Deep Black ns-7

by Andy McNab

  I could see now why everyone had got such great pictures: they hadn’t even needed to move off their hotel balconies.

  The secure area between the hotels was teeming with news crews jumping in and out of 4x4s, sweating buckets after a day in helmets and body armour. The word ‘Press’ was stencilled just about everywhere there was space.

  The Palestine wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Moscow slum. It was sixteen storeys high, rectangular and very plain. A few single-storey sections, probably ballrooms and restaurants, jutted out from the base. Every room seemed to have a balcony, no matter whether you were looking out over the Tigris, the garden or the roundabout, each protected by an ugly concrete section that looked like the wings on one of Darth Vader’s imperial fighters.

  Satellite dishes the size of flying saucers were mounted on the roof, and smaller ones sprouted from almost every balcony. Cables were strung everywhere.

  A German news reporter in body armour was doing his piece to camera, with the tank, the mosque and the roundabout as a backdrop. A convoy of Hummers screamed round the roundabout, looking very warlike, machine-guns and M16s sticking out all over the shop. Jerry was wearing his bad-smell face. ‘Look at this bullshit. Give me Nuhanovic any day.’

  We followed the driveway up to the hotel and went in through a set of big glass doors, past the security, a couple of Iraqis with AKs. Not that they checked us. Maybe it was too hot for them.

  Thronging the lobby were the guys you’d find in any big hotel in any trouble spot: the fixers. Drink, drugs, guns, cigarettes, women, you name it, they’d get it for you. At a price, of course.

  The inside of the hotel was just as 1970s as the outside. The dark marble floors had seen a few years’ hard polishing. I’d heard that during the sanctions all these places stank of petrol. It was much cheaper than water, and used to clean the floors.

  US soldiers in uniform wandered in to buy cans of Coke. Others had their PT kit on, blue shorts and trainers and a grey T-shirt with the word ‘Army’, just in case we hadn’t guessed from the M16s slung over their shoulders.

  Overweight men in suits and khaki waistcoats had monopolized every available sofa, while their BG stood a discreet distance away. It looked as if it was pretty much business as usual in Baghdad. Soldiers, businessmen, BG, journalists: everyone was in on the act.

  A sign on the desk announced that rooms were ‘$60 US’ a night, no ifs, no buts. A deposit covering half your stay was required up front and always in cash. In this neck of the woods, it said more about you than American Express ever could.

  Jerry counted out a week’s worth of dollars in cash. I wanted to be on the first floor – a jumpable height if we needed to get out in a hurry – but everything was full. The closest to the ground we were going to get was the sixth.

  We took the lift. Our rooms were next to each other, and whoever had stayed in mine had left about ten minutes earlier and not told the housekeeper. The place reeked of cigarettes and sweat.

  There were two single beds. The veneer was lifting off every chipboard surface, and the carpet was scarred with cigarette burns. The walls had been sprayed with concrete and were now a lumpy, faded yellow. The tiny bathroom had a toilet, basin and shower. I tried turning on the tap. Nothing happened. Maybe later.

  I dumped my kit on the bed, which was covered with old, mustard-coloured, furry nylon blankets. No sheets, and a couple of saliva-stained foam pillows without cases. B-and-B owners in Margate and Blackpool would have been proud of this place, charging so much for so little.

  I went and pulled open the glass sliding door to the balcony and was mugged by the noise of the city. The Tigris lay in front of me, glittering in the mid-afternoon sun. Apart from the mosques and a few surviving government buildings, all I could see was miles of middle-class housing, little blocks of concrete fighting for space among the towers. Further out, on the edge of the city, was the Baghdad I knew.

  It suddenly felt like yesterday that Gaz, Rob and I had been mincing about on the north-eastern edge of the city during the ’91 war. It was a slum, a massive township of crumbling buildings, a world of poverty and shit. The Shia who lived there were forced to call it Saddam City. Finding the fibre-optic cables that ran beneath it on the way from Baghdad to the Scud teams in the Western desert had been a fucker, but it had had to be done. If they weren’t destroyed, the Scuds could still be fired into Israel. The Israelis would have joined the war, and the coalition’s alliance with the Arab states would have been over.

