Deep Black (26 page)

He removed his gigs and leaned back against the door. ‘I have talked enough about our situation. But what about you, Nick, what is your place in the story? Would you like to be part of something different? Would you like to be part of keeping him alive?’

Soon the market was behind us. We bounced along pitch-black, deserted streets and Rob hit the lights.

Both of them were silent now. I didn’t know if it was because we were nearly there, or they were giving me time to think.

Benzil must have been reading my mind – or was it showing on my face? ‘No need to rush your decision, Nick. We have time.’

There was a heavy, dull thud. The front of the vehicle lifted. The windscreen shattered. The car rose up and over to the right, then bounced back down. Rounds rained into the bodywork, punching through the steel.

Rob lunged for the footwell, scrabbling for the AK. Two rounds thumped into his neck, spraying the interior with blood. His head lolled from his shoulders, held by just a few ligaments.

I shoved the door and rolled out on to the road. Glass showered down on me. Petrol spewed out of the vehicle as more heavy 7.62 AK rounds ripped through metal.

I turned back, trying to grab Benzil, but I was too late. He was slumped in the footwell. The rounds poured in. I kept low, sprinted back to the junction, turned right and leaped over a fence. I landed in a garden.

60

Kids screamed. Dogs barked. My legs weren’t moving as fast as my head wanted them to. It felt as if I was running in mud.

People peered from their windows and shouted when they spotted me. ‘American! American!’ A couple of women started the Red Indian warble.

There were a couple of long bursts from near the vehicle as I ran down a narrow alley between two tall breezeblock walls. Arab screams echoed behind me. A burst water main had left the ground slimy and I lost my footing. I stumbled over a pile of rotting garbage and fell face down. Scrambling on all fours to move forwards and get up, I saw headlights moving back and forth about seventy metres ahead. All I wanted to do was get there and turn, it didn’t matter which way – anything to get out of the line of sight and fire.

I kept running, not bothering to look back. My feet kicked old cans and newspapers. My hands were stinging like I’d fallen into a nettle bed.

I stopped about two metres short of the road, and had a quick check left and right. A few pedestrians hovered on the dark pavements. Some shops and houses had electricity, others just a flicker of candlelight.

I was covered in Rob’s blood. My hands were soaked with it; shards of glass were sticking to it. My heart pounded in my chest as I tried to regain my breath.

There was a junction about twenty metres down. I stepped out of the alley and started along the pavement, concentrating hard on the weeds growing in the cracks between the paving-stones, keeping myself in the shadows.

A couple of people spotted me immediately and pointed. Somebody behind me shouted. I ignored it and kept going. All I wanted to do was get level with the junction and run across the road. They shouted again, this time more distinctly. ‘Hey, you! Stop! Stop!’

I turned my head but kept moving. A Hummer patrol was parked on the same road, just too far up for me to be seen from the alley. With them were some Iraqi police, standing next to a new blue and white, carrying AKs.

The patrol challenged me again: ‘Stop!’ The police joined in, in Arabic. I looked to my half right and spotted an alleyway. I crossed the road and broke into a run.

‘You – fucking stop! Stop!’

The Hummers and police revved up and started rolling. I reached the other side of the road and was into the alleyway. My mouth was dry and I fought for breath. Sweat diluted the blood on my face and hands. There were rough breezeblock walls either side of me again, only this time closer together. Light streamed through the shutters. I kept running as police sirens wailed behind me.

The blow to my throat was so swift and hard I didn’t see who’d delivered it.

I lay on my back, gasping for breath, trying to get my Adam’s apple moving as I listened to vehicles shrieking to a halt and pissed-off shouts coming from a house to my left, now in darkness.

American voices joined in, screaming at each other: ‘Where the fuck is he? Let’s go, let’s go!’

As I pulled myself on to my hands and knees, I realized I’d run straight into a cable stretched between two buildings. The fuckers were getting their kettles on.

