Holding the Zero

by Gerald Seymour

  If he were believed his flight would be forgiven. If he were not, he would be shot as a deserter.

  Across an endless wilderness of rock plains and marshes, up escarpment cliffs, down into gullies with swollen streams, he had led his men to safety. As the sun fell, he had reached the village and the company-sized unit of mechanized infantry.

  He sat in the corridor outside the captain’s room in the biggest house in the village that was classified by the regime as a Victory City. The cries of his two wounded men echoed down the corridor. He sat on the floor with his hands clasped on his head. If his hands moved the guard kicked him. He recited in his mind, over and over, the story he had told the captain.

  ‘I often said to him that he should always use the cover of the communications trenches. I do not wish to speak ill of a martyred hero but he did not listen. Major Aziz of the Baghdad Military College can confirm that I attended his course two years ago. He taught us about the sniper. It was what he called “crack and thump”. You hear the crack beside you, then you hear the thump from the firing position. If the crack and the thump are together then the sniper is close. The major said that you would know how far away the sniper was by the time between the crack and the thump. It was between one and two seconds – so I think that is about seven hundred metres. We all fired but none of us, even with a good Dragunov, could hit the targets at that range. Only he, and he is the best, was accurate. It was a very expert sniper that killed the lieutenant. We are forbidden to use the radio, but it was impossible anyway to reach it because there was heavy machine-gun fire at the approach trench to that bunker. We had wounded, we were about to be overrun.

  There were many scores of saboteurs attacking us. I have many times served my country in northern Iraq, but I never heard of a “primitive” who could shoot so straight at seven hundred metres with a rifle. It was my duty to report it.’

  If they did not believe him he would be kicked again, hit around the head with a rifle butt, taken out of the building, stood against the wall and shot. It was the truth: in all the years he had fought in the north he had never confronted a ‘primitive’, a tribesman, who could shoot with accuracy at such a distance. He could hear the low voices behind the door as the captain and his two lieutenants discussed what he had told them. He had not mentioned that a woman led the final charge towards the bunkers because that would not have been believed.

  The door swung open.

  The captain stood over him, took the final breath from a cigarette, then ground it out against the corporal’s forehead. He screamed. He heard the rasping voice denounce him as a coward, as a disgrace to his unit. The kicks came fast and hard into his body. He had betrayed the sacred trust of the Iraqi army. The rifle butt crashed down on to the hands that protected his scalp. And then he smelled the stale old stench of the animals.

  The goatherd had been brought into the corridor by two soldiers. His arms were held tight.

  The corporal believed that his ribs were broken and he felt the blood on his face. He listened to what the goatherd told the captain, and it was a second thread on which his life rested.

  ‘It was a long shot that killed my friend who was a true and loyal servant of the Iraqi army, and the same long shot this morning took the honoured life of the officer. I saw the man who fires the long shots. Yesterday afternoon, before he went to walk in the night towards the place where he shot the officer, he sat outside my friend’s house. He has a big rifle, the devil’s rifle, bigger than I have and you have. I do not think he is a peshmerga. He wore clothes that also I have never seen before. It is only when he moves that you see him. If he does not move then he is like a rock or a pile of earth. I have never seen a man like this devil before.’

  The corporal reached forward and took the ankle of the goatherd and held it tight, as if to thank him for the saving of his life.

  He crawled to his feet and he was not kicked, not hit. He heard the captain inside his room shouting on the radio.

  He whispered to the goatherd, ‘You did not tell them about the woman …’

  ‘I told them what would be believed.’

  It was his birthday, and he had forgotten it.

  When he had woken that morning, after three hours’ sleep, the children had been round the bed and had shaken him so that he could open the presents they had brought him. His elder son had given him a pen of sterling silver, and he had unwrapped the white shirt offered by his younger son. His wife’s present was a narrow gold ring that fitted easily onto the little finger of his right hand. He had kissed each of them, and thanked them hoarsely.

