by Puk Damsgård
Pierre and Daniel spent a couple of days preparing for their trip. They furnished the silver car with mattresses and a nifty device that enabled them to fold down the seats and flip open a bed in the back.
Before they headed for the ferry to England, they first made a stop farther south at a French farm to attend Nicolas Hénin’s wedding. Daniel drove, because Pierre had no driver’s licence. When they finally reached the farm and the lawn where the wedding was to be held, they met a happy Nicolas dressed in jacket and tie.
‘Hi Daniel, welcome! How good it is to see you,’ he said, smiling, before quickly moving on to welcome the other guests, including correspondents and journalists from around the world.
Pierre and Daniel had been assigned a room in the farmhouse where they could spend the night, while other guests slept in tents. When the party and the music shut down at around 1 a.m. Daniel rushed up to the bartender, who was about to pack up, and asked him to leave them a few bottles of wine. He carried them up to the room, where he and Pierre sat on the floor and laughed, joked and drank. They consumed so much wine that Pierre got drunk for the first time in his life. When they woke the next morning, 17 August, with throbbing headaches, Daniel started laughing again.
‘You just made it before you turned thirty. Happy birthday, my dear Pierre.’
· * ·
Late in the evening on 19 August Arthur opened the door to his hotel room in London. He had been to a series of meetings and threw his computer bag on the bed and checked his phone. There was a message from one of his contacts in Syria.
It was a question: ‘Have you seen the video with James?’
There were also several missed calls from his security colleagues in the United States. Arthur immediately called back.
‘I’ll send you the link,’ his associate said. ‘It’s a video. I think they’ve killed him.’
‘OK, I’ll take a look and call you back in a minute,’ replied Arthur. He fished his computer out of his bag and hurried to download the video from YouTube before it could be censored.
A picture appeared with someone who looked like James Foley in an orange prison uniform kneeling in a desert. Beside him stood a black-clad, masked man with a knife in his hand and a gun in a holster. The video was entitled ‘A Message to America’.
James recited some clearly rehearsed phrases. It was a political message to his government: ‘I call on my friends, family and loved ones to rise up against my real killers, the US government,’ began James. ‘For what will happen to me is only a result of their complacency and criminality. My message to my beloved parents: save me some dignity and don’t accept any meagre compensation for my death from the same people who effectively put the last nail in my coffin with the recent aerial campaign in Iraq.’
He spoke to his brother John, who should think about whether those who had decided to go to war against IS had thought about him and his family.
‘I guess, all in all, I wish I wasn’t American,’ he concluded.
Then the black executioner took over as he put a hand on James’s shoulder.
‘As a government you have been at the forefront of the aggression towards the Islamic State. You have plotted against us and gone far out of your way to find reasons to interfere in our affairs.’
The executioner proclaimed that an attack on IS was an attack on Muslims all over the world.
‘So any attempt by you, Obama, to deny Muslims their rights to live in safety under the Islamic caliphate will result in the bloodshed of your people.’
The executioner brought the knife up against James’s neck. At that moment, the video went black and the next thing Arthur saw was an orange-clad body laid out on its stomach, the head placed between the shoulder blades.
Arthur played the video three to four times and tried to focus on his task: to analyse what he was watching. He noted the way the film was edited. At the moment of execution, it went black. Could they have faked the killing? Was the decapitated head really James’s? Why didn’t IS want to show the actual moment of death? Was it out of respect? Was it because it would be too triumphant, or had they learned from the 2004 video of Kenneth Bigley, which frightened off al-Qaeda support?
Arthur played the video in slow motion, frame by frame, to interpret James’s facial expressions and body language, as the knife met his neck, and compared it with other images he had of James. It didn’t look like a fake. It looked like a murder.
For Arthur, it was the tragic culmination of nearly two years of searching. It was now clearly all over. A heaviness weighed on Arthur’s mind. James’s family had believed that he could do the same for James as he had done for Daniel.
He took a deep breath and called his colleague in the United States.
‘I’m not in any doubt about it. It’s James. He’s dead.’
They talked about the strongly worded appeal addressed to James’s brother, who was in the US Air Force, and to his family about not accepting a meagre compensation from the US government.
‘If we’re going to do anything to retrieve the body, we have to move fast. You must ask the family if they want us to try,’ said Arthur. If that were the case, he would quickly get hold of his contacts in Syria. ‘I have to run. There’s someone I have to talk to as soon as possible, so that he doesn’t get the news another way,’ Arthur said and hung up.
Then he dialled Daniel’s number.
· * ·
It was dark and the English country road twisted in front of Daniel and Pierre as they sat shrouded in music inside the car. They had taken the ferry from Calais to Dover, where they had driven ashore and were now heading towards a small town that was lit up in the distance.
Daniel loved the tranquillity that oozed out of the nerdy marine biologist when he held long, enthusiastic monologues about fish and water fleas. Pierre was the sort of person who would never buy a smartphone and was completely satisfied with his little old flip phone.
Suddenly the ring tone from Daniel’s iPhone interrupted Pierre’s speech. He could see on the display that it was Arthur.
