Kardinal (17 page)

“I WAS there that day in Basra,” said Khoury. He looked at his watch and yawned.

Lawton glanced at the man’s wrist and saw it was about 4.40am.

Stupidly early
, he thought.
Or stupidly late
.

They were trying to psyche him out, denying him sleep. But if anyone could go without sleep, it was Lawton.

Khoury had dismissed the short guard. Told him to get more coffee and something to eat for their guest. “I was a police cadet. Nineteen years old when it happened. I had joined the new police of the new Iraq. I was being trained by British police.”

Lawton narrowed his eyes.

Was the man trying to dupe him?

“I have seen your face on the internet,” said Khoury. He was sitting opposite Lawton, staring straight at him. “I have watched you in England, fighting your demon enemies, and I say to myself, ‘I know who that man is.’”

He hesitated and stared at Lawton’s face.

“You are Jake Lawton,” said Khoury.

Lawton said nothing. He was considering the odds on another bet now. Playing it safe until he knew everything he could possibly know.

“Two men leapt from a VW,” said Khoury. “I remember clearly. Two men with backpacks. Bombs on their bodies. I remember waiting to go into the mosque. Still in my cadet uniform. A soldier shot one of the insurgents.”

Rabbit
, thought Lawton. That’s what they called him. A true comrade. A brother in arms.

Khoury continued.

“But the other one fled. Down an alley. I remember. And it was
you
who followed him,
you
who shot him dead. You saved our lives. Hundreds of lives.”

“I did my job.”

“You stopped evil.”

Lawton said nothing.

“Why are you here?” said Khoury, his brow furrowed.

Now it starts
, thought Lawton. Maybe this was all part of a psychological game. Maybe Khoury was nowhere near Basra that day. But whatever the case, he knew about Lawton’s actions on that November 2004.

Khoury said, “There are no vampires in Iraq. Europe, I know, suffers, but we are not contaminated yet. Are we?” A look of fear crossed his face. “Tell me if this is the truth?”

“I don’t know if you have vampires.”

“Then why does a man known on the internet as a vampire killer come to Iraq illegally?”

“Are you interrogating me now?”

“Hardly,” said Khoury. “But someone might, very soon. The men from the Department of Border Enforcement will come before Hassan is back with the tea. You have no authority to be here. You have no visa or a passport. Are you doing contract work?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you working on a security mission, secret mission?”

Lawton said nothing.

“I am not asking you from interrogation,” said Khoury, “I am asking you because I am interested in Jake Lawton – the man who saved my life.”

“What’s going to happen to me?”

“You will be questioned. You might be charged with entering the country illegally. You will be put on trial. You will be found guilty. You might be sent to jail, or you will be fined 10,000 dinar.”

“How much is that?” said Lawton.

“Eight dollars.”

“That’ll break the bank.”

Khoury looked confused.

Lawton said, “Forget it.”

Khoury said, “You might be sent back to Britain, if you are lucky – expelled.”

“No, that would not be lucky.”

“Not be lucky?”

“They will kill me.”

“But you are a hero. We read of you on the internet.”

“I’m not a hero now. Britain has changed. There are powerful people who want me dead. And if I’m sent back, they will kill me.”

“What can I do?”

“I don’t know, what can you do?”

Khoury shook his head.

Lawton started thinking. Thinking hard. Planning. Strategizing.

Never stop thinking. Keep your brain fired up. Like an engine. If it stalls, you might not get it going again.

He had to get away. That was it. And for that to happen, he needed an opportunity. Just a second’s hesitation by his guards. Just something to unsettle them, to make them lose concentration. And he had to be outside this building. Outside in the streets among the traffic and the crowds. Outside where you could easily lose yourself so that no one could find you.

“I need you to do something,” he told Khoury.

The Iraqi looked worried.

Lawton told him what he needed him to do.

Khoury leapt to his feet, the chair flying across the room.

He said, “No, never! I am not a barbarian!”

LAXMAN and two of his colleagues, Xavier and Ashton, took the same route as Lawton had taken to Baghdad. But their journey was more pleasant. They were stopped once at a checkpoint outside Tikrit, but their papers were in order.

Laxman chilled out in the back of the Toyota Land Cruiser, music on his iPod, the interior of the vehicle at a nice temperature. Xavier drove with Ashton riding shotgun.

He gazed out at the night. They drove through cities and towns and passed shacks on the roadside.

They passed compounds protected by barbed wire, with warning signs in Arabic hanging off the gates.

