Tigger and Märta look carefully at him, and turn to each other. Neither has seen him before.
‘I came here for four people,’ Märta says. ‘Three men and a girl. This man makes me think you don’t have my people, and that we should leave. You obviously have other business.’
Märta makes to stand, and Tigger stands as well, without saying a word.
The man across from them raises a hand and signals them to sit. Then he nods to one of his men, who withdraws an automatic pistol and places it against the man’s temple. The captive’s shoulders rise and he whimpers, but he says nothing.
‘So if I kill him, it means nothing to you?’ the man says. ‘He says he is a journalist. Writes stories for the Internet. You say he is not with you?’
‘It means everything to me if you kill him,’ Märta says. ‘Our work is committed to saving human lives. All lives. The purpose of this conversation is for me to recover my people. If your first move in this conversation is to insult us, to harm someone else, and change the purpose of our meeting, then nothing will be able to continue. I’m not here to be intimidated. I’m here to talk. And since he is not one of my people, I’d like some proof you have them. I assume you have their names. At least give me those so we can proceed.’
The leader nods to the man with the pistol. Immediately, the man shoots his captive in the temple. Blood arcs from the wound, and he is dead before the sound of the gun reaches his ear.
His limp body is collected by his executioners and dragged back the way they came.
Märta’s heart races, but she does not stand and does not move. Though her voice is weak, she says, ‘Do you have what I want, or don’t you?’
‘They aren’t here.’
‘You could have anyone. I don’t know you.’
He nods. He reaches into his pocket and withdraws a piece of white paper taken from the pages of a child’s school notebook. He reads the names aloud.
‘Adar al-Kaysi. Jamal al-Khedairy. Ferris Bueller. And’— he checks his note again — ‘Inigo Montoya.’
Tigger shakes his head.
‘These are not your people?’ the man asks.
‘Those are our people,’ Tigger says.
34
When Arwood was stuck in the cell with Benton, he’d wondered what was behind the inner door, if only because, after so many years of game shows, he had no choice but to wonder what was behind curtain number two.
It turned out that when they finally dragged him through that door, there was nothing behind the proverbial curtain, because it led first into a small antechamber or guardroom, and then outside to a courtyard that could once have garrisoned a company of men and their horses. Outside, in that courtyard, Larry shot into the air as a signal or warning — a message in a language Arwood did not speak. Maybe it was a signal to someone. Maybe it was to make Benton think Arwood had been killed.
‘I’m not sure there’s been anyone to tell you guys, as you live in kind of a closed-off world that only reads its own press,’ Arwood says as he is pulled across the courtyard, ‘so just in case you don’t know this, you are in fact a bunch of complete fucking arseholes.’
What this journey behind the curtain has taught him is that the room where he was kept with Benton is but one corner of an old military fortification. Of the four square towers, only his holding cell and the one directly across from it look intact. The others were bombed out and ruined long ago. Connecting these four corners are castle walls. Arwood looks up as he walks, and views the mountains to the west. Ahead of him is only the wall. Beyond that is a clear view north into the plains in Ninawa that he cannot see.
Long ago, this fortification provided a high-terrain advantage — an Arab Masada. Later, when man took to the skies to kill from above, and war was fought from the wings of eagles, the advantage was lost.
As Arwood walks, he imagines the view of this fortress from inside the cockpit of an A-10 Thunderbolt — a plane that many call ugly, but one that Arwood has found stunningly beautiful since he was a boy. He made one with his uncle. He studied the specs. What might it be like to hear the 1,100 rounds of 11-inch-long 30mm tank-killer bullets ripping into these walls at four thousand rounds a minute? He smiles at his captors as he imagines those aerial gunfighters lingering over the fortress, giving close air support to onrushing infantry — flying low and slow, distinguishing friend from foe, getting their chins into the fight, and blowing these people to hell.