I got up and ran, stooped. I tried to suck in air but my Adam’s apple was still glued to the back of my throat.

A powerful torch beam swept the alley. I hugged the wall to the right, crouching among piles of garbage and old mattresses.

61

I came to a turning. Fuck knew where it led to, but it would take me out of the line of fire.

I ducked down it and found myself in a crap-filled courtyard. There was no obvious way out. The shouts behind me were getting louder. The troops were on their way down the alley.

I ran into a washing-line and it snapped with a loud twang. Torchlight flashed along the walls. Orders were shouted in Arabic.

A couple of old pallets were stacked against the far corner. I lifted the top one and leaned it against the breezeblocks as a makeshift ladder. A vehicle drove past about twenty metres the other side of the wall, its lights flickering along the top of it. Grabbing an armful of washing off the line, I scrambled over. As I dropped, two shots rang out, heavy rounds, AK. The fuckers didn’t even know what or who they were firing at, or why. American voices echoed down the alleyway. ‘Hold your fire, hold your fire!’

If these Iraqis had been trained by Gaz, he deserved the sack.

I landed on firm ground and started running again. My hand went down to my waist: the bumbag was still with me.

I got to just short of the road and stopped. There was no follow-up behind me, just plenty of commotion.

I threw the clothes to the ground and ripped off my shirt. A damp T-shirt from the pile got what I hoped was most of the blood and sweat off my face and hands; then I pulled on an old stripy shirt that smelt nothing like washing powder.

I moved out on to the street and turned right, keeping in the shadows, moving quickly, head down. Checking out those weedy pavement cracks again, I gulped in oxygen, trying to slow myself. Sweat streamed down my face, stinging my eyes.

The shops were open, and bare bulbs hung from wires. People sat outside cafés, drinking coffee and smoking, engrossed in their conversations. There was a line of three parked cabs about fifty metres down. Two guys leaned against the first one, a rusty 1980s Oldsmobile with orange wings. I walked up to them with my best smily face on and gave them a thumbs-up. They smiled back. They were both young, hair brushed back, beards a week old. Their shirts hung out of their trousers and both wore sandals on bare feet.

‘OK, let’s go, let’s go!’ I jumped into the back of the Oldsmobile before the driver had time to object. Dirty foam burst from slits in the seats, and roses evaporated from a bottle of car-freshener plugged into the lighter socket.

One of the young guys opened the driver’s door and leaned in. ‘You pay dollars?’

‘Yep, dollars, no problem.’

He smiled, climbed into the driver’s seat, and turned the ignition key. ‘Where do we go?’ His English was good, and he obviously wasn’t fazed by having a white guy in the cab after a contact no more than two hundred metres away.

‘The Australian consulate. You know it?’

He nudged into the flow of the traffic, then checked junctions left and right as we went along. Most traffic-lights weren’t working, and even if they had been, nobody would have paid much attention. It reminded me of Africa. He turned his head. ‘That’s far away, Mister. It must cost a twenty.’

I smiled at him. He could have asked a hundred, for all I cared. ‘No drama, mate.’

His face fell. He’d just realized he could have got away with a lot more. To console himself, he threw a cassette into the player and George Michael sparked up through the speakers. ‘What you do here at night, Mister?’ He turned his head again. ‘No good one man. Big trouble.’

‘I’m a journalist. The car broke down. They’re trying to sort it out, but I’ve got to get to the consulate. I’ve lost my passport.’

He nodded and started singing along quietly with George. I kept an eye on the road for Hummers and cars with flashing blue lights, but the only thing I saw was one of the red double-decker buses that operated in the city passing the other way. Sweat sluiced out of every pore as my body started to recover.

What the fuck had all that been about? Did the CPA want to suppress a Bosnian story so badly? That couldn’t be it. Killing US citizens would have looked even worse on the front pages. So was Benzil the target? More likely; it sounded like anyone connected to Nuhanovic was on a hit list. But who had done it? In this fucked-up place, anyone from a cast of thousands. I bet Nuhanovic would know.

