The Protector

by Duncan Falconer

  ‘There ’e goes,’ Des said, leaning on the rail a few metres away and looking down into the lobby. ‘See that guy there?’ he said, pointing at the reception desk. ‘The short-arse in t’ black suit.’

  Mallory made out a short, well-groomed man in a black suit talking with one of the hotel managers.

  ‘ ’Is name’s Feisal,’ Des said. ‘Ali Feisal something or other. One o’ the puppet deputies at the Ministry of Interior.You know what ’e does? Takes suitcases o’ dollars out of Iraq and deposits ’em in banks in Dubai.’

  Mallory took another look at the small man. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Mate o’ mine works at Palace in the GZ, the one at US embassy. They ’ave a big room in t’ basement filled wi’ US dollars. Guarded by US soldiers. Loads o’ money, so they say. Billions is what I’ve ’eard.The ministries get an allowance or summat like that.The Yanks keepin’ ’em ’appy, I s’pose. Money belonged to Saddam anyway, so they say, or it’s part o’ the Yankee ’andout. Once a month ’e comes in to embassy wi’ ’is suitcase which they fill op and ’e takes to airport . . . Good job if you can get it,’ Des said.

  Mallory watched the little man moving around energetically, pressing the flesh with several suited individuals as if he was of some importance.

  ‘We never did it for money, did we?’ Des said.

  Mallory glanced at Des, wondering what he meant. Des was a funny chap, unserious most of the time but prone to the occasional bout of philosophy.

  ‘In the mob, I’m talkin’ about.When we first joined op. We did it for love of it, di’n’ we? An’ it were great, wa’nt it? I remember me first wage. Fifty quid the army gave me for ma first two weeks. I di’n’t think yer got paid till yer’d finished trainin’. Fifty quid. We were rich then, ’cause we weren’t there fer the money . . . Different now, eh? That’s all we’re ’ere for, i’n’t it? Money. We’re all ’ere for that. We’re no different than ’im.’

  Mallory had to agree with Des, the part about his early days in the forces. He’d never thought about the money, not for a second.

  ‘Good news, was it?’ Des asked. ‘The phone call. Yer looked ’appy.’

  ‘Oh . . . Nah. Just work.’

  Des nodded. ‘I’ll let you know about the Fallujah job, OK?’

  ‘Roger that,’ Mallory said as Des walked away and he headed along the corridor towards the emergency stairs. He would go to his room and watch a bit of TV, catch some news if it was worth watching, take some lunch, read a bit of a book and then visit the gym before dinner. He had some interesting prospects to think about: a meeting with the delightful Tasneen and possibly a move to Fallujah in the next week or so. There was some prepping to be done, mental as well as kit-wise. He needed to be able to move decisively and at short notice. All in all things seemed to be on the up and up.

  7

  A Life Reborn

  Abdul popped a couple of painkillers and washed them down with a glass of water. He remained motionless at the sink for a moment until the worst of the throbbing went away.

  He stared at his bandaged stump, as he often did, still unable to believe this horrible thing had happened to him. For days following the amputation he had been consumed not only by his own loss but by the horror of the other events of that night. The image of the woman being shot through the eye inches from him, followed by the brutal slaying of the old couple. The mental picture of the westerner being handed over to the insurgents, his pathetic, shivering obedience as he trotted off with them like a dog to the slaughter. Then there was the guilt for the part he himself had played in the kidnapping, intermingled with bouts of self-pity. Abdul would sometimes burst into tears, often without warning. It was worse still when it happened in front of Tasneen - such an unmanly thing to do.

  Night-time brought a fresh intensity to the memories of the atrocities and Abdul slept little more than an hour before being awoken, usually by the voice of the woman declaring her love for the American just before the gun went off.

  It was at the lowest point of one of those days that Abdul took hold of himself and reasoned that he could either be a victim of the memories or fight to escape the mental prison they threatened to keep him in.

  Unsurprisingly,Allah became a great help and Abdul found comfort in the Koran, reading it for hours at a time, especially after being woken in the night by horrible dreams. When he got to the end of the book he started at the beginning again, always, to his joy, discovering something new or a subtly different interpretation in the wise pages. He began to feel his soul reaching out to Allah more and more and believed it would be only a matter of time before he, Abdul, made true spiritual contact with Him.

  Abdul began to see Allah’s influence in everything around him and decided that the job offer from the Englishman was a hand reaching down to guide him. There were things he needed to set right over the coming weeks and the word that cried out above all others was ‘change’. He was going to have to become a different person than he had been so far in his life. The pathetic way he had acted since the amputation sickened him and the need to stand on his own two feet and let go of Tasneen’s apron strings became paramount. The only way to achieve that was to leave her. It would be the most positive single event in his quest for development. She had always urged him to think for himself and forge his own way in life but then her very next action would be to treat him like a helpless little boy. And despite resenting her for it he had been content to allow it to continue.With Allah’s help he was going to break free of these chains and the curse of the amputation and become the man he should be.

