War of the Encyclopaedists

by Christopher Robinson

PRINCIPAL PURPOSE:To document potential criminal activity involving the US Army, and to allow Army officials to maintain discipline, law, and order through investigation of complaints and incidents.

  ROUTINE USES:Information provided may be further disclosed to federal, state, local, and foreign government law enforcement agencies, prosecutors, courts, child protective services, victims, witnesses, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Office of Personnel Management. Information provided may be used for determinations regarding judicial or non-judicial punishment, other administrative disciplinary actions, security clearances, recruitment, retention, placement, and other personnel actions.

  LOCATION: CP 11DATE: 20041101TIME: 1725

  Farouk Allil, ~45 YO Local National Male, states the following:

  I know everything that you are wanting to know. It is very fortunate for you to have someone like me.

  Q, 2LT Montauk

  A, Farouk Allil

  Q: What do you know about Aladdin’s murder?

  A: I know a lot about Aladdin’s murder.

  Q: Do you know how he was murdered?

  A: Yes.

  Q: How was he murdered?

  A: By mujahideen.

  Q: How do you know this?

  A: I have very good information. I will give you the information and you give me the reward.

  Q: How did Aladdin die?

  A: He was murdered by mujahideen.

  Q: How specifically? How did they murder him?

  A: They kidnapped him first, then they killed him.

  Q: What weapons did they use?

  A: The normal weapons.

  Q: What are the normal weapons?

  A: Maybe a gun, a pistol, knives.

  Q: Did you know Aladdin before he was killed?

  A: Sure, I know him.

  Q: How did you know him?

  A: We live nearby.

  Q: How many mujahideen killed him?

  A: The usual number, it’s the same number what you’re looking for.

  Q: What number am I looking for?

  A: The usual number.

  Q: I’m looking for information about this murder. You say you have information.

  A: Yes, I see. I have the information, I give you the information.

  Q: Okay.

  A: And you give me reward.

  Q: How many mujahideen?

  A: Five?

  Q: Five?

  A: Five? You want five mujahideen?

  Q: I want the number that were actually involved in the killing. How many were actually involved?

  A: Oh, many, many.

  Q: Many?

  A: How many do you want? I can give you names and addresses.

  Q: I’m only giving you a reward if this is actual true information about Aladdin’s murder. I want the actual murderers.

  A: The actual murderers, yes. How many do you want?

  NOTES:

  Ali Gorma acted as translator for Farouk Allil. Nothing follows.

  DA FORM 2823, OCT 2004

  PREVIOUS EDITIONS ARE OBSOLETE

  APD LC v1.01ES

  25

  * * *

  Like all men of Babylon, I have been proconsul; like all, a slave. Montauk sat in the shade of the CP with a cold Mr. Brown and a copy of Borges’s Labyrinths that he’d received in the mail that morning. Corderoy had sent it—there was no return address, but it had to be him. Who else would have dog-eared “The Lottery in Babylon,” a pretty academic joke about Montauk’s current geographical circumstances. Corderoy had underlined several passages, including that first line. For a lunar year, I was declared invisible—I would cry out and not be heeded. Was he lonely in Boston? Why didn’t he just write? Why didn’t Montauk? He had read the story before, but not through Corderoy’s eyes. In many cases, the knowledge that certain happy turns were the simple result of chance would have lessened the force of those outcomes. That sounded like Corderoy, all right, rejecting good fortune because he didn’t deserve it. He had starred a longer passage:

  If the Lottery is an intensification of chance, a periodic infusion of chaos into the cosmos, then is it not appropriate that chance intervene in every aspect of the drawing, not just one? Is it not ludicrous that chance should dictate a person’s death while the circumstances of that death—whether private or public, whether drawn out for an hour or a century—should not be subject to chance?

  Poor Corderoy, trapped in his head, just like Borges. Montauk got the intended sentiment, the frustration and bafflement that life was subject to the dictates of chance, but it was such an intellectual, metaphysical framing of the idea. It could live only inside a library. It would fall apart as soon as some junky BMW raced toward the barricades with who knew what in its trunk, his men forced to shoot the dirt, then the tires, then, if the car kept coming, the driver. Center of mass.

