by Tim Ayliffe
‘You see? System works!’ Mario said. ‘I keep tapes for one month, then record over them again. We want camera nine from exactly one week ago, no?’
‘That’s right.’ Dexter seemed relieved that Mario could make sense of the chaos in his office.
He moved another box on his desk to clear a space in front of an old television with a built-in tape deck. Next, he used his hand to sweep the thick layer of dust from the screen.
Mario held up a tape with the word ‘sixteen’ scribbled in thick black writing on the label. ‘Sixteen?’
‘Sixteenth of the month,’ Dexter said. ‘Good system.’
‘Here we go!’ He inserted the tape and the machine flickered to life.
Mario handed Dexter the remote control. ‘You do it.’
Bailey watched as Dexter spooled the recording, the numbers ticking over in the corner of the screen. Mario was right – even at high speed they could see that no one used the fire exit. Dexter hit play when they were close to eleven o’clock.
‘What’s on the other side of that door?’ Bailey said.
‘Not much – a pathway alongside the building. No one uses it.’
The little time code at the top of the screen showed two minutes past eleven when a sturdy figure wearing a large coat and a baseball cap appeared in the foyer. From this angle they could clearly see the top of his head, not much else, and his body was side on. He turned around and took a step towards the main entrance, all the while keeping his head down.
‘We’re not going to see his face.’ The pessimist in Bailey called it early.
‘C’mon, c’mon, c’mon.’ Dexter was talking to the screen. ‘Look up, damn it. Look up!’
Having surveyed the area around him, the man walked towards the camera and the fire exit, without once raising his head. The recording only captured a clear image of a baseball cap with the insignia of the New York Yankees. They couldn’t even make out the colour of his jacket because the pictures were in black and white. He walked directly underneath the camera and disappeared.
‘So, he comes into the foyer through the main entrance and then leaves through the fire exit?’ Bailey said.
‘Wait!’ Dexter said. The clock on the screen showed that it had been approximately three minutes since the man first appeared. ‘The black hole lasted for fifteen minutes.’
Bailey kept his eyes on the screen.
After a few more minutes, the man reappeared, unsteady on his feet, like he’d been pushed backwards by something. Or someone.
‘That door is a bit hard to get open,’ Mario said. ‘It needs a bit of muscle.’
Bailey and Dexter were glued to the screen.
The man in the cap was trying to regain his balance when a second person stepped into the frame. The man grabbed the new guy by the jacket, trying to steady himself. The force of the action spun both men around and the camera caught the sides of their faces. Dexter hit the pause button.
The room fell silent as everyone took a moment to process what they were looking at.
‘Holy shit!’ She grabbed Bailey’s arm. ‘It’s Davis! And –’
‘He’s just let Victor Ho in the building.’
‘No wonder he was pressuring me to let this thing go.’
‘I’d say that there is a pretty good reason.’
Dexter stood up and pointed at the screen. ‘I want to see what’s on the other side of that door.’
‘Let’s go.’
‘Give me a minute.’ Dexter turned to Mario. ‘I’m taking it there are no other copies of this?’
‘These tapes are an expensive business,’ Mario said.
‘Meet you down there.’ Bailey walked out the door.
Bailey pushed down hard on the long metal beam that stretched across the fire exit door, kicking the bottom of the wood that had swelled with the humidity. He couldn’t get it open. By the time Dexter joined him he was ramming the door with his shoulder.
‘You need a little more muscle there?’
‘Damn thing won’t budge!’
‘That’s because you need to push down and pull.’ She was trying not to smile. ‘It’s an old fire door – opens inwards rather than out.’
‘Now you’re an expert on doors?’ Bailey bashed the door again with his shoulder.
‘No, really. Give me a go.’ She nudged him out of the way and followed her own instructions. After a stern pull, it opened.
‘Lucky guess.’
‘God, you’re stubborn.’
