Last Light

by Alex Scarrow

  He’s new to these men. He sensed the jury was still out amongst Carter’s platoon.

  CHAPTER 10

  9.21 p.m. local time Road leading to Al-Bayji, Iraq

  Andy squeezed the last of the meal around in its flexible foil pouch. After a dozen or so mouthfuls of tepid chicken and mushroom pasta he decided his hunger had been more than sated. In the same way of the all-too-common roadside burger van, the smell of the field rations stewing in boiling water over their small hexamine field stoves had been about a hundred times more appetising than the actual taste.

  In the dark interior of their Land Cruiser, Andy, Mike and the French engineer, Erich, ate in silence; the only noise the rustling of their foil food pouches. Outside, the full moon cast a worryingly bright light down on the quiet road and the surrounding flat terrain. In the last three hours they had seen no more than a dozen vehicles pass by. Each one had been stopped by the hastily established vehicle control point, and then waved on after a cursory inspection by flashlight. All of the vehicles passing were heavily laden with possessions and people on the move, presumably away from the growing unrest in the larger towns. Out here, with only the moon and the stars and the gentle hiss of a light breeze for company, Andy conceded you could be excused for thinking it was a quiet and uneventful night for all of the country. Except for the distant and disturbing orange glow of Al-Bayji on the horizon, you could think that.

  From the snippets they were picking up from the BBC World Service and the more detailed reports coming from local stations, and translated for them by Farid, it seemed as if the unrest that had started first thing this morning in Riyadh had spread right across the Arabian peninsula like a tidal wave.

  ‘They’ve gone insane,’ said Mike, breaking the silence.

  In the darkness Andy nodded in agreement, although the American wouldn’t have been able to see the gesture. ‘I just can’t believe how quickly this seems to be spreading,’ he replied after a moment.

  ‘There’s no working these crazy assholes out. First they’re turning on us because we kicked out their tinpot dictator, now all of a sudden they’re turning on each other. Do you think they just got bored with blowing up foreigners?’

  Andy sucked in a breath and let it go. He had sat through so many conversations that started like this back in London, around the dinner table in the company of Jenny’s friends and their husbands. Invariably the hubbies rarely strayed beyond talking about Top Gear, football, property prices and very occasionally, politics, and even then only in a superficial ‘that’s how I’d sort things’ kind of way.

  Erich sat in silence for a moment before murmuring something in French that suggested he agreed with the Texan. He ended his sentence with a solitary English word, ‘savages’.

  The driver-side door opened and a cool flurry of wind blew in a cloud of grit and dust. Farid climbed in, his shemagh fluttering around his face. He quickly pulled the door closed.

  ‘The others okay?’ asked Andy.

  Farid nodded. ‘Amal and Salim sleeping. The other engineer, U-u . . .’

  ‘Ustov,’ said Erich.

  Farid nodded politely, ‘Ustov sleeping too.’

  The silence was uncomfortable until Mike decided to break it in his own blundering way.

  ‘So why are all you people fucking well ripping the crap out of each other?’

  The old Iraqi man turned to Mike, ‘Is not all of us. Many, like me, we want just peace.’

  ‘Yeah? Well every time another roadside mine blows a hole in one of our convoys, there’s one hell of a lot of you out there celebrating on the streets jumping up and down and firing your guns in the air.’

  ‘That is not everyone.’

  ‘And now you’re doing it to each other,’ Mike said, almost laughing with exasperation, ‘I mean . . . I don’t get it . . . why?’

  ‘I do not expect you to understand.’

  ‘But you’re all brothers aren’t you? . . . All Muslims? We’re supposed to be the big bad guys aren’t we?’

  ‘Would you ask me to try understand why so many Christian brothers died in your American Civil War?’

  There was a lull in the car that Andy suspected might precede an enraged outburst from Mike. But to his credit he replied in a measured manner. ‘No, I suppose you wouldn’t understand if you’re not from a southern state. Shit, of course you wouldn’t.’

