Holding the Zero (35 page)

Her mouth was close to the drain, and the stumbling flow of his urine.

‘Are you there?’

‘Where else would I be? I am here.’ From the drain came a black, shaken chuckle, not laughter.

‘Can we survive?’

‘We have to survive.’

‘For how long?’

‘For as long as God gives us strength.’

‘Can we be saved?’

‘Only by death.’

She trembled. Between the interrogation sessions and the smiling soft-skinned face phrasing the questions with care in the intervals between the beatings and the pain, she had thought of home. She had summoned the image of the village, the orchards in blossom, the smell of food cooking and of wet wood burning, the children bringing back armfuls of wild spring flowers, and of old Hoyshar reading to her from the books of military history that had been left for him by his friend, esteemed brother Basil, children playing and shouting – but she could no longer find the image. All she had left were the words coming through the narrow drain hole and sighs as if the effort of speaking each word brought a worse pain.

‘When does death come?’

‘When they have finished with us – for you earlier, for me later.’

‘Can you not tell them something, a little?’

‘If you start, you weaken. Then it is not a little but everything.’

‘If you are strong?’

‘Today men pray for my strength that they can live.’

‘How do you make the strength?’

‘By thinking of those I love.’

‘May I be loved by you, because I am frightened.’

‘We will love each other, child and father …’

She closed her fist. She reached into the hole, pushing her hand, wrist, forearm, into it.

She felt the feathery brush of the cockroaches’ legs on her skin. In the rough hole, with the creatures on her, her arm shivered, but she thrust it deeper, to the elbow. She felt the coarse close-cut hair and thought she touched his neck, and he started at the touch and let out a small cry because he had moved suddenly. The big, hard hand took Meda’s. Her fingers were in his. She felt the wetness of his lips on her fingers, on the palm of her hand that had been burned with cigarette stubs. It was as if she reached beyond her cell, beyond the fences and walls, beyond the city, through the drain towards a freedom. It was not a father holding a child’s hand and kissing it, it was the hold and the kiss of the man she loved. She was alone with him, given strength, watching the same stars as shone over Nineveh and Nimrud … Gus would come for her, take her back into the night, to freedom, and she would feel again his lips kissing hers.

‘He will come and save me.’

‘No-one will come. The only safety is death.’

‘I have to believe it.’

‘If you believe it then you will be weak. Be strong, give me strength.’

‘You were my enemy.’

‘I am all you have, you are all I have.’

‘I will be saved …’

Meda tried to drag her arm back from the drain hole, but she could not. He held her hand with the firmness of desperation.

‘She is only a girl, a peasant. We are responsible.’

Etiquette said that Haquim, already offered coffee in a thimble china cup and sweet biscuits, should have taken the chair, upholstered in royal blue, and sat opposite
agha
Ibrahim and engaged in polite talk before gently steering the conversation towards the reason for his visit. He was incapable of such courtesies. The coffee remained untouched on the low table, the biscuits uneaten. He roamed the salon room, beating out a stride, then turning and gesticulating with his finger for emphasis. The room had been the principal lounge of the hotel that had once been a retreat for the privileged of the regime when they came north to escape the heat of Baghdad’s summer; it was now the commandeered residence of the
agha
, and the old opulence was maintained. Haquim’s boots, as he pounded backwards and forwards, scattered dried mud on a hand-woven carpet.

‘She had dreams, delusions. We played on her simplicity. We have a duty to her.’

The
agha
’s eyes followed Haquim. The only evidence of his mood and inclination was in the eyes. The hands were still, did not fidget. The mouth was set, expressionless. But
agha
Ibrahim could not hide the message of his eyes. Haquim was heard out in silence, but knew he had failed. Nothing would be done, a finger would not be lifted. As he spoke he seemed to see her in the cell, just as he had seen her in the village, just as he had seen her in the charge of the Victory City and on the stampede towards the town of Tarjil, and the rush along the ditch beside the high-built road to the perimeter defences at the crossroads. Because of what he saw, and the memory of the way she trapped him with innocence and certainty, his voice rose.

