The flight engineer collected our headsets, food trays and blankets once the chopper had settled onto its wheels. The pilot leaned over behind the bulkhead, gave us the hurry-up signal, followed by a salute. I figured the aircrew wanted to be nicely hunkered down back at Tallil with a Dr Pepper by the time the sandstorm hit. Masters and I obliged, grabbing our stuff, hopping out, and running clear of the rotors. The Pave Hawk was airborne before we’d reached the windsock. The flight engineer threw us a wave out the side.
‘Welcome to Fantasy Island,’ Christie exclaimed, over the receding noise of the helo’s turbines, with an accent I’d pegged as Scottish.
We checked the names on each other’s shirts and then shook hands.
‘Just to get the protocol right, what do I call you?’ he asked. ‘“Sir” and “ma’am”? “Provoh marshals”? I’m at a bit of a loss . . .’
‘I get called plenty of things, so whatever you like,’ I replied, having already broken the ice with Christie over the phone. ‘But “Vin” and “Anna” will do, unless you want to go formal, in which case I’m Your Royal Highness and this is Special Agent Masters.’
‘I’ll keep it casual, then, eh? So where do you want to start?’ he said, heading towards a dusty, desert-camo-pattern Land Rover.
‘What about the storm?’ Masters enquired.
‘I understand we’ve got around forty-five minutes till it hits. But I wouldn’t let a little skin-flaying dirt and gravel divert you from your purpose – keeps the snipers indoors. You’re here to look at the new desal plant, right?’
Masters nodded.
‘Then let’s start there, shall we?’
‘Say hello, lads,’ he said to his men as we piled into the Land Rover.
The lads mumbled a greeting.
‘This is Special Agent Cooper and Special Agent Masters. They’re cops, so I hope you’ve all got your parking fines paid up.’
The driver did a U-turn.
‘What do you know about this part of the world?’ Christie asked us.
‘That there are lots of ways to get killed,’ said Masters, beating me to it.
‘You don’t say. Well, Iran is around thirty miles over the horizon that way,’ he said, pointing directly ahead through the windshield. ‘So while this place might be within Iraq’s national borders, its allegiances lie with the Ayatollah. Muqtada al Sadr and his Mahdi Army is top of Ali Baba’s tree around here. Those Shiite asshats run this rat hole and push everyone around – with the exception of Her Majesty’s British Army, of course. Lately, another group called the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq has been trying to muscle in on the action, but so far they haven’t become serious contenders, though it has raised the body count amongst the locals somewhat. The polly who just got a handful of hot lead inserted in his person is a case in point.
‘The Mahdi Army recruits from the poor and the pissed off, so it has a pool the size of a small ocean to draw from in this place. If you have a different political point of view, whether religious or secular, you’ll end up with a bullet-riddled car, and usually while you’re in it.’
‘What about the plant?’ Masters asked.
‘Kawthar al Deen, which means, “Sweet water is the way”, or, “Sweet water of life” – take your pick. We’ve been up here for the last month, tasked to protect the final construction phase. A crafty Egyptian gent by the name of Moses Abdul Tawal fronts the project. He flies in occasionally to kick a few arses for the fun of it. Has his own full-time private security force on-site, made up of mercenaries. And these lads are at least as crazy as any lunatic on the other side of the fence. Fortunately for Tawal, his lunatics are fiercely loyal to his chequebook.’
‘We going to pass through town?’ Masters enquired, establishing the geography.
‘Through Kumayt? No, that’s behind us on the other side of the Tigris. The plant is twenty-three miles north-east of it. We just follow the pipeline.’
‘Twenty-three miles. That would put it within spitting distance of Iran.’
‘It would,’ said Christie, ‘if you could spit ten miles.’
The scrub of the airport gave way to low marshland, something I hadn’t seen a lot of in Iraq. ‘What’s the water like here?’ I asked.
