Middle Man

by David Rich

  I shivered. Dan waited for marks to make comments like that so he would know they were thoroughly cooked. Coming from an officer, it was scary. I pointed out that the border might not be clearly marked and we should not enter Iran, but Spera was beyond listening. He was in love with the adventure.

  “The Kuchis know every inch of this territory. They know where the border is.”

  “The Kuchis don’t care where the border is,” I said.

  The Kuchis nodded, agreeing with both of us.

  We parked the jeeps far off the track where the boulders jutted out, forming a shelter that would keep them hidden. The Kuchis led us up toward the border along something resembling a path, which grew steeper and rockier as we went. Before we reached the top, we were able to look back and see the drug runners unpacking the bags of opium from the vehicles and repacking them on camels that had been brought to them. The Kuchis recognized the camel herder: He was one of them. Sam Simmons shook hands with the leader of the Taliban escort and counted out his payment. Someone had to help Simmons mount his camel. The Taliban watched the camel caravan until it reached the point where vehicles could no longer navigate. We watched the Taliban and, far back in the distance, the rest of our squad.

  An hour later we reached the crest. If that was the border, it was a great place to sneak into Iran. The Kuchis said they knew where to find people who would alert the border guards.

  Again, Lieutenant Spera misunderstood them on purpose. He claimed they said there would be guards at the border. Ten minutes later, the Kuchis told us to wait. They went ahead.

  “Let’s go back,” I said. “We’re going to be trapped.”

  But Spera wanted to be a guy who met with the Iranians and made a deal with them.

  “There are no Iranians,” I said.

  “This is Iran.” At least he acknowledged that.

  “I mean border guards. The drug runners are being met by their partners or customers. That’s who the Kuchis will see first. The contacts on the Iranian side of the border. We’re going to be trapped.”

  He was arguing with me when the first shots dropped all around us. We scrambled behind rocks for cover and began working our way back to the top. I could not see who was firing at us. Might have been drug guys or even Iranian border guards. It might have been the Kuchis, though there were certainly more than two firing. RPGs landed near us. At the top, lying flat, looking back toward Afghanistan, I could see some of the drug runners turning their camels around and others firing blindly up toward us as cover. I could not see Sam Simmons.

  Once we were over the crest, the firing from the Iranian side subsided. The firing from the drug runners was inaccurate and they were moving away from us. The original trap was going to work. Our men were taking positions at the bottom of the trail, where they would kill or capture the drug runners. Lieutenant Spera stood up and began firing down at the drug runners though they were too far away to hit.

  He was brave and naïve and having fun. An RPG cruised over the crest and hit him square in the back and obliterated him.

  The other Marine was splattered with bone, blood, and all the goo of life. He stumbled around while wiping it off his face. Another RPG hit close by, and the Marine jumped away from it. His body stopped bouncing off boulders about thirty feet below.

  The Marines below were closing in on the gun runners. No more fire came from the Iranian side. I looked around for Lieutenant Spera’s tags but didn’t see them, so I edged down the hill to check on the Marine who had fallen.

  The Marine lay on a flat, wide ledge. His head was bloody and bent at an awful angle. It looked like the fall had killed him. Sam Simmons held the Marine’s sidearm. I watched as Simmons, on one knee, removed the Marine’s tags. He didn’t notice me. “Put it down,” I said. He dropped the tags. He still held the sidearm. “The weapon.” He stared at me a while before tossing the gun aside.

  “Private Waters, right? How are you? I don’t see you all this time and then here you are.” He sounded like we ran into each other at a bar. He was still a scrawny guy, but his eyes were clear. I didn’t think he was high. He flicked a piece of Lieutenant Spera’s flesh off of the Marine’s shirt and stood up. Then, as if he were concerned that I thought he was being insensitive, he said, “I didn’t kill him. He was already dead.” Two large plastic bags of opium tied together lay on a rock behind Sam Simmons. “Damn camels are more trouble than they’re worth. I just carried what I could. Ever ride one?”

