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 Kirkuk, 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’qubah, 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.’