Bailey stepped out onto a narrow dirt pathway covered in leaves and branches. ‘Some fire escape. Wouldn’t want to be in a hurry to –’
Bailey heard Dexter gasp behind him. He turned around to see a gloved hand covering her mouth, a flash of electricity slam into her neck and Dexter slump to the ground.
He lunged at her attacker, only to be clobbered in the head by something hard, then he too hit the deck.
Reeling from the crack on his head, Bailey tried to grab his assailant’s leg, but was pushed back. A foot stamped heavily on his chest, knocking the oxygen from his lungs and paralysing his torso on the ground. His already damaged rib cage sent a piercing pain through his body.
It was almost pitch black, with the thick canopy of trees hiding the moon and the stars. All Bailey could see was a pair of white eyes staring at him through a black mask.
Then a flash from the taser as it discharged fifty thousand volts into his neck.
CHAPTER 31
Baghdad, January 2005
Someone ripped the blindfold off his head and untied the rope that had been binding his hands tightly behind his back.
‘Sit.’
A hand landed on Bailey’s shoulder, pulling him backwards until he fell unsteadily into a chair.
‘How do you feel?’
He rubbed his eyes, trying to focus on the man sitting opposite, get a handle on where they had brought him.
‘Where am I?’
‘Baghdad.’
They were in a large room, surrounded by empty tables and chairs. It looked like some sort of restaurant.
‘How long have I been here?’
‘Here in Baghdad? Or as our special guest?’
Bailey recognised the posh accent. It belonged to the violent bastard from the cave.
‘An answer to both would be good.’ The shackles might have been off, but he needed to keep his head. ‘If you wouldn’t mind.’
The man was staring at Bailey like they were old friends.
‘Well, Mr Bailey, I think you could guess from your long drive here that you have only been in Baghdad for a few days. But it has been ten months since my men first met you in Fallujah.’ He pointed to the small huddle of men sitting near them.
Bailey wanted to punch him in the face. ‘You mean slammed a rifle butt into my head and kidnapped me.’
The man shifted in his chair and rested his elbows on the table between them.
‘There wasn’t much we could do about that, I’m afraid. I do regret some of the other acts of violence. My men can get carried away when they meet someone from the occupying nations.’
Bailey looked down at his two bent fingers, the red flesh where three of his fingernails used to be. ‘As I keep saying, I’m a journalist.’
His captor leaned forward, closer to Bailey. ‘And that is exactly why we are sitting here in this café together.’
‘Is that where we are, a café? It’s hard to know when you arrive blindfolded.’ If Bailey was going to die, he didn’t want the final scene of his life to be one where he broke bread with a murderer.
‘This is a public place and you are close to your freedom.’
Freedom.
After ten months in captivity, Bailey didn’t know what to believe.
‘Bullshit.’
It was just another trick, another torture technique, to punish an invading kaffir.
‘My name is Mustafa al-Baghdadi and you, John Bailey, are going to tell my story.’
‘What?’
Bailey wanted to believe him, but it didn’t make sense.
Mustafa slid a pen and notebook across the table. ‘Pick it up.’
‘I don’t have much choice here, do I?’ He stared at the pen, a remnant from his stolen life.
‘I was hoping that you would see this more as an opportunity, considering what has happened to so many of your allies in uniform.’
That was Mustafa’s way of saying – live or die. If it was the price of freedom, Bailey would do it. They were just words.
Bailey began with his name. ‘Mustafa, the chosen one, from Baghdad?’
Mustafa didn’t seem surprised by Bailey’s understanding of Arabic. ‘These are names given to me by others.’
Olives, bread and tea were placed on the table by a woman wearing a niqab.
Bailey didn’t snatch at the food like he’d done during the days, not long ago, when he’d felt close to starvation. Since arriving in Baghdad, he’d been given regular meals, showers, clean clothes, even a mattress to sleep on. Still, he wasn’t going to turn down fresh food. He quietly munched on a piece of bread while listening to Mustafa.
