by Paul Torday
‘Do we have anything to do with Green Park, sir?’
‘Yes. Green Park are operating a Temporary Screening Facility. Any prisoners you collect should be handed over to them for questioning before being sent to the interrogation centre at Camp Nama, up by the airport.’
I’d heard of Camp Nama. It was a ‘black’ prison similar to the ones at Bagram or Guantanamo.
‘Anything else I need to know about them?’ I asked.
‘They know the city so they will give you a briefing on arrival. They’ve got a consultant advising them called Mr Harris. He’s also a consultant to Delta Force. One of their jobs is to obtain local intelligence, which they pass on to JSG. This is going to be different to any operation you’ve been on before, Richard.’
‘I’m not sure I understand, sir.’
‘Rules of engagement are different to what you are used to.’
‘In what way, sir?’
In every other place I’d been our rules had been very clear: don’t shoot unless someone is about to shoot you. Sometimes you had to wait until they’d actually tried to kill you before you were allowed to return fire. Sometimes you had to have written clearance in triplicate from some staff officer sitting safely in London before you could even take the safety off your gun.
‘It’s more flexible here, Richard. You can shoot if you perceive a threat.’
‘What does that mean exactly, sir?’
‘It means whatever you want it to mean, Richard. It means use your initiative.’
Our convoy was thundering along Route Irish into the city. I had been expecting the sort of landscape I’d seen on the television reports in 2003: miles of flat, sandy desert, across which the all-conquering armoured columns of the US 3rd Infantry Division had charged. But this was the Tigris valley, where the great wide, mud-coloured river flowed down to its confluence with the Euphrates at Shatt al-Arab, then on to the Persian Gulf. It was much greener than I had expected. Palm trees lined the road, and there were green fields and banks of vegetation. There was also an extraordinary profusion of litter. Piles of refuse lay by the roadside or on patches of bare land, and the smoke of dozens of small fires rose into the sky as half-hearted attempts were made to burn some of the rubbish. The air was full of dust, from traffic or from running repairs going on to damaged buildings or, occasionally, holes in the road. No doubt these had been made by IEDs.
We passed a huge white building. The upper floors were in a state of some disrepair with gaping holes in the masonry. I leaned forward and tapped the American driver on the shoulder.
‘What’s that place?’ I asked him.
‘We call it Camp Prosperity,’ he replied. ‘It used to be the As-Salaam palace, one of Saddam’s. It’s where they store his heads now.’
‘His heads?’
‘Yeah, big stone heads, the ones that were chopped off his statues all around the city.’
This struck me as odd.
‘Why are they keeping them? Do they think they’ll need to put them back on again at some point?’
The driver shook his head.
‘In this place, you never know. Now if you don’t mind, I need to watch the road.’
We were driving in convoy – not too close together, in case of problems – and keeping up the best speed we could in the traffic.
I shut up, and stared out of the window. It was so strange to be in this city, so often talked about, read about, seen on television: an ancient place, the cradle of civilisation. Now it looked remarkably unimpressive – like a shanty town on the outskirts, under a white-hot sky. The signs of war were everywhere: charred vehicles that had not yet been towed away, damaged buildings lining the roadside. The convoy slowed down as we approached the centre of the city and the buildings became larger and the streets a little busier; not too much traffic, apart from the military and police and a few very old cars or pick-ups that had managed to find petrol. On every street corner there were men with guns: Iraqi police and army, US army, private security. Looking up I could see half a dozen helicopters circling overhead. Above the helicopters and out of sight I knew a Nimrod or E-8 Joint Stars surveillance flight would be circling above the city.
We had to pass through several different checkpoints before we could enter the Green Zone, at Checkpoint Twelve, weaving around concrete chicanes and through anti-crash barriers that were raised and lowered to let us through. Finally we turned into a white-walled compound. As we arrived in the central courtyard I saw a man in jeans and an old khaki shirt standing at the top of the steps that led to the main entrance of the building.
‘That’s Mr Harris,’ said my driver, pointing him out. He switched the engine off. ‘He’ll take care of you.’
