The Girl in Green (27 page)

‘Aren't you in the middle of a massive refugee crisis in a war-torn country with terrorists?' Charlotte asks.

‘It's dinnertime. Everyone's eating. How did he drive her to this?'

‘It was his absence. He was never there.'

‘So he was never there for you, either.'

Charlotte does not reply to this. She looks over at her meal, and no longer feels hungry. Miguel is right. Nothing about it can be good for her.

‘What do you do for a living, Ms Charlotte?'

‘It's Doctor, actually. I'm a palaeontologist. I try to understand how things are related to each other.'

‘So you do professionally what has been impossible for you to do personally.'

‘Look, Miguel, I hadn't quite formulated my thoughts yet. I don't even discuss this with my boyfriend.'

‘Ah, you have a boyfriend. Of course, why wouldn't you? What is his name?'

‘Guy.'

‘Guy?'

‘Yes. Guy.'

‘This is a name?'

‘Yes.'

‘I thought it was an English word for “just anyone”.'

‘It also means that.'

‘I see. You would rather settle for the embrace of just anyone rather than risk losing someone specific the way you have lost your father. I understand.'

‘Um—'

‘There is more to your father's visit here, Dr Charlotte, than perhaps you know. And perhaps, in a way, it will soothe you. Perhaps he was running from the most important aspects of his life, but he has real business here. Ms Märta has told me he is here for the girl in green. Do you know about her?'

‘The girl in green?'

‘You have seen her, I am sure. The mortar attack in northern Iraq. It is on the news. It was on many stations. My mother, in Barcelona, she says it has played many times. The mortar came down and killed many people, and they show the video on the news. Your father thinks the girl who stood so alone in her green dress may still be alive. He has come, with Mr Arwood, to find her. They left for Ninawa this morning. In fact, I scheduled this call because I thought they would be back before curfew, but they are not. Let us meet again in a few hours. We will know more then. And there are some people I would like you to meet. Do you like children?'

‘Sure, Miguel. But before all that, why would my father try to rescue a girl in Iraq? He's a journalist.'

‘Perhaps,' Miguel says, ‘because it is his way of rescuing you.'

‘Honestly, Miguel, I really am not sure whether you have a remarkable insight into the human experience, or whether your certainty in yourself is what makes your arguments so compelling,' she says.

‘My mother once said to me, “Miguel, the world is a noisy place. There is little point in mumbling.”'

‘Of course.'

‘Later, after we eat, I will affix the iPad to the walking stick, and then off we will go together in search of your father, who must now return to your mother so you will not be sad anymore and have to eat the fried wontons and marry a man who is like every other man. OK?'

At home, Märta leans over the countertop separating the dining area from the kitchen. Her legs are crossed at the ankles, and she is sipping a beer. Tigger arrived moments ago, and is sitting on the sofa with his legs crossed and an outstretched arm. Herb is on a bright-red chair across from the sofa that both he and Tigger refer to as ‘the thinking chair,' a term taken from a children's television show they both watched with their kids, called
Blue
'
s Clues.

‘Let's call the meeting to order,' Märta says.

‘I have a question,' Tigger says, raising his hand.

‘Already?'

‘What the hell were you doing, letting them go out there in one of our vehicles—'

‘—with Jamal driving?' Herb interjects.

‘I was getting to that. Yes, what Herb said.'

‘I made a mistake,' Märta concedes.

Tigger and Herb glance at each other. Herb points to Tigger, who nods, agreeing to speak for them both. ‘Our question is built on the assumption that you made a mistake. We sincerely want to know what you were thinking.'

‘I agreed to let Arwood use the office for old times' sake, and because I didn't see any harm in it at first. And I think he played me. He told me Benton was coming, and I wanted to see him. And then it escalated.'

‘How?' Tigger says.

‘By seeing Thomas.'

‘Did you sleep with Thomas Benton last night?' Tigger asks.

‘Yes,' Märta says.

‘How was it?'

‘Nice.'

‘So you gave him a car and Jamal, and sent him to a dangerous area because of schoolgirl feelings?'

‘I agreed before I slept with him.'

‘Which does not disprove my theory, but … why?' Herb says, leaning forward in the thinking chair.

‘I felt this sense of possibility I haven't felt in a long time. They wanted to fix something that everyone else had written off for lost. It was … well, it was like the minefield and that boy, remember?'

‘Of course we remember,' Tigger says. ‘But there is a difference between watching someone walk into a minefield and sending someone—'

‘—specifically, Jamal,' Herb says.

‘—in one of our cars. You should have run this by us.'

‘You're right, and I was wrong. Is there anything else?'

‘No,' says Tigger. ‘Herbert and I have been looking into matters for the past two hours. Let's all get started.'

‘I guess the first question is, do we know they survived the explosion?' Märta says.

‘We don't,' Herb says, ‘but we think probably they did. Ahmed, in the radio room, talked to the chief of police in Mosel. The Iraqi police are out in force over there now. They killed four of the attackers, captured one, and if there was anyone else, they're gone. One of the cops found our car a little ways off the road. There were bullet holes in the wheels, but no blood and no bodies. So they are out there. Somewhere.'

Herb is in his late forties, and has maintained a soldier's physique. Unlike Tigger, who is long and sinewy, Herb is muscular, big, and athletic. He speaks with a soft and deep voice that Märta has grown to find comforting.

‘My read is that they tried to escape in the car, got shot at, got out, and that's when they disappeared,' Herb says.

‘There are only two ways to disappear in the desert,' Tigger says, reaching over to the coffee table for a Diet Coke. ‘Voluntarily and involuntarily.'

