by Dawson, Mark
“I’m Simon.”
She nodded impassively.
“Can I get you a drink?”
“No, thank you.”
He pointed at her empty glass. “But you’ve finished. Let me get you another one.”
She turned to face him. Her eyes, icy powder-blue, were blank and pitiless as she stared at him. She could see the confidence that he had managed to assemble melt like the ice cubes in his glass. “No,” she said. “Thank you. I’m fine.”
He swallowed down his embarrassment and shuffled around on his stool.
“Excuse me.”
Beatrix turned in the other direction, an exasperated retort on the tip of her tongue.
The man standing at the bar was in his early thirties. He was muscular, with thick arms that bulged through a grey T-shirt that was a little too small for him. He had a pair of Aviators pushed back on his forehead, and his black hair was cropped short, a number one buzz cut. His jaw was square and his skin was tanned.
“Miss Rose?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Damon Faulkner,” he said. “Michael Pope sent me.”
Faulkner bought them both drinks, and they moved to a quiet table in the corner of the bar where there was less chance that they would be overheard. Beatrix watched as he brought the fresh pints across the room to her. He was obviously ex-military: he walked with the confident gait that she had come to expect in spec-ops guys and his appearance was straight out of central casting. He deposited the beers on the table and sat down.
“Good to meet you,” he said. “Pope has told me a lot about you.”
“Really?”
“I think he’s a fan.”
“That’s nice,” she said. “He hasn’t told me anything about you.”
He smiled. “I was in the Regiment for five years, until two months ago. That’s when I got the tap on the shoulder, and they asked me if I was interested in transferring to the Group.”
“What are you? Number . . . ?”
“Number Twelve.”
“Twelve.” The most junior member of the team.
“That’s right. I understand there’ve been a few vacancies recently.”
Five, she thought. Five traitors whom she and Milton had eliminated on the Russian steppes.
“How much do you know?”
“I know that Captain Pope’s predecessor and some of his agents were corrupt.”
“And what do you know about this?”
“This?”
“This. Why you’re here with me.”
“He wants me to get you into Iraq. Once we get to Basra, he wants me to get you equipped and then get you down to Rumaila.”
“Anything else?”
“We’re going to bring a chap across the border afterwards.”
“Anything else?”
“That’s all he told me.”
Beatrix hadn’t asked for help, but if Faulkner was decent, then perhaps it would be useful to have him around.
“Alright. What’s your plan?”
“I’m parked outside. We’ll wait until it’s dark and then we’ll drive west. Once we get to Basra, I’ll fix up an appointment with the Group quartermaster. Should be able to get you kitted up with most of the gear you want. Sound alright to you?”
Chapter Twelve
Faik was taken back into the main prison building and led through the warren of corridors until he reached a small cell with thirty other men inside. There was a bench along one wall and a bucket for them to relieve themselves. There were no windows and the only light came from a flickering striplight high above.
The guards opened the door, covering the men with rifles, and tossed Faik inside.
The other prisoners paid him no regard. It was stifling hot, and the bruises that the policemen had inflicted were sore to the touch.
He sat down in a narrow space against the wall, bounded by two other men. He realised, with abject clarity, that his situation was very bad indeed. He felt lonely and helpless.
“Are you alright, brother?”
Faik looked up. The man to his right was looking at him.
“Are you alright?”
He gave a single stoic nod.
“What is your name?”
“Faik.”
“I am Ahmed. You have been with the mercenaries?”
“How do you know?”
He pointed and added with a polite smile, “Your hair is still wet.”
“They think I am with Muqtada al-Sadr.”
“Are you?”
“No,” he said. “I was protesting at Energy City. My mother was killed.”
“I am sorry.”
Ahmed paused for a moment. Faik took the chance to compose himself.
“What are you here for?” he asked him.
“I am a lawyer. I found evidence of fraud in the government. Bribes from big foreign corporations to win the contracts they tendered for. I was found out, and well”—he spread his arms—“here I am.”
“But you didn’t do anything wrong.”
Ahmed looked at him as if he were a child. “That depends who you ask.” He arranged himself against the wall, wincing from a stiff back. “They asked you whether you were with Muqtada?”
“Yes.”
“What did you say?”
“That I didn’t know him. And I don’t.”
“They don’t expect us to say we do. I doubt they think we are involved in the uprising at all.”
“I’m not.”
“I believe you.”
“So why are they asking?”
“It is all for effect. One big show. They need to show the people that they are serious about security. They will demonstrate that they can deal with the insurgents. It doesn’t matter if the people they punish are engineers, office clerks, mechanics”—he gestured to himself and then to Faik—“or lawyers and young men.”
Faik set his jaw and said with a conviction he didn’t feel, “They’ll let me out. They have to. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
Ahmed laughed, a hacking noise that soon became a hoarse cough.
“What?”
“You think they’ll do it? Just like that?”
