An Enemy Within

by Roy David

  He turned his attention to the latest polls from back home, at once frowning. One survey asked whether now the Iraq war was over, would the public support an attack on Syria? A majority said they would.

  ‘The war over?’ he muttered to himself. ‘Yeah, of course, mission accomplished.’

  How he’d love to say his own mission had been accomplished. But it was only just beginning. There were so many opinion polls, surveys and samplings to monitor, a never-ending multitude of events he hoped he could influence if deemed important to the cause. The election was in next year’s calendar but it was the rest of this year that mattered. The long hard drive for campaign donations stretched on and on. A simple equation faced the President: popularity equalled money equalled victory. And his boy, McDermott, was going to play a big part in the whole show.

  Kowolski had given himself a month to establish the lieutenant’s celebrity in a media onslaught. From then on, he would milk it for the rest of the campaign. He’d already thought of arranging for McDermott to make an appearance at the Iowa Primaries in January when the Republicans clicked into overdrive. Folks would love to see the President’s Golden Boy on the platform, helping kick off the proceedings.

  The Primaries would be a piece of cake for the President. Who would dare challenge him? So the Republicans would just sit back and watch the Democrats squabble among themselves.

  Schmucks, he thought. They wouldn’t know what hit them.

  Planning was such an ordinary, boring word, Kowolski mused. But he loved it.

  * * *

  After a decent lunch, Kowolski found himself in a good mood. He was upbeat about the President’s approval rating. Down to fifty-five per cent pre-war, but now riding high at seventy-two per cent.

  His masters were content. For now. But he was constantly urging himself and those around him against complacency. Bad news had a habit of appearing, like the magician’s rabbit. That was why he’d been anxious to lay down the law to Alex and her Australian friend. He would not be taken for a ride. The more people who knew it, the better.

  The Brits in Basra had disappointed him. Try as he might to have the Australian taken off the embed, they would not accede to his complaint. Okay, so the jerk was a mere fly in the scheme of things. But Kowolski would still like to swat him given half the chance.

  A secretary came into the room carrying a sheaf of papers, which she put on his desk. Kowolski’s eyes followed her out of the room.

  ‘You getting much ass out here?’ he said, turning to a young man assigned as an assistant.

  The guy, a postgraduate on a Pentagon internship, blushed. ‘I… er…’

  Kowolski laughed. ‘They all want it, son – just some more than others.’

  He began reading an overview of a recent briefing by senior army officers to Rumsfeld. The generals were optimistic of a rapid pull-out of US troops to around the 30,000 mark. After several minutes, he swore softly, shaking his head. Tossing the paper to the assistant, he took off his glasses. ‘What d’you make of this?’

  The young man studied it. ‘Well, sir, if the estimates and projections are correct, it will surely ratchet up the President’s popularity.’

  ‘You’re learning, son. Yep, there’s nothing like seeing our boys safely back home to the fanfares of victory.’ He paused. ‘And longer term – where does that leave us?’

  The young man hesitated.

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ Kowolski thundered. ‘We’ll be up shit creek without the fucking paddle. A quarter of a million of our boys vanish from Iraq and we’re left with the Iraqi army, a bunch of ill-trained motherfuckers bereft of leadership and direction. It’d be a fucking nightmare.’

  With that, he stormed out of the office, slamming the door. His mood was black.

  10

  Aban al-Tikriti regretted choosing to put on a tie.

  Like many others entering the Green Zone, he’d been forced to wait over an hour in the merciless heat. Those in front had their papers checked, their identities determined, their pockets, robes and bags searched. He witnessed endless arguments. Tempers were short these days. Fear and loathing was the new common currency. Now, even with his jacket over his arm, his shirt was sodden, the trickles of sweat down his neck and his arms adding to his discomfort.

  He thought of Farrah and the boys. Every ounce of his love was invested in his family. They’d discussed the prospect of joining the mass exodus to Syria or Jordan but decided to stay. The boys would continue their schooling, albeit with likely interruptions.