  I looked out into the heat haze beyond the city. It had been about this time of day that I would give my orders for the coming night’s fuckabout, and my four-man patrol would start preparing. We would stay in the sewer under a market square until last light, then slip out to do the night’s work. It was more or less the same each time, checking the power lines leaving the city, checking any communications towers still standing after the last twenty-four hours’ air attacks.

  When my patrol finally located the cables, it was almost an anticlimax. All they needed was one good tap with a two-pound ball hammer and that was it.

  Looking down, I could see that the garden area was surrounded by a low wall and some pretty serious rush fencing. A couple of guys were drinking coffee inside a cabana in what looked like a small oasis. The war seemed a million miles away. There was even somebody cutting the grass with a petrol mower.

  Then two Blackhawks came screaming across the river, so low I could have headbutted the pilots, but nobody took the blindest bit of notice.

  29

  One of the single-storey rooms jutting out from the ground floor seemed to have been taken over by CNN. All its windows had been sandbagged, and their logo hung from a small shed where the security guy was sitting. Just outside, on the grass, were a black leatherette sofa and chairs that would only get sat on once they were in the shade. The place was heaving with important-looking cables and antennae. Beyond it, a guy in shorts, T-shirt and trainers was sprinting along the bottom of an empty thirty-metre swimming-pool. Each time he got to one end he did a shedload of sit-ups, ran to the other, did some burpees, then back again for more press-ups. It was making me sweat just watching him.

  I needed to check out our escape route, since jumping six floors wasn’t an option. A green sign in the corridor directed me in Arabic and English to the fire escape.

  A push-bar door led to a bare concrete stairwell. There were no lights, just slits in the walls, so fuck knows what happened here at night. The stairwell was littered with cigarette butts and old newspaper photographs of Saddam smiling and pointing at something in the distance. I’d always assumed it was a fucking great suitcase full of money. I wedged one of the papers between the door and the frame so it wouldn’t lock on me if I needed to come back up.

  Moving down the fire escape, I checked the doors on each floor. They were all locked from the inside. Even worse, on the flooded ground floor, the double exit doors that led out into the open were chained, padlocked and blocked by a mountain of rubbish. The only way out from the sixth was the lift.

  I went back up and knocked on Jerry’s door. He was busy sorting out the recharging equipment for the camera and phone. The Thuraya, about the size of a household mobile, was resting on the balcony ledge. He’d pulled the thick plastic antenna out from the side in an attempt to get a satellite fix.

  No cell networks were operating in Iraq now the Ba’ath Party’s had been obliterated. There was a system of sorts, but for the exclusive use of CPA officials. With a Thuraya it didn’t matter if you were in the middle of the Russian steppes or on top of Mount Everest: as long as it could shake hands with a satellite, you could talk to anyone, anywhere, with a mobile or a landline. Where anyone got the money to run them, I didn’t have a clue. You could buy a week in Greece for a few minutes on one of these things.

  I went out on to the balcony while Jerry untangled several lengths of wire, one of which connected the phone to the camera so he could transmit images down the line. Jerry�
��s plan was to download them to the Telegraph as soon as he got them, then wipe the memory card clean so there was no chance of anyone else getting their hands on them.

  The guy in shorts was still bouncing backwards and forwards in the pool. I picked up the Thuraya to see if it had a signal, but the five-bar indicator was blank. I carried it along the balcony a few steps, but still got nothing.

  I went back into the room. Jerry was stretched out on the bed, hands behind his head, admiring his prowess with the electrics.

  ‘No signal – the sat must be the other side.’ I threw the Thuraya on to the bed next to him. ‘The only way out of here is by the lift or jumping. The fire escape is blocked.’

  ‘Don’t worry, man, this place is as safe as Fort Knox. First things first.’ He had cheered up a lot since the wait in Amman. Maybe he felt we were just that bit closer to Nuhanovic. He sat up on the edge of the bed. ‘You get the beers. I’m going to need some local clothes if I’m going to do the brown thing right.’