“Why wouldn’t they?”
“They have to make an example of you now. Every time there is a protest or a shooting or a bombing, it makes it more expensive to do business here. They need to show the foreigners that they are serious about making it a safe place for them to work.”
“But I can’t stay here. My mother was . . . There are things I need to attend to. And I have a little sister. She is alone.”
“She will have to learn to grow up, Faik. You will be here for many years.”
“No . . .” He started to stand, anger twisting his face, until Ahmed reached over, took his shoulder and pressed him down.
“Be quiet, brother. If the guards think you are going to cause trouble, you will be beaten.”
“I can’t stay here.”
“There might be a way.”
“How?”
“You want to get out of here, brother?”
Faik suddenly found his eyes were full of tears. He tried to say that he did, but the words would not come. He nodded instead, blinking the tears back and swallowing hard.
“Like I said: I am a lawyer. I am going to represent as many of the prisoners as I can. If you like, I can add your name to the docket.”
“Why would you do that? You don’t even know me.”
“Someone has to stand up for our rights. Some of the people in the government, I wonder sometimes whether they would prefer things as they were with Saddam. I would not. But we need to fight them. This is a good place to start, if Allah wills.”
“What do I need to do?”
“Noth
ing. I am going to speak to the governor tomorrow. There are nine of us. If you like, you can be number ten.”
Chapter Thirteen
Faulkner had a Land Rover Freelander parked in the short-stay car park. The gardens outside were well watered and healthy, but the road was barren and choked with dust that had been cooked in the sun all day. They drove for forty-five minutes out of the city, heading west, through a featureless desert landscape that looked almost lunar under the silvery starlight. They followed the same road that Saddam’s tanks had used twenty-five years ago, eventually reaching the border at Safran. It was a broad, open car park with several four-by-four vehicles, a couple of trucks and a collection of Portakabins. There was no official transaction to speak of, and after Faulkner had signed a document for a clipboard-wielding functionary, they were on their way again.
“How safe is the road?” she asked as they accelerated away.
“Better than it was, but still not safe. There’s a Glock in the glove compartment if you need a weapon.”
“Are you armed?”
“I’ve got a Sig.”
The landscape became more interesting the farther they travelled to the north. Route Eight was bleak and arid, just as in Kuwait, but now there were stretches that were littered with the carcasses of rusting tanks and other military vehicles, the detritus of war, a reminder of the fearsome power that had been ranged against Saddam’s men. They raced through occasional villages composed of low-slung huts with corrugated tin roofs, surly residents standing in their doorways and watching with suspicious eyes as they hurried past. They didn’t see another vehicle until they were well inside the border, and then it was just the lights of a military convoy moving in the distance.
“They say that the Garden of Eden was around here,” Faulkner said as he turned onto the main road heading into Basra. “Joke, right? Maybe once, but I don’t know about now.”
Beatrix looked out. In the hazy distance she could see gas, the by-product of bringing oil to the surface, being flared. Other places might store that gas and use it, but here, with oil so plentiful, they just let it burn. The road was badly pot-holed, the traffic disorganised and disorderly, the motorists using the verge whenever a queue developed. As they passed into the fringes of the city, shops on the side on the road offered everything from construction materials to car repair. Small herds of sheep hovered around feeding troughs and waited to be sold. Camels crossed the road, seemingly oblivious to the peril that they were in. There were carcasses of dead vehicles, pools of fetid, stagnant water and more litter than Beatrix had ever seen in one single place. There were piles and piles of rubble. Beatrix remembered that from previous visits. The Iraqis never cleared rubble. They moved it to the sidewalk and left it there.
As they drew closer to the city, the number of soldiers increased. There were roadblocks every few miles on the road, but as they approached Basra, these became much more frequent. Iraqi soldiers stood behind reinforced concrete baulks, backed up by armoured cars with fifty-calibre machine guns. Everyone had to stop and show their papers.
“Been to Basra before?” he asked her as they pulled away from the latest checkpoint.
“No. Never been this far south.”
“It’s a total shithole. We never really got control of it. One thing about it, and it’s pretty crazy, but you’ll be able to tell the time just by opening your window and sticking your head out. You’ll know it’s seven in the morning from the explosions as the Iraqi patrols get hit by the IEDs that the insurgents planted overnight. It’s like a fucked-up alarm clock. After that, you get the suicide bombers. And in the afternoon you’ll get the mortar teams who like to lob bombs into the city itself. End of the day, you’ll hear the small arms fire from the Iraqis going out on ops and the extra-judicial killings.”
“I’ve been in war zones before,” she said. “This won’t be any different.”
“If you say so.”
