The Girl in Green (24 page)

But Arwood was told that he wasn't
necessarily
excluded. His was an in-between case — being other than honourable — that may or may not have been disqualifying, based on the standards set under Title 38 Code of Federal Regulations (C.F.R.) §3.12. Now, as it was explained to Arwood one afternoon by phone in 1991, as he wiped potato-chip crumbs from his AC/DC T-shirt, he still might retain eligibility for VA health-care benefits for service-incurred or service-aggravated disabilities, unless he was subject to one of the statutory bars to benefits set forth in Title 38 United States Code §5303(a), Authority: Section 2 of Public Law 95-126 (Oct. 8, 1977).

‘Uh-huh,' he'd said.

He might be eligible for pending verification status. ‘You have to put in a request for an administrative decision regarding the character of service for VA health-care purposes, and that must be made to the local VA regional office or VARO. Do you know where your VARO is?'

‘Um —'

‘This request may be submitted using a VA Form 7131, Exchange of Beneficiary Information and Request for Administrative and Adjudicative Action. In making determinations of health-care eligibility, the same criteria will be used as are now applicable to determinations of service connection when there is no character-of-discharge bar.

‘Sir? Are you there?'

With his savings from the army, Arwood bought a very used red-white-and-blue Yamaha FJ 1100 motorcycle, and disappeared into America at $0.98 a gallon. He realised, in looking at his Rand McNally map, that he'd actually seen less of the country than he'd seen of Iraq, and he'd only seen four towns in Iraq. His goal was simply to put as many miles as possible between himself, his father, and anyone who might understand that phone call.

Arwood Hobbes tried working regular jobs — supermarkets, photo labs, record stores. But regular jobs for regular people had in common the element of routine. Routine, he found, could be a great way to hold things together if you're already a together kind of guy, but Arwood was in pieces, and he wanted to do something that might put himself right again. Holding the line was not going to make that happen.

He arrived in the Midwest, only in the sense that you can't get anywhere without passing through it, and he had to stop for money for petrol. Amid the flatness, he found hand-written signs for yard sales and flea markets, all of them selling guns.

Arwood wasn't a gun nut. He didn't have any happy childhood memories of hunting with his grandpa or learning to track with his daddy. He had never heard lectures on nature and conservation, or on Teddy Roosevelt. Guns were mechanical things he'd been trained to take apart, put back together, and use. They were fun to play with at the outset, but, after basic training and jogging in the desert, what Arwood had come to appreciate about guns was that — more than anything else — they were heavy.

What he did like, though, was sales.

Supply and demand made sense to him. It was a simple seesaw, a singular philosophy with one fulcrum on an unalterable axis — much like talk radio.

Still, though, Arwood was dissatisfied. It wasn't the money he wanted; it was a higher calling, a purpose. He was still pissed off, and he had no way to get over it.

In Montana, at one well-attended and well-stocked gun show in the autumn of 1991, Arwood met a large, bearded man named Nick Harwood. Nick ran a booth selling military-surplus items — lots of wool, backpacks, bayonets, gloves, and camping gear. Arwood had been standing next to him, selling re-loads and second-rate small-game rifles at someone else's table for $8.50 an hour plus lunch, minus questions.

He and Nick started talking. Like a lot of other guys who look like they could unscrew your head and pour your guts into a bucket, Nick was actually soft-spoken, pleasant, and slightly defeated.

Nick lived out of an RV that pulled a trailer full of what he called ‘stuff'. He'd buy stuff where there was a lot of it, and then sell the stuff where there was less of it. If he was lucky, petrol prices stayed low, and the people who had it weren't too far from the people who needed it. Lately, though, he'd gotten into a new line, mainly because he had a slipped disk, and driving the RV was literally a pain in his arse he didn't need anymore. That was what he was into now, he said: ‘brokering.'

‘Like with stocks and stuff?' Arwood asked.

