The Mirage

by Matt Ruff

  “Abdullah al Hashemi,” Mustafa said. “A colleague. We were just going to have him throw a shoe at Amal, but he decided a cap pistol would be more dramatic.” The senator’s security detail, overplaying their own part in the charade, had dislocated one of Abdullah’s shoulders in the course of subduing him. “It got a little out of hand.”

  “Well, the Mahdis ate it up,” Iyad said. “You could get a meeting with Muqtada al Sadr himself now, if you wanted to . . . Although for the guys we’re actually going to see, it was probably overkill.”

  “Who are we going to see?” Amal asked.

  “A bunch of wannabes. Not proper Army, more like junior auxiliaries. The sense I got from the one I talked to is that they were freelancing when they hijacked the truck—which is good for us, because it means they’re anxious to fence the goods. God willing, the deal should go down quickly.” He looked at the briefcase Mustafa was carrying. “You have the cash?”

  “Yes.” The riyals in the case had been requisitioned, by presidential order, from a larger stash of drug money recently seized by Halal. It was rough justice, the ransom for Saddam’s property to be paid with Saddam’s own ill-gotten gains.

  “Good. Let’s get going, then.”

  Samir cleared his throat. “Right,” said Mustafa. “Samir would like the address of our destination, so we can leave word of where we’re going.” In fact, Samir had been pestering him nonstop about this.

  Iyad regarded Samir with suspicion. “Who do you want to leave word with?” he asked. “Your mother?”

  “Yes,” Samir deadpanned. “If something goes wrong, I’d like her to know where to pick up the body.”

  “If it comes to that, you can trust the Mahdis to dispose of your body properly,” Iyad said. “But don’t worry, we’ll be fine.”

  “One other thing,” Mustafa said, making a quick check of the other vehicles on the street. “There’s a possibility we may be followed. Not by our people,” he clarified. Or by the Mukhabarat, whom Saddam had promised to call off. “By agents of Al Qaeda.”

  “Al Qaeda, trying to enter Sadr City?” Iyad chuckled again. “If only God were that generous . . . Now come on, let’s not stand here all night.”

  On maps it didn’t look like a neighborhood that would be hard to get into: a five-by-six kilometer rectangle extending northeast from the canal that ran like a moat between it and Rusafa. What the maps didn’t show, but what could be glimpsed in satellite photos on the Internet, were the clusters of black-clad Guardian Angels who stood watch all along Sadr City’s borders, on every thoroughfare and side street, profiling the incoming traffic. More Angels flocked on the El train platforms, ready to help as well as hinder. The station elevators rarely worked, but a wheelchair-bound El rider could count on being carried down to the street—unless the Angels pegged him as a Baath spy in cripple drag, in which case he’d make his descent even more swiftly, and headfirst.

  The most closely watched entry points were those along the City’s northwest boundary, which it shared with the Adhamiyah district. Angels assigned to that border were especially vigilant, and they were matched on the Adhamiyah side by a neighborhood watch of off-duty cops and Baathist street thugs. The two groups of border guards catcalled one another across Safi al Din al Hilli Street, and these exchanges of verbal insults sometimes escalated into physical fights or even full-blown riots.

  Iyad approached Sadr City from the southeast, detouring through the New Baghdad suburb and coming up Jerusalem Boulevard. At Habibiya Circle, where the boulevard crossed Port Said Street, the Guardian Angels were encamped on the central traffic island, at least three score men in black sitting on or standing around the civilian-model Humvees they used as interceptors. Inbound traffic entering the circle tended to slow down, the drivers hoping to avoid being singled out, but Iyad kept the cab rolling at a steady speed and waved at the border guards. Several waved back, including one particularly brawny Angel who’d traded his uniform top for a T-shirt that said MAY I READ YOU YOUR RIGHTS, OFFICER?

  The taxi continued along the boulevard, passing two cars with out-of-state plates—one from Jordan, one from Qatar—that had been pulled over, probably on suspicion of Driving While Sunni. Farther down the block, a rented camper with a Danish flag on its antenna had been cut off by a Humvee after ignoring a signal to stop. Now the three passengers were being made to stand in the street while the vehicle was searched for contraband. As the cab drove by, an Angel emerged from the back of the camper waving a stack of comic books as if it were pornography.

