US Central Command (USCENTCOM)
Camp as-Sayliyah
The State of Qatar
The Arabian Gulf
“Do you know what my biggest problem is, Dr Curzon?” General Hunter turned to Ava solemnly. He spoke slowly but authoritatively, a marked Alabama drawl complementing his oversized frame.
Ava really had no idea. The adrenaline coursing through her system was not helping her concentrate either.
She shook her head. She did not even know why she was there.
She was still heavily disorientated.
She had started the day in the quiet hush of Baghdad’s National Museum, where her overfilled office was one of the few areas of constant activity among the closed and dust-sheeted galleries.
She had been looking out of her large window at the museum’s massive entranceway—a replica of ancient Babylon’s famed Ishtar Gate, when two uniformed and armed soldiers of the US Marine Corps had appeared unannounced in her office’s doorway.
Without giving her a choice, they had taken her down to their armoured Humvee, and driven her through the perimeter concrete blast-walls and razor-wire of the international Green Zone, then on to what had been Forward Operating Base Prosperity—the ultra-high-security US military camp at its heart.
Everyone in Baghdad knew FOB Prosperity by reputation. It had been one of Saddam Hussein’s gilded marble palaces before the US military commandeered it as their Baghdad command and control centre. When the army pulled out, the site had become home to the US State Department, and remained a formidable outpost.
Ava had never been through its staggered checkpoints and multiple security screens before—still less under armed escort and without an explanation.
Despite the long queue of vehicles waiting at the barriers into the ultra-secure zone, her escorts produced a pass emblazoned with a white letter A on a blue background rimmed by a red circle and the word arcent. The soldiers on guard took one look and waved them straight through.
Once inside the heavily fortified base, the escort took her directly to its busy helipad, and ushered her onto a desert-camouflaged US-101 headed south.
In response to her repeated questions, they said little other than her presence was required immediately by US Central Command in Qatar, seven hundred miles to the south in the turquoise Arabian Gulf.
After an uncomfortable four-and-a-half-hour flight, the pilot had eventually dropped low over Qatar, skimming Doha’s skyline of concrete mosques and minarets before landing to the south-west of the city at the desert moonscape of Camp as-Sayliyah, the US Forward Command Centre in the Arabian Gulf.
Stepping out of the helicopter, she was instantly enveloped by the suffocating furnace-like heat of the desert air. It was much hotter than Baghdad—one hundred and twenty degrees in the shade according to the ground crew. Not that she could see any shade. There was nothing living for miles around.
She was instantly hurried indoors.
Passing through the full-body x-ray at security had been quick. She was clearly being fast-tracked by the soldiers on duty, who gave her appreciative looks as they issued her identity pass. She guessed they did not see many women in anything other than the local flowing black abaya, usually with the whole face except the eyes covered by a niqab veil.
With her gold-flecked brown eyes and long dark hair, she could have passed for local, but the open-necked soft casual shirt, combats, and loose ponytail immediately gave her away as a westerner.
Now, less than ten minutes after landing, she was sitting at a stripped oak table in the heavily air-conditioned strategic nerve-centre of US combat operations in the Middle East.
She had never been in a US military control room before.
A guard from the front desk had shown her onto the floor of a hanger filled with groups of soldiers in khaki and sand-coloured uniforms clustered about workstations and banks of wall-mounted screens. He had led her directly to a soundproofed glass box ‘briefing zone’ in the centre, from where she was now looking out at the activity on the floor all around her.
It was a far cry from the warm wooden shelving and tables piled with books, catalogues, and artefacts in her quiet lo-tech office back in Baghdad.
Opposite her at the table, flanking General Hunter, were a man and a woman in civilian clothes. All three of them had slim brown files on the desk in front of them, each stamped with the blue flaming torch and atom-ringed globe of the US Defense Intelligence Agency.
Ava was feeling at a distinct disadvantage. There had been no time for a coffee or to freshen up after getting off the chopper. And she had been given no opportunity to prepare for whatever they wanted to talk to her about.
