The Girl in Green

by Derek B. Miller

  ‘That’s quite an analysis.’

  ‘I’d bet your life on it.’

  ‘All right. Get on with it,’ Benton says.

  ‘You need to kneel by the window so I can stand on you. I can’t reach otherwise.’

  ‘Of course you do.’

  Benton moves on his hands and knees toward the wall across from the mattresses and between the two doors. There are three slits near the ceiling, each a metre long, separated by small supporting columns. They are too small for a man or a child to slip through, but wide enough for binoculars, a rifle, or an arm to hurl an object the size of a grenade or a mobile telephone.

  The room has all the qualities of a crypt. It smells like a construction site mixed with cooking spices and bare feet. In the dirt and the dust that coats everything, as Arwood places his right foot in the small of Benton’s back, an unexpected thought comes to him, and not one he’s entertained before.

  ‘I want to die outside,’ Benton says.

  ‘Me, too,’ says Arwood, and he now shifts all his weight onto Benton’s back. The skin over his old bones slips around like a plucked chicken’s. ‘I want to get out of here and have a nice long life selling weapons to oppressed people with cash.’

  ‘I don’t mean outside this room. I mean outside all rooms. I want my last breath of life to be taken outdoors. A clear shot, so to speak.’

  ‘This window opens to the outside,’ Arwood says. ‘We seem to be in a small valley, or a canyon, or something. I can’t fit my head through. I can see stars above us, but there are rocks or — well, something that blocks out the stars — maybe ten or fifteen metres away. There’s no artificial light anywhere. I can’t see any buildings. Wherever we are is blacked out.’

  There is blood dripping from Benton’s nose, and he cannot move his hand to wipe it away. All he can do is stare into the floor and listen as Arwood narrates his own movements: ‘I’m reaching my hand out to see what’s there. The outside wall is smooth, more or less. I can’t reach the ground. I can’t tell how high up we are. The light is too strange. A metre or two? It doesn’t feel like the ground in our room is the same level as the ground outside. I think we’re dug in. That’s why the slats on the wall are so high.’

  ‘If you have a clear throw, then get on with it. My back—’

  Arwood falls silent above him. His feet become still. There is a moment when their absurd pose becomes statuesque — a new member in the Garden of the Fugitives, those human statues at Pompeii. Then, without a sound, Arwood’s weight shifts to Benton’s lower back, rests there a moment, and then shifts forward to his upper back as he hurls the phone with all his might.

  A silence follows — as complete and warm as a ceasefire — to be replaced by the sound of plastic and metal crashing into an ancient crevasse, echoing outward from the Sinjar Mountains to al-Anbar in the south and Ninawa province to the north, with a message for anyone with the ability to hear it.

  PART III

  OTHER THAN HONOURABLE

  THE NEXT MORNING

  28

  Märta Ström wakes to the sound of her phone. She checks her watch to confirm the time. She can barely make out the faintly luminous green glow of the watch hands. It doesn’t appear to be 5.00 a.m. yet. Which is nice. There is more time for sleep.

  Her grandmother used to call sleep ‘delicious’, as though it had a flavour. Her grandmother died almost twenty years ago. Märta would lie in bed with her as a child, after her grandfather had gone off to wherever men went at six in the morning. The bed was still warm. The blanket smelled of wool. The wooden walls of their home, two hours from Stockholm, never entirely lost their smell. Everything in their home was simple. What they needed they had, and what they had they needed. Life was about the relationships between people, and the love that peace allows. She can still feel the knuckles of her grandmother’s hand and the way her index finger would curl across all four of her own fingers while they lay in bed, toasty from the neck down, a thin layer of cold over her cheeks from the windows that were not thick enough — not really — to keep out the early-morning chill of a Swedish winter. She can taste it, just like her grandmother said. But it isn’t the sleep she can taste. It is the memory.

  More time to sleep. More time to hold her grandmother’s hand and wonder what might be for breakfast. To enjoy this time alone with her. Her parents aren’t here now. Or her older brother. They’ll be able to talk this morning, just the two of them.

