Hard Rain (34 page)

M
asters was towelling off her hair as she walked into my room. Like me, she was wearing a galabia, only hers was cream coloured. Despite it being cut for a guy, I couldn’t help but notice it fitted in most of the right places. And the places looked good.

‘That suits you, Vin,’ she said, motioning at the orange, blue and gold thing I’d uncomfortably slipped into.

‘Makes me look like an Inca ruin. Did you get through?’

‘To Christie? I believe so, but I haven’t heard back.’ Masters sat on the chair beside a small writing shelf anchored to a wall. She seemed troubled.

‘What’s up?’

‘I flicked through the report Tawal gave us. They tested the surface water at a number of sites, one of them being Kumayt, and found various isotopes consistent with depleted uranium contamination. I’ve been thinking about the DU supposedly buried around here.’

‘Do we need the cone of silence, chief?’ I asked.

‘I think maybe we do.’

I walked back into the bathroom and turned on the faucets. ‘They bury contaminated material where it’s geologically stable,’ Masters said, resting on the basin. ‘They also bury it where it’s
dry
. Have you noticed
the ground in this part of Iraq is totally the wrong kind? Remember what it was like back in the vicinity of Kumayt? It was soft, wet and porous. You drop something radioactively hot in a hole dug in marshland and sure as shit it’s going to work its way back out.’

‘Is it possible someone just went ahead and buried stuff here anyway – made a mistake? The Army has been known to make one or two.’

‘Vin, Cain and I were snooping around in the Department of Energy before we left, remember? We were hoping to get a lead on the contamination burial sites. The people we spoke to have checked their research with the DoD and sent Cain an email, which he has just forwarded to me. Energy says there’s
no
chemical waste or DU-contaminated wreckage buried anywhere around here – in their words, “unsuitable containment characteristics”. In short, too marshy.’

‘So if there’s no DU dump, why does this environmental impact study say different?’ I asked.

‘According to Energy, enquiries into the existence of a dump in the Maysan province had been made on a prior occasion by our mission in Ankara.’

‘Really . . . does it say who made the enquiry?’

‘Nope,’ said Masters. ‘But it was six months ago. Five’ll get you ten it was Portman doing the digging.’

‘If there’s no DU in the water, I’d like to know what messed with those children.’

‘I’m sure the colonel asked himself the same question. I’d say, with that independent water-quality assessment he commissioned, he found some answers along with that uranyl fluoride.’

‘Yeah.’ I wondered what the hell we were really dealing with here. ‘We done?’ I asked.

Masters nodded. I turned off the taps and walked out into the main room as the Iraqi in the white coat, Achmed, came in through the front door carrying a tray with food on it. He glanced at me, then Masters, glowered, shook his head at our shameless display of immorality and mumbled to himself while he put the tray on the shelf. He then checked
the state of the adjoining door, no doubt wondering whether he’d contributed to this lascivious behaviour by leaving the lock unlatched.

‘Don’t get the wrong idea, Mac,’ I said. ‘She’s my mother.’

He looked at me, puzzled, went out the door and then came back in with another tray, which he deposited in Masters’ room. On his way back out, I stopped him and said, ‘Clothes,’ pinching the galabia’s collar to help him get it. ‘Clothes, uniform,’ I repeated.

‘Ah!’ he exclaimed and held up ten fingers, flashing them a second time. My interpretation: our ABUs were either being returned in twenty minutes, twenty hours or twenty days.

Achmed left us to eat. I went to the tray and lifted up a couple of lids. Slices of lamb, lettuce, yoghurt, tomatoes and cucumber. Again. From Istanbul to Iraq, that’s all anyone seemed to eat. Masters lifted a lid on her tray and screwed up her nose.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ I said. ‘What wouldn’t you give for a nice, juicy rat.’

A
ping
sound came from the laptop in Masters’ room. ‘Mail’s in,’ she said, going to fetch it while I sat on the end of the bed and picked at the food. ‘From Christie,’ she announced, walking back in. ‘Says he’ll pick us up at 7.30 tomorrow morning and has informed Tawal of that.’

