‘She would have heard.’
‘It is enough?’
‘It is enough because she would have known.’
‘Can we get out now?’
‘We can.’
‘You have seen sufficient – Mr Gus, the tourist – of the sights of Kirkuk?’
‘No, when it is necessary I will return.’
‘For her? Fuck you, Mr Gus. You’re mad.’
‘So that she knows she is not alone… With you, Omar, or without you.’
‘Without me you are dead,’ the boy spat scornfully.
They ran from the open concrete floors of the uncompleted apartment block. Twice they were seen and erratic shooting followed them. Without Omar’s intuition, gathered from thieving and fleeing, Gus would have blundered into the closing net of patrols and into the path of the personnel carriers that criss-crossed the city.
‘Mr Gus, have you been helped?’
In the space of almost two hours he had probed into the city and fired eight shots. He had felt no remorse as he saw the vortex of air and the speck of the bullet speeding towards a chosen target, a man doomed because he was available and wore the uniform.
He had felt only a brutal anger he had not known before. They went through ditches, gardens, yards, sewer- pipes, on their stomachs or running. They left behind them road blocks, checkpoints, house searches, cordon lines of soldiers, blundering chaos, and the anger never abated.
He shouted, ‘If this gate is not opened immediately, you bastards will answer to me with your lives.’
With a full swing, full force, Major Karim Aziz kicked the steel plate of the gates. The screams of the soldier filled his ears. The wounded man, drowning in his own blood, flapped the ground. ‘Open the gate and have a stretcher with you, or I will have all of you cowards hanged before the night’s out.’
He went back from the gate and crouched over the young soldier. Behind him the square and the road leading towards the office and apartment blocks had emptied. There were troops in firing positions, down and finding cover. He sensed the terror all around him, created by a single man who fired the bullets. He cradled the soldier’s head. He could not have ignored the challenge. He heard the gate scrape open. The sniper’s trademark was on the bare chest of the soldier where, frantic to kill the pain, his fingers had torn away the tunic and shirt buttons. In the well of the blood was a cleanly drilled entry-hole. As the stretcher-bearers sprinted from the safety of the gate, he lifted the soldier and noted the exit pit large enough to take two field-dressing pads to cover it. The soldier was taken from his arms, thrown down onto a stretcher, and stampeded inside. A single man who made such fear was an opponent worthy of him. There was a small glint on the tarmacadam below the gate that caught his eye. On his hands and knees he crawled to it, picked it up. In his palm was the misshapen piece of lead antimony crushed by the impact on the gate. It had been cased in cupro-nickel when it was recognizable as a bullet. He gazed at it for a moment, then dropped it and thought of his wife, who would be in the car with their children, trusting him…
He walked across the square towards the side-street into which the driver had swerved the jeep. He found the man half hiding under the vehicle, stood over him, exposed, and gave the instruction that his backpack and the box should be returned to his old room.
With his rifle in his hands, his dog beside him, Major Karim Aziz stood in the centre of the square and stared up the length of the road at a thousand windows and a hundred roofs.
She heard the boots and the dragging slither as if a weighted sack were brought down the corridor, and the weight collapsed beside the darkness of the drain hole. The door slammed and the boots receded. Her mouth was beside the hole.
‘Did you hear it?
‘I heard only their questions – and I did not answer. I had the strength…’
‘Did you hear the shot?’
‘You had given me the strength, your love…’
‘He was there, with his rifle. He is coming.’
‘Give me your hand… No-one is coming, only death. Give me your hand, I beg you.’
‘I heard the shot…’
‘A man makes a gesture, clears his conscience, then goes… Only I can help you, child, only you can help me.’
She put her hand, her wrist and arm, back into the drain.
Chapter Sixteen
His family would be pulling into the fuel station – hot, tired, fractious and looking for him.
Major Karim Aziz came out of the medical unit. The gate sentry might live and he might die. He was escorted by a doctor who thanked him sheepishly, and explained again, uselessly, why a wounded man had been left in the road to bleed without help. The doctor said that the sniper had made a corridor of fear that ordinary men did not have the courage to enter. The doctor wheedled congratulations at the major’s bravery, but Aziz walked on and left the man babbling behind him. He had a fresh, urgent step as if a reason for living had again been given him.
The boys would be spilling from the car and complaining to their mother; her temper would be short and she would be barking at them.
He was walking towards the command bunker when his name was shouted from behind him. He walked on, but his name was called again in a thin, nasal voice. He stopped, turned slowly. He thought that Commander Yusuf, the man who was said to harbour an obsessive love of his grandchildren, was breaking again for coffee or for biscuits. There were more blood spatters on the tunics and trousers of the brutes with him; they would not have changed into new uniforms because it was part of the terror they strewed around them that the pain they inflicted should be seen in the bunker and in the officers’ quarters.
‘You came back, Major.’
‘I had thought my duty here was finished, Commander Yusuf. I returned when I realized that was not the case.’
‘You are a sniper, Major,’ the torturer said, with distaste. ‘You understand the psychology of this cowardly killing.’
Aziz stood his ground. ‘The man who came into Kirkuk this morning was not a coward.’
‘Soldiers without military significance were butchered – a fox amongst chickens. Is that not the work of a coward?’
‘I came back to shoot him but he is not a coward, Commander. He is no more a coward than the man who, in the name of the state, tortures and mutilates the body of a defenceless prisoner.’
His words died. The men around the commander, the heavy-set, cold-faced beasts, stiffened, and he saw the menace in their eyes, but the commander laughed. The dog bared its teeth.
‘Is he, Major, as much a hero as yourself?’
Major Karim Aziz said quietly, ‘He is a brave man, Commander, but I am also certain that it requires great courage – in the name of the state – to interrogate a bound captive.’
The eyes watching him were amused.
‘Come.’
The commander took his arm, gripped it with his narrow fingers. The hand was against the body of the rifle that he carried loosely in the crook of his elbow. The dog scampered warily beside him, and the brutes made a phalanx behind him. He thought he was as much of a prisoner as the wretches in the cells. His vanity had made him turn.
Pacing around the petrol station, she would be telling the children their father would come soon and wondering where he was.
He did not try to break the grip of the fingers. He was led, taken, into the building used by the Estikhabarat. The boots stamped in rhythm behind him. He was brought into a room that was fragrantly scented with air- freshener, and there were flowers on the table.