  ‘We cannot leave now – what would happen to our home if we left? I will get a new job, help rebuild our country,’ he told her. ‘Everything will be fine. The Americans will leave shortly and let us get on with things. The future is bright.’

  He always gave her a reassuring hug or patted her hand when he made such pronouncements. But his reassurances were hollow. Worse, he knew they were. Without work, their future in Iraq looked bleak.

  Even so, he was glad they did not have daughters. Religious extremism was becoming rife. A neighbour’s daughter, accustomed to the popular fashion of jeans and t-shirt, was recently accosted and bawled at by several men in the street who accused her of being immodest. The teenager now wore a burqa with a niquab, with only her eyes on show.

  Where would it all end, he asked himself. At least under Saddam’s rule there were women engineers, scientists, doctors, teachers. And they could wear what they liked. The universities were full of women and many of the professions had equal pay.

  But if the men could not now find work, what hope for women?

  He glanced at the letter giving him instructions for the interview. No specific job but, as a former senior civil servant in the Ministry of Commerce, he was going into the meeting with a degree of confidence. His CV was first class, as was his PhD.

  He reached the building, showed his letter to one of the two marines on guard, and was led to a door, which he opened himself. Two-dozen pairs of eyes from the packed, stuffy waiting room assailed him. Men, already here looking for work, regarded him suspiciously, a competitor. He sat down in the last vacant seat.

  Many of them dressed as manual workers, ties non-existent. Some stared at their shoes, shuffled their feet in embarrassment. Others, churlish, fixed their gaze on a creaking ceiling fan that stuttered anti-clockwise, barely raising more than a breath in the silent, fetid atmosphere.

  It was a further debilitating two hours before his hopes were raised. A fresh-faced young man opened the door. ‘Al-Tikriti?’

  Aban stood up, stiff from the waiting. Pushing his shoulders back, he strode after his interviewer with a degree of confidence he hoped would not be taken for arrogance. But the young man never turned round, simply marching on, pushing through several sets of doors leaving Aban in his wake. Aban took a wrong turn and found himself on a fire stairs landing. Hurrying now for fear of looking stupid, he had to double back. When he reached the correct doorway, his interviewer was already lolling in a chair, a leg resting on the edge of his desk.

  Aban felt his insides twisting. A dark foreboding shivered through him as a pokey side room greeted him with a scowl from its bare walls and a smell of stale cigarette smoke.

  The interviewer, exactly half Aban’s age of forty-eight, had recently just scraped through a protracted degree course in business management. His wealthy parents, generous donors to the Republican Party, had pulled several strings to get him the posting with the Provisional Coalition. They’d managed to persuade their son that potential employers would be delighted to see he’d stuck his neck out for his country. No one would know, however, that he had not yet set foot out of the safe zone – nor did he intend to for the whole of his six-month attachment.

  He had a brash, almost cocky aura, flipping through the pages of the CV in a scant manner that only endorsed his disinterest.

  ‘So, Mr…’ he glanced at the notes, ‘… al-Tikriti.’

  ‘It’s Doctor, actually,’ Aban said quietly. ‘You will see
I have an MBA and a PhD.’

  ‘Right,’ he said without a trace of apology. ‘And what do you think you can do for the United States of America?’

  Aban was taken aback. He wanted to respond immediately that he was not offering his services to America but for his own beloved country. He felt like asking this ‘boy’ what HE could do for Iraq. He was tempted to tell him that if he were in his Ministry, he would be shuffling papers as an office junior with such an attitude.

  Instead, he bit his tongue. ‘Well, you will see my experience is in many areas of commerce. Most of it in an executive capacity – I had over two hundred staff working for me, many departments.’

  His words appeared to float over the young man’s head who had now fixed his gaze on a second sheet of Aban’s CV. ‘It says here you are a Sunni… Ba’athist, perhaps?’

  ‘My friend, everyone who worked for the government was a member of the Ba’athist party. It was a requirement. I thought you would have known that.’

  ‘Wait here,’ he said imperiously, quickening out of the room.