All of us climbed out of our vehicles and clustered together, waiting for Mr Harris to come down the steps. But he just stood and watched us. Around us other men, all in civilian dress, either Arab or European, moved across the courtyard in one direction or the other. The place smelled of strong coffee, cigarettes, sweat and petrol fumes. Underlying it all was the bitter scent of blood. The roof of the building was a forest of radio antennae and satellite dishes. In another corner of the courtyard were several dusty Toyota pick-up trucks. I saw that one of them had bullet holes stitched along one side, and an Iraqi was sluicing out the tailgate with buckets of water. The sun was well up in the sky and the heat was unbearable. I mopped my brow. Finally Mr Harris came down the steps towards us.
‘Captain Gaunt?’ he asked.
‘I’m Captain Gaunt,’ I replied. ‘Sir.’
‘Green Park is a company, not the army. So I’m Mr Harris.’
He looked as old as Methuselah. His face was deep brown, grizzled with beard, and lined in every way it is possible for a face to be lined, as if it had been etched by sand and cracked by drought. His eyes were pale blue, the whites slightly yellow. His jawline sagged slightly, and there were pouches under his eyes. His mouth was thin, like the slit in a letterbox. It was difficult to tell what age or nationality he was.
‘Get your men inside, Captain Gaunt,’ he told me, jerking his thumb at the dark doorway in which he had been standing a moment ago. ‘We’ll give you your local briefing first, then show you your quarters.’
‘Local briefing?’ I asked.
Mr Harris smiled, revealing firm white teeth. It was not a comforting smile.
‘We’ve been asked to tell you a little about what life is like in this great city.’
Once inside the building we were led to a large cool room in which several rows of chairs had been set out, with a map of Baghdad on the wall. All of us sat down. Then Mr Harris came in and sat in front of us. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, revealing forearms that looked as if they were made from some knotted tropical hardwood. His belly strained at his shirt but he did not look unfit. Patches of sweat stained his shirt under his arms but he did not look hot.
‘You’re here …’ he began, then stopped and said, ‘Fucked if I know why you’re here. Anyone got any ideas?’
‘We were told we were to provide support for a counterinsurgency operation, sir,’ I said, feeling that someone should say something. Then I remembered the injunction against rank. ‘I mean, Mr Harris.’
‘Counter-insurgency? Forget that bullshit. We’re in the real world now. Call them insurgents if you like. We call them criminals and terrorists. The people we are mostly fighting,’ he said, ‘were part of the Iraqi army, only some clever schmuck fired the lot of them, just after the invasion ended, without pay. They took to the streets, of course, so the war goes on, only the enemy isn’t wearing a uniform. That’s the only difference. The war never ended. And right now, we are in real danger of losing it.’
He paused, letting the silence grow, looking at us as if we were children in our first day at infant school. Perhaps that is how we appeared to him.
‘You are here to fight the terrorists,’ said Mr Harris. ‘The Mahdi Army, al-Qaeda, Ansar al-Islam – it doesn’t matter which. When they’re dead they
all look much the same. Your intel will come from the Joint Support Group, and from us here at Green Park. Your orders come from Task Force HQ. I am here to offer advice and support and to teach you the wicked ways of this sinful city.’ It sounded dangerous. Mr Harris hadn’t finished with us yet either.
‘Now, you’re all experienced soldiers. You were in Kosovo, right? Tell me, how do you fight terrorists?’
There was a silence while we all tried to recall our training manuals, but Mr Harris wasn’t really interested in anything we had to say. He curled his hands into two massive fists and smacked them together.
‘You fight them like that,’ he said. ‘You crush them. You fight terror with terror. You make sure these people are so frightened of you that all they want to do is hide under their beds.’
He stood up then. He was an old man: God knows how many wars he had fought in. God knows where he came from – Sergeant Hawkes told me later he thought Mr Harris was Mossad, drafted in by the Americans to give them the benefit of Israeli experience in counter-terrorism. There were some strange people in Baghdad that year. But wherever he came from and whatever he had done, Mr Harris looked as if he knew everything there was to know about terror. He looked as if he had dished it out in his time. He had probably fought in most of the dirty conflicts around the world since the last world war, and we were already more terrified of him than the insurgents who waited for us somewhere outside in the Red Zone.
