by Paul Torday
Working like that, if only for a few days, does something to you. After weeks and months the changes work their way deep inside you. To start with, and to end with, you have to deal with the fear. The fear is always there. So you have to suppress it. You must never show it. That wasn’t the way things worked in our regiment. We were taught that we weren’t afraid of anyone; other people were afraid of us.
But all the same, some of us were afraid. Some of us knew that you were likely to live longer if you allowed the fear to come, because it kept you sharp and vigilant. And with the fear came a feeling of being alive that was so intense it was like a drug. Don’t believe anyone who has worked on this sort of operation and says they don’t know that feeling. If they don’t then they probably never went to the places we went, walking in the shadows down narrow alleyways in the shanty suburbs of Baghdad, never knowing when we might be shot at by a sniper, or discovered by an angry crowd anxious to tear us limb from limb and hang our mutilated remains from a lamp-post.
As the weeks passed something else became clear. The odds of getting away with it grew worse over time, not better. You knew the arithmetic was against you: the more you went out there, the greater the chance that something would go wrong.
It wasn’t only the tension that changed you. It was the things you had to do. The task force was there to ‘take people off the streets’. That might mean one thing in London and another in the backstreets of Baghdad. Most of our intelligence came from Joint Support Group, but it also came from a variety of other sources, including the ‘processing’ that went on in the Green Park villa. That part of the villa was sealed off from the bunk-rooms where we were housed. That part of the villa had steel doors which were rarely opened. When they were, we glimpsed dark and humid corridors that were badly lit, with rooms leading off on either side. We never saw inside those rooms. The windows were always shuttered.
People who had to be ‘taken off the streets’ were identified in a number of ways. Sometimes they were caught by aerial photography monitored by the analysts at Camp Balad. Sometimes the intel came from mobile phone calls which were pinpointed by the electronic intelligence teams working in the Green Zone, linking through from GCHQ in Cheltenham or the National Security Agency listening posts in the USA. In the last year the Iraqna mobile phone network had been activated, operated by the Egyptians, using US communications satellites.
In a country where the average income was only six hundred dollars a year, everyone still wanted a mobile phone. Our enemies used them all the time. Sometimes – until the Coalition authorities got wise to the fact and started using jamming devices – they managed to use mobile phones to activate roadside bombs and blow up American or British soldiers. Often they used them for one-time calls, from principal to bomb maker; from bomb maker to suicide bomber. Then the phone would be discarded or sold. So we might be out looking for the man who made the call and end up arresting some unfortunate who had picked up the same phone, with pay-as-you-go units still on it, from a market stall.
From time to time the Green Park ‘processors’ would obtain the name of a target from one of the people they interviewed in the shuttered rooms of the compound. That might mean that the person being questioned knew something of value. Or maybe he had given us the name of someone with whom he had a score to settle, or whose job or wife he coveted; or maybe the person being interviewed by Green Park just wanted the ‘processing’ to stop and was prepared to say anything to make it do so.
Sometimes the right people were caught or killed, and sometimes it was the wrong people. It’s just that we never knew which was which. The special forces teams went into houses, and found a family at supper. Then two soldiers would hold the children and the wife at gunpoint, offering them chocolates and chewing gum, while someone else led the man of the house outside and ‘took him off the streets’. Sometimes a bomb maker would be caught in his factory, fiddling with home-made electrical circuits. But the high-value targets, the people who organised the suicide and car bombs, were usually sitting in a village in Syria or Iran.
This was the kind of life we led. For a while I didn’t quite know how to cope with it, but I found a way. I stopped caring. I anaesthetised myself, the part of me that worried about walking into a booby-trapped building, or being bottled up in a cul-de-sac with an angry crowd, or shot in the back by a sniper. Instead I was up for everything. It didn’t matter what I was asked to do. There was only one answer to give whenever anyone briefed us on a mission. The answer I found was in a question: ‘Why not?’ because ‘Why not?’ stopped you from asking yourself ‘Why?’ ‘Why not?’ was the right answer to give people who might be wondering whether you were about to crack up, or whether you still had any nerve left in you. ‘Why not?’ wasn’t really a question at all: it was a way of life.
In between missions we lay on our cots and smoked, even those of us who had never touched a cigarette before. Sometimes we talked a little, in low voices. We never talked to the Green Park people unless we had to. We never discussed what went on in the sealed rooms. We had a feeling it would be very unhealthy to express any criticism of what was going on here.
That didn’t stop Sergeant Hawkes talking. Nothing would. He read too much, he thought too much, and he definitely talked too much. I didn’t mind. Sometimes he said the things I was thinking, only he expressed them better than I ever could.
‘Do you think we’re doing any good here, boss?’ he asked me quietly, one night.
‘Good? In what way, good?’ I asked. I wasn’t sure I understood.
‘I mean that we go and take out a few of the insurgents. Or we hand them over to the Iraqis, who lock them up. Or the people next door take them off our hands. But that man last night was no more an insurgent than you or I, sir. You saw him. But sure as hell his children will grow up hating us. They’ll never forget what we did, charging into their house with guns and taking their father away.’