‘What about the sandstorm?’

‘It’ll still be with us, but the wind’s supposed to drop some before sunrise. And in answer to your question, he said there are no restricted areas around here – too close to Iran. Kawthar al Deen is out here on its own.’

Masters sat down on the bed beside me with her tray and played with her food. ‘Do you miss her?’

I didn’t need to hear Doc Merkit’s name to know who Masters was referring to. ‘Yes,’ I replied. No point denying it.

‘Were you in love with her?’

Was I in love with her? I hadn’t been prepared to ask myself that. I liked her. I enjoyed being in her company. I liked her smell, her warmth. I liked the way she looked, her eyes, the way her hair fell around her shoulders. I liked the whole Turkish-girlfriend thing – it was exotic. I
enjoyed making love to her; loved the touch of her breasts against my back; loved watching her move; loved watching her move on me . . . ‘Did I love her? I don’t know. “Love” is a pretty complex word,’ I said. ‘Could you be more specific?’

‘I know that before you left the consulate, before the explosion, you visited her. I know you went to see her, because you told me you were going to see her. Emir called me.’

‘Emir called you?’

‘He said you were with her for at least an hour and that I shouldn’t trust you.’

I was starting to think that Emir was lucky he was already dead. ‘So you want to know whether you should go get your nail file?’ I asked.

‘No, actually I want to absolve you. I was the one who went and got engaged.
I
tried to manipulate
you
. Maybe I wanted to hurt you. And then, when it was all over with Richard, I just assumed you’d come running. Turn you off, turn you on, make the rules and expect you to follow them. That wasn’t fair.’

‘I guess, if you put it like that –’

‘The slate’s clean, Vin. You don’t owe me any excuses.’

‘Are you trying to talk me into coming up for coffee?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know, maybe I am . . . Is that something you might be interested in?’

I came awake suddenly, instantly, too fast. It took a few blinks to work out where the hell I was. It was dark and the surroundings were unfamiliar. And then it came back – an explosion, a silver skeleton, Iraq, Kawthar al Deen. Through the door between our rooms I could hear Masters’ soft and steady breathing. Before going to bed, she’d made me an offer I couldn’t refuse, except that I’d refused it. There was only one reason why that made sense: it was just too soon.

I thought about the doc. She’d still be alive if we hadn’t become involved, and the realisation gave me a pain in my chest.

*

I woke Masters with a cup of Turkish-style coffee left by Achmed, who’d also brought us a breakfast of cheese, tomato and cucumber. I was thinking I’d happily kill for a bagel. Achmed showed me our clothes, which were folded on the floor outside our respective doors. They’d probably been sitting there all night, so maybe he’d meant twenty minutes.

Once we’d eaten, showered and dressed, Tawal paid us a visit. ‘I trust your stay here hasn’t inconvenienced you,’ he said as we collected our helmets, weapons and other gear.

‘No, though I haven’t been locked in my room since I was a kid,’ I informed him. ‘You got a good reason for that, or did you want to prevent us from going on an unguided tour?’

Tawal gave us his phony smile. ‘You and I both know that these rooms held you for less than two minutes, Special Agent. You would also be aware that, with so much security in this facility, no harm could possibly have come to you. And should you have chosen to explore this facility on your own and become lost, finding you would have been a simple matter indeed. Shall we proceed? I believe Lieutenant Christie is waiting.’ He turned and walked off.

Tawal had an oblique way of saying, ‘We kept an eye on you every second.’ I wondered about the bathrooms. Had he seen us and picked up our conversations, despite the precautions?

‘Do you think he’s disappointed we didn’t put on a little peep show for him last night?’ I said under my breath.

‘Maybe,’ replied Masters. ‘Are you?’

‘Please, this way,’ Tawal said before I could answer, holding a security door open for us.

