Holding the Zero (37 page)

‘Afterwards, will you take me with you? Will you take me to your home?’

Gus let out a low, involuntary chuckle. ‘Ridiculous.’

‘Why is that ridiculous?’

‘Because …’

‘I am your friend here. I can be your friend at your home.’

He could not see the boy’s face but he sensed the smarting resentment … Yes, he could take him home. The boy could sleep on the floor and each morning he could go out into the handkerchief-sized garden at the back of the block, lower his trousers, squat and defecate. Maybe he could thieve the silver spoons from the drawer. Yes, the boy could go with him to work, could sit in the office and be bored witless and look at the wallets protruding from the inside pockets of the jackets draped on chairs and the women’s handbags with the purses displayed. Yes, he could take him up Guildford’s high street on a Saturday morning. He could watch the snake-like movements of the boy’s hands and see his pockets fill. Yes, he could take him to the pub. He would try to intervene in time to stop the flash of a knife if a lout or a yob laughed at the boy’s appearance. Yes, the boy should see Stickledown Range. He could lay the boy on the mat beside him and ask for him to call the distance and wind deflection and know they would be right. Gus reached out in the darkness and his hand found the thin shoulder. He gripped it hard.

‘I would like to sleep now, Omar, and I want you to wake me when it is time to go.’

‘I sort of sat on it, Caspar. I don’t like to be a harbinger, the bringer of bad news. And I’m sorry for it.’

‘I heard it on the radio, Isaac, on their news bulletin. You have nothing to apologize for.’

‘They’re going to hang her in the morning.’

‘Jesus – I didn’t get that from the radio.’

‘They’re going to hang her in the morning – they’ve told the Party faithful to ensure a good attendance.’

‘Jesus Christ.’

‘Did you hear about the shooting?’

‘No.’

‘There was shooting in Kirkūk this morning. You recall the marksman with her?’

‘I remember him.’

‘After she was taken, the rest of her people came out, all except him. He stayed.

Kirkūk this morning was like your Dodge City, Caspar. He shot at least seven soldiers before he backed off – long-shot stuff, one bullet for one man.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘You met her, Caspar, you saw her. She’d twist a man’s head. It could only be a futile gesture of his commitment to her … I have to believe he cannot turn away from her.’

‘Isaac, maybe he should have gone to the Agency’s school. We major in courses on walking out on trusting idiots.’

‘There are PhDs on it at the Mossad. You are not alone on the excellence of walking away. Of course, there’s nothing that he can do for her.’

‘Isaac, I appreciate your calling. Appreciate the advance warning. I won’t sleep much tonight. She was good and feisty – those bastards in Arbīl and Sulaymānīyah didn’t deserve her. And we didn’t. I hope she knows he stayed when no other fucker did. Shit …

I have a paper to read so I’m up to speed to entertain a serious asshole who’ll be here about the time she’s dangling … Goodnight, Isaac.’

He cut the link. He reflected that there might just be a job vacancy, or two, or three, in the classified advertisements of the Baghdad newspapers.

Wanted: HANGMAN. No previous experience required. Expertise not necessary. Successful applicant must be prepared to work long hours.

Good career prospects.

The paper had come in two hours earlier and had clogged thirty-two seconds of time on the secure teleprinter. It took thirty-two seconds to transmit the latest piece of Langley optimism, and the plan on the paper would give work for years to a hangman, or two, or three … He was so goddam tired. He started to turn the pages of the paper – and in a few hours, as she was hanged, a shiny-faced man would step off the shuttle plane from Ankara and would be expecting Caspar Reinholtz to be similarly breezy and cheerful, to say that it was the best plan ever conceived for the toppling of the Boss for Life. He was hunched over his desk, the words in front of him bouncing uselessly in his head.

First Phase
: A core group of 250 Iraqi exiles would be trained in sabotage techniques by US Special Forces.
Second Phase
: A further 2,000 exiles receive eight weeks’ basic military training.
Third Phase
: Twenty groups of twenty men infiltrate Government of Iraq territory to blow up power lines and disrupt internal transport.
Fourth Phase
: More men are pushed across friendly borders and set up a liberated enclave.
Fifth Phase
: The overthrowing of the regime of the Boss for Life.