General Hunter looked keenly at her, a solemn expression in his pale grey eyes. “You see that, Dr Curzon,” he pointed through the glass wall to a screen in the main room showing a sequence of numbers flashing blue and green as they increased and decreased in value by the second. “That’s the cost on the NYMEX of WTI Light Sweet Crude delivered to Cushing, Oklahoma.” He paused. “To you and me, that’s the price the world pays for gas.”
Ava looked more closely at the screen. The number was flickering around one hundred and five dollars a barrel.
Looking back into the room, she noted that General Hunter’s desert pattern combat uniform was sun-bleached and worn, as were the two faded stars on each shoulder. She was not surprised—he was clearly no armchair soldier. He had the air of a man who led from the front.
He continued, evidently wanting her to understand. “Before we started Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, it was around twenty a barrel. By mid-2008, it was one hundred and forty-six. Early last year it was one hundred and ten. Now it’s a shade lower. But who knows where it’s headed. It’s got a mind of its own, not connected to anything real any more. With the ongoing instability in the region, the number could break loose any time and punch through the two hundred mark.” He looked at her solemnly. “Every industrialist and motorist in the world is feeling the effect of what we do here.”
Ava was not at all sure where the conversation was going. She was not an expert in petrochemical economics.
“And,” he grimaced, gesturing to a white board visible through the glass in the control room, “that’s the reality no one wants to see. I make sure it’s updated and on display here at all times.”
She read the handwritten script:
Insurgent Forces
Iraqi Sunnis: 65,000 (50%)
Iraqi Islamists: 32,500 (25%)
Iraqi Shi’a: 29,900 (23%)
al-Qae’da & Jihaadis: 2,600 (2%)
Total: 130,000
She was beginning to feel extremely awkward. She knew a huge amount about Iraq. But this was not her area at all—she was not a military analyst.
A soldier entered the glass box quietly without knocking. He had the regulation high-and-tight shaved head and the same desert pattern combat uniform as Hunter. His sleeve showed the three chevrons and rockers of a master sergeant.
He stooped to whisper something in Hunter’s ear, then left without waiting for a reply.
Hunter pursed his lips before turning to the woman sitting to his right. She was neatly dressed in a light grey suit, with long slightly wavy auburn hair pulled back into an austere bunch.
“Seven Revolutionary Guard boghammers have been spotted on the wrong side of the Shatt al-Arab, intention unknown.” He spoke softly but decisively. “When we finish here, I want an incident response unit set up immediately.”
“Washington’s going to want to know,” she replied, typing something rapidly into her blackberry.
He nodded grimly.
Ava was rapidly getting the feeling she was being involved in something of major strategic importance—she doubted General Hunter had time for purely social meetings. But looking around the room, she had no idea how her skills fitted in.
The general leaned his ox-like frame forward towards her. She could see why he had risen to the top. He oozed authority. “Dr Curzon, none of th
ese are in themselves my biggest problem. The real headache is that embedded into each of them—oil, insurgents, and border-disputes to name a few—is one unknowable factor.” He paused and looked at her grimly, before answering his own question with five words—“The Islamic Republic of Iran.”
Ava decided it was time to say something before the situation developed further. It was obvious there had been some kind of mistake.
She looked at him apologetically “General, if I can speak directly, I think you may have the wrong person. I don’t ... .”
He silenced her with a dismissive wave of his massive hand. “Dr Curzon, we know this isn’t your field of expertise. You’re an archaeologist. That’s why you’re here.”
Ava heard the words, but it still felt like there had been a fundamental mistake. “General, I’m not engaged in any field work at present. I just … .”
Hunter cut her off. “Okay. So let’s get on. Starting with your experience. We’d be grateful for an overview of your résumé.”
Although still lost as to how she fitted into General Hunter’s hi-tech military world, she breathed a little more easily.
It was not a difficult question.
“I’m a specialist in the ancient Middle East,” she began. “I studied archaeology and ancient Middle-Eastern languages at Oxford, Cairo, and Harvard. In 2005, I joined the British Museum’s Department of the Middle East. In mid-2007, I was seconded to the National Archaeological Museum in Amman, Jordan. In 2009, given my regional experience in the
The Sword of Moses (Sneak Preview) Page 4
