Michael Robotham - The Wreckage

Two of the young men have arrived. They are arguing and joking, throwing fake punches and kicking at a soft-drink can in the gutter. How many others are there like them-white, black, Asian, rich, poor, educated, uneducated-praying in Madrasahs, surfing the internet, dreaming of Jihad?

Syd is the youngest. He runs his fingers over the contours of the dark-colored BMW parked at the rear of the motel screened by an overgrown hedge.

“This would be such a sweet ride, you know. I reckon Jenny Cruikshank would go out with me if I had a ride like this.”

“Jenny Cruikshank still won’t do the business,” laughs Rafiq, “not even in a BMW. She’s a prick-tease, man.”

“Don’t talk about her like that.”

Rafiq laughs even harder, his cheeks etched with tiny acne scars like needle marks. “Don’t let the Courier catch you leaving your prints on that thing.”

Syd bunches his sleeve in his fist and begins wiping the car.

Built on either side of a tarmac courtyard, the red-brick motel has two stories with an open walkway along the upper floor. The Courier lets himself into the dining room, which is stripped of furnishings except for a dozen chairs and a tea-urn. There are boxes of donated clothes and blankets-some for disposal, some for sale.

Rafiq and Syd are in Room 12, setting up a digital camera. Folding a magazine, Rafiq jams the pages under one leg of the tripod, which is shorter than the others. Syd sits cross-legged on the floor wearing cargo pants, trainers and an Arsenal strip.

“Should the light be blinking?” he asks.

“It’s still charging.”

“You got the lens cap on.”

Rafiq checks, then glares at Syd.

“You’re a funny prick.”

Syd giggles and adjusts the shemagh on his forehead. His round face is made rounder by an attempted beard that sprouts from his cheeks like alfalfa in wet cotton wool. His father calls it bum fluff. Says it out loud to embarrass Syd when girls come into the shop. He hates his father then. Hates his braying laugh. Hates how everything is a competition.

“We should have crossed swords in the background.”

“We don’t have any swords.”

“Well, I should be holding a gun. We’re supposed to look like soldiers.”

“You got khaki trousers.”

“Can you see them? Maybe I should stand up.”

“You’re fine.”

“It still looks kind of lame.”

Rafiq seems to make a decision. He goes to his rucksack and removes a cloth-covered object, placing it carefully on the table. Unwrapping it with great ceremony, he steps back. The pistol has a black rubber grip and snub-nosed barrel that soaks up the light.

Syd whistles through his teeth and reaches for it. Rafiq slaps his hand away.

“I just want to touch it.”

“Be careful.”

Syd’s fingers close around the grip. He picks it up and feels the weight, marveling at how balanced it feels. Swinging it left, he aims it at a blank TV screen.

“Is it loaded?”

“You got to treat every gun like it’s loaded, that’s what the Courier says.”

“Where did you get it?”

“The Courier gave it to me.”

“Am I going to get one?”

“You don’t ask him shit like that.”

Syd closes one eye and looks down the barrel. “Why we need guns for, anyway? We’re just gonna blow shit up.”

“Insurance.”

“Against what?”

“Problems.”

Syd glances at the camera. “Can I hold it-just while we’re filming?”

Rafiq takes his time deciding and nods. Syd sits on the floor, crossing his arms with the pistol braced against his chest.

“Do I look like a soldier?”

“You look good.”

“One day of fighting…”

“… is worth eighty of praying.”

He looks into the camera.

“Oh, glorious prophet and vanquisher of the infidels, bless me now as I prepare for holy Jihad against the unbelievers…”

“What’s wrong?”

“I forgot what I was going to say next.”

Syd pulls a slip of paper from his pocket and begins memorizing.

“Just read it.”

“I don’t want to read it. I want to know it off by heart.”

“We’re wasting memory.”

“I got it now. Was I speaking too fast? Sometimes when I get excited I speak too fast.”

“You were fine.”

“Could you hear the words?”

“Yeah.”

“So it was OK?”

“You should say something about being a martyr.”

“But we’re not going to be martyrs. That’s what the Courier said. I’m not going to even pretend. I’m not interested in virgins in Heaven. I’ll be happy if Jenny Cruikshank lets me feel her tits.”

“Don’t let the Courier hear you say shit like that.”

“I’m not scared of him.”

“Bollocks!”

“I’m not.”

Syd looks up and his bowels seem to liquefy. The Courier is standing in the doorway as if he has suddenly materialized from thin air. Syd scrambles to his feet. Bows his head. Palms together. Salaam.

“Where is Taj?” asks the visitor.

“He’s running late,” says Rafiq. “His wife wanted him to mind their baby.”

“I can go look for him,” suggests Syd, who likes being around Aisha, Taj’s wife, even though she makes him nervous. Pretty girls do that to him and Aisha is so beautiful he finds her painful to look at. How did Taj manage to get a wife like that? Honey-colored eyes. Perfect skin. Glo-white teeth. When Syd’s time comes, his parents are likely to choose some fat cow with a stutter.

The Courier has moved into the room and taken a seat on a plastic chair. He motions them to sit down. He has a job for them.

“We have to dump the banker’s car.”

“What about his body?” asks Rafiq.

“That too.”

Daniela’s bags are packed and waiting on a luggage trolley by the door. Her flight leaves in four hours, the first leg to Istanbul and then on to New York. By this time tomorrow she’ll be back in her one-bedroom apartment with its dodgy plumbing and her weird neighbor who works all night in a basement under strange flickering lights.

“Have you decided?” she asks Luca.

“Decided?”

“Are you coming with me?”

“New York in the fall.”

“It’s lovely. Not too hot. Not too cold.”

“You sound like Goldilocks.”

Forty-eight hours. That’s how long Jennings gave Luca to leave Iraq. He can picture his visa smoking and then self-destructing like a Mission Impossible tape.

“I have three questions,” asks Daniela. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

“Not exactly.”

She purses her lips. “What if I begged you to leave?”

“Don’t.”

“Do you think Glover was killed because of this?”

“Yes.”

She sighs and leans back on the bed. The motion tightens her sweater, molding it against her body. It hurts Luca to look at her. It hurts him to think of her leaving. He should go with her to New York and shag her into next year. It would mean admitting defeat-the leaving, not the shagging-but what’s one more humiliation after being arrested, drugged and interrogated by the Iraqi police?

The satellite phone interrupts. Keith Gooding on the line from London:

“You wanted to know about Ibrahim? I found someone at the Foreign Office who pulled his file. Nothing new. This stuff dates back to the invasion.”

“What stuff?”

“I’ll tell you the story the way it was told to me.”

Gooding talks in a type of journalistic shorthand, full of half sentences and abbreviations.

“Twenty-first March 2003, Shock and Awe. Forty Tomahawk missiles began the assault, launched by navy vessels in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. Then came the precision-guided bombs dropped on Baghdad from stealth jets. Three hours after the raids began Saddam Hussein appeared on state television calling on Iraqis to defend their country. By then Baghdad was burning.