The pilot has just warned them that they are about to arrive in the area. They all take deep breaths. In a few minutes they will be in the heart of the action. In a few minutes they will find out if this house is the right one. Later—but it seems such a long time—the day will break and with it the revelation of their defeat or victory. In a few minutes they will know, and Sullivan Sicoh adjusts his helmet, taking his time, cool-headed, ready to do what he has been learning to do for years: strike, and vanish.
Now the car is heading toward the sea. Assem can hear a plane taking off in the distance. According to his reckoning, the airport is to the left, further south. People are leaving, propelled into the sky at hundreds of miles per hour, and in a few seconds they will see the city retreating below them, growing smaller and prettier, because at this distance those gleaming little lights no longer show you how squalid the neighborhoods are. But he is there, deep in those lifeless streets, abandoned by the world. He is afraid. He can feel the palms of his hands turning damp. The car reaches the coast. Al-Jnah Street. They are near the airport. He knows this fear, knows he must let it settle inside him, because it can be useful. It will give him instinct and vigor. It will make his senses more alert. He has traveled a long way for this moment. The car drives down Al-Jnah Street. All along the side, little concrete houses stare out at the sea, clinging to the land like an anthill. Most of them don’t have a proper roof. They have corrugated iron sheets on top, with rubber tires to hold them in place when the wind blows. At some point they will be burned, if the Sunnis from the districts to the north come looking for a fight. And then all at once there is a house that is bigger than all the others. He immediately notices a man on the terrace acting as lookout with an assault rifle slung over his shoulder. This is it. The car pulls over. The passengers get out, except the Palestinian, who stays with Assem. He can hear voices calling in the night. The trunk of the car slams. The little Colombian woman has also taken out a machine gun, and she comes to open the car door, watching the surrounding houses all the while. They motion to him to get out. He inhales the pungent sea air. A deep lungful. He has come such a long way to meet the man waiting in the house, surrounded by this improbable bunch of guerrilleros. He feels calm again. He knows what he has to do. He has rehearsed these moments in his mind so often, trying to anticipate every contingency. And now he is eager to meet this Sullivan Sicoh, whom no one refers to like that anymore, Sullivan Sicoh who makes his friends tremble and reigns over Al-Jnah Street in south Beirut like some drug lord or revolutionary in his stronghold. He is eager to meet him because he knows his host has also been waiting a long time for him, and he will look him straight in the eye, without a mask. Assem climbs the four steps to the porch without hesitating, without even noticing the men and women who have emerged in the garden or on the balconies like shadows, a veritable army watching over the night as vigilantly as any cat.
The two helicopters hover vertically over the courtyard. They are about to land. The men are ready to spring out the moment they touch ground. Suddenly Sullivan Sicoh’s helicopter is knocked violently off balance. The men are thrown from side to side. They realize something unexpected has happened but they don’t have time to be frightened or wonder what has caused the sudden shaking. No time to worry that the helicopter might be damaged and they won’t be able to take off again. They have been trained to run to the building that is before them and that is what they do, springing out in little groups, and never mind if the pilot is cursing the fact they nearly crashed, nearly smashed the prop of the other helicopter to bits, never mind, the men are already long gone . . .
One man is standing guard on the terrace. He is older than the others, and has a bushy beard. He motions to Assem to spread his arms and legs. He searches him carefully, then says, “He’s expecting you,” and opens one of the two shutters on the double glass door, letting him go ahead, as if he, the guard, didn’t have the right to go any further and wished he did—avid for the privilege granted to this stranger. Assem goes in. The house is bigger than he imagined. A large central staircase leads upstairs. There is something old-fashioned about the living room. Who used to live here, before Job’s men took possession of the premises? There are no side doors indicating any other way than up the staircase. He goes up. Once he reaches the second floor he finds himself in a room where the open windows let in the sea air. At the end of a long enfilade of rooms—all plunged in darkness, all empty, all decorated with old furniture that seems to have been forgotten there for centuries—he sees a light and hears what he thinks is the sound of laughter and a clinking of glasses.
