by AJ Stewart
He turned and stepped out the door. The soldier in the sand-colored uniform stood waiting in the corridor. Fontaine paused.
“What is your regiment, soldier?” he asked in French.
“Twenty-fourth infantry regiment.”
Fontaine nodded. “What is your rank, soldier?”
“Soldat,” he said.
Fontaine nodded again and looked at the private. His eyes were unblinking and sharp. They held each other’s gaze for a moment, and then Fontaine marched away.
General Thoreaux didn’t make the call until he was sitting in the forward compartment of the Airbus A 310. The aircraft was a version of the commercial passenger plane, reconfigured so the first compartment was passenger seating and the rear could hold cargo. It was old and the seats were not to the general’s liking, but it beat traveling in a transport and there weren’t any commercial flights from Baghdad to Djibouti City. He leaned back in his seat and punched the icon and the phone dialed the Paris number.
“It’s done,” he said into the phone.
“What will he do?” said the voice at the other end. The general did not know who owned the voice, and had no desire to know such a thing.
“I don’t know. These Legionnaires, you never can tell. If he was one of my men, he’d do what he was told.”
“But he’s not one of your men.”
“No. I told you that before I left. So why? He has his own chain of command.”
“Pressure, Général. Applied from multiple directions.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” said the general.
“We always know what we’re doing, Général. And you get looked after, don’t you?”
“I hardly call being stationed in Djibouti being looked after.”
“All in good time, Général.”
The call ended with a click. General Thoreaux snarled and dropped the phone in the vacant seat beside him. A soldier handed him a bottle of cold water and told him they had clearance to take off. Thoreaux nodded and cracked open the water. He thought about the call and about the man he had met in the hotel. Fontaine. The general had heard the rumors. He didn’t believe most of them. Stories of military conquests were like fishing tales—they grew bigger with every telling. But now that he had met the man he wasn’t so confident, and the general was a man used to feeling confident. It wasn’t just the man’s insolence, although there was plenty of that. It was the look in his eyes. He was hard and determined. Many a soldier would have quaked at the general’s mere presence. His orders would have been followed as gospel, chain of command be damned. But Fontaine was not fazed by the general or his orders. Thoreaux had warned against this eventuality but had been ordered to go anyway. Pressure. Multiple directions. The general shook his head and closed his eyes as the Airbus turned onto the main runway at Camp Victory and the pilot hit the thrust.
As the aircraft lifted from Iraqi soil the general thought of his home in Lyon. It was true that he was looked after by whoever they were. The rumor was that they were called The Eight, but he put no stock in rumor. Perhaps there were eight men around a table in a smoky room in Paris, perhaps not. It sounded like a movie to him. Yet whoever they were, he knew that France’s interests were their interests, and that made what he did the patriotic choice. None of the information he ever gave was that secret. They always seemed to know the really secret information already. Certainly the occasional payments allowed his wife to live in a large house and enjoy associations that they would not have otherwise afforded on a general’s salary. His only wish was that he could return to France to enjoy them himself. And he saw this as his opportunity to do just that. That was why he left a man on the ground in Baghdad. The Eight had eyes, and the Legion had eyes. Now he had eyes, and he would use his eyes to show Laporte’s group for the bandits they were. Paris would thank him for it and bring him home.
General Thoreaux’s man was on the ground, in a part of the city that had once been a nice suburb of Baghdad. It didn’t look so nice to him anymore. It looked like it had been through a war. It was the kind of place with which the private was quite familiar. Because he wasn’t a private. He had been in the army a lot longer than any soldat. He had a uniform and a rank, but he had not worn either in a long time. He was in no doubt that the Legionnaire, Fontaine, would not have believed that he was a private. He didn’t care. His objective wasn’t to create an intricate backstory; he just had no intention of sharing information of any kind. He had worked on the edges of the army for General Thoreaux for many years. Thoreaux called him Bandy, although that was not the name his mother gave him, and referred to him as his odd jobs man. Bandy didn’t find the jobs he was tasked with odd, but they were not by most definitions routine.
Bandy was watching a white delivery van being driven by an American soldier. The van stopped outside a building that had once had two floors but now had just the one thanks to a mortar round. Bandy had been to the building before. His first task on landing in Baghdad had been to follow Fontaine and his merry men from their hotel. General Thoreaux’s information was that Fontaine was meddling in something he should not be, something above his pay grade, something that was evidently above the general’s pay grade as well, since no information about it was shared with him. But the general was a cautious man. He figured the more he knew, the better. So Bandy followed Fontaine to this area of Baghdad and watched him walk alone into this very house. He came out alone, too, and then Fontaine and his men left. Bandy waited. He knew the Fontaine end of the equation. It was the other end that wasn’t being shared. He waited only ten minutes before a casually dressed soldier ambled out of the house and got in an army jeep. The soldier wore an unbuttoned BDU coat thrown over the top of his t-shirt and body armor. Bandy took photographs of the man and then followed him. The man drove into Camp Victory, somewhere Bandy could not follow without good reason, and paperwork. At least now he knew something. The soldier was American, he had a safe house off base, and the name on his coat was Dennison.