  “Idiot tourists,” Iyad muttered. Samir eyed the unhappy Danes and began fidgeting in his seat, and Iyad, catching this in the rearview, said: “Dude, I told you, we’ll be fine. But if you don’t quit acting nervous it’s going to cause problems.”

  “Sorry,” Samir said, and forced himself to sit still.

  Mustafa, feeling like a tourist himself, stared out at the boulevard, comparing it to his memories from the early ’90s when Halal had had regular business here. No question, the Mahdi Army had improved some things. Though the district was still ailing from decades of coming in dead last in every city budget allocation, the Army had worked overtime to patch the crumbling infrastructure, filling potholes, repairing sidewalks, shoring up dilapidated buildings, and organizing garbage collection and other services that most of Baghdad took for granted. There was a heavy smell of diesel in the air from the thousands of generators brought in to bolster the unreliable power grid, the fuel to run them being siphoned from Baath-owned tanker trucks and Baath-controlled oil depots.

  Traditional street crime, once rampant, was practically nonexistent now. But here and there were glimpses of the price paid for that, the dark side of the new order. Among a row of well-tended shops Mustafa spied a grocery whose front window had just been busted out. The Angel who’d done the deed was still standing there, slapping his palm with a wooden club while the grocery’s tight-lipped proprietor used a push broom to sweep up the glass.

  “What’s that about?”

  “Don’t stare, cousin,” Iyad said. He shrugged. “Guy must’ve broken a rule. Maybe he stayed open during prayer time or tried to sell something he shouldn’t. Or it could be he didn’t pay his dues.”

  “Dues,” Mustafa said, and Iyad shrugged again.

  “You think your buddy Saddam doesn’t charge the shopkeepers in his territory for protection? At least here, you actually get the security you pay for.”

  At the next corner they stopped for a red light and Mustafa looked up at a pair of billboards on the side of the El tracks just ahead. One billboard carried the ubiquitous AL SADR FOR GOVERNOR poster. The other was an ad for a local cell phone company, with a map of Iraq contrasting its superior coverage area with that of its competitors, the multicolored overlay giving the state a fragmented look that reminded Mustafa of the grocer’s window. He shifted in his seat, and Iyad, thinking he’d caught Samir’s case of nerves, said: “Dude, seriously. Chill out or I’m turning us around.”

  The helicopter orbited at eight hundred meters, the camera on its belly automatically tracking the progress of the cab.

  Six Al Qaeda commandos sat in the helicopter’s cargo compartment. For tonight’s mission they had dressed in paramilitary uniforms of the Badr Corps—another super-militia, based in Najaf, that was currently disputing the Mahdi Army’s right to represent Iraq’s Shia downtrodden.

  Idris Abd al Qahhar was in the co-pilot’s seat. While the pilot focused on maintaining line-of-sight with the taxi, Idris reviewed the rules of engagement with his men. “Retrieval of the object is your top priority,” he said. “All guards and bystanders are expendable. Remember the neighborhood is hostile and any commotion is likely to bring armed reinforcements.”

  “What about the Homeland Security agents?” the lead commando asked.

  “If you can spare their lives without compromising your main mission, do so. But if you can’t, make sure you kill all three of them, and also any witnesses. Set incendiary cha
rges on your way out of the building. One last thing—this goes without saying, but you are not to allow yourselves to be captured alive.”

  “Understood,” the commando said.

  The pilot, watching the camera feed, spoke next: “The taxi just turned off the boulevard. I think they are approaching their destination.”

  In front of a mosque at the corner of a block of tenements, a group of kids were playing in the water from an open hydrant. An imam’s assistant with a wrench stood watch from the sidewalk; despite his efforts to come off like a stern lifeguard, Amal detected a certain wistfulness, as if what he really wanted was to throw off his robes and join in the splashing.

  Iyad drove another block to a vacant lot surrounded by more tenements and a small factory that had been turned into an auto shop. A sign said FAWZI’S CAR REPAIR, but the true nature of the business was hinted at by the stripped chassis littering the lot.