  Two-Six, Two-Three, can you come down to Routine Search? Got an issue down the line. It was Staff Sergeant Arroyo, 3rd Squad leader.

  “Two-Three, Two-Six,” Montauk said into his hand mike. “Moving.”

  At the head of the line, he found Sergeant Fields feeling up the upholstery of some old black Opel. Ant had finished patting down the driver, who presently fished a pair of cigarettes from his front pocket and handed one to Ant. Ant shrugged but accepted it. He gave Montauk a halfhearted hooah as he passed. The Iraqi gave Montauk a big smile and the motionless openhanded wave peculiar to Baghdadis. Montauk returned the hooah and the wave and strode by.

  Behind that car, there was a long line of cars winding down Karada Dahil. Raggedy palms and a big pile of trash, complete with old hypodermic needles, made a natural barrier between the sidewalk and the vacant lot to the east of the checkpoint. Montauk didn’t know what the needles signified other than medical waste. He didn’t imagine Baghdadis did needle-type drugs. It occurred to him that he wouldn’t know whom he could ask about it that he was confident would both know the answer and tell him the truth.

  He found Staff Sergeant Arroyo a few cars down, standing next to the T-walls with Ali Gorma and another Iraqi. Gorma looked bored out of his skull; he was idly looking at a dusty BMW a few cars back from which some tinny Arabic-pop was emanating. Montauk had struggled for the last week to figure out what was going on in Ali Gorma’s head, largely to no avail. The guy didn’t seem to have any interests. He rode a motorcycle, and sometimes he’d sort of incline his head toward a car that wasn’t a total piece of shit, but that was as close as he came to getting excited about anything. If only those terrorist fucks had killed Gorma instead of Aladdin. Of course, Gorma’s perfect insipidness was probably why he’d never wind up in the river.

  “We’ve got an abandoned car down the line,” Arroyo said. “This guy says he saw the driver get out and run away. Says the driver’s Al-Qaeda.”

  The Iraqi wore thin slacks and a button-up and the kind of thin-soled leather slip-on shoes that straddled the line between cheap and elegant.

  “Why does he think he’s Al-Qaeda?” Montauk looked at Staff Sergeant Arroyo, who looked at Ali Gorma. They all looked at the Iraqi as Ali Gorma repeated the question. In Arabic, Montauk noticed, it was pronounced more like “Al-Q’aye-duh.” The man turned his hands up and said a few words to Gorma.

  “He doesn’t know,” Gorma said.

  “Well . . . did you mirror it?”

  “No, sir,” said Arroyo. He clicked on his walkie-talkie. “Ant. Bring the mirror up here.”

  Roger, came the reply. Montauk looked back down to the checkpoint and saw Ant and Fields moving toward them with the undercarriage mirror.

  “Which car is it?” Montauk asked.

  “Gray Toyota, ten cars down,” Arroyo said.

  “He says the man parked the car and ran away with a cell phone and hasn
’t been back,” Gorma said. The Iraqi witness kept talking.

  “He says he thinks he is Al—”

  “I know,” Montauk said.

  Ant and Fields arrived with the mirror.

  “Okay, get some standoff, I’ll go check it out myself. Ant, you post up twenty meters past the car while I have a look. Try to get some cover.”

  Ant gave a dubious look to Staff Sergeant Arroyo. “Hey, sir, should we call EOD?” Arroyo asked.

  “We can’t call the bomb squad for every parked fucking car,” Montauk said. “They don’t have time for that shit.” A scent like a wood fire mixed with plastic and petrol drifted past Montauk’s nostrils. Someone was burning trash nearby. Ant moved out past the gray Toyota, staying close to the T-walls.

  “Look for a hajji with one of those Wile E. Coyote plungers,” Fields called after him.