‘Fucking awful, mate. Best you stick to the bitter on tap back at barracks. Failing that, take your own supply. That’s why there’s a desalination plant here. The ground water had a high salt content and traces of DU were found in the surface water. There’s supposed to be a burial ground of contaminated Gulf War I scrap out here somewhere.’
‘We heard. Does anyone know where that burial ground might be?’ Masters asked.
‘No, though I’m sure someone in one of your government departments would have the coordinates tucked away somewhere.’
‘You wouldn’t happen to know why the water was tested in the first place?’
‘When you’re in Kumayt next, call in to the hospital and visit the children’s ward.’
‘What’ll we find there?’
‘Birth defects, many times the national average.’
The marshland came to an abrupt end, becoming the Iraq I was more familiar with – a flat and empty moonscape of powder fine enough to blush a woman’s cheeks. The convoy zigzagged through a half-dozen dry river beds called wadis, eventually hooking up with a broad, smooth strip of two-lane asphalt tracking a fat pipeline that disappeared into the haze. I didn’t see another living thing the entire journey, not even a goat. We followed the road for twenty minutes, the elevation climbing steadily, plenty of signage along the way keeping us informed of the miles remaining to the plant.
‘You ever meet a Colonel Emmet Portman?’ I asked Christie.
‘Colonel Portman? Ay, he didn’t invite me over for tea or anything, but I met him a couple of times. Seemed like a good man. Friend of yours?’
‘He was murdered,’ said Masters.
‘Oh, sorry to hear that. Is that why you’re here? On the trail, as it were?’
‘As it were,’ I confirmed.
‘And here I was, thinking perhaps it was the weather that brought you here. For what it’s worth . . . and don’t take this the wrong way – rumour had it Portman and Tawal hated each other’s guts.’
‘Do you know why?’ Masters asked.
‘No – the rumour didn’t come packed with a lot of detail. Take the turn-off, boyo,’ Christie instructed the driver. There was no turn-off that I could make out, just a bunch of divergent tyre tracks in the mushroom-coloured dust. ‘I’ll take you to where you can get an overview of the project. Might as well do that before we drive you up to the front door. You seen a desalination plant before?’
Masters and I shook our heads. No.
‘You’re in for a surprise then. Our base is up this way, too.’
Several corners later, the trail swept past the aforementioned base, barricaded with barbed wire, sandbagged machine-gun posts and sentries. We motored by in a swirling cloud of choking grit that drifted towards the Brit guards, one of whom gave us a merry wave.
Not five minute’s drive past Club Dragoon, the convoy pulled to a stop on a low hill. Spread out below was a vast facility.
‘Jesus Christ,’ muttered Masters as we left the vehicles.
Countless shiny new stainless-steel pipes were laid out on the desert below like the sand had been sucked away to reveal the skeleton beneath. Here and there, clusters of vertical stacks rose into the air. There were huge water storage tanks, covered cooling ponds, an enormous power station to provide the facility with electricity, a 10,000 foot newly surfaced runway, hangars, garages and several groupings of buildings that looked like office blocks. Surrounding the facility was a trench deep enough to swallow tanks. Inside it, there was a double perimeter of gleaming razor wire that reminded me of an exercise yard in a correctional facility. Concrete bunkers that I guessed contained machine-gun emplacements dotted the perimeter every 300 yards or so. ‘You’d think they were expecting trouble,’ I remarke
d.
The roar of jets at high altitude echoed around us. I squinted at the sky a long way ahead of the sound and saw two tiny flecks of silver racing north, parallel to the Iranian border.
Christie rested the butt of his SA80 assault rifle on his hip. ‘Ay, like I said, Iran is barely ten miles across the plain. On a clear day you can see Khuzestan, the Iranian province Saddam annexed during the Iraq–Iran war. I’ve heard they’re pretty jumpy over there. And while I think about it, best not to venture off the road. The surrounding area has been mined.’
Masters peered through a pair of binoculars. ‘Who owns the white Eurocopter? That’s a lot of money parked down there on the helipad.’