  It was a further ten minutes before he returned, not even bothering to sit. ‘I have to say that we do not have any vacancies in any of our departments at this time. I hear they’re looking for people at the morgue – you might like to enquire of some of your fellow countrymen down there. Good day… sir.’ He quickly disappeared through another door leaving no time for a response.

  Aban sat completely stunned for a moment. He was mild-mannered enough to forgive the man’s rudeness, his incompetence. But the audacity had been simply breathtaking. No vacancies, no job, even for a man of his qualifications. Surely not.

  The country needed rebuilding. He was desperate to help.

  His mind began racing, firing off a raft of questions and emotions; self-doubts, fears for his family, for himself. Finally, the stark reality suddenly struck home like a hard, sickening blow.

  So this was their game. He ran his thoughts back to recent murmurings among his friends about the Coalition.

  ‘Don’t be surprised if we Sunnis are frozen out of any meaningful position within government and the military,’ one former colleague had said.

  He’d read the stories in the US media; the power-holding Sunnis under Saddam were a twenty per cent minority of the population. The pendulum was about to swing in favour of the majority Shi’ites.

  He knew the Sunni-Shi’ite split in Iraq was more evenly spread than that. Enclaves of one sect or the other abounded within Baghdad and the other big cities. But they were all Muslims. Little attention had ever been paid to people’s persuasion. As long as it was not anti-Saddam.

  Aban left the base in turmoil; angry, hurt, confused. If this was a sign of the times, his worst fears would be realised. Iraq had its own dark forces to turn the fear of a Sunni-Shia schism into the nightmare of reality.

  As to his own dire situation: a job at the morgue? Farrah had a cousin, a well-meaning, likeable young man named Abu Khamsin, who worked there. He had not long returned from the US, where he’d completed his master’s degree – yet could find no other work. The families had been regaled with the most gruesome of details. Aban shuddered at the memory.

  ‘It is only a job,’ the cousin told his aghast audience. ‘To starve like a dog on the street is a fate far worse.’

  Aban stared blankly at the numbing landscape on the journey home. He recalled an article he’d read in Time magazine as a young man. It had evoked a feeling of pity to hear of the dozens of highly-qualified NASA scientists thrown out of work at a stroke in America when the US space budget was slashed. Some had resorted to becoming taxi drivers.

  It had struck him as incongruous that a country supposedly as advanced as the United States could do that to its cognoscenti. That he was now in the same position was a truly frightening prospect. The family had some savings, but how long would they last? And who would pity him?

  Glad the house was empty, he needed time to be alone, to think. But the tight knot in his stomach made this almost impossible. He stumbled into his study and flopped into his chair, staring doggedly at the wall.

  ‘A hundred thousand curses on America,’ he wailed before breaking down, crying loudly, his head in his hands.

  * * *

  Alex fastened her seatbelt and braced herself as the C-5 Galaxy rumbled along the runway, rapidly picking up speed. Facing backwards and with no windows on the upper deck, it made for a disconcerting take off.

  ‘Some power in those engines, huh?’

  She glanced sideways. A man who’d been the last onboard, sitting two empty seats away, smiled at her. Unlike the military passengers on the half-empty flight, he was casually dressed in jeans and sneakers. She noted his light blue short-sleeved shirt in stylish linen.

  Suddenly airborne, climbing steeply, they hit turbulence. ‘Whooah,’ Alex shouted, steadying herself, and giving him a startled look.

  When the Galaxy levelled off, he undid his seatbelt and moved a seat closer. ‘Steve Lewis,’ he said, leaning over and offering his hand. ‘Where you headed?’

  Was he trying to hit on her – or just being friendly? She couldn’t tell. He seemed fairly laid back, though. And, she had to admit, it was good to see someone smile at last – an uninhibited lightness notably absent in Baghdad.

  ‘Home,’ she said. ‘New York – I’m Alex Stead, freelance photographer, by the way.’

  ‘Lucky you,’ he said, running a hand through his dark hair and fastening his seatbelt.