  Abdul went into the living room, sat on the couch, reached for the remote control and turned on the television. The day’s plan was to watch English-language programmes until Tasneen came home and then he would tell her he was ready to start work for the newspaper as soon as possible. As he flicked through the channels he paused at an Arabic news broadcast, the image on the screen suddenly turning him cold. It was poor-quality video footage of the man’s face that he saw every night in his dreams, the face of the American he had helped kidnap. The man was sitting on a floor, wearing a one-piece orange overall, his hands tied in front of him while several hooded men holding guns stood behind and on either side of him.The commentator was explaining how the tape had recently been released on the Internet by a group calling itself the Holy Jihad Brigade and that they were demanding all American troops should withdraw from Fallujah within a week or the hostage would be executed.

  Abdul was stunned to his very core. Having decided to look to the future by cleansing himself of the past he found that it was thrown right back in his face. And then, just as immediately, something became very clear to him.This was not a coincidence. He had been meant to see the footage. He did not know precisely what it meant but one thing he strongly suspected was that it was not over between him and the American.

  Stanza swam easily to the shallow end of the Sheraton’s outdoor swimming pool and took hold of the side, his breathing laboured. This was his fourth consecutive day of self-supervised physiotherapy and he was doing it days earlier than the doctor had recommended. But Stanza was anxious to get his leg back to a semblance of working order as soon as he could. His earlier belief that he could get almost as much work done in his room, relying on the Internet and talking to other people in the hotel, had turned out to be unrealistic. Patterson had shown a surprising degree of patience with the lack of substance in Stanza’s reports so far but he would not put up with it for much longer. There was little chance of finding any story of substance while Stanza was immobilised in the hotel. His leg was still painful but not all of the time and was nowhere near as bad as it had been only a few days before.

  He brought his legs beneath him into the standing position and gradually lowered himself, bending his legs at the knees.The dull throbbing around the wound was immediate but bearable until a sudden increase in pain forced him to straighten back up. Undeterred, he repeated the exercise several times and was ple
ased to note that the aching reduced slightly and he could bend a little lower each time. Worried that he might open the wound again if he overdid it Stanza called it a day, pushed himself out of the water and twisted his body so that he ended up seated on the edge of the pool. He winced as a sharp pain stabbed through him and he waited for it to ease, checking the wound that was still ugly and swollen with tiny scabs of blood around the stitches where they entered the skin.There was going to be a nasty scar but at least he had a good war story to go with it.There were not too many ‘war correspondents’ around who had a bullet wound.

  Stanza eased himself onto his back, closed his eyes, gently extended his legs until they were flat on the hot concrete surface and let the sun, which felt immediately strong on his face, bake him dry. He felt tired and could have drifted off to sleep but forced himself to concentrate on a plan of action for the next few days. He was confident of soon being fit enough to make a trip to the convention centre in the Green Zone.

  But there were some administrative and logistical problems that had to be taken care of, the first of which was his security adviser. When Stanza had told Mallory that he planned to go to the convention centre within a day or two the man had appeared unenthusiastic. Stanza had argued that all he had to do was walk a few metres from the drop-off point to the first checkpoint inside the Zone where he would be safe but Mallory had explained how he doubted Stanza’s ability to move quickly enough in the event of a ‘situation’ developing on the way to or from the centre. Mallory’s point was that if Stanza needed help getting away he would be putting the rest of the team in jeopardy.

  Stanza still felt he had a valid case, though, and rested it on the argument that he had come to Iraq to do a job that he could not do from his hotel room and that Mallory was employed to find solutions, not create obstacles. To drive his point home he suggested that if it was Mallory’s job to keep Stanza completely safe he should have kept him at the airport on his arrival and held him there for a couple of months. Mallory had no answer to this facetious reasoning and agreed wearily to take Stanza to the convention centre, a decision that heartened the journalist. He had wondered about Mallory’s flexibility. Stanza had heard other journalists complain about their security advisers and how they could be complete pains in the backside. Stanza’s philosophy was that he was in the risk business and therefore so too were his staff. It appeared that Mallory now understood that.

  Another problem - and this was according to Mallory - was the team itself. It was going through something of a shake-up, with Farris the driver having lost his nerve somewhat: under pressure from his family, he was planning to relocate to Jordan. Rumours of civil war were rife and even Mallory, it seemed to Stanza, was not immune to them.

  Mallory had come to Stanza’s room on the journalist’s first morning in the hotel and had presented him with a list of ‘operational procedures’, as he called them.They were in a typical military format, covering things that Stanza should and should not do, such as never leaving the hotel without informing Mallory and never making an appointment in the city without getting every possible contact detail and location to enable Mallory to conduct a security-risk assessment. There was also a detailed equipment list of things that Stanza should carry with him at all times.This included his passport and sufficient money, a torch or flashlight with spare batteries, a phone with a list of emergency contact numbers and a map that Mallory provided that showed friendly and not so friendly locations, hospitals and notable bad areas. Mallory also provided an emergency evacuation plan several pages long, containing information on escape routes to Jordan, Turkey and Kuwait that Stanza had promised he would read but hadn’t.There were also comprehensive health and hygiene tips. Mallory’s ‘briefing’ had gone on for almost an hour, by which time Stanza felt as though he was on some kind of clandestine mission. He did ask, somewhat impudently, at the end of the briefing if Mallory was going to provide him with a Rolex that was really a tracking device. Mallory replied soberly that there were tracking devices on the market if Stanza really wanted one.

