The Kills: Sutler, the Massive, the Kill, and the Hit (4 page)

Later in the morning, out in the desert with a tape measure, a camera, a notebook, Parson clambered up a littered shale bank to reach the road, and remembered the message, and thought that he was foolish not to pay it immediate attention. He should have called London, he should have spoken with Gibson, exactly as he was asked. He returned to the vehicle and finished his notes, marked measurements on a diagram of the road – a simple line with a single curve. The road, straight for fifty-three miles, rose on a slight embankment as it turned, then levelled out again and continued through the desert for another thirty-two straight miles. A highway with almost no traffic, and a turn which accounted for a good number of fatalities. Even here, thirty-two miles south of the closest town, the roadside appeared untrustworthy. The siding was indistinct, an embankment of boulders and stones furred with shredded paper and plastic that rattled in the wind. A thick border of potential hazard, which might contain any kind of mess, hide any kind of device.

He took photographs of the tread marks on the road, took shots of the highway, almost of nothing, the sky and land being of equal value, bright and burnt, without particular feature. He braced against the wind to take another photograph of the curve, then returned to the vehicle to write down the details. Seven weeks ago a HOSCO supply truck had missed the turn and careened off the road, blindly launched itself over the drop, a mere three feet: small, but stepped high enough to tip the vehicle to its side before it hit the scree. Pieces from the supply truck could be found without effort, fragments of glass and sections from the frame, rutted aluminium, some pieces of chrome that caught the sun, and as he picked through the debris field Parson re-read the case files. The marks from this incident were hard to distinguish from other marks from other accidents, a history in scorched dirt of drivers falling asleep or just altogether missing the turn and finding themselves, for one moment, mid-air and roadless. HOSCO convoys used the road when security alerts made Highway 80 impassable. Parson never lost sight of the small ironies that made up his work. By seeking a safer route the convoy had come across more predictable enemies – exhaustion, fatigue, inattention – and a translator slumbering in the cabin of the tumbling truck was thrown from the bunk at the back of the cab to the windscreen and broke his neck.

He knew nothing about the translator, Amer Hassan, except that he held a British passport, and had a wife and two children in Darlington, UK. He knew that HOSCO had already terminated the contracts of its American and European drivers and rehired men from Nepal, India, and Sri Lanka. He knew that most of the translators came from Baghdad or the northern cities, and that they would not be able to return home because of their work.

The soldier escorting Parson (one of two, the second behind the vehicle), picked at a hair in his nose, and asked if Parson was ready. Small-talk done between them, Parson nodded and put away his work. He disliked travelling in the HOSCO jeeps, and disliked passing through the small towns. He disliked how men watched, heads turning as the truck drove by, some rooted calculation in their minds. He disliked the trash by the roadside, the dogs, the children who sometimes ran after them, the plumes of roadside fires spiralling into flat blue skies. He disliked the dust, the flies, the heat, the sweat, the way he thought these days of them and us. He disliked how he could be miles from anywhere, cutting through the desert on some unbending road, and how he would still see plastic bags or water bottles, or clothes. He disliked every moment he spent outside the camp compound, but these visits were unavoidable, so he conducted them as precisely as possible, as early in the day as he could arrange.

Back on base in a hut that passed for guest quarters, Parson laid out the case files. An accident. Simple enough, a ranking of ‘no culpability’ with ‘mitigating circumstances’, which he trusted HOSCO would translate sympathetically. He sat with a bottle of tepid water. It bothered him to be resolving issues in the field which could be decided in a comfortable office in London that faced the river and the Temple, with plain views of temperate browns and greys, of occasional river traffic and pedestrians, a welcome dullness to the prospect and the work. In London he would argue the matter.

Because he could not receive a signal in his hut, he traced his way to the mess hall, bought another water, and sat under a mural of New York with the Twin Towers restored, an eagle above them, wings outstretched. That the water was cold made him happy. He retrieved Gibson’s message. Without doubt the call would mean another delay in his return home, another site visit under police, military, or private guard, another delay in which he spent his days at a hospital, a military barrack, a roadside, speaking through an interpreter, interviewing people who would rather not talk. This call would mean more evenings lost to reports to determine if HOSCO was or was not liable. He opened the attachment and enlarged the image, a headshot from an identity photo, the man’s expression slightly bewildered, eyes wide, a little startled, and couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to this man. The image set in the past tense. The call passed quickly to Gibson.

