The Kills: Sutler, the Massive, the Kill, and the Hit (9 page)

Anne calculated the time difference, but as the taxi made its way down Broadway she became distracted by the drive. Twelve years in New York City and the streets viewed from a cab still appeared foreign to her. Readable but unstable. The mood of any given street shifted between blocks, a blunt reconfiguration, different each time, brutish and harsh. The streets gave character to the people, she thought, not otherwise. The last time she had drinks with Marian they had disagreed in a sulky, dissatisfied way, and on the taxi ride uptown they had attempted a reconciliation, Marian suggesting that Anne shouldn’t be such a tourist all of the time.

It would be Friday morning in Turkey, early, barely dawn. She imagined Eric tired but awake, riding on a bus and heading toward his friends. She’d heard more from him on this trip already, than the entire time he was in Cuba with Mark.

It would be Marian who would tell her about the bombing of the refinery, and how the Turkish government blamed the attack on the PKK and was clearing the villages and settlements close to the border. Marian questioned how Anne could not have seen the news. It was everywhere. For three days. Unavoidable. The region was in chaos. She had meant to call earlier to make sure that she was OK.

‘They won’t let reporters in. First it was Syria, then they closed their border, and now it’s Turkey, all of these refugees, and they’ve cleared the villages so no one has anywhere to go. These people have come out from Iraq, desperate, and no one wants them. It’s what happened with the Armenians, you burn the villages and you keep them moving. Like animals. Herding people like cattle.’

Ford woke after a fretful sleep, his head muggy with Zolpidem, the sleeping pills he’d taken from Kiprowski at Camp Liberty. It was only natural after two weeks sleeping rough that this – a bed, sheets, a room – would feel so alien and insecure, and that his sleep would be hounded by wakefulness, an awareness of the room, the proximity of things, of temperature, sound, a multitude of disconnected elements. Like most mornings, ideas about the Massive, Southern-CIPA, Howell, Kiprowski, became confused with ideas about returning to Bonn. He dreamed of the wrong people in the wrong places. The idea of reconnecting with his old life – even just to arrange payments for loans, of walking into his small apartment, of returning to John Jacob Ford’s dry and ordinary struggles – bore down upon him as a weight he couldn’t avoid, a welter of regrets through which he wrestled into his day.

Unsure of the time, he rose without considering that the day belonged to him; habit made him turn out of bed and set his feet on the floor the moment he woke. During the night he’d taken the dog tags off, and kept them secure in his fist, the chain wrapped about his hand. As he looked about the room (a narrow lean-to, simple, little more than a goat pen with a flagstone floor, whitewashed walls, and two low cot-like beds pushed to opposite sides) he thanked his good luck. No coaches today. No crowds. No open roads. Without the preoccupations of travel Geezler stuck with him, a stream of thought running parallel to his own at equal volume. Geezler. Geezler. So far he had done exactly as he had been asked. Surely he could call him? How serious was he about not being contacted? Ford knew the answer even as he considered the question. He should find an internet café, transfer the money, or at least email the numbers to himself.

On the spare bed he found a well-thumbed guidebook, the pages down-turned to Narapi. It gave little information, saying that the town was nothing more than a transit town with a small hammam, two mosques – almost everything in pairs – two pensions, two large hotels with the only bars, a nightclub of sorts, and a swimming pool. An escarpment crowned by the remains of a fort rose from the centre of the town with tombs carved into its eastern side, barely worth the
walk. The guidebook gave no information about this strange geology, except to describe the rock as an inland island.

Beside the door hung a framed print of the Massif du Vercors in the French Alps. Ford took the picture down to use the glass as a mirror. He wet his beard, tweezed the hair between his fingers, and decided not to shave. He washed his face then studied the water, milky with sediment. He changed the water, washed, changed it again, doused his face and neck, the water specked with matter. With a final bowl he lowered his head to take in the musty odour of moss, of rock, a suggestion of subterranean rivers and caverns, a world in opposition to the bright dry landscape and the cold scentless nights of the previous fourteen days. He drained the sink and studied the grit, and wondered if this was plasterboard, pieces of the hut from Amrah City, or shale from sleeping rough? He scratched his fingers through his beard and found small spots, whiteheads, what he’d taken to be ingrown hairs, which when crushed pushed out sharp grains, tiny pieces of dirt, flecks; some white, some black, some translucent. He’d heard about this from the men at Camp Liberty, how in cases of bombings, blasts, suicide attacks, survivors found splinters dug in their skin: pieces of bone, fragments of the weapon, flecks of what they called
environment
. He turned his head to inspect his cheek, now healed but still numb. In the softer skin on his neck and right shoulder he found more small lumps, sensitive peppered specks.

