David Mitchell - The Bone Clocks

“Um … yeah, it will, all things being equal.”

“Ah. So all things might not be equal?”

“ Spyglass offered me an extension to December.”

Dave exhales through his teeth in sympathy.

“Age-old dilemma. Duty versus family. Can’t advise you, Ed, but for what it’s worth, I’ve met a fair few fellers down the years just after they’ve been told by a doctor that they’re going to die. Stands to reason — if a quack ever tells me I’ve only got X weeks to live, I’ll need a bar, a sympathetic ear, and a stiff drink, too. You won’t be surprised when I tell you that not a one of them fellers ever said, ‘Dave, if only I’d spent more time at work.’ ”

“Maybe they were doing the wrong jobs,” I say, and regret straight away how flippant it sounds. Worse, I don’t get the chance to clarify what I meant because the door flies open and a trio of Holly’s Irish cousins burst in, laughing at a lost punch line: “Ed, Uncle Dave, here you are,” says Oisín, whose blood relationship to Holly I can never get my head around. “Aunt Kath dispatched us to hunt you both down and bring you back alive.”

“Blimey O’Riley, what’ve I done now?”

“Chil lax , Uncle Dave. Time to cut the cake, is all.”

AZIZ DROVE US back towards Baghdad so Nasser could tell me about the patients he’d interviewed at the clinic. With Aziz’s photos, we had the bones of a good Spyglass story. Before we reached Abu Ghraib, however, we hit a long tailback. Nasser hopped out at a roadside stall and returned with kebabs and two items of news: A fuel convoy had been attacked earlier and the main road back to Baghdad was part blocked by a thirty-foot crater, hence the holdup; and that an American helicopter had been brought down on farmland southeast of the prison complex. We decided to make a detour in search of the crash site. We chewed the chunks of stringy lamb — or possibly goat — and Aziz turned south at the mosque where we’d run into trouble earlier. Once the prison complex was behind us, we saw a reedy column of black smoke rising from behind a windbreak of tamarisk trees. A boy on a bicycle confirmed that, yes, the American helicopter, a Kiowa, had been brought down over there, Allah be praised. Boys growing up in occupied Iraq know about weaponry and military hardware just as I knew about fishing gear, motorbikes, and the Top 40 in the 1980s. The boy mimed a boom! and laughed. Some marines had removed the two dead Americans thirty minutes ago, he told Nasser, so now it was safe to go and see.

A track led over an irrigation canal, through the tamarisks and into a field of weeds. The smoldering carcass of the crushed and blackened Kiowa lay on its side, with its tail section lying half the field away. “Ground-to-air missile,” speculated Nasser, “cut in middle. Like sword.” Maybe twenty men and boys were standing around. Farm buildings stood on the far side, and machinery lay neglected. Aziz parked in the corner and we got out and walked over. The late afternoon was filled with insect noises. Aziz took pictures as we approached. I thought of the pilots, and wondered what had spun through their heads as they careered to Earth. An old man in a red kaffiyeh asked Nasser if we were with a newspaper, and Nasser said, Yes, we worked for a Jordanian one. We were here to counter the lies of the Americans and their allies, Nasser said, and asked the man if he had seen the helicopter crash. The old man said, No, he knew nothing, he only heard an explosion. Some other men, maybe the Mahdi Army, drove off, but he had been too far away, and look — he pointed to his eyes — his cataracts were clouding over.

Seeing too much in Iraq can get you killed.

Suddenly we heard the rumble of army vehicles, and the crowd scattered, or tried to; we clustered into a group again as we realized both exits from the field were blocked by two convoys of four Humvees. Marines emerged from the vehicles in full body armor, pointing their M16s at us. A disembodied roar filled the field: “Hands above your heads! Hands where I can see them! All of you on the fucking ground now or I swear, you gloating fucking Ali Baba pig-fuckers, I’ll put you in the ground!” No translation was provided, but we all got the idea.

“HANDS HIGHER!” another marine yelled at a man in a mechanic’s oil-stained overalls, who said, “Mafee mushkila, mafee mushkila,” No problem, no problem, but the marine shouted, “Don’t contradict me! Don’t contradict me!” and booted the man in the stomach — all our guts jerked tight in sympathy — and he folded over, gasping and coughing. “Find out who owns this farm,” the marine ordered an interpreter, whose face was hidden in a sort of head-wrapping, like a ninja. The marine spoke into his headset, saying the area was secured while the interpreter asked the old man in the red kaffiyeh who owned the farm.

I didn’t hear the answer because a black marine was standing over Aziz, saying, “Souvenirs, huh? This your handiwork, huh?” Fate sent a Chinook thundering out of the sun; it drowned my voice as the marine yanked Aziz’s camera off his neck with such force that the strap broke, and Aziz fell forward headfirst. Next thing I knew the marine was kneeling by Aziz with his handgun pressed against my photographer’s head.

I shouted, “No — stop! He’s working for me,” but the din of the Chinook drowned me out, and suddenly I was flipped to the ground and an armored kneecap was pressing my windpipe into the dirt, too, and I thought, They won’t discover their mistake till I’m dead . Then, No, they won’t discover their mistake at all; I’ll be deposited in a shallow pit on the edge of Baghdad .

“WHY AREN ’ T THEY grateful, Ed?”

A cube of wedding cake is halfway to my mouth, but Pauline Webber has a penetrating voice, and now I’m being watched by four Webbers, six Sykeses, Aoife, and a vase of orange lilies. My problem is, I have no idea who or what she’s talking about, as I’ve spent the last few minutes mentally composing an email to the accounts department at the corporation that owns Spyglass . I look at Holly for a hint, but she blanks me from behind her wronged-woman mask. Though I wouldn’t be too sure it is a mask.

Luckily, Peter’s younger brother and best man, Lee, comes to my aid; his “core competence” may be “tax evoision” but that doesn’t stop him being an authority on international affairs too. “Iraq under Saddam used to be a concentration camp aboveground and a mass grave below. So us and the Yanks, we come along and take their dictator down for them, gratis and for free — and how do they pay us back? By turning on their liberators. Ingratitude is deeply, deeply , ingrained into the Arab races. And it’s not just our lads in uniform they hate; it’s any Westerner, right, Ed? Like that poor reporter who got offed last year, just for being American? Gro tesque .”

“You’ve got spinach stuck in your teeth, Lee,” says Peter.

Of course Aoife asks, “What does ‘offed’ mean, Daddy?”

“Why don’t you and I,” Holly says to Aoife, “go and see Lola and Amanda at the big kids’ table? I think they’ve got Coca-Cola.”

“You always say Coca-Cola stops you sleeping, Mummy.”

“Yes, but you worked so hard being Aunty Sharon’s bridesmaid, we can make an exception this once.” Holly and Aoife slip away.

Lee still hasn’t caught on. “Has the spinach gone?”

“It has,” says Peter, “but the tactlessness is still there.”

“Huh? Oh .” Lee does a contrite smirk. “Oops. No offense, Ed. Imbibed too freely of the old vino, methinks.”

I should say, “No offense taken,” but I just shrug.