  We had already agreed that he was going to do the brown-man stuff and I would do the white.

  ‘I’ll call DC, then hit the mosque over the road in time for Asur and see what I can pick up. That’s if I can get past that tank without them putting a bullet in my Islamic ass.’

  I nodded. It was pointless just sitting around waiting for the source to come up with the goods: we had to get out there. Somebody had to know something. Jerry didn’t want to quiz the journalists because they’d sniff a story and either clam up or lie. But there was nothing to stop me getting among the guys working on the circuit.

  I checked Baby-G, my own black one this time. I’d left Kelly’s behind: I needed to keep a clear head. Who was I kidding? Looking at my own just made me think about hers – and then about her. It had been wider than her wrist, and took her for ever to fasten.

  It was just after three p.m. – seven a.m. Washington time. We’d missed a couple of nights’ sleep. No wonder I was feeling knackered.

  30

  We took the small, nine-person lift down to the lobby. Jerry, as ever, was clutching his camera; I had my bumbag with my passport in it, along with just over three thousand dollars in cash. The lift stank of cigarettes and stopped at every floor with a disconcerting bounce. We were joined on the fourth by two Filipino guys with MP5s, dressed in black body armour like a SWAT team; on the third, by two military guys trying to look like civilians, which is pretty much impossible when you’re sporting a whitewall haircut; finally, on the second, by two NGO guys with fat Filofaxes and even fatter beer bellies.

  Everyone, civilian or military, seemed to have some form of ID round their neck, a nylon tape with a hook and a plastic, see-through cardholder. Were we supposed to have one? What the fuck did I know?

  As the doors closed, one Filipino offered the other a cigarette and they both lit up. By the time we reached the lobby I smelt like I’d spent the night in a pub.

  There were now maybe a few more Iraqis than foreign businessmen sitting and smoking on the sofas, all with identical thick black moustaches, trousers, shirts, plastic dress shoes and white socks. Whatever else had changed here, the Saddam look was still in.

  A pair of Hummers was parked up outside. A group of sweaty soldiers were dumping their body armour and taking off their soaking wet BDU jackets; hot food and bottles of mineral water were being passed round from the back of a canvas-skinned truck.

  I could see two or three civilians pacing up and down just beyond the Hummers, chatting away on their sat phones. They must have been staying on our side of the hotel.

  The two shops in the lobby were doing a roaring trade in toothpaste, Saddam watches and banknotes, which were still in circulation. Saddam looked the same on the dinars as he did in any picture: big smile, big moustache, and outstretched arm pointing at something we never got to see. You could also buy Arabic coffee-pots, maps, clothes; one guy was putting up a little Bedouin tent to use as a carpet stall. Even DHL were setting up a stand as we walked past – so people could jet their purchases back home in time for Christmas.

  As Jerry headed out into the blinding sunlight, I spotted a group of fixers.

  I was greeted by three big smiling faces. ‘Hello, Mister, what can I get you?’ It doesn’t matter where you go in the world, everyone in this line of business speaks English.

  I shook each by the hand and gave them a smily ‘Salaam aleikum. I need twelve beers.’

  The youngest was the first to answer. He looked very smart in his brand new jeans and trainers. ‘Ten minutes. You wait inside?’

  The other two left us, still smiling away. They had more than enough custom. I grabbed my boy by the arm as he turned towards the door. ‘There’s a couple more things.’

  His smile got even bigger. ‘You want girl? I get you young girl, European. Very new.’

  ‘No, just two pistols, with magazines and lots of ammunition.’ I didn’t even bother phrasing it as a question.

  ‘Sure. For you I have Saddam’s own pistols, good price. You want rifle, I get you Saddam’s own—’

  ‘No, mate, just two pistols. Saddam’s or not, I don’t care. Make sure they’re semi-automatics.’

  ‘Sure. For you, tomorrow morning. I bring here, OK. OK?’

