Middle Man (14 page)

He was brave and naïve and having fun. An RPG cruised over the crest and hit him square in the back and obliterated him.

The other Marine was splattered with bone, blood, and all the goo of life. He stumbled around while wiping it off his face. Another RPG hit close by, and the Marine jumped away from it. His body stopped bouncing off boulders about thirty feet below.

The Marines below were closing in on the gun runners. No more fire came from the Iranian side. I looked around for Lieutenant Spera's tags but didn't see them, so I edged down the hill to check on the Marine who had fallen.

The Marine lay on a flat, wide ledge. His head was bloody and bent at an awful angle. It looked like the fall had killed him. Sam Simmons held the Marine's sidearm. I watched as Simmons, on one knee, removed the Marine's tags. He didn't notice me. “Put it down,” I said. He dropped the tags. He still held the sidearm. “The weapon.” He stared at me a while before tossing the gun aside.

“Private Waters, right? How are you? I don't see you all this time and then here you are.” He sounded like we ran into each other at a bar. He was still a scrawny guy, but his eyes were clear. I didn't think he was high. He flicked a piece of Lieutenant Spera's flesh off of the Marine's shirt and stood up. Then, as if he were concerned that I thought he was being insensitive, he said, “I didn't kill him. He was already dead.” Two large plastic bags of opium tied together lay on a rock behind Sam Simmons. “Damn camels are more trouble than they're worth. I just carried what I could. Ever ride one?”

“Who were you meeting?”

“Oh, those guys had the contacts. I was just the money man on this deal.”

He watched me for a moment, then reached down to get the dead man's tags. I raised my rifle. He stopped but came up with the tags in his hand. I climbed down and told him to back away from the body. I knelt down to check for a pulse. There was none. The intervals stretched in the firing below. Nothing came from above us. Whoever had been shooting at us was not coming across the border.

“I've been watching you, Private Waters. You didn't know it, but I saw how you operate. You're very good. I could learn from you.”

Flattery? “Shut up.”

“The others turned back, but I couldn't. You understand? I couldn't,” he said.

Sam Simmons was just a would-be drug dealer, one of millions. I had spent the last few months carefully making sure not to interfere with the poppy business, so I did not feel too sanctimonious about this guy's participation. The honest way to lead him down the mountain would be to put a leash and a bell on him so the U.S. military and the Afghan authorities could have the thrill of human sacrifice. Would bringing him in honor Spera's preposterous idealism? I fought that foolishness while Spera was alive, so it made no sense to hand over Sam Simmons and condone that foolishness now that it had killed Spera. And burning behind all those thoughts, behind the months of nonsensical futility and my ambivalence about life as a Marine, was the instinct to avoid being a cop. I was born with it and experience reinforced the tendency. Every organization and institution I had come in contact with pushed toward making me, and everyone, into enforcement drones, and that bumped hard against my instinct to be contrary. I didn't do a long analysis while standing there on that mountain, pointing my rifle at Sam Simmons, but I could not see the benefit in handing him over. He was probably going to die getting out of there anyway, but he put himself in that position.

“Leave the bags,” I said.

“Y'sure?”

“If you pick them up, you're going down the mountain with me.”

“Can I take his shirt? It'll help me get out of the country if I'm . . .” He looked at the tags. “Kosinski . . . Victor Kosinski.” Just like James Bond.

I nodded and he got to work on the shirt. I saw him shift his eyes to the sidearm, but I shook my head and he made no move. He had to pick more bits and pieces of Lieutenant Spera off the shirt before he put it on.

He slipped the tags over his head and smiled and shrugged. He was a guy who had been having narrow escapes his whole life, and I had just helped reconfirm his belief that he would always escape.

“You go first. I'll wait here,” he said. I picked up Kosinski's sidearm and slung the bags of opium over my shoulder and walked past the new Kosinski. “Hey, man . . . Thank you. I really appreciate it. I won't forget it.”

