News From the Red Desert (37 page)

R
ami Issay hovered as Rashid Siddiqui pried the crate open. When the nails squealed and the top board pulled up, packing foam flowed out and then the grey metal can holding the filmstock emerged. Rashid reached inside and withdrew it. Neither of them could breathe for a moment. Then they saw the title.
Batman Returns.
They both exhaled in one long breath.

“We have no debacles to amuse the television people.”

“Don't worry, boss. You're going to be a star.”

“We're all going to have our lives changed by this, my boy.”

“Well, you mostly. But it's okay. I'm happy for you.”

“You will see. All our lives will be different.”

“Even Amr's?”

“Amr is implacable, my dear boy. He allows his life to change exactly as much as he wants it to.”

“Most of us don't have as much control over things as that.”

“Most of us want too much.”

“Is that you, saying this?”

“I know, I know, I hear the irony. But with my recent successes, I see
the folly of wanting excessively. I have been reading about Buddhism. It's very grounding, they say.”

Rashid looked at him like he had just claimed sainthood. “Well, let me know how that goes, boss.” He set to further unpacking the crate.

“I think, Rashid, that I may be self-sabotaging.”

The younger man looked up at him.

“I mean it. It all feels a bit too much. Major Horner says Mr. Barnett says he is going to fly me and my family—and my friends, too, I'm sure, don't worry—to LA to complete the shooting and promote the series launch. It sounds incredible. My daughters will walk the red carpet. They will admire me. How can any of this be true?”

“Well, think about the Buddhists, boss. Don't get carried away.” He took out the other four cans of film, all marked
BATMAN RETURNS
.

“I may need some sort of therapy.”

Rashid turned to look at him.

“Not now. Later, in California. Jungian, maybe.”

“You are joking.”

“Of course I am joking.”

“I was going to tell you to just enjoy the ride, but clearly you are.”

“No one has been better prepared to enjoy this than me. After the misadventures of the last several years, I am ready to enjoy some good luck, I promise you.”

“Have you told your family about this?”

“Not yet.”

“Does Mr. Burnett not ask about them?”

“Sara Miller has asked.”

“You do not want to discuss this.”

“I don't,” Rami Issay agreed, amiably. “And anyway, I have work to do. Major Horner is as excited about this television program as anyone else. He wants a report on the preparations for tonight.”

Major Horner called Rami Issay a few minutes later to confirm that the screening was a go.

“Of course it is.”

“Which film showed up?”

“Batman Returns.”

“Thank God.”

“Our Ramstein trickster seems to have developed a conscience.”

“It was either that or Leavenworth. I will not be embarrassed in front of these studio people.”

“I think they found the story amusing. I think they will be disappointed to learn that the joke is not being continued. They want to use that story in the pilot, they say.”

“Who said that? Miller?”

“Ms Miller did, yes.”

“What else has she said?”

“A million things.”

“I should have had you keeping notes.”

“There would have been too many. I could have worn a wire.”

“Don't mock me, Mr. Issay. I have a fair amount of influence over this project.”

“Oh, I am not mocking you, sir. I don't know why you would think that.”

“When will the screening start?”

“At sunset as usual, sir.”

“I will see you at sunset.”

“Sir, we will save you a seat, sir.”

“Stop that.”

Fazil looked up as Sara Miller and Chayse Simpson walked into the café. Following them was a new face, a man apparently just off the flight from Kabul, wearing crisp L.L.Bean outerwear and Ray-Bans. The two women appeared very interested in demonstrating to him how fascinating the café was. Rami Issay leapt off his chair and ran to greet the TV people with obsequious good humour.

Anakopoulus had thought that he would not go to see the
Batman
movie, but the day was so warm and bright that his anxiety had lifted a little. He had a feeling that there were no longer quite as many eyes looking for him as there had been. Probably just wishful thinking.

Rob Waller sat on his cot and packed the open barracks box in front of him. His report, concluding that the leak could not be traced to any specific sender in KAF, had been on someone's desk for just six hours when the order to return to Baghdad reached him. Proof of how in the shit Iraq was now, how much they needed more actionable intel, especially from people who understood the battlefield and, consequently, what the “actionable” part of that phrase meant.

He would be perceived to have failed, but he did not view the responsibility for finding the leaker to have been properly his. If it were not for his SF background he would never have been given this assignment. Against his every expectation, he looked forward to getting back to Iraq, to looking at weapons and reading pieces of paper and partially burnt maps. Data-trolling was not for him.

Anyway, for all the discussion about the all-seeing eye of the state, from what Waller had seen, the brain behind that eye was too limited to use that data. What they needed was more humans to read the millions of words of telephone transcripts and emails that accumulated every day in their files. What they needed, ultimately, was a human observer for every five or six humans in KAF, to read their letters and emails and to listen to their telephone calls. Which would be one sort of world to live in. He had rebadged into intelligence because he wanted to concern himself with the big picture. Instead, he had spent his time here immersed in the small picture of normal people's lives, reading transcripts of telephone calls between lonely soldiers and their wives/husbands/boyfriends/girlfriends.
This managed to make him feel even dirtier than he had after watching that CIA sadist interrogate the terp. That was as low as he thought he could go. Back in Baghdad, he would sharpen up his Arabic and think about al-Qaeda in Iraq and work on understanding its organization, methods and aims. He would do the work of an officer in the intelligence branch of the US Army. Rather than in the KGB.

He had wanted to get back to Afghanistan, with its mountains, bright blue skies and clean air. And now he couldn't get out of here fast enough. He put the last of his socks in the barracks box. Next came the undershirts. Fuck. This place had been the model he had used to illustrate how far astray Iraq had gone.