‘I was born and raised in the suburb of al-A’miriyah which, as you probably know, being a learned man, is an affluent Sunni neighbourhood.
‘My father was an influential man, a holy man, who knew Saddam but was never his friend. When the United States drove the National Guard back across the Kuwaiti border, we all sat here and waited for the international community to do more. Saddam was a bad man. Leaving him in power hurt us all.’
‘So, you wanted regime change back in ’91?’ Bailey, the journalist, was re-emerging.
‘Many promises were made to Sunni leaders, like my father, here in Baghdad. Promises that were made by the CIA. Promises that Saddam found out about, that he used to purge his enemies, even those who were not.’
‘Like your father?’
Mustafa had vengeful eyes. ‘Like my father, my mother and my three older brothers.’
‘Killed by Saddam?’
‘One night they came for all of us. I was a young boy, I had my hiding places. I was the coward who watched them all get dragged away.’
Mustafa picked an olive from the bowl, turned it in his fingers and put it in his mouth.
‘I never saw them again,’ he said. ‘Kill the father and the sons must go too. Saddam’s paranoia – you must always eliminate the threat of revenge.’
Mustafa clicked his fingers and gestured for the woman to return to pour the tea.
Bailey watched the brown liquid flow from the pot into their cups. It reminded him of the water that spilled into his mouth and nose when that filthy rag was stuck to his face. Simulated drowning, or waterboarding. A torture technique sanctioned by the White House and enthusiastically copied by its enemies.
Bailey looked up and caught one of Mustafa’s guards staring at him, smirking, reading his mind. He shuddered at the sound of the tea catching in the cup. The man’s smirk became a smile, and Bailey saw he was missing half his front teeth. Bailey remembered – he was the bastard who had poured the bucket on him when he was lying on his back, strapped to a table, head dangling over the end, shaking violently with each splash of water.
He had lost count of the number of times they slapped that wet rag on his face. It was the most terrifying thing they did to him. Worse than the pliers that ripped out his fingernails, the hammer blows to his fingers, the cigarettes butted on his back. Nothing compared to being pushed to the brink of drowning over and over and over again.
Waterboarding was supposed to be about extracting information, only nobody asked Bailey a question. Not one.
The woman finished pouring the tea without saying a word.
Mustafa watched her walk away before resuming his story. ‘I went to London to live with a wealthy uncle who’d escaped Saddam’s purges. He sent me to good schools, university too.’
Bailey looked away from the guy with the bad teeth in the corner and scribbled notes on the paper in front of him. The skin where his fingernails used to be was still raw and it was painful to write.
‘Sounds like a good life, a lot to give up.’ Bailey could see that Mustafa hadn’t always been an Islamic extremist. He wanted to know how he got here.
‘September 11 changed everything – not just for me, for all Muslims,’ Mustafa said. ‘Suddenly, we’re all terrorists! Even those who had embraced another culture and – Allah forgive me – turned their back on Islam.’
‘In favour of a western life of sin?’ Bailey challenged him. ‘I’ve heard these arguments.’
‘Mr Bailey, don’t test my patience. Remember, you are my guest.’
Bailey flipped a page on the notepad and grabbed himself an olive. ‘Go on, then.’
‘When the United States and its war on terror extended to Iraq, I watched on television as the bodies of my countrymen were sacrificed for a freedom that would never come. My country is a complicated one – only Islam can make sense of it.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I found sanctuary in returning to the mosque. In Finsbury Park, I found guidance from wiser men who reconnected me with the struggle, our holy war.’
Bailey knew all about the North London mosque. It was a place where young British men had been radicalised and recruited to fight for Al Qaeda. Richard Reid, the petty criminal who tried to blow up an American Airlines plane with bombs packed in his shoes, was one of them.
‘Months after the Americans tore down Saddam’s statue in Baghdad, I returned home.’
‘And changed your name to the chosen one from Baghdad?’
‘As I said, it was others who gave me these names.’
Bailey moved on, wanting to understand how monsters were made. ‘What did you do?’