‘She took you to the outskirts of Kirkūk. You saw the flame of Baba Gurgur. When you turned, it was a betrayal of her. History will curse you, and the spirit of your father and your grandfather, if you abandon her.’

The passion of the veteran fighter went unanswered. No man, certainly no woman, spoke to
agha
Ibrahim with such disdain. Haquim thought that the call would already have been made on the satellite telephone to the palace offices in Baghdad and that there would have been the protestations of loyalty; but it would not be admitted. He thought he shouted to the wind.

‘I beg of you, use the communications you have. Call them and plead and bargain with them. Offer them what they want.’

Perhaps, if he had wished to, the
agha
could have saved her. If he had picked up again the satellite telephone and begged, pleaded, perhaps her life could be returned to her.

Perhaps, for a quarter or half a million dollars, of the customs tolls exacted by the
agha
for permission for lorries and tankers to cross his territory, her life could be won. The slight shrug told Haquim that nothing would be done, that the interview was terminated.

‘She did it for you. She risked her life to bring you to Kirkūk. Your indifference shames you.’

He had expected nothing more and nothing less, but it had been his obligation to try.

He would drive from Arbīl to Sulaymānīyah, and if the answer was the same he would go back to the mountains, to his village, to forget. He stamped out of the salon room.

The soldier in the watchtower at the fuel depot was high above the traffic on the nearest street.

He had heard two shots fired with thirty minutes separating them but, and he checked his wristwatch again, the second shot had been eighteen minutes before. The soldier strained to hear another shot but it was harder now because a mullah called the faithful to prayer and the chant billowed out from the loud-speakers in the minaret tower of the mosque closest to him. In the watchtower, he was dismayed at not being able to respond to the mullah’s call – he was from one of the few Sunni families in Karbalā where the treacherous Shi’a were in the majority. Being of the minority sect in that city, he gave total support to the regime, its troops, police and security agents – his family might be butchered with knives in their beds in the night. He had reported hearing the shots, shouted it down to his sergeant, but he could not locate them. From his vantage, he scanned with binoculars across rooftops, upper windows and street junctions, but saw nothing that threatened him. The call had reached a crescendo when the binoculars were driven back into his eye sockets by the armour-piercing bullet and the top half of his head spiralled down to the ground close to the boots of his sergeant, who supervised the refuelling of a lorry.

The back marker in the scrambled patrol crouched at the corner of an office block.

The patrol was one of many that had been hustled out of the barracks and were now scattering beyond the inner city and reaching the outer suburban blocks. He was back marker, on the young officer’s insistence, because he was the most intelligent soldier in the platoon, and he understood that it was a position of trust. He had a place offered him at the university in Baghdad for the study of chemical engineering when his army service was completed. He detested the army because it took him away from the laboratories and pitched him amongst illiterate peasants. It was an indication to him of the officer’s regard for him that he was given the role of guarding the safety of the men ahead of him. He heard, over his shoulder, the officer’s shout for the patrol to move forward. It seemed idiotic that he did not know against what force they were deployed. Twice, patiently, he had tried to ask the officer to explain for what or whom they searched, but each time the officer’s attention was on the peasant soldiers. He stiffened in his crouched position, ready to follow the patrol, to track backwards. His eyes were on the far side of the street, on the windows and a flat roof with aerials and TV dishes. He had not been told that, to protect the patrol and himself, he should be watching roofs and windows that were a full 700 metres away from him, and far beyond the range of his assault rifle. There was no pain, only the blow against his chest, and then the swift collapse onto the pavement. The back marker heard, for a moment, the officer’s call for him to follow, and saw a man emerge from the office block and stand beside him, his face wide with horror.

The military policeman was holding up traffic to let a column of armoured personnel carriers through the junction.