Inside the next room, he is tossed onto the floor. Half an hour later, Abu Larry comes in for a chat: he wants to know Arwood’s name and who he works for. Arwood explains that he is on assignment for Wallpaper Magazine to write an exposé on the interior design of terrorist holding cells.
‘And I’ve got to say,’ Arwood adds, ‘I love what you’ve done with the place.’
Abu Larry shoots him in the leg.
The bullet rips through his quadriceps. Arwood is then uncuffed, and allowed to tend to the wound. He is left alone, and there he sits for hours, thirsty beyond belief. Later, in the blackness of that night, the door opens, and Adar is pushed at him.
He rushes to her as best he can, and holds her face in his hands. She starts to cry when she sees him. He turns her head, and examines her scalp, neck, and shoulders. Though it is against every local code of behaviour, he turns her around and lifts up her garments, to reveal her bruised but unpunctured back and then belly. She does not resist him. When he is convinced she isn’t injured or bleeding, he again sits on the floor, and rests his body against the wall.
She sits by him, as she did on the Ural.
‘I’m sorry about this,’ he says.
Adar does not speak.
‘Did they touch you?’
Adar still does not speak.
Later, they toss in Jamal, too. He has the same gunshot wound as Arwood.
‘You OK?’ Arwood asks.
‘Of course I am not OK. They shot me.’
‘Have you seen Benton?’ Arwood asks.
‘No.’
Jamal explains that they gave him Adar’s dress to stop the bleeding of his wounds. They had told him that his companions were dead. Jamal said he was happy to see them, but he does not look happy.
‘Did they ask you any questions?’ Arwood asks.
‘My name. Who I worked for. If I was sent to spy on them.’
‘Uh-huh,’ Arwood says.
‘Do you think they are going to kill us, Mr Arwood?’ Jamal asks.
‘I think that whatever is about to happen is going to happen soon.’
He calls himself Abu Saleh. He talks at Märta and Tigger for twenty minutes about the imperialist West, about the treatment of the Palestinians, about the will of God, about the suffering of his people, about the meaning of jihad, about how Muslims must live by the word of the Koran, and how no power on earth will ever stop that from happening again, and how Märta and Tigger are now his hostages.
He explains how ISIL in Syria has new needs that separate it from al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He says there will be a caliphate again. And the West will shudder.
Märta has never seen a man shot before. She does not know whether Tigger has, but she is glad he is the one to talk. ‘Time is wasting,’ Tigger says, sounding unimpressed and uninterested. ‘I suggest you tell us what you want, because we have a call scheduled at eight-thirty. And if we do not make that call at eight-thirty, then this conversation is over, and there will be consequences for everyone involved.’
‘You will give me your telephones now.’
Tigger, conscious of the time now and the window that is about to close on their chances, looks at Märta and tells her to place the call.
Abu Saleh raises his hand to signal his men to come.
Märta dials.
Tigger looks up, expecting to see two assault rifles in his face, but is surpris
ed to see only the calm street.
The two henchmen are no longer at their posts. They no longer seem to be anywhere.
Abu Saleh looks at Tigger, and registers the look of confusion. He turns to look for his men, and finds them gone.
He shouts in Arabic for them to come.
Märta has dialled, and the phone rings.
‘Put it on the speaker and turn up the volume,’ Tigger says.
Abu Saleh, irritated for the first time with his new loss of control, shouts again for his men.
‘No one’s answering,’ Märta says.
‘There is no Plan B,’ Tigger says.
It is 8.32 a.m.
Yelling something in Arabic, Abu Saleh, certain his men are not coming, bursts to his feet and yanks a hidden pistol from his belt, and makes the mistake of leaning across the table to place the barrel of his gun against Märta’s heart.
Tigger is no longer in the military. When he was, he served in intelligence. He had no interest in joining the special forces, no compulsion to prove his manhood through brute force and sustained discomfort, and he did not believe that most conflicts could be solved by violence. He was a thinking soldier, and liked reasoning his way to victory.