  Major Karim Aziz had gone to work in his office at the Baghdad Military College, and in the afternoon he had locked his door, pulled down the blinds, put his feet on the desk and slept for two and a quarter precious hours. As he slept, the fingers of his left hand clutched the gold ring. Before drifting off, he had thought that it was as though Leila sought to bring him back to her, to wrestle him from the grasp of devils. It had been a good, deep sleep, free of dreams and nightmares.

  He had returned home refreshed for the family meal in celebration of his forty-fifth birthday. The children had changed from their school uniforms to their best clothes, his wife wore a fine blouse of Indian silk, her father was in his favourite suit and her mother in the dress she took out of the cupboard only on special occasions. At another time, on another day, he would have criticized his wife for the extravagance of the presents and the cost of the food she served, and there was a bottle of Lebanese wine that had been imported across the Jordanian border. But the wine poured for him stayed in his glass, because he did not dare to cloud his mind. He picked at the rice and cubes of curried beef and ate little, because he didn’t dare to fill his stomach with food. What hurt most, they all tried so hard to make it a happy day for him … and he could tell them nothing.

  He resented what they had spent on him. Only at work, only at the Baghdad Military College, was his life not subject to the sapping frustration caused by the shortages. An American had said that Iraq would be bombed back to the Stone Age of history.

  And what else was there to talk about around the table? Any conversation inevitably entailed more discussion of the shortages, whether in the street markets, at school or the children’s hospital. He ate little and drank nothing, and the silences around the table grew longer.

  The telephone rang. Wafiq ran to answer it, hurrying to escape the quiet of the celebration.

  A year after his marriage he had been posted to the Soviet Union for six months to learn infantry tactics. He had written to his wife twice every week while he was away, and babbled conversation to her of what he had seen for days after his return. Two years later he had been in Lebanon’s Beka’a Valley teaching those tactics to militiamen, and he had told her everything when he had come home. On leave from the battle fronts of Khorramshahr and Susangerd, he had written home of the war with Iran – careful letters that would not offend the censors – and he had talked to her on leave, walking on the esplanades beside the Tigris river where he would not be heard, of the horror of the street fighting. He had held back nothing of his times in Kirkūk and Mosul and Arbīl in the north. Everything he had seen in Kuwait City, at the start and at the end, when he had fled from the advance of the American tanks on the charnel-house road through the Mutla Pass, he had shared with her, because he loved her. Now, he had nothing to talk of, and he pecked at his food, and her eyes never left the ring she had given him.

  The boy came back, said the call was for him.

  He pushed aside his plate, scraped back his chair, and went into the hallway. He lifted the telephone and gave his name.

  The call was from a duty officer at the al-Rashid camp of the Military Intelligence, the Estikhabarat. He was ordered to attend the al-Rashid camp at nine o’clock the following morning. The call was terminated.

  He rocked on his feet. It was a familiar pattern, known about by every officer of his rank and experience but never talked of. The Estikha
barat always summoned a suspect to the al-Rashid barracks, but watched his home through the night to see if he fled, and to block him if he did. He knew of such calls, and of the desks cleared the following day by strangers, then occupied by new men, and of the officers who were never seen again after they had travelled to the al-Rashid complex.

  Major Karim Aziz breathed hard, and the sweat ran on his stomach and down the small of his back.

  Around the table, beyond his sight and reach, his family – everyone he loved – was waiting for his return and wondering why he was so troubled.

  He went into the bedroom, took his heavy coat from the hook on the door, and knelt to pull the sports bag out from under the bed. From the small cupboard beside the bed, always locked and closed from the sight of his wife and his sons, he took a Makharov automatic pistol and a single hand grenade. It was possible, with planning, for a general to cross the frontier if he used his authority, or his relatives, or a dignitary, but for a major at the Baghdad Military College, with his family, it would be a journey of exceptional difficulty. He put the hand grenade under his shirt, tightened his belt so that it could not slip down, and reassured himself that his fingers could feel the loop of the pin.