  This was the second time Montauk had inspected a suspicious car, but the first time he’d done so after seeing the car bomb at the Iraqi T.J.Maxx. He knew now that the sound would be sharp, like the snapping of an enormous stick. It would happen fast, so fast that he would not see it coming. The Toyota was a junker. The driver’s seat had a cover made of wooden beads, the kind that was supposed to massage your back. There was a large crack running the length of the windshield. He spotted an empty potato chip bag in the backseat. This made Montauk feel better, as it did not comport with the ritualized cleanliness he imagined suicide bombers adhered to. He slid the rolling mirror under the car and looked up at the dirty undercarriage. There were no bombs as far as he could see. But the obvious thing would be to just put it in the trunk and either try to remote-detonate it or wire it to blow when the trunk got opened. He thought of the driver observing him nearby.

  He set the mirror down on the sidewalk and walked over to the trunk, sliding Molly Millions around his back to get her out of the way. Arroyo, Fields, Gorma, and the nervous Iraqi were watching him from down the street. Ant had tucked himself into a gap between two T-walls and was scanning the buildings across Karada Dahil. Montauk looked back at the trunk latch. Labyrinths, in his cargo pocket, rested damply against his thigh. The worst thought was that as fast as an explosion was, perhaps he would be aware of it for at least a split second, a sensation of dark impact and the taste of blood and teeth or metal as his face got blown in, like the way your eyes supposedly took mental still-frames every sixteenth of a second. Is it not ludicrous that chance should dictate a person’s death while the circumstances of that death—whether private or public, whether drawn out for an hour or a century—should not be subject to chance?

  He brought a gloved hand down to the latch and closed his eyes, hoping that if it did blow, he wouldn’t live to regret it. It wasn’t too late. He could call EOD. “Ahh, fuck it,” Montauk muttered, and clicked open the trunk.

  BOOM!

  Montauk was lifted off the ground by his own fear. He turned to see Fields down the line, doubled over laughing. “Goddammit!” Montauk said. “What the fuck was that?”

  “Sorry, sir,” Fields shouted back. “Couldn’t resist.” He chuckled to himself.

  The trunk was empty except for a small nylon gym bag and a stack of old newspapers. There was a tire iron poking up through the coarse carpet. Montauk slammed it shut, wincing at the sound. “Clear,” he said to Ant, who was already on his way back, his face emotionless. Ever since they’d pulled Aladdin’s body from the river, Ant had become more withdrawn. And Fields, who used to be so decent, had become a complete asshole.

  Montauk handed over the mirror to Arroyo, told him to keep Fields in line, and fished his tin of Kodiak out of his jacket pocket. He checked his little black Casio as he walked back toward the CP. Another four hours until the shift was over.

  “Hey, man,” Monkey said.

  Montauk turned and looked up to the edge of a T-wall. How Monkey had managed to scramble up there, Montauk couldn’t tell.

  “You find a bomb, man?”

  “No.”

  “You know that old man say you shit, man.”

  Old man? Montauk looked down the street at the Iraqi standing next to Arroyo. “The driver said that? He wasn’t that old. What did he say?”

  “He said you shit American don’t help anything, man.”

  “Did he.”

  Monkey nodded.

  Fucking Gorma. Was he really leaving that out of his translation? Or was Monkey bullshitting him? Once again, as was so often the case, Montauk was confronted with the fact that in his position, certain things were not merely unknowable, they seemed to not even have definitive truth values. There simply was no answer; in asking the question, you couldn’t help but affect the world you wanted to investigate. Babylon is nothing but an infinite game of chance.

  26

  * * *

  It was the morning of November 3rd, 2004, and Montauk had whipped himself up about the elections. He came from a family of down-the-line Democrats and a social group that hated George W. Bush with a foaming intensity that made Montauk uncomfortable, especially as he had many acquaintances, if not friends, who assumed he’d volunteered for Iraq and therefore his presence here was proof of unscrupulousness, stupidity, or both. This line of thinking made Montauk angry. Which was unfortunate, as he’d been following the election coverage as a way to keep from dwelling on Aladdin’s death and the futility of the interviews he’d conducted. “You’re never gonna figure this out,” Olaf had told him. “It’s Iraq.”

