Michael Robotham - The Wreckage

“How long are you here for?” he asks.

“I don’t know. A month. Maybe two. The incoming government-when they choose one-needs to know the state of Iraq’s finances.” Daniela’s arm brushes against his. “We’re using fairly standard software. Accounting with a few extras. It collates payments, expenses, insurance, that sort of thing.” She hesitates. “I really shouldn’t talk about it…”

She changes the subject. “Do you think about leaving?”

“All the time.”

“Why?”

“People aren’t interested any more. They’re bored with hearing about Iraq and Afghanistan, just as they got bored with hearing about Vietnam, Watergate, the Iran-contra scandal, the global financial crisis and the oil spill in the Gulf.”

Daniela tilts her head, studying him. “Did something happen today?”

“I took a drive to Mosul-following up on a story. It didn’t go to plan.”

“Meaning?”

“Two men died.”

“Journalists?”

“Haji.”

She shivers. Not from cold. They find a quiet corner of the lounge with armchairs and a sofa. Daniela wants a hot chocolate.

“I don’t know if that’s a house specialty.”

“Maybe I’ll be surprised.”

He sits opposite her, his head clearer now.

“You won a Pulitzer Prize.”

“You Googled me.”

“I was curious. Nosey. I shouldn’t have told you that. Are you sobering up?”

“Yes.”

“Do you always drink so much?”

“No.”

Tucking her legs under her, she leans on the side of the sofa, resting her chin on her hands.

“What made you come to Iraq?”

“I’m a war correspondent. This is a war.”

The answer is too flippant. She lets him know it and he tries again, his voice a hoarse whisper.

“I guess I needed to understand why this mess was necessary in the first place. And why it’s necessary now. Growing up, I heard so many stories about Iraq from my mother that I felt I might belong here.”

“Is that because you don’t belong anywhere else?”

The prescience of the observation rattles something inside him. He blinks twice, moving his mouth, but no words come out. A waiter arrives and delivers their drinks.

Daniela is holding her mug in both hands. Her pink tongue appears, wetting her bottom lip, and disappears again. For the next hour they talk about Iraq, Afghanistan and other war zones in his career. As he tells her stories, Luca can feel himself being drawn into the scene like an actor who forgets that he’s acting and the drama becomes his life-the journeys to sad, violent places; reporting on the best and worst of human beings.

“So much for me,” he says, not liking the way she’s looking at him, her neutrality, her silence, the way her eyes seem to be probing him for weaknesses-not to hurt him but to see where he’s broken.

“Were you scared today?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not like any journalist I’ve ever met.”

“How so?”

“You don’t seem very excited about what you do or driven to make your mark.”

“That’s because I wonder if I make things worse by being here. I distort the outcome. The observation of an event alters the event itself.”

“Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle?”

“You know your physics?”

“My father was a mathematician, remember?”

“If people like me weren’t here reporting the bombings and sniper attacks and sectarian killings, would they still be happening?”

“Yes.”

“What makes you so sure?”

She shrugs. “We can’t just look the other way.”

“Why not?”

“Because the innocents are the first to suffer-the women and children.”

Daniela has finished her drink. She runs her finger through the pale froth left on the rim of the mug.

Luca glances through the doors. “I should go home.”

“It’s dangerous out there.”

“I know the back streets.”

She opens her mouth, changes her mind. Tries again.

“You can get a room here.”

“They’re booked out.”

“You could stay in my room.”

He looks at her a moment too long.

“There are twin beds. You can use the shower.”

The practiced womanizer in Luca wants to celebrate his success. The sexual historian within him reminds him of past mistakes. He’s not a player, remember? She’s too young, too earnest, she’s been hurt before; he should go now, leave her be, wish her a long and happy life.

Sitting in silence he looks into her eyes, down to her breasts and then at his own hands, still covered in gun oil.

Daniela uses the bathroom first. She has cleared her papers and books from the spare bed. There are pages of handwritten notes in a neat, slanting hand. Luca sits in the cone of lamplight and stares at his reflection in the window, exhausted, half sober.

After he showers he borrows a robe and carries his clothes into the bedroom. Daniela is already in bed. Her eyes open. She notices the holster and weapon on his folded clothes.

“I didn’t think journalists carried guns.”

“I live outside the wire.”

“Is that a reason or an excuse?”

He picks up the pistol and pushes a catch. The ammunition clip drops into his hand. He shows her the single bullet lodged in the spring mechanism.

She looks at him, expecting an explanation, fearing for a moment she might not get one.

“There are some groups who value me as a trophy or a hostage or a commodity that can be traded for money or weapons: Shiite death squads, Sunni insurgents, criminal gangs…”

“One bullet won’t be enough.”

“It only takes one.”

A pulse seems to shiver in her eyes.

“I don’t want anyone risking his or her life to save me,” Luca explains. “And I don’t want my mother watching my execution on the internet.”

Daniela turns away from him, facing the wall, pulling the covers tight around her. She hardly seems to breathe at all.

Luca turns off the light and lies on his bed. Listening. Desiring. Wondering why every woman he touches seems to bloom and then wither like a cut flower. Sleep comes unexpectedly. It doesn’t stay. He wakes in fright, fighting a pillow, the top sheet twisted around him. A hand on his chest… hers.

“You were having a nightmare.”

She is sitting on the edge of his bed.

“I’m sorry I woke you.”

“You don’t have to apologize.”

He knows the dream. It’s the same loop he watches on the wrong side of every night-the unbroken litany of destruction and misery. And it always ends the same way, with Nicola’s broken body almost buried beneath rubble. Only her head is exposed, her brown eyes open, blood on her lips.

Nicola once told Luca that he tried to distinguish between pain observed and pain shared. Pain observed is a journalist’s pain. His role was to watch and report without getting emotionally involved. Nicola said those who watch brutality and do nothing are no better than those who inflict it. “They are the bad Samaritans,” she said. It was a term that Luca had never forgotten. He was the bad Samaritan.

Daniela still has her hand on his chest. She looks into his eyes and leans forward, brushing her lips against his. Opening and closing her mouth, letting her lips move wider, her teeth nibble at his tongue and lower lip and her hands slide down his chest.

Pulling her down next to him, he presses himself against her, listening to her heart fluttering with the urgency of a damaged watch. Impatiently, she rolls him on top of her and he pauses with his penis resting at the entrance to her sex. He looks into her eyes, asking the question silently, Is this what you want?

Hooking her ankles around his waist, she presses him closer, sighing into his shoulder, and he begins moving, pulling the world forward beneath them.