I turned back and raised my rifle and glared at him. I hated him at that moment more than I ever hated anyone. More than Dan at his worst. More than any foster parent or pompous colonel. It wasn't until I raised the rifle that I understood how much I disliked having to make this decision. If he had spoken, I would have shot him. But he did not speak, and I walked down the mountain and managed to push him from my mind until that moment on the Citadel in Erbil.

And following the flood of that memory came the realization, a side issue, one I never considered before, that Sam Simmons had probably done that ambush in the village in Farah that killed the NGO and the Marine. The rumor was the NGO had a lot of cash on him.

T
hree ol
d men argued at a stall selling nuts. They were vehement, heated, and one grabbed a handful of pistachios. I thought he was going to throw them, but he let them fall back into the bin. They respected the nuts. At the next stall, teenagers browsed the DVDs and tapes. The marketplace below the Citadel was crowded but orderly: souk meets mall. The smells, the sounds, and the swirling motion kept my head from spinning off. Men and women I had never seen looked familiar, like old friends. A secret past malingered behind the eyes searching mine and avoiding mine. A zombie world of bad decisions traipsed alongside me. But one Victor Kosinski was enough to last me. He had popped up and would pop up again. I did not need to do anything to make that happen.

Two tough guys in short jackets cut me off and hurried to a stall selling packaged food and groceries. They moved with the arrogance and insolence that serves as the international symbol for secret police: in this case, the Asayish. When the proprietor saw them, he kicked something farther under the counter. They were not fooled. One grabbed him while the other pulled out the box of contraband. I moved on, never finding out what it was.

I veered right, along a row of stalls selling scarves and hats. I took a left and followed that to the end of the row, where I found the gun-selling stall belonging to the supposed cousin of my cabbie.

The guns were hung on hooks and laid out on red cloth, an impressive array: Colt 1911s, M9 Berettas, Glocks. The merchant and his son pointed to one after another, held them out so I could handle them. It was the jewelry store experience for mercenaries. I declined them all.

I asked the merchant to open the boxes at the back and show me the SIG Sauers. The merchant's son played dumb, asked me what those were. They conferred in Arabic about how long to hesitate to get the maximum price, then brought out two guns. I chose the SIG Sauer 226 over the 228 because it had two extra rounds in the clip, fifteen. They brought out two boxes of 9mm ammunition.

The merchant and his son started at twelve hundred dollars. I offered three hundred dollars. The merchant moaned, his son threatened. I paid four hundred and fifty.

Cold high-desert air had descended on the city. It felt refreshing despite the smell of diesel. Shades of blue stretched across the sky, darkening steadily, subtly toward the horizon. Green, red, and yellow colored lights made the fountains seem fake, like rippling plastic. I don't know how many cars followed me as I walked toward my hotel, but the driver that stopped beside me was Maya. She put down the window and leaned across. The driver behind her honked his impatience. When he stopped, she said, “I can't offer a fancy convertible like yours. But please get in.”

I got in and readjusted the side mirror so I could watch any followers. “I bet you know where there's a roadhouse here, too,” I said.

She was wearing a long black skirt and a blue silk long-sleeve blouse. This was not an outfit Muslim elders had in mind when they decreed women should be covered in public. I said, “Your blouse matches the color of the sky just ahead of us.”

She laughed. “I didn't take you for one who delivers cheap compliments like that.”

“It's not a compliment. I was wondering how you managed the timing.”

“I wore the black skirt in case you came along later.”

She turned a few times and we left the traffic behind and entered a large park.

“Johnny sent me. I am to charm you. That's what he said. ‘Charm him, my dear, because he has fallen under your spell.' That's how he put it.”

“Turning on the charm is usually only the first part.”

“He wants you to meet with him. He promises your safety.”

A Mercedes just like the one we were in turned into the park: charm insurance. She kept driving through to the other end of the park, then turned onto a broad boulevard that led to the Kurdistan Parliament building, a five-story sandstone block pierced at regular intervals by thin window slots. I wanted to get to Bannion's, but more than that, I wanted to know how thick a coating of charm Maya would be willing to spread to get me there.

“I don't want to go to Bannion's,” I said.

“Where would you like to go?”

“The airport.”