  It wasn’t as though Stanza thought that Mallory’s’s concerns were pointless. On the contrary. But Stanza’s view was that Mallory had his job to do, an important part of which was to make Stanza’s life easier. Mallory’s responsibilities included the general running of the bureau staff, ensuring they were trained in their respective tasks and that they maintained security standards at all times. But, according to Mallory, the team was apparently not as solid as it should have been. If Farris did quit, and that appeared to be his intention, they would need to hire another driver. When Stanza suggested that Mallory should ask Farris to make up his mind Mallory was against it, arguing that they needed to show the men some loyalty. These were trying times for Iraqis and Farris was under enough pressure from his family without any westerners adding to it. Stanza agreed to let Mallory handle it. Another question that Mallory had raised was the need for a translator. He explained that he had been told on arrival the Herald’s budget had originally made allowance for the post.

  Stanza was interested. Anyone who could help him was welcome. As for the budget, it wasn’t Stanza’s money and he reckoned that if the allowance was there they should use it.

  Stanza was struck by how keen Mallory was: he already had someone in mind for the job. However, Stanza did question Mallory’s judgement when the recruit was described as a twenty-five-year-old Sunni with limited experience of working with the media, who could not read or write English well despite being able to speak it adequately and, most bizarrely, had only one hand. Mallory defended each criticism as if prepared for it. The man was indeed young but he was a former police officer and therefore had a useful knowledge of the streets and would also be helpful if the police ever stopped them. It would also help if they were in pursuit of a story that required some assistance from that department. As for being a Sunni, the advantages were obvious when a story involved that particular religious persuasion. And as far as his disability was concerned the man was being hired as a translator and in Mallory’s opinion one hand less would not affect this function.

  Mallory’s presentation of his discovery’s case was so thorough that Stanza had little choice but to give the man a try. Still, after his security man’s sincere thanks he got the distinct impression that he had done Mallory some sort of favour.

  Stanza’s mobile phone chirped beside him. He picked it up and hit the ‘receive’ button. ‘Jake Stanza.’

  ‘Jake? It’s Henry.’

  Stanza was instantly fully alert and would have sat bolt upright had it not been for the pain. ‘Hi . . . ’ Stanza stammered. Patterson had not introduced himself to Stanza as Henry since before the infamous incident. After that dreadful day Patterson had been unrelentingly rude to him, a constant reminder of his terminal dislike for the journalist who had almost ruined his precious paper’s reputation.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Patterson asked without a hint of a barb in his tone.

  Stanza struggled to gather his thoughts. This was his first conversation with Patterson since his injury, all previous communications having been with Patterson’s assistant and mostly by e-mail.

  ‘You there?’ Patterson asked with a hint of irritation, sounding a bit more like his old self.

  ‘Yes, sorry, I was just . . . ’

  ‘You been watching the news?’ Patterson interrupted. ‘I know you haven’t been writing much of it - anything worth reading, that is.’

  Stanza rolled his eyes. Whatever the reason for Patterson’s initial civility, it had obviously passed. ‘I . . . ’

  ‘Listen. What do you know about Jeffrey Lamont?’

  Stanza felt that he knew the name from somewhere and as his silence became unbearable even to him it flashed into his head. ‘Kidnapped a month or so ago. Worked for—’

  ‘Shut up and get off this damned phone. The walls have ears over there. You at your computer?’

  ‘No. I’m . . . ’

  ‘Get to your computer
. I’ll Skype.’

  ‘I’m down in the lobby.’

  ‘Then get your ass back to your room. Three minutes,’ Patterson said. The phone went dead.

  Stanza lowered the phone, wondering what on earth the man was so fired up about. He wanted to talk through Skype because it had high encryption, making it more secure than other communication systems.

  Stanza moved as quickly as he could, gritting his teeth against the pain as he pushed himself to his feet. He pulled on his T-shirt and flip-flops, gathered up his things and shuffled into the hotel.

  The pool entrance was on the mezzanine floor but for some reason known only to the hotel management the lifts did not stop there: it was a choice between walking up to the first floor or down to the lobby in order to call one. Stanza chose to employ gravity and, supporting himself heavily on the banister rail, hopped down the broad curving marble stairs to the ground floor as quickly as he could. He hobbled over to the elevator bank and joined a short podgy man who was pushing the call button repeatedly as if his action might speed up the machinery.

  ‘Goddamned elevators,’ the man mumbled as he adjusted a thick pair of glasses on his nose to squint up at the floor indicators that sometimes told the truth about the lift’s whereabouts.