  Alex shifted position. Her feet touched her cabin bag under her seat. She pulled it out and undid the zip. Finding her laptop, she placed it on her knee. She’d planned to start a reluctant memo to Richard Northwood from the notes on her laptop. She intended to keep things brief and to not name her source. But Aban’s alarming views on the situation in Iraq, now and future, would surely be of some use to him – even if only endorsing intelligence they already possessed. Then she would put Richard Northwood out of her mind for good.

  ‘Hope I’m not disturbing you,’ Steve said. ‘I’m very good at sitting quietly. In fact, I’ve often thought I’d make a good dog – sitting by my master with the occasional pat on the head to keep me happy.’

  He had light blue eyes and when he laughed, as now, she saw them set to dancing.

  Hesitating for a second, she closed the lid of the laptop, putting it back in the bag. ‘Too noisy to think straight,’ she smiled.

  ‘It sure is one big angry beast. There’s only one plane bigger anywhere – Russian – but not by much. We call these fellas FRED.’

  On an impulse, she took off her beret, throwing it in the bag, and shaking her hair free.

  He watched her, intrigued. Some of her gestures signalled a degree of confidence, yet he couldn’t help but notice her hands trembling when she’d pulled out the laptop. She looked so much better without the headgear, too.

  Although Alex knew what the fuel-guzzling Galaxy’s acronym stood for, she feigned ignorance. ‘FRED?’

  ‘Ah, Ma’am, I couldn’t say.’

  ‘Go on,’ she teased.

  She saw him start to blush.

  ‘Okay, let’s have a guessing game.’ She relaxed in her seat, watching him grow more uncomfortable. He rubbed the end of his nose, embarrassed.

  He had a square jaw, softened by a shade of prominence in his cheekbones. Good looking, yes, she thought.

  ‘Right, I’m going to have a go,’ she said, pursing her lips, toying with him. She watched his eyebrows rise in anticipation, a crease across his forehead. ‘How about… Fucking Ridiculous Environmental Disaster!’

  He burst out laughing, doubling up and slapping his knees, his body shaking. Alex couldn’t help but join in. Still giggling a minute later, she produced a tissue and dabbed her eyes.

  It struck her she hadn’t laughed like that for months. Nor had she made anyone else laugh, something she liked to do. Pleased at how she’d managed to bait him, she still had a wicked gleam in her eye when she turned sideways. �
�That’s one up for me, I think,’ she said.

  Shaking his head, hardly believing he’d been suckered, he let out a deep breath. ‘Yeah, you got me good and proper. I can see I’ll have to watch you.’

  They talked, interspersed with laughs, for the rest of the journey. She was intrigued by him, so un-military like and with none of the overt macho characteristics of some of those she’d met. He was two years older than her, an army helicopter instructor, currently based at their destination, the Kuwait-US Ali al-Salem airbase, forty miles south of the Iraq border.

  ‘Do you like what you do?’

  ‘I like flying choppers – hope to have my own charter company when I get out. Thankfully, I don’t get involved with Iraq and wouldn’t want to. I just train the younger guys in Kuwait. Until all this kicked off, I was working for an oil company but, as an army reserve, got called up. So here I am.’

  The noise of the Galaxy’s engines dropped a beat.

  He handed her his card. She saw his rank was a chief warrant officer (class 4).

  For some reason, she found herself wondering if he was married. Just out of curiosity, she told herself. Probably had a wife and a couple of kids back in Philadelphia.

  The plane came into land, touching down sharply.

  ‘Say, Alex, I’m going into Kuwait – two days left of my R and R. I’d be pleased for the company, that is unless…’

  She hesitated for a moment. How else was she going to get into the city? Besides, she was enjoying his easy manner. She’d be safe with him, surely?

  ‘That’d be great,’ she said.

  The process of taxiing in the Galaxy proved a protracted affair. At a loaded weight approaching 380 tons, the plane had to manoeuvre on to special reinforced ramps to stop its undercarriage sinking into a runway that often melted in the 120-degree heat of this bleak desert outpost.

  Finally in position, Steve picked up Alex’s luggage and allowed her out of the plane before him. She scanned the vista. No wonder they called this place The Rock, she thought. Perched on a barren hill, surrounded by sand and scrub, it comprised a runway and more tents than she could count.