‘If it’s white, it’s Tawal’s,’ Christie replied. ‘You’re in luck. He must be in.’
‘He is,’ she said, passing me the glasses. ‘Take a look.’
She indicated that I should aim at a particular building. I refocused until a tall man in a long white robe sharpened in the lenses. Tawal – we’d seen pictures of him on the net. He was beating two other men to the ground with a clipboard. The guys taking the lumps were cowering, protecting their heads with their arms.
‘And don’t you ever ask me for a raise again . . .’ Masters said, taking a camera with a long lens out of her bag and snapping off a bunch of shots.
I kept watching. The guys put up no resistance whatsoever. When Tawal had finished dishing out the punishment, he spat on the two men sprawled on the ground.
‘I’ve seen Tawal do worse,’ said Christie, peering through his own pair of glasses. ‘The place is a couple of months behind schedule. He’s on edge.’
I moved the binoculars over the facility while Masters took photos. There were plenty of armed stooges wandering around, looking bored. I noted one of them also had a set of binoculars. And the guy was looking straight back at us. ‘Let’s go introduce ourselves,’ I said.
A grey veil was suddenly drawn across the sun. The light intensity went from mid morning to late afternoon in a couple of seconds. The sandstorm moved across the sky and the ground. I saw the guy with the binoculars become enveloped in a swirling eddy of sand that forced him to bury his face in the crook of his arm, and then he disappeared. I felt a shift in the air around us, sucked out just like sea water retreats ahead of a tsunami. A heartbeat later, we were consumed by a howling, blinding wind that stung exposed skin and filled my mouth and nose with a choking dry clot of dust and grit.
I put on the eye goggles and tied some camouflage netting around my face. Masters, Christie and his men did likewise. Christie gave the ‘move out’ hand signal, the shriek of the wind and the intense sandblasting making further talk a waste of breath.
Thirty-nine
Moses Abdul Tawal was in his mid fifties. He was also somewhere around six three and 230 pounds; athletic, but with a stomach that looked like a pillow had been stuffed up his shirt. His hair was solid black with no grey – dyed, I guessed – and brushed back off his forehead. His skin was brown and smooth as tanned leather. Behind gold Porsche Design glasses, his eyes were small and surrounded by dark circles. Tawal either didn’t sleep much or he was sporting a couple of first-class shiners. Maybe the workforce had fought back.
‘You have blood on your sleeve, Mr Tawal,’ I said once the formalities of introduction, namely our shields, were back in our pockets.
He saw the spatters, pulled back the sleeve and investigated the skin on the underside of his forearm. ‘Oh, I must have injured myself somehow,’ he said in perfect, though Middle Eastern–accented, English.
Yeah, we saw.
Not finding a source for the blood, Tawal shrugged and moved on. ‘Can I get you anything? You must be parched from being out in the storm. As you might expect, we do a very nice line in water here.’
‘Sure,’ I replied. ‘Water would be fine.’
‘Please,’ nodded Masters.
A young Iraqi guy in a white coat and black pants appeared from behind a black panel, a crystal decanter and two glasses on a heavy silver tray between his hands. He placed the load on the immense, and no doubt priceless, wood and ivory antique boardroom table. I accepted the glass as sand dislodged from the folds in my clothes and rained down onto the black granite floor around my feet. I shifted my boots, and the sand crunched. I gulped down the water, as did Masters.
A wall of glass down two sides of the room suggested this was a corner office. Beyond it, I supposed, lay the expanse of Kawthar al Deen – though, at the moment, the view was limited to a solid wall of boiling dust, the high overhead sun making its presence known by throwing an ethereal orange–red tinge throughout. There was a flash followed by a bolt of lightning. The building rumbled, the storm front passing close by. Large drops of water, heavy with suspended powder, began to smear the glass.
‘So, how may I help you today?’ Tawal asked, taking a seat at the head of the table and beckoning us to sit.
‘There have been a number of murders. You have probably heard what happened to the US Air Attaché to Turkey, Colonel Emmet Portman,’ I said, kicking it off. ‘We believe you and the colonel met on a number of occasions, and over a number of years.’