Abu Saleh, sensing that Tigger is a man of talk, has made the error of equating that with weakness.
Abu Saleh is a tall man. Like Osama bin Laden was, he is spindly — not unlike Tigger himself. So when his Webley is extended across the table, and the edge of that table meets Saleh’s legs at mid-thigh, Tigger has little trouble using his own left hand to grab Saleh’s gun wrist and — rather than pushing against him — twist the man’s body, using inertia to pull him over the tabletop and flat onto his stomach, in a motion as smooth as dance.
With Abu Saleh prone, Tigger immediately twists his wrist to the breaking point while tucking Saleh’s arm into the pit of his own. With Saleh’s elbow and wrist painfully locked, and the weapon pointing harmlessly into the distance, Tigger bends his hand back until the gun comes loose.
Holding it in his right hand, he presses the barrel of the pistol into Abu Saleh’s temple without changing his own body position.
‘Oh, this is just swell,’ Märta says.
‘How’s that call coming?’
‘He hasn’t answered yet. When I said earlier I wanted them off- balance, this isn’t what I had in mind.’
‘Well, this is all very awkward for everyone,’ Tigger says.
‘Who are you?’ Abu Saleh asks.
‘Believe it or not,’ Tigger says, ‘we really are who we say we are. Only, we are not feeling ourselves today, because you have made us very nervous.’
Märta holds up her finger to silence them. The call is connecting.
She says, ‘Yes.’ There is silence while the voice on the phone speaks. ‘His name is Abu Saleh,’ Märta says next. ‘You know him?’ Märta nods to Tigger. ‘You’ll do this?’ she asks the voice on the phone.
Moving the phone away from her ear, she presses the speaker button and places it on the centre of the table beside Abu Saleh’s undignified and prone body.
‘It’s for you,’ she says.
35
Herbert Reston was born at the back-end of the 1960s, making him old enough to feel that, somewhere along the line, science had promised him a jetpack.
His would be silver and would look like dual scuba tanks. It would have a bright-red button on the grip, and it would be on his back with thick leather straps right now, allowing even a big man like himself to lift off from Märta’s upstairs balcony and scare the crows from the sky as he jetted toward Louise’s subdelegation office. He would use the red tail-lights on the highway below to direct his flight path.
But he isn’t in the air like an Avenger. Instead, he’s stuck in traffic. And if that isn’t bad enough, he’s had to listen to Clip Maxwell apologise. Because his blogger is out of contact, and they fear the worst.
‘So you have nothing useful to tell me,’ Herb says, calculating the time to the office with traffic, and hating the results.
‘The Iraqi air force,’ Clip says, ‘is going to start a ground assault on ISIL positions and weapons depots at nine o’clock tonight. That is in … about fifteen minutes.’
‘You know this how?’ Herb asks.
‘We paid for it from someone inside the ministry. There’s no way to get them back here tonight, assuming they can even come. I’m sorry.’
‘We need a helicopter,’ Herb says.
‘The area’s too hot, Herb. No one would be crazy enough to even think about taking off. No one can get to the mountain in this sort of maelstrom. I know six private security companies in Iraq, all with lift, and they’re all grounding their people during this. Everyone’s grounded until the assault is over. It would be madness to fly in Ninawa today. Everyone is sitting this one out.’
‘Not everyone,’ Herb says, and hangs up.
He honks the horn.
Horns honk back.
When his phone rings again, he answers it, hoping it is Märta or Tigger. But it is, instead, Farrah, Louise’s assistant.
‘Mr Herbert, I have Louise here for you. You were trying to reach her?’
‘How are you hanging in there, Farrah?’
For the first time since he’s known her, he hears a faint tremble in her throat as she speaks.
‘It is very hard for us, Mr Herbert. Our families—’ She does not finish whatever she was planning to say.
‘It’s not over, Farrah. There’s hope yet.’