‘I suppose not,’ I said, dragging on my cigarette. I was trying not to think about last night.
‘He’s upstairs being interrogated,’ said Sergeant Hawkes. ‘Do you suppose he has anything to tell them?’
‘I don’t know. I hope so, for his sake.’
‘I mean, how can you win a war when you keep killing the people you’re meant to be liberating?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said again. ‘Shut up for now, Sergeant Hawkes, there’s a good chap.’
‘Yes, boss.’
The rock music started at that moment. It was very loud. Tonight they were playing ‘Hotel California’, an old favourite of Mr Harris’s, judging by the number of times we had to listen to it. He was in the locked rooms of the villa, the part we could never enter, and didn’t want to. That was where the interrogation teams worked, ‘processing’. The music was turned up. When that happened we all turned away from each other and lay on our sides or closed our eyes so that we did not have to look each other in the face.
Above the plaintive voices of the Eagles, we could occasionally hear a noise like the screeching of owls.
Eleven
After Eck had left, Adeena remained silent all afternoon. At dinner she was sullen, replying only in monosyllables to my attempts at conversation. She barely ate, and afterwards, when we went through to the library, I lost my temper with her. She was standing by the windows leading out into the garden, staring at the dark, her back to me.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked her. ‘You’re not still thinking about Eck, are you? I didn’t bring him here.’
Adeena looked at me as if I were a child.
‘Of course I am thinking about that man. He will tell someone I am here and then we will have to leave.’
Suddenly her eyes filled.
‘I don’t want to go. It is so peaceful here. I feel safe.’
She looked at me with such anguish that my bad temper disappeared. Without any thought of the consequences I walked across the room and put my arms around her. She clung to me.
‘Y
ou don’t understand what it’s like to be me,’ she said.
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Wherever I go I will never find peace. I will not be safe.’
‘That’s nonsense,’ I told her. She started to tremble. The passion that swept through me was overwhelming. I let go of her and stood back.
‘We mustn’t,’ I said, more to myself than to her.
‘You are my husband,’ she said. ‘It is your legal right. You can come with me upstairs to my room.’
‘I was paid to marry you. I can’t take advantage of you now.’
‘Take advantage of me? An Afghan man would say that is what wives are for,’ replied Adeena. ‘Do you not find me attractive?’
‘I find you very attractive,’ I said, gritting my teeth.
‘Perhaps you have other wives? A girlfriend?’
‘None at the moment.’
‘I don’t want to be alone,’ said Adeena. ‘If I am alone I will be afraid.’
‘Afraid of what?’
‘Of what is going to happen to me.’
Later we went upstairs to her bedroom and I waited outside until she had got into bed. Then I went into the room and lay down beside her still fully clothed until she went to sleep. As she dozed a hand came out from beneath the blankets and I took it. She mumbled some words: not English, not Arabic. I couldn’t make them out. For a long while I just lay there, wondering at the comfort that lying next to her gave me. She slept peacefully, as if whatever memories haunted her, whatever dark thoughts occupied her mind, were for the time being expelled. It was a long time since I had felt closeness like this: not since I had left Emma more than two years ago. It was the middle of the night before I could bear to leave her, letting go of her hand as gently as I could and easing myself off the bed. As I left the room I heard her murmur:
‘Papa, où est-tu?’
I headed back to my own room and went to bed.
*
When I awoke it was daylight. I looked at my watch and saw that it was after eight o’clock. I got up and after I had showered and dressed I went to the window and pulled back the curtains. Outside the golden weather of the previous day had been replaced by glowering skies. As I stood there, I saw a silver-coloured people carrier with tinted windows come down the drive and pull up in front of the house. For a while nothing happened. It spooked me, the way it just sat there. No one got out.
Then at last a passenger door slid open and a man stepped out. He was tall, thin and dark-haired. His face was shaded with stubble. He was wearing a pale raincoat, and clutching a mobile phone. He looked up at the house and instinctively I moved back from the window. Another man got out of the vehicle. He was wearing a leather jacket and jeans and trainers. He started talking to someone else inside the car, then straightened up and looked at the first man. They both examined their watches.
Perhaps these men were here to read the meter, or to measure the place for double-glazing, but I didn’t think so. The way they stood, waiting for some signal that would spur them into action, reminded me so vividly of the way I had once behaved, at the beginning of an operation: those moments of false calm before the adrenalin started to flow and everything speeded up. Maybe that memory was what pushed me into doing what I did next. I stopped thinking altogether and something else took hold.
I hurried along to Adeena’s room. I could hear her splashing about in the bath, so I opened the bathroom door. She was lying in a mountain of foam, soaping herself. She gave me a melting smile.
‘Adeena, we’ve got to go.’
‘Go? Go where? Why must we go?’
‘Some men have come to the front of the house.’
Adeena’s whole demeanour changed in an instant.
‘Get out of the bath and get dressed.’
I went back outside into the corridor and waited. She was very quick. She came out of the bedroom wearing a grey pullover and jeans, her hair still damp.
‘What men have come? Is it Aseeb?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. Are you ready to go?’