We were led on a brisk walk through the facility. I couldn’t work out whether it was a meandering tour or the most direct route to what was probably the main entrance, a black granite and mirror-lined reception area with an elaborate water feature. I timed the walk: seven-and-a-half minutes at an average speed of around three miles an hour. Up three floors, past twelve armed goons, twenty-seven surveillance cameras, along two hallways and through four security doors. Subtracting thirty seconds for tapping codes into keypads and another minute while
listening to ‘The Girl from Ipanema’, in the elevator left six minutes. A walk of around a third of a mile and I still had no sense of the extent of the facility below ground.

Jarred appeared to be loitering around the front reception area. I gave him a nod, which he ignored. He was wearing dust goggles, preparing for a walk outside and, for all I knew, he was looking at his reflection in one of the mirrors. Alternatively, he could just have had a bowl of assholes for breakfast and, as they say, you are what you eat.

The reception windows faced an open courtyard filled with concrete bollards that limited the speed and direction of any traffic. Specifically, any traffic that might have intended to blow itself up. I noted that the airborne sand had thinned a little, but the wind was still blowing waves of it across the sky. Out front there was a small garden blanketed in about a foot of sand that had also built up against the glass of the external door. It was a great day to be somewhere else. Lieutenant Christie’s vehicles were parked thirty yards away, black shapes against a morning sky shifting from red at the horizon to yellow overhead. The lead vehicle gave us a few dirty yellow blinks, flashing its lights. Time to move.

‘I hope you have both enjoyed your impromptu stay with us,’ said Tawal. ‘If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.’

‘Thanks for your hospitality, Mr Tawal. We’ll be in touch,’ Masters replied, handling the goodbyes while I matched the guy’s fake smile with one of my own.

Jarred held the glass door open for Masters and me as we walked into what felt like an airlock. We dropped goggles over our eyes and pulled scarves up over our mouths, preparing for the short jog across the open ground to the lead Land Rover.

As I pulled open the door, the wind caught the built-up sand and lifted it into a swirling tornado that ripped at our clothes and stung the skin on the back of my neck. I put my head down and made for Christie’s Land Rover, Masters half a pace in front of me.

‘Good morning,’ chimed Christie as we threw ourselves in the back.

We shook the grit out of our gear. A water bottle was passed back to us and the vehicle began to move.

‘Sorry we had to leave you there last night,’ he said. ‘I thought perhaps it might to be your advantage anyway.’

‘It was fine,’ said Masters, taking a drink and then offering me the bottle. I passed.

‘Tawal’s an unusual guy,’ I said. ‘When he flies in, where does he fly in from?’

‘He’s Egyptian, so perhaps from somewhere there.’

‘So, we’ve got Egyptian management, Turkish technology and construction, and Iraqi labour, maintenance and supervision,’ Masters summarised. ‘And probably the whole thing’s compartmentalised – no one on the ground except Tawal knowing what the left and the right hand are up to.’

‘Who put up the capital?’ I asked.

Masters shrugged. ‘Maybe all three countries. Maybe someplace else entirely.’

The Land Rover rounded the last of the concrete bollards and drove through the heavy front gates.

‘Y’know, Vin,’ Masters continued, ‘Thurlstane must have been in the game just to provide a check quote, just to give the process the impression of fairness.’

‘Because Kawthar al Deen’s a front,’ I said, picking up on her train of thought, ‘and an American company would’ve blown the whistle.’

‘What sort of front?’ Christie asked.

‘Before it’s anything else, Kawthar al Deen is a forward military base,’ said Masters. ‘The whole desalination-plant thing is just a cover.’

I nodded. Masters was making a lot of sense.

She took a few more pulls on the water bottle, then wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist. ‘Only, who’d want to build a private, clandestine military base right on Iran’s doorstep?’

‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘But let’s say that finding out was how Emmet Portman ended up getting himself butchered.’

A
head, whole sections of the purpose-built road that linked Kawthar al Deen with Kumayt lay hidden beneath sand drifts, the only indication that a road existed at all being the roadside post markers placed at twenty-yard intervals disappearing into the red haze. I leaned forward, a scrap of paper in my hand. ‘You mind tapping these coordinates into your GPS?’ I asked our host.

Christie examined the numbers:
32°14′2.90″N, 46°52′16.86″E
. ‘This got anything to do with your question about restricted areas in the vicinity?’ he asked.

