Michael Robotham - The Wreckage

“Except?”

“Do you know of Jawad Stadium?”

“It’s south of here.”

“According to the financial records it has been completely refurbished. Work began in 2005 and was finished two years ago. But the work was never done. I’ve seen the stadium. That’s where I was when they launched the attack.”

“How big was the contract?”

“Ninety million dollars.”

“And the duplicate payments?”

“Forty-two million.” She pulls her knees up and takes another sip, unused to the harshness of the vodka.

“Who knew you were looking at the contracts?”

“Glover called the Iraqi Reconstruction Management Office and asked what team approved the project.”

“Did they tell him?”

“No.”

“Did you talk to anyone else?”

“I sent an email request to New York asking for information about the main contractor, Bellwether Construction. They sent a file, but most of the important details had been blacked out.”

They lapse into silence.

Swinging her legs out of bed, Daniela moves barefoot across the floor. She opens her satchel on the luggage rack and retrieves a single sheet of paper.

“You asked me about cash deliveries to banks. I did a search of the Central Bank database.”

Luca leans forward expectantly, his knees touching the edge of her robe.

“And?”

“I’ve probably broken a dozen laws.” She hands the page to Luca and begins explaining the figures. “The first column is a code used to identify each bank branch. Next there is a date and then the amount of cash requested in the nominated currency. I concentrated on US deliveries.”

Luca looks at the first three transfers.

BI (74-312)

092609

US$5.3m

RB (74-212)

020610

US$15.6m

ITB (74-466) 021110

US$1.8m

Even without checking, he knows these cash deliveries correspond with the robberies-preceding them by twenty-four hours. Somebody must have leaked the information to the armed robbers. How many people had access to the information? It could be an insider at the Treasury, or the Iraqi Central Bank, or the delivery company.

Daniela curls up next to him, reaching between the lapels of his robe and running her fingers down his chest, loosening the knot at his waist. She flattens herself against him, pressing her loins tightly to his and he feels a desire stirring that he tries to ignore.

“Don’t you want me?” she asks.

“I don’t want you mistaking my motives.”

“I’m leaving tomorrow.”

“I know.”

“I might not see you again.”

“You will. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

Daniela crosses the foyer, moving from memory on marble tiles that are polished and cool. Her cheeks have color now. Her hair is drying and her clothes are clean. Outside the air is hot and harshly bright, thick with the smell of wood fires and paraffin stoves.

They drive east along busy roads. As they approach each checkpoint, Luca tells Daniela to lower her eyes and cover her face with a scarf. Once they pass through, Luca continues his story, telling her about his arrest and interrogation-as much as he can remember. The account seems so strange, so pulled out of shape and littered with broken and jagged pieces.

“So you don’t have a visa?”

“No.”

“What will you do?”

“Leave.”

Sadr City is an immense suburb in eastern Baghdad full of ramshackle one-storey buildings covered in dust and patched together with scavenged building materials. The city has many neighborhoods like this one-sectarian strongholds, full of widows, orphans and the dispossessed; Sunni or Shiite, bombed back to the Stone Age. Amid the poverty, children play football using oil drums as goal posts. Their mothers, in full chadors, look like shadows in the darkened windows. The only splash of color comes from billboards advertising mobile phones and flat-screen TVs.

Jamal and Nadia have two rooms behind a shop that sells water barrels and tools. Luca parks beside a mound of broken bricks and discarded planks. He fixes a lock to the steering wheel and another to the gearstick.

A woman opens the door just a crack, one eye visible, suspicion in it, then fear, then anger. This is Jamal’s wife, Nadia. Two young boys are clutching her legs, peering from the folds of her dress.

She covers her mouth and nose. “You should not have come.”

“I need to talk to Jamal,” says Luca.

“You have caused enough trouble.”

Her gaze switches to Daniela and her anger evaporates. She opens the door wider. “You take too many risks and put other people in danger.”

The boys run away and hide in the second room, peeking out through a curtain, one head below the other. Electrical wires sprout from the walls and a kerosene lantern hangs from a beam, revealing woven rugs and bedding rolled in the corner.

Jamal emerges from the second room, his handsome face transformed. Rearranged by fists or clubs, his almond eyes, his white smile, his youth. Gone. Beaten from him. His lips are blown up to twice their size and his right eye is full of blood, while the left has almost closed completely. Daniela can’t hide her shock.

Jamal opens his mouth to speak. No sound emerges. He tries again, his voice altered by his swollen lips and broken teeth.

“Please leave. It’s not safe for you to be here.”

His voice is loud in the tiny room.

“What happened?” asks Luca. “Why did they do this?”

“I work with Americans-this is the reason.”

“Abu?”

“He is safe, but they’re looking for him.”

Jamal wipes the spit dribbling down his chin. Luca reaches out and touches his friend’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry.”

“It is not your fault. We both knew this could happen.”

Nadia is making coffee. From the plastic container she carries from the pump each day she pours just enough water into a saucepan. Daniela introduces herself and crouches down, talking to the boys, who are losing their shyness.

Jamal pulls cushions from the corner and asks Luca to sit down. His modesty and politeness are a study in respect passed on by his parents. He glances at his wife. Speaks softly.

“I met Nadia at university. I remember thinking I could never marry someone so beautiful, so I didn’t talk to her… I was too nervous. Then one day I found her crying. Her father had been taken by Saddam’s secret police for something he’d done or said or not done or not said. I told Nadia I would find him. It took me two weeks. It cost four thousand dollars to buy his freedom. Nadia married me out of gratitude, but it has become love.”

He wipes his mouth on his sleeve.

“None of my five sisters are married. My father says he won’t find them husbands until the militias stop killing each other. He prefers to keep them safe at home.”

“What does your father do?”

“He runs a market stall. I did have a brother, but he’s dead.”

They are silent for a moment and Luca tries to apologize again.

“You are not to blame. There is too much blame in Iraq. The Sunnis blame the Shiites, who blame the Baathists, who once poisoned the Kurds, and they all blame the Americans. We’ve become a country of nasty, pissed-off people with guns and third-grade educations. My generation has been at war ever since I was born. We are so familiar with it we have coffin makers on every corner, moving bodies like melons.

“The new Iraq was never going to be perfect, but we hope, we dream, we survive. The Americans will leave one day. And what will be left behind? All things light and all things dark.”

Jamal’s eyes find the floor. “They tried to drown me. Now each time I fall asleep, I dream of swallowing water. I can taste it, smell it coming out of my mouth and nose. I wanted to die in the end. I didn’t care anymore. I made a statement. I wrote what they told me.”