The Kills: Sutler, the Massive, the Kill, and the Hit (30 page)

Anne Powell did not slow her pace until she reached a building set on its own, large and stern, sheer-sided. Up on the roof, occasionally illuminated, a number of the residents watched the display.

Eric had exaggerated or was mistaken. The villa was not abandoned. It wasn’t isolated. Neither was it private, but busy and occupied. This clearly wasn’t the hideaway the boy had promised.

Ford waited for lights to come on in one of the apartments, then counted the floors: one, two, three. At the entrance he studied the list of occupants. Ca’ Floridiana. Third Floor. Suite 5.

Disappointed, he walked along a black road, relieved to have his back to the display, more relieved when it finished and the night sank into more regulated noise: cicadas, the beat of an approaching car, the blank unquiet night. He asked himself what would he do as Sutler? Sutler would return in the morning, reassess his options, adjust to the circumstance. Ford would give up, surrender to circumstance. Sutler would persist.

5.6

The consul’s assistant kept her waiting. Anne sat beside his desk in an office subdivided by small temporary walls, feeling a little more confident, allowing the language of the office – a bank-like odour and finish: sensible furnishings, beech-wood veneer, blue carpet squares – to convince her that business was accomplished here: at these desks, on these phones, problems were approached and pragmatically addressed. In such an environment the answers would come as a simple yes or no. Anne sat bolt upright with her arms folded, reassured by the openness and order.

On the desk, weighted by a folder, were a series of faxes and printed documents from an email account.

The assistant arrived out of breath. His shirt, crisp and white and tight; his tie, fat, red, and out of style. Not much to like, and a little too young, it occurred to her that she was saddled with a junior clerk. He made his apologies sound like an aside.

‘So, this is our man. Eric Powell.’ He pushed the file aside and picked up the papers, reading as he spoke. ‘We don’t think we have anything to worry over at this point. We have information from the Turkish authorities. They have been helpful, although there’s nothing much they can tell us at this point. They are in contact with the people he was travelling with. Has your husband heard anything?’

Anne nodded. ‘The university contacted him yesterday. This is how we heard.’

‘So you have no news today? Nothing direct for how many days?’

‘Five.’

‘You heard from him five days ago?’

‘No. I heard from him last week, I think last week, perhaps the weekend before. Before I left New York.’

‘And is he regularly in contact – in other situations?’

‘He’s a student, so . . .’ Anne hesitated, not wanting to give the wrong idea. ‘This is very different, he was supposed to join me. According to the airline he hasn’t tried to change his ticket, he just didn’t make the flight. He usually, he always calls me before he comes home, or when we meet up.’

‘Sometimes people don’t realize the trouble they cause.’

She couldn’t place the man’s accent. Not southern, and not identifiably urban. She could never place the East Coast accents.

‘In most cases these are simple matters. At this point there’s nothing to signal that we should be alarmed. No previous misdemeanours, no offences. We’ll find him in some hotel, I don’t doubt. He’s young, looking for adventure. He might have met someone. I’m absolutely sure.’ The idea bloomed promisingly between them. With the help of Eric’s companions the man was confident that they would track him down. He didn’t doubt that they would soon hear from him. ‘But just in case, here’s what we do—’ The assistant began to describe the usual checks and procedures. They were keeping an eye on the hospitals and clinics. The embassy in Istanbul would distribute a description of her son, and they would check anything that came up from such a search. In these situations they would know immediately if he was arrested or if he was in an accident. ‘It happens, very rarely, but it happens. People end up in hospital without identification. It would be rare for someone his age to disappear without provocation, and from what we have here there’s nothing to worry about. There’s no history of drug use, no family problems. Is he most likely to contact you or his father? Mark?’

Anne corrected the officer. Mark was not Eric’s father. The man apologized, still smooth – almost utterly disengaged.

‘I should be doing something.’

‘Until you hear otherwise you have to assume that everything is all right, and that this is, one way or another, his choice. That is, until we know something which otherwise changes the situation.’

She called her husband from the street and found that speaking increased her anger.

