A few Iraqis sat half listening, drinking gla.s.ses of tea, as a couple of big white guys with flat-top crewcuts, one with a goatee, tried to do business with them. They exchanged a few words with each other in what sounded like Serbo-Croat, then switched back to something approaching English for the next stage of their mumbled negotiation. Their accents were so heavy, all they needed was a black-leather jacket each and they could still have been in the Balkans. I"d need to find out where exactly they came from before bouncing in and asking about a Bosnian. The war might have officially ended, but for a lot of these guys the Dayton Accord was only a piece of paper.
Asmall bowl of boiled eggs, a plate of cheese and some bread rolls looked rather tired on the bar top, carefully guarded by two guys in crumpled white shirts with elasticated bow-ties who were trying hard to look as if they were doing something useful.
One finally made it to my table. I wasn"t going to drink Arab coffee so I ordered a Nescafe with milk, and a couple of the rolls.
He went away to put the kettle on.
A news crew came past, talking English but sounding French, with a couple of the local boys in tow. They sat down to hammer out what they were going to do tomorrow and how long they"d need the driver and interpreter. It wasn"t long before everyone was nodding and one of the Frenchmen peeled some dollar bills from a wad and handed them over. The going rate seemed to be ninety dollars a day for an interpreter and sixty for a driver, paid in advance and if the French wanted to go anywhere outside Baghdad it would be extra.
My coffee, rolls and a foil-wrapped pat of b.u.t.ter turned up as the two Balkan boys got up to leave. Their Iraqi companions had a little waffle among themselves, puffed happily away on their cigarettes, and went back to listening to Johnny Cash"s dad.
31.I was half-way through my first mouthful when I realized I had compet.i.tion. The oldest biker in town was making a beeline for the buffet. He was late fifties, early sixties, only about five foot five, but powerfully built, with big freckled arms and hands the size of baseball gloves. He ordered eggs, rolls and cheese with his Nescafe and, judging by the size of his gut, it wasn"t for the first time: it strained under a black Harley Davidson T-shirt that shouted: "Born To Ride, Born To Raise h.e.l.l". The image was completed by a long grey beard, jeans, and a big black belt with a Harley buckle. His head was totally bald, and he"d been out here for ever, by the look of it. He was nearly as brown as Jerry.
He was certainly pretty pleased with himself. He waved at the French, who were now in a smoking compet.i.tion with the Iraqis, as he settled himself on a stool a few down from me, and treated me to the sort of nod that said, "Later, we"ll talk." I treated him to one that said I was in no hurry, but I had a feeling it wouldn"t be long before we were best mates and he was offering me the use of his house, car and wife next time I was in the States.
I"d just filled my second roll with b.u.t.ter and shoved it in my mouth when the baseball glove appeared in front of me. "Howdy, I"m Jacob. How"s it hanging?"
I swallowed fast but my reply still emerged in a shower of crumbs. "Fine, how about you?"
"Good, real good. Big day tomorrow. My son"s in town."
His T-shirt should have said "World"s Proudest Dad". None of his worldly goods heading my way, then.
"Here in Baghdad?"
"Sure. He"s in the 101st, up north. Ain"t seen the boy for months. I"m kinda excited."
His food turned up and he started to make himself an egg and cheese roll. I finished my Nescafe and ordered another. Why do Arabs only serve the stuff in thimbles? "So, you"ve come to Baghdad to see him?"
His gut quivered with laughter as he sliced the eggs. "h.e.l.l, no. I work in power been getting the juice back on for five months now. I"ve got another son here, too Apache pilot. Pretty cool, eh?" He beamed. "Yep, he"s west of here. I"m gonna go see him some time soon. He can"t get into the city."
A group of American squaddies came in, looking as if they should have had schoolbags over their shoulders, not automatic weapons. s.h.i.t, I used to look like that. They unloaded their belt-kit and body armour and dumped it beside the sofas.
Jacob smiled at them and they smiled back. He got back to his roll and coffee. "Yep, been following my boys about since Grenada." He chuckled so hard his beard threatened to slide off his chin. "My boys destroy the power, their daddy gets the contract to fix it. Kinda neat, ain"t it?"