  Andy turned in his seat to face both Mike and Farid. ‘Why don’t we leave off politics for now, huh?’

  ‘I just want to understand what makes these people tick,’ said Mike. ‘We came in and kicked out Saddam, we’ve tried rebuilding this country, fixing the power stations, the sewage systems, the water supplies, the hospitals. Rebuilding the schools so all the little boys and girls—’

  ‘You rebuild our country, yes . . . but in your image!’ Farid replied, his soft voice raised ever so slightly in pitch. It was the first time Andy had seen the normally placid old man raise his voice in anger. Under the stress, his very good English began to fracture a little.

  ‘We not wanting our girls go to school, to learn how to become business lady, to dance around undressed in exercise gym before other men, to do power lunch, make big business deals. We do not want to buy McDonald burgers, or Coke, or Pepsi, or cowboy boots.’

  Farid came to an abrupt halt, ground his teeth in silence and stared out of the window at the moonlit desert. ‘It still our country. Only Iraqi people can know how to make fixed again, like a puzzle. We know what all the pieces is . . . are, and how they going together. You Americans don’t even know what picture is on the jigsaw!’

  Mike laughed. ‘Oh Jesus, what a load of crap. I tell you this - I know you ain’t got your goddamned pieces right when you have women and children blown to bloody shreds in the marketplaces every day. The best chance you had of rebuilding this shit-pit piece of desert you call a country, was when we rolled in and knocked over Saddam’s statue. And you threw that chance right back in our faces. And frankly all we’ve ever wanted to do since, is get the fuck out again.’

  Farid shook his head. ‘Everyone know why America comes here.’

  ‘Let’s just leave it there,’ said Andy addressing both men. ‘We don’t need—’

  ‘Shit! Who are you? My mom?’ snapped Mike.

  ‘I’m just saying we can do without this right now.’

  ‘Yeah right, this is bullshit,’ his deep voice rumbled. He opened the back door and stepped out, slamming the door behind him.

  They watched his large frame, a dark silhouette against the glowing, pale blue moonlit ground, fade quickly into the night. A moment later they saw the flare of a match, and then a glowing orange tip move up and down every so often.

  ‘He just like every American,’ Farid muttered.

  ‘Farid, enough of this for one night, okay?’ said Andy quietly looking sternly at the old man. ‘They,’ he said nodding towards Mike, ‘want to get out of here just as much as you want them out. It’s not your oil they’re here for.’

  The translator looked less than convinced by that assurance, but he offered no reply. After a moment’s silence listening to the gritty dust tinkle against the windows, blown across by a lively breeze, he stirred.

  ‘I get rest now,’ he said before bidding goodnight to Andy and Erich and leaving their Land Cruiser for the other one.

  Andy shook his head at those words.

  It’s not your oil they’re here for.

  If only it were that simple. Anyone who had a fair understanding of Iraq’s complete incapacity to pump and export oil knew that. Anyone who’d taken the time to look at the much bigger picture knew that. Anyone who took the time to research the long-term game-plan knew that. If Andy was asked why the Americans were over here and was only allowed to give one straight and clear reason, just to make this complex scenario simple and digestible, he knew what answer he would give.

  They’re here to keep the Saudis in line.

  The Gulf War, the second one at least, wasn’t about
hunting down Al-Qaeda, it hadn’t been about finding weapons of mass destruction, nor about removing a dictator. It had been about placing a permanent and very visible military presence right in the middle of all of these oil-producing nations. A crystal clear warning to all of them, particularly the Saudis, that they better just keep on playing ball with America.

  And now it looked like things had all gone wrong.

  He suspected the focus for US forces would be damage limitation, a desperate attempt to guard and preserve the oil facilities in Saudi, and for that matter in Kuwait, Oman and the other big producers. He wondered, however, if they’d be able to put a lid on this thing before every other refinery and pump station in this part of the world ended up looking like IT-1B, the burned-out shell they’d been picking over this morning.

  Christ, if all of the Arabian oil producers head that way . . .?

