War of the Encyclopaedists

by Christopher Robinson

  * * *

  Montauk found Tricia’s e-mail address on the Truthout.org website. Her article wasn’t half-bad—more balanced than a lot of the lefty swill on the Internet. Even the accompanying photo by Luc Dubois, he had to admit, was well composed. The article began as a human-interest piece about a family with a mortar in their backyard, but expanded to address the violence surrounding the elections. A suicide bomber had detonated himself in a queue of voters in Sadr City, killing four. At least twenty-five more people had been killed in attacks on other polling stations—that number seemed to have made an impression on Tricia, though it didn’t seem terribly high to Montauk for a day’s worth of violence in Baghdad. He wanted to write to her immediately, but he held back for several days. “Hey, nice article, let’s fuck again” didn’t seem like the appropriate thing to say. “Want to grab dinner” seemed too transparent. What he needed was a plausible work-related excuse to spend enough time with her to make a further sexual encounter all but inevitable. It was hard to plan this out, though, with the headache Ali Gorma was giving him.

  For weeks, Gorma had been showing up late to his shifts. And just recently, he’d no-call/no-showed. That alone might have been reason enough to fire him. But Montauk had also repeatedly found himself in situations where Gorma’s translations didn’t match the facial expressions of the distraught Iraqis whom Montauk was attempting to communicate with. This suspicion—that Gorma was leaving out information, due to either apathy or a misdirected sense of propriety—had been gnawing at him for weeks. He had even begun to worry that Gorma was actively sabotaging day-to-day operations. The most infuriating part was that when Montauk got up the courage to send Gorma packing, he stood there looking bored as ever. “Do you get what I’m saying?” Montauk had said. “You’re fired. Don’t come back.” Gorma had said, “Okay,” shrugging with the least amount of exertion possible to convey his indifference.

  But with Gorma gone and Olaf looking for a replacement, Montauk could focus on the more important question of how to get Tricia alone in a dark room. He’d begun the e-mail by complimenting her article and telling her that EOD had gone out to remove that mortar. This put him in a good light. But Tricia didn’t seem like the kind of girl who would come running to him because he was big and strong and could solve all her problems. She had a very developed sense of her own agency. He’d grinned at his cleverness when the idea came to him. Just a little afterthought at the end of the e-mail: P.S. Maybe we can trade information. Let’s talk. How could she resist that? He’d offer her some leads about civilian casualties from the daily INTSUM—stuff that would make great human-interest material for lefty publications. And in exchange, maybe she could . . . keep an ear to the street—that was a good phrase—for rumors of insurgent activity. It wasn’t entirely bullshit. Maybe Tricia and her journalist cronies could turn up information that Montauk, as a US soldier, would never get from the locals. And though sharing bits of intel with an unembedded journalist wouldn’t endanger anyone, he could get in serious shit if Captain Byrd found out. There was real risk, which made the elaborate attempt at a liaison even more erotic.

  They had arranged to meet at the internal checkpoint to the DFAC. Montauk was there now, shooting the bull with the guard force, which today meant Fields and Kyriacou and a few Gurkhas. The Gurkhas were former British colonial troops from Nepal who were now basically mercenaries.

  • • •

  Tricia arrived alone. Khakis and a button-up. The hijab she wore outdoors lay around her shoulders.

  “Lieutenant,” she said. Her ID hung from a lanyard around her neck, government-worker style. She held it out expectantly toward Montauk.

  He took it, flipped it around, and gave it the once-over. “You’re good.”

  “Are you working right now?” she asked.

  He raised an eyebrow. Fields raised one, too. “Technically, no.”

  “Technically, dinner?”

  “The LT would be glad to keep you company, ma’am,” Kyrie said. “Sir, me and the Gurkhas got it locked down, you’re good to go.” He flashed a grin and gave a double thumbs-up.

  Tricia smiled and stepped through the gap in the sandbags, beckoning Montauk to follow.

  “Sir!”