‘They have nothing. Nothing. They aren’t doing anything. The man is retarded. He’s a child. They employ children who speak about themselves in the plural, who talk about procedures, about what could be done without doing anything. He talks about nothing. He said nothing. We have to
wait
. They won’t do anything until more time has passed. Do nothing other than what we’re already doing. He thinks he’s having an
adventure
.’

‘Did he say this?’

‘It’s what he thinks.’

‘It’s possible. He might have met some girl.’

Anne could not reply. The idea made her wretched. She hadn’t liked hearing this from the consulate, and she didn’t like hearing it from her husband. She caught her reflection and felt suddenly vulnerable speaking in the street about matters which were private. But it wouldn’t be
some girl
, would it? It wouldn’t be something so straightforward. It was possible that he was continuing with the behaviour he had started at home: contacting men, speaking with them over the internet. It was possible. And if he was doing this, then what other possible opportunities, and what activities were there for a young man seeking company? This potential terrified her. Nothing could be worse. Anne immediately changed the subject. ‘I didn’t mention that he was a climber. I should have said something.’

She satisfied herself with the idea that he was somewhere remote, with a new group of friends, people who shared the same passion. He would be climbing somewhere. Almost certainly. Somewhere remote. ‘I’ll come back. There’s another flight on Thursday, I’ll go to the airport and see if he’s there. But I’ll come back. I’m done with my work in any case.’

Anne made her excuses and promised to call later. As she cancelled the call she found herself alone.

5.7

Ford returned to Ca’ Floridiana early in the morning in the hope that he would see Anne leave and he could risk a closer look at the property. The road that swung about the villa appeared less dramatic in the daylight, the village of Marsaskala smaller, the houses strapped to the bay-side road all faced the sea. Now that the rain had stopped, the sun regained its heat and grew fierce enough to draw scents off the blacktop, the sides of houses, the tin that covered shacks and shop fronts. A burnt fuzz of scorched straw hung in the air. Ford waited two hours. Certain that Anne was not home he counted people coming in and out, and realized it was, as he had found on the previous night, too busy. People would want to know his business. Ford returned to the village and sat out his afternoon, feeling the opportunity slide away from him. Why, exactly, had he come here? He felt distant enough now, even secure; his concerns began to shift to other matters – what he should do, where he should move on to, how he could earn money? Without the dog tags, without Eric and his notebooks, he needed to refigure his plans. While he was free, he was also penniless.

The sun encouraged a kind of laziness, and he half expected to bump into Anne, to find her in one of the cafés or walking beside the port browsing the smaller shops. The longer he sat, the less he wanted to do. Money in any case was short. He had enough for food, and if he didn’t pay for his hotel he’d have enough for a flight. He’d paid for the first night in cash and the manager, pleased to see him stay, happily allowed the nights to accrue.

He found a small café-bar on the waterfront and bought himself a beer. The café offered free internet, and lost for what to do he sat at the terminal, knees just sliding under the table, and typed in names.

‘
Eric Powell
’ brought almost nothing: a comic-book enthusiast, a sculptor, Myspace and Facebook pages for high-school students, a video of a boy taunting a dog. ‘
Eric Powell
+
Turkey
’ returned photographs for Thanksgiving, some jokes about food poisoning. He searched for ‘
Anne Powell
’ and found information on an exhibition in Rome, lecturers at minor US universities – nothing of interest. For ‘
Paul Geezler
’ he found more substantial information, pages of reports from the
New York Times
, the
Washington Post
, the
Financial Times
, all linked to HOSCO. In separate reports he found that Geezler was supervising the break-up of HOSCO in southern Iraq, and that he would head a new company managing private construction and supply.

He bought himself a second beer, picked and scanned through pages, and learned that Geezler was returning to Washington to report on the decommissioning of HOSCO, its devolution into smaller companies. On an image search he found photographs of Kiprowski, a head shot accompanying a report on contractors in Iraq. On a first read it made little sense. Here, Kiprowski, looking not quite like himself – Ford couldn’t recall him smiling, at least not so unguardedly – and underneath a tagline noting his death from an insurgent attack on Southern-CIPA at Amrah City.