They saw the skeletons of tanks and Humvees. Ruins from the war. A war Laxman would have loved to have been part of. But he’d had to wait for it to be over before he could bring his White Light Ops team in.

They were hired in 2004 to protect American industrialists. The Yanks were in the country to make a profit in the aftermath. The insurgency had just kicked off. Al Qaeda nuts joined forces with Ba’athist thugs, and anyone they regarded as an enemy was murdered or kidnapped. There were videos posted online of fanatics sawing people’s heads off with a butcher’s knife. It was a crazy place at that time. A dangerous place. But it gave a military man like Laxman a permanent hard-on. His blood was up. Adrenaline was in constant supply. He just loved it. Loved the danger, the action. You had to be constantly on your guard against insurgents. But that was part of the fun for him.

He had a grudging respect for them. He hated what they stood for but liked their ruthlessness.

He didn’t mind killing or torturing civilians, but he wouldn’t do it for pleasure – and he thought from watching some of those decapitation videos that the psychos doing the sawing were in it for the blood and the shit.

They probably jacked off after slicing off a head.

Those guys were willing to kill anyone, at any time, for no reason.

However willing Laxman was to slaughter, he did like a fair fight. Especially if it improved his skills. Bad odds bored him. Sure, having an edge was important, just to make certain he came out on top. But you had to give your opponents a chance.

That’s why he was looking forward to taking on Lawton.

His head told him to pop Lawton from a distance – bullet in the brain from 100 metres.

But his heart told him, “Go hand-to-hand with this fella.”

Lawton had a serious reputation. He was a first-class soldier who was drummed out of the army because he’d done his job.

After his discharge, he’d acquired a reputation as a bareknuckle fighter. They said he was undefeated in illegal bouts all over England.

It was all part of the mythology that had built up around Lawton during the vampire plague.

He was the only one to fight the monsters up close and the only one who seemed to win.

People liked that.

Laxman liked that.

He admired Lawton’s tough-guy approach to life.

But he also knew that Lawton was vulnerable. He was vulnerable because he would never sacrifice a mate so he could survive. He would never turn his back on a colleague. He would never let someone weaker than himself suffer.

And that’s what exposed Jake Lawton.

That’s why Laxman had the edge.

That’s why he would win.

Laxman thought about Alfred Fuad. He wondered what the guy was up to. Laxman had been hired by Howard Vince. They’d known each other during the first Gulf War in ’91. At the time, Vince was an officer on the frontline, but he later became Chief of the General Staff. The military big cheese in the UK.

Laxman and his firm were being paid well. More than a million pounds. And it was an easy million, as far as he was concerned. It was not as if White Light Ops had been forced to sweat for their wages. The only problems they’d encountered so far were that girl – Laxman’s balls ached at the thought of her – and the foreign fella with the walking stick. Nothing else. Until now. Until Jake Lawton.

He’d guessed that the main reason he was here was to keep Lawton at bay.

He wasn’t completely clear on what Fuad was up to. Digging for some ancient mummy. Something called Nimrod. Fuad and the others seemed to believe this creature might still be alive.

Laxman wasn’t going to argue with that. He didn’t care what people believed. He had his own faith – in weapons. Shooting a gun was like a religious experience to Laxman.

But then everyone had their superstitions.

Some of the Iraqi diggers on the site were jittery about vampires.

They spoke about witches and goblins. They spoke about the ghost of Nimrod’s wife, still stalking the earth, still trying to find her way home.

And when she did, there would be trouble.

Always trouble when the wife comes home, thought Laxman, brushing the scar across his forehead. His missus had smashed him across the head with an iron after a domestic. Bitch, he thought, smiling. Loved that girl.

Laxman knew about vampires. The UK was plagued with them. He’d never believed in them before, but there was no doubting their existence now. But he wasn’t bothered. Laxman had spent most of the past few years living in Switzerland and working in Africa and the Middle East – well out of the way of any vampires.

The dawn was starting to peek over the horizon, a white band cresting the skyline.

“How long?” he asked now.

Xavier, a Swiss national who’d worked with Laxman for ten years, said, “Thirty or forty minutes.”

Ashton said, “What’s the plan, boss?”

“I’m just thinking one up,” said Laxman.

He shut his eyes and had a nap.

KAMAL Najib, forty-seven in years and also around the waist, combed his moustache in the mirror of the gentlemen’s toilet at the Ministry of the Interior.

