Richard House: The Kills

Because he could not receive a signal in his hut, he traced his way to the mess hall, bought another water, and sat under a mural of New York with the Twin Towers restored, an eagle above them, wings outstretched. That the water was cold made him happy. He retrieved Gibson’s message. Without doubt the call would mean another delay in his return home, another site visit under police, military, or private guard, another delay in which he spent his days at a hospital, a military barrack, a roadside, speaking through an interpreter, interviewing people who would rather not talk. This call would mean more evenings lost to reports to determine if HOSCO was or was not liable. He opened the attachment and enlarged the image, a headshot from an identity photo, the man’s expression slightly bewildered, eyes wide, a little startled, and couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to this man. The image set in the past tense. The call passed quickly to Gibson.

‘Who am I looking at?’

‘His name is Stephen Sutler. He’s with HOSCO. Have you kept up with the news?’

‘Haven’t had a chance. To be honest, I’m closing cases. I’m looking forward to coming home.’

Gibson hesitated, the comment sat without remark. ‘The picture you have. He’s British, and he’s missing. He was at the local government office five days ago when it came under attack and now he’s missing.’

‘Kidnapped?’

‘Doubtful. What do you know about the Massive?’

Parson imagined Gibson in his office, stooped, as he always stooped when he spoke on the phone, voice raised, his accent a little pushed.

‘It’s a proposal to expand a small military installation in the southern desert. HOSCO won the bid earlier this year. Washington have poured no end of money into the project. Stephen Sutler was HOSCO’s man on site, in charge of the initial development, but he’s disappeared and no one can find the money.’

‘You said he’s British?’

‘That’s almost all we know about him.’

‘How much?’

‘Well, here’s the thing. No one knows exactly. The data was destroyed in the attack. It’s being calculated as we speak. We’re certainly talking several million dollars.’

Parson allowed a respectful gap before asking why they were involved.

‘They want someone to go to Amrah and see the Deputy Administrator at the government office, a man called Paul Howell. He physically managed the money, oversaw the accounts. He’s almost certainly involved. It needs to happen soon, though, as soon as possible. Howell has an attorney, and I understand it’s all starting to get complicated. They want Sutler found. No one else seems to be getting anywhere. They’ve also arrested two of the guards, and you’ll need to speak with them as well. Ask about Stephen Sutler, see what everyone knows. Oh,’ Gibson added, not so much an afterthought as a warning, ‘Howell has friends in the State Department. He isn’t someone you want to annoy. I doubt he’ll come out of this clean, but he’s seasoned. Find out what you can about the financial organization. See what’s known about Sutler, and leave the rest to the lawyers.’

‘You’ve explained that this isn’t what we do?’

‘There isn’t any choice. HOSCO are our clients and we want to keep them. It’s unusual, but it’s in the vicinity of what we ordinarily do. They say they aren’t liable, that the money was organized by the government office. Anyway, I want to show them that we’re available, and that we’re happy to help. They need someone immediately, and they’d prefer this person to be British. By the time they find someone else and send him over, Stephen Sutler could be anywhere.’

‘So I speak with these men and report back to you.’

‘You’ve misunderstood me. They want you to find him.’

* * *

He waited for the flight with the printout in his hands. Two names written on the reverse, Stephen Sutler, Paul Howell. The paper folded twice with care. The delay on his return wasn’t completely unexpected and when he called his wife she took the news with resignation. In return she gave him little news of her own, and it bothered him that he didn’t know her thinking, not to the usual detail.

The proper force of his reassignment struck him mid-flight. A black night with the knowledge of desert and stone waste beneath him, a bad month behind him, and this one fact that he would now have to stay in the country, amid all of this calamity. Beside him sat American soldiers in full kit: tourniquets, boots, helmets, in mottled desert MARPAT. One replaced plates into pouches. Another — tight mouth, bored — shook with the craft and refused eye contact. Parson looked at the men and wondered how they could tolerate the plain unworkability of the situation. I should not be here, he told himself. I do not want to be here.

* * *

Parson arrived at Camp Liberty before sunrise and was taken immediately to collect Sutler’s belongings. An hour later, in possession of a single kitbag in a sealed military sack, he boarded the helicopter for Amrah City. The kitbag would go to the team investigating Stephen Sutler’s activities, a mix of US Federal Marshals, Iraqi prosecutors, and representatives from the ministries, with a few interested private attorneys. While Parson was officially seconded to this team, he would report directly to Mathew Gibson, who would filter the reports to HOSCO.

Parson focused on the view, unsettled by the craft’s sideways pitch he picked out a single Humvee as it cut through the compound in the early light. The camp, marked by water tanks, latrines, a line of Portakabins, and a single Quonset hut, lay alongside another unbending road. Back in the desert he could see a number of black oblongs, the burn pits, with lazy smoke trails thinning into ghost vapours. Nothing more than seven black holes and a curve of shacks as provisional as a movie set, its impermanence amplified by the lack of scrub grass, palm groves, or any natural sign of water. A practical logic determined these locations: to protect signals, facilities, borders, supply lines, strategic zones, or some pre-existing feature, but here the logic was lost and the road cut into the desert in a clean unnatural line with the camp and outpost set as nodes on either side — which could, and might as well, sit anywhere along its length. In twelve days this unit would be disassembled and shipped, flat-packed, to Kuwait and Camp Navistar.

He shut his eyes to imagine the unit wiped off the map so that nothing remained except morning light, sunburnt dust, cracked stone. It was easy to imagine it gone, the desert here being ungraded rubble, ridges scorched of colour. Sand filtered into the sky, blurring the land with a pink funk. The flight from Camp Liberty to Amrah City crossed two lines of control: from American to British, from British back to American. The craft descended in a corkscrew, sidling down to avoid attack.

* * *

Howell’s attorney laid out the problem as they walked. They — representatives from HOSCO, the military, the New Transitional Assembly, the various Danish, British, and US consulate representatives and their advisers, four internal ministries (which included the National Bank, the Oil Ministry, the Ministry of Industry, and the Ministry for Labour) — wanted Stephen Lawrence Sutler. She counted the authorities on her fingers. ‘But instead of Sutler we have Paul Howell and two civilian contractors,’ meaning Mathew Clark and Carl Simon Pakosta, the men arrested alongside Howell at Southern-CIPA and charged with impersonating military personnel. ‘Which is…’ she squinted across the asphalt to the hangar, the light about them solid and over-bright, ‘useless.’

Parson nodded.

‘It’s sticky.’ The attorney explained the situation in tiny bites. She shifted a collection of bound files under her arms to free her hands, then drew her hair, straight, black, shoulder-length, behind her ear. The heat pushed on Parson’s shoulders; the sun sparked sharp across the airfield from chrome on cars and aircraft. He studied the attorney through pinched eyes and thought her younger than he’d first imagined.