‘Do you have time to talk? I have a message,’ said Arthur.
‘I’m driving,’ said Daniel.
‘Then pull over,’ said Arthur.
Daniel could immediately tell that Arthur sounded different and that he hadn’t said, ‘What’s up, you idiot?’ or fired off a stream of jokes.
Daniel hung up while he found a place to pull in and turn off the engine. Pierre looked at him.
‘Why are we stopping here?’
‘It’s Arthur. Something’s happened,’ said Daniel and rang Arthur back.
Arthur’s voice sounded heavy.
‘A video has just been made public. It shows James in an orange prison uniform in a desert, where he is being killed by a masked man.’
‘No! How?’
‘Yes, well, that’s it – he was decapitated.’
Daniel stiffened.
‘I have more bad news,’ continued Arthur. ‘They showed Steven afterwards. He’s the next in line.’ Daniel thought about his old prison companion, whom he had wrapped up in a blanket in December when he had been Steven’s Secret Santa.
Daniel was beside himself. It was unbearable to think of James’s brutal murder, and the fact that Steven had been forced to witness the killing, after which he would have to sit in a cell, knowing he would be next. His worst fears had become reality.
‘I knew it could happen,’ said Daniel quietly. ‘That’s the way things were going.’
‘I need your help,’ said Arthur.
He wanted to send Daniel the video.
‘Could you listen and hear if it’s James’s voice?’ asked Arthur. He wanted to get a clear confirmation or denial as to whether it was actually James.
‘You just have to listen while he speaks. Stop the video after that,’ warned Arthur.
>
Daniel hung up, his eyes empty. Pierre stared at him expectantly.
‘They’ve beheaded James,’ said Daniel. ‘Steven is next.’
Pierre’s eyes welled with tears and Daniel reminded him of the terrible last days in prison, when the Beatles had been agitated, violent and obnoxious. Everyone had sensed that it could end this way.
They got out of the car, unfolded a small camp table and sat around it. Daniel connected his computer to the mobile’s network and downloaded the file Arthur had sent. In the darkness, they watched James in silence as he knelt in an orange suit in the middle of the desert, while he spouted what he had been told to say. It was James. Daniel and Pierre were in no doubt; the voice, the torso and his characteristic underbite.
‘I think I recognize the landscape,’ said Pierre. It looked like James was standing on a mound in the desert, where the Euphrates River, some green areas and the outlines of an urban environment were just visible behind him. It could be Raqqa.
They let the video play and watched the black figure standing with a knife in his hand beside James.
‘It’s John!’ exclaimed Pierre, as the executioner began to speak.
He recognized his accent, his posture and his rhetoric – the way he put pressure on individual words: ‘YOUR government.’
Daniel called Arthur back.
‘There’s no doubt. It’s James,’ he said. ‘And the executioner is one of our British guards. Probably John.’
James’s voice on the video was echoing inside his head. So was John’s.
‘Let’s find a place to stay,’ said Daniel.
They drove into a small rest area near some woodland. The air was damp as they arranged themselves on mattresses in the back of the car, where they also found a few cans of beer. Daniel called Arthur again and put the phone on speaker.
‘Hello Pierre, hope you’re OK,’ said Arthur.
They agreed to hold a minute’s silence for James. The rain drops were dribbling down the car windows. In that one minute the world shrank to just the two of them on a mattress as they sheltered from the rain, with a silent Arthur at the other end, somewhere in London. Daniel and Pierre stared into the distance and remembered the man they had shared a cell with for eight months; the man who so often sacrificed himself in order to be the best for others. Now he had finally found peace. The one minute became several, in which they stayed on the line without uttering a word. Arthur finally broke the silence.
‘Since you both had to receive such bad news, it’s good that you’re together to share it with each other and vent your frustrations,’ he said.
Arthur knew it would be natural for Daniel to feel shame that he had survived when James had not. Questions like ‘Why him and not me?’ were bound to come up. The typical response from an outsider would be: ‘Well, you’re lucky it wasn’t you.’ But for the survivor, that was exactly what they didn’t need to hear.
‘Just call if you need to talk,’ said Arthur. ‘Me or the psychologist.’
When the conversation was over, Daniel and Pierre went online to see how the story about James’s death was being reported. There were items with judgmental reactions about the killing and photos from James’s life and work in Syria, which were put up as a response to the execution. The newspapers were soon calling John ‘Jihadi John’, because they had found out that the hostages in the cell had named him John. The nightmare in the desert haunted Daniel’s restless sleep that night.
The next morning they drove towards London. On the way they tried to figure out if their plan would still hold. The original idea was to visit Alan’s and David’s families to talk to them about the good times in captivity and give them encouragement, but both families cancelled the visit after James’s murder. Pierre was relieved; there was nothing positive to say. Instead they drove north towards the wide open spaces of Scotland to be alone with themselves and each other.
· * ·
Since Daniel had returned home and was living in the summer house it had been a difficult time in Hedegård. Susanne and Kjeld walked around on tenterhooks, trying to gauge how Daniel was really feeling. At Christina’s graduation party in the garage he was bouncing off the walls. Many of the guests had been nervous about meeting Daniel. ‘What shall we say? How does he look?’ they had asked Susanne.