After taking the general to meet with Fontaine at the hotel and then driving the general back to the airport at Camp Victory, Bandy decided to check out the soldier’s safe house. He returned to the once nice suburb and entered the residence through the rear door. Someone had placed a rudimentary padlock on the door, which was more symbolic than practical. Bandy moved through the rooms, from what was a kitchen in the rear, along a hall and past small bedrooms, to a living room at the front. The purpose of each of the forward rooms was nominal since there was no furniture in any of them. Bandy paused in the living room and observed the street outside, the white heat bleaching the scene from his darkened position. He listened for a moment, heard nothing he didn’t expect to hear, and then retreated back out through the rear, snapping the padlock closed as he went.
He was back sitting in his dusty SUV when the white van approached the building. He recognized the American soldier, Dennison, as he stepped out of the driver’s cab and opened the rear doors on the van. Bandy saw a woman step out. She was thin in the cheeks and dressed in a long green dress and matching hijab. She turned back to the van to help several children down onto the dusty street. A second similarly dressed woman followed the children out. The American soldier slammed the doors closed and ushered the women and children inside. He bore no weapon and the women seemed to be under no duress. The children watched him closely, as if they had been trained that deference to a military uniform was the smart play. Bandy watched the group enter the building, Dennison unlocking a padlock on the front door. When Dennison came back out a few minutes later he was alone. He relocked the padlock, glanced around the street and then jumped back in the van and drove away.
Bandy thought about calling General Thoreaux but dismissed the idea since the general would be in the air. He decided to let Dennison go and return to the hotel instead. He didn’t know what the American was up to, or how the women and children fit in. He did know a little more about the other side of events and would learn more, but F
ontaine was who he had been tasked to shadow, so he pulled the SUV around and headed back to the GZ.
“I don’t like it,” said Gorecki.
The men were in Fontaine’s room. Fontaine sat on the end of his bed.
“Général Thoreaux,” said Manu.
“Oui,” said Fontaine.
“And he actually said, ‘your country thanks you’?” asked Thorn.
“He did.”
“Does he understand the foreign in French Foreign Legion?” asked Gorecki.
“Evidently not.”
“Général Thoreaux,” repeated Manu. “But he is not a Legion commander, is he?”
“No, Manu. He commands regular army operations in Africa.”
“I don’t like it,” Gorecki said again.
“It smells bad, mon Adjudant,” said Babar.
“I agree, Babar,” said Fontaine.
Babar shook his head. “Someone not even in our chain of command giving us orders? And he came all the way from Djibouti to tell you this?”
“Have we heard anything from General Murat?” asked Thorn, referring to the commander of the French Foreign Legion.
“Does Thoreaux outrank Murat?” asked Manu.
“No,” said Fontaine. “He’s a two-star. Général de brigade. Murat is a three-star. And no, we haven’t had orders from General Murat.”
“So what do we do?” asked Thorn.
Fontaine looked around the room at each of his men. Each had saved the others more than once. There were debts shared and repaid and shared again. He was their unit leader, the highest ranking. But they didn’t work like that. He knew they would follow him, whatever he decided. The esprit de corps was the foundation of the Legion. Where the French Army’s motto was Honneur et Patrie, or Honor and Fatherland, the motto of the Legion was Honneur et Fidélité. Honor and Fidelity. The brotherhood of the Legion came first. Always. But he knew that as a group what they were protecting was more than that. It was a common belief not in a flag but in a right. The right to freedom. No country had a mortgage on that and no country had it perfected. Freedom wasn’t so easily defined. But he certainly knew when it was taken away, and when it was being denied. And his men did, too. So as a group, they would decide.
“We do as we always do, Thorn. We decide as one.”
Gorecki laughed. “One for all and all for one.”
Manu rolled his eyes and slapped Gorecki’s shoulder.
Fontaine said, “Our direct commander, Colonel Laporte, has given us our orders. Another officer, although not in our chain of command, has given us contradictory orders. To ignore these new orders might mean more than breaking rules. Perhaps time in the prison militaire. Perhaps we will be dishonorably discharged. Perhaps nothing will happen.”
“I don’t like it,” said Gorecki for a third time. “This officer coming into our business, Legion business. I say to hell with him.”
“I agree,” said Manu. “You are right, mon Adjudant. There is something going on here. The timing is suspect. We must continue.”
Fontaine looked at the blond by the door. “Thorn?”
“It is not a reasonable position for them to put us in.”
“Yet here we are.”
“Oui. It is not reasonable. Until we get clarification from our own superiors, we must continue as we were.”
“D’accord. And what say you, Babar?”
The big guy grinned. “If they think prison militaire is a threat, they haven’t trained with the Legion.”
The men all laughed.
“We must do what is right,” continued Babar. “Allowing these weapons to fall into the hands of bad people is not right.”
Fontaine looked around the room again. The decision was exactly what he knew it would be.
