The Wreckage: A Thriller (16 page)

Picking up the plastic bags, he steps outside and pul s the door shut, pushing the bolt across and reattaching the police tape. Then he knocks on neighboring flats. After a long wait a door opens.

“I’m not buying anything,” says a pale man with red hair and doleful eyes.

“That’s good,” replies Ruiz. “Were you home the night before last?”

“I already told the police everything.”

“What did you tel them?”

The neighbor looks at him nervously. “Nothing!”

Ruiz stands motionless, letting the silence work its magic. The neighbor fidgets. Scratches. Shuffles his feet.

“I did see this one guy run down the stairs. He almost knocked me over.”

“What did he look like?”

“I only saw him for a second.”

“What color?”

“I don’t know. Muddy.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Foreign looking. I think maybe you should leave this guy alone.”

“Why’s that?”

The neighbor hesitates, stil scratching his crotch. “He had a look, you know, like he came into the world with nothing except a name.”

“Dangerous?”

“Hungry for something.”

23

BAGHDAD

Daniela laces her fingers and stretches her arms above her head. She’s tired—her own fault—too much sex and too little sleep. She has laid out dozens of documents on her desk, placing a shoe or a lamp or a glass on them because the ceiling fan is stirring the air.

Alfred Nilsen has come back to her. The Pentagon won’t approve her request for information regarding Bel wether Construction. Instead she has been given a brief corporate profile in which Bel wether claims to employ 25,000 Iraqis on 315 different construction projects.

The work on Jawad Stadium was subcontracted to a dozen different Iraqi companies, each linked to a Syrian-based corporation cal ed Alain al Jaria, which in Arabic means “Ever-Flowing Spring.”

Ironic, thinks Daniela, as she looks for an office address in Baghdad but can’t find one.

Glover appears at her door. He’s wearing a basebal cap with a picture of a camel riding a surfboard.

“Can you tel Shaun to stop humming?”

“Humming?”

“He hums this one song. It’s driving me crazy.”

“What are you—six years old?”

Glover looks aggrieved. Pouts. Tilts his head. “You look different today.”

“In what way?”

“Happier.”

Daniela can feel blood warming her cheeks. She changes the subject. “What did you want?”

“I found something you might want to see.”

As she fol ows him down the corridor, Glover keeps looking over his shoulder, uncomfortable about letting a woman walk behind him. The IT room has a bank of computers and shelves stacked with software manuals and ring binders.

Shaun is outside the door listening to an iPod and humming loudly. Daniela pul s an earphone from his ear. “Stop teasing the puppy.” He grins at her and then at Glover, who flips him the bird, having to hold down some of his fingers.

Glover speaks. “You wanted to know about Jawad Stadium. During the invasion it became a shelter for Iraqi families and then a compound for the US Army Motor Pool.

“It’s one of the bigger footbal venues in the city. The Iraq Footbal Federation applied for the rebuild. The contract was awarded in 2005 to Bel wether.”

“Did you get a copy of the contract?”

“Take a look.”

She glances at the screen. Someone has scanned the paperwork but not before meticulously using a thick-tipped marker to black out details including names, dates, addresses, phone numbers and the signees. The file had been stamped “classified” with a Pentagon seal.

“So this is it?” asks Daniela.

“I managed to pul up a company address. It’s a post office box in the Bahamas.”

Glover adds, “There is a separate interim report from 2007. There were delays with some of the work. The wrong seats were delivered. The turf was coming from Sweden and got stuck at the border for three weeks. Died.”

Daniela looks again at the anomalies. These problems could explain some of the duplicate payments. Each amount is under $200,000. This meant that a PRT commander could approve the payments without going to the next stage of review.

“Bel wether subcontracted the work to Alain al Jaria, a shelf company based in Syria. There must be local paperwork.”

“It’s probably in Arabic,” says Glover.

“Get it translated.”

Daniela knows she is overstepping her remit. Nilsen had been very clear that she should not go further back than May 2006, but this isn’t natural wastage or an oversight. Most of al she’s annoyed by the blacked-out sentences. She can picture an entire department of faceless public servants in the bowels of the Pentagon, hunched over desks, wielding black marker pens. Too lazy to actual y read documents and make informed decisions, they label everything as “classified” and “top secret,” blanking out every name, address and number.

She runs her finger over the hidden text before turning away.

“I’m going out for a little while.”

“Where?”

“An excursion.”

Jawad Stadium is in a safer area of the city, but Shaun and Edge stil aren’t happy. The journey wil take them through Baathist strongholds, including al-Haifa Street, once known as

“sniper al ey.”

They spend twenty minutes plotting a route and then briefing a security team. Edge wil be in charge. Two vehicles. Four bodyguards. Shaun wil stay behind with Glover and the rest of the security team.

Daniela fol ows the instructions without complaint. She’d prefer to be with Shaun, but holds her tongue. The cars arrive. Two Ford Explorers. Armored. Ful y armed. She’s escorted down the steps by Edge and Klosters, his second in command.

The doors shut and the cars are moving, weaving between barricades and joining the main road heading east along the river. The vehicles rarely pause, taking detours rather than risk getting stuck at bottlenecks or at checkpoints. Some of the side roads are dusty tracks between houses and apartment blocks.