Märta drinks her beer with her left hand tucked under her right armpit. She has let her hair down. It falls to her shoulders. She is barefoot. ‘We should build out the scenarios,' she says.

‘If they got away on their own, they would have called by now,' Herb says.

‘Yeah. We should be thinking they're captured and being held.'

‘Agreed,' Tigger says. ‘Anyone hungry?'

‘I don't eat after seven,' Herb says. ‘And how can you be thinking of food?'

‘I'm always thinking of food. It's the irony of thin people.'

Märta reaches behind the counter, extracts a bag of mixed cocktail nuts, and pours them into a small ceramic bowl. She reaches forward and hands them to Tigger, who immediately targets the cashews.

‘What groups?' Märta asks.

‘They could be criminals looking for money. They could be jihadists,' Tigger says. ‘They could be jihadists looking for money. We should hope they are financially motivated. Otherwise, I don't know.'

‘Something that's worked for us before in Pakistan with jihadists,' Märta says, ‘was contacting some of the Muslim world's more respected scholars of jihad, and having them talk to the kidnappers, to let them know that the notion of Islamic struggle, even at the most extreme, does not apply to the humanitarian organisations. It hasn't always worked, but it has worked. The International Committee of the Red Cross and the local Red Crescent can be helpful here, too. The ICRC has a mandate to serve as a neutral intermediary, and they can extend their good offices and serve as mediators when the time comes. Maybe Louise can back us up. But this isn't the Taliban. Say they were captured by al-Nusra, al-Qaeda, or ISIL. What does that look like?' she asks.

Herb looks at the bowl of snacks, and sits further back in his red chair. ‘We're not sure whether Nusra and ISIL have broken with al-Qaeda yet. There's so much internecine fighting that looking for a pattern is to overlook the actual pattern that it's all a mess. They're posting their murders and massacres on YouTube. Everyone's jockeying for position.'

Märta sits on a stool by the counter, her blue skirt cutting across her shin. She is still holding the beer, but is no longer drinking it.

‘Why post that stuff?' she says. ‘Why put on display that you're murderers? Aren't they repelling people with their violence?'

‘On the contrary,' Tigger says. ‘It shows strength and conviction. Maybe not to us, but to many others. Sometimes it is hard to accept that people are fundamentally different, but the simple proof is that foreigners are confusing. The reason it's working, since you asked me, is that in the West we take military action, and then wrap a communications strategy around it to win hearts and minds. The jihadists have a communications strategy, and they wrap a military strategy around it to show they are serious about what they say. You see the difference? Our ways of warfare are not asymmetrical. They are opposite. We are entering a new era of warfare with the non-Western world, with non-Western rules and non-Western methods. We are unprepared.'

‘We don't need Big Theory, Tigger,' Herb says.

‘I disagree. It would have been good to have a better theory before invading Iraq in the first place. Of course, this is all a pantomime, because we all knew this in 1991, which is why we didn't take Baghdad in the first place.'

‘Louise thinks Arwood might be CIA,' Märta interjects.

‘Do you?' Tigger asks.

‘No.'

‘Why not?' Herb asks.

‘Yeah. Why not?' Tigger asks.

‘I talked to Louise about this already. The CIA is a formal administrative system. I don't think he fits.'

‘Whether he's CIA or not, I don't trust him. He's got bad paper,' Herb says.

‘What does that mean?' Märta asks.

‘It means he's got a dishonourable discharge, or something close enough to it. He was kicked out of the army after Desert Storm. It means that for one reason or another his country thinks he's a disgrace, and I'm not about to question that judgement until I've got a good reason to. I know the army. I gave my career to the army. It gets the benefit of the doubt over Arwood Hobbes.'

‘Benton trusts him, and I trust Benton,' Märta says.

‘I don't see why,' Herb says. ‘I also don't understand their relationship. None of us have been in touch with either one of them, and I haven't been keeping tabs on 'em. You said this morning that Benton hasn't been in touch with Hobbes, so I don't think even he really knows what he's getting into. All we really know for a fact is that Benton's been working a steady job at the newspaper since Margaret Thatcher. Otherwise, I think you're too close to this with your … you know—'

‘Vagina?'

‘I was going to say “lover,” but OK. Vaginas don't scare me. I realise sex doesn't mean a thing to you sophisticated French and Scandinavian types, but my experience tells me differently. Be that as it may, I want to be on record here about one important thing: I'm here because Jamal is missing. The boy's one of ours, and that's what I'm here to help with. The others put themselves in harm's way for whatever reason, and those reasons sound dubious. So that's on them. Meanwhile, Jamal didn't ask for this, and he has a family we know, and he shouldn't have been out there. And, quite frankly, I'm a little sick and tired of national staff being treated like they're disposable or second-class citizens in their own countries that we invaded. And when I say second-class, you know what I'm really saying.'

‘That's not fair, Herb.'

‘It is fair, Märta. We pay them less. They have less job security. They aren't covered by the same insurance. They usually take bigger risks, they are far more exposed than we are — because everyone knows who they are and what villages they come from — and when we all go home because the situation's become too hot, we leave the natives behind to fend for themselves. After all, this isn't colonisation, it's cooperation! Meanwhile, do you have any idea how many translators and staff hired by the US military we left behind after we pulled out of Iraq and Afghanistan? Tens of thousands. We dragged our feet, didn't process their visas, didn't care for their families. We use people up, and leave them for dead, which many of them become. It is dishonourable and short-sighted, and I don't like it.'