“Sullivan was in charge of protecting the body. He was one of the men on the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier. They held the ceremony with McRogan and a few authorities and then they tipped the body overboard.”
“And?” asks Auguste so that Kovac will get to the heart of the matter.
“For a few months, nothing. And then one fine day Sullivan disappears. At first it looks like a depression, something like that . . . But then a few months after his disappearance there are rumors of some strange negotiations. This intel crops up, in several places, according to which there’s an agent offering relics of the al-Qaeda leader to certain jihadist groups. At first everyone thought it was a joke. It was ridiculous. Until the day a Jordanian agent assured us that he had seen the DNA tests and that the guy in question really did have a piece of bin Laden in his possession.”
Assem remembers Job brandishing his human shinbone on the terrace of the house on Al-Jnah Street. He can hear his voice, muffled, veiled, almost coy. Is this really what it is all about? Dealing in body parts? A bone to be put up for auction?
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Auguste broke in. “You can’t be serious. Even if he managed to steal a finger, a toe, or who knows what, you don’t expect me to believe that that’s the reason you’ve set up this whole operation?”
Very calm, the American looks at Auguste. Then he says: “I can understand why you might see it that way, Auguste. But it just so happens that my superiors are not finding this business the least bit funny, nor is the White House. If little pieces of bin Laden start showing up all over the place, it will be hard to keep a lid on things. And there’s something else. If Sullivan really did do this, he’s too far gone for us to get him back, and I’ll be the first to insist I’m not at all comfortable knowing he’s in Beirut or Addis Ababa or who knows where, in the process of reaching out to all the scum on the planet. Al-Shabaab and Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and the Al-Nusra Front and Islamic State and Boko Haram: it won’t take long for one of them to come to the conclusion that a former American commando who’s gone off the rails could be an interesting asset, don’t you think?”
Assem has stopped listening. He is mulling over what Dan Kovac has just said. “He’s too far gone . . . ” He knows that’s it. Job is too far gone to come back. He doesn’t want to. He is communicating one last time from the far shore where he’s decided to land, and that is what fascinated Assem all through their meeting. Job has left life behind. He has cast off the burdens that other men shoulder and is confronting obscurity. If this story about relics is true, it’s no big deal where Job is concerned. All anyone should read into it is Job’s way of thumbing his nose, his declaration of war, or rather, his way of bidding farewell to his own side. Because after this—Kovac said as much, and Job knows it—he won’t be able to come back. He is burning all his bridges. And with a smile, while he stares hungrily into the dark, because from now on he will have no other option, he can only go forward. He is moving away from the world, away from everything, but he is probably getting closer to something that is more genuine, more intoxicating, and Assem knows that this is why he found Job so fascinating and why he wants to see him again, because he envies him for being able to immerse himself like that, with his bridges burning as he stands between the two shores, alone facing the unknown.
“I, Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia, am here today to claim that justice which is due to my people, and the assistance promised to it eight months ago, when fifty nations asserted that aggression had been committed in violation of international treaties . . .”
