“It won’t cost a lot, Sam. Something small. It’s not like a real bribe. I’ll take care of it. If anyone finds out, you can blame it on me and say you didn’t know.”
She looks at me sympathetically. “That’s not the point. It’s just not a good idea to get people used to that sort of thing. You know, you end up encouraging these people and raising their expectations so that every time they do something, they expect some kind of kickback, a little baksheesh.”
Sam speaks like a parent who thinks she can prevent her child from getting accustomed to eating sweets. Maybe she can’t help it: it’s how America as a whole looks at us. Us in Iraq, us in the Middle East, us in the Muslim world. They know what’s good for us, what mix of dictatorship and democracy is acceptable, how many weapons we are allowed to have. What is that word? Patronizing? No...Paternalistic.
I’m tempted to remind her that the favour we’re asking involves them lying for her, but it hardly seems to matter now, since I’m the one who made up the lie.
“Also, there’s more than that,” I explain. “This guy, Mustapha, he is also going to want to be paid. And I don’t think we will have a choice in that either, because it will be work for him to get us the answers we need.”
Sam tilts her head. “Did you promise this guy you’d pay him?”
“No, of course not.” Negotiable. How could Sam understand? “But it was very much implied.”
“And do you trust this guy? Do you think he’s really going to be able to get us definite answers?”
“I went to university with him.”
“Oh! So you know him.”
“Not really.”
“So let me get this straight. This guy you sort of know from college, your cousin sent you to him. He wants to see the documents and he wants to be paid if he can find out for us where the documents come from, who ordered them made, and whether they made other documents that might be even sexier.”
“More or less.”
Sam rakes her hair around the crown of her head, then unclasps the barrette holding it neatly in place. She shakes the locks out, massaging her scalp as if tying back her hair that way makes her head ache.
“Sam, I found out today that one of the other fixers was killed. Taher, for Sky News.”
“Who?”
“This nice young guy named Taher. Handsome-looking? He was often sitting around by the windows in the first tower lobby when we come in. The American army shot him and four others in a car at a checkpoint for no reason. Or they say because the car didn’t stop.”
Sam shakes her head. “That’s awful. Jeez. Why the hell didn’t the driver stop?”
Why the hell did they shoot? Why doesn’t Sam ask that? Maybe the car was rushing for good reason. I feel a frustration banging in my chest. She doesn’t really seem upset about Taher, doesn’t realize that an innocent guy, someone just like me, is gone.
And Louis’s friend, who was killed last week? Did I feel anything when Louis mentioned him? Some sympathy for Louis, perhaps, but behind it, a malicious voice is keeping score: a lot more of ours have been killed than yours. And you bloody well started it.
We round the corner towards the Hamra car park. Sam gazes down the street in the direction of the Sumerland, where she occasionally meets her friends for dinner, and the Duleimy Hotel, which is reputed to have been a hotel for prostitutes. Now, young freelance reporters on tight budgets stay there.
“Let’s go up and talk through things. And maybe eat,” she says, putting a hand to her belly. “This is too much running around on an empty stomach.”
“I think I should go and talk to someone at the Sumerland first. How about you wait here in the car for a few minutes.”
“Fine,” Sam says. She goes into her wallet and takes out two fifty-dollar bills, handing them to me. “You shouldn’t have to pay for your bribes out-of-pocket.”
“No,” I hold up my hand towards hers. “I don’t need it.”
“Take it, Nabil. I’m not going to let you pay for it.”
I shake my head, pushing her hand back towards her bag. “Not now,” I say. “You’ll pay me back some other time. I’m counting on it.”
~ * ~
41
Counting
As I walk into the Sumerland Hotel, I try to suppress the guilty feelings Sam conjured up in me about paying bribes. Some bribes are necessary, no? The only person at the desk is a middle-aged man named Munzer, whom I’ve noticed once before. I’m gonna just give you the headlines, Sam said to me recently, when I asked her for an explanation and she was in a rush. Headlines only.
And so I tell Munzer that I need to protect Sam, that nice foreign lady I work with. The one with the red hair? And he says yes, he’s noticed her. And I say that if anyone asks I need him to pretend that she stays here, because for her own honour, we don’t want certain people to know where she lives — she’s a very important person and we need to keep that information private.
Honour I said, not security, and I think he could understand that, just in the way that some men will never mention their wives’ and daughters’ names in front of people they don’t know well. Women’s names are part of the family’s honour, and why should a stranger have access to information like that?
Munzer understands, I see, and he takes the small stack of dinars as I pass it behind the counter, which probably came out to somewhere around $30. Munzer smiles, and as this is probably a week’s salary for him anyway, I feel like I have a friend for life.