  There would be nothing preventing them from sharing a stolen moment together this morning, were it not for a question forming off the bow like a storm front. She knows, instinctively, that if she allows the question to take a proper shape, it will disrupt her planned course. She needs to ignore it. Maybe it will go away. She wants to have breakfast with her grandmother, because they love each other and this time is set aside for the two of them.

  But it nags her. It irks her. It knows her too well. She is not one to avoid a good question. And so it comes: If the sound on her phone wasn’t the alarm, what was it?

  Märta unclenches her hand from her grandmother’s, and the bond is broken. Her grandmother’s spirit leaves her, and she is alone again. She is older.

  She looks at her phone.

  It is an SMS message:

  N36° 23’ 15.88”, E41°47’32.87”. Held hostage. Need help. In some kind of old building. Probably ISIL. Come get us now.

  She’s up. Phone in hand, she skips the formality of slippers and bathrobe, and pads down the tiled staircase with the agility of an eleven-year-old girl. In the living room, she flips on the light. Herb is lying on his side, fast asleep in his blue boxers, as peaceful as a baby giant. She says, ‘Herb,’ only once in a quiet tone, and his eyes pop open.

  ‘We got a note. They’re alive. Ten minutes. Make coffee. Where’s Tigger?’

  ‘In the guest room. He won the coin toss.’

  Märta is up the stairs quicker than a sound. She opens the guest bedroom door and flicks on the light from the wall switch. Tigger is sleeping face down and naked, his feet toward the head of the bed.

  ‘Tigger?’

  No reply.

  ‘François Armand?’

  ‘Je ne veux pas aller à l’école. C’est ennuyeux,’ he says.

  ‘Réveille-toi. Ils sont vivants.’

  Tigger raises his head. ‘D’accord.’

  ‘Time to go to work.’

  Märta showers quickly, dresses, and then goes downstairs to meet the two men, who are already dressed in field gear — no more than ten minutes after she woke them.

  ‘What do we have?’ Tigger asks her.

  Märta reads off the coordinates from her cell phone. Herb writes them down, then copies them a second time and hands the second copy to Tigger, who puts them into his pocket without looking up.

  Tigger spreads out a map of northern Iraq on the kitchen table while Herb fixes three cups of coffee with sugar and no milk. He uses the laptop to find the location of the GPS coordinates, and the program zooms in on the Sinjar Mountains.

  ‘Well … shit,’ Tigger says.

  ‘Why?’ Herb asks, back at the table in his blue Patagonia field shirt, the sleeves rolled over his forearms and fastened by buttons.

  ‘They’re in the mountains. West of Tal Afar. It’s a bad place,’ Tigger says, pulling out a chair and then sitting down on it.

  ‘Who do we know in Tal Afar?’ Herb asks.

  ‘Some of the people we helped in ’91 were resettled there,’ Märta says.

  ‘This isn’t Tal Afar,’ Tigger says. ‘These are the Sinjar Mountains. They rise out of absolutely nothing. Geographically, they look like they shouldn’t even be there, the way Monument Valley rises from nothing. Culturally, those mountains are not even Iraq. They are a different universe. They don’t like foreigners. They don’t like Shiites. They don’t like the government. They
won’t like us. Mostly Yezidi.’

  ‘I know some of the Yezidi,’ Märta says. ‘I’m not saying they like foreigners. I’m saying I think they’ll answer the phone if I call.’

  ‘The Yezidi worship the devil,’ Herb says.

  ‘They don’t worship the devil,’ Märta says, ‘at least not the devil as Christians think of him.’

  ‘How else should I be thinking about devil worshippers?’

  ‘The Yezidi,’ Märta says, trying to find out how to explain this even to herself, ‘are a very, very old tribe. Older than the Jews. As old as the Zoroastrians. They see the world as being made of opposing forces — right and wrong, good and evil. The Yezidi recognise that they need to come to spiritual terms with them both, and so they engage in worship that somehow involves talking to the darker forces as well. I don’t know much about them. No one knows much, because they don’t speak of their religion or their identity with foreigners. They’ve been a brutally persecuted minority, and see themselves as put upon by both the Arabs and the Kurds, and they aren’t wrong about that.’