She checked the rearview mirror. “Johnny guarantees your safety.”

“If I fly out of here, I guarantee my safety all by myself.”

She forced the faint smile, the glimmering tease in her eyes. “I thought you were a man who doesn't give up. A determined man.”

“I'm going to declare victory and go home. Mission accomplished. You're no longer a captive.”

“You mean you came all this way just for me? I'm flattered.”

“Your father made me a very lucrative offer. It's odd, isn't it? He knew you weren't in any danger. Do you think I should try to hold him to it?”

She did not like that remark, either. I was struck by how less exotic she seemed here, removed from the mongrel luster of Houston. Her aura of mystery mystery faded against the hometown background of war and its spoils.

“You think you understand what is going on, but you don't.” She didn't have the pleading in her voice that I expected. It was the declaration of a disciple, a True Believer.

“I think I don't understand at all. And I think you're not going to explain it to me.”

She had no answer. To explain meant narrowing the story; the details would diminish the wild ecstasy of the dream. Experience and training told her to protect her devotion from a skeptic. I did not think she knew all the twists in Bannion's plot; no one did. I wanted to push her to see how far she would push me. I concentrated on the silence and did not register the growing roar overhead. A shadow lowered across us from the left and passed quickly. The plane touched the runway just a few hundred yards beyond.

I said, “If I don't go to Bannion's, will he take it out on you?”

She pulled to the side of the road and it was as if the veil of vagueness overtook her again. She stared forward, then checked her mirrors while she decided which answer would best serve her purpose, which answer would make me come to Bannion's willingly, without the men who were following having to grab me.

“No, Johnny won't hurt me.” She waited for my reaction, then she laughed. “You can't decide if I'm telling the truth or not. It wouldn't matter how I answered. How do you get out of bed in the morning? You can't trust anyone.”

“Can I trust you?”

“Don't you think I know what that feels like? Don't you think I had to spend my life wondering about everyone? Every moment? Who the liars are? But I figured out how to handle it.”

Instead of dwelling in doubt, she had resorted to pulling down the veil, and that had the effect of making most people give more, pushing for a reaction, a confirmation, even a refutation, until, finally, they gave too much. Her eruption of honesty seemed to fill the drab brown desert with colors.

“You think that if you question everything I say, you'll find the real me, the one you can understand and trust, but the result is just a muddier picture.” She smiled, emphasizing the challenge. She was more beautiful in that moment of pugnaciousness than ever before. She laughed again. “The truth is as good as a lie in dealing with you.”

I wanted to tell her we were talking about faith, not trust. But I remembered Dan's True Believer rule: Never allow them to draw you into a conversation about their faith unless you are prepared to let them think they have converted you. No argument can ever defeat faith. I said, “We're back to the night we met. You want me to help your father.”

Her shoulders dropped and her head tilted with relief. She had moved me back to the holy quest. Victory. The veil descended. “I don't know what Johnny has planned or why he wants to meet you. I only know that I'll feel better if you're there.”

She made a U-turn. All the way to Bannion's I tried to reassure myself that I was going there for my purposes, not Maya's. I had loaded up five cylinders for Russian roulette with chivalry, gallantry, righteousness, sincerity and plain old lust. One was going to kill me soon enough if I didn't stop playing. I spent the ride back wondering which would hurt the most.

Dan spoke up on that subject.
“You know the answer.”

“I don't want the answer.”

“The only one you're not faking.”

______

A new white van idled in the middle of the courtyard, which was lit like a landing zone. Maya pulled past the gates, which bore a sign reading
DS SECURITY SERVICES,
and maneuvered around the van. A video cameraman waited for a pretty redheaded woman to fix her hair, near the side door to the office building. A harried man in his forties brought her a scarf and helped arrange it over her hair. He was her producer. She scrutinized the mirror, flicked a few hairs across her forehead, handed over the mirror, and pointed to the cameraman. The soundman nodded to him and he said, “Ready.”

“Though this northern section of Iraq is peaceful, we have been advised that the prudent approach is to hire a security escort as we tour the outer-lying cities and towns. Ah, here they are now. . . .”