  I nodded and pointed towards the coffee area. ‘I’ll wait in there for the beers.’

  He ran off before I’d had the chance to ask him about vehicles. Through the glass entrance I saw that Jerry had joined the other members of the Thuraya club and was waving his free arm about like a windmill. I hoped his source was coming up with the goods.

  One of the soldiers who’d been eating outside came into the lobby and homed in on one of the fixers. He spoke low and close up. There was a smile as the fixer showed him the size of the breasts he was about to get hold of. These two hotels were probably Shag Central for the grunts, for whom business would be conducted quickly in the toilets.

  I left them to it; money changed hands as if it was a drugs deal.

  Whoever had designed the café-bar area had opted for plastic banquettes and gone for the seventies, dark, sophisticated and moody look. They’d got the seventies, dark part of it spot on.

  The carpet was threadbare and the air was heavy with cigarette smoke and country-and-western music. An old guy dressed in a red shirt and shiny plastic shoes, his hair immaculately combed back, was sitting flanked by a couple of speakers, an amplifier and a Casio Beatmaster. Apart from the Saddam moustache, he was a dead ringer for Johnny Cash’s dad.

  A few Iraqis sat half listening, drinking glasses of tea, as a couple of big white guys with flat-top crewcuts, one with a goatee, tried to do business with them. They exchanged a few words with each other in what sounded like Serbo-Croat, then switched back to something approaching English for the next stage of their mumbled negotiation. Their accents were so heavy, all they needed was a black-leather jacket each and they could still have been in the Balkans. I’d need to find out where exactly they came from before bouncing in and asking about a Bosnian. The war might have officially ended, but for a lot of these guys the Dayton Accord was only a piece of paper.

  Asmall bowl of boiled eggs, a plate of cheese and some bread rolls looked rather tired on the bar top, carefully guarded by two guys in crumpled white shirts with elasticated bow-ties who were trying hard to look as if they were doing something useful.

  One finally made it to my table. I wasn’t going to drink Arab coffee so I ordered a Nescafé with milk, and a couple of the rolls.

  He went away to put the kettle on.

  A news crew came past, talking English but sounding French, with a couple of the local boys in tow. They sat down to hammer out what they were going to do tomorrow and how long they’d need the driver and interpreter. It wasn’t long before everyone was nodding and one of the Frenchmen peeled some dollar bills from a wad and handed them over. The going rate seemed to be ninety dollars a day for an interpreter and sixty for a driver, paid in advance – and if the French wanted to go anywhe
re outside Baghdad it would be extra.

  My coffee, rolls and a foil-wrapped pat of butter turned up as the two Balkan boys got up to leave. Their Iraqi companions had a little waffle among themselves, puffed happily away on their cigarettes, and went back to listening to Johnny Cash’s dad.

  31

  I was half-way through my first mouthful when I realized I had competition. The oldest biker in town was making a beeline for the buffet. He was late fifties, early sixties, only about five foot five, but powerfully built, with big freckled arms and hands the size of baseball gloves. He ordered eggs, rolls and cheese with his Nescafé and, judging by the size of his gut, it wasn’t for the first time: it strained under a black Harley Davidson T-shirt that shouted: ‘Born To Ride, Born To Raise Hell’. The image was completed by a long grey beard, jeans, and a big black belt with a Harley buckle. His head was totally bald, and he’d been out here for ever, by the look of it. He was nearly as brown as Jerry.

  He was certainly pretty pleased with himself. He waved at the French, who were now in a smoking competition with the Iraqis, as he settled himself on a stool a few down from me, and treated me to the sort of nod that said, ‘Later, we’ll talk.’ I treated him to one that said I was in no hurry, but I had a feeling it wouldn’t be long before we were best mates and he was offering me the use of his house, car and wife next time I was in the States.

  I’d just filled my second roll with butter and shoved it in my mouth when the baseball glove appeared in front of me. ‘Howdy, I’m Jacob. How’s it hanging?’

  I swallowed fast but my reply still emerged in a shower of crumbs. ‘Fine, how about you?’