I was seeing the United States military industrial complex at its lowest binary level. "Sounds like the perfect family business."
He roared with laughter. "Where you from?"
"The UK. I"m looking after a journalist."
"You one of them snake-eaters? Hey, I got two myself."
"By the look of you, you"re one of the few people around here who doesn"t need them."
He liked that. But it was true. "You know the companies, they gotta look after their people. It"s Crazyville out there. But I was in the service myself. Nineteen years in the 82nd. d.a.m.n proud of it."
I thought this might be a good time to get on and do the white thing. "Reminds me of Bosnia..."
He wiped some crumbs from his beard and shook his head. "One gig I never got to. There wasn"t that much work for us." He nodded towards the French. "Them cheese-eating surrender monkeys got most of it."
I smiled as he shoved another lump of cheese into his mouth. "Well, it looks like the Bosnians are about to level the score. I heard they"re here in force. You b.u.mp into any along the way?"
He shook his head. "Not in the reconstruction game." He gave me the sort of wink that used up most of the muscles in his face. "Some other kinda game, maybe? You got a special interest there?"
I didn"t answer. The Casio sparked up a bit, and Johnny"s dad began to knock out the theme tune to Bonanza Bonanza. War or no war, a man had to feed his family. He plucked away, eyes closed as if he had the music tattooed under his lids.
"Say, how long you staying here?"
"Dunno," I said. "A week or so?"
"Cool, maybe we"ll crash into each other. You can meet my boy."
Two bullet-headed MP5 slingers headed in our direction. All they needed was the boom mikes and they could have gone into partnership with the CPA Action Men at the airport.
Jacob lifted a hand as they reached our table. "Hey, boys, nearly ready." He finished shoving egg slices into his last roll and squashed it into his left hand, then stood up and held out the other for me to shake. "Good to meet you. Say, I didn"t catch your name..."
"Nick," I said. "Good to meet you too. I hope you get to see your sons."
He nodded away. "Yep, I hope so too, Nick. Maybe catch up tomorrow." His eyes twinkled. "I"ll look out one of those little Bosnian ladies for you..."
He joined the two BGs and slapped each of them on the shoulder. "Come on, boys let"s go make some juice."
He disappeared to the final chords of Bonanza Bonanza and I threw down the last of my Nescafe. Jacob might be right, this was Crazyville, but I"d definitely made the correct decision coming here. and I threw down the last of my Nescafe. Jacob might be right, this was Crazyville, but I"d definitely made the correct decision coming here.
32.Ten minutes for the beers, my a.r.s.e. I went and joined the Saddam-lookalike compet.i.tion on the settees; I just didn"t bother trying to smoke myself to death at the same time.
Faces flowed constantly in and out of the hotel, and I recognized one. It was Rob, on his way out. He was on his own, with no ID laminate round his neck but an old semi-automatic on his hip. The Parkerization had worn away, exposing the dull steel beneath. In his hand was an unloaded AK, Para version. It had a shorter barrel than the normal a.s.sault rifle and a collapsible b.u.t.t. Great for close-quarters work or in a car. That, too, had seen a few years" wear and tear.
He caught my eye and smiled. Things were different now: we were on our own. I hauled myself off the settee. "h.e.l.lo, mate, I thought you were dead!"
His big nose crinkled into a grin. "What"s going on, you on the circuit? I thought you"d dropped out years ago."
"Sort of. I"m working for an American. A journalist. He"s here for maybe a week to get a picture a Bosnian guy, here in Baghdad, if you can believe that."
He could. "There"s plenty of weirder stuff going on here listen..."
Three German ex-Paras were singing their regimental song by the newly erected Bedouin tent as two Russians loading AK mags chatted to each other about the noise. Going by their crewcuts, tattoos and scars, they"d spent longer in Chechnya than in Moscow.
"What about you? What firm you working for?"
"None of those w.a.n.kers." Rob had always wanted to go his own way. "I work for an Uzbek he"s in the oil business."
"Staying here?"
"No, the al-Hamra. Famous for its swimming-pool, chilled beers and dancing girls. Allegedly. It"s not as well protected as this, but he"s a private sort of guy, and it"s not like he"s not used to a bit of drama, if you know what I mean. That"s why I"ve been looking after him for the last three years. He"s a good man, as it happens."
