‘Kareem. It’s Mallory. Are you coming in this morning at nine? Nine o’clock . . . Good.What about Farris? OK. See you here at nine. Be a little earlier if you can. Bye.’
Farris was apparently on his way in but seeing was believing. Mallory’s next call was to Tasneen who was very cheery when she answered the phone. She asked him to hold on while she moved to somewhere more private in her apartment. She had made it home without a hitch to find Abdul asleep on the couch and when he woke up he’d been relieved to see her. He had been visibly excited about starting work that morning and she intended to drop him off at the hotel on her way to work.When Mallory asked if she planned to drop him off and pick him up on a regular basis she said no but since this was his first day she would make an exception. In future Abdul would use the taxi service which was reliable enough. Mallory made a mental note to instruct Kareem to drive Abdul into work and back home when practical. Mallory eventually said goodbye to Tasneen after they agreed to discuss Abdul’s first day at the end of it.
At a quarter to nine Mallory stepped out of his room and looked down into the lobby.The wind blew unchecked through the hotel but apart from the missing windows everything looked in place. If there was one thing the Iraqis could do efficiently it was clean up immediately after a bomb.
Kareem and Farris stepped out of the emergency stairwell - the lifts were still out of order - and walked towards him, both lighting up cigarettes even though they were out of breath. It was at times like this that the KBR staff suffered through living at the top of the building, particularly their grossly overweight members - of whom there were many. But because of their selfish antics with the lifts no one had any sympathy for them. Des, of course, had been quick to react by posting a sign in the emergency stairwell on his floor that was aimed at KBR staff. It announced: ‘Only 16 more floors to go, you fat bastards.’
Farris looked sheepish as he greeted Mallory but said nothing about his future intentions. Mallory chose not to ask. If Farris wanted to leave the country it would be a problem for Mallory’s relief. Some media organisations were easier-going and local staff could organise stand-ins to take their place but Mallory did not allow that. Mallory had trained his drivers in security-driving techniques that included actions to take in the event of various different situations, from a traffic accident or flat tyre to an actual enemy contact. He did not want to endanger the client or the team by having a stranger take over, someone who did not know the drills and procedures.
Mallory looked back down into the lobby and saw a young man who resembled Tasneen’s brother standing near the fountain, one of his arms wrapped in a colourful cloth. ‘We have a new guy starting today,’ Mallory said to the drivers.They looked at each other quizzically. The suspicions that Kareem had confided to Farris on the subject had obviously been correct. ‘If you need someone I can find you good man,’ Kareem said.
Mallory knew that was coming. It irritated him how these people never seemed to grasp the boundaries of their rank, often making suggestions concerning matters beyond their authority. ‘He will be a translator and fixer and will be working directly with Stanza . . . He’s a Sunni,’ Mallory added, caring less if that last bit of information annoyed them further.
Farris and Kareem glanced at each other again to ensure that they were in agreement. ‘No problem,’ Kareem said, shrugging, a sentiment clearly opposite to what he truly felt.
‘Be back in a minute,’ Mallory said, leaving them.
Abdul recognised Mallory as soon as he saw him step onto the lobby floor and put on a smile for him. Mallory reached out with his left hand, Abdul took it and they shook. The vividly coloured silk scarf that wrapped the bandaged stump was no doubt a touch from Tasneen.
‘How are you?’ Mallory asked.
‘I am fine - thank you for asking,’ Abdul said, each word carefully enunciated.
‘Your sister drop you off?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you had breakfast?’
‘I had breakfast with home - at home, thank you.’ Abdul smiled apologetically at the mistake.
‘How is the wound? Still painful?’
‘Very little now. I do not need the pills any more.’
‘That’s good.’ Mallory was pleased with his first impression of the young man who was polite, dignified and unobtrusive, qualities that Mallory hoped would sustain. ‘We live on the fifth floor. Come and meet the rest of the team.’
‘Of course,’ Abdul said, extending his left hand in a courteous gesture to indicate that Mallory should lead on.
Mallory headed for the stairs. ‘The lifts aren’t working at the moment but you need to know the emergency stairs anyway.’