  “Who were you meeting?”

  “Oh, those guys had the contacts. I was just the money man on this deal.”

  He watched me for a moment, then reached down to get the dead man’s tags. I raised my rifle. He stopped but came up with the tags in his hand. I climbed down and told him to back away from the body. I knelt down to check for a pulse. There was none. The intervals stretched in the firing below. Nothing came from above us. Whoever had been shooting at us was not coming across the border.

  “I’ve been watching you, Private Waters. You didn’t know it, but I saw how you operate. You’re very good. I could learn from you.”

  Flattery? “Shut up.”

  “The others turned back, but I couldn’t. You understand? I couldn’t,” he said.

  Sam Simmons was just a would-be drug dealer, one of millions. I had spent the last few months carefully making sure not to interfere with the poppy business, so I did not feel too sanctimonious about this guy’s participation. The honest way to lead him down the mountain would be to put a leash and a bell on him so the U.S. military and the Afghan authorities could have the thrill of human sacrifice. Would bringing him in honor Spera’s preposterous idealism? I fought that foolishness while Spera was alive, so it made no sense to hand over Sam Simmons and condone that foolishness now that it had killed Spera. And burning behind all those thoughts, behind the months of nonsensical futility and my ambivalence about life as a Marine, was the instinct to avoid being a cop. I was born with it and experience reinforced the tendency. Every organization and institution I had come in contact with pushed toward making me, and everyone, into enforcement drones, and that bumped hard against my instinct to be contrary. I didn’t do a long analysis while standing there on that mountain, pointing my rifle at Sam Simmons, but I could not see the benefit in handing him over. He was probably going to die getting out of there anyway, but he put himself in that position.

  “Leave the bags,” I said.

  “Y’sure?”

  “If you pick them up, you’re going down the mountain with me.”

  “Can I take his shirt? It’ll help me get out of the country if I’m . . .” He looked at the tags. “Kosinski . . . Victor Kosinski.” Just like James Bond.

  I nodded and he got to work on the shirt. I saw him shift his eyes to the sidearm, but I shook my head and he made no move. He had to pick more bits and pieces of Lieutenant Spera off the shirt before he put it on.

  He slipped the tags over his head and smiled and shrugged. He was a guy who had been having narrow escapes his whole life, and I had just helped reconfirm his belief that he would always escape.

  “You go first. I’ll wait here,” he said. I picked up Kosinski’s sidearm and slung the bags of opium over my shoulder and walked past the new Kosinski. “Hey, man . . . Thank you. I really appreciate it. I won’t forget it.”

  I turned back and raised my rifle and glared at him. I hated him at that moment more than I ever hated anyone. More than Dan at his worst. More than any foster parent or pompous colonel. It wasn’t until I raised the rifle that I understood how much I disliked having to make this decision. If he had spoken, I would have shot him. But he did not speak, and I walked down the mountain and managed to push him from my mind until that moment on the Citadel in Erbil.

  And following the flood of that memory came the realization, a side issue, one I never considered before, that Sam Simmons had probably done that
ambush in the village in Farah that killed the NGO and the Marine. The rumor was the NGO had a lot of cash on him.

  21

  Three old men argued at a stall selling nuts. They were vehement, heated, and one grabbed a handful of pistachios. I thought he was going to throw them, but he let them fall back into the bin. They respected the nuts. At the next stall, teenagers browsed the DVDs and tapes. The marketplace below the Citadel was crowded but orderly: souk meets mall. The smells, the sounds, and the swirling motion kept my head from spinning off. Men and women I had never seen looked familiar, like old friends. A secret past malingered behind the eyes searching mine and avoiding mine. A zombie world of bad decisions traipsed alongside me. But one Victor Kosinski was enough to last me. He had popped up and would pop up again. I did not need to do anything to make that happen.