  This was a scenario, one of many, he had imagined could happen. And that’s all it would take to start things tumbling down, a few months, shit . . . a few weeks, maybe even a single week without a regular flow of the stuff, would do it.

  He had imagined something like this might eventually happen. In fact he had actually predicted it.

  Andy pulled out his mobile phone once again, checked for a signal and cursed.

  CHAPTER 11

  8.33 p.m. GMT UEA, Norwich

  Ash looked around the room. It was as messy as he would have imagined; discarded clothes lay in a pile on the end of the bed, a small mountain of shoes lay at the foot of it. Beneath the small sash window, there was a modest desk, cluttered with cheap cosmetics and text books and folders. From the look of them she was studying something to do with movies.

  However, it looked like good news. Leona Sutherland may have decided to go out tonight, but her study books and papers were all here. She’d be back, if not tonight, then first thing tomorrow morning, to collect them before going in to study.

  He spotted a packet of photos on the table and leafed through them. A collection of fresh-faced kids squished together into a tent, pulling faces at the camera. He spotted Leona in only one of them; she would have been taking the pictures.

  Her hair was darker in this picture, darker than in the picture he’d been given, and a little longer. She also looked somewhat older. The picture they had secured of her was not as recent as they had assured him it was. No matter, he would recognise her easily. Ash was particularly good with faces.

  He smiled - as good as young Leona here.

  She had been so silly with that email of hers. But then that was perhaps a harsh judgement; she had no reason to think that was a foolish thing to do. And hers wasn’t a life lived in shadows and under pseudonyms. Her mind wasn’t, by default, switched to checking every room she entered for bugs, checking windows for line-of-sight trajectories with some building across the street.

  She wasn’t to blame for attracting her death sentence.

  There was nothing else here that was going to help him track down where she was right now; no phone books, no hastily scribbled notes or ‘don’t forget’ memos to herself. He decided it was time to go talk to her flat-mate.

  He stepped out of her room into the communal kitchen and squatted down beside the girl, taped up to one of the kitchen stools, and gagged with a strip of tape across her mouth.

  ‘I’m going to remove the tape,’ he said gently. ‘Don’t tense your lips when I do it, or it’ll rip some of the skin off. Ready?’

  She nodded.

  Ash grabbed one corner and pulled it quickly. The girl flinched.

  ‘Right then, to work,’ he said with a tired shrug. ‘Let’s start with an easy one. What’s your name?’

  ‘A-Alison . . . Alison Derby.’

  He nodded. ‘Alison’s good enough for now. Thank you. You can call me Ash. So then, here’s another easy one for you. Do you know where Leona has gone this evening?’

  Alison shook her head. ‘No . . . n-no, I d-don’t. She-she never told m-me,’ she replied, her voice trembling uncontrollably.

  Ash placed a hand lightly on her shoulder. ‘Okay,’ he laughed gently, ‘okay, I believe you. I know what you kids are like. Spur of the moment and so on.’

  Alison nodded again.

  He looked around the kitchen, it adjoined the lounge - clearly the one main communal space for them. ‘How many of you share this place?’

  ‘S-six of us.’

  ‘And where’s everyone else?’

  ‘Th-they’ve gone, f-for a reading week.’

  ‘Skiving?’ smiled Ash.

  She nodded.

  ‘So you’re telling me, it’s just you and Leona here this week.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Well that’s good. No one’s going to come barging in on us then. Very good.’

  Alison looked up at him - direct eye contact for the first time. ‘P-please d-don’t rape me . . . I—’

  ‘Rape you?’ his eyebrows knotted with a look of incredulity. ‘I’m not going to rape you, Alison. What kind of animal do you think I am?’

  ‘I . . . I’m sorry, I . . . but . . . I just—’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said in little more than a soothing paternal whisper, ‘no raping, Alison. Just some questions is all.’

  ‘O-okay.’

  ‘So then, let me see, who is she with?’

  ‘Dan. Th-that’s her boyfriend.’

  ‘Dan huh? You know where he lives?’ he asked.

  She shook her head.

