Dorothy Mcintosh - The Witch of Babylon

“What a shame.”

Ward rolled his eyes. “Try having your legs blown off. You’d be chopping down a few trees too if you thought it would save you.”

With checkpoint stops, it took us almost an hour to travel to our destination. Concrete barriers thrown up to prevent truck bombs from getting through and a heavy military presence stopped us from driving right up to the hotel. We parked and walked to the entrance.

Stocky, tough-looking soldiers dressed in black uniforms patrolled the hotel. They carried enough firepower to take over a small country. I was surprised to see they weren’t Americans. “Peshmergas,” Ward told me. “Kurdish soldiers; they’re working with the American military. You don’t want to fool around with those guys.”

After being checked out by the guards, we proceeded to our suite—one bedroom with a sitting area and bathroom. The hotel looked to be in very rough shape and Ward told me it had been looted when the occupation forces had entered Baghdad. He ushered me into the bedroom and ended my brief flirtation with freedom by cuffing my wrist to the bed frame. This time he left my right hand free.

“I’ve got to go out to make some arrangements. I’ll order you something to eat. When I’m back we can talk.” Ward said this on his way out the door. Eris accompanied him. The two mercenaries made themselves comfortable in the sitting room and immediately popped a movie into the DVD player.

I found I could slide the bracelet of the cuff a little way along the bedrail so I maneuvered over to the side near the window and looked out. Off in the distance I could see the turquoise dome of the Fourteenth of Ramadan Mosque, one of Hussein’s last megaprojects. He was a great one for building monuments, most of them in praise of himself.

I looked down to the hotel grounds and could make out a pack of dogs, once family pets, now forced by hunger to return to their wild roots and forage in the urban landscape. They tore at some whitish lumps on the ground. I shifted my eyes away, not wanting a clear picture of what they were eating.

Traffic noise died down. The lyrical notes of the Adhan cut through the evening air. This would be the fifth and last call to prayer for the day, coming between the fall of darkness and midnight. I felt the beauty of his song, tried to loosen up and let the halftones float through me. Then came the tat-tat-tat of gunshots. The dogs howled, the muezzin’s call shattered by their song of despair. Laurel was now so far away I couldn’t imagine how to help her. My own prospects were barely any better.

When we’d passed through the lobby, I’d noticed a number of Westerners and judged by their easy camaraderie and casual dress that most of them were journalists. The thought occurred to me that if I could get free, one of them might lend me a hand to get away. But with no money or papers I’d have no means to get out of the country. And even if I’d found a way around that, Ward would take it out on Laurel.

I used the time to do some thinking and believed I knew why he’d brought me to Iraq. If I was right it would soon be obvious.

I called out to one of the guards. He stuck his head around the door. “What?”

“I want a drink. Can you get me something from the minibar?”

“We’re not your waiters.”

I could smell the hot dogs he’d just heated up in the microwave. “How did you get hot dogs?”

“It all comes in from Kuwait. We don’t eat the eye-raki shit.”

Despite his claim that he wasn’t a waiter, when my food came he brought the tray in and placed it on the bedside table. Chicken tikka, rice, and something vaguely greenish that I guessed had originally been a vegetable. Along with that, a carafe of sweet chai with a screwtop lid that could be used as a cup. I wolfed down the entire meal as if it were cordon bleu.

After Ward returned he undid the cuffs so I could use the can. I took my time, soaping and splashing water over my arms and hands, running a washcloth under the steaming hot water and pressing it to my face, giving my hair a comb. My beard was starting to look unruly.

Walking back into the bedroom, I told Ward I wanted a drink. “Help yourself,” he said.

It was a measure of how low I’d fallen that I felt elated when he let me go unaccompanied into the sitting room to reach the minibar. His guards kept their eyes trained on me as I grabbed a mini bottle of Scotch and poured it into a glass before returning to the bedroom.

I dangled my legs over the edge of the bed while Ward pulled up a chair. He seemed more relaxed, a little brighter.

“Eris checked out the address you gave us. It looks credible. Actually, it’s in this neighborhood, al-Mansour. The owner of the house is Assyrian like the Zakar brothers. Tomas may very well be hoarding the engraving there.”

“So why not just raid it? You have the means. Why involve me?”

“I don’t want to risk damaging it in a raid. And I need to know more before we go in. We’ve had them under continual surveillance. Whatever was in there a few days ago still is.”

“Would Tomas have had time to get back here? He could hardly sail in through the airport.”

“It’s been what—over three days since you last saw him?” “Pretty close.”

“I doubt he ever entered Turkey. Mazare set all that up for him. That left more than enough time to fly to Syria or Jordan and drive in. The borders are like a sieve now, millions of holes for anyone to crawl through, and it’s only half a day’s drive to the city.”

He tilted back and stretched. Despite the heat he was dressed in a relatively formal suit, white shirt, and tie. Perhaps to appear more casual and set me at ease, he took off his jacket, loosened his tie, and rolled up his sleeves.

The tattoo on his forearm stood out like a neon sign. A lowercase h with a short bar at its top.

Ward bent forward and rested his elbows on his knees and his chin on his fists. “Tomorrow morning we’re sending you to the address you gave us. We want you to get inside.”

“Why me? There must be any number of people you could call on.”

“Shock value. You’re absolutely the last person Tomas Zakar would expect to see in Baghdad. We’ll be able to flush him out that way.” He paused to make sure I got the full impact of his next words. “Also, you’re expendable. I don’t want one of my own people dying in there.”

“And after what happened in Turkey, exactly how am I going to explain how I got here, or why I even went to the trouble of coming?”

“You won’t have to. Tomas is hardly going to answer the door, but whoever does will be reporting back to him. He’ll be feeling very pleased with himself. Resting on his laurels. It will shake him up hard just knowing you’re alive and made your way here. He’ll want to know whether you’re alone or if we all escaped. That’s the state we want him in. Uncertain and knowing his plans have been shot to hell.”

I got up and walked over to the window. Ward made no move to stop me. In the distance, the palms stirred slightly in the breeze; the air shimmered in the heat and haze. I felt as though I were part of the mirage, that none of this could actually be happening to me.

I faced Ward. “I won’t do it. What’s the point anyway? You’ll kill Laurel and me anyhow.”

Ward smiled, got up, and went into the sitting room. He came back seconds later carrying a suitcase, which he plopped on the bed and opened. He dug into the fabric sleeve inside the case and pulled out a manila envelope, spilling its contents onto the bedspread. I moved over to look.

A roll of about a hundred American dollar bills and my Visa card, along with my passport that he’d shown me before.

Ward pointed to the card. “The balance has been taken care of; you can use it now.”