Dedication
For Finn and Annie, without whom this book would have been finished a lot sooner. Riff says hi.
Contents
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Tim Lees
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter 1
Interested?
“But it’s a war zone,” I told him.
“Not technically. Not anymore.”
“Oh, good.” I folded up the map and passed it back. “So if I’m killed there, what? I’m not technically dead or something? That how it works?”
“No, Chris. If you’re killed there—God forbid, but if you are—then you were never technically there at all. You follow me?” Dayling smiled, the gracious host. “Do try the bamia, by the way. It’s delicious here.”
“I’ve lost my appetite.”
A dozen lidded bowls lay on the tabletop between us. A ceiling fan whisked tepid air over our heads. In the adjoining room, the only other customers— both westerners—had just been served the pleasures of the sheesha, and a sweet drift of tobacco smoke began to mingle with the smell of sweat, and spice, and char-grilled lamb.
“Please, Chris. Just hear me out, will you? For old times’ sake?”
He raised his brows. His forehead wrinkled like a puppy’s.
“I need your help,” he said.
And in a life spent saying many, many stupid things, I said one of the stupidest.
I said, “OK.”
His name was Dayling, Andrew Dayling, and I’d last set eyes on him about ten years back, at a Registry get-together in Berlin or Berne or somewhere. It only stuck inside my mind because at one point he had taken me aside and told me he was leaving Field Ops. “I mean, you can’t do this forever, can you?” He’d asked me for advice. I’m not sure what I said and don’t imagine it was any help, but he’d seemed pleased, and for my own part, I’d felt flattered to be asked. (I found out later he’d approached a half a dozen others at the same event, each in the same hushed, confidential tones. But never mind.)
He’d closed the conversation with a running joke, a little gag we used to do that always made him laugh.
He’d asked me: “Any tricky jobs lately?”
“Yeah,” I’d said, waited a beat, and he’d joined me in the punch line: “All of them.”
He’d grinned and clapped his hands together. “Later,” he’d said, and, as I’d assumed, walked straight out of my life.
Till now.
He hadn’t changed a lot. His face had filled out—too much bamia, perhaps—and his hair was touched with gray; there was a look of strain about the eyes, maybe, though no worse than I’d expect from living in a place like this. I’d recognized him instantly. In a profession that accepted, even fostered, certain shows of eccentricity, Dayling had been resolutely straight-edge. A shirt-and-tie man through and through. Today he wore a linen suit, stained under the arms, his tie held with a small pearl pin. He looked every bit the Englishman abroad, remnant of an empire long ago dissolved and vanished into memory. We had been friends once, or, more accurately, friendly. We’d worked jobs together, kicked back and relaxed when we were done. He was charming, attentive, usually good company. Yet when he’d left the field, I hadn’t kept in touch, and didn’t know anyone who had.
Nonetheless, it should have been an amiable reunion. It should have been a lot of things. Most of all, it should have been a different job.
“I was told this was a quick assignment. In and out. Not a bloody two hundred mile trek through warring desert tribesmen. Come on—”
“Hardly tribesmen. They’re pretty sophisticated these days.” He raised the lid on the bowl nearest him. “This isn’t Lawrence of Arabia, you know.”
“Shame. I know how that one ends.”
“The militias here are well-armed, and they’re ruthless. I won’t lie to you. But it’s a hundred to one that you’ll run into them. I’ll tell you: you’re in a lot more danger here and now than you could ever be, out there.” He spooned a reddish tomato-smelling stew into a bowl and handed it to me.
Well, I thought, if I was going to die, I’d rather do it on a full stomach. Perhaps the bamia was worth it after all.
He said, “You are currently in one of the most over-crowded cities on the planet. Killing’s easy here. It’s a daily occurrence. And they don’t discriminate. You’d think that Shia would kill Sunnis, and Sunnis would kill Shia, but it’s not like that. I’d feel safer getting out of here myself. Who wouldn’t?”
“I’d feel safer back at home, watching it on telly with my feet up. Personally.”
This he ignored.
“One truck,” he said. “Middle of nowhere. Unscheduled. Visible, it’s true, but tough to hit. If anybody’s bothered. Which they won’t be.”
“Comforting.”