‘Same logic, but different stuff. A broker is someone who sits anywhere he wants, and instead of dragging stuff around from place to place with a bad back, he brings supply and demand together for a price, or else a cut. The nice thing is, you never need to take possession of the stuff, or actually move stuff around. You're the connection guy. You can bring anything you have access to to anyone you want to have it — if you've got access to the goods, know the right people, and have the chops to make the deal happen.'

‘What's the hard part?' Arwood asked.

‘The hard part?' Nick laughed. ‘The hard part is matching up the supply with the demand, and gaining the trust of both sides so they think you're the man to be the bridge for them. The more mainstream the goods, the greater the competition. The more unusual or niche or dangerous, the less competition. Most people don't want to take big risks.'

‘What if minefields don't bother me?'

‘Anything that bothers other people and doesn't bother you is an asset in this life.'

‘This is interesting,' Arwood said. ‘How do I start?'

‘You'll need a phone.'

Arwood shook his head as though he were being told he'd need a third hand for his second penis. ‘I live on the road. Where am I gonna get a phone?'

‘You'll need to stick around someplace, or work the pay phones. I think you should stick around someplace. I'll tell you what,' Nick said, sizing Arwood up and having nothing better to do than take a chance, ‘I've got a little place outside Bozeman. It's a cabin, but it's got electricity and a phone line. You want to give it a go, the place is yours for $150 a month.'

‘What's in it for you?'

‘$150 a month.'

‘That's a pretty strong argument.'

‘You think that's the kind of life you want?'

Arwood said it was. It really, really was.

Arwood realised quickly that weapons were his game and that the US wasn't his market. As it happened, 1991 was a stellar year to become an arms broker. The Berlin Wall was down, the Warsaw Pact was defunct, all of eastern Europe was begging to join NATO and the EU, and the only thing of marketable value left behind in the former Soviet Union was military hardware. No one was getting paid, the military had nothing to do, and everyone needed jobs because communism wasn't so much being replaced by capitalism as by reality.

That was supply taken care of.

Transportation wasn't too hard to arrange, either. There were plenty of surplus Soviet air platforms lying around in the newly independent states of the former USSR, and no one had any work for them. If you offered to pay the pilots and some bribes, the planes went wherever you wanted them to.

That left only demand.

But these were the salad years. Everyone was buying. By the late 1990s, Arwood knew his way around the planet. Planes and a bank account in Geneva were all he needed once he cracked the nut on domestic transport problems in conflict zones, which usually involved hiring the same charter companies the humanitarian organisations used, and simply filling them on their return runs.

It all came together.

And yet, all through this period, what Arwood Hobbes really wanted was to close the chapter on a piece of old and unfinished business. What he needed was intelligence information, and that was finally what he'd received a few weeks before arriving in Dohuk — before the mortar attack — from a Kurd named Jindar Zafar.

The Leopard Room, beneath the Hotel d'Angleterre in Geneva, is a short stroll eastward from the Mandarin on Quai du Mont-Blanc, past the spot where Lake Geneva draws to its south-western tip and the Rhône River is born under the Pont de la Machine — as though it were named for making the river rather than for pumping its water into the public fountains. Like the Thames or the Seine, the Rhône is trimmed by concrete as it runs through the city, but, like Geneva itself, the river has less drama and less majesty. It performs its functions and lives its life as quietly as possible. With its understated and dour birth between the Alps to the south and the hamlet-rich Jura Mountains to the north, one would never suspect that the freshwater river eventually bursts into the spirit-filled Catholic world of the Riviera, swells the grapes on the
C
ô
tes du Rh
ô
ne
, dances down to the estuaries near Marseille, and then — as quickly as it came — vanishes from Europe altogether, leaving only the taste of its sweet water to lap the wide shores of North Africa.

Geneva was undeniably beautiful. The problem was the Calvinist mood. It was serene here to the point of sterility. In Arwood's view, the collective goal of Swiss life was to get from birth to death without incident. If that wasn't your own philosophy, the city would never be more than a distraction from the life you actually wanted to live.

