Button by button he undresses her until her blouse falls open and slips from her shoulders; her drawstring pants are pushed down, one foot raised and then the other.
Standing before him in quivering stillness, she waits while he undresses. Then he leads her beneath the stream of water where he soaps a flannel and gently washes her arms and legs, her feet and hands, her shoulders and breasts. He shampoos her hair, massaging his fingers into her scalp, letting the soap stream down his forearms and over his penis.
Only when he’s finished does she open her eyes and gaze into his. Her lips move slightly apart. She wants to be kissed, but he holds her at arm’s length and begins drying her. Wrapping a robe around her shoulders, he takes her back to the bedroom and pours her a drink from the mini-bar.
“Shaun is dead,” she whispers.
“I know.”
“So are the others.”
“What happened?”
“They were dressed like soldiers. They came into the Ministry and started shooting.”
“Where were you?”
“Away…” She sucks in a breath. “I had to identify Glover’s body. They tortured him with an electric drill and then cut his throat. He was covered in flies…”
Her voice has a mechanical quality, devoid of emotion, like a person who has spent a lifetime tethered to the banks of a river, only to wake one morning and discover that someone has severed the mooring lines overnight and she’s drifted into a dark new place.
“The attack was premeditated. We were the targets. They went straight to the basement.”
“Why would they do that?”
“To stop the audit.”
“Had you discovered something?”
“The software had only been running for forty-eight hours. There were some double payments and overpayments…” The statement tails off.
“Except?”
“Do you know of Jawad Stadium?”
“It’s south of here.”
“According to the financial records it has been completely refurbished. Work began in 2005 and was finished two years ago. But the work was never done. I’ve seen the stadium. That’s where I was when they launched the attack.”
“How big was the contract?”
“Ninety million dollars.”
“And the duplicate payments?”
“Forty-two million.” She pulls her knees up and takes another sip, unused to the harshness of the vodka.
“Who knew you were looking at the contracts?”
“Glover called the Iraqi Reconstruction Management Office and asked what team approved the project.”
“Did they tell him?”
“No.”
“Did you talk to anyone else?”
“I sent an email request to New York asking for information about the main contractor, Bellwether Construction. They sent a file, but most of the important details had been blacked out.”
They lapse into silence.
Swinging her legs out of bed, Daniela moves barefoot across the floor. She opens her satchel on the luggage rack and retrieves a single sheet of paper.
“You asked me about cash deliveries to banks. I did a search of the Central Bank database.”
Luca leans forward expectantly, his knees touching the edge of her robe.
“And?”
“I’ve probably broken a dozen laws.” She hands the page to Luca and begins explaining the figures. “The first column is a code used to identify each bank branch. Next there is a date and then the amount of cash requested in the nominated currency. I concentrated on US deliveries.”
Luca looks at the first three transfers.
BI (74-312) 092609 US$5.3m
RB (74-212) 020610 US$15.6m
ITB (74-466) 021110 US$1.8m
Even without checking, he knows these cash deliveries correspond with the robberies—preceding them by twenty-four hours. Somebody must have leaked the information to the armed robbers. How many people had access to the information? It could be an insider at the Treasury, or the Iraqi Central Bank, or the delivery company.
Daniela curls up next to him, reaching between the lapels of his robe and running her fingers down his chest, loosening the knot at his waist. She flattens herself against him, pressing her loins tightly to his and he feels a desire stirring that he tries to ignore.
“Don’t you want me?” she asks.
“I don’t want you mistaking my motives.”
“I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“I know.”
“I might not see you again.”
“You will. There’s someone I want you to meet.”
Daniela crosses the foyer, moving from memory on marble tiles that are polished and cool. Her cheeks have color now. Her hair is drying and her clothes are clean. Outside the air is hot and harshly bright, thick with the smell of wood fires and paraffin stoves.
They drive east along busy roads. As they approach each checkpoint, Luca tells Daniela to lower her eyes and cover her face with a scarf. Once they pass through, Luca continues his story, telling her about his arrest and interrogation—as much as he can remember. The account seems so strange, so pulled out of shape and littered with broken and jagged pieces.
“So you don’t have a visa?”
“No.”
“What will you do?”
“Leave.”
Sadr City is an immense suburb in eastern Baghdad full of ramshackle one-storey buildings covered in dust and patched together with scavenged building materials. The city has many neighborhoods like this one—sectarian strongholds, full of widows, orphans and the dispossessed; Sunni or Shiite, bombed back to the Stone Age. Amid the poverty, children play football using oil drums as goal posts. Their mothers, in full chadors, look like shadows in the darkened windows. The only splash of color comes from billboards advertising mobile phones and flat-screen TVs.
Jamal and Nadia have two rooms behind a shop that sells water barrels and tools. Luca parks beside a mound of broken bricks and discarded planks. He fixes a lock to the steering wheel and another to the gearstick.