He behaved like a helium balloon that would fly away if they didn’t hold on to him. Beyond that, he was almost over-caring and kept asking everyone how they were, instead of looking after himself. At the same time, Daniel didn’t feel up to the small, practical things, such as getting a new online security ID, a health card and driver’s licence. Kjeld helped by driving him around to different government agencies. Daniel was granted two months’ social security benefits before he began teaching photography at Grundtvig College.
Kjeld and Susanne thought he had changed, although he retained his upbeat attitude. Whenever they asked him how he was, the answer was always ‘fine’. Nevertheless, they were concerned if they didn’t hear from him, and Tina Enghoff, his teacher before he went to Syria, also sensed a darkness in her formerly enthusiastic student. The story of Daniel’s suicide attempt was always at the back of Susanne’s mind and it took some time before she could process her own emotional journey.
On top of everything, the family had a debt of just under a million kroner to deal with. The total expenses in connection with Daniel’s kidnapping had amounted to more than 22 million kroner (almost €3 million or £2 million). The insurance had covered 5 million kroner (about £500,000) of it and other insurance policies had also kept the family’s expenses to a minimum. But Susanne and Kjeld wouldn’t be at peace until the entire debt was paid off.
Nevertheless, they had been released from the iron grip of terror that had held them for more than a year. They no longer needed to fear the next email or the next telephone call, and slowly everyday life returned to Hedegård.
· * ·
In autumn 2014 Denmark became involved in the fight against Islamic State in Iraq, along with the United States. On 2 October 2014 seven Danish F-16s, in collaboration with a broad coalition of countries, flew from a base in Kuwait to bomb IS positions in Iraq. In coordination with the bombing from the air, Iraqi forces attacked IS on the ground.
The Danish government led by Helle Thorning-Schmidt also decided to send a team of soldiers to the Ayn al-Asad base in western Anbar province to train Iraqi forces. This was the very same base where former US President George W. Bush gave a speech in 2007 to the US military, who had fought the most tenacious insurgency of the Iraq War.
‘Anbar is a huge province that was once written off as lost, but is now one of the safest places,’ he proclaimed at the time.
When the Danish soldiers arrived at the base seven years later, that statement was no longer true, since it had now fallen under the control of Islamic State. The soldiers being trained were the dilapidated remnants of the Iraqi army, which had previously received training and equipment from the West. The army was now being helped mainly by Iranian-backed Shiite militias, whose goals were often just as sectarian as IS and who also committed atrocities against civilians. At the same time, then Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki mobilized the so-called People’s Army, made up of thousands of young male volunteers who received only a few weeks of training before they were sent to the battlefield. The establishment of the People’s Army and the influence of powerful Shiite militias meant that Iraq was being driven further in the direction of a divided, violent and sectarian society that could push even more Sunnis into the arms of IS.
It was in the midst of this chaos that Denmark and its allies were trying to exert their influence. It had always been impossible to intervene in Iraq without simultaneously exacerbating the underlying causes that made it possible for IS to thrive. The Iraq War in the 2000s had made one thing abundantly clear: the coalition would in all likelihood be flying over Iraq for a
long time with no guarantee that it would stabilize the country or eradicate Islamic State.
· * ·
The evening when the video of James was made public, Arthur had also sent a text message to Diane Foley. He wasn’t at all sure whether it was the right thing to do. He didn’t know what the authorities had told them and he hadn’t wanted to be the first to commiserate on what was only circumstantial evidence, even though everything indicated that James was dead. Even so, he had written to Diane that his thoughts were with the family and the following day, after several attempts, he finally got through to her.
She had been receptive and happy that he had called.
‘You helped give us hope to the last, and for that we will be eternally grateful to you,’ she said.
She had invited Arthur to take part in James’s memorial service and now he was sitting with Daniel on their way to New Hampshire. He wanted to pay his respects to James and to show the family he was thinking of them – and, along with Daniel, close a chapter of their lives that had lasted more than two years.
He was happy to have freed Daniel from captivity, but he was just as sad that he had ‘lost’ James, as it was called in his line of work. Not a day went by when he didn’t think about whether he could have done things differently and if there had been openings along the way that he had overlooked. He wondered if it could have ended another way if he had had the same influence on James’s case as he had had on Daniel’s, and not just followed the decisions that the US authorities had mapped out. He didn’t know the answer.
Arthur was nervous about how he would be received – if the family would direct their frustration and anger at him. The easiest thing for him to do would have been to stay away from the memorial service and remain as a negotiator, the role for which he had been hired. In his field it was considered neither professional nor beneficial to get emotional about the work. But as a human being, Arthur needed to look James’s parents in the eyes and share their grief. So did Daniel, who hadn’t yet allowed the murder of James to sink in completely. He and Pierre had relaxed and talked about it together in Scotland, but he hadn’t wept. It still seemed unreal to him that his former fellow prisoner had been killed.