‘I don’t know, Mr Herbert. We thought that maybe Iraq could be a democracy. The national staff here … with the NGOs. What’s wrong with us? Why can we not find peace among ourselves? Why do we always fail?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with you, Farrah.’
‘Maybe we are being punished.’
‘You’re not.’
‘We are so very tired, Mr Herbert. It feels like the world is caving in around us, and no one will dig us out or know we were ever here.’
‘Farrah, let me just say this. Iraq has been here since the dawn of history. And things are bad. And you’re right, they’re gonna be bad for a long time. But someday people will need to look back and know there have always been people like you trying to fight the good fight and in the right way. I learned that from my civil rights movement. Yours is the real jihad, Farrah. So keep struggling, keep your faith, and, if you can, keep your sense of humor.’
Herb cannot know what Farrah is thinking or doing in the silence that follows. She is too composed. He does not, however, interrupt her. When she does speak, she says, ‘It was nice talking with you, Mr Herbert. I’ll pass you over to Louise now.’
He hears a click, followed by Louise’s voice.
‘What’s happening?’ she asks directly.
‘I don’t know,’ Herb says. ‘It’s eight-forty in the morning. I should be getting a call, and no one’s calling. No messages — nothing. I can’t reach Tigger. I can’t reach Märta.’
‘Tigger probably has his hands full,’ Louise says, ‘and it’s likely that Märta is still on the phone. Do you have any reason to think something might have gone wrong?’
The traffic moves. Unconcerned with obeying protocol any longer, he angles his 4×4 onto the shoulder of the road, forcing half his vehicle into the desert itself. It is bumpy at fifty kilometres an hour. Still, it is faster than before.
‘I don’t know anything,’ Herb says, not mentioning the missing blogger. ‘Either way, we need to prep the helicopter, and we should prepare to pick them up.’
‘We’ve heard rumours of a possible offensive today,’ Louise says. ‘If it’s true, there will be mass casualties. I need that helicopter for non-combatants.’
She knows this will irritate Herb, but there are reasons that the ICRC is here. She wants to be helpful, but the rules we
re explained to Märta in clear terms, and Louise will not rush in where there is no agreement between the parties. ‘We’re not a hostage-rescue outfit, Herb. I will make AirOps available to you, but only once you’ve secured an agreement and we can contact the different parties. And I hate to ask the obvious, but if they drove there, why not drive back?’
‘There’s no time,’ he says.
‘Why not?’
‘Because it’s not a rumour. The military is going to start striking targets in twenty minutes. And seeing as ISIL is entrenching in Kurdistan to solidify their positions in Syria, I strongly suspect that they are going to hide in highly populated civilian areas to neutralise government air superiority. And there is no route back that doesn’t pass through a city. Which means Tal Afar, at the very least. That town is cursed.’
‘What if they sheltered in place?’
‘In a terrorist holding cell, among devil worshippers?’
‘It’s not ideal, I admit,’ Louise says, ‘but it might be better than being on the open road. And I don’t think they’re devil worshippers. I think people keep calling them that because it’s fun to say—’
‘Louise,’ he interrupts, ‘I understand you have your policies and your laws and your rules, and I like policies and laws and rules, but please be prepared to get off the ground the second that confirmation comes through. Promise me that?’
‘If they left at five in the morning for a run that takes eight hours, and you knew there’d be an assault, it sounds like you deliberately put me in an impossible situation, Herb.’
‘We didn’t know about the offensive until after we’d made contact. It’s all unfolding, Louise. All I can do is try and get my people out safely. That is my job.’
‘I’ll have it fuelled,’ says Louise unenthusiastically, ‘and I’ll make sure Spaz is ready. I’ll even bend the rules and let you fly along, but only because we have a signed memorandum of understanding with the IRSG, not because it’s a special favour. You give me confirmation, and you can go get them. But do not put the International Committee of the Red Cross in a political pinch, Herb. I don’t want us kicked out of Iraq.’
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