He has waited a long time to be able to say these words. When he entered the great auditorium of the headquarters of the League of Nations on the shore of Lake Geneva, he thought it would be a solemn moment, and he had prepared for it, but instead he was greeted with whistles and catcalls. Italians, shouting at him that he was a monkey, that Italy could not decently sit in an assembly that admitted countries like that. They were noisy. They laughed, made faces, insulted him. There were four or five of them, in the section reserved for journalists. He clenched his teeth and waited patiently for the police to intervene and evict the fascist activists. But it took a long time. Defeat. Right to the end. And the humiliation that went with it. They would leave him nothing: neither solemnity nor silence. In order to remain impassive he concentrated on memories of his country. Standing there at the rostrum of the League of Nations, before the entire planet, humiliated like some common politician you heckle in a marketplace. He is a deposed king, in exile. Even Switzerland only authorized him to come to Geneva once he had promised he had no intention of remaining on Swiss soil. He will return to Bath as soon as he has delivered his speech. To Fairfield House, a little way outside the town, to that house overlooking the road and which is so damp that the empress has to keep a shawl over her shoulders all day long. And before long autumn will arrive, then winter. He will have to stand fast, far from his country. Will he ever see it again? To stockpile the anger he needs he focuses on his memories of the battle of Maychew. “Pickaninny!” The journalists continue to insult him. The police have arrived to surround and expel them but they are resisting, and the more they sense they are about to be thrown out, the harder and faster come their insults. The emperor remains erect, impassive. To the end of his days he will never abandon his astonishing composure, even amid the turmoil of coups d’état: stay calm and you’ll give nothing to the enemy. He looks at the journalists, there must be four or five of them, as ugly as the cowardice of the strongest. Do they even have the slightest idea of what happened at Maychew? Of the courage the Ethiopians showed? Would they have lasted five minutes in that machine gun fire, those swine with their ridiculous gestures, the better to ape him? They spit in his face. Mussolini has sent these troublemakers to strip him even of solemnity. So be it. He will endure. He thinks of the villages the Italian air force massacred with their clouds of gas that no one could do anything to prevent; he thinks of how his fighters panicked when they understood that their courage would be wasted, that the enemy did not even need to show his face and they would die there on that battlefield, without glory, amid the squalor of battles that are lost from the start. He thinks of the corpses swollen like helium balloons, all the gassed, disfigured faces. He thinks of all this and is filled with rage. Calmer and calmer. Colder and colder, but he could break the rostrum in two. All the delegates watching him there today, fifty countries are there, some of them laughing because of the scene the Italian journalists are making, others who think it’s an outrage—they all represent countries that allowed Ethiopia to perish. They sold their souls to purchase peace. And they don’t want to hear what he has come here to tell them, because they know it will be a reproach. It was only a month ago that he fought at Maychew. One month ago, holding a machine gun amid an indescribable chaos of flames, gas, and bursts of gunfire, and here he is today, waiting motionlessly for the four swine to leave at last and for silence to return, and only then, looking them right in the face, those fifty countries who are not his friends, who will applaud out of politeness but will let him go back to the damp city of Bath without lifting a finger, only then will he speak and say these words he has been waiting to say for so long: “I, Haile Selassie I, emperor of Ethiopia, am here today to claim that justice which is due my people . . . ”
Assem walks along the right bank of the lake. The May sunshine is glittering on the water. He sees one luxury hotel after another. He leaves the center of town behind him. He wants to walk out to the former headquarters of the League of Nations, which he has never seen. When he reaches it at last, he is surprised by how small it is. Facing the lake, a garden terrace makes the building look like a grand manor house. He tries to imagine Haile Selassie arriving on the day he made his famous speech. The League of Nations never got over it. The Negus buried them. Or rather the League buried themselves, because they were cowardly, because not one of the member countries was ready to fight for a small state
. Is it so different today? He remembers the days of waiting when France was pressuring the US to intervene in Syria. He walks farther on his stroll along the lake.
“Have you won, lieutenant?” He hears Job’s questions, that nasal voice with its veiled threat, its feverishness. Has he won? For ten years he has been coming and going all over the globe. One mission after another. But as part of what? A war? When he walks through the streets of Paris he doesn’t feel as if he is at war. Whose soldier is he, then? In this era when France is neither at war nor at peace, where the threat is diffuse and ongoing, what sort of victory can there be? The vengeance of the state, yes, that he understands. He worked on the assassination of Mullah Hazrat, checking the precise coordinates of his whereabouts. And when the fighter jets bombed the house, he thought about the ten French soldiers who had been killed in the ambush at Uzbin four years earlier, and he felt good—not victorious, but bolstered by the sensation that only fulfilled revenge can bring. But where is the victory when everything just goes on as before? Has he ever known victory in an entire lifetime of operations? A victory that would truly put an end to a state of war, and lay the foundations for peace? What is he doing, then, if it is all just an endless succession of missions? For years he had a deep, sincere conviction he was serving his country. That was how he saw it. Can he actually say with certainty today that he has never taken part in what were dubious police operations? Job’s question keeps going around in his mind: “Have you won, lieutenant?” In that crowd on the road to Sirte he never felt the victory. The dictator was five yards away, in a stupor of pain, his face bloodied; Assem felt no compassion for him, but he was not overjoyed, either. And yet the people had been set free. In the end, that is the only thing that is just, the only cause worth taking up arms for: to set a people free. Has he ever worked for such a cause? He walks along the river and imagines the Negus addressing the entire world, gathered there in that building, speaking about his country that had just been invaded, and superimposed upon that image is the one of Shaveen smiling on the road to Kawergosk, in the pickup taking them north to the Sinjar mountains. Why does he think of her so often? Perhaps because she had victory in her eyes. What words can he, Assem, use to describe what he is doing at the moment?