Kareem and Farris were leaning on the rail, smoking cigarettes and chatting, as Mallory and Abdul exited the emergency stairwell. Mallory made the introductions and the men exchanged greetings in Arabic. Kareem and Farris glanced at Abdul’s stump several times without mentioning it. The meeting between them seemed cordial enough and, not wanting to waste any more time, Mallory knocked on Stanza’s door. When it opened Stanza looked out, saw his assembled team and stepped back to let them in.
‘This is Abdul,’ Mallory said as the young man passed the journalist. Stanza forced a smile, extended his right hand and before he realised his mistake Abdul took hold of the journalist’s offered fingers with his left hand and shook them.
Mallory closed the door after Kareem and Farris and followed them into the room.
‘Find a seat,’ Stanza said.The drivers sat on the edge of the bed, leaving the two chairs for Mallory and Stanza. Abdul stood politely to one side until Stanza insisted that he should take a chair.
Stanza sat on the edge of his desk.‘I guess we should first of all welcome - Abdul, is it?’
Abdul nodded. ‘Abdul, yes,’ he said.
‘I take it you guys all know each other?’ Stanza asked, looking between the drivers.
‘They just met,’ Mallory said.
‘OK.Welcome to the team . . . um . . . let’s see how we all get on and . . . well, let’s get straight to it . . . We have a story the paper wants to pursue. But before I get into it I need to stress one important thing, which is that everything about this story has to be kept between ourselves. No other media group out there -’ he pointed to his door ‘- has the knowledge we have about the story and they must not find out. In fact, no one outside of this room must know. Understood? Friends, family, whoever. It has to stay with us only. Is that clear?’ He acted like a headmaster, looking hard at each individual until he nodded.
Stanza looked at Mallory last. Mallory was miffed at being relegated to the level of the others and decided that he’d been right in his earlier impression of the journalist: Stanza was a twat.
Appearing satisfied, Stanza adjusted his position before delivering the next part of his brief. ‘The story,’ he announced, ‘is Jeffrey Lamont, the American who was kidnapped from a house in Karada last month. A lady and two other people were murdered at the same time.’
Abdul stiffened, then checked to see if any of the others were looking at him. Suddenly he wondered if this was some kind of bizarre set-up. But all eyes were on Stanza who was looking down at the floor while composing his next sentence.
Kareem and Farris did not know who Stanza was referring to but, typically, nodded as if they did.
Mallory didn’t know who Stanza was talking about either. There were dozens of kidnap victims. The mention of the murdered girl rang a bell but triggered nothing specific in his memory.
‘I’m not gonna say too much right now,’ Stanza went on, ‘other than that we’re a Wisconsin newspaper and Lamont is a Wisconsin boy.’
That was obviously the appeal of the story but Mallory could not see the reason for secrecy. Stanza was clearly taking this too seriously. From Mallory’s experience, Kareem and Farris would have understood about five per cent of what Stanza had said: they made little effort to concentrate, even though they nodded constantly. Abdul, on the other ha
nd, appeared locked onto Stanza’s every word.
‘I’m gonna need your help on a few things,’ Stanza went on, addressing the nodding drivers, clearly unaware of their level of competence. ‘Research. First thing. The woman Lamont was seeing, the one who was murdered. Very important. I want to know who she was. Where are her family, parents, whatever? We need to talk to someone who knew her. Next. The house where the kidnapping took place. Where is it? This is where you guys earn your dollars. Any ideas how to find answers to these questions?’
Kareem and Farris were looking at each other as if they had been asked to find the Holy Grail.
‘Mallory,’ Stanza said.
Mallory looked at him. ‘Sorry. What?’
‘Any ideas?’
Mallory shrugged. Story research was not his part of the ship. ‘Finding the house?’ he said, blowing through pursed lips. ‘Was the address on the wires?’ he pondered, throwing out the first thought that came into his head.
‘Research back at the office has come up blank. Someone in this town has to know. What about the police?’
Mallory looked at Abdul who was wearing a bemused expression. ‘Abdul?’