“We have a bodyguard lined up, former Royal Marine. Scots chap, top man, handles our security. Very reliable. He’ll be assigned to you directly.”
“My very own Scotsman. Is it my birthday?”
He laughed now, as if I’d actually said something funny. It ended quickly.
“The interpreter’s a local man. Again, we’ve worked with him before. He’s sound. You couldn’t be in safer hands.” He put his own hands on the tabletop and spread his fingers. “Really, Chris. Would I steer you wrong? Try the stew. Go on. Just try it.”
So I tried the stew.
“Good?” he said.
I nodded.
I looked at his hands, the knobby wrists protrudi
ng from his sleeves, so tanned they looked like they’d been dipped in paint. And I remembered, years ago, a girl saying, “But have you seen his arms?”
I hadn’t at the time, and it was quite a while before I did.
“The thing is, Chris, see—thing is this. It’s all a bit hush-hush, and I’m sort of . . . restricted in what I can tell you. But the fact is, you were recommended for this job. More than that. Requested, as it happens.”
“Yeah. Well, I’ve made enemies.”
“How’s the bamia? Good, I hope? I’d suggest the kibbeh or kofta to follow. You can eat well here if you know the right places.”
“And you don’t get killed.”
“Quite.” He put the spoon up to his mouth again. A line of red clung to his upper lip, looking unpleasantly like blood. “We’ve got a big, big presence here. The Registry, I mean. You won’t read about it in the press, but it’s true. Still,” he said, “this one site, we’ve held off on. Till now.”
He let me eat a little more. Then he asked me, “Interested?”
“Why should I be?”
“Well—it’s a job, for one. And you’re professional.”
“Not good enough.”
“You’re Field Ops.”
“That’s on my card.”
“What’s more—” He leaned back, one hand stroking his wrist. I wondered if he could still feel the scars, even after all this time. “What’s more,” he said, “you’re proud of what you do. No, Chris, you are, I’ve seen you. You take a real pride in it. I know this because it’s—well, it’s one reason I’m not in Field Ops anymore.”
He gave a small, self-deprecating smile.
I held off asking for as long as I could. Then I said, “Go on.”
“Simple. I saw it mattered to you, that’s all. But to me, it wasn’t like that. It was a job. To you—it was important. Getting it right. Doing it well.” He shrugged. “I had some bad experiences, and . . .”
“Well. We’ve all had that.”
“You got out for a time yourself, I heard.”
“Few years, yes.”
“But you got back in! That’s what I mean! With you—it’s in the blood, Chris. It’s what you do. And—well. This job’s special, like I say. You’re going to want this job.”
“Try me.”
“This is—this is probably the oldest entity so far identified. It goes back, I don’t know, thousands of years, at least. Hm?”
“OK. Risk of death aside, I’ll say that I’m intrigued.”
“I’m giving you the chance to be alone with it. Take a day, a night, however long you want. Talk to it. Commune with it, if that’s what you do. Because you know that once you get it back, you’re never going to see the thing again, don’t you? It’ll disappear into some workshop or research facility, or get left in one of those big bloody storerooms for about ten years till someone works out what to do with it.” He made a gesture with his hands, placing an unseen bundle on the table. “What I’m offering you—what I’m offering is a chance. To know what it knows. I can’t promise, but I can give you the chance. And I think you’ll take it, won’t you? Yes?”
I didn’t answer him.
“You’ll take it, because—well. Because somewhere in the world, there’s a god walking around with your face, and that bothers you. I’ll tell you, frankly,” he pursed his brow, “it would bother me.”
He raised his water glass, watching me over the rim of it.
“Half right,” I said. I raised my own glass, made to clink with his, but then pulled back. “It hasn’t got my face,” I said. “Not anymore.”
“No?”
“Update your intelligence.” I put the glass down carefully in front of him. “One of us got older. I don’t suppose it looks much like me now at all.”
Chapter 2
Night Moves
At 3 A.M. Baghdad is almost quiet. The restaurants and cafés are in use, but nobody goes in or out. The doors stay shut. Diners who dropped in for an evening meal stay on till 5 a.m., when curfew lifts and everyone goes home. It’s like the world’s biggest lock-in. Equipped with papers and an escort, you can stand there in the dark and listen to the music drifting from a window twenty yards away. It’s dream-like, spooky . . . laughter on an empty street. Nighttime in the land of ghosts.