Now they listen to him in silence, probably hoping his speech will not last too long, because they’re in a hurry to get back to their hotel, to walk along the lake and forget, as quickly as possible, this unpleasant moment when a little man not five feet tall, the deposed emperor of a faraway kingdom, told them what they were. They listen to him in silence and the Italian journalists’ obscene shouts are forgotten. It is his words that reign over the assembly. He talks about the mustard gas that was sprayed onto the Ethiopian troops, and even outside the combat zone—on cattle, villages. Total war to terrorize an entire country. “These fearful tactics succeeded. Men and animals succumbed. The deadly rain that fell from the aircraft made all those whom it touched fly shrieking with pain.” He tells them everything, and it takes time. But he will spare them nothing. It is not pity he asks for but they have not yet grasped this. “ . . . All those who drank the poisoned water or ate the infected food also succumbed in dreadful suffering . . . ” He can see them, those suffering bodies, before his eyes. He knows he might have been one of them. The silence in the assembly grows heavier. Something is vibrating in the air that has nothing to do with the compassion one might feel for the vanquished. And the little man, in his impeccable uniform, speaking perfect English, stands so straight you would think no one had told him that his army has been defeated and his country invaded. “ . . . That is why I decided to come myself to bear witness against the crime perpetrated against my people and give Europe a warning of the doom that awaits it, if it should bow before the accomplished fact . . . ” The delegations look up with surprise at the little man. A warning? Did they hear him right? His voice is firm. Then they realize that this is no defeated king who is speaking, standing there before them to beg for alms. Is History hesitating again? He continues his speech, feeling stronger and stronger. Nothing can shake him now. He belongs to the lineage of King Solomon. What can Badoglio and Graziani do against him? He belongs to the lineage of the Queen of Sheba and it is not a petition he has brought here today. The delegates begin to sense this and they listen more attentively. The emperor standing before them is a gravedigger—not of Ethiopia’s grave, but of the League where they are sitting. That is what he is saying. “ . . . I assert that the problem submitted to the Assembly today is a much wider one. It is not merely a question of the settlement of Italian aggression . . . It is collective security: it is the very existence of the League of Nations . . . ” And on he goes, responding blow by blow to past silence, to the desertions and false promises, to the blockade that was never lifted, to the multiple little instances of backstairs cowardice. “ . . . It is the confidence that each State is to place in international treaties. It is the value of promises made to small States that their integrity and their independence shall be respected and ensured . . . ” Now everyone is listening. The man standing there before them is no longer weeping over his country, he has just signed their death certificate, and he is the one who looks strong, much stronger than any of the representatives here. Yes, he has lost everything, he will go back to Bath tomorrow and Switzerland will be relieved to see he has not tried to stay on the shores of the lake, because they would not have known what to do with such a burdensome guest. For three more years he will be cold and the empress will have had enough of constantly catching cold and will move to Jerusalem, leaving him alone to count the days and follow nervously the upheavals of war, hoping that England will grant him the possibility to go back to his people. He will be cold, he will wait night after night, but right now he is standing before them and telling them that they died there with him on the battlefield at Maychew, even thought they’d been congratulating themselves on not taking part in the battle: “ . . . it is international morality that is at stake,” and when he says this, everyone understands, he says that it no longer exists, that back there everything died. To finish his speech he asks those present what they are prepared to do for Ethiopia, but he knows that the answer will be “Nothing,” he knows that the people listening to him have just dissolved into their own hesitations and that is what he came to tell them, that they have lost, without even realizing it, that the League of Nations no longer exists, because henceforth no one will believe in it, and when he leaves the room amid applause, for the first time since the night he fled Addis Ababa he will feel something resembling victory, as if that long hymn of defeat he just uttered had swept away the insults and told of invisible joy yet to come.
