. We pay them less. They have less job securit
y. They aren’t covered by the same insurance. They usually take bigger risks, they are far more exposed than we are — because everyone knows who they are and what villages they come from — and when we all go home because the situation’s become too hot, we leave the natives behind to fend for themselves. After all, this isn’t colonisation, it’s cooperation! Meanwhile, do you have any idea how many translators and staff hired by the US military we left behind after we pulled out of Iraq and Afghanistan? Tens of thousands. We dragged our feet, didn’t process their visas, didn’t care for their families. We use people up, and leave them for dead, which many of them become. It is dishonourable and short-sighted, and I don’t like it.’

  ‘We’re not the US military, Herb. And that’s not what’s happening here,’ Märta says.

  ‘NGOs do more or less the same thing. Unfinished projects, unkept promises, unbalanced pay scales, disrespect for local knowledge and experience — it’s close enough to the same thing. And, no, we’re not doing that with Jamal, because I’m not going to let it happen. And if anything comes down to the wire, he’s my priority.’

  ‘I’ll notify the British and American embassies of Benton’s and Hobbes’s status,’ Tigger says. ‘And I suggest I call Clip Maxwell at Firefly Consulting. We need to set up a crisis-management group. And then, my friends, we need to sleep. Tomorrow will be a very full day.’

  25

  Arwood jolts to his feet when he hears the gunshots. Benton rolls onto his knees and presses his head to the mattress, inhaling its body odour and mould, before taking hold of a knee and pushing himself upward to stand.

  Arwood is already at the door by the time Benton is ready. He has pressed his ear against it. Arwood’s face is placid in the harsh light of the solitary bulb.

  ‘What do you hear?’ Benton says.

  ‘Shh.’

  Benton watches Arwood reposition his ear to the left, lower on the door. His face is unchanged.

  ‘If they killed those kids—’ Benton mumbles.

  Arwood moves quickly from the door to Benton, turns himself around, and, with his hands still bound in plastic cuffs, grabs hold of Benton’s belt, unbuckles it, unsnaps and unzips his trousers, and thrusts his hands down them to collect the phone.

  ‘They kill children all the time,’ Arwood says, ripping the phone from the Velcro. ‘Oh, shit. It’s an iPhone, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t look. I guess. Why?’

  ‘No buttons — that’s what’s wrong with it. Ever tried working one of these with your hands tied behind your back?’ Arwood slips the phone into his back pocket for now, needing his hands to do up Benton. ‘User-centred design, my arse.’

  Arwood reassembles Benton’s trousers. As he does, Benton notices that Arwood has altered his first tattoo from when he enlisted. It now reads Death Before Dishonorabilishness.

  Finished, Arwood takes the phone out of his pocket and presses the Home button. He turns so Benton can see it. ‘Is it on? Is it lighting up?’

  ‘No.’

  Arwood rotates it in his hands and finds the power button. He depresses it and places his thumb over the speaker, muffling the chime.

  ‘Arwood, what do you do for a living?’

  ‘I solve problems. Is it on?’

  Benton looks down. ‘Whose problems? And, yes, it is.’

  ‘Is it charged? Icon’s in the upper right.’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘We’ve got a signal?’

  ‘No. Whose problems, and how do you solve them?’

  ‘You know that saying, “Give a man a fish, feed him for a day; teach him to fish, feed him for life”? That’s all very sweet until people come to take his fish away and make him a slave. Meanwhile, you give a man a gun, he can get as many fish as he wants. And keep them. We’re on the GSM phone network in Iraq. There should be a signal.’

  ‘It could be the concrete walls,’ Benton says. ‘I’m still wondering why those slats are positioned so high.’

  ‘We’re in a bunker or military fortification of some kind. Something old. We need to find a signal in here. I’m going to walk and you’re going to follow me, checking the bars. Here we go.’

  Arwood stoops to raise the phone higher, and Benton stoops to see it. Together they shuffle across the room like two old men with their hands behind their backs as they scan for a signal.

  ‘No one would give me a job when I got back,’ Arwood says as they walk. ‘With my discharge papers, I couldn’t get a job at Denny’s or Dairy Queen. Bad paper leaves you worse off than if you were a felon. People don’t forgive a bad discharge. They feel like you personally let them down, no matter where you went or what you actually did, or the fact that you served and they didn’t, and that their pain doesn’t mean shit. It’s like being convicted of treason and then being freed rather than facing the firing squad. There are no second chances, no do-overs, and no cleaning that record, no halfway houses, no rehab. Some people deserve that. Some don’t. Mainly, I worked flea markets and gun shows across the Midwest.’

