The Girl in Green (34 page)

The shopkeeper blows out the smoke and looks at the basket. He gives the most subtle of nods.

Sharo places the letter in the basket. The man immediately fills it with supplies, and then calls a woman from the back room. He says something in a language that Sharo does not understand.

A woman appears. Sharo nods to her, but she does not acknowledge him. He does not take offence. He does not know their ways.

Sharo pays twenty times what the cigarettes are worth, and then leaves. If his front wheel does not slip on sand on the way down the mountain, if the bombs do not fall around him as he commands the turns, if a car does not run him off the road on his way down, and if he has luck and the will of God on his side, then for one hour more he can ride and be free.

The woman who collects the basket is dressed as a Yezidi woman, not a Muslim one. Concessions are made to the existence of the foreigners, but the Yezidi are too proud and too formal in their ways to concede everything. They have been here for millennia before the Muslims. Perhaps, with the aid of the god Melek Taus, they will remain here — in peace — after the Muslims have gone.

She walks down stairs carved into the rock. She walks beyond the edge of the village to where the valley stone rises, and where the waters run fast and unhindered in the winter beneath the thin ice that collects here. She walks to an old, long-forgotten building. An Ottoman fortification from World War I, it is made of stone and concrete. It is a garrison building. She does not want to know what happens here. She prays it will someday be gone, but she has no expectations that her prayers will be answered.

Without uttering a name, without making a sound, she knocks three times on the steel door and then turns to leave before it is opened. There is no need to wait. She knows she was being watched the moment she entered the small pass that leads to the only two outer doors — one to the left and into the main building, and one to the right into the dungeon.

If they did not want her to come this far, she would be dead already.

She walks back the way she came. She has two kilometres to go. She is old now, and tired, but this is what her body has learned to do. Before the building vanishes into the mountain behind her, she hears a door open, and the sound of the basket scraping against the earth before it is taken into what she imagines is Hell. And why wouldn't she? Where else would the devil live?

30

Thomas Benton is alone, his shoulder causing him so much pain that it dominates his attention and infuses itself into his hallucinations. The only question that holds his mind together is
Why am I here?
If he can answer this, before the end, he will have achieved something and given himself permission to die.

But the pain and the fear and the thirst disrupt the continuity of his thoughts. And his capacity to imagine.

He tries to fight this domination by using techniques he imagines a Buddhist might use to meditate: the image of a flickering flame against a mahogany wall; walking along the undulating green hills of the upper coastal path by Dorset; tracking the slow descent of a single drop of condensation on a pint glass on a hot summer's day.

Well, a British Buddhist, anyway.

When his phone rang in Cornwall and it was Arwood Hobbes on the other end, it did feel — if he allows himself to admit this — as though the cosmos were intervening for the first time on his behalf. Everything he was, and had failed to correct in himself, had finally reached its natural conclusion, and his family had fallen apart. And then Arwood's disembodied voice asked him to come back to Iraq with him. To look for something. To make the dead live again. To make the world complete. And he said yes.

Why?

A coincidence. An echo. A midday moon in a blue sky.

There really was no explaining it.

Benton hears a door open to the adjacent room. There is a shuffling sound as something is pulled inside. The door is closed again and bolted. Then the uneasy silence returns.

He can see the green dress more clearly now that the sun has risen and the room is illuminated. A warm, yellow light spreads across the ceiling. It will not touch him, but it is good to look at something connected to life.

Benton is thirsty. He has tried to convince himself he's not, but to no effect. Whatever the body wants, it does not stop wanting until it gets.

He used to want many things. He wanted the MG he once purchased with his brother, Edgar. He wanted Vanessa. It wasn't that her beauty was so overwhelming, or that her eyes glittered like the moon, or that her body was perfect beyond measure. That was for women in magazines. He always preferred three dimensions to two.

Vanessa was lovely. It is a term that has fallen from favour, but it still means something particular. Her face was kind and intelligent and inquisitive and warming. Her eyes were healthy and bright and commanding. Her body was the kind that most young women actually have. Vanessa probably saw in it a litany of imperfections when she was naked, but they all went entirely unseen by Benton, because she was naked.

What else had he wanted? He had wanted children. They had had Charlotte. They tried for more. After three miscarriages, they called it a day. It had been starting to affect their ability to be parents to the one they had.

What else did he want? He had wanted to take the girl in green to the American side of the ceasefire line twenty-two years ago. He failed in that, too. Which is when he stopped wanting things. When Charlotte stood in the doorway and he heard the pauses between her heartbeats, and he could have stepped through the silence between them as though it were an eternity, he knew he could not want her to live and love him the same way he had before. The reason was simple, really. He was too weak.

Was this what Vanessa was trying to accomplish — why he caught her in bed with another man? To make him want her again?

The door to their bedroom in Fowey was at the end of the carpeted hall. It was very late. He had planned to stay in London that night but came back instead, although not before stopping off at the pub for a pint. He had fallen into a conversation with Lester, and the hours had slipped by. It was a black and wet night under a low sky. Coming up the stairs, he was surprised to find his bedroom door framed in light. He turned the handle quietly so as not to startle her. She'd likely fallen asleep reading a book. He wondered what she was reading these days — John Irving, maybe?

The door didn't creak as he slowly waved it open. The table lamp on his side of the bed gave out a weak orange light. When the door was halfway open, he heard a muffled grunt that startled him. Instinctively, he flicked on the overhead light.

The inner door to his prison opens.