He will go to Addis Ababa and see Job again. The Americans will be there behind him. He will be the bait. Those are the words he must use to qualify his mission. He has to put Job to sleep while the others decide what to do with him. Does that have anything to do with patriotism? Isn’t this simply making him a dubious sort of cop? Private militia, negotiators, former agents gone over to private security companies: countries at war are full of them. Is that how he is going to end up, too? In some oil-producing country where he’ll sell his know-how to major French groups who have been dazzled by his feats of arms? Of course that didn’t make him what he is. That is not what he likes. He wanted to be in History—not that it should acknowledge him (that’s not his ambition), but to feel it, to be in those places on the planet where it is seeking to leave its mark, thrashing about, hesitating, taking terrifying, excessive forms. To feel its breath, to see how it shapes countries, distorts lives, creates singular spaces. That is what he has always wanted. And he has often felt that breath of History. During Operation Serval, or when he was an instructor in Kurdistan, even in Sirte, when it was History shaping Gaddafi’s swollen mask. He felt it in Afghanistan. Sometimes it was frustrating, sometimes it was terrifying, but he was there, at the pulsing heart of events. And the headiness of witnessing how a simple decision at a precise spot ca
n change everything: that too he has felt. He knows that Sullivan Sicoh has also known that feeling, and loved it. That is what they have in common. And that is why he made the appointment with him in Addis Ababa. Because basically they are brothers. And never mind if he knows—cannot help but know—that when they meet, there will be a trap. Job invited him to that second meeting to tell him how alike they are. He too has known those moments when time stretches out, when seconds grow longer and History hesitates. He too has pressed the trigger on his gun, three bullets, a dull thud, a body falling, the body he scarcely had time to see, it went quickly, it always goes quickly, it happens with tension, without emotion, but there is neither fear nor joy, because there’s not enough time, three shots and the entire world will know a story has come to an end, ten years of hunting the terrorist who defied the United States of America, and it will be said of them that they were heroes, but they know that everything could have changed the moment the helicopter landed in the courtyard of the house in Abbottabad, with that sudden loss of balance, the rotors breaking, they would have found the bodies of dead American soldiers, Pakistan would have demanded an explanation, Al-Qaeda would have rejoiced, they know that everything always hinges on tiny little things, the pilot’s reflexes, the muscles in one’s wrist, bringing the copter down in spite of everything, and the gesture that saves them leads them straight to the three shots because the moment the helicopter lands History makes its choice and all that’s left is to follow the path it has laid before them. Basically that is what he loves. The moments when History hesitates. What has it decided in Job’s case? Does any of this have the slightest importance? No, probably not. Because Job is only fighting for himself. He would like to know what History has chosen for Shaveen. That matters, yes . . . Maybe, deep down, it all disgusts him? It’s as if they were forcing him to look at who he is, at what he thought he would never become. Maybe this is the sign of defeat: this feeling of awkwardness with regard to oneself? He will have to ask Job if he really did steal a bone from bin Laden’s body, and if so, where he is hiding it. He will have to talk and act as if it were important, although to him it is not. He never wakes up wondering under which dune in which part of the Libyan desert Gaddafi’s body is buried. Alexander the Great’s, yes. Hannibal’s, too. Because they had a vision, because those are the bodies of men who saw History abandon them, when they could have reigned over it, because they were men who brought down worlds and gave words to new worlds. Job knows this. And in all likelihood if he really does have in his possession a shinbone, a finger, or a rib from the Saudi terrorist, it must immerse him in an even greater melancholy, because he is wrong and he knows it. It doesn’t take only zeal to make a relic. The remains must have belonged to a man who caused other men to tremble, first with surprise, then impatience.
Hear Our Defeats Page 12