‘It’s related. One of Tawal’s people slipped us the numbers,’ I said. ‘The guy was shitting himself.’

Christie fed the numbers into the hand-held device. ‘Ay, well, whatever it is, it’s out in the middle of nowhere – a drive of around an hour and a half from our current position. As far as I know, it’s all rock, dust and wadis out there. Any idea what you’d be hoping to find?’

‘Answers. Only just don’t ask us what the questions are. Like I said, the way the guy slipped me those numbers, I got the feeling they were important. Can we head there now?’

‘Sorry, can’t. There’s a situation brewing. Remember that politician down in Basra who got himself whacked yesterday? There’s been a lot
of revenge sabotage at Al Amaran and Kumayt through the night, using this sandstorm as cover. The boss has tasked my lads to defend the hospital in Kumayt. We don’t want people getting dragged out of their beds and decapitated on the telly.’

‘I hear you, Lieutenant,’ I said. ‘But we need to check out that location, and the sooner the better.’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he replied.

We were too late for at least two people at Kumayt. Their heads were planted on steel concrete-reinforcing rods on the outskirts of town, presumably as a warning to someone. The blood in their hair and beards had congealed with the dust and only the wisps flapped in the wind.

Christie pulled the patrol over to the side of the road. His men were deployed around the vehicles while photos of the scene were taken for the police. They also bagged the heads. Masters and I walked the area. The rest of the bodies were nowhere to be seen.

The force of the wind had tapered off some, and while there was not so much airborne sand, with the heavier particles having settled out, the haze was still impenetrable. An open truck appeared suddenly out of the murk before Christie’s men could react, loaded with armed men all wearing scarves over their mouths and noses. Everyone relaxed a little. Blue uniforms: local Iraqi police. The truck swept past and was almost instantly swallowed by the soup.

We motored into a square near the town’s centre. A couple of buildings were on fire, one of them being the police compound. The fires hadn’t managed to get a hold and were in the process of being extinguished. There were men everywhere, mostly civilians – shouting instructions at each other, ferrying buckets of water and sand to dump on the flames, directing traffic, helping each other.

Our unit continued on to its original objective. The streets were largely empty away from the police station. We passed a permanent vehicle checkpoint supposedly manned by Iraqi police, an old bullet-riddled
vehicle occupying one of the blast-protected inspection pads. The place was deserted.

The hospital was big by small-town standards – four storeys, with a couple of stubby wings hanging off either side of the main block. Concrete blocks and heavy steel gates manned by Iraqi army units protected the entrances to the hospital grounds.

The Iraqis waved our vehicles through into a parking lot protected by more concrete walls and razor wire. The Iraqi flag, I noticed, was hanging limp on its pole.

Christie turned around in his seat. ‘We’ve got to have a chat with the Iraqis and then probably send out a patrol or two,’ he said. ‘What’re you going to do?’

‘Go talk to the hospital staff,’ Masters replied. ‘Got to be a few people who knew Portman, right?’

The lieutenant nodded. ‘Have a word with Doctor Bartholomew. He’s an Aussie. He’s the one who raised the alarm about those birth defects. And you might like to give him the heads. He’ll put them on ice till the Iraqis get around to finding out who they belonged to.’

‘How long we here for?’ I asked.

‘The duration, I’m afraid, however long that is,’ said Christie. ‘It’s up to my boss – he doesn’t tend to consult with me. I haven’t forgotten about your problem.’

We left Christie to get his unit organised and went to collect the heads from a warrant officer in the Mastiff. A couple of Iraqi soldiers were looking in the bag, shouting at each other. One of them had tears running down his cheeks, cutting valleys through the dust caking his skin.

‘What’s up,’ Masters asked.

‘One of the heads belonged to this man’s sister’s husband,’ explained the WO, in a regional English accent as thick as a bowl of rolled oats. ‘It appears he was a copper, manning that empty checking station we passed.’

‘Can you explain to the man that we’re taking his brother-in-law’s remains into the hospital?’

‘Do my best,’ said the WO.