After dressing in clothes he’d washed the night before, the cuffs and collar still damp, Ford stepped into the courtyard to find a woman alone at a picnic table; honeysuckle decked the wall behind her, a small bag on the seat beside her spilled loose sheets of paper. The woman gathered her notes together and told him in a husky voice with a pretty French twist that he had missed breakfast.

She stacked the plates together, a little apologetic. She could ask Mehmet for coffee, but to be honest it wasn’t likely there would be any more. Breakfast was a one-shot affair. Four small plates with olive pits and orange rind, a pinch of bread, maybe some oil. Ford wondered if he had missed breakfast or if she had eaten his share. The woman introduced herself. Nathalie. She smiled as they shook hands and squinted into the sun as she looked up. He considered telling her his proper name, but shied away and introduced himself as Tom.

‘
Tom
,’ she repeated, elongating the name to
Tome
. ‘English?’

She was travelling with friends, the three of them touring for the month; except, mercifully, today she was on her own, and how nice it was to have a day to herself. They planned to stop at the Maison du Rève for a week, perhaps. She didn’t know. How long did he intend to stay?

Ford said that he hadn’t decided; he might stay a week. He couldn’t remember when he’d last spoken with a woman one-to-one, literally couldn’t remember, there being no women at Camp Liberty, and none that he could recall at Southern-CIPA.

Nathalie warned him to be prompt about meal times. Water, she said, became scarce in the late morning and was lukewarm at best. As she spoke she gathered her hair in both hands – chestnut-coloured, long and straight – and drew it back in a premeditated gesture.

There was one small problem. Nathalie cleared her voice. ‘Has Mehmet said anything, perhaps? No?’ She shook her head. ‘There’s a small mistake.’ It was her understanding that they had rented both rooms – there being three people in her party, and only two rooms in the pension at present. ‘We booked the rooms before we came. Mehmet must have thought that you were the third person in our group.’

‘I think I’ve met your friend.’

‘I don’t think so? Where did you come from?’

Ford hesitated. ‘South.’

‘You came by coach?’

Mehmet had mentioned nothing to Ford about the room and he said so.

Nathalie ran a finger through her hair, her mouth compressed to show that this was awkward. ‘It’s a room for two people.’

He finally understood what she was asking for. ‘I don’t mind sharing.’

Delighted, the woman smiled in relief. ‘Are you sure it isn’t a problem?’ This was good then, not the best arrangement, but satisfactory. The third member of her party would arrive tonight or tomorrow morning, she wouldn’t know until later. She would explain everything to Mehmet, he needn’t worry. Nathalie picked up her shoulder bag and smiled as she drew the zipper shut. ‘It’s a nice place,’ she said, ‘the town. It isn’t anything special, but it’s nice. Very quiet.’ Narapi was not without interest. He should visit the fort and the market. It would occupy the morning but not much more.

As she left she warned him not to be late for the evening meal.

Ford followed Nathalie into town, determined to find an internet café. He decided to buy new clothes.

He took the paved road from the bus depot to the mosque, and found the morning air warm but thin – the only indication of the altitude. Tom, he repeated the name, Tom, pleased with the invention. Better Tom than Michael. Too bad he’d told the boy Michael, although, why would he even remember it? If the situation proved too sticky he could move on, although the idea unsettled him. Wasn’t this a good place to wait and allow everything to settle? Five days at least, five or six days. The road forked behind the mosque, one tine leading to a small market, the other to a rough track which continued up the escarpment. The road steepened as it turned, flanked on one side by a scrappy rock face, and on the other by a scattered line of garage-like workshops. Ford walked without hurry. Four children followed behind, loosely curious. A man squatted at a doorway, shirtless, skinny, and smoking while he tapped a design into an aluminium bowl held between his feet. The hammer’s patter rang light and clear up the escarpment walls. Ford stopped to pick grit from a slit in his boot and noticed that the children also stopped in their tracks. When he turned about they also turned, and when he stared too long they headed back, breaking into a run just before they reached the corner.