Kiprowski killed in a mortar attack on Southern-CIPA.

A memorial to be held at St Jerome’s in Rogers Park, Illinois, attended by his parents, his brothers, his sister.

He’d asked Kiprowski to come to Southern-CIPA after he’d changed his mind about Clark and Pakosta. He wanted Kiprowski because Kiprowski kept himself to himself; because Kiprowski could be asked to do something and he would automatically attend to the task; because Kiprowski was easier company; because if Ford was caught leaving the compound, deviating from their usual routine, Kiprowski would not raise any alarm.

Kiprowski had run after him the moment before the mortar strike. The boy came running out of Howell’s office with Ford steps away from the door. The boy had run, hammering down the corridor, teeth gritted, arms beginning to rise – and in that final moment he’d closed his eyes
as if he knew
.

For Ford the moment before the explosion stuck with him in clear definition. Kiprowski running with his eyes closed, sprinting hard, then everything in pieces, the corridor, the air, the ground suddenly liquid, dense with matter. Flung outward, thrown by the blast, Ford had landed on his back, winded, but was on his feet by instinct, and had run out of the dust to the perimeter fence. He couldn’t see, he couldn’t hear anything but a shrill mechanical jabber. He didn’t ache until he arrived at Balad Ruz two days later, when his hands had begun to burn and his back had seized up. He felt like he’d been beaten, kicked, but knew, even so, that nothing serious had happened. The blast had knocked them out of the building, small enough to damage an office, but nothing of substance. His assumption to this point was that Kiprowski, two steps behind, was fine, because he was fine.

Ford drank through the afternoon, he read through the articles, clicking back through his history, refreshing his searches, checking repeatedly on Geezler, and finding in every report mentions of Southern-CIPA and the Massive. Geezler: responsible for reorganizing HOSCO contracts in southern Iraq. Geezler: negotiating on behalf of the company, apologizing for the disarray. Geezler: the only company representative ready to step up to the mark. Geezler: apologizing and accepting that HOSCO was
entirely responsible for the hiring of its personnel, but that questions about the mismanagement and misappropriation of government funding should be directed at the appropriate governing bodies
. Geezler: admitting that the money was gone. Geezler: recovering part of the funding; first twelve million, then five, then another thirteen. Geezler quoted:
the company can no longer continue to operate along these lines without accepting responsibility.
Geezler: HOSCO operations must be redistributed, the company must be reorganized, restructured, rebuilt,
trust needs now to be earned
. Geezler: architect and director of a new company, CONPORT, taking over the support contracts for US military in southern Iraq. Geezler: the man of the moment.

He drank. He paid for the beers one by one to keep a check on his money, each time leaving a small tip. In the late afternoon he asked for a telephone,
international
, and the barman pointed him to a corner store where he spent the last of his money on a phone card.

It took a while to find the company number. Geezler’s extension he could remember: an easy rhythmic 6363. He could not remember the direct number for the company, nor the man’s private number, and could not find the line for the government offices at Southern-CIPA – it occurring to him too late that there was no number because Southern-CIPA no longer existed.

Central-CIPA government operations in Baghdad were split across divisions. Dealings with HOSCO, with outsourcing, with contractors, were managed across administrative departments contract by contract.

He felt them stalling, evading, every person he spoke with, and down to his last five minutes he cancelled the call then dialled the number for HOSCO at Hampton Roads, Virginia, and found himself routed to an answering service who recommended that he call Geezler directly at Southern-CIPA, although they had no number.
Don’t you know
, he said,
don’t you pay attention to the news?

He redialled, a last attempt, went directly to message and found that he had nothing to say.

‘Paul. Paul, I just want to know how this happened. I want to know if this was planned. If you worked this all out right from the start. I want to know if you organized this down to the last detail, had me sent me out there with this idea, so that step by step you’d end up at the top of the heap. I just want to know. What came first, Paul? Was it Sutler? How long did you have the idea for Sutler? Or was this something more haphazard? Someday, Paul, I hope we have a conversation about how this all came to happen.’