The Brit spoke to the two locals in a mixture of Arabic, mime and English. He seemed to get the point across. The Iraqis drifted away with slumped shoulders, heads down.

I swung the bag over my shoulder and made for the front entrance. Inside the hospital, it was standing room only. The sandstorm had been the cause of plenty of accidents – broken limbs, burns, motor-vehicle accidents. Folks were either asleep, groaning or arguing, a couple of men in particular giving an Iraqi nurse a hard time, yelling at her.

Masters found someone who could point us in the right direction. She led the way through an access door and down a hallway, which eventually opened out into a large ward. The place smelt of disinfectant, blood and urine. Here and there a few people moaned.

I walked up to one of the nurses, an Iraqi woman wearing a full black burqa, and gave her a peek in the bag. ‘Doctor Bartholomew?’ I asked.

It took a few long seconds for the contents of the bag to register with her, and then her eyes widened behind the black slits. She grabbed my sleeve and excitedly pulled me into an annex, where a tall guy in jeans and a T-shirt with a stethoscope around his neck was bent over a basin, washing his hands. The woman waved her arms around, talked animatedly, pointing at me and the bag I was holding. The man talked to her in Arabic briefly before she swept out of the room, muttering to herself.

‘Got something there for me, mate?’ asked the doctor in a broad Australian accent, walking towards us. The guy had unkempt longish blond hair that was greying slightly at the roots. His olive skin had a blanched look, and his brown eyes were rimmed with red pinstripes. I guessed he’d been up a while.

‘They’re probably more for your fridge,’ I replied. ‘We found them on the outskirts of town, welcoming visitors.’

‘It has been one of those welcoming kinda nights,’ he said, looking into the bag. A stink rose from it. He shook his head. ‘I know these guys. They’re police. The one there on the left – I took his tonsils out only last week.’

‘So he hasn’t had much of an opportunity to miss them,’ I suggested, always looking for that silver lining. ‘This is Special Agent Masters and I’m Special Agent Cooper, doc. We’re with the OSI. Mind if we ask you a few questions?’

‘What about? These two?’

‘No, about Colonel Emmet Portman.’

‘Sure, what about him?’

‘He was murdered.’

Bartholomew blinked a couple of times while this news registered with him. The guy was clearly exhausted.

A nurse walked in, a European woman – dark, Spanish-looking. Bartholomew spoke to her in a language that sounded Italian. She looked in the bag, shook her head, and carried it away.

‘I’ve just finished a triple shift and things are getting quieter. Let’s go to my office.’

Along the way, he was continually pulled into corridor consultations with other doctors and nursing staff. Doctor Bartholomew was obviously an important cog in this machine.

His office was windowless and airless and small enough to wear. There was room for a minute desk, which was covered in piles of reference books that leaned against his computer screen and swamped the keyboard. A single chair for visitors and the one behind his desk took up most of the floor space. A whiteboard with various meaningless names and lines drawn in red and green marker pen accounted for most of one wall, while on the other hung the framed photo of a green wave, curling perfectly, shot by someone in the water aiming back down into the hollow barrel. A brown, muscled guy was inside the tube, casually dragging his hand along the glassy concave face of the wave.

‘You?’ I asked, giving the photo a nod.

‘A long time ago. And in another life,’ Bartholomew said as he cleared a pile of magazines off the spare chair and motioned for Masters to sit. ‘So what happened to Emmet?’ he asked.

‘The killers cut him up into itty-bitty pieces,’ said Masters.

The doc shook his head. ‘Well, you know, there’s no justice in the
world, is there? Emmet Portman was one of the good guys. He spent a lot of time here, mostly with the kids in the cancer ward.’ Bartholomew leaned back in his chair, his hands resting on his stomach. ‘Now, what is it exactly I can help you with?’

‘A Lieutenant Christie said you were the man to talk to, that you and Emmet Portman were tight,’ I replied. ‘There are quite a few odd factors connected with the Attaché’s death and we’re looking into them.’

‘Such as?’

