Liquid Gold

by James Phelan

  73

  AMRITSAR, INDIA

  “Recently, I have seen a rise of human trafficking through here,” Thomas Singh said. “Young women mainly, either being moved out of impoverished situations where they have no hope other than a nicely presented deal from some slick human salesman, or…”

  Thomas let out a long sigh. He and Fox were parked in a Land Cruiser across from the Golden Temple, which glowed, iridescent, in the early morning light. There was traffic and a surprising number of people milling about, dozens of tourists braving the cold to visit the sacred site and take photos. Gammaldi was across the road with Duhamel; Brick and the others were scattered within the vicinity.

  “It’s just plain wrong,” Fox said, turning up the heating a little. “It was one of the first stories I ever worked on—the first real big story, actually, the first thing that made me realise that this kind of job really can make a difference. It helped bring down a people-smuggling outfit in Indonesia.”

  Thomas was silent for a while.

  “I will find out if what you say about my brother is true…” Thomas trailed off. “When I met you, I did not understand what you did.”

  “How so?”

  “I was educated abroad, in the UK, as a lawyer, then a journalist, but I always intended to come home to ply my trade for my people. I have always known it was the right thing to do, and I did it. You—you have done what so many in the world have done, you have elected to work abroad … but now I can see why.”

  Fox tilted his head, trying to read Thomas’s meaning.

  “Lachlan, you are a warrior, a war-like one from the water, as your name’s roots suggest—not dissimilar to the Sikh tradition of warrior saints,” Thomas said. “I see this place, my nation of India, as the place where I can effect change and make a difference, and you see this too. You and I are similar, but you are a global man.”

  Fox nodded slowly, gazing out the front window. “Here comes your brother,” he said, as Amar Singh walked towards them.

  74

  SOUTH OSSETIA (EASTERN EUROPE)

  Nix and Top walked through the back door of the house behind Anna. Nix felt his heart rate quicken with every step on the tiled floor. They were in their cams gear and bristling with war-fighting equipment, standing in the living room of a house in a hostile area … and there was nothing Nix could do to downplay it. Anna’s mother was asleep on the couch under the light of a lamp—she awoke, looked up at them wide-eyed.

  “Mum, it’s okay, they’re here to help,” Anna said. “They’re friends.”

  The woman nodded, she seemed calm. She was a small, stout woman: Nix wondered, not for the first time, if she was an example of what happened to all beautiful Eastern Bloc girls: they started out looking like the bomb and ended up, after a life of hardship and repression, looking like Boris Yeltsin.

  “Is my brother here?”

  The mother shook her head: “Out.” She looked disappointed, surveying Nix with a mixture of alarm and curiosity about what he might want with her boy; or perhaps it was a plea for him to help her son. She shuffled into the adjoining kitchen and came back with a decorated tin.

  “You would like some cake?” she asked, offering pastries dusted in icing sugar.

  Nix nodded, took one; Top followed suit. The woman smiled, and the two men followed Anna upstairs.

  Mac had watched them go in, their fluorescent tags on their cams giving him a clear ID on which figures were his friends. The big thermal scope clicked in front of the fixed sight ate the distance up with ease.

  His M110 was locked and loaded, the safety off. He lay there, watching and waiting, his spotter next to him. A squad of guys were two clicks to the east, and a hundred metres beyond them was a squad with an AT4 rocket launcher and a spotter to call in mortar fire from well inside the Blue Zone with the Humvees that could rock in for a rapid exfil.

  The bedroom door was locked with a bolt and padlock. Anna retrieved a key from where her brother hid it atop the doorjamb—she could just reach it on her tiptoes—and opened the door slowly, as if afraid of what she might find.

  Kynoch called the scene over his closed-circuit tac mic: “This is sniper team. Be advised we have a technical approaching the house, coming south down the street—heavy military vehicle—make it a three-tonne truck, ID as Russian military type, no visible markings.”

  Mac looked in the direction and trained his scope there, tracing it. He loved his 110, especially the semi-auto nature of it, making it ideal in a target-rich environment like the one that seemed likely to present itself any second, like his compatriots sometimes encountered in Iraq and Afghanistan—he could really make a big difference to a battlefield. This ability to keep shooting fixed a failing of the older M24, where the shooter had to pull off target ever so slightly while reloading. With the 110 the bolt didn’t need to be touched, which halved the time it took to get rounds off, and a nice big suppressor saved sound and muzzle flash. The 110’s long-range thermal optical sight worked day or night, and it doubled the magnification, attaching in front of the fitted sight. He adjusted it and watched as the truck stopped in the street outside the house next door: the cargo tray was full of guys, but only one jumped out.

  He was carrying an AK.

  “Armed target approaching the house,” Kynoch said into his mic.

  The truck rumbled on, grinding slowly up through its gears. It turned the corner and disappeared, out of sight. The lone figure walked towards the house—the way he walked, the way he held his gun, clearly told Mac he wasn’t a trained soldier, but then most of these guys weren’t.