“I will ask Colonel Laporte for clarification. Until then, we continue. But we must rethink our strategy. It is suspicious that we get called off the operation just as we make contact with this Staff Sergeant Dennison. A link seems improbable, but we should assume he knows exactly who I am. Who we are.”
The men fell into silent thinking which was punctuated with a knock on the door. They looked at each other.
“Who is it?” asked Fontaine.
“Hutton,” came the reply.
The men relaxed and Fontaine called for her to come in. She cracked open the door and ran her eyes around the room.
“Am I interrupting?”
“No, mademoiselle,” said Gorecki with a mischievous smile. “We were just leaving.”
Gorecki ushered his brothers out of the room, and then turned back to Fontaine as he was closing the door.
“We’ll think on it, mon Adjudant.”
Fontaine frowned at him. “Do.”
The door snapped closed and Fontaine turned his attention to Hutton.
“Sorry for interrupting, but I wanted to know what that thing was all about this morning.”
“We’ve been ordered to leave Iraq.”
The wrinkle appeared between her eyes again. Fontaine was growing to like it.
“What? Are you serious?”
“As soon as we get new orders.”
“That doesn’t make you suspicious?”
“Very.”
“So what are you going to do?”
Fontaine thought on it for a moment.
“I’m going to eat.” He stood from the bed. The space between the bed and wall was no more than a meter, and most of that was filled by Hutton. They ended up face to chin. She looked up at him. The wrinkle was still there. She was looking at him like he was an animal in a zoo that she had never seen before.
He said, “I heard there’s a place nearby that does steak-frites. You hungry?”
Hutton nodded.
Chapter Seven
The place with the steak was a little building next to the Islamic High Command. Apparently they had found a way to tolerate each other. The owner was an Englishman who had seen a need and filled it. The restaurant was full of UN staffers and Department of State diplomats. The owner told them that the specialty was steak and chips, and that it was Parisian in style and very tasty, but he advised against asking where the beef came from. He followed that comment with a wink and set them up at a two-top with a beer and a bottle of Swiss water. They clinked drinks, and Fontaine’s plastic bottle crumpled a little under the pressure of Hutton’s glass.
“When will you leave?” she asked.
“When we get new orders. A couple of days, maybe.”
“And you won’t continue after the case in the meantime.”
“That was what was suggested.”
“Suggested?”
“I don’t like leaving things hanging. Those sorts of things tend to fester and go bad on you. Plus they were lying to me.”
“Lying?”
“The soldier you saw at the door? He was the general’s escort. He told me he was an infantry private.”
“He looked a touch old for a private.”
“Exactly. If he was still a private, he was the world’s worst soldier, and a general doesn’t get escorted by the world’s worst soldier. Plus he was checking out the lobby like a pro. He didn’t enlist yesterday. And no private would forget his manners and address me without calling me by my rank. The whole thing stinks.”
Hutton smiled. “I thought for a minute I’d misjudged you.”
“Easy to make false assumptions about someone when you really know nothing about them.”
“I’d like to change that.”
Fontaine looked over the top of his bottle at Hutton. His was a culture where mysteries were assumed but answers were never sought. Legionnaires didn’t ask questions about their brothers’ lives before the Legion. There was always conjecture and assumption, but true answers were never part of the deal. It was an unwritten rule. You were who you were now, not who you might have been before.
“I don’t mind secrets,” Hutton said. “I knew there were some things you weren’t going to share. As a CIA operative I assu
med that fact. But I was wrong about a lot of things.”
Fontaine said nothing, so Hutton sipped her beer and continued.
“Let’s start with the fact that you are not in the CIA.”
Fontaine raised an eyebrow.
Hutton nodded. “I’d go as far as to say you don’t even work for the US government. It’s probable that you aren’t even a US citizen. Maybe you just learned your English there.”
“You think I’m one of the bad guys?”
Hutton shook her head. “I think there is more than one party that wants these arms off the market. And as long as that job gets done I don’t care who does it. But you’ve been called off the job. By someone you don’t trust completely. And you don’t like it. And I respect that about you.”
“You do?”
Hutton nodded. Two plates of thin steak and French fries landed on their table. The steam coming off the food smelled fantastic.
“Bon appétit,” Fontaine said.
Hutton smiled. It wasn’t joy in her face. More like she thought she knew something, or was learning something. She cut into her meat and took a bite.
“He wasn’t kidding—this is really good.”
“Hunger is the best sauce.”
“Who said that?” she asked.
“Anyone who has ever truly been hungry. But I read it in Don Quixote.”
“Don Quixote?” She nodded and did the smile again.
Fontaine ate. It was good. A touch salty, but salt was something everybody needed more of in the desert heat. He watched her eat. She was small and fit and healthy, but she ate like it was her last meal. Like she wanted to savor every single bite. As she chewed she didn’t speak. She didn’t try to fill the silence between them. Not that the place was silent. The crowd was buzzing and eighties hits were playing from a speaker attached to a phone behind the bar. Fontaine took a drink of water and sat back.
“All right. I’ll bite,” he said. “What is it you think you know?”
“I know you don’t quit.”
“Right.”