Sullivan Sicoh advances, searching through his infrared glasses for any sign of human presence. He moves quickly. He knows that two comrades are following him like shadows. They are covering him, protecting him. The three of them are united because they can see in the dark, like cats, because they have adjusted their stride and are advancing at the same pace, because this may be the first time they have entered this building, but they already know it well for having painstakingly studied the plans. They are united because each of them has his finger on the trigger, will be ready to fire, without emotion, not even stopping as they make their way. They must advance, reach the spot they have been told, upstairs at the end of the corridor, in the bedroom. They are united by the sound of the gravel in the courtyard crunching beneath their boots, because at the same time they hear shots fired by other members of their unit, they are united because they have no time to wonder what is going on. Sullivan Sicoh keeps moving. This is a manhunt, and he will do everything he must to flush out their prey. The three of them walk close together, up the stairs, down a long corridor to this last door, and behind it they will find the man they have come to kill, the man all of America wants dead. And so without hesitating, not wasting a minute, because his body knows he has to be quick and leave the enemy no time to react, Sullivan Sicoh breaks down the door and enters the room.
“Come . . . come . . . Closer, so I can see what they have sent me.”
Assem made his way slowly through all those rooms to reach at last a wide covered terrace overlooking the sea. There are two sofas set at right angles, a table, and an armchair; staring at him with piercing eyes and a smile on his lips is Job, a glass of whiskey in his hand. He speaks with a Southern drawl. Assem steps closer, and now his face is in the light. Before he can even say anything, Job asks, “Was it you who killed him?”
He doesn’t answer, caught off guard by the question and the man’s good-natured welcome. He tries to see whether there is anyone else there on the terrace, whether Job has a weapon . . . He tries to gauge the height, whether he can jump from the terrace if need be . . . And he can see that Job is examining him, and sees what he is doing. There is what he says, this question in his Southern drawl, there are his open arms, his face in the light with this strange smile—as if none of it were meant for the man there across from him, with his smile almost like a bonze’s—but there are also those light, lively eyes that have not missed a thing during his guest’s arrival: they are sizing him up. “Was it you who killed him?” Assem hasn’t answered, doesn’t know what Job is referring to, but Job doesn’t leave him the time to speak, he waves his hand, as if to indicate that he can wait. “I’m sure you get asked that all the time, more than anything else . . . I know what that’s about. Let’s say that’s a shared experience for us.” And he sits down in the armchair, turning his back to Assem for a moment, almost slowly, as if he wanted to point out that he is not afraid, that he is showing him his back, that nothing in him is attainable. “Whiskey?” He makes the offer but is too far away to serve his guest. And besides, he is staring out to sea, as if under a spell, suddenly very far away from this terrace, from Assem, from the question he just asked or all the ones he will ask. Assem goes over to the little drinks trolley and pours a glass. So that’s what he meant. Their shared experience. He’s talking about Sirte. The death of Gaddafi. He’s talking about it because he, Jo
b, was in on the hunt for bin Laden. And what if he were to ask him the same question? Was he the one who fired? No. He won’t ask. What difference does it make? There were several of them who made their way down that corridor in the house in Abbottabad. There were six, or ten, of them in the first helicopter. And ten in the other one. All with infrared sights, all ready to shoot. What difference does it make, basically, whether he was the one who fired? All twenty of them did.
Assem has still not spoken, but he feels as if he has been on this terrace for hours already. He looks at Job. He remembers the photographs he was shown in Zurich, the ones where Job is among his comrades, from the days when he was still Sullivan Sicoh. He looks at him now: he has lost weight, has marked wrinkles on his face, but there is a sort of depth to his eyes that he did not have before, an edginess, a substance. He is bare-chested, wearing a long wooden necklace that could be African, and several rings on his fingers; his hair is messy, uncombed.