‘Time to go to work, boys,’ he said. ‘Mr al-Najafi will see you next. He will show you your quarters and give you a geography lesson.’
That was the beginning of the best and worst few months of my life. Whatever I had been expecting from my tour in Baghdad, it was not what happened. That was the last time I felt as if I was alive: really, truly alive.
Five
The next morning, I had difficulty in remembering where I was, or why I was there. Then I remembered: Mr Khan. This was my wedding day.
‘I’m getting married in the morning,’ I hummed to myself, ‘Ding dong, the bells are going to chime,’ trying to brush my teeth at the same time. The result was messy. I finished shaving and then climbed into my smart new wedding clothes, making sure I transferred my belongings into the pockets. Another hour or two and I would be clutching a large cheque, happily married and counting off the hours and days, weeks and months until I could file for divorce.
It had been a diverting interlude. My life had been so deadly boring for such a long time that the last couple of days had been an almost welcome change. If only there was someone I could have shared the joke with: walking to Oxford for a bet, being kidnapped by thugs, then married off to a beautiful girl from Afghanistan. And being well paid for it.
I caught sight of myself in the mirror: a foolish man in a wedding suit with a stupid grin on his face. Suddenly I felt sick. What the hell was I doing? How on earth could I contemplate marrying some wretched girl then simply taking the money and walking off with it in my pocket? Of course I couldn’t share the joke. If I told anyone what I was up to they would look at me in disgust. No wonder I had so few friends left, apart from the card-playing vultures at the Diplomatic.
I was sick. Sick in the head even to be thinking about doing this. I ought to just get up and leave.
That would be difficult, though. After all the trouble he had gone to, Mr Khan didn’t seem the kind of man who would let his guest slip through his fingers. I went to the door and tried the handle. It was locked. Even if I could get out of the room somehow, I was likely to meet Kevin. Kevin struck me as the type of person who lacked any common sense and would be quite likely to shoot me just to see what happened next.
Another thought struck me. Once Mr Khan had obtained my signature on the marriage register, was he really going to let me go just like that? Wouldn’t it be cheaper and better for him if I disappeared? For the first time I began to wonder whether the situation I found myself in might not be more serious than I had at first imagined.
Before I met the girl I had assumed this was simply a rather elaborate way of obtaining a UK residency permit for another illegal immigrant: perhaps a cousin of Mr Khan’s from Lahore or Peshawar, or a girl to whose family he owed a favour. But the more I thought about him, the more Mr Khan reminded me of other people I had met in the past: people whose moral values and objectives were very different from the rest of the world’s. The truth was, there was no knowing what Mr Khan would do once I had completed my part of the deal. Maybe the plan they had made for me did not include a happy ending, after all.
There was a knock at the door, and I heard the key turn. David came into the room.
‘It is time, Mr Gaunt,’ he told me.
*
The wedding party was conveyed to the register office in two black Range Rovers. I saw the girl for the briefest moment, being shepherded by David, who had swapped his role as assistant for that of chauffeur, and the man who had kidnapped me with Kevin. His name was Amir, and he was not in the same class as Kevin. He looked much more formidable. The girl was wearing a beautifully cut dark blue jacket over a skirt of the same material. She was dressed as if for a smart day’s shopping in Bond Street – unless you looked at her face, that is. Then you wondered whether she wasn’t on her way to a funeral.
I travelled in the second vehicle, in the rear, while Mr Khan sat in the front and Kevin drove. Mr Khan was wearing a morning coat in the same charcoal material as my own, and there was a white rose in his lapel. He handed another rose to me and ordered, ‘Put this in your buttonhole.’
We proceeded at a stately pace down a long drive with sweeping lawns and banks of rhododendrons on either side, until we came to the entrance, two stone pillars with electronically operated gates that opened slowly as we approached. We turned into a small lane and drove through pleasant rural countryside, by fields of stubble and innumerable small woods and thickets. Here and there were road signs of which I caught only the briefest glimpse. At first the names meant nothing to me, but there was something familiar about the landscape. I felt I knew it, had seen it before, perhaps from a different perspective.