  “Make him male, late teens, civilian clothes, AK that’s seen better days,” Mac said without moving, then went quiet, the long barrel of the M110 trained on the target, ready for action. “Captain, you’ve got company. Your boy is about to enter the front door. Make him fifteen seconds out, we have the shot.”

  75

  AMRITSAR, INDIA

  “Remember when the Hindu train from Ayodhya—”

  “Amar—”

  “More than fifty were killed, and the RSS? They killed 2000 Muslims in reprisal.”

  Thomas struck his brother across the face with the back of his hand.

  “I am here to listen to you talk about what you have done,” Thomas said, his voice patient, the look behind his eyes that of a caged animal.

  “In reprisal! Then they kicked 200 000 out of their homes—and this was in 2002!” said Amar, his breath ragged. He was in a state, seemed delirious. Blood poured from his nose; he wiped it away impatiently. “We have over 300 million middle class, the world’s biggest democracy—we have the vote but we don’t have food. Don’t have shoes. Can’t…” His voice died out in desperation. “Some say there are two Indias, but I have not seen beyond this one…”

  Amar had tears in his eyes. They stood outside the car, three men, talking.

  “Our country spends less than one per cent on healthcare—”

  “Brother—”

  “Do you remember, Thomas, when our cousin died?” Amar said. He looked like a child as he leaned on the fender of the car. Thomas was silent. Amar turned to Fox. “Lachlan, when I was fifteen, my cousin was fifteen, and he had appendicitis. Our father was a doctor, here in Amritsar, and he would perform surgery on the one day off he had each week, in the villages. He was too late for our cousin—he took out the appendix but it had burst. He took our aunt’s hand, took my hand, and said to her, ‘Sister, you have lost your son. Here, take mine.’”

  Amar looked at his hands as his tears fell on them.

  “I was left with them with what I knew at that age, with what I had at that age, and I never learned more—I got nothing new. I started as I am and am now as I am. But you, brother…”

  Fox looked at Thomas; the older man was aware that the brother he thought he knew was now gone, but the boy he had once said goodbye to had never really left.

  “Amar, how did
you get out, when these men were taken?” Thomas asked softly.

  “I was there and I saw what you did,” Fox said. “Saw it with my own eyes. You took us there. You handed us over.”

  Amar nodded, took a deep breath, reached into his jacket—Thomas grabbed his wrist, brought it out. Amar held a folded stack of paper.

  “This is what I have done,” he said. “Names, money, things I have done—everything I have done. Leverage. Proof.”

  Amar stared at the ground. Fox took the papers from his hand.

  “You can’t conceive, my brother,” Amar said, “the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God. I never wanted it to be like this—I never asked for this. Between us, there is such a gulf that I cannot see across.”

  76

  SOUTH OSSETIA (EASTERN EUROPE)

  Anna saw the look exchanged between Top and Nix.

  “What?”

  Nix shook his head.

  “Negative, sniper team,” Top said into his mic. He moved back to cover the door of the bedroom with his M4. “Hold position and await orders.”

  “Anna, your brother is coming—”

  She made for the door but Nix caught her.

  “Do you know where his camera is?” he asked.

  She snapped into action, scanning the room. She opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a cardboard box with the camera inside.

  Nix flicked it on, a little Japanese digital camcorder. He checked the image …

  “Copy that, Top,” Kynoch said. “Target entering the house momentarily.”

  Mac lay there, his finger through the trigger-guard. He breathed steadily, consciously keeping his heart rate slower than normal rest.

  Nix heard the front door open downstairs. Anna stood by Top, who was peering out the open bedroom door.

  The image on the fold-out viewfinder showed the city square in Gori—Anna posing in front of the statue of Stalin. He scanned through it at double-speed, then came the explosion that ripped through the air. He watched it for a moment, their reactions … then the screen went to black, then flickered to life again with the day Nix and his team engaged the attackers across the river.

  He heard the mother talking to the son downstairs. They were speaking Georgian; he couldn’t make out the words but the tone was typical of a mother and teenage son, even if the son had just come through the front door with an assault rifle. It quickly became heated—was she trying to stall him? Nix watched the screen: the brother had been filming about a hundred metres from the fighting position of the attackers, the large-calibre rounds of the heavy machine gun sounding over the tinny speaker. The view changed angles, zoomed into the treed section where Nix’s team had been positioned … focused on the Humvee as it was torn up to shit … then the camera went back to the attacker’s position … continued moving towards them … fifty metres, close now—

  “Shit, they’re coming back!” the spotter said.

  The truck rumbled back down the street, its lights on full-beam this time, the engine louder—they were in a hurry.

  “Be advised, House, technical is coming back towards your location, make it less than sixty seconds out.”

  Nix heard the warning over his mic as he watched onscreen the tracer rounds of his squad’s SAW spraying cover fire over the attacking positions. It was over in seconds, the twin cracks of Mac’s M4 not audible on the video. The brother had taken cover and crawled along to the two downed targets, the video never stopping … Both men were sprawled on the ground, both head shots, right on the money … They wore Russian cams but had Georgian weapons … Then he saw the Kevlar vests, not Russian military—they were good spec-ops gear as worn by private military contractors … a small orange patch on the pocket—a small orange ‘U’ inside a black square. He had seen it before but didn’t have time to think where right now.