"Even better. How long you here for?"
"Four, five days? We"re not too sure. But no more than a week. I came to pick these f.u.c.king things up." He hefted the AK. "Three fifty they wanted for this heap of s.h.i.t." His nose crinkled again as he had a thought. "What you doing tonight? CNN are having a pool party here."
"Without water?"
My fixer arrived with the beer. It had a Bavarian-looking label, and was probably brewed just up the road. There"d never been a problem with alcohol in Muslim countries like this, even in restaurants. You just brought your own and asked if it was OK to drink it.
I gave the guy fifteen dollars instead of the five he"d asked for. The ten was to make sure he came back in the morning with the weapons. As he left I turned back to Rob. "What time"s kick-off?"
"Eightish? You"re here anyway."
We shook hands and I watched him loading a mag on to his AK as he headed for the door.
The best part of an hour must have pa.s.sed back on the settee before I heard the sudden sound of a heavy machine-gun, then short bursts of 5.56, both from less than three, four hundred metres away.
Jerry came through the main doors as if his tail was on fire. "You hear that? f.u.c.k..."
I stood up. "Any luck at the mosque?"
"Nope. Nothing at all. I"ll try again at Maghrib." His eyes scanned the activity in the lobby. "I got no news from DC either. I"ll keep on calling. I know if he finds out we"ll find out."
"So, come on, you can tell me now. We"re here, so it doesn"t matter. What paper does he work for?"
His eyes locked on to mine. This was going to be the last time he told me. "Look, Nick, you know the score with sources. I can"t, and won"t, say zip. He"d lose his job, man, everything. We gotta respect that s.h.i.t."
He was right, of course. But it didn"t stop me wanting to know.
He had an afterthought. "You want to use the phone?"
I shook my head.
"What are you, Billy-no-mates?"
"Something like that." I held up the beers. "Here, for you. I ain"t touching this s.h.i.t."
He took the bag off me as we headed for the lifts.
"You staying in all night to drink those?" I hit the lift call b.u.t.ton. "Or you want to come to a party and maybe find Nuhanovic?"
33.There was a knock at the door. It couldn"t be Jerry. He had left ages ago for the mosque to catch Maghrib at around last light. I opened it to find two old boys, cigarettes in their mouths. One handed me a sliver of soap and a hand towel. The other gave me some thin sheets that had gone grey a few hundred wash cycles ago. Everything stank of cigarettes.
I tried the shower tap and got a trickle of cold water, so I jumped under it before it ran out. The 1970s radio set into the Formica bedhead was tuned to American Free Radio and pumped out country-and-western.
The sun was going down when I emerged. I switched off the radio and turned on the steam-driven TV, which was tuned to a snowflaky version of CNN, but at least I had decent sound. The only other channel was showing a football game.
Not wanting to be the object of tonight"s target practice, I turned out the lights before I went on to the balcony and looked out over the thousands of satellite dishes that sprouted like weeds from the rooftops.
The rattle of automatic gunfire came from somewhere in the distance. A few more rounds of heavier automatic fire, probably 7.62 short from AKs, were met by a huge amount of fire from the Americans" lighter 5.56 ammunition. Then a stream of heavier-calibre stuff was unleashed, probably .50 cals, and this time I saw tracer bouncing up into the last few minutes of dusk from the other side of the Tigris.
It stopped as quickly as it had started, but the lull didn"t last long. Two Apache gunships thundered overhead, their shapes deep black against the evening sky. Somebody was going to wish they"d had an early night.
They swooped over the river and, moments later, one of them opened up, strafing the riverbank. It felt strange to be spectating from the very place that most of the shock-and-awe footage had been shot, watching the same area taking hits all over again.
Below me, preparations for the pool party continued as if no one had a care in the world about what was happening the other side of the rush fence. Either they felt immune to attack or wanted to believe they were. Plastic tables straight from the same B&Q as the garden shed were being dragged into the gra.s.s and round the still empty pool, and a couple of big oil-drum barbecues were on the go.