The former Iraqi Army major, now senior investigator with the Department of Border Enforcement, coughed. He grimaced. His chest ached, and his throat was burning. It had to be an infection. His wife said, “Lay off the cigarettes.” He smoked eighty a day. Some said Marlboros could kill you. But Najib reckoned it was just another lie the West told the Arabs.

He lit one now in the bathroom. Just to clear his throat. It hurt when he sucked in the smoke. But it would clear out any mucus trapped in his lungs.

He was getting ready to interrogate the British spy they’d found in the desert up north. He’d got the call an hour ago. Dragged out of bed at 4.00am.

“Can you come in?” a voice had said.

“It’s four in the morning,” he’d screamed.

And then the voice at the other end had told him why they wanted him in. He was happy to oblige. Anything to interrogate a spy.

Of course, it wasn’t proven that the stranger was a spy just yet.

But Najib would find the proof.

He checked his watch – it was 5.15am now, so by 8.00am the Briton would have made a full confession.

Najib smiled at his reflection, proud that he was going to send some interfering Westerner to jail.

He hated them. They had invaded his country. They had killed his leader.

Najib was a Ba’athist. A Saddam loyalist. A true believer in the regime. He had met Saddam and had been honoured to follow an order once to kill another army officer who had been disloyal.

However, in his job as an assistant director of the Department of Border Enforcement, Najib had to keep secret his previous allegiances. He was expected to act within the laws of the new Iraq. The democratic Iraq. How could you get the truth out of a prisoner you weren’t allowed to torture? Fear was the key to getting the facts. But these days, the regime was reluctant to sanction extreme techniques. They were scared of being told off by their new masters, the West.

Najib sneered.

He hated the US, the European Union, and Britain. It was time that his countrymen stopped regarding them as allies. They were colonists, usurpers, and infidels. They were imperialists intent on conquering Arab lands and corrupting the countries of the Middle East with democracy and human rights.

He farted. He smoked the cigarette before dropping the stump down the sink. He farted again. He walked out, leaving an odour of shit behind him, which made him smile.

He took the elevator to the basement, where the prisoner was being kept. Khoury, a western-loving young lieutenant with the Federal Police, had been keeping watching on the spy. Also on duty was Hassan, a fat lazy oaf. One of them would have made a mess of things, for sure. Najib would have to sort it all out. He’d show this spy, this criminal, this trespasser, that you can’t just walk in and out of Iraq just because you claim to have liberated the country.

He exited the elevator and farted once again, just as the doors were shutting behind him He grinned, thinking about the odour that would waft out of the lift when the next passenger opened the doors.

A slim young woman wearing a tight skirt walked towards him along the corridor. She was beautiful. In her twenties. A secretary, probably. From the admin pool. One of the early shift. Najib was glad fanatical Islam had not infiltrated Iraq too deeply. It would be a shame to see women covered up. The wives, maybe, but not the secretaries. Not the students. Not the actresses. He liked looking at them – at legs, at breasts, at faces, at hair.

As the girl pressed herself against the wall to allow Najib to pass, he stroked her hair and said, “You are looking beautiful today. What is your name?”

She blushed and looked worried. But they always did. They loved the attention. He pressed his large belly against her, pushing her into the wall.

“Leyla,” she said.

“You know me?” he said. He kept stroking her hair. It was so silky, and she must have liked it being stroked. She was flinching a little.

She nodded that she knew him and then said, “Please, I must… ”

“Ah, no rush. You must visit me in my office to take some notes. Later today, perhaps.”

“I am, I can’t – ”

“But it is an order – ”

A door flew open. Khoury sprang out. He ran off down the corridor. Najib stepped away from the woman. She hurried away in the opposite direction to Khoury. But he wasn’t about to chase her.

A gurney had burst out of the room Khoury had exited. Four medics shoved the stretcher down the passageway in Khoury’s direction. An oxygen mask was clamped to the patient’s face. Whoever he was, he was twitching on the gurney. And there was a lot of blood. The man wore a white kurta, but it was red now with blood.

They wheeled him down the corridor.

Najib shouted at Khoury.

The lieutenant stopped and turned. His face bleached when he saw Najib.

“What is happening, Lieutenant Khoury? Who is this man?”

“Sir, it is the prisoner.”

Najib gawped. He couldn’t speak. His chest suddenly became very tight, and he could hardly breathe.

“He attacked me, sir,” said Khoury. “I had to shoot him.”