Arwood liked the Leopard Room for business, because it looked colonial and felt smarmy. It was three steps underground, and despite its being only a stone's throw from the lake, you'd never know it was there. It was dark, filled with earth tones and woods. It was as good a place as any to draw green and purple lines on maps, soiled only gently from gin and tonics and the rank egoism of a self-serving philosophy. It really was a top-quality place to sell weapons.

Arwood had been drinking a bourbon on the rocks, wearing a black T-shirt and Levi's. He was leafing through a blue-cloth book by Norman Angell written in 1910 that explained how future war in Europe would be futile because it would be economically irrational.

Arwood laughed so hard, he spilled his Maker's Mark. He was wiping it off his leather jacket when his associate entered and took a seat beside him to the right of the piano.

Jindar Zafar wore an exquisite blue Super 140 suit from Corneliani and a yellow tie by Lanvin. His shoes were J.M. Weston. His watch was IWC. Zafar was in his early fifties, and looked to Arwood as though he knew exactly how much longer his prime would last. He joined Arwood at a table near the back, filled with books used as furniture, topped now by Norman Angell.

‘So, Mr Jindar Zafar. Still lookin' like dat.'

‘Mr Hobbes.'

‘Want a drink?'

‘I don't think I'll be here that long.'

‘You could have had two already if you'd applied yourself.'

‘I'm a Muslim, Mr Hobbes. We don't drink. You wouldn't understand.'

‘Really,' Arwood said, tossing the soiled napkin onto the table and calling a waiter to remove it. ‘I was sitting in Manama waiting for this arms dealer I know, and while there I learned about how the Saudis drive across that new fancy bridge of theirs and get thousand-dollar hotel rooms at the Meridian, where they have bottles of the finest booze in the world brought up to them by the youngest of Russian hookers. I'm talking fourteen years old. You find them in business class on Emirates — maybe you've seen them. After the Saudis and their guests are done, they drive back across the bridge and tell the West we're corrupt and morally adrift. So what else do you plan to teach me about how you mystical and wise Orientals live your lives that I can't possibly understand?'

‘I choose not to drink to honour my religion.'

‘Well, that's entirely different, isn't it? Meanwhile, without a beverage, you look like a gangster waiting to get shot. So settle into the chair. You're embarrassing me.'

‘Do you have what I want?' Zafar asked.

A young man with the physique of a distance runner sat himself down at the piano in the corner of the room. His jacket probably fitted the last guy who wore it, but there was no telling. He started playing ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes'. No one in the room seemed pleased to hear it.

Arwood had to lean in to be heard. ‘Do I have what you want? The interesting part is whether you have what I want. People selling information don't always have the information. So let's start with you. Where's the fucking colonel, and when's he gonna be there?'

Jindar Zafar straightened his jacket, sat back, and crossed his legs. ‘Up north. In a village on the road to Zakho. He has a cousin. After Saddam was killed, he took to hiding there. It's in Kurdistan.'

‘Why was he killing people in the south, if he's from the north?'

‘He is Sunni. They are Shiite. He is well connected to the network from Tikrit. It is usually easier to kill people farther from home.'

‘Uh-huh. I need GPS coordinates and a time window. There's a lot to coordinate.'

‘Are you really this driven to kill a man because of a grudge over twenty years old? You'll take that risk, pay this cost, for something so distant?'

Arwood removed a photograph from his bag and slid it across the table. It was a picture of himself in Iraq in 1991, taken during the long quiet of the air war and before he was stationed at Checkpoint Zulu. He looked young and handsome. He was in the middle of a hearty laugh beside another young man who looked the same. They were both laughing, because a third man in the middle — his face obscured from view, his black fingers in relief against the white fabric — was holding up a T-shirt that read,
I HATE SAND
.