‘I’m a doctor. Did I not mention?’
‘A doctor?’
‘These were my studies and the skills I brought back with me. At first, I helped in hospitals but soon my focus shifted to the brave martyrs who were fighting against both the Shias, who were being armed by Iran, and the stupid Americans who, by then, were firing their weapons at anyone.’
‘Doctor turned jihadist?’ Bailey said aloud the words he was scribbling on the notepad.
‘If you had witnessed the slaughter of the innocents, like I have, then you, too, would look for another way.’
Bailey had seen it. He’d spent more than fifteen years seeing it. He didn’t like the comparison. ‘This isn’t about me.’
‘Collateral damage – the words of the occupiers,’ Mustafa said. ‘In any other place, you’d call it murder.’
‘Your bombs kill civilians too.’
‘The struggle has its price.’
‘And you think the people of Iraq agree with you?’
‘I have many followers, Mr Bailey,’ Mustafa said. ‘None have I asked to follow me.’
They were distracted by a commotion at the entrance of the café. Mustafa looked over at his men by the door and waved his hand to invite the new arrivals to join them.
Bailey’s pen dropped to the floor.
Ronnie Johnson was walking across the room with two Iraqis Bailey didn’t recognise. He was carrying a small leather sports bag, which he dumped on the table in front of Mustafa.
‘It’s all there.’ Ronnie didn’t even look at Bailey. ‘I’m taking him, Mustafa – now.’
‘Mr Johnson, I was hoping you might join us for a cup of tea?’
Bailey stared at his old friend, waiting for some type of recognition. He had been in captivity for ten months and, sensing his freedom, could feel the emotion building inside.
‘Get up, Bailey.’ Ronnie still didn’t look at him.
Bailey pushed back his chair and did as he was told.
‘Please.’ Mustafa tried to intervene. ‘Sit back down. We’re not finished –’
‘Yeah, you are.’
Ronnie walked around the table and grabbed Bailey by the arm with his big right hand. ‘We’re going, bubba.’
Bubba.
Finally, a word that connected Bailey to a world he thought he would never see again.
Two of Mustafa’s men stepped towards the table, blocking their way out.
‘We’re leaving.’ Ronnie pulled a grenade out of his pocket, dangling it by the pin. ‘Before this gets messy.’
‘Don’t forget my story, John Bailey. It will be worth telling someday. Maybe it’ll be part of your story?’
Mustafa unzipped the bag. Inside Bailey could see thick wads of American bank bills – Benjamin Franklins, all of them.
‘You can count it later,’ Ronnie said.
Mustafa motioned for his men to step out of the way.
Bailey was trying to calculate the cash in his head. It was a lot. ‘What the fuck is that?’
Ronnie put the grenade back in his pocket and nudged Bailey to get him walking. ‘Don’t turn around.’ With a firm grip on Bailey’s bony arm, he led him to the door and outside.
Blinded by sunlight and the sudden realisation that it was over, Bailey tripped and fell on the dirt.
‘We need to get out of here, bubba. It’s a dangerous neighbourhood.’
Bailey put his hand in the dirt to balance himself, but Ronnie still had hold of his arm and steadied him to his feet.
‘I’m sorry. I just . . . I just –’
‘Later, bubba,’ Ronnie said. ‘Plenty of time for that. Right now, we need to go.’
They piled into an old hatchback. Ronnie and Bailey ducked their heads between their knees in the rear passenger seat.
Their driver carefully steered the car through the outer suburbs of Baghdad, trying not to arouse suspicion. The warring militia groups had people everywhere.
Ten minutes elapsed before it was safe for Ronnie and Bailey to sit up.
‘Mustafa al-Baghdadi,’ Bailey said. ‘Who’s he to you?’
‘If we’re ever going to end this fucking war, these are the people we need to deal with.’
‘Nobody won today.’
Bailey thought about the cash and wanted to throw up.
‘It’s not about winning any more, bubba. At least you’re alive.’