62

I slumped back into the seat, keeping as low as I could without making the driver suspicious, and started to pick the glass out of my hands. This was getting to be a bit of a habit.

The driver still hummed away to George belting out ‘Faith’. ‘Where you from, Mister?’

‘Australia.’

‘Oh. I go to London soon. My sister lives there. I go to drive taxis of her husband. Three more weeks!’ He nodded to himself, very happy. ‘You go to London, Mister?’

‘Not if I can avoid it.’

We hadn’t been in the cab more than twenty minutes when I saw the half-illuminated sign of the al-Hamra. Either Rob had really got into those anti-surveillance drills on the way out, or it had just been busy. ‘I thought you said it was a long way?’

He smiled into the rear-view mirror. ‘You lucky, Mister. Some drivers take you to the bad places for money. The bad people in Saddam City pay me fifty dollar like that. But I am good taxi driver. I am good London taxi driver.’

We were still on the main drag, just short of the turn-off for the hotel. ‘You might as well drop me here. I’ll walk.’

He pulled over. Huge artics rumbled by on their way into the city centre. I gave him twenty dollars, and an extra thirty to cover what he could have got in Sadr.

I turned left down the approach road to the al-Hamra. There was power on the hotel side of the street, but none on the other, where the shop was lit by candles. A bunch of barefooted kids in shorts and a collection of Premier League T-shirts kicked about in the gloom.

I bent under the scaffold pole and carried on to the main entrance. Two more Aussies were on stag in the driveway. As I nodded at the Iraqi on the door, I looked up at Rob’s room. The light was on and Jerry was on that fucking phone again. He disappeared from view as I went inside. If the CPA were tracking it, we’d be in the shit.

The old man was chatting to a few locals at the counter, every one of them with a cigarette on the go. I got a cursory look up and down, but they’d seen enough blood and sweat in their lives not to be too concerned at a little more splashed about on some white guy. Through the glass door by the lifts, the underwater lights filled the air with a blue glow. The poolside tables were crowded. The world’s media were back from a hard day at the office.

A good friend was dead, and what might have been the best job I’d ever be offered had been shot to fuck. But at least I was in one piece and Jerry was alive; I supposed I had done what Renee wanted me to – so far. We still had a way to go.

I got to the door and put my hand on the knob. It was locked.

‘Who is it?’ Jerry sounded worried.

‘Nick. Open up, quick, quick!’

He fumbled with the lock and the door half opened. ‘Fuck, what’s happened to you, man?’

I walked in and closed it behind me. A fuzzy BBC World was conducting a silent interview with Blair.

Jerry’s camera was on the coffee-table with the cable attached.

‘Who you talking to? You sending pictures?’

‘Just testing the kit. What the fuck’s happened?’

‘The car got hit. The other two are dead. Get your stuff together, quick. We’re getting out of here before curfew. Test or not, you had the fucking thing on – they’ll find us.’

63

This time, we had a forty-seater minibus to take us across the tarmac. Jerry sat next to me, his right leg sticking out into the aisle because I’d taken up too much room. I was knackered and wanted to lean against the window as I listened to
Now That’s What I Call Mosque 57
playing on the tape-machine. The driver bopped away in time with the music as he spun the wheel with his elbows. I could just hear the rotors of two Blackhawks; I turned my head and watched them hover the last few feet before hitting the pan alongside about another eight of the dull green things. My hands, knees and elbows were scabbing up nicely after my tour of Baghdad’s back alleys, and in a few days, I knew, I’d have a hard time trying to resist picking them.

Jerry hadn’t said much since we left the al-Hamra. That was OK, I needed time to think.

The bus was full of self-important businessmen checking their mobiles as they roamed for the new signal, and others holding their diplomatic passports firmly in their hands like some sort of talisman. I never knew why, but the people who have one always think it gives them better protection than body armour.