Basra wasn’t quite as bad as Beatrix had expected. They passed one of Saddam’s large palaces with the outsized domes and the ceremonial battlements. There were Ba’athist statues, large and declaratory, surprisingly spared during the upheaval of the invasion. The streets were arranged in neat and ordered lines, the traffic within them surging forward with little regard to rules. Beatrix remembered the Iraqi standard of driving from Saddam’s time. The main imperative was to keep moving, and if that meant driving on the wrong side of the road, going the wrong way around roundabouts or, occasionally, on the pavement, then so be it. It was anarchic, and Faulkner became quiet as he concentrated on avoiding a collision.
He accelerated away. “I’ve booked us into the Basra International. About the best you can find around here.”
The hotel was in the Al-Ashar district in the north of the city, near to the Arvand River. They parked the Freelander in the car park and went inside. It was an old Sheraton and in reasonable condition, twin Iraqi flags flying from the flagpoles outside. Beatrix waited in reception as Faulkner took care of the papers. They had rooms on the fourth floor. Faulkner suggested that they take an hour to settle in and then meet in the restaurant for dinner.
The room was basic: a fake marble bathroom with a bath that obviously leaked badly in several spots, a claret-red carpet decorated with a gaudy golden design, thick drapes, faux-mahogany furniture, cheap prints on the wall. She dropped her bag on the bed and went over to the window. The view was to the southwest, towards Rumaila. She could see flame-topped derricks were visible, the nodding donkeys of the pumpjacks and the ubiquitous smoggy haze in the air.
It was close. A short drive away.
Duffy was there somewhere. It was very likely that he was expecting her.
That was fine.
It didn’t matter.
She was coming anyway.
Chapter Fourteen
Faik had spent the day twitching with nerves. There was a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. Ahmed’s meeting with the governor had been scheduled for the morning. The guards came for him after breakfast, opening the door and escorting him away to the administration block. He clasped Faik’s hand before he left.
“Don’t worry, Faik. I can be a persuasive advocate. I can make a nuisance of myself. There is a saying: the squeaky hinge gets the oil. If I squeak enough, they will have to listen to me.”
It would have been an exaggeration to say that Faik was reassured, but he did feel a little more at ease knowing that something, at least, was being done. He had slept badly that night, and he was still dead tired. There was a little more space in the cell now that Ahmed was out of the way, so Faik stretched out as much as he could, rested his head on his folded arms and tried to relax. He thought of his mother and his little sister, and eventually it was her beautiful face that he remembered as he drifted off into an uneasy slumber.
Faik awoke in the afternoon feeling a little more refreshed. He pushed himself up so that he was sitting against the wall and looked around him at the cell. The striplight overhead had finally died, and now the gloom was lit only by a shaft of light from the corridor adjacent to it. The other prisoners were either asleep or staring dumbly at the walls and the bars of their cage. Faik scrubbed the heels of his palms against his eyes in an attempt to wake up.
He looked around.
There was no Ahmed.
Had he been successful?
Where was he?
A guard was sitting in a chair in the corridor, a shotgun resting across his lap. He was snoring lightly, his sleep untroubled by the muffled cries of pain that could occasionally be heard from the direction of the interrogation block.
A group of six men sat together, and Faik eavesdropped on their conversation. They were talking about Ahmed, and he gathered that they were among the prisoners that he was representing. They noticed that he was listening, and once he had explained that he was one of their number, they invited him to join them. He picked his wa
y over the out-flung limbs of prisoners who passed the interminable time in sleep and sat down amid them.
They introduced themselves: an oil worker, an accountant, a shopkeeper, two engineers and a driver.
“What do you do?” the accountant asked him.
“I am trying to find work.”
“What does your father do?”
“He was a soldier.”
“And you don’t like the idea of that?”
“No,” he said.
The men laughed.
“No indeed. A most dangerous profession.”
“I was at the oilfield. I want to work there.”
They scoffed.
“Good luck. Those jobs are not intended for Iraqis.”
The accountant indicated the busy cell. “We were wondering where our advocate has gone.”
“Maybe he has negotiated his own release and forgotten about the rest of us.”
Faik’s eyes went wide. “Do you think he . . . ?”
“Relax. It was a joke.”
“He is an honourable man.”
“Do you think he will be able to get us out?”
“I don’t know. But anything is worth a try.”
The guard outside the cell was listening to their conversation. He opened his eyes, stretched and yawned. “I wouldn’t set too much hope in your friend Ahmed,” he said. “He won’t be able to help you.”
“Why not?” asked the engineer.
“Because he’s not coming back, friend.”
“What do you mean?”
“The governor doesn’t take kindly to be lectured by criminals.” He spat the last word with eloquent distaste. “He sent the good lawyer to the interrogation block before lunch. I heard he had a heart attack and, well . . .” He allowed his tongue to poke out of his mouth and angled his head to the side.
“They killed him?”
“His heart, like I said. Tragic.”
Faik struggled to his feet and ploughed through the others to the cell door.
“Let me out,” he yelled at the guard. “I’ve done nothing wrong. I shouldn’t be here.”