Four security men marched out of the office, all of them dressed in khakis and black jackets with
DS
embroidered on the chest. The first three men lined up behind the woman. She put out her arm to invite the last man to join her.

“This is Mike Jensen, who will be leading us as we search for the best authentic, indigenous cuisine and boutique inns of Kurdistan. It looks like I'm the luckiest woman in the entire region. Certainly the safest. Well, the van is loaded and waiting, so, Mike, are we good to go?”

“We're good to go, Zooey,” Mike said. It was clear he had rehearsed.

The producer yelled, “Great.” Zooey removed her scarf and rushed the cameraman.

“Let me see how it looked.”

But the cameraman had swung the camera to follow the security detail. A goon, one of the original Houston goons, had come out of the house behind the offices. The goon froze when he saw the camera catch his exit. Three long strides brought him to Mike Jensen. Jensen listened carefully. He was taking orders. Gently as he could, he took the camera away from the cameraman. The producer protested, but the other security men swarmed and he was kept away.

The goon melted away.

Seconds later, that goon and another were patting me down and removing my gun in the foyer of the back house. Johnny Bannion's cooing singsong cadence bounced from the hallway. “Well, I had said I wanted to meet with you, Mr. Hewitt, and Maya said she would undertake the assignment. She was confident of success and I can see her confidence was warranted. Did she remember to assure you of your safety?” He put out his hand and the goon put my gun in it.

“I can't remember.”

“Thank you, Maya, dear.”

It was a dismissal. Her half smile could not hide her hatred for him. He held his Cyclops gaze on her, soaking in the venom until she broke off and moved down the hallway he had just come from. Bannion faced me and forced his fat baby cheeks and doughy lips into a saggy half smile. “You and the boys have never been properly introduced, have you. Neil Bess, Gethin Berry . . .”

He spoke deliberately, wanting me to take note of the names. The goons were dismissed and went outside, where the video camera had been tamed. Bannion turned his gaze along the hallway after the shadow of Maya.

“She used to love me, you know. Truly loved me. Painful knowing it will never come back. Can't stop checking, though, looking for any feeling. Like with a missing limb. What's that called when you prefer to feel the pain instead of just nothing?”

“Hope.”

“I think you know exactly what I mean, Mr. Hewitt. We both know what it takes to keep us feeling alive.”

“You think we're alike?”

“You're here, Mr. Hewitt. Halfway around the world, armed and outnumbered. I take that as the proof.”

He was sincere, or the closest he could come to it. He managed to reverse the purpose of sincerity. He used it to show how transparent and vulnerable I was: I had not duped him, could not dupe him. He handed over my gun. “Only a fool would travel around these parts without a gun, and I don't want to be in business with a fool. Come along.”

Twelve of the thirty or so desks were occupied on the second floor of the office building. Industrial gray carpet, weak lighting, and maps pinned to the walls gave the office the feel of a short-term rental. Computer screens were planted everywhere. Cases of Coca-Cola were stacked beside the men's room door. Two large shisha hookahs sat on an unused desk. Houston goons occupied four desks in a supervisory cluster set up facing all the others. Bannion made the goons stand for our introduction. Again, he spoke their names slowly, wanting me to catch them. It seemed the names were some sort of waving flag I was supposed to be looking at while the magic trick was performed with the other hand. But I didn't know what the trick was. As a distraction, the goons were effective: a bunch of guys getting their knives out. That was fine; I expected that much. It was the forks that bothered me.

“We contract for the security of events and locations all over northern Iraq. And for visitors, as you saw outside. The boys supervise and monitor the operations from the borders with Turkey and Syria to Kirkuk, where things are often quite tense. We employ over a thousand guards at any given time dealing with threats and some very real violence.”

It was a pat sales speech. The million dollars that passed between us was forgotten. I missed his tone of bullying condescension, replaced now with synthetic confidentiality.

“He cares as much about this part of the operation as I do. This is the ‘we make do without you' part of the game. He wants to con you. He wants to be conned,”
Dan said.