‘Who am I looking at?’

‘His name is Stephen Sutler. He’s with HOSCO. Have you kept up with the news?’

‘Haven’t had a chance. To be honest, I’m closing cases. I’m looking forward to coming home.’

Gibson hesitated, the comment sat without remark. ‘The picture you have. He’s British, and he’s missing. He was at the local government office five days ago when it came under attack and now he’s missing.’

‘Kidnapped?’

‘Doubtful. What do you know about the Massive?’

Parson imagined Gibson in his office, stooped, as he always stooped when he spoke on the phone, voice raised, his accent a little pushed.

‘It’s a proposal to expand a small military installation in the southern desert. HOSCO won the bid earlier this year. Washington have poured no end of money into the project. Stephen Sutler was HOSCO’s man on site, in charge of the initial development, but he’s disappeared and no one can find the money.’

‘You said he’s British?’

‘That’s almost all we know about him.’

‘How much?’

‘Well, here’s the thing. No one knows exactly. The data was destroyed in the attack. It’s being calculated as we speak. We’re certainly talking several million dollars.’

Parson allowed a respectful gap before asking why they were involved.

‘They want someone to go to Amrah and see the Deputy Administrator at the government office, a man called Paul Howell. He physically managed the money, oversaw the accounts. He’s almost certainly involved. It needs to happen soon, though, as soon as possible. Howell has an attorney, and I understand it’s all starting to get complicated. They want Sutler found. No one else seems to be getting anywhere. They’ve also arrested two of the guards, and you’ll need to speak with them as well. Ask about Stephen Sutler, see what everyone knows. Oh,’ Gibson added, not so much an afterthought as a warning, ‘Howell has friends in the State Department. He isn’t someone you want to annoy. I doubt he’ll come out of this clean, but he’s seasoned. Find out what you can about the financial organization. See what’s known about Sutler, and leave the rest to the lawyers.’

‘You’ve explained that this isn’t what we do?’

‘There isn’t any choice. HOSCO are our clients and we want to keep them. It’s unusual, but it’s in the vicinity of what we ordinarily do. They say they aren’t liable, that the money was organized by the government office. Anyway, I want to show them that we’re available, and that we’re happy to help. They need someone immediately, and they’d prefer this person to be British. By the time they find someone else and send him over, Stephen Sutler could be anywhere.’

‘So I speak with these men and report back to you.’

‘You’ve misunderstood me. They want you to find him.’

He waited for the flight with the printout in his hands. Two names written on the reverse,
Stephen Sutler, Paul Howell
. The paper folded twice with care. The delay on his return wasn’t completely unexpected and when he called his wife she took the news with resignation. In return she gave him little news of her own, and it bothered him that he didn’t know her thinking, not to the usual detail.

The proper force of his reassignment struck him mid-flight. A black night with the knowledge of desert and stone waste beneath him, a bad month behind him, and this one fact that he would now have to stay in the country, amid all of this calamity. Beside him sat American soldiers in full kit: tourniquets, boots, helmets, in mottled desert MARPAT. One replaced plates into pouches. Another – tight mouth, bored – shook with the craft and refused eye contact. Parson looked at the men and wondered how they could tolerate the plain unworkability of the situation. I should not be here, he told himself. I do not want to be here.

Parson arrived at Camp Liberty before sunrise and was taken immediately to collect Sutler’s belongings. An hour later, in possession of a single kitbag in a sealed military sack, he boarded the helicopter for Amrah City. The kitbag would go to the team investigating Stephen Sutler’s activities, a mix of US Federal Marshals, Iraqi prosecutors, and representatives from the ministries, with a few interested private attorneys. While Parson was officially seconded to this team, he would report directly to Mathew Gibson, who would filter the reports to HOSCO.