Another brief contact rattled round the city somewhere, followed closely by an explosion. n.o.body stopped doing what they were doing. Nothing mattered beyond the garden wall and our American protection. The Palestine was a little oasis, a bubble of safety.
I looked around the sky. There was no tracer, and I couldn"t see any smoke. It was time for a brew.
The lift bounced at every floor as it took me down to the lobby.
From a mug the boys had found behind the counter, I took a heat-testing sip of Nescafe. There were just a couple of Iraqis left in here, maybe because all the eggs and cheese had been eaten. The Casio and guitar stuff was still in place but the player wasn"t to be seen. Shame: Johnny Cash"s dad had grown on me.
I heard Jacob before I saw him, coming up the stairs saying goodbye to his BG. He saw someone to talk to and gave me a smile. "Hey, Nick, they glued you to that seat?"
I stood up and we shook hands as he asked for three coffees at once unless they had another mug?
"How"s your half-day been, Jacob?"
"Oh, just had to go check up on a few things. Kinda got to keep on top of them. Say, where"s your reporter fella? What"s his name? He treating himself to an early night?"
I thought he was going to treat me to another of his winks. "Jerry. No, he"s gone to the mosque."
The waiter brought the first two coffees over and started to pour in the milk. Jacob lifted a hand. "No, fully leaded when the sun goes down." He turned to me. "Well, I"ve been talking to a few people for you. Ain"t heard nothing about no Bosnians. They kinda should have it"s a mighty small town in some ways."
Jacob had an asbestos mouth. He"d already picked up his second cup as the waiter brought the third. "Anything else I can do for you, you just let me know, y"hear? Maybe I can make some connections for you."
I was starting to get an uncomfortable feeling about Jacob. He was being a bit too helpful. "To tell you the truth, I don"t give a f.u.c.k about the Bosnians. We"re just throwing out a net and seeing what gets dragged in."
The third cup was about to be killed. "Tell you what, I"ll keep my eyes open. What room you in, just in case you decide to unglue yourself from here?"
I told him and we shook hands. "Thanks, Jacob. Appreciate it. Have fun tomorrow with your son."
"Sure will. We"ll talk later."
I left him to it and walked down into the lobby to wait for Jerry. He might have b.u.mped into his ayatollah in the mosque, but I wasn"t counting on it. Tonight I"d see who was about on the circuit. A Bosnian would certainly stick in their minds.
34.A huge amount of automatic gunfire kicked off close by. From where I was, near the main entrance, tracer seemed to bounce straight up into the sky. It wasn"t necessarily a contact. After all, it was Thursday night. I went out into the garden to see if anyone had arrived early. There was no music yet but a couple of guys were preparing the barbecue. They weren"t remotely interested in the firefights as they tipped charcoal from paper sacks into two sawn-off oil drums.
I wandered over to the pool. I couldn"t see the bottom of it from where I was, but I could hear a chorus of grunts and the rhythmic slap of running feet. I went right up to the edge and looked in, just as another burst of tracer shot skywards. I saw a headful of sweaty, short, wiry ginger hair training in the semi-darkness. The last time I"d seen Danny Connor was in Northern Ireland in 1993 in a gym, naturally.
He pounded up and down the pool, totally focused on the job in hand. I watched him for several minutes, wondering whether to interrupt. He ran to one end, did twenty press-ups, spun round, ran to the other and did some sit-ups. I started to grin like an idiot. Connor"s motto had always been: "I train, therefore I am". Well, after he got married it was. Before that it was "Training + lots of = women pulled". He had to do a lot of training in those days to be in with a chance. His face was covered with acne scars; it looked like someone had been chewing it. His accent did him no favours either. He came from the bit of Glasgow where everyone sounds like Rab C. Nesbit on speed. Connor hadn"t been born, he"d done star jumps out of the womb. I worked with him on and off in the late eighties and early nineties. In all that time the sum total of any conversation from him was, "You done yours yet?"
"Oi, Connor! You"re getting a bit of lard on!"
He stopped running, but dropped to do some sit-ups as he looked up. I stood there and smiled, but he didn"t react. He sprinted to the other side and started to do some burpees.
I shouted, "Connor, you k.n.o.bber. It"s Nick!"
"Yeah, I know, don"t wear the name out. You done yours yet?"