I was becoming more and more jumpy. The right thing to do would have been to go downstairs and sort it all out. Open the door and confront these men with that well-known phrase: ‘What seems to be the trouble, Officer?’
But maybe these men weren’t policemen. They didn’t look like policemen, so perhaps they were from the security services. Eck had decided I wasn’t going to do anything about calling them so he had called them himself. In which case all I had to do was hand Adeena over to them so that she could answer their questions. And I could go and make myself a cup of coffee.
Except I wasn’t going to do that.
I wasn’t going to do that because I thought I knew what would happen next if I did. We would be put under restraint and driven back to London. We would be taken to wherever these men conducted their business – maybe the building known as ‘Legoland’ at Vauxhall, maybe some darker hole. There we would be separated. We would be interrogated. They’d ask me about Aseeb. I didn’t know whether they would believe my story: I could hear myself telling them how I had met Aseeb and Adeena and I could hardly believe it myself. I could imagine them asking me about the ten thousand pounds in my bank account. And I had no idea what sort of questions they would ask Adeena. I couldn’t see them thanking us for our co-operation and allowing us to walk back into the sunlight while they waved goodbye. I thought there was a good chance I would never see Adeena again: that she would be deported, or taken to some place beyond the reach of the human rights lawyers.
Adeena was looking at my face. What she saw there, I don’t know, but she didn’t like it.
‘It is that man who came here yesterday,’ she said. ‘He has told the police to come here. He has told lies about me.’
‘Maybe,’ I replied. ‘But there’s no time to discuss it. We have to leave now.’
I took her hand and we hurried down the stairs, then headed along corridors and through silent halls towards the back of the house. Far away I heard the insistent ringing of a doorbell. We walked swiftly through the stable yard, past endless buildings that had once housed bakeries or brew-houses, and past the walled gardens until we found the road that led behind Hartlepool Hall and out towards the farm buildings.
‘Where are we going?’ asked Adeena.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Away from here.’
Every move I made was the wrong one, but for the right reasons. Another Rubicon had been crossed. Now I felt even more responsible for Adeena. I should have given her up back at the house, and I hadn’t. Now I had to keep her out of trouble, for as long as I could.
Did I feel anything for her? I hardly knew her, although I knew her a lot better than the first time I had seen her, standing frowning in the drawing room of Aseeb’s house. I thought she was very beautiful. I definitely wanted to sleep with her. But I couldn’t work out how our lives had become so entangled. Only someone like me could have got into a mess like this.
We walked briskly past the farm buildings. There was no one about. Adeena said nothing, but kept her head down. A faint drizzle began to fall from the grey sky. Now we were walking between two stone walls along a track. On either side of us were fields, ploughed and sown, with the faintest dusting of green from the new crop showing on the brown soil. The track took us now through a long dark plantation of firs. We were both beginning to feel quite wet. Adeena suddenly stopped walking.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked again. ‘I cannot walk for ever.’
‘Neither can I,’ I said. ‘Look, there’s a road ahead. We ought to be able to find a village and get a bus or a taxi.’
‘And what then? Where shall we go?’
‘I don’t know yet. Let’s get away from those people first, and then worry about what happens next. Come on, let’s keep moving.’
As we came to the edge of the road, a single-track affair that looked as if it led from nowhere in particular to somewhere quite similar, Adeena stopped agai
n. She turned to face me.
‘Why are you helping me?’ she asked.
I didn’t know how to reply so I said with a flippancy I did not feel: ‘Because I’m your husband.’
She made an almost indescribable gesture with her hands, as if dispelling clouds of vapour, to show what she thought of my answer.
‘You know you do not have to look after me. This has been an accident: an accident has happened to me, and another sort of accident has happened to you. We have met like two people whose cars have crashed in a road. I come from such a different place to you. How can I ask you to look after me? I cannot.’
She was nearly weeping as she said this, the first time I had seen her really start to lose control. Suddenly I saw the world as I imagined she must see it: not much more than a week ago she had been living her own life, in a faraway country. She may have been happy or unhappy there, but it was her world. Then, in an instant, everything had changed. The men she worked with had been shot and she was spirited away – kidnapped might be a better word – and taken to a house in Oxfordshire. Her feet had hardly touched the ground when she was told she had to marry the first tramp that Kevin and Amir picked up from the roadside. That tramp, as it turned out, was me.
‘But if I don’t look after you,’ I said without thinking, ‘who else is there?’
She ran into my arms. We stood there for a moment in an embrace. I could feel the fierceness of her grip. She was holding me so tight that my ribs hurt. I stood still until she stopped sobbing into my shoulder. Then she straightened up and let go of me, wiping her face with the sleeve of her jersey.
We started walking along the road. After half a mile it joined a larger road at a T-junction. Here was a sign indicating that we were fifteen miles from Darlington. I looked to either side, hesitating. Main roads meant people, people in cars, which is what we wanted. But I did not want to meet a silver-coloured people carrier with tinted windows. At that moment a bus came around a bend in the road, displaying the word ‘Ripon’. Ripon was in the opposite direction to Darlington. Those men would definitely think about watching the station at Darlington. They might have the resources to do that: what they couldn’t do was check every town in the Yorkshire Dales.