Parson focused on the view, unsettled by the craft’s sideways pitch he picked out a single Humvee as it cut through the compound in the early light. The camp, marked by water tanks, latrines, a line of Portakabins, and a single Quonset hut, lay alongside another unbending road. Back in the desert he could see a number of black oblongs, the burn pits, with lazy smoke trails thinning into ghost vapours. Nothing more than seven black holes and a curve of shacks as provisional as a movie set, its impermanence amplified by the lack of scrub grass, palm groves, or any natural sign of water. A practical logic determined these locations: to protect signals, facilities, borders, supply lines, strategic zones, or some pre-existing feature, but here the logic was lost and the road cut into the desert in a clean unnatural line with the camp and outpost set as nodes on either side – which could, and might as well, sit anywhere along its length. In twelve days this unit would be disassembled and shipped, flat-packed, to Kuwait and Camp Navistar.

He shut his eyes to imagine the unit wiped off the map so that nothing remained except morning light, sunburnt dust, cracked stone. It was easy to imagine it gone, the desert here being ungraded rubble, ridges scorched of colour. Sand filtered into the sky, blurring the land with a pink funk. The flight from Camp Liberty to Amrah City crossed two lines of control: from American to British, from British back to American. The craft descended in a corkscrew, sidling down to avoid attack.

*

Howell’s attorney laid out the problem as they walked.
They
– representatives from HOSCO, the military, the New Transitional Assembly, the various Danish, British, and US consulate representatives and their advisers, four internal ministries (which included the National Bank, the Oil Ministry, the Ministry of Industry, and the Ministry for Labour) – wanted Stephen Lawrence Sutler. She counted the authorities on her fingers. ‘But instead of Sutler we have Paul Howell and two civilian contractors,’ meaning Mathew Clark and Carl Simon Pakosta, the men arrested alongside Howell at Southern-CIPA and charged with impersonating military personnel. ‘Which is . . .’ she squinted across the asphalt to the hangar, the light about them solid and over-bright, ‘useless.’

Parson nodded.

‘It’s sticky.’ The attorney explained the situation in tiny bites. She shifted a collection of bound files under her arms to free her hands, then drew her hair, straight, black, shoulder-length, behind her ear. The heat pushed on Parson’s shoulders; the sun sparked sharp across the airfield from chrome on cars and aircraft. He studied the attorney through pinched eyes and thought her younger than he’d first imagined.

‘At the moment they can’t agree on anything. There’s no decision on the presiding authority, so there’s no consensus on whether Howell should be handed to civil or military authorities. Right now, until the charges are formalized, the decision is academic, but nobody wants to decide.’ She smiled and shook her head. ‘If, or when, they make that decision they’ll have to decide which military or civil authority takes precedence. It’s very sticky.’

They continued their walk; the guard a step ahead, a curve of sweat wetting the small of his back.

‘Everything’s made a little more complicated because Howell holds dual citizenship with Denmark and the US. He also worked for the State Department, which doesn’t make matters easier. Both the military and HOSCO are making a strong case to have him returned to Washington. You understand the complexity?’

Eyes bright, the attorney spoke of patience. None of this was easy or pleasant. Howell was cooperating, while at the very same time he was being stripped of his assets. Each day brought worsening news as his public and private lives were ransacked in the search for the money. ‘When the office was destroyed they lost most of their records.’ At the very least he would lose his house in Charlotte, North Carolina, his apartment in Washington, DC. His bank accounts, already frozen, would be cleared. A team of government and civilian lawyers had already divided the claims. ‘HOSCO will sue for what they can. The transatlantic flights, the hotels in Damascus, Dubai, London, and every expense relating to these and other such visits during the period of the charges will be clawed back. They’re intent on it.’ By mid-September Howell’s Danish-based properties would be seized. Not that any of this could yet be proved to come from the money they believed he’d extorted. The attorney curled back her hair. Did Parson understand how
unjust
this was? He’d yet to be proven guilty. He’d yet to be formally charged.

Whatever the outcome, Howell’s reputation lay in pieces. She said this as an aside and allowed her hand to waver, so-so. She spoke about Howell as if he were a remote element, which Parson found distracting, a quantity they could coolly consider and assay. ‘Now Stephen Sutler,’ she again curved her hair behind her ear, ‘is a whole other matter. We’ve had sightings in Iran, Bahrain, Sulaymaniyah, Basrah, Kuwait, Damascus, Aden.’ Everywhere except the oil-rich wastes of Al-Muthanna and the dusty tracks of Amrah City. A phantom Sutler crawling through the Middle East left open too many possibilities. She pointed in the direction of a hangar. The airfield swam in a humid light. ‘Remind me, are you looking for the money or the man?’