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 Karbala 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 Kirkuk, 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, Jurgen, 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.
‘I’ll get a radio spot,’ Mike said. ‘I’m going to crucify this fucking bullshit place, and the woman, if she ever existed.’
‘I reckon she existed, but only as a myth in these people’s minds,’ Dean said. ‘Being realistic, we’re talking about a foot soldier at best.’
And then they were quiet, struggling to climb, and behind them was the bright yellow Mercedes and the ever falling panorama of the ground.
‘What do you want?’
‘For, God’s sake, Joe, I want to talk.’
‘Talking seldom helped anybody, Sarah.’
‘Because I can’t help, that’s why I have to talk.’
‘I might not listen.’
‘They caught her. She was captured…’