It was always that simple and they always sent the plan on ahead of its author so that a dumb field officer, a Caspar Reinholtz, could not plead the need for time to study it. It would be considered
defeatist
to tell the author that the plan was a piece of crap.

A plan was dead. Long live the plan.

The woman, Meda, would hang in the morning and a new thesis of liberation was transmitted to Incerlik.

There was work for one hangman. There would soon be work for many more.

Maybe the man coming in on the shuttle would shake the lethargy out of Caspar Reinholtz’s system, and maybe he would not. But, maybe, the man on the shuttle on the last leg of his journey from Langley should be congratulated for a new refinement of warfare: combat by fucking proxy. Maybe Caspar should grip his hand and slap his shoulder and praise him for digging out a plan where someone else did the fighting for America and faced the noose. No-risk fighting, no casualties going home in body bags to Arkansas or Alaska or Alabama, no mothers trying to be brave as the caskets went down into good Virginia or Vermont earth, because the poor bastards getting killed were proxy soldiers and didn’t count.

Rusty came into the office, and brought coffee with him.

‘There’s a call for you, Caspar – the green phone. It’s London – been cleared by Langley. They want to talk to you.’

‘What about?’

‘About that sniper. Do I say you’re available or not available?’

He thought of the man he had met, and the big rifle, of the man who had not turned, not walked away, of the man who did not know the fucking rules.

‘I’ll take it.’

Long before dawn, while the stars and the moon’s crescent still watched the city, the first of the crowd came, intent on gaining the best places. Those who had risen earliest, or who had not been to bed, pressed against the barrier behind which a solid wall of soldiers stood. They came at first in a dribble and would arrive later in a growing mass.

Confronting them, above the soldiers, was a wooden platform on which was set a low chair. Above the chair and below a solid crossbeam was a dangling rope with a waiting noose that swayed gently in the light night wind. The same wind rippled the canvas sides of the scaffold and flapped the roof above the crossbeam. Because of the cold, those who had arrived first were well wrapped in thick coats and some carried blankets to drape over their shoulders. Music from transistor radios would help to pass the time before daybreak, and later coffee vendors would come. Warm plastic cups would be passed over heads, money would return on a reverse route, and there was a buzz of talk. Away behind the crowd, stretching into an infinity of dull street lights, was the length of Martyr Avenue. They came to see the death of the witch, but none of them who surged onto the weight of the barrier knew why there was a roof over the gallows and side screens around it.

He sat on the balcony, the night caressing his face. Her warmth was against his back. The dog nestled against his legs. Major Karim Aziz let the conceit play in his mind, and shield him from the future.

‘Did you see him?’ the woman asked.

‘I saw him.’

He had been thinking of trophies, the heads that hunters set on walls. It would be talked about. Young men, not yet old enough to know of war, would gather in the quiet of barracks’ corridors and speak of a duel to the death. He had wrapped the obsession around him, a cloak against the night. He had not thought of the brigadier, the Boot, with the nails torn from his hands, the blood seeping from the flab of his face, the burns of electrodes and cigarettes on his body, the names hidden in a tortured mind.

‘Was he well?’

‘I saw him very briefly.’

‘He will be tired – I tell him he works too hard. Will I see him when they hang her?’

‘I think not, I don’t think he will be there.’

The bell had woken her. She had come to the door with a light in her face that was washed out when she had seen he was not her lover. He had gone through to the bedroom balcony and squatted down with his dog. He could see up the length of Martyr Avenue.

He had no plan of what he would do afterwards. The duel was the present, and the anticipation of it, like some narcotic, overwhelmed him. She had come outside, sat on the cold tiles of the balcony, and leaned her back against his.

‘Are you from Kirkūk, Major?’

‘Baghdad.’

‘You have a wife there?’

‘In Baghdad, yes. She will be sleeping now – she will have had a long day.’