And then the trucks start up. Big engines grumble, big tires grinding in the dirt. Another US convoy setting out. They move at night, each night—but this time would be different. This time, we were going with them. Out of town, and then a few miles more. After which, the plan was, they’d head one way, and we—well. We’d be on our own.
It was just as Dayling had described it. One truck, retrieval gear stowed in the back. A local guide named Nouri, chain-smoking his PX Marlboros, occasionally remembering to blow the smoke out of the window. Carl was the driver. Heavy forearms mottled with tattoos, accent probably Glaswegian; the most I’d had from Carl so far had been a quick, obligatory, “All right?” when we’d shaken hands. After that, it was all business. He seemed sharp, confident, experienced. Somehow that didn’t altogether calm my nerves.
We drove with windows down. I could smell petrol fumes. A dog barked somewhere. Then, astonishingly, children’s cries. It was the middle of the night, but on a half-cleared bomb site in the ruins of the city, kids were playing soccer. They paused to watch us pass, ready to run if need be. Instead we waved to them, and someone in the Humvee up in front yelled, “Go Colts!” and the kids called back, “Beck-haaaam!” and the game went on.
Nouri clapped his hands.
“You see? Only the children now are brave.”
“How’s that then, Nour?” asked Carl.
“Because the rest of us,” said Nouri, “we lock ourselves away. We say, yes sir, no sir. But the children, they don’t care for stupid rules. They do as they please!”
“They’ll care if they get shot,” said Carl.
“No one likes getting shot, I can be damn sure. Especially by interfering foreign squaddies like yourself, eh? No offense,” he added, amiably.
“Ah, none taken, pal. None taken.”
Nouri was watching me.
“You are worried, friend.”
“I’m fine.”
“He’s worried,” said Carl.
“I’m cool.”
“Worried.”
I stared into the night, my head filling with visions, daydreams, near hallucinations: some crazed gunman charging at us from the dark, some nutter with a grudge and a Kalashnikov, or else some mad old woman strapped with gelignite—
“No,” I said. “It’s going to be an easy job, I think. Once we’re there I’ll do a survey, and then we’ll know—”
“The job. Aye. Right.”
“OK.” I looked from one of them to the other. “I’m worried. That suit you? Shit scared, if you want to know. How’s that?”
“Only a fool,” said Nouri, “isn’t worried.”
“I don’t do this. Places like this. Jesus—”
“Aye. And you can tell your boss, your Mr. Dayling, we don’t bloody do it, either. Not without some preparation and the full security, no way. Still,” Carl said, “here we are. So I guess we do do it, after all. And so do you.” He sucked air between his teeth. Then he said, “Want lessons?”
“Lessons?”
“Aye. Iraq 101. War for dummies. You want ’em?”
The whole time he’d been talking, he’d been looking at the road, the darkness either side, the country slipping near enough invisibly along beside us. He hadn’t once looked at me.
Maybe that was my first lesson.
Chapter 3
The Car Wreck
There was a strange effect, almost an optical illusion, which I noticed once we’d left the other vehicles and moved out into open country. Th
e lights from the truck lit up a little of the roadside, giving the impression, not of flat land, but of two low walls running on either side of us. We seemed to be passing through some quiet residential suburb—the weird illusion I was still in England. For some reason, this soothed me, and in spite of my anxiety, I found myself starting to doze, drifting off into this dreamy little fiction.
Darkness peeled back slowly over palm trees, telegraph poles, little houses squat as pill boxes.
Then sunrise. The heat came almost instantly, like switching on an electric fire. Nouri blew cigarette smoke through a half-inch crack in the window. We passed a small boy leaning on a staff with goats all round him, like something from the Bible.
Mirages of lakes, water on the tarmac up ahead, folding into nothingness as we approached . . .
I nodded off awhile, dreaming of home. Then Carl shook me awake.
“Huh? What?”
He jerked his head to indicate.
There was something in the road. Dark shapes, what seemed to be the roofs of vehicles, then a movement, detaching itself. A man walking around as if wading in water, ripples shifting all about him . . . but no water. Obviously. The light moving instead.