At the top of the escarpment the track stopped at a chain-link fence. Ford paused and let his breath even out. A lime-green gecko skittered across the path. The fence bowed beside the road. The stone edge fell steeply away to dry grasses, a drop, a view of pale sky and rooftops. Ford looked down at the workshops as he carefully straddled the fallen fence, unnerved not by the idea that he might fall so much, but by the idea that he might deliberately let go.

He found the fort as decrepit and uninteresting as the guidebook suggested. With over half of the wall collapsed, the hill lay bare, a black slug of rock stripped by the wind. Signs turned about-face warned that the road was unsafe. Broad fissures crazed the stone; cracks which appeared to run the width and depth of the plateau. Close up, the rock appeared to be made of separate upright stacks. Ford stepped delicately across with the same unease he’d felt straddling the fence. A warm updraught blew through the crevices. He crouched and dropped a pebble and listened as it scuttled down, the noise tapering to nothing.

In all directions pale land gave out to pale sky. Scrub farmland cut close about the town. A coach wound slowly through the market to the square. Most of the travellers would only see the terminus and then press on to Birsim. He needed to decide what he would do, when and where he would move on. If things were good now, stable, didn’t it make sense to wait, to stay safe? He didn’t want to admit that the next steps, the risk of going to a larger town, the risk of transferring the money, were easier to stall for the moment than face. If things were calm, he saw no harm in allowing them to remain calm.

He walked back alongside the workshops. The man turned the bowl over in his hands and looked up with a plain unquestioning expression. They did not talk or exchange greetings.

Without immediate fear of discovery the day fell into order, smooth and easy, and this unruffledness bothered him so that he couldn’t determine what he wanted. Twice he decided to have his hair cut, and twice he walked up to the shop and then changed his mind. The clothes he needed, he didn’t want, and while there was one shop with a stack of old computers inside, the cafés were too basic, simple rooms with tables and chairs. No internet. No wifi. His lack of purpose leaked into everything about him, so that the market traders, the women shopping, the men at cafés, all seemed idle, disengaged. He returned to the barber shop, sat down before he could change his mind, and told himself not to move. The shop opened on one side to the market and on the other to a boulevard lined with palms and dry bushes, and a slope-roofed building which he first took to be a school, mistaking a parade ground for a schoolyard, a barrack for an assembly hall.

A doorway beside him, doorless, opened to a corridor which led to the hammam. A man scrubbed the tile floor, hosed the walls, returned with towels, ignored the waiting men. Ford watched him in the mirror, preoccupied by his steady labour. Another figure held back in the doorway, and when Ford looked up he saw that this figure was – although it could not be –
Kiprowski
. This certainty came to him with shock and a kind of joy, and when he leaned through the doorway to look into the empty corridor the barber tutted and gently waggled his scissors. In an instant Ford’s certainty dissolved. Customers watched with folded arms and pushed their backs into their chairs. It was not Kiprowski, of course, but a desire for familiar company.

Ford faced himself in the barber’s mirror and tried to conjure Kiprowski out of the shadow at the soft curve of the doorway, but nothing came to him. Why had he assumed that this stranger or these shadows were Kiprowski when he could not consciously reconstruct the man? When he could barely remember his face?

It was fear, of course, but fear of what, success, that he would return to an ordinary life as Ford, a life in which nothing was at risk,
as if this had never happened
? He missed Sutler, and missed the simple buzz from the deception which ran as an undercurrent to every moment at Camp Liberty. While Sutler had not yet proved himself, he had also never failed. As Sutler he’d given no thought to his return to life as Ford, and made no preparation.

When it came to his turn the barber held up both a razor and a pair of scissors and it took Ford a moment to understand that he was being offered a choice of how his hair should be cut. He looked carefully at the photos taped beside the mirror, and pointed at one and said, there, that one. Like that. He could smell the barber, not unpleasant, a hint of nicotine and talcum. It wasn’t Kiprowski he remembered now so much as his absence, a gap in the doorway where no one stood.