  A gang of young men, too motley to be Angels, loitered outside the chop shop’s garage entrance. As the taxi approached they came alert, brandishing an assortment of firearms.

  Iyad parked next to the rusted carcass of a minibus. “Wait here until I signal you,” he said. He walked up to the garage and spoke to a fellow whose AK-47 had what looked like four ammunition clips bound side-by-side with duct tape. “Somebody must like war movies,” Amal observed. “Or maybe he’s just compensating for something.”

  “Yeah, that’s great,” said Samir. The guy with the AK-47 was nodding now. He sent one of the other gang members into the garage and Iyad turned towards the taxi and raised a hand.

  Mustafa and Samir exited the cab first, Mustafa coming around to open Amal’s door. After she got out, they fell in step beside her, making like bodyguards, Mustafa doing the better job of projecting professional menace.

  Not that it mattered much: The gang members only had eyes for Amal. As she neared the building she heard a whistle and glanced up to see two teenage boys peering out a window on the factory’s second floor—and almost directly above them, another guy with a rifle leaning over the parapet of the roof. Amal resisted an impulse to wave.

  The group in front of the garage door parted to make way for their boss. He was older than the others but still young, at least five years Amal’s junior.

  “Fawzi bin Taymullah al Walid,” he introduced himself. “At your service.”

  “Amal bint Shamal,” Amal said. She undid the lower half of her niqab so he could see it was really her, the sudden exposure of her face causing the gang rank and file to collectively drop their jaws. You Sadr City kids, Amal thought, you really need to get out more. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me.”

  “The honor is mine,” Fawzi said. “Please, come inside.”

  In the large open space beyond the door, four different cars were in the process of being cannibalized. The mechanics all put their tools down to gawk at the visiting celebrity. One guy with a lit blowtorch on the ground by his feet held up a copy of the Baghdad Gazette and waved it like a groupie hoping for an autograph. Amal politely ignored this, her attention drawn instead to the only intact vehicle in the chop shop, a sedan with a bar of flasher lights mounted on its roof.

  “Our secret weapon,” Fawzi said grinning. He didn’t elaborate, but Amal could figure it out for herself: Out on the highway at night with its flashers on, the sedan would easily be mistaken for a police car. This must be how they got their inventory. Amal wondered what sort of arrangement these guys had with the Mahdi Army, and how much of their gross they had to pay in protection money.

  “This way, please,” Fawzi said. The back half of the ground floor was a warren of industrial shelving. The shelves nearest the chop shop were filled with auto parts, but those deeper in were stacked with consumer goods—electronics, small appliances—that must have come from hijacked trucks. The boxes on one shelf carried the mark of the Red Crescent and were labeled ANKARA EARTHQUAKE RELIEF. Of these, Fawzi quipped: “Could I interest you in some cheap medical supplies?”

  A space at the center of the warren had been furnished as a parlor: stolen carpets and chairs, a sheesha pipe, even an espresso machine. Fawzi, Amal, and Iyad sat down, while Mustafa, Samir, and Fawzi’s lieutenant with the AK-47 remained standing.

  “So,” Fawzi said, after an abbreviated exchange of pleasantries, “I understand you’re interested in something I may have in my possession.”

  “Actually, it’s my mother who is interested,” Amal said.

  “Oh? Not that I’m not flattered, but I wonder how such an important senator would even know about my business here.”

  “My mother has many friends in the intelligence community. As a personal favor, they keep tabs on certain people for her. One of these people has been doing a lot of talking on unsecured phones lately about an item that was stolen from him. He’s a very unhappy man.”

  Fawzi shrugged, as if it were no big thing to be an object of Saddam Hussein’s displeasure. “Not all unhappiness is a curse.”

  “My mother agrees wholeheartedly,” Amal said. “She’d like to increase this man’s unhappiness. So she asked me to see if I could track down the missing property. With my local contacts, it didn’t take long.”

  “Well, we aren’t exactly hiding out here,” Fawzi said, a hint of unease breaking through his cool. “And of course, you are welcome in Sadr City . . . So the unhappy man, I assume he’s looking, too.”

  “Oh yes,” Amal said. “High and low. But he’s still a few steps behind me, and my hope is to take the object off your hands before he gets any closer.”