‘Radioactivity in the water supply here. Vast sums of money disappearing and a water treatment plant out in the middle of nowhere. One of Portman’s squadron buddies mentioned that the colonel had a connection with a hospital around here. We’re assuming it’s this hospital, and our enquiries have led us to you.’

‘Mr Christie will vouch for you?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you call him and find out?’

‘I will.’ Bartholomew pulled out his cell and walked out of the room.

Masters and I glanced at each other and shrugged. I picked up a model of an eyeball from the doc’s desk and looked it over.

A minute later, Bartholomew walked back in and locked the door behind him. ‘I know I’m taking a hell of a risk here, but with Emmet dead, that just leaves me.’

‘I take it Christie gave us the nod?’ Masters asked.

The doc gave half a grin and said, ‘He told me you gave Tawal a major dose of the shits, which makes you my kind of people.’

The Australian went to his filing cabinet and unlocked the bottom drawer. Then he pulled it out entirely and tilted it over onto its side. Taped to the underside of the drawer was a folder. Bartholomew pulled away the tape, releasing the folder. He opened it, took out a handful of photographs and spread them across his desk. Each one showed a baby or child with horrible deformities.

‘Jesus,’ said Masters quietly, passing a few of the photos to me. ‘This stuff breaks your heart.’

‘After Gulf War I,’ Bartholomew began, ‘the staff at Basra Hospital
became highly concerned at the number of leukaemias amongst children in the area, as well as the alarming number of congenital malformations in newborn children. From 1990 to 2001, data showed an incidence increase of 426 per cent for general malignancies, 366 per cent for leukaemias and over 600 per cent for birth defects. At Kumayt, we’re almost double those figures. Or we were. There had to be a reason for all the abnormalities suddenly turning up. We thought it might have been something to do with a depleted uranium dump supposedly somewhere upstream of us, a hangover from the first Gulf war – perhaps the stuff had finally worked its way into the water supply. That was over three years ago, by the way. Around the same time I met Colonel Emmet Portman. He’d flown down here from Turkey, looking into something to do with a reconstruction project.’

‘Kawthar al Deen?’ Masters asked.

‘Yeah, but I didn’t know anything about it back then. Anyway, the colonel had cut his hand, nothing too serious. He stopped by to get the wound cleaned up. While he was here, he toured the hospital – saw the children’s ward. It got him pretty worked up. Said he felt a personal responsibility towards the kids. He sent gifts and toys. About a month later, he phoned and told me in confidence that the authorities in Baghdad were aware of the problems with the water supply here. An environmental study of the area had been undertaken and high levels of depleted uranium had indeed been found in the water. Locally, promises were made to clean up the dump and build a desalination plant to treat the ground water and make it drinkable. Tenders went out for the project.’

‘That was when Portman met Tawal,’ I said.

‘Yeah – talk about oil meeting water. Anyway, I gather there were some issues around the way the tender was conducted, complaints from other companies involved in the tender process. To say that Emmet didn’t like Tawal would be an understatement, and from what I’ve heard, the feeling was mutual. Emmet told me he didn’t believe there was a DU dump in the vicinity of Kumayt – couldn’t find records within the Department of Defense of the existence of such a dump.
His conclusion was that the whole desalination thing was crooked. So, around six months ago, he had the water tested independently.’

Bartholomew handed me a photocopied report pulled from the packet taped under the file drawer. It was dated three months ago. I recognised the black and white logo in the top left of the page. Now I had time to read the writing:
Sage Laboratories, Ca
. I passed the report to Masters.

‘There’s a lot of competing noise about depleted uranium,’ the doctor continued as Masters scanned the report. ‘Some experts reckon that breathing the dust will fuck up the immune system and alter your genetic code. Others say it’s harmless.’

‘Only there’s no argument about uranyl fluoride,’ observed Masters, examining one of the pages. ‘Radioactive
and
toxic like you wouldn’t believe.’

‘The toxicity is the real problem,’ said Bartholomew. ‘The levels of hydrogen fluoride they found are just as bad. That stuff is seriously gnarly.’

‘Any ideas how these chemicals got into the water?’ Masters asked.