  He went back into the dining room. The table had been cleared. Leila was coming out of the kitchen with the cake her mother had made that day. It was iced, decorated, it would be sugary sweet, the cake he liked best. He kissed Wafiq, and the boy stared down at his table place; then he kissed Hani and the tears ran on the child’s cheeks; then his wife; then her mother and father.

  He could tell them nothing.

  All of them, the officers who went under orders to the al-Rashid camp, believed in the faint hope of survival, went with the hesitant innocence of lambs herded to the butcher’s knife, deluding themselves that the anxiety was unfounded.

  He stood in the kitchen doorway, holding the sports bag, and faced them. Behind him was the hallway, the front door, the concrete pad where the car was parked, the shadows of the poorly lit street. If the anxiety was well founded, the agents of the Estikhabarat would already be in those shadows, watching his house. Sometimes the bodies were brought back, if their families paid a few dinars for the bullets that had been used.

  He turned away from them, switched off the kitchen light, then went out through the back door. He slipped past the new building where her parents slept, and scrambled over the wall at the end of the yard.

  He would spend one more night beside the water tank on the flat roof. And, if they were waiting for him, if they were there to take him, he would pull the pin from the RG-42 high-explosive fragmentation grenade. Major Karim Aziz knew of no other road he should follow.

  He thought it was his duty, in the name of Arab nationalism, socialistic modernism and his country, to go to the roof and pray that all was not known and that the bastard would step into the handkerchief of light on the driveway. He wondered if, without him, they would eat the cake … He walked briskly. Alone, without the responsibility of his family, he could again cloak himself with the assurance, confidence, self-esteem that marked him down as a master of the military science of sniping. It was why he had been recruited.

  AUGUSTUS HENDERSON PEAKE.

  Profile of subject compiled by K Willet (capt.), seconded MoD to Security Services.

  Role of K Willet (capt.): In liaison with Ms Carol Manning (Security Service), to assess AHP’s capability as a marksman, and the effect of his presence in northern Iraq on military/political situation in that region.

  AHP is British national, born 25–10–1965. Resident at 14D, Longfellow Drive, Guildford, Surrey.

  Background: AHP’s presence in northern Iraq

  witnessed by Benedict Curtis (Regional Director of

  Protect the Children registered charity) on 14 April.

  AHP seen wearing combat sniper’s camouflage kit,

  with unidentified sniper rifle. No known past or

  present links with Ministry of Defence or other

  government agencies.

  1. Conclusions after search of AHP’s home (see

  above). Subject is a competition marksman of the

  highest quality using a vintage weapon (Lee Enfield

  No. 4). From his undemonstrative lifestyle, I would

  consider him to be of placid temperament and not

  subject to personal conceit; necessary characteristics

  of a champion target shooter. I found, however, no

  signs of his having made a study of military sniping –

  no books, magazines etc. – and no evidence of any

  interest in that area. Also, there were no indications

  as to the motivation of AHP in going to northern Iraq.

  At first sight, he presents the picture of an eccentric

  enigma.

  SUMMARY: Without strong motivation, military

  background, and a hunter’s mindset, I would rate his

  chances of medium-term survival as extremely slim.

  (To be continued.)

  Willet shut down his computer. Had he sold the man short? Without motivation, the background, and the necessary mindset, Gus Peake was as naked as the day he was born.

  What a bloody fool …

  ‘So serious, so heavy …’ The twinkle was in her eyes, as if she mocked him.

  Gus had watched her approach. She had moved quietly and effortlessly over the rocks towards him. He had lit a small fire that was deep down and sheltered by the crag stones.

  He was wrapped in a blanket. A half-moon was up. She had come amongst her men: some reached up to touch her hand, some brushed their fingers against the heavy material of her trousers, and he’d heard her gentle words of encouragement. Haquim followed her, then the boy.

  ‘Maybe tired.’

  She sat close to him. She had no blanket but she did not shiver. ‘I do not think so, I think angry.’