Abdul snapped out of his trance and looked at him enquiringly.
‘Any ideas?’ Mallory asked. ‘You’re an ex cop . . . Do you know anyone who could tell us where the house is?’
Abdul stared at Mallory for an uncomfortably long time but his eyes were out of focus again and were seeing something else. He was back in the house in its dark, quiet street, seeing again the tattered entrance, the creaking stairs, the room at the top, the people inside and then hearing a gunshot that made him blink.
Mallory wondered if there was something wrong with the man.Tasneen had mentioned something about psychological stress but she’d never said how bad. ‘You OK, Abdul?’
Abdul refocused and saw everyone looking at him. ‘I know where it is,’ he said matter-of-factly.
‘The house where Lamont was kidnapped from?’ Mallory asked, unsure if Abdul was on the same page as the rest of them.
‘Yes,’ Abdul said. His mental reaction to thoughts of the house had varied since that night but his present feelings tended towards morbid curiosity. He had passed by the end of the street a couple of times since that night and had strained to see the building in the few seconds it had been in view. There had to be an explanation of why he was going to offer to take these people to visit it. The thought had come from outside his soul and therefore was not his. Perhaps it came from Allah, he mused.
‘The house where Jeffrey Lamont the American was kidnapped?’ Stanza repeated.
‘Yes,’ Abdul said. ‘Where Lamont was kidnapped.’
‘And where the woman was murdered?’ Stanza added, still not entirely convinced that the young man knew what he was talking about. It all seemed too easy, too convenient.
‘And another man and woman,’ Abdul added.
‘Were you on duty the night it happened . . . a police officer?’ Mallory asked.
‘Yes,’ Abdul said.
‘Were you involved in the case?’ Stanza asked anxiously.
‘I was out that night and I know where it is.’
‘And you can take us there?’ Stanza asked, tense.
‘Yes,’Abdul said, calming down as the questions kept coming.
‘This is fantastic,’ Stanza said, standing up and flexing his leg, which had stiffened a little. ‘What about the woman?’ Stanza asked.
Abdul considered the question. ‘I don’t know,’ he finally said.
‘I’ll settle for the house for now,’ Stanza said. ‘I want to go there. Right away.’
Abdul shrugged. ‘OK.’
‘So let’s go.’ Stanza made a move towards the door.
‘One second,’ Mallory said.
Everyone paused.
‘Let’s remember where we all are, shall we? Kidnappings, bombings, shootings take place outside the hotel, any time, anywhere. So can we all put our security heads back on? I need to give Abdul a security brief: how we do things, go through a few of the drills, OK?’
Stanza sighed heavily. ‘Do we have to do that now?’ he asked.
‘What if something happens on the way?’ Mallory argued. ‘He needs to know - for his safety as well as ours - how we operate and what to do in an emergency. You can’t take short cuts in this place.’
‘OK, OK,’ Stanza said, holding up his hands.‘Enough with the lecture. I’ll see you guys in the car park.’
‘Quarter to ten at the cars,’ Mallory said. Kareem and Farris acknowledged and followed Stanza out of the room.
Mallory looked at Abdul, curious about his mental balance though not unduly alarmed by any of the signs of distraction that he’d displayed. Abdul looked far too pathetic to be threatening. ‘Let’s take a slow walk to the car park. I’ll tell you what we do in emergency situations - bombs, shootings, flat tyres, accident, car crash, if we’re being followed, et cetera. I would normally take a whole day going over these things. Anything you don’t understand, ask me. OK?’
Abdul nodded.
‘I don’t mind repeating myself a hundred times but you have to know what I’m saying. Don’t say you understand something if you don’t because I will ask you questions and if you can’t answer them correctly I’ll be angry. Do we understand each other?’