A woman opens the door just a crack, one eye visible, suspicion in it, then fear, then anger. This is Jamal’s wife, Nadia. Two young boys are clutching her legs, peering from the folds of her dress.
She covers her mouth and nose. “You should not have come.”
“I need to talk to Jamal,” says Luca.
“You have caused enough trouble.”
Her gaze switches to Daniela and her anger evaporates. She opens the door wider. “You take too many risks and put other people in danger.”
The boys run away and hide in the second room, peeking out through a curtain, one head below the other. Electrical wires sprout from the walls and a kerosene lantern hangs from a beam, revealing woven rugs and bedding rolled in the corner.
Jamal emerges from the second room, his handsome face transformed. Rearranged by fists or clubs, his almond eyes, his white smile, his youth. Gone. Beaten from him. His lips are blown up to twice their size and his right eye is full of blood, while the left has almost closed completely. Daniela can’t hide her shock.
Jamal opens his mouth to speak. No sound emerges. He tries again, his voice altered by his swollen lips and broken teeth.
“Please leave. It’s not safe for you to be here.”
His voice is loud in the tiny room.
“What happened?” asks Luca. “Why did they do this?”
“I work with Americans—this is the reason.”
“Abu?”
“He is safe, but they’re looking for him.”
Jamal wipes the spit dribbling down his chin. Luca reaches out and touches his friend’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry.”
“It is not your fault. We both knew this could happen.”
Nadia is making coffee. From the plastic container she carries from the pump each day she pours just enough water into a saucepan. Daniela introduces herself and crouches down, talking to the boys, who are losin
g their shyness.
Jamal pulls cushions from the corner and asks Luca to sit down. His modesty and politeness are a study in respect passed on by his parents. He glances at his wife. Speaks softly.
“I met Nadia at university. I remember thinking I could never marry someone so beautiful, so I didn’t talk to her… I was too nervous. Then one day I found her crying. Her father had been taken by Saddam’s secret police for something he’d done or said or not done or not said. I told Nadia I would find him. It took me two weeks. It cost four thousand dollars to buy his freedom. Nadia married me out of gratitude, but it has become love.”
He wipes his mouth on his sleeve.
“None of my five sisters are married. My father says he won’t find them husbands until the militias stop killing each other. He prefers to keep them safe at home.”
“What does your father do?”
“He runs a market stall. I did have a brother, but he’s dead.”
They are silent for a moment and Luca tries to apologize again.
“You are not to blame. There is too much blame in Iraq. The Sunnis blame the Shiites, who blame the Baathists, who once poisoned the Kurds, and they all blame the Americans. We’ve become a country of nasty, pissed-off people with guns and third-grade educations. My generation has been at war ever since I was born. We are so familiar with it we have coffin makers on every corner, moving bodies like melons.
“The new Iraq was never going to be perfect, but we hope, we dream, we survive. The Americans will leave one day. And what will be left behind? All things light and all things dark.”
Jamal’s eyes find the floor. “They tried to drown me. Now each time I fall asleep, I dream of swallowing water. I can taste it, smell it coming out of my mouth and nose. I wanted to die in the end. I didn’t care anymore. I made a statement. I wrote what they told me.”
“I know.”
He blinks back tears, looking like a man whose life has undergone a violent decompression, a diver returning to the surface too quickly.
Jamal taps his chest. “They could not change who I am. They could not touch me inside.”
Daniela joins them, bringing a jug of rose-scented water and a tray of sweet pastries. Luca takes one and feels the sugar melting on his tongue. They speak in English for her benefit.
Jamal remembers something else. “There was an American… when they were interrogating me. I saw him just once, but I remember his voice. He was feeding them the questions.”
Daniela interrupts. “What did he look like?”
“Like an American,” says Jamal. “He asked me if I was scared. I told him no. He laughed and said I was too stupid to be scared.”
Daniela: “Did he have a side-parting?”
“Yes.”
“What about his voice?” Luca asks. “Did it sound cracked or broken?”
Jamal nods and all three of them are staring at each other, wondering how they could know the same man.
“His name is Jennings,” explains Daniela. “He was assigned to us by the US Embassy as our local liaison officer.”
“I was told he works for the State Department,” says Luca. “I met him this morning.”
Luca takes a moment to consider the ramifications. US involvement in the arrest and torture of an Iraqi civilian doesn’t come as a complete surprise to him, but normally such operations don’t feature personnel from the State Department or the CIA as eyewitnesses. The US government prefers to remain in the background, promoting the culture of deniability.
“When did you last talk to Jennings?” he asks Daniela.
“After the attack on the Finance Ministry. He wanted to know what files had been taken. He also wanted my laptop and whatever results we’d obtained. I told him the program had only been running forty-eight hours, but he still wanted the records.”
“Did you tell him about the double payments?”
“Yes.”