  “Right . . .” Montauk hadn’t cleared his weapon. SOP when entering US military buildings was to pop out your magazine, yank back the bolt to show the empty chamber, and then aim your rifle into the sand-filled clearing barrel and pull the trigger. Montauk pointed Molly Millions into the clearing barrel, but he yanked back the bolt before ejecting the magazine, which racked a round into the chamber.

  “Oooh,” said Kyrie.

  “Shit.” Montauk jacked the bolt back again, ejecting the rifle round, which he caught and popped back into the magazine. He pulled the bolt back a third time, then fired the empty weapon into the barrel.

  “Good to go, sir!” chimed Kyrie.

  “Thanks,” Montauk muttered.

  “Everything okay?” Tricia asked as they walked across the mosaic of Bush I’s face.

  “Everyone’s already watching me because I’m an officer, and now I’m walking around with a hot American chick.”

  Tricia blushed. “Like it’s fifth grade and you don’t want to be the first guy with a girlfriend.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I see why you get along with Hal.”

  “I heard about a staff sergeant who got busted down like three ranks for getting blown by an interpreter.”

  “What? Why?”

  “There’s no sex in the Army.”

  “C’mon.”

  “No permissible sex.”

  “And what does that have to do with us getting dinner?”

  They walked down the hall past the barbershop and one of the many stalls selling paintings and cheap watches and pocketknives. Montauk chuckled at himself.

  “What?”

  “It’s just that my game’s been sucking it through a glory hole.”

  “When did you become a frat guy?”

  “I’m pretty sure I was dipping Kodiak and swigging High Life when we first met.”

  “That was when you were a blimp pilot.”

  “I still am, this is just a yearlong deployment.”

  She smiled at that. “Right.”

  “I’m serious—they have to hold my job for me at UAI. It’s federal law.”

  “Let’s just forget that, okay? You’re not who I thought you were.”

  The track-lit buffet at the Al Rasheed spread out before them. Tonight was chicken Kiev, which here was basically a breaded fist-sized chunk of boneless chicken with a cream-cheese sauce injected inside. Montauk had no idea what chicken Kiev was supposed to be, but he’d wager money that it was totally different from what they served in the Al Rasheed.

  They picked an empty table at the far end of the room.

  “So how are you liking Baghdad?” he said.

  “Let’s get down to business,” Tricia said. “You can get me leads on civilian casualties?”

  “I get an intelligence brief on Karada every morning. It’s like a police-blotter thing, except with stuff that’s of interest to us. Mostly attacks and threats on their side, raids and other ops on our side, and tidbits of intel, like reports that we’re going to get hit with a car bomb, which we seriously get every day.”

  “Car bombs?”

  “Reports of car bombs. We haven’t actually been blown up. Not my platoon, anyway.”

  “It’ll have reports of civilian casualties, then?”

  “No, it’s just a bunch of incident reports, but it generally reports if one of our units has done an operation anywhere in the area, if they’ve done a raid or taken contact or whatever.”

  “And it has addresses?”

  “More like grid squares. But they’re accurate to about ten meters, if you have a GPS. Sometimes the rep
orts mention which apartment building, plus maybe a street or an intersection. Mostly grid squares, though.” The cheese sauce came oozing out of the chicken Kiev when he pushed on it with his fork. “Usually they won’t mention if they hurt someone or trashed the place—it’s an intelligence report. But if you know where an operation recently happened, you could roll over there and talk to people, see what they say.”

  “That’s helpful. I think.”

  “I’m only giving it to you, not that other dude. Understood?”

  “Okay . . .”

  “And I’m not going to give you the whole thing. I’m going to write down the stuff that’s relevant to you. I could get in serious shit for this. As in jail time, maybe.”

  “It’s classified?”

  “Tell people you got it from your translator friend.”

  “Okay. And what do you need from me?”