‘Yes,’ Abdul said, wondering if the Englishman liked him or not. Abdul was instinctively suspicious of this invader. All foreigners were in Iraq to make money out of Iraqis. Abdul did not feel hate for them, nor malice, but he did not like them either. His attraction to western trappings was not as strong as it had once been. The West and democracy were threats to Islam and they had to go, it was as simple as that. But, simple as the solution was, its achievement would not be easy, he knew that much. He believed in patience but above all else he trusted in Allah. Abdul’s faith was founded on the teaching that every single object and action was part of a great and universal design that would eventually prove Islam to be the true guiding light of mankind. It was the only religion that secured man’s salvation against himself. Allah oversaw every strata of life and was even watching the faithful at this moment, listening to their plans and ambitions and guiding them where necessary.
The pair left the building and as Mallory talked Abdul listened carefully. He did not want to give Mallory any reason to criticise him and he asked several questions, some of which he already knew the answers to. But he wanted to prove that he was being attentive. All the while, however, in the back of his mind was the forthcoming visit to the house of the murders. It was a living nightmare that he had to confront at some time. There was also the threat from Hassan to consider. As long as Abdul did not implicate the other members of his squad in any way there should be no problem. But that was assuming Hassan was a reasonable man, which he was not.Abdul was aware of another change in himself. He was no longer as afraid as he used to be. He still feared the unknown, though: the house, his future. His recent maturity was Allah’s doing, he knew that much. He also had a strange feeling that the journey he needed to take had begun.
Half an hour later the Milwaukee Herald’s two cars were passing through the hotel’s last security checkpoint. Farris’s car still had bullet holes in the windshield and bonnet: Mallory had asked him repeatedly to have them repaired because they drew attention. It was this type of insubordination that took Mallory to the brink of losing his temper and in this case threatening to replace Farris’s car and therefore the driver if it was not taken care of. He decided that if the vehicle was not repaired by the end of the week he would deliver just such an ultimatum. Farris and Kareem were slacking and needed a kick up their backsides.
The team drove down a narrow pothole-scarred residential backstreet that connected to Sadoon Street. Des had nicknamed it ‘Fingers-in-your-ears Street’ because of the number of explosive devices that had been planted in it during the past year - it was the only route out of the hotel complex most of the time and was therefore an
attractive ambush site.
Abdul was in the lead vehicle with Farris while Mallory and Stanza followed in Kareem’s car. At his feet Mallory kept a holdall containing a short-barrelled AK47 with an extra-long forty-round magazine attached, a chest harness holding six AK47 magazines, a smoke grenade and a shrapnel grenade that he had appropriated from a US soldier.
The general M.O. while driving in the city was for both vehicles to act as if one had nothing to do with the other. Mallory had given Abdul as much of a security brief as he could in half an hour and was relying on Farris to guide him if they ran into a problem.
Stanza wiped his brow and adjusted his body armour. ‘This jacket is damned hot,’ he complained.
‘Wait until the summer,’ Mallory said dryly.
‘How come the drivers don’t wear any?’ Stanza asked. Kareem glanced at the journalist in the rear-view mirror and gave a smirk.
‘Same reason they don’t wear seat belts,’ Mallory said. ‘Allah will decide when it’s time for them to die and no safety equipment will help when that moment arrives. That right, Kareem?’
‘Al hamdillilah,’ Kareem nodded.
Abdul had given Farris and Kareem a rough idea of where the house was and on reaching the Ali Baba roundabout they took the first exit into a popular shopping district. The street was lined on both sides with vendors of every description, most of them utilising the wide pavement to display their wares that included newly made furniture, washing machines still in their boxes and stacked several high, satellite dishes, refrigerators and clothing.
‘What’s this street?’ Stanza asked.
‘Tariq Al Karada,’ Kareem replied.
‘Are we actually in Karada?’ Stanza asked.
‘We not far from the house - if Abdul is telling truth,’ Kareem said.
‘Do you think he’s making it up?’ Stanza asked, curious why Kareem should say such a thing.
Kareem shrugged his shoulders and stuck out his bottom lip. ‘We shall see,’ he said.
The traffic was heavy and Kareem did not allow more than a couple of cars to get between him and Farris. After crossing a major junction they turned along a quiet residential street. A few blocks further on Farris slowed as he approached the entrance to another.
The Protector Page 24