  “And then what? Your mother will let him know she has it?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “And what will your mother do with the object? Destroy it?”

  “She considered that. But once she heard the item was an antiquity, she decided it would be more fitting to donate it to a museum.”

  “A museum?”

  “Yes, in Persia,” Amal said. “Or perhaps Kurdistan . . .”

  “I see,” said Fawzi. “And once it’s behind glass in Tehran or Kirkuk, what, you wait for the unhappy man to come visit it?”

  “If only God were that generous . . . But my mother will see that he gets an invitation and let him know that a warm welcome awaits him if he accepts.”

  Fawzi was grinning now. “I like how your mother thinks. And I believe we can do business.” With a measured note of regret, he added: “Of course, since it is business, I’ll have to ask for payment.”

  “Of course,” Amal said. “I’m ready to pay a reasonable price. May I see the item?”

  “Absolutely.” Fawzi turned to his lieutenant. “Shadi. Go get the crate.”

  The guard on the roof was listening to Green Desert’s “I Pray by Myself” on a pair of headphones, snapping his fingers and swaying to the music. The helicopter, now in whisper mode, had descended almost to the rooftop before he noticed it, and what drew his attention was not the muted shussing of its rotors, but the downdraft, which made the smoke from his cigarette dance as if it too had caught the tune.

  When the guard looked up, a Qaeda commando shot him between the eyes with a silenced submachine gun.

  “Right side clear,” the commando said.

  “Left side clear,” said another.

  “Go,” said Idris. The helicopter touched down on the roof just long enough for the six men to jump out; then the pilot increased power and took it back up to five hundred meters. The commandos sprinted across the roof to the stairwell.

  A hallway ran the length of the building’s top floor. A man was just coming out of a bathroom near the middle of the hall, adjusting his belt as he walked, when the lead commando reached the bottom of the stairs. The silenced SMG made a flat sound that might have been mistaken for a cough; the fall of the corpse was louder and more distinctive.

  “Ali?” a voice called, through an open door midway between the bathroom and the stairs. “Did you trip over your pants again?” This was followed by laughter. The comman
do stepped quickly to the doorway. Inside the room, three men sat around a card table. The commando killed them all, then paused, listening. When no one else called out or came into the hallway to see what was going on, he returned to the stairs and exchanged hand signals with his men.

  They began a careful sweep of the entire floor. At one end of the hall, a commando opened a door on a roomful of machine tools and saw a teenage boy standing in front of a row of windows. Rather than shoot him immediately, which might have broken the glass and alerted others outside, the commando gestured for the boy to put his hands up. The boy did so, and the commando made him come closer to the door and kneel down facing the wall. Then he shot him in the back of the head. As the boy slumped to the floor, the commando made a quick visual scan of the room, but he didn’t actually walk around the machines, so he didn’t see the second boy, down on one knee behind a lathe, his trembling fingers gripping the laces of an untied sneaker.

  The commandos completed their sweep, killing three more people in the process. They regrouped at the top of another stairwell. The lead commando keyed his headset and spoke to Idris in the helicopter: “Top floor is secure. We are ready to go downstairs.”

  “Proceed,” Idris said.

  “Is there a problem?” Fawzi said.

  Amal was frowning. “Are you sure this is the right object?”

  “But of course.” Fawzi picked up the lid of the little wooden crate and showed her the attached label, which bore the crest of the University of Iraq at Al Hillah. Scrawled by hand beneath this—rather haphazardly, Amal thought—were the words PARTHIAN BATTERY, 2ND C. BCE. “There, you see?”

  “Yes, I see. It’s just, this doesn’t look like what I was told to expect.”

  Instead of a terracotta urn, the object Fawzi had pulled from the crate was a crude brass bottle, about fifty centimeters tall. The vessel was a flattened sphere with a long tapered neck; its surface, unadorned by any decoration or pattern, was pitted and tarnished, thickly encrusted with grime, except for one small area where someone had tried to rub it clean, exposing a dull shiny spot the size of a half-riyal coin. The bottle mouth was open and the vessel was empty. Amal had a hard time seeing how it could function as a battery.