The stadium is visible from half a mile away. First the lighting towers, then the covered stands that look like a series of arches, giving the impression of a sporting cathedral. Built in the 1960s, the stadium was a gift to the Iraqi government from a rich oil family. In the 1980s Saddam told architects he wanted it redesigned as a possible Olympic venue.

They reach the main gate. A grizzled Iraqi with a woolen hat and yel owing teeth emerges from a prefabricated hut. Behind him, the parking lot is littered with debris, broken concrete, discarded tires, drums and plastic bags. Weeds are growing through cracks in the tarmac and a broken water pipe has created a lake of oily black water.

Edge offers the caretaker a dinar note. He pockets the money like a conjurer and leans on the counterbalance, raising the boom gate. As the cars rol past he salutes Daniela, lifting his right arm and revealing a stump where his fingers used to be.

They park in the shade of the southern stand and climb a filthy stairwel to the top tier. Emerging on to a concrete ramp, there are banks of seats on each side and tiers that spread around the stadium. The playing surface is a muddy field, churned up by tank tracks and truck tires. The bleachers are pockmarked by bul et holes and riddled with cavities where the seats have been torn out, burned or broken. One of the light towers has crumpled over the players’ entrances.

Edge looks at Daniela.

“Is this what you expected?”

“No.”

She takes a smal digital camera from her shoulder bag and begins taking photographs. Edge lights up a cigarette and watches her move between seats to get better angles.

“Why are you so interested?” he cal s out from behind her.

“Does this stadium look rebuilt to you?”

Edge blows out a stream of smoke. “Iraqis don’t go in so much for finishing things.”

“It was an American company.”

He shrugs. “Maybe they’re running behind schedule.”

“Work was supposed to have finished two years ago.”

Edge spits into a puddle. “Wel , I’m glad someone is making money.”

Daniela glances at him with undisguised loathing.

“Hey, lady, don’t go giving me that look. Let me tel you another story. An army buddy of mine got a bul et in his back, lodged in his spine. Paralyzed from the waist down. They flew him back on a C141 to Andrews, lying on a stretcher, surrounded by amputees and invalids and guys who were pissing, puking and dying. Even the healthy ones were fucked. Stateside they spent a week getting debriefed. Then their CO told them to go home, kiss their girlfriend and walk the dog. Walk the fucking dog—do you believe that?”

“They signed up to fight.”

“Most of them couldn’t piss straight with a hard-on. They were recruited straight out of school from Buttfuck, Idaho, where the only jobs were working in the local chicken factory. So these kids get to thinking, if they join the army, they get to go on this big adventure overseas and shoot at shit, which has got to be better than pul ing chicken guts out of a carcass for the rest of their sorry fucking lives.”

Edge spits again. Wipes his lips.

“I was one of them. I did more than a hundred patrols in this shithole country. I rode on tanks and flew in choppers and got rocked by roadside bombs. I lifted bodies on to trucks and built boxes to send them home. Now I’m here to make money. I’m here to kil or be kil ed, but I’m not going home poor. I’m going to suckle on the nipple until the milk runs dry.” Daniela lowers her gaze, stil appal ed by his uncouthness, but with a better understanding of his motives.

A distant explosion thumps the air, rattling the metal pipes and roofing iron. It’s fol owed by an exchange of gunfire that lasts almost five minutes, punctuated by the wail of sirens.

Ambulances. Fire engines.

They listen in silence, picturing the chaos.

Edge slings his weapon across his chest.

“Time to go.”

24

LONDON

A note flutters beneath the wiper blades of the Mercedes. Not a parking ticket. The doors are unlocked. Ruiz glances inside and sees a large orange envelope on the passenger seat.

Walking slowly around the car, he crouches to peer beneath the chassis, checking the wheel arches and drive shaft. Four years in Northern Ireland taught him to be careful. Standing upright, he studies the street. Opposite there is a school with an asphalt playground. Boys kick a bal between painted posts on a brick wal and girls sit in groups on the benches. A dark blue Audi is parked on the corner. Engine running. Ruiz is no expert on cars. He doesn’t watch
Top Gear
because Jeremy Clarkson is further right than Donald Rumsfeld and only half as funny.

The car is too bright and shiny and new. Out of place. Stepping on to the road, Ruiz walks towards it, but the Audi begins rol ing further away from him. As he speeds up, so does the car. Cutting a corner, he tries to close the gap. Twenty feet away, the Audi accelerates. Gone.

He chastises himself. Dogs chase cars. His knees are hurting, a dul thudding pain, muscle memory from the rugby field, old injuries. Hol y’s clothes have spil ed from the plastic bags he dropped. He gathers them together and tosses them on to the back seat. Then he pul s the note from beneath the wiper blade; a single page. Handwritten.

Dear Mr. Ruiz,

We think this was stolen from you recently. You should have it back. This should pay for your daughter’s wedding and make up for any losses. It’s an intel igent alternative to poking your nose into somebody else’s business. We think you have something of ours. If you return it promptly you can double your reward.

The envelope contains two neat bundles of banknotes: four, maybe five thousand pounds. It’s not the money that worries him. It’s the fact that these people know about Claire and the wedding. It’s less a bribe than a warning.

Flipping open his mobile, he dials the number at the bottom of the note.

“Nice of you to cal ,” says a voice. American. Educated.

“Have we met?”

“I know you by reputation.”

“You left me a package.”

“Money owed.”

“I don’t think so.”