  On arriving back at the Convention Center, Montauk took off his kit and hung it on the back of the black desk that served as his living partition. He loaded nytimes.com and cnn.com and foxnews.com to check the election results. Pennsylvania had just been called for Kerry—it was midnight back there—but results weren’t in for Florida, Ohio, or Nevada. After a few minutes of fruitless refreshing, Montauk gathered up Molly and his cleaning kit and went upstairs to the Coalition Press Information Center. The CPIC was the medium-sized lecture hall with the big projection screen where CPA spokespeople gave their press briefings; on occasion it hosted movie nights or broadcast sporting events. Montauk guessed correctly that they’d have the election news on, though no one else was in there at 0715 except one woman who, as indicated by her press badge, worked for NPR. The big screen was tuned to MSNBC, where a commentator was blathering half-predictions between the actual results. The NPR lady glanced over briefly when Montauk spread out his grimy brown cloth and laid out Molly Millions in all her black, dusty glory. Molly hadn’t yet fired a shot, so her bolt carrier was relatively clean, but everything exposed to the outside air wore a fine coat of dust, including the inside of the barrel. He swabbed it and held it up to the screen, and for an instant, John Kerry was framed by the bore, like in the opening credits of a Bond movie. Except for the flecks of Baghdad dust in the rifling. He threaded another swatch of cloth into the bore snake’s slot and pulled it through. At 0827, Florida was called for Bush. The NPR lady looked over. “Did you vote?”

  The bore snake made a metallic thwoop noise as it popped out of the barrel.

  “I did,” Montauk said. “I’m Bravo Company’s voting officer, in fact.”

  “So you help other soldiers vote?”

  “I make sure that everyone who wants to vote gets registered and gets an absentee ballot and knows how to send it in.”

  “Do most of them vote?”

  “Most? Probably not. Maybe half. Probably less.”

  “Who do you think they voted for?”

  Montauk shrugged. “Probably Bush. I don’t ask.”

  • • •

  He was back at his desk by 0850. He refreshed nytimes.com again and surveyed his surroundings. With his thoughts on civilian concerns, imagining his friends and their beer-fueled election parties, FOB Bushmaster felt alien. It was certainly unlike most of the other FOBs in the country and unlike most encampments in the history of warfare: a large office space with
wall-to-wall carpeting, fluorescent lights, cubicles replaced with rows of identical bunk beds fitted with camouflage sheets and hung with rifles, helmets, and web gear. Sweat-stained body armor. Next to the bunks, automatic weapons on their bipods, ammunition belts hanging limply from ammo bags. Laptops everywhere. Energy drinks and bodybuilding supplements.

  More than half of the company slept in a camouflage quilted poncho liner, nicknamed the “woobie” in the late sixties when troops tied them into the grommets of their issued ponchos and rolled themselves up against the night monsoons in the central lowlands of Vietnam. The air-conditioning was running full blast, as usual. Ant’s woobie was draped over him like a sort of shawl or sorcerer’s cape as the blue light from his laptop illuminated his face from below.

  On the laptop’s screen, Ant’s Sims avatar lived out his mostly quotidian life. In some ways, it made sense that he had turned to the virtual domesticity of this “sandbox” game, so called because it lacked any defined goals; it was both the furthest thing from and inescapably similar to the sandbox of Iraq he was currently stuck in. The more Ant withdrew from his own life as a private from 2nd Platoon doing security at Checkpoint 11, the more he invested in developing this virtual person, giving him desires and sating those desires.

  He had set up his Sims avatar in a two-bedroom, two-bath rambler, the best he could afford with a service job’s income. The avatar stood by the window, eyeballing the neighbor lady as she got out of her minivan and walked to the front door of her house.

  When she closed the door behind her, Ant’s Sims avatar pulled himself away from the window and initiated a set of calisthenics. He was a relentless self-improver, with Benjamin Franklin–level discipline, who would work himself into wealth and physical hardness. Private Ant’s Sim would run through that neighbor lady like Drano, that was the plan. Ant tracked the screen with the vapid intensity of a toddler watching a Baby Einstein video. He wore a set of earbuds in deference to those sleeping around him.

  Gentle snoring noises came from Thomas’s partitioned-off hooch. He slept on his side in a modified fetal position, his hands pressed together prayerlike under his ear. The orange tip of an earplug was visible next to the elastic band of his JetBlue sleep mask.