Benton doesn't move. He sees two men walk into the room. One takes a position by the door; the other brings in a folding chair, which he places a metre from Benton. He sits and crosses his legs, settling into a position thought effeminate by Western men.

He holds Benton's satchel.

Benton looks up into his face. It is Abu Larry again. The man reaches down and unties the bandana from Benton's head. He places his fingers between Benton's lips and pinches the remaining cloth, pulling it slowly from his mouth so it winds like a snake.

‘Do you know who I am?' he says.

Benton shakes his head. ‘No.'

Larry removes a pistol from the satchel. It is an ancient gun, a Webley.

‘Who is the girl?'

His accent is Arabic, but with British intonations again. He sounds educated. His voice is calm. He sounds deliberate and in control of his actions. He looks pitiless and calculating.

Benton notices the present tense used in his question.

‘We found her by the side of the road,' Benton says. ‘I was taking her to Domiz. There is a refugee camp there.'

‘Everyone is by the side of the road in Iraq. Why this girl?'

‘She reminds me of my niece.'

‘I think you're lying to me.'

‘I don't feel a strong need to tell the truth to terrorists.'

‘I'm not a terrorist.'

‘Well,' Benton says, ‘you're not a duck.'

Larry shoots Benton in the leg.

The bullet tears through the muscle of his upper right thigh, missing the femur. His body cannot decide whether to inhale for life or exhale to scream. Then, from deep in his diaphragm, the initial shudder of exquisite pain finds its voice, and he wails. The smell of his own urine fills his nostrils, and tears, from a well of moisture he didn't know was there, burst from his eyes.

Of course. Of course this.

The shooter sits calmly, resting the warm pistol in his now limp hand. He is speaking softly, saying something. Benton can see his lips move. It is not loud enough to rise above the ringing in Benton's ears.

And his accent is too thick. Benton would only understand his own mother's loving voice now. It was always the only voice that could reach him when he was in distress.

‘Listen to me. Can you hear me?' Abu Larry claps his hands together. The other man by the door, the man with the Chinese assault rifle, stands motionless. Abu Larry's voice remains calm. ‘Look at me.' He uncrosses his legs and rests his boots on the floor.

He leans forward, trying to get Benton's attention. ‘I said, look at me.'

Benton looks.

‘See if the bullet went through, Mr Bueller.'

‘Can't move. Can't look. Can't feel.'

Larry makes a gesture to the man by the door, who then takes out a knife and, standing behind Benton, cuts off his plastic binders.

The feeling should be one of relief, but in fact there is even more pain. His arms have not moved in twelve hours. The first repositioning is excruciating.

He wants to touch the back of his leg, but his hands do not obey him.

‘See if the bullet went through, Mr Bueller.'

He looks at the back of his leg.

‘Did it go through?'

‘You sonofabitch.'

‘Good.' He throws Benton a cloth. ‘I suggest you tie this around your leg.'

Benton ignores the offered cloth, and instead removes a faded red bandana from his jacket pocket and presses it against the exit wound, which is larger than the entry one. He would tie it, but the pain is too great.

‘You're a Jew, Mr Bueller. An assassin?'

‘No.' Benton's voice is low and weak. The throbbing has started. He needs his strength to hold his leg. Talking drains him. He is forced to listen.

‘Does it hurt?'

‘Yes.'

‘I've never been shot. I have no idea what it feels like.'

‘Don't lose hope.'

‘Are you thirsty?' Larry asks. ‘Thirst is a horrible thing. That is something I have experienced.'

‘I'm thirsty,' Benton says.

‘Would you like some water?'

‘Yes.'

‘Me, too. It gets hot in here. Maybe we can find some later. The Jews want to support the Kurds and Druze, and take Arab land away from us. You are here for them?'

‘I'm British.'

Benton tries to elevate his leg. There is a lot of blood, but none of it is pulsing. He does not know how much blood he can lose before passing out or dying, and he has no way to measure this, in any case.

‘I'm losing my blood. Can I have some blood? Or water? Yes, I'd like some water. I'll make my own blood. The Catholics say the wine becomes blood. It's true. Only it's our own blood, not that of Christ.'

He looks up at the ceiling of cheap cement and cracked white paint. ‘I have a wife named Vanessa,' he says, for no other reason than to be sure it is said. ‘She loved me. I was mad for her. We were happy for a long time. Then I faded away from her. My daughter, too. I used to pick out her clothes with her when she was seven years old. Before she went to school. You wouldn't believe how complicated it was.'

Then he jerks his head to the left and vomits on the mattress. He moves his head away from it, only to vomit again. He pushes himself away from that as well, and his eyes tear again. He lets them roll down his cheeks without shame.

Benton says, ‘You killed all those people. All those people in the breadline with the mortar. The people in the traffic jam. The police. They were little more than boys. So many. So very many. I've seen so many die. They say there are sixteen hundred factions in Libya now. Hundreds in Syria. You want a caliphate? Have you no perspective?'

Abu Larry taps the Webley against his knee.

‘Do you speak Arabic?' he asks in a quiet voice. ‘You don't. I can tell. Have you ever noticed how many Arab men speak English when interviewed on CNN or BBC? Barbers. Taxi drivers. All these regular people you care about so much. And yet, when was the last time you saw a European or American ask someone a question in Arabic? You don't speak the language of the people you are speaking for.'

‘I want some water.'

‘You think you're superior to us. To what goes on here. You kill whoever you need to kill. Men, women, children. You became mighty powers on the bones of your enemies. There is no difference.'