  Two tough guys in short jackets cut me off and hurried to a stall selling packaged food and groceries. They moved with the arrogance and insolence that serves as the international symbol for secret police: in this case, the Asayish. When the proprietor saw them, he kicked something farther under the counter. They were not fooled. One grabbed him while the other pulled out the box of contraband. I moved on, never finding out what it was.

  I veered right, along a row of stalls selling scarves and hats. I took a left and followed that to the end of the row, where I found the gun-selling stall belonging to the supposed cousin of my cabbie.

  The guns were hung on hooks and laid out on red cloth, an impressive array: Colt 1911s, M9 Berettas, Glocks. The merchant and his son pointed to one after another, held them out so I could handle them. It was the jewelry store experience for mercenaries. I declined them all.

  I asked the merchant to open the boxes at the back and show me the SIG Sauers. The merchant’s son played dumb, asked me what those were. They conferred in Arabic about how long to hesitate to get the maximum price, then brought out two guns. I chose the SIG Sauer 226 over the 228 because it had two extra rounds in the clip, fifteen. They brought out two boxes of 9mm ammunition.

  The merchant and his son started at twelve hundred dollars. I offered three hundred dollars. The merchant moaned, his son threatened. I paid four hundred and fifty.

  Cold high-desert air had descended on the city. It felt refreshing despite the smell of diesel. Shades of blue stretched across the sky, darkening steadily, subtly toward the horizon. Green, red, and yellow colored lights made the fountains seem fake, like rippling plastic. I don’t know how many cars followed me as I walked toward my hotel, but the driver that stopped beside me was Maya. She put down the window and leaned across. The driver behind her honked his impatience. When he stopped, she said, “I can’t offer a fancy convertible like yours. But please get in.”

  I got in and readjusted the side mirror so I could watch any followers. “I bet you know where there’s a roadhouse here, too,” I said.

  She was wearing a long black skirt and a blue silk long-sleeve blouse. This was not an outfit Muslim elders had in mind when they decreed women should be covered in public. I said, “Your blouse matches the color of the sky just ahead of us.”

  She laughed. “I didn’t take you for one who delivers cheap compliments like that.”

  “It’s not a compliment. I was wondering how you managed the timing.”

  “I wore the black skirt in case you came along later.”

  She turned a few times and we left the traffic behind and entered a large park.

  “Johnny sent me. I am to charm you. That’s what he said. ‘Charm him, my dear, because he has fallen under your spell.’ That’s how he put it.”

  “Turning on the charm is usually only the first part.”

  “He wants you to meet with him. He promises your safety.”

  A Mercedes just like the one we were in turned into the park: charm insurance. She kept driving through to the other end of the park, then turned onto a broad boulevard that led to the Kurdistan Parliament building, a five-story sandstone block pierced at regular intervals by thin window slots. I wanted to get to Bannion’s, but more than that, I wanted to know how thick a coating of charm Maya would be willing to spread to get me there.

  “I don’t want to go to Bannion’s,” I said.

  “Where would you like to go?”

  “The airport.”

  She checked the rearview mirror. “Johnny guarantees your safety.”

  “If I fly out of here, I guarantee my safety all by myself.”

  She forced the faint smile, the glimmering tease in her eyes. “I thought you were a man who doesn’t give up. A determined man.”

  “I’m going to declare victory and go home. Mission accomplished. You’re no longer a captive.”

  “You mean you came all this way just for me? I’m flattered.”

  “Your father made me a very lucrative offer. It’s odd, isn’t it? He knew you weren’t in any danger. Do you think I should try to hold him to it?”

  She did not like that remark, either. I was struck by how less exotic she seemed here, removed from the mongrel luster of Houston. Her aura of mystery mystery faded against the hometown background of war and its spoils.

  “You think you understand what is going on, but you don’t.” She didn’t have the pleading in her voice that I expected. It was the declaration of a disciple, a True Believer.

  “I think I don’t understand at all. And I think you’re not going to explain it to me.”