  ‘But you now have professional-level knowledge of geography and international affairs. You hadn’t heard of the BBC when I met you in ’91.’

  ‘I found business better in the Middle East than in the Midwest. Travel really is broadening. Besides, I was never stupid. I just didn’t know anything.’

  Arwood stops by the long wall across from the mattresses and looks up at the slits in the bunker walls. ‘Do you really think it’s possible,’ he says, ‘to spill every kind of blood, experience every kind of human emotion, and weep every kind of tear on a piece of land for over six thousand years, and actually leave nothing behind in the soil? A psychic scar of some kind? I don’t believe that. I mean, forget the Bible. This place has been populated since the Sumerians. That’s six thousand years. You ask me, this land has to be haunted. It has to be. It’s a ghost factory.’

  ‘Arwood,’ Benton says, standing himself upright. ‘If you came here to murder that man, why did you bring me with you? Or Jamal? Why couldn’t you have done this nasty business yourself, and left us out of it?’

  Arwood turns and faces Benton. He looks surprisingly young and sincere.

  ‘I had the intel on the colonel. But the guy I bought it from said something that made me think. So I sat on it. And then the mortar attack happened, and it all came together. That girl is the reason I’m here. But the parallels are impossible to ignore. Even you have to see them. Last time, the colonel lived, and she died. This time, he died, and she’s going to live. Last time, we didn’t take Baghdad. This time, we did. Last time, we were battling the government; this time, it’s the insurgents. It’s all inside out, but exactly the same. Don’t you see?’

  ‘So you came here to murder him.’

  ‘I came here to confront him. Then he pulled out that same Makarov and pointed it at me, so I blew him away. And you know what? The Klingons are wrong. It’s actually much more satisfying to get revenge while you’re in the mood for it. That’s what happened, and I don’t regret it. It is scary and freakish to kill another person, but I swear to God there are times when the pros outweigh the cons. So why are you here? No one put a gun against your thick head.’

  ‘I felt I owed you. You came to get me in Samawah.’

  Arwood shakes his head. ‘You don’t owe me anything. I’m the one who convinced you to go look around. I put you there.’

  ‘No, you were right. I needed to do my job. You reminded me of that.’

  ‘I was twenty-two years old. What the hell did I know?’

  ‘You can be right without understanding why. Kids are like that all the time.’

  ‘I don’t believe that’s why you’re here,’ Arwood says. ‘You must have been looking for any excuse to get out of England, and I gave you one. You said in the car that things are rocky with your wife. So is that it? You’re running as far away from yo
urself as possible? If that’s the case, then I’ve got bad news for you. Buckaroo Banzai was right: no matter where you go, there you are. And so here we are. Again. Back at Checkpoint Zulu.’

  ‘I think,’ Benton says, ‘that the reason my wife cheated on me is that she was unable to reach me any other way. And I think this was the case because I lost something significant after what happened to us here in ’91. Though it may seem cowardly, the reason I’m here is to try to recover what I lost so that I might have a different relationship with my wife and daughter when I get back, if I ever do.’

  Arwood is quiet for a moment before saying, ‘That actually makes sense.’

  ‘Well, thank you.’

  ‘Did you tell your wife this?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Dude—’

  ‘It’s a process,’ Benton says.

  Arwood, with nothing else to say on the matter, spins around and raises his arms to his waist. ‘Do you see my watch?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says.

  ‘Read our coordinates to me. My hunch is that we’re near Kursi in the Sinjar Mountains. You felt how we drove south-west, how it was flat, and then we started bouncing along going up again? How the road got all twisty, like we were in the Alps? My ears even popped. Only reason for roads to twist like that is mountains. There aren’t many mountains down here — not on the way to al-Anbar. I think we’re west of Tal Afar. This is not a high-rent district.’

  ‘Just … stop moving around. The numbers are very small.’

  ‘In your own time. No reason to rush.’

  ‘OK. It’s N36° 23’ 15.88”, E41°47’32.87”

  ‘Repeat them.’

  Benton does.

  ‘Remember them.’

  ‘I can’t possibly,’ Benton says.

  ‘If they take the watch, or we’re split up, or I’m killed—’

  ‘It’s too many numbers. I’m not a computer. I’m thirsty, I’m tired, I’m in pain, I’m sixty-three years old—’