  “You know,” Montauk said, taking a bite of his entrée. “Just keep your ear to the street for rumors of insurgent activity. We get so many reports, and we can’t pay attention to all of them. Even a hint about which ones to focus on, even if it’s not hard intel, could be useful. Try your chicken Kiev. Not bad.”

  Tricia took an indifferent bite.

  “So, really, how are you liking the city?” Montauk said.

  “It’s overwhelming. And incredible. Just . . .”

  “Just your boyfriend’s got his panties in a twist.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  “Girls tend to say that around me.”

  “Stop it.” She playfully slapped his arm. His frat-guy act was just thin enough to be funny. “But yeah, he’s been kind of uptight. He chewed me out for going to observe the elections.”

  “I would have, too, Tricia. Jesus.”

  “Well, he doesn’t explain anything. That’s the real problem. I ask questions and he gets annoyed that I’m trying to figure out how to maneuver in this war zone. What you can do, what you can’t. So I’m left just doing things and figuring out the consequences later.”

  “Now you know how the Army feels,” Montauk said. “Ba-dum-tshh.”

  41

  * * *

  “Wooah, ho ho ho,” said Jackson softly. “Worked over.” He reached down to the Chinese walkie-talkie tied to his vest, and the news started wending its way through the platoon like word of some prodigal’s return to a snowbound village.

  “It’s Ali Gorma?” Joh said into his walkie-talkie, resting in the shade of the Priority bunker behind the fifty.

  Yeah. The voice wasn’t quite identifiable through the cheap handset, but probably Ant.

  What the fuck does he want? Thomas, over the talkie net.

  Sergeant Nguyen is talking to him. Jackson again. Looks like he got hit by a steamroller.

  Montauk stood on the lower lip of a T-wall, looking out over the traffic circle. He had his walkie-talkie switched on, the better to monitor the platoon chatter, although as a rule he responded only to official communications on the company net, which presently came alive with the voice of Staff Sergeant Nguyen.

  Two-Six, Two-Two. Can you come down to Routine Search?

  “Two-Two, Two-Six. On the way.” Montauk spat out some dip and hopped down from the T-wall. The soles of his feet felt hot and tender in his boots, and he knew they’d be reeking when he pulled his socks off.

  Ali Gorma was indeed worked over. He had on his usual baggy trousers and a button-up, but his cheek was covered in gauze, and a huge shiner spread across his eye up to his forehead. The tip of his nose was scabbed over, and his arm was in a sling and covered in more gauze from wrist to elbow. The gauze was crusted over with yellow fluid that had seeped through.

  “Ali Gorma. What happened?”

  Nguyen replied for him. “Says he got beat up by the AIF, sir.”

  Montauk led him up the lane toward the command post, walking slowly to accommodate Ali Gorma’s new limp.

  “Somebody attacked you?”

  “Yes, they attack me.”

  “Do you know who it was?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  Montauk racked his brain for relevant episodes of Law & Order. Gorma had not been back to the checkpoint since Montauk had fired him last week. He was now coming in to report that he’d been attacked by terrorists, probably for working with Montauk’s platoon. Did Gorma want protection? Montauk was fairly certain that 3rd Brigade was not in the witness protection business.

  He felt like he was about to enter the familiar drill of listening to a local’s grievance, saying he’d forward the concerns to his commander, and Insha’Allah, something would be done. He’d come to think of Baghdadi complaints as if they were complaints from girls—stop trying to fix everything, an ex once told him. Just listen to me. If Gorma really was attacked for (barely) working for Montauk, wasn’t he taking another big risk by coming back to talk with soldiers? Aladdin’s dead face materialized in Montauk’s head. He threw it out of his thoughts, something he’d been getting better and better at.

  Montauk pulled out a plastic chair for Ali Gorma in the CP. He laid his rifle on the desk’s plywood top and fished a couple of cold Mr. Browns from the recycle bin. “So. First of all, I’m sorry you were injured. I hate to see you like this. Can you tell me what happened from the beginning?”