  ‘Arwood said he thinks it’s ISIL, not Yezidi,’ Tigger says.

  ‘Makes sense,’ Herb says. ‘The Yezidi are weak, and the land is good for hiding in. It’s close to the Syrian border, it’s good for attacking farther south into the Sunni regions, and it’s easy to defend. The government is using the Sunni tribes again against ISIL. This is high ground. Not a lot of that around.’

  Märta says, ‘The Yezidi are politically sensitive, and they’re very attentive to what’s happening in their land. It’s how they survive.’

  ‘You think they owe you a favour?’ Herb says.

  ‘I don’t think anyone owes me anything but a paycheque at the end of each month. But some people are grateful nonetheless, and they remember things. Back in the nineties, when I was with UNHCR and then the Red Cross, I used to get out of the office more and actually meet people, rather than fill out funding proposals for junior government staff who have never been in the field. And since I’m considered pretty funny-looking in this part of the world, they tend to remember me. We still have reputation and access as strategic assets. Now would be the time to use them, don’t you both think?’ she asks.

  ‘We need to make contact,’ Tigger says. ‘I will speak with Firefly immediately. Get started. Herb should work the government. See if we can negotiate their release.’

  Herb is looking at the map and considering the location of the Sinjar Mountains in relation to the safe zones. ‘Even if we do reach an agreement, we’ll still need to get them out of there. If the military is hunting ISIL after that attack, then this zone is going to be very hot. No travelling by ground. That means we’ll need a lift. And there are no airfields, so that means helicopters. And if we’re flying at only eight hundred metres, we’ll be very vulnerable, which means we need to be allowed to fly. Because there’s no defence.’

  ‘Tigger, you have thoughts on this?’ Märta asks.

  ‘I suggest we put the players on the board, learn what we need to learn, and then see what the world looks like after that. Herb, you do the government, yes? Tell our friend in Baghdad what we know. See what he says.’

  ‘Yeah, all right.’

  ‘Märta, you warm up Louise. We may need her, like you said last night. I’ll talk to Clip Maxwell. On y va?’

  ‘You two work from here,’ Märta says. ‘I need to see Louise in person.’

  They sleep like the dead until dawn. It is Arwood who wakes first, to the feeling of a boot in his gut. It is Arwood’s involuntary grunt, and then his wheezing attempt to inhale, that wake Benton.

  Hands still cuffed behind him, he opens his eyes. There are two men with AK assault rifles by the door, and one standing above Arwood. Once Arwood has taken a full breath, the man kicks him in the solar plexus again, and again Arwood wheezes for air.

  ‘Stop kicking him,’ Benton says from a sitting position. He says it only so that it will have been said.

  The man — Abu Larry — is wearing a dark tan shirt that falls to his knees over trousers of the same colour and fabric. He wears desert army boots the colour of sand, and has a leather ammunition belt around his thin waist. On his head is the black headscarf of ISIL. On his wrist there’s a vintage gold Longines watch with a fine leather strap. He does not carry a gun.

  Abu Larry crouches down by Benton and studies his face. After a long look, he says something in Arabic, and one of the men by the door quickly kneels on Arwood and binds his hands behind his back again. Then he hits him on the head with the rifle.

  ‘What are you accomplishing? What does this serve?’

  Larry says nothing. He checks Benton’s restraints, sees they are secure, and then removes a rag from his pocket. He pushes Benton to the mattress, kneels on his head, and shoves the rag into Benton’s mouth. He ties a bandana around his head to hold it in place.

  The two other men pull Arwood to his feet. Dizzy and obviously in pain, Arwood is unable to walk by himself. Head bent, he says as loudly as he can, ‘We’re not alone, Benton. There’s still hope. And if they kill us, we’ll be avenged. Mark my words. The land remembers. That’s the only truth of the Middle East.’

  The two men drag Arwood from the room, and one of them kicks the door closed.

  Larry remains crouching by Benton, studying him. His eyes are nothing like Märta’s. Or Vanessa’s. Or Charlotte’s.