  “Got it,” Nix said. He ejected the memory card, undid the top of his own vest and put it in the breast pocket of his cams, then did the velcro back up.

  “Sniper team, what are we looking at?”

  “Be advised, we have six guys getting out of the truck and heading towards your location,” the spotter said. “All are headed to your front door, all armed with AKs, forty seconds out.”

  77

  AMRITSAR, INDIA

  “I recorded the current address of Art Kneeshaw there, too.”

  “Who is that?” Thomas asked.

  “An engineer we’ve been trying to get hold of,” Fox said. “What’s—”

  “He always did free work in the northern areas and Kashmir,” Amar said. “I told him to get out when I knew what they were doing. He never did wrong, he has spent his life working for other people, getting wells put in. For decades he did this work for people, not for money … Thomas, look at me…” He begged his brother with tears in his eyes.

  Thomas looked down at his brother, who now sat slumped on the ground by the car.

  He stayed silent, disappointed, trying to understand, trying to summon up empathy. “What did you do?” Thomas asked.

  Amar shook his head: “Nothing! I did nothing … but this. I’ve become part of something…”

  Thomas looked away. Fox looked over at Gammaldi and Duhamel across the street, then knelt down to Amar.

  “But you knew what was going to happen?”

  Amar let go, silent tears streaming down his face.

  “We never had a chance to talk,” Amar said to his brother’s back. “We never—”

  “We? We—this is us now? Now I don’t want to talk to you,” Thomas said, facing them. “You should have talked to me about this, Amar. I could have done something.”

  Amar couldn’t look at him. Fox felt the heat coming from Thomas, the white-hot rage the older brother was just managing to keep a lid on. He walked away, across the street, stood before the Golden Temple, his back to them.

  Amar spoke: “Our father taught us that when we can prevent suffering without sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance, then we ought to. But what I have done—”

  “Come on, let’s get out of here,” Fox said, offering a hand to help him up from the ground.

  Amar clasped Fox’s hand, and said: “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be, not to me,” Fox said. He helped him up, watched him wipe the blood streaming from his nose.

  “Is there an honest thief, a tender murderer?” he asked Fox, who shrugged.

  “I’m not sure, Amar, but we can always work hard to make up for our mistakes.”

  Amar nodded and looked back across the road to his brother. Thomas’s back was still turned.

  “I will dedicate my life to it,” Amar said, leaning on his car, holding the edge of his scarf against his face. “I went off … I forgot so much. I will make it up, with whatever I have. I will do good for these people for however long I may live, but I know it will never be enough … if only I were immortal.”

  Fox nodded, helped steady Amar on his feet and turned towards Gammaldi and Duhamel. He waited, watching for a break in the motorbikes and trucks and bicycles for a chance to cross the road.

  To his right, he saw Brick scanning the crowd, noticed his expression change.

  To his left, Fox heard a whistling, a sound he hadn’t heard for a long time, a sound that a soldier who had heard it never forgot.

  “RPG!” Duhamel yelled from across the street.

  78

  SOUTH OSSETIA (EASTERN EUROPE)

  “Is there another way out?” Nix asked Anna.

  “The back door, but it’s through the lounge, and my brother—”

  She stopped talking as they heard her brother bounding up the stairs towards them.

  “Disarm him,” Nix said quietly to Top. His Sergeant nodded, drew his Beretta pistol and took position just inside the door, his M4 hanging by his side.

  “No!” Anna whispered.

  “We won’t hurt him,” Nix said. He pulled Anna in close to him
and behind the bulk of Top.

  “Mortar team, get a bead on that truck and engage on my call,” Nix said quietly into his mic. As the footsteps in the hallway neared, Top tensed up and Anna dug her hands into the sides of Nix’s Kevlar.

  Then there was a loud noise from downstairs—a pounding on the front door.

  At the top of the stairs they heard several men talking, then movement, then the fridge in the kitchen opening and bottles jingling. It sounded as if a party was about to get underway. Someone said something that elicited cheers, then the mother started yelling but was quieted by a slapping sound. Then crying, more laughter, more talking; the pure bravado of stupid young men mad with some kind of power in this place where they made their own laws with the guns in their hands.

  “Captain, we have a clear shot of four targets in the kitchen,” the spotter said.

  “Standby,” Nix whispered.

  “What are they saying down there?” Nix asked quietly into Anna’s ear.

  She was trembling, tears in her eyes. He stooped down a bit, gently shook her shoulder, looked into her eyes.

  “They are waiting for me,” she whispered. Her bottom lip quivered. “They are waiting for me to come home and they want to…” She didn’t finish.

  Nix pulled them both back down the hall a little and whispered to his Sergeant, who nodded and led the way as they crept downstairs.

  The brother saw them first. He moved towards them, his eyes wide in wonder, then rage as he computed what his sister was doing here with American soldiers.

  He said something to her in Georgian. She shook her head. He took a step towards them. She spoke and motioned, put forward some kind of explanation of why two Americans would be here, but he wasn’t buying.