Yasmina Khadra - The Sirens of Baghdad

Suddenly, just as the captain was preparing to let the matter drop, there was a loud crash inside the repair shop. Sayed and his employees froze. The captain raised an eyebrow, delighted to catch Sayed out.

Sayed said, “I swear I thought he’d left, Captain.”

The captain knocked on the door. “Open up, pal, or I’ll kick my way in.”

“Just a moment. I’m soldering something. Almost finished.”

You could hear creaking sounds, followed by some metallic screeching; a key turned in the lock, and the door opened. The engineer, wearing an undershirt and tracksuit bottoms, peered out. The captain saw a table cluttered with wires, tiny screws, screwdrivers, little pots of paint and glue and soldering material, and, in the midst of the clutter, a dismantled television set. Its back cover, which had been replaced too hastily, hung askew, revealing a skein of multicolored wires inside the shell. The captain squinted his right eye again. The moment he detected the bomb, which lay half-concealed in the place where the picture tube should have been, his throat tightened, and then his face suddenly turned somber when the engineer poked the mouth of a pistol into the back of his neck.

The detective, who had remained in the background, didn’t immediately comprehend what was going on, but the heavy silence that had just fallen on the room caused him instinctively to bring his hand to his belt. He never reached his weapon. Amr jumped him from behind, put one hand over his mouth, and with the other thrust a dagger deep into his back, just under the shoulder blade. His eyes wide in disbelief, the detective shivered from head to foot and slowly collapsed onto the floor.

The captain was trembling in every limb. He could neither lift his arms in surrender nor lean forward. He said, “I won’t say anything, Sayed.”

“Only the dead know how to keep their mouths shut, Captain. I’m awfully sorry for you, Captain.”

“I beg you. I’ve got six kids—”

“You should have thought of them before.”

“Please, Sayed, please spare me. I swear I won’t say anything. If you want, take me into your cell. I’ll be your eyes and ears. I’ve never cheered for the Americans. I hate them. I’m a cop, but — you can check — I’ve never laid a hand on anyone in the resistance. I’m on your side, all the way…. Sayed, what I said was true: I’m hoping to get out of here.

Don’t kill me, for the love of heaven, don’t. I’ve got six kids, and the oldest isn’t even fifteen yet.”

“Were you spying on me?”

“No, I swear I wasn’t. I just got a little greedy, that’s all.”

“In that case, why didn’t you come alone?”

“He was my partner.”

“I’m not talking about the jackass who came in with you. I mean the boys waiting for you outside in the street.”

“No one’s waiting for me outside, I swear to you….”

There was a silence. The captain raised his eyes; when he saw Sayed’s satisfied smile, he realized the seriousness of his mistake. He should have been a little craftier and pretended he wasn’t alone. The unfortunate man had no luck at all.

Sayed ordered me to go to the front of the store and lower the rolling shutter completely. I did as he said. When I returned to the storeroom, the captain was on his knees, with his hands tied behind his back. He’d shit his pants and was crying like a child.

Sayed asked me, “Did you look around outside?”

“I didn’t notice anything unusual.”

“Very good.”

Sayed slipped a plastic packing bag over the captain’s head and then, with Rashid’s help, forced him to the floor. The officer struggled wildly. Mist filled the plastic bag. Sayed held its mouth closed very tightly around the captain’s throat. He ran out of air quickly and started wriggling and writhing. His body was racked by violent convulsions; it took a long time for them to become less frequent and then subside; after a final jerk, they stopped altogether. Sayed and Rashid kept bearing down on the captain with all their weight; they didn’t let up until the corpse was completely still.

“Get rid of these two stiffs,” Sayed ordered Amr and Rashid. Then, turning to me, he said, “And you, clean up this blood before it dries.”

After Sayed charged Amr and Rashid with making the two corpses disappear, the engineer proposed demanding a ransom from their families. The idea was to throw people off by making them think the men had been kidnapped. Sayed’s response was, “It’s your problem,” and then he told me to follow him. We got in his black Mercedes and went across the city to the other bank of the Tigris. Sayed slipped a CD of Eastern music into the slot, turned up the sound, and drove calmly. His natural composure made me relax, too.

I’d always dreaded the moment when I would step over the line; now that it was behind me, I didn’t feel anything in particular. I’d witnessed the killings of the two officers with the same detachment I observed when I contemplated the victims of terrorist attacks. I was no longer the delicate boy from Kafr Karam. Another individual had taken his place. I was stunned by how easy it was to pass from one world to another and practically regretted having spent so much time being fearful of what I’d find. The weakling who had vomited at the sight of blood and lost his head when shots rang out was far, far away, and so was the wimp who’d passed out during the screwup that cost Sulayman his life. I was born again as someone else, someone hard, cold, implacable. My hands didn’t tremble. My heart beat normally. In the side-view mirror on my right, my face betrayed no trace of an expression; it was a waxen mask, impenetrable and inaccessible.

Sayed took me to a posh little building in a residential neighborhood. As soon as the security guards recognized his Mercedes, they lifted the barrier. Sayed seemed to receive a great deal of deference from the guards. He parked his car in a garage and led me to a luxury apartment. It wasn’t the same one where he’d convened Yaseen, the twins, and me. The place had a caretaker, a secretive old man who served as a general factotum. Sayed suggested that I take a bath and join him later in the living room, whose windows were festooned with taffeta curtains.

The bathtub had a chrome faucet the size of a teakettle. I took off my clothes and stepped in. The scalding water quickly warmed me to my bones.

The old man served us a late supper in a small dining room filled with glittering silver objects. Sayed was wrapped in a dark red dressing gown, which made him look rather like a nabob. We ate in silence. The only audible sound was the clicking of the silverware, occasionally interrupted by the ringing of Sayed’s cell phone. Each time, he looked at the dial and decided whether or not to answer the call. Once, it was the engineer, calling about the two corpses. Intermittently grunting, Sayed listened to him and then clicked his phone shut. When Sayed looked up at me, I understood that Rashid and Amr had carried out their assignment successfully.

The old man brought us a basket of fruit. Sayed, as before, scrutinized me in silence. Perhaps, I thought, he expects me to make conversation. I couldn’t imagine any topic of mutual interest. Sayed was by nature taciturn, not to mention haughty. I didn’t like the way he ordered his employees around. He had to be obeyed to the letter, and once he’d reached a decision, there was no appeal. Paradoxically, I found his authority reassuring. Working for a guy of his stature meant I had no reason to ask questions; he saw to everything and seemed prepared to face any eventuality.

The old man showed me to my room. Pointing to a bell on the night table, he informed me that should I require his services, I had only to ring. Having ostentatiously verified that everything was in order, he withdrew on tiptoe.