  She had no answer. To explain meant narrowing the story; the details would diminish the wild ecstasy of the dream. Experience and training told her to protect her devotion from a skeptic. I did not think she knew all the twists in Bannion’s plot; no one did. I wanted to push her to see how far she would push me. I concentrated on the silence and did not register the growing roar overhead. A shadow lowered across us from the left and passed quickly. The plane touched the runway just a few hundred yards beyond.

  I said, “If I don’t go to Bannion’s, will he take it out on you?”

  She pulled to the side of the road and it was as if the veil of vagueness overtook her again. She stared forward, then checked her mirrors while she decided which answer would best serve her purpose, which answer would make me come to Bannion’s willingly, without the men who were following having to grab me.

  “No, Johnny won’t hurt me.” She waited for my reaction, then she laughed. “You can’t decide if I’m telling the truth or not. It wouldn’t matter how I answered. How do you get out of bed in the morning? You can’t trust anyone.”

  “Can I trust you?”

  “Don’t you think I know what that feels like? Don’t you think I had to spend my life wondering about everyone? Every moment? Who the liars are? But I figured out how to handle it.”

  Instead of dwelling in doubt, she had resorted to pulling down the veil, and that had the effect of making most people give more, pushing for a reaction, a confirmation, even a refutation, until, finally, they gave too much. Her eruption of honesty seemed to fill the drab brown desert with colors.

  “You think that if you question everything I say, you’ll find the real me, the one you can understand and trust, but the result is just a muddier picture.” She smiled, emphasizing the challenge. She was more beautiful in that moment of pugnaciousness than ever before. She laughed again. “The truth is as good as a lie in dealing with you.”

  I wanted to tell her we were talking about faith, not trust. But I remembered Dan’s True Believer rule: Never allow them to draw you into a conversation about their faith unless you are prepared to let them think they have converted you. No argument can ever defeat faith. I said, “We’re back to the night we met. You want me to help your father.”

  Her shoulders dropped and her head tilted with relief. She had moved me back to the holy quest. Victory. The veil descended. “I don’t know what Johnny has planned or why he wants to meet you. I only know that I’ll fee
l better if you’re there.”

  She made a U-turn. All the way to Bannion’s I tried to reassure myself that I was going there for my purposes, not Maya’s. I had loaded up five cylinders for Russian roulette with chivalry, gallantry, righteousness, sincerity and plain old lust. One was going to kill me soon enough if I didn’t stop playing. I spent the ride back wondering which would hurt the most.

  Dan spoke up on that subject. “You know the answer.”

  “I don’t want the answer.”

  “The only one you’re not faking.”

  ______

  A new white van idled in the middle of the courtyard, which was lit like a landing zone. Maya pulled past the gates, which bore a sign reading DS SECURITY SERVICES, and maneuvered around the van. A video cameraman waited for a pretty redheaded woman to fix her hair, near the side door to the office building. A harried man in his forties brought her a scarf and helped arrange it over her hair. He was her producer. She scrutinized the mirror, flicked a few hairs across her forehead, handed over the mirror, and pointed to the cameraman. The soundman nodded to him and he said, “Ready.”

  “Though this northern section of Iraq is peaceful, we have been advised that the prudent approach is to hire a security escort as we tour the outer-lying cities and towns. Ah, here they are now. . . .”

  Four security men marched out of the office, all of them dressed in khakis and black jackets with DS embroidered on the chest. The first three men lined up behind the woman. She put out her arm to invite the last man to join her.

  “This is Mike Jensen, who will be leading us as we search for the best authentic, indigenous cuisine and boutique inns of Kurdistan. It looks like I’m the luckiest woman in the entire region. Certainly the safest. Well, the van is loaded and waiting, so, Mike, are we good to go?”

  “We’re good to go, Zooey,” Mike said. It was clear he had rehearsed.

  The producer yelled, “Great.” Zooey removed her scarf and rushed the cameraman.

  “Let me see how it looked.”