‘Why, yes, I did hear about the colonel. Very tragic. But I fail to see how his death might have anything to do with me.’
‘Colonel Portman spent a lot of time down here. There seems to have been a lot of effort expended to keep that quiet.’
Tawal shook his head. ‘Not of my doing. I still don’t see how I may be of any worthwhile assistance.’
‘We believe the two of you didn’t get on.’
‘Who told you this?’ Tawal frowned.
‘I don’t think it’s any secret,’ I countered.
‘There were certainly issues on which the colonel and I did not see eye to eye. But I would like to think that we had a common respect.’
‘What were some of the issues that came between you, Mr Tawal?’ Masters asked.
‘The colonel did not think it fair that this facility came to be built by an Iraqi-led consortium, given the amount of American blood sacrificed here in the name of democracy.’
I believed in Tawal’s answer as much as he did. ‘You mean he didn’t appreciate the way your consortium lied, cheated and bribed its way into the box seat.’
‘Ah, I see you’ve been talking to the people at the Thurlstane Group. This is not America, Mr . . .’
‘Special Agent Cooper.’
‘Thurlstane was not prepared to conform to the realities of business practices here in Iraq, Special Agent Cooper. We were. That is why, as I believe you saw today, we have built a magnificent piece of infrastructure for the people of Iraq, for the future of this great country.’
‘A runway, lots of empty buildings, a nice thirty-mile stretch of highway – it all seems like a lot of trouble to go to for a patch of desert,’ I said.
‘How very near-sighted of you, Special Agent. Water is even more important to the future fortunes of the Middle East than oil. Over the coming decades, you will see towns like Kumayt become cities, purely because of the presence of this facility. Along with the domestic consumption of potable water, we will also be able to supply industry and agriculture with its needs. I wouldn’t be surprised if Kawthar al Deen itself becomes an important town and business centre surrounded by lush farmland. Populations will grow on our doorstep.’
‘I hope they don’t step on your mines.’
Tawal stared at me without blinking. He then glanced around the room – probably scoping about for his trusty clipboard with which to teach me some respect.
‘Where are you from, Mr Tawal? You’re not Iraqi.’
‘I am Egyptian, from Cairo. Are you going to ask to see my passport?’
‘No, and there’s no need to tense up on us, Mr Tawal,’ I said.
‘You have an aggressive interrogation style, Special Agent.’
‘This is Special Agent Cooper being nice, Mr Tawal,’ Masters informed him. ‘He must like you.’
The guy forced out a smile but he didn’t seem in the least bit happy.
‘We have some photos we’d like you to have a look at, if you wouldn’t mind, sir,’ Masters continued. She pulled a folder from a satchel. ‘Do you know this man?’ she asked, placing a print on the table in front of Tawal.
‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Who is he?’
‘His name is Dutch Bremmel. Or I should say, was. He’s dead.’ Masters produced a second photograph. ‘And this man?’
‘No.’
‘His name was Denzel Nogart, though mostly he was known as Ten Pin. Also dead.’
A blank expression suffused Tawal’s face. It said he had no idea why he was being shown these photos, which he reiterated by saying as much.
‘How about this woman?’ Masters now put a police artist’s impression of Yafa on the table.
‘Is this woman also dead?’
‘We wish,’ I said.
‘Why are you showing me pictures of people I have never seen before?’ he asked.
We couldn’t decide whether Mr Tawal here was a very dangerous man or a man in very great danger. Until we knew for certain what we were dealing with, Masters and I had decided beforehand not to stampede the guy. It was time to shift the tone into the conciliation range.
‘We believe Emmet Portman died because of some connection with this facility,’ I told him. ‘And frankly, sir, we’re concerned for your safety. Special Agent Masters could show you photographs of at least another twenty men and women, including a couple of close associates of ours, who’ve been murdered along with him. There have also been attempts on our lives during the course of this investigation.’
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