He enjoyed the authority given him by his uniform – and his authority was about to grow. In the breast pocket of his tunic was a typed sheet of paper, signed by his captain, informing him of promotion from corporal to sergeant to take effect from the first day of the next month. Everything about the military policeman’s bearing was proud. As the first of the personnel carriers thundered past him, he raised his arms and held back the civilian traffic. The previous day, he had been at one of the barricades on the edge of the Old Quarter where the bastards from the mountains had been blocked. He had not seen the witch herself, but the convoy carrying her to headquarters had raced past him with horns blaring and sirens calling in triumph. He hoped they would hang her, high and soon, and that he would be there to watch it. There was a great confusion in the city that morning and he had heard that riflemen were scattered in Kirkūk, but he knew little of the detail other than that there had been five fatalities. When he fell, bludgeoned down onto the road, his upper body sprawled under the wheel of a personnel carrier whose driver felt only the slightest bump.

‘How far do we go?’

‘Close enough for her to hear.’

‘Hear what, Mr Gus?’

‘Hear that I haven’t abandoned her, Omar.’

‘How does that help?’

‘I hope it gives her strength.’

‘Is it to help you, Mr Gus, that you are killing?’

They were closer to the city’s heart and heard more often the drone whine of the armoured vehicles on the main routes, and the shouts of patrols. They were at the back fence of a villa’s garden when a woman yelled. He saw the blotched face at the upper window and she clasped her hand at her mouth as if to stifle herself, and her dressing gown gaped open. Gus understood. The woman yelled because she saw two figures of a bygone age, primitives, filth-encrusted and armed, camouflaged, tracking across the end of her garden. She would waddle from the window to the telephone. The boy went over the fence first, vaulting it easily, and Gus followed.

As always, the moment before the yell, the boy had bared him. He was glad not to have to answer Omar’s question as they ran down the alleyway.

He stood in the doorway.

The officer looked up, saw Aziz, smiled obsequiously. ‘I promise you, Major, it will only be another two, three minutes, and the car will be ready.’

‘What does it say on the radio?’

‘There is great chaos, Major. I do not mean it disrespectfully but the men on the radio are running around like headless chickens.’

He hissed, ‘What does it say?’

‘Patrols, cordons, lines, and the new casualties. For myself – and I am not a hero as you are, Major – I am happy to be here and organizing an efficient—’

‘How many new casualties?’

‘There are three more – a soldier at the fuel depot, another on patrol, a military policeman. There is a hunt but they cannot find the sniper, he shoots one time at a long distance then moves. Ah, your wait is over, Major.’

The officer gestured. Major Karim Aziz turned and saw a soldier driving a small saloon car to the front of the building.

‘I am happy to have been of service to you.’

Beyond the car was the jeep that had brought him from the headquarters of Fifth Army: the driver was sprawled behind the wheel, dozing in the morning sunshine. He would be beyond the grasp of his sergeant and would hope to while away the rest of the morning before returning to duty. The man offered himself, challenged.

At the desk, Aziz took the typed sheets of paper and tore them in half. The dog followed him from the building. He carried his backpack and the rifle’s box to the jeep, opened the door, and punched the driver awake. As they sped out of the military car-pool yard he was already unfastening the clasp locks of the carrying-box of his rifle.

* * *

‘I’m not looking back – I never want to see that fucking place again,’ Mike said.

‘No way, I’m happily waving goodbye to the land of broken goddam dreams,’ Dean said.

‘I think we should never have come, never have believed in the nonsense about that woman,’ Gretchen said.

They walked away from the roadside and the big Mercedes. None of them had thanked Rybinsky. They followed the German, Jürgen, up the winding path that led to the ridge, and above that ridge were three more, and beyond all of the ridges were the mountain peaks. Each carried their own personal bags but, as a gesture of comradeship and democracy, the camera gear was shared between the three of them. They would climb in daylight towards the border, then rest, and under cover of darkness make the dangerous crossing into Turkey. Their heads were down: neither of the men or the woman were used to failure. Each, in their own way, grunting with the exertion of the steep trek, expressed the bitterness that went with failure.