“Were you prepared to die that day?” asks Job in a muffled voice, and Assem senses that this question is now a test, and that if he doesn’t give an honest answer the interview will be over.
“Yes.”
Job pulls a face, savoring the truth, letting it float in the air. Then he adds, “So was I. Naturally. But I could tell it was the last time . . . ”
What changed him, during that mission to Abbottabad? Was he more frightened than during the other missions? Was it because of the identity of the man they killed that day? Or because one of the two helicopters had crashed against the wall in the courtyard and he thought he was going to die?
“What makes us follow orders, lieutenant, do you know? You’re a lieutenant, right? I served under McRogan, you must know that. I saw Abu Ghraib before anyone else found out about the shit we were up to there. I went on raids in the middle of the night to take out guys we pulled half-naked from their houses, and they died without dignity, shitting themselves, literally. You’ve done that sort of thing too, I bet. What makes us follow orders, lieutenant? Some people think we get a kick out of doing it. You know we don’t. I didn’t like McRogan. That is God’s truth. But I would have let myself get killed for his sake. I swear. At times like that, if the occasion called for it, I would have stood between the bullet and him . . . Why is that?”
He swallows his drink down in one, then falls silent. So Assem senses he can ask his question, and his voice is soft, almost considerate:
“What are you doing here, Job?” And what he means is, What are you doing here in this city that isn’t yours and that will spit you out when it’s had enough of you? What are you doing here, in this improbable getup, on this terrace surrounded by revolutionaries who are anything but?
“Ah . . . ” says Job, raising his hand, as if at last Assem has asked the right question, and he narrows his eyes mischievously.
Hannibal gazes out at the plain. The sea has not trembled. The heat is gently declining. His head is still full of blows and counterblows, cries, falling bodies, whistling arrows, the pounding of hooves. For three hours men have been killing each other. He gazes out at the tide of bodies around him. All Roman . . . He doesn’t know it yet, perhaps he will never know exactly, but forty-five thousand Romans are lying at his feet. Still they moan, sometimes they move, beg to be finished off or cared for, they go on sweating as they bleed. Forty-five thousand dead. His own men’s arms are aching from so much bludgeoning. All they had to do was close the circle and slaughter them one by one, all those Romans caught in their net. It took time. And now all that is left at Cannae, on the banks of the Olfanto, is a soft, caressing late-afternoon light, and a tide of bodies. Liters and hectoliters of blood are nourishing the earth. So much blood that the earth cannot drink it all. Forty-five thousand severed, gaping, stinking bodies. A vast slaughterhouse roasting in the sun. Because even if the sun is beginning to set, the air is still hot. It is summer. The stones burn with all the heat stored during the day. Forty-five thousand bodies that will take days and weeks to decompose. There it is, his victory: as ugly as an unspeakable butchery. It is the greatest massacre in History. Never again will any battle be the cause of so much death in so little time. He looks at the men at his feet. They lost only a tenth as many men as the Romans, but they lost the soldiers to whom they owe the victory: the Celts. So he leans down, and from time to time he touches the hand of one of them, stiff with death, because it is from these men that he wants to receive glory. Soon the Senate will hear the news. Soon Carthage will celebrate his audacity. Now and forever he will be the victor of Cannae, the one who turned the order of things upside down. The victory he has been waiting for, for so long, since the day he crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and long before that, even, ever since his father told him how he had taken and held Mount Pellegrino in Sicily, his victory has been there, but he wants to remember that it is the dead who have given it to him. It has always been thus, and woe betide whosoever forgets it. The great battles that people remember: atrocious mass graves with birds circling overhead. Is he proud of this? Of the forty-five thousand Romans lying at his feet? Is it really something to be proud of? He wants to remember the smell of viscera on the summer wind, because if History has a smell, surely this is it.
Hear Our Defeats Page 9