The feeling passed as we turned on to wider and busier roads. I started seeing names I recognised: ‘Witney’ and ‘Oxford’. Before long we were approaching the outskirts of Oxford. Mr Khan turned to me as we drove towards the town centre.
‘Of course, you will play your part as promised, Mr Gaunt. No wrong words to the registrar, no attempts to dash off into the crowd. Any such behaviour would be bad for you. You will not get your money. And it will be much worse for the girl, I assure you.’
‘Relax, Mr Khan,’ I said. ‘I’m here for the money. I won’t spoil the party. You’d better make sure she doesn’t do something unexpected again.’
Mr Khan smiled at me. ‘We have already made sure of that.’
He turned back to face the front again. I tapped him on the shoulder.
‘How will you pay me? Ten thousand is quite a lot of cash to carry around.’
Mr Khan did not move his head.
‘We obtained your bank account details when we visited your flat. The money will be deposited in your account twenty-four hours after the ceremony is concluded.’
I made a mental note to change my bank account as soon as possible. I wondered why I had ever believed Mr Khan would actually pay me. There was nothing I could do about it now, in any case. The feelings of doubt I had experienced earlier returned in greater strength. How on earth was I going to get out of this?
We arrived at the register office in Tidmarsh Lane. It was situated in a grey office block: rather unromantic, I thought. David and Kevin dropped us off then drove the cars away to park them, while Mr Khan, the girl, Amir and I went to sit in the waiting room until it was our turn. When Kevin and David arrived a minute or two later, Kevin was whistling ‘Here Comes the Bride’. He was silenced by a look from Mr Khan. I stared at the ceiling and tried not to think too much about what I was doing. The girl from Afghanistan sat very upright, eyes downca
st. She did not move or speak. Then the registrar put her head around the door.
‘If Mr Richard Gaunt and Miss Adeena Haq would come through now, please, and the witnesses as well.’
Adeena stood up and said something, in Arabic, not Pashtun, as I would have expected. When I was in Iraq we were taught a few words of Arabic, so that we could hold basic conversations with locals when necessary. I had forgotten most of what little I had learned, but I was still able to understand what Adeena said.
‘Aseeb, I will not do this.’
Aseeb? She had addressed herself to Mr Khan. Was that his name? I stood up and smiled politely at everybody. Amir stepped very close to Adeena and whispered something in her ear. She was already pale but now she flinched as if a wasp was buzzing at her head. I added Amir to the list of people I had developed a strong dislike for and mentally put him in my queue for retribution just behind Kevin. Amir took Adeena’s arm and almost frogmarched her through the door into the next room. I followed, shepherded by Kevin and Mr Khan – or Aseeb, if that was what he was called. It was a Pashtun name.
The ceremony was very brief. Adeena and I stood side by side in front of the desk and listened to the registrar deliver a small speech. I did not take in a word: I was feeling more wound up by the minute. I remember Mr Khan handing me a ring to put on Adeena’s finger, and Amir put a ring on my finger. Adeena wouldn’t, or couldn’t, bring herself to do it. Then Kevin and David signed as witnesses, and it was all over. Five minutes later we were herded back towards the Range Rovers. Soon we were driving out of Oxford.
Now that the ceremony was over, Mr Khan was in a more genial mood.
‘I congratulate you, Mr Gaunt,’ he said, turning in his seat to look at me, ‘you have married a very beautiful girl.’
‘What happens now?’
‘Ah, we shall see, we shall see. All has gone well. You have done as we asked. We will fulfil our side of the bargain, you must not be in any doubt.’
But I did not see. As the minutes ticked by, and we drove farther away from Oxford, I knew I had made a serious error, once again; my life had been one long string of bad decisions over the last three years. What had started out yesterday as an amusing joke with a large cash reward now felt very different. My heart was racing. Why hadn’t I run for it while we were in Oxford? What could they have done if I’d walked off? And what had prevented me from doing so? Was it the money?