  ‘Maybe angry.’

  ‘It is the start of a journey – why angry?’

  ‘In fact, it’s the end of a day … and I think you’re probably the reason for my anger.’

  ‘Me?’ She pouted as if he amused her. ‘Why?’

  ‘It was just indulgence. You stood on the bunker, you waved your arms around like a kid on a football pitch. Anyone within half a mile could have shot you.’

  Haquim hovered behind her, and the boy. She waved them back as a parent would have dismissed children. ‘Were you frightened for me? It is because I lead that I have the strength to make men follow me.’

  ‘In the American Civil War, at the Battle of Spotsylvania, the last words spoken by General John Sedgwick were, “What, what, men, dodging? I am ashamed of you. They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance.” He didn’t say any more, he was dead. Someone shot him.’

  ‘Who else can make the men follow them? Haquim? I do not think so … Agha Bekir, agha Ibrahim. They won’t lead. I lead. Because I am at the front, not frightened, I will lead all the way to the flame of Baba Gurgur that burns over Kirkūk. The simple people pray to the flame as if it were God, and I will lead them there. Kirkūk is the goal. If we must die, then we must die for Kirkūk. We will sacrifice everything that we have –everything, our lives, our homes, our loved ones – for Kirkūk. It is only I who can take the people there. Do you believe me?’

  Her eyes never left him. She was, he thought, neither beautiful nor pretty. There was a strange simplicity about her. He would have been hard put to describe it to a man who had never seen her. Her nose was too prominent, her mouth too wide. She had high, pronounced cheekbones, and a jaw that showed nothing of compromise. To a man who had never met her, he would have talked of her eyes. They were big, open, and at the heart of them were the circles of soft brown. With her eyes, he thought, she could win a man or destroy him. He had seen the way the peshmerga clustered around her to win a single short spasm of approval from her eyes, which never wavered, stared into his. Gus looked down and tried to snatch a tone of bitterness.

 
; ‘I have to believe you, I have no choice – but the “simple people” won’t get to see their flame if you are shot, prancing on a bunker.’

  ‘Is that the limit of your anger?’

  ‘You’ve been ignoring me …’

  ‘Oh, a criticism because I have forgotten my social manners. That is a very serious mistake. My grandfather tells me that the Iraqi Arabs in Baghdad used to say that all the British taught them was “to walk on the pavements and iron our trousers”, to behave like them and you, Augustus Peake. I apologize for my rudeness. Between my duties of raising and leading an army, I must speak to my newest recruit. Don’t sulk. If I spend time with you, favour you, then the peshmerga believe I bend my knee to a foreigner.

  Because of foreigners, where are we? We are hopeless, lost, destitute. We were abandoned by the foreigners in 1975, in 1991, in 1996 – is that enough for you? You saw in 1991 what was our fate when we trusted the word of foreigners – on the mountain, starved, dying, fighting for food thrown down from the sky, for a few hours you saw it. If you believe you are superior, should have special attention – sheets to sleep on, comfort, food to your liking – go home. Turn round, take your rifle, go back, and read of me when I take my people to Kirkūk. Is there any other cause for anger?’

  She lectured him gently, tauntingly, but with a soft sweetness at her mouth. It was as if she manipulated him, and dragged the irritation from him.

  Gus said, surly, ‘You treat Haquim badly. He’s a good man.’

  ‘He is old.’ She shrugged. ‘Has he shown you his wound? The wound took the fire from him. He is a good man at arranging for the supplies of food for the men, and the ammunition they will use, and he knows the best place to site a machine-gun. Without the fire the simple people will not follow him. Always he is cautious, always he wants to hold back. He will never take us to Kirkūk. I will. Is there more, Gus?’

  He would have said that he loathed arrogance above everything – a man with arrogance could not shoot. Sometimes at work it was necessary for him to deal with arrogant men and afterwards, in the privacy of his car or the quiet of the small office, he despised them. If written down, her words would have reeked of arrogance, and yet …