  Benton’s broken nose is making it hard for him to breathe. More than fear, he is starting to feel a sense of anxiety and claustrophobia. There isn’t enough air. His breaths become more rapid, more shallow. To look at his abductor or to look away — have his options dwindled only to this?

  Then the man stands and leaves. He does not kick Benton. He does not say a word. He passes through the inner door into a room Benton has never seen. The sliding bolt is engaged, and then the padlock is replaced.

  A moment later, there is a third gunshot.

  Dawn again, and the Syrian refugee men in the Domiz refugee camp are already smoking. There is smoke everywhere — smoke from their cigarettes, smoke from the cooking fires, smoke from the makeshift chimneys in the more permanent structures. The drive from Märta’s home to the IRSG office at the refugee camp is uneventful. The police only have one roadblock set up, and they’re searching cars at random. They wave her through.

  She pulls into the Red Cross parking space reserved for visitors. Her Land Cruiser is not as well equipped as those from the UN or the ICRC. She has her handset but no HF antenna, no black rod that stretches like a thin roll bar across her vehicle to fasten in the back. In Sierra Leone, when she was posted there, the locals called them ‘white rhinos’. She always hoped they were referring to the vehicles.

  In Pakistan, they laughed at her and said the ‘internationals’ never leave the Egg: an egg on wheels. It wasn’t only the colour of the Land Cruisers that inspired the name: it suggested that Westerners were never really born into the world in which they now lived.

  She gets out of the car and locks it. It is six-fifteen in the morning. Farrah isn’t in yet; she comes in closer to seven. Louise, however, is there. Märta can hear the sound of the BBC streaming through tinny computer speakers.

  Märta knocks, because people are supposed to knock, and then walks directly in because she wants to. She sits on Louise’s sofa.

  ‘Good morning,’ Louise says.

  ‘They’re alive. I got a text message. They’re being held by some ISIL cell in the Sinjar Mountains. I’ve heard that the security forces are planning some kind of offensive today, west of Mosul. So there’s a clock on this.’

  ‘I heard that, too. It’s in the sitrep. We’ve all been told to evacuate the area. I’ve cleared my people, but the Iraqi Red Crescent is being a little stubborn.’

  ‘Which means,’ Märta says, ‘this all needs to be over in a few hours. I’ll send you a letter for the reco
rd, but I’m formally requesting that the ICRC extend its good offices to mediate release. And we’re gonna need a ride.’

  ‘Have you made contact yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What’s your play?’

  ‘I’m afraid the military knows about this base in the mountains, and they plan to strike it. If they do, they’ll kill my people. I also don’t want them going underground. I was in that situation in Somalia. They captured our people, they didn’t reach out to us for months, and when they did, our nerves were so frayed we agreed to anything. I also can’t ask the military if they know about the base, because then they’ll definitely bomb it. So all I can do is hurry.’

  Louise says nothing.

  ‘We have an arrangement with Firefly International. Tigger says he trusts them, and thinks they have systems we can use. Apparently, the IRSG keeps them on retainer. Have you used people like this before?’ Märta asks.

  ‘Officially,’ Louise says, ‘I can’t confirm or deny that we’ve used specialised firms to set up the negotiating structures to secure the successful release of our people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Colombia in the last few years. And I can’t confirm that I think it’s a good idea to follow Tigger’s advice. What I can do is tell Spaz that we’ll help when the time comes — if all parties accept us, the government is informed, and we can secure a flight path. You realise, though, that to do this I’ll have to pull air assets off the relief effort to help your people instead. You want to use my lift during an assault. That’ll have consequences.’

  Märta nods. ‘I know.’

  ‘How do you feel about that?’

  ‘I’m going to put off feeling anything about it until it’s over.’

  ‘Are you in touch with Geneva on this?’

  ‘I’m putting Miguel in charge of liaison work with headquarters. You know him? My kid from Spain? Big eyes, floppy hair, the voice, the whole thing? I find they’re a little afraid to talk to him. The Swiss don’t react to his verbal style very well, so they tend to leave me alone if the choice is Miguel or silence. Meanwhile, Herb is working the government to get approval for the pickup, without telling them exactly where it is.’