Simon Toyne - The Key

‘So, you going to talk to me or what? You’ve been all over the news for days now. When I saw you standing on the sidewalk there I didn’t know whether to offer you a ride or ask for an autograph.’

Liv pulled her baseball cap lower to shield her face and hunkered down in her seat. It hadn’t occurred to her that everything in Ruin would be news here. Foreign stories rarely got any airtime unless they were about a war where Americans were dying.

‘What you heard?’

‘Sounds like you got some kind of mediaeval curse hanging over you or something. Anyone you speak to gets offed. We’ve got two homicides that may or may not be linked to you and your little adventures overseas. I should get my head examined, letting you in the car. So what happened? Did you find out what they got in that mountain?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Oh, come on.’

‘Honestly, I can’t remember.’

She thought of the dream that frightened her so much she had chosen to stay awake for the twelve-hour flight rather than risk facing it. Her boss had been one of the two homicides Ski had referred to: killed merely because he had spoken to her. Maybe she was cursed.

‘Listen, Ski. Just take me home and I’ll tell you everything. Perhaps talking it through might jog something loose. Besides, I could use a shower and a change of clothes.’

‘Take you home…’ Ski said it flat and left it hanging.

Liv saw the troubled expression on his face. She’d seen that look before. His unbending streak of honesty meant he had the worst poker face of anyone she had ever met. It was the look he got when he had to tell someone some really bad news.

‘Tell me,’ she said.

Ski shook his head. ‘Probably easier if I show you.’

Dick had intimidated his way to the front of the taxi queue and given the driver a story about how a buddy of his had been arrested. The driver’s English was pretty sketchy, but he’d understood enough and they were now following the police cruiser at a safe distance. Dick glanced up from time to time to make sure it was still there, in between composing an email detailing everything that had happened so far. He knew from the girl’s file that she worked as a crime reporter so he assumed her ride must be an acquaintance. It didn’t appear to be a heavy-duty protection detail, it was much too casual for that. Maybe he was her boyfriend, in which case it was bad news for him. Dick had a schedule to keep and anyone who got in the way would become collateral damage. Whoever it was, he hoped he was taking her somewhere quiet, maybe somewhere with a basement — that would be best.

He finished the email and read it through, checking he hadn’t missed any details. Then he attached the photograph he’d taken of the book the girl had been reading. It might not be important, but that wasn’t for him to say. Finally satisfied, he hit send and watched until it had gone.

Up ahead, the police cruiser curved off the expressway on to McCarter Highway. There wasn’t much traffic at this time of night and it was easy to keep tabs on them. He told the driver to ease back a bit. After a mile or so the taillights flared and the car turned off. The driver started to speed up, but Dick told him not to. He could see they were heading east into the Ironbound district and he remembered something from the girl’s file that told him exactly where she was going.

‘Welcome home,’ he said, too quiet for anyone but himself to hear. ‘Welcome home.’

Badiyat al-Sham

True dawn had started to show by the time the Ghost drew close enough to the cluster of lights to see what it was. He had worked his way into position using the contours of the land and the remains of the night to hide his approach. He was now lying on the upslope of a shallow berm and staring straight at the settlement through field glasses.

At first glance what he saw did not strike him as particularly remarkable. It appeared to be another of the thousands of oil drilling compounds that had spread like a contagion over large parts of the country since the end of the war. There was a thin drill tower in the centre, a collection of silver-sided buildings to house the workers, and a large transport hangar for vehicles and supplies. On the far side of the compound a flat, concreted area with a large painted ‘H’ showed where helicopters could land, though none were parked there at the moment.

Everything seemed normal — and yet there was something not right about it.

For a start, it wasn’t on an existing oilfield. There were no other drilling operations for at least a hundred kilometres in any direction and the whole place was too clean. Exploratory drilling gear got moved around from site to site and usually bore the scars of oil grime and years of standing out in various godforsaken places being blasted by extremes of weather. The equipment here all shone with newness, as if everything had been shipped straight from the factory, taken out of its packaging and dropped into the desert like a theme-park version of a drill site. It was clearly operational, the drill was turning but there was no oil in either of the holding lagoons.

He remembered a government outfit seven or eight years back sinking a few wells out here. They moved on pretty quickly when they came up dry. All of this would be on record and it seemed unlikely that one company would now succeed where another had failed; especially with all the technology they used to sniff out oil these days. Down to a certain level you could pretty much see what was there using seismic readings, and beyond that it was too expensive to drill anyway.

The thing that really aroused his suspicions was the level of security. Iraq was still a dangerous place and any Western corporation had to have some protection, if only to dissuade opportunistic insurgents from kidnapping their employees and charging exorbitant ransoms. But the security levels at this place were off the scale. Two layers of razor wire formed a perimeter around the entire compound with two steel gates barring the only road in. There were guard towers positioned at the four corners, each with a shooting platform at the top and a gun visible through the slits in the side panels. They were M60 Mk43s, the US Army’s heavy machine gun of choice. With an effective range of around a thousand metres and a fire rate of six hundred rounds a minute they were easily capable of stopping any approaching vehicle, even an armour-plated one, long before it reached the main gate. What they could do to a man was unthinkable. It didn’t make sense that such heavy artillery was being used to protect what looked from the outside to be nothing more than a dry well. There had to be something else he was missing, something valuable enough to warrant this small, lethally equipped army.

The Ghost dropped down and moved in closer. Wary of the men in the towers casually scanning the land with their hands resting on their heavy guns, he went as far as he dared then crept back into an observation position.

He could hear noises now, drifting over from the compound: the clank of the turning drill; the hum of motors and air-conditioning units; voices speaking a mixture of Arabic and English.

A bunch of men in white overalls emerged from the main building and headed over to the drill where others were waiting to be relieved. Up in the towers the guard details changed too, staggered by a few minutes each time to ensure the compound was not left vulnerable by a simultaneous changeover. It was all very slick and professional, and all the more strange because of it.

The Ghost continued to watch, slowly building up an operational picture of the place. The sun would be up soon and he would have to slip away or risk being seen. He was about to switch position when the sound of diesel engines punctured the low-level operational hum of the place, and three jeeps emerged from the transport bay. They pulled up in front of the main building and waited.