“What about the cash deliveries to the banks that were robbed?”
“He knew that too.”
They fall silent and watch Jamal’s two boys drawing pictures on butcher’s paper, sharing colored pencils between them. What sort of future awaits them, wonders Luca. Jamal has been identified and labeled as a collaborator. He and Abu will be targets from now on. Friendless. Never safe.
Reaching into his pocket, Luca places the keys to the Skoda on the tea tray.
“These are yours now.”
Jamal looks at him. “Why?”
“You can be a taxi driver—until you become a doctor.”
“You do not owe me anything.”
“I owe you more than I can ever repay.”
Jamal drives them to the al-Hamra Hotel and drops them inside the security perimeter. They say goodbye with the engine running.
“I will come back one day,” says Luca.
Jamal shakes his head. “Iraq is a place to leave, not to live.”
“What will you do?”
“I have family in the south.”
Daniela turns away as the two men embrace wordlessly. She takes Luca’s hand as they watch the Skoda leave, waving one last time before going upstairs to their room where they undress each other.
Luca can’t find the clasp of her bra.
“Try the other side.”
“I never say no to the other side.”
Unhooking the clasp, he reaches for her breasts. “These are nice.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“Firm.”
“They hold my bra up.”
She turns, expecting a kiss, but Luca avoids her lips.
“I thought you were going to kiss me.”
“Not yet.”
He wants to change the rhythm of her breathing. He wants to make her skin flush and her toes curl. He wants to see her self-control dissolve and for Daniela to exist on the same plane he does.
Afterwards, they lie together. She takes his hand and can feel it beating softly as if it contains its own tiny heart.
“Who’s Nicola?” she asks. “Nadia mentioned her.”
“A woman I knew.”
“You were close?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“I lost her.”
Daniela looks at him steadily and for a moment the intelligence in her eyes seems to be absolute and unshakable.
“Why did you take me to meet Jamal and his family?”
“To show you why I do this.”
15
LONDON
Elizabeth is leaning out of the top-floor window, puffing on a cigarette but not inhaling. The last time she remembers doing something like this she was fourteen. It was a Pall Mall and she was hiding from her parents. Now she’s thirty-two and hiding from her son’s nanny. Age doesn’t make us any wiser or less prone to guilt.
She found an old packet of cigarettes when she was searching North’s study, looking for clues, trying to piece together his last days, checking his credit card statements, mobile phone bills and emails; lipstick on his shirt collars; or another woman’s scent on his clothes.
Suddenly nauseous, she breaks the cigarette in half, wrapping the butt in a tissue before flushing it down the loo. The tissue dissolves but the dog-end is still there, bobbing in the bowl, mocking her.
She brushes her teeth and goes back to the study, sitting at North’s desk, feeling the contours in the old leather chair, worn shiny in places. She found the chair in a second-hand shop in Camden just after they bought the house in Barnes. North had wanted a new chair, but she told him this one was a classic. It reminded her of something you see in old movies about newspaper offices where reporters hammer on manual typewriters and yell at copyboys to run their words to the subs desk.
Her personal dreams of journalism had made this image seem romantic. At university she imagined herself as a famous columnist—the next Julie Burchill or Zoë Heller or Lynn Barber. Instead she’d presented a “lifestyle” program, as forgettable as a phone number.
Eliza
beth opens the report from the private detective. Her husband’s days are broken down into hours and minutes: times, dates and places. Tucked into the front sleeve of the folder is a USB stick. Using a directional microphone, Colin Hackett had recorded some of the conversation between North and the two men he met at The Warrington in Maida Vale.
Plugging the stick into her laptop, Elizabeth opens the audio file and presses “play.” There are background voices, car sounds, wind rustling the leaves. Three voices, one of them North’s, another speaks a guttural-sounding English, his words like gravel rolling in a drum. The other accent is almost too perfect, like listening to someone mimicking Roger Moore.
Voice 1: … you should stop saying these things and calm down…
North: Don’t tell me to calm down… I approved the transfers. I signed off on the details…
Voice 1: You did your job… due diligence… nobody is suggesting otherwise…
North: … it’s a bad sign… the money came from somewhere… it’s going somewhere… tell me.
Voice 1: These are not questions you need to ask. Worry about life, worry about your wife and family…
North: Leave my family out of this.
Voice 1: These things will pass…
Voice 2: We have a proverb where I come from, Mr. North. If you have done nothing wrong, don’t worry about the devil knocking at your door…
North: But I am doing something wrong…
Voice 1: You’re exaggerating… nothing has changed.
There is a garbled section of the recording. North appears to have walked away from the table, but the men are still talking.
Voice 2: … he’s rattled…
Voice 1: … I will call our friend. Tell him we’re concerned…
Voice 2: The time for talking is over… this is what happens when you deal with amateurs…
The Wreckage: A Thriller Page 20