I ask him which room he will pretend she’s in, and he says how about 125, and I say that’s fine, just make sure it stays the same. And he promises to send a message over to Sam’s room at the Hamra if he hears anything, and to be quiet about it. And I tell him he’s been very kind and he nods and reaches behind him and sticks a folded white piece of message paper into the box for 125, taping it in as if conjuring up imaginary guests is something he has been doing forever.
~ * ~
Sam and I agree to send Rizgar off for a lunch break, and to have ours inside. In the lobby, my eyes focus on the chair where Taher used to sit while he was waiting. But Sam keeps heading straight for the courtyard and tower two, and after a moment of contemplating his empty seat, I follow.
In the shaded corner, I can see Joon facing us, chatting and nodding. Across from her is a fellow who screams “American” with his big broad shoulders, and as we move a few steps closer I can see the profile of his face: Franklin Baylor.
Sam strides ahead of me, and pretends to be pleasantly surprised.
“Joon, hi!” Sam says as Baylor rises to greet her by holding out his hand.
“Miss Katchens. Nice to see you again.”
Sam’s mouth is slightly ajar. “Likewise.” On the table, we both notice, is Joon’s recorder and a mini-microphone, though they don’t appear to be turned on.
“You done that electricity story yet?” he asks.
“Not yet,” she says, staring at him and forcing a smile. “I’ve got so many stories on my plate this week.”
I glance at Joon, who has a barely perceptible air of annoyance at our arrival.
“Well, you better step on it or this here Joon Park’s going to do the story first,” he says, sitting himself back down.
Sam smiles at Joon, Joon smiles back. Sam rolls her eyes in a way that almost seems authentic, but not quite. “No problem there,” Sam says. “We’re not competitors, we’re friends.”
Joon nods as if she agrees. And then her Thuraya phone, sitting on the table, begins moving with a buzz, and finally begins to ring. She looks at the number of the incoming call and makes a sour face. “Damn. Washington Q&A at the top of the hour. I have to take this. Frank, would you excuse me for a few minutes?” She avoids Sam’s gaze and brushes past her, heading to the other side of the pool, where there is reception.
Frank gestures to us to take a seat, but Sam remains standing, although moving closer.
“What
are you doing, Frank?” she whispers in a voice that sounds flirty, but also aggressive. “You tipping off every reporter in the Hamra?”
“Easy there. I came here to see you. I tried calling you three times on that Thuraya thing but couldn’t get through. And I was on a little errand in the neighbourhood anyway, so I thought I’d stop in.”
“And how the hell—”
“Don’t forget your friend there was also at that party the other night at the Sheraton, and so she thinks that I’m actually working on electricity. In fact, I’ve spent the last ten minutes explaining what we’re doing to fix it, because apparently everyone and their mother wants to know why Iraqis have been sitting in the dark since we came to town.”
“Oh.” Sam looks over at Joon, who from the way she’s answering questions, loudly and clearly, sounds like she’s being interviewed live.
“Listen,” he says in a low voice. “Chalabi is not responsible for the documents, but someone with a similar mindset is. And the man who made them, is named Ali al-Yaqubi al-Sadr.”
Sam moves to uncap a pen.
“Don’t write. Just listen.” And then to my surprise, he turns to me, and in perfectly accented Arabic, repeats the man’s name and spells it for me, as if to emphasize. Sad-dall-raa.
“Related to Moqtada?” I ask.
“Unclear,” he says. “But not a bad guess. Either way, I don’t suggest you go looking for him further. You’re a reporter, not a police force. You have enough to go on now.”
“Well,” Sam says. “Not exactly—”
“I don’t want to tell you how to do your job, but you’d better watch yourself. Dir Balak,” he says. “Because furthermore—”
Out of the corner of my eye I see Joon heading back in our direction.
“Because furthermore, you have to realize just how much more power we’re going to be able to generate from the South Baghdad Power Plant in Dura. That plant will be generating a thousand megawatts a day when our emergency rehabilitation plan is implemented, starting next week.” Baylor lifts his eyes to acknowledge Joon’s return. “That’s going to have this town buzzing with more power than it ever had under Saddam.”
‘
On the way up to her room, I begin to ask Sam a question, but from behind I see her shaking her head, telling me to wait. She opens the door and her body jerks as if a little current just went through it. There’s a strange man standing at her desk, in front of her computer.
It dawns on me that he must be one of the hotel cleaning staff. He has a rag in one hand and a spraybottle in the other.
“Sorry, madam. Clean your room.” He seems startled as well.
Sam lets out a sigh and unloads her bag. “Thanks, that’s enough,” she says, looking around. “It looks very clean already. Maybe come back tomorrow?”
I start to translate this for him but he seems to get the point before I finish my sentence and moves to leave. I try to explain that she just has a lot of work to do, but he says maku mushkile, maku mushkile. No problem. And walks out, closing the door quietly behind him.