  Gorma shifted in his chair and glanced at the satellite map of the checkpoint taped to the concrete wall. Sunlight passed through the city’s haze and the CP’s camouflage netting before settling on Gorma’s bandaged face and oiled black hair. “I receive a note on my door, and it is from mujahideen, saying I work with Americans, and they kill me if I work with Americans.”

  “When did you get this note?”

  “I get it last week.”

  “While you were still working here?”

  “No, no, just after.”

  “Do you have the note?”

  “What the note?”

  “The note on your door? Do you have it?”

  “No, no. I put in garbage.”

  From behind his desk, Montauk could see the apartment buildings across the street, with their crazy lattice of wires and rooftop satellite dishes. Electricity had become a free-for-all in occupied Baghdad; people regularly climbed telephone poles to splice wires into the power lines so they had extra sources of power during brownouts. Down on the street level, hidden from Montauk’s view by T-walls, a ring of trash bags was stacked three high against the building like some putrescent buttress system. Montauk decided to play chief inspector, since he didn’t really have a choice.

  “You threw it out. Of course. Do you know where the trash bag is?”

  “No, I don’t know.”

  “It would help if you could find that note and bring it to us. It will help us to identify your attackers.” A growing part of Montauk felt disassociated from the present moment and viewed the conversation from above. How absurd it sounded. Second Lieutenant Montauk asking former translator Ali Gorma to dig through trash bags to find a note from the AIF. It would never happen.

  “Hmm, okay. I will look for it. Insha’Allah, Insha’Allah, I will bring it to you.”

  “Did they contact you again before the attack?”

  They had not. Ali Gorma had been walking home after visiting one of his uncles in the neighborhood just southeast of the checkpoint when a car slowed down next to him, a revolver pointed out the window. Three men got out of the car and walked him into the alley and beat him and stuck the barrel of the revolver in his mouth. Montauk scribbled the details in his notebook with a ballpoint. His handwriting was like a personal encryption.

  “It is the same men, I think,” Gorma said. “The same who kill Aladdin.”

  Montauk stopped writing. After nailing his proverbial gold doubloon to the mast and slogging through that week of useless interviews, Montauk had done his best to quash any hope
of finding Aladdin’s killers. It wasn’t going to happen. He knew that. And it distracted him from his job. But now it all came rushing back at him, that anger, that desire for black, metallic revenge. Holy Christ, if those motherfuckers had done a number on Gorma, then maybe he’d find them after all.

  “Do you know them?” Montauk asked.

  “Only one. His name Abdul Aziz.”

  “How do you know him?”

  “He lives near to me.”

  “So he’s not Al-Qaeda from Yemen or something. He’s Baghdadi.”

  “Yes.”

  “Sunni or Shia?”

  “I think he is Sunni.”

  “You think? You don’t know?”

  “I know. He is Sunni.”

  “Is he working for Zarqawi? Muqtada al-Sadr? Someone telling him what to do?”

  “No, no. I don’t know. Maybe Zarqawi, but—”

  “Oh right, because Al-Sadr is Shia, but Abdul Aziz is Sunni.”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “So, where does Abdul Aziz live?”

  “He live near Karada Kharidge.”

  “Near the middle traffic circle?”

  “Yes.”

  “In an apartment?”

  “Yes. Babil Apartments.”

  “What apartment number?”

  “I think he is number eight.”

  “Abdul Aziz, Babil Apartments, number eight. Near Karada Kharidge.”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you point to where it is on the map?”

  They walked a few steps to the T-wall, and Ali Gorma pointed to a spot on the satellite photo with his unbroken arm.

  “Wow, that’s close,” Montauk said. And it was—a little over half a kilometer southeast of the checkpoint, in the Mansour neighborhood, nestled in a twisted knot of buildings and alleys that reminded him of a trip to Naples with Corderoy, the rooftops and upper alleys hung with wash, spidery electrical wires. Montauk began to calculate the number of troops he’d need and whether he could fit a Bradley down into that neighborhood.