She would have waited for him from the middle of the day through to the end and then, cursing him, she would have ordered the boys back into the car and she would have driven back down the long road to Ba’qūbah, and then on to Baghdad and home. She would have thrown the packed bags into their room and the children’s bedroom, and gone into the kitchen to make a meal. Later, because he had not met her at the fuel station, the door of their home would be sledgehammered open and the house would be defiled by the boots of strangers. He had made a choice and he lived with it.

‘And children?’

‘Two sons. One has an important examination at school today, and the younger one has a football match tomorrow. They are fine boys.’

‘And proud of their father?’

‘I have to hope so.’

The boys would have sat sullen and quiet in the car during the journey home. They would not have understood why their father had not come or why they had made the journey in the first place. Perhaps their mother would have attempted to turn their mood with talk of school or football, and perhaps she would have spoken of the importance of their father’s work. Perhaps she would have said nothing, bitten her lip and blinked into the blazing lights of the oncoming lorries going north. When the door was broken down, when their mother was beaten by the strangers, when the house was stripped and searched, his sons would be told that their father was a traitor. His choice was dictated by his vanity.

‘Why are you here, Major?’

‘To kill a man.’

‘Because he is your enemy?’

‘No,’ he said absently.

She pressed, ‘Because he is the enemy of the state?’

‘Not the reason.’

‘Because he has hurt you?’

‘He has not hurt me.’

All he knew of the man was from the one distant sighting, distorted by the mirage over the open ground, and always beyond the range of the Dragunov. He knew nothing of him.

He did not know where the man had come from, or why he had travelled, or of his life.

After he had killed the man, he would not stand over his body and pose as a hunter would over the corpse of a bear or a wolf or a leopard, but he would kneel in a moment of reverence and hope they shared a god, and close the lids of the dead eyes. Then, and only then, he would think of afterwards.

‘How do you know he will come?’

‘He will come, he has to. He is a driven man, as am I. We are equals. I respect him, and I believe he gives me respect.’

His eyes traversed the many windows of Martyr Avenue, and the roofs, and he waited for the dawn.

Three hours before first light Gus and Omar started out and headed for the glow of the street lamps and the flame.

‘She did not know her place. She treated me as if I were inferior. In front of many who could watch and listen she behaved as if I were subordinate to her. I tell you, Haquim, even if I had influence, if I was listened to in Baghdad, I would not lift a finger on her behalf. But that is idle talk because it’s not the truth. She is, and you know it, beyond reach. It is my duty now, as a leader of my people, to protect them. I will fulfil my duty, I will negotiate with the President. I can do nothing else. She deluded you. Go home, forget her. Go and sit in the sunlight in front of your house, and put her from your mind.

You will excuse me, I am tired, I wish to go to my bed.’

‘You disgrace yourself if you do nothing.’

‘She climbed too fast.’

The
agha
Bekir rose from his chair. The silk robe swirled around his body. Behind the sweet words and the wringing hands, Haquim could see detestation for the young woman who had taken him to the edge of Kirkūk. His feet, snug in light embroidered slippers, slid across the floor towards the inner door. Haquim thought the bastard would sleep well.

He felt old, weary, and the dusty uniform clung to his body. The double doors behind him were opened silently: the audience was concluded.

Haquim went out of the building and into the night that had fallen heavy on Sulaymānīyah. His last effort for her had won no reward.

He drove away towards the dark lines of the mountains where the air was clean, where he could still dream of the city that had been their goal, and the flame.

Meda walked into the cell, the door rattled shut behind her and the boots went away down the corridor.

She had been woken, taken to a room where harsh lights burned, read a statement from a typed sheet of paper, then wheeled round and marched back to the cell. She was alone, and when the boots had gone there was only the quiet around her. She sagged to her knees, crawled to the hole, put her mouth close to it and whispered, in a small voice, that she was to be hanged at dawn. She asked for him to hold her hand till dawn came. She heard his laboured breathing. She reached with her arm deep into the drain but in a moment of respite he slept and did not take her hand. She did not shout into the hole to rouse him, did not cry for him, because she thought it would be cruel to wake him. It was many hours since she had heard the rifle fired, and she looked up at the high window where the stars were and she did not know how long it would be until the light dismissed them.