Her eyes grow twice their normal size. “I’m starting to suspect everyone,” she says. “Not a good sign.”
Sam paces a few times, goes to her computer, and taps it awake. She takes the file that’s been sitting under her laptop and opens it, and counts the five pages of photocopies of the Jackson documents.
“I think I’m keeping this with me from now on,” she says, tucking the folder into her day bag. “Some of these hotel guys give me the creeps.”
I take a seat on the sofa. “But don’t you trust your own friends?”
Sam closes her laptop gently. “What? You mean Joon?” Her nostrils flair. “It’s not that I don’t trust her. It’s just that you can’t share every story you’re working on with everybody else. Some things you have to keep quiet. And Jesus, I don’t know what to make of Baylor.”
I shrug. “He seemed to hold up the electricity expert routine.”
“Or not. Maybe he’s fooling both of us. Who knows what he’s up to.” She stands. “Nabil, I’m starving. The Chinese food here is not that bad. Let’s order something now, because by the time it gets here, it’ll probably be dark.”
~ * ~
The knock on the door comes sooner than I would have expected and Sam is up quicker than I am, heading for the door. “That was fast,” she says. “Room service is really improving around here.”
Sam opens the door to find Joon, who doesn’t look happy. But then, I’ve hardly seen her smile.
“Oh, hey,” Sam says. “What’s up?”
“Can I come in?” Joon asks as if it’s awkward to have to ask.
“Of course,” Sam replies. “But I’m kind of on deadline so I can only talk for a few minutes. You want a quick coffee?”
“No,” says Joon, who continues to stand despite Sam heading towards the sofa. “Look, Sam, I have to be honest with you. I didn’t appreciate the way you acted downstairs.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about. Frank Baylor? Your, um, electricity source?”
Sam shoots her a blank look.
“Look, you want to be all secret and clandestine about your sources, you go ahead. But don’t start acting all pissy and territorial if some of your sources also speak to some of your colleagues. The rest of us have jobs to do, too.”
Sam gets up and goes to the kitchen, taking down the coffee jar from the cabinet. “Joon, I’m going to make myself a coffee. You can have a cup with me, or maybe you want to just have a make-believe cup to save yourself the caffeine. Because you seem to have quite an overactive imagination at the moment.”
“Don’t be ridiculous! I know you’re on that Jackson story, everyone in this hotel knows it. So Baylor’s a source. So what? Maybe he’s a source for me on something else. For your information, I met him before you did. He was in Suleimaniye before Baghdad fell, just before you arrived. And suddenly you’re looking at me like you own the guy.”
Sam slaps a mug on the counter, almost hard enough to break it. “I don’t own anyone. And I don’t owe you anything. Look, if you’re pissed off because I’ve been too busy to hang around in the evenings—”
“I’m pissed off because you’re acting like I’m moving in on your sources.”
“Well maybe you are,” Sam shoots back.
“Yeah? Just like you moved in on my boyfriend.”
“What?”
“Sam, don’t pretend you didn’t know I was with Jonah last year when you guys hooked up in Kabul. And then after all that you dump the guy.”
Sam’s mouth drops wide open. “Dump? Jonah? You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Well, after he was released from Abu Ghraib with his head inside out, you were pretty damn quick to send him back home to England to let someone else deal with him.”
“Just because I wasn’t going home with him, doesn’t mean I dumped him,” Sam says. “The man’s been wanting to get out of journalism for years and this was the final straw. If you guys were so tight you should know that.”
Joon’s eyes are suddenly brimming with tears.
“What do you want me to do,” Sam scowls. “Jump on his funeral pyre?”
Joon’s face is a wall of outrage. “You make me sick. I can’t believe we’re having this conversation in front of your fucking fixer! What are you two, attached at the hip?”
They both glare at me as if I should say something in my defence, or out of offence. I wish I’d excused myself and left the minute Joon walked in. Sam looks as if she might pick up the mug and ram it into Joon’s pale, pretty face.
“I could have asked him to leave if you wanted,” Sam says in quiet, forced calm.
“Yeah, I’m sure you have him trained really well.”
“Get out, Joon. I have nothing else to say to you.”
Joon turns with the grace of an alley cat and grabs the
door, slamming it behind her.
~ * ~
42
Slaming
“I think I’m going up to the roof to have a scream.”
I stare at Sam, wordless.
“But that will probably make the neighbours think someone just got shot. I think I’ll have a smoke instead.” She opens what looks like a biscuit jar on the kitchen counter and takes out a packet that says Marlboro Lights on it, shaking a cigarette into her hand. In one brisk movement, she lights the gas on the stove and makes the tip of the cigarette in her mouth glow orange.
Baghdad Fixer Page 41