  ‘Hummm . . . do you think they’ll come back here tonight?’

  She shook her head again. ‘I don’t th-think so.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘She said she was s-staying at h-his tonight.’

  Ash stroked his chin. ‘Hmmm. I’d dearly like her to come back here tonight. Call her.’

  She shook her head. ‘I c-can’t.’

  ‘And why’s that?’

  ‘I d-don’t know her number.’

  ‘You live together, but you don’t know her number? That’s not a very good lie, Alison.’

  ‘I’m not lying!’ she whimpered. ‘She replaced her phone a couple of weeks ago.’

  ‘But you would know her number by now.’

  ‘I d-don’t! Honest! I just . . . I hardly ever call her, I don’t need to, we see each other all the time.’

  He looked down at her, placed a finger under her chin and lifted her face up so that she met his eyes again. That seemed to be the truth. There were no deceitful micro-tics in her expression; no involuntary looking upwards as her mind hastily constructed a piece of fiction.

  ‘Tell me, what do you think would make her come back here tonight?’

  Alison shook her head, ‘I-I don’t . . . kn-know.’

  He smiled cheerfully, ‘You know what? I think I’ve got an idea. And you can help.’

  CHAPTER 12

  11.55 p.m. GMT Whitehall, London

  ‘Those figures have to be incorrect, surely?’ he said looking around at the men and women sitting at the table with him. ‘Surely?’ he asked again.

  ‘I’m sorry, those are the figures, that’s our best approximation. ’

  The Prime Minister looked down at his legal pad. He had scribbled only a few hasty notes, but the last three words he had written down were the ones he found most disturbing.

  Two weeks’ reserves.

  ‘Two weeks? That’s all we have in our strategic reserves?’

  ‘Our strategic reserves actually only contain about a week’s worth of oil at normal everyday consumption rates,’ replied Malcolm Jones, the Prime Minister’s Strategic Advisor, and confidant.

  ‘However, within the distribution chain throughout the country, terminals, depots, petrol stations, there’s perhaps another week’s worth of supply at the normal consumption rate. If we locked down any further selling of petrol, right across the country, right now we would have a reserve that might last our armed forces and key government installations six to nine months.’

  The Prime Ministe
r stared silently at him for a moment before finally responding.

  ‘You’re telling me that in order to supply the army and the government with the oil it needs to keep operating for the next few months, we’d have to suck every corner petrol station dry?’

  Malcolm nodded, ‘Until, of course, normality returns and shipments of crude from the Gulf resume.’

  ‘And the week’s worth of oil in our strategic reserves?’

  ‘If restricted only to the armed forces and government agencies, ’ the civil servant replied, ‘we could perhaps make it last three or four months.’

  The Prime Minister jotted that down on his pad and then looked up at the assembled members of his personal staff. He had his Principal Private Secretary, his Director of Communications, Malcolm, his Chief Advisor on Strategy and Malcolm’s assistant. These were the people he worked with daily, these were the small band of colleagues he trusted. None of them were party members, none of them politicians, none of them secretly jostling for his job. He’d long ago learned that his smartest and most effective decision-making was done here, in this office, with these people, and not around the long mahogany table with his cabinet. The cabinet meetings were where policy was announced , not decided.

  ‘So,’ he began calmly, ‘how the hell did we let ourselves get so bloody exposed?’

  He directed that towards Malcolm. ‘How did we let this happen? ’

  Malcolm stirred uneasily, but retained that dignified calm that seemed to stay with him always. ‘We’ve not been able to buy in enough surplus oil to maintain, let alone build up, our reserves. In fact, we’ve not been able to do that for the last few years,’ he replied. ‘It’s been a gradual process of attrition, Charles. It’s not that we let it happen, we’ve had no choice.’

  The Prime Minister nodded.

  ‘And we’re not the only ones,’ added Malcolm. ‘The increasing demand for oil from China and India, combined with Iraq being a damned basket-case and Iran’s continued oil embargo; all of that has made it difficult for anyone to build up a surplus. We’re all over a barrel.’