War of the Encyclopaedists (30 page)

INK AND SKULL

37

This iiiiisssss 107.7, Freedom Radio. Rock On
!

The waterproof stereo floating in the kidney-shaped pool blared 50 Cent's “Candy Shop.” Big pink human beans splashed around, not having too much fun without female company. And the sunburns, my God, the sunburns. The scorching air—elsewhere bone-dry and flecked with gasoline and gunpowder—was a steaming aerosol of chlorine, suntan lotion, sweat, and grilled hot dogs. Big Costco Polishes. The kind served up at backyard barbecues in Fayetteville, NC. But this wasn't Fayetteville. Luc had brought Tricia to the American embassy in Baghdad, which was housed in the old Republican palace. And what would anyone do with a palace but have pool parties.

“You're right,” Tricia said. “It
is
like a frat house.”

Three young men were looking at her from the other side of the pool, posed like a movie poster for the Three Musketeers. Two wore wraparound Oakleys. One took a swig out of a giant water bottle filled with fluorescent blue liquid. Tricia felt the compulsion to look busy but had no cell phone to fiddle with.

Luc pulled his shirt off and said, “Go on,
allez-y
.” Tricia glanced at the sparse black hair on his chest—it was economical and subtle, like a miniature Chinese garden. She peeled off her dress, revealing her green bikini, pleasantly aware of the Musketeers' gaze. She wondered if Luc saw them looking at her.

“And what big story are we looking for here,” Tricia said, feeling awkward in the ensuing silence.

“Due time, due time,” Luc said. “It is necessary to arrange security.”

“Are you talking about Blackwater? We can't be running around with—”

“No, not Blackwater. I'm looking to get some locals. But not just some kid off the street, you know? Ah, hallo, he's here already.” Luc waved across the pool at a row of occupied lawn chairs with plastic parasols. “Give me a minute, okay? I need to catch up with this guy, and then I'll make your acquaintance. Have a dip.” Luc headed off around the side of the pool without waiting for an answer, making a beeline to a sunburned, slightly chubby, middle-aged white guy. Tricia fished some sunscreen out of her bag and began rubbing it on. The radio was now playing Destiny's Child.

Everything here was so different from her expectations that she had to remind herself she was in Baghdad. The city she'd come for lay outside the embassy, among crumbling tenements and piles of garbage, where a traumatized populace struggled to survive the fallout of their liberation. She felt ready to engage them; she'd been memorizing her Arabic phrasebook, studying maps of the Green Zone, researching Iraqi cultural norms. She hadn't been working on her crawl stroke.

They had come in from Amman yesterday on a small Royal Jordanian flight full of Filipinos, Europeans, and the odd non-government-affiliated American aid worker. The only other way in was through US military air from Kuwait. Baghdad International itself was a US government operation full of military traffic, with lines of troops marching on and off big propeller-driven Air Force planes. They looked like lines of worker ants, shuffling across the tarmac under the almost comical weight of bags and guns and assorted Army stuff. Luc and Tricia had sat in a plywood waiting area until their driver came to take them on the hair-raising ten-mile trip to downtown, keeping prudent distance at all times from the Army convoys barreling through with guns pointed everywhere. They'd reached the Palestine Hotel at dusk, and Tricia barely had the energy to carry her bags up to her room before falling asleep.

Luc was still ignoring her in favor of the pudgy guy. Several older men padded by, speaking in Army-type jargon complete with code names that Tricia guessed stood for people or bases or groups of sol
diers. She slid into Saddam's pool, which was so highly chlorinated that it fizzed slightly when she disturbed the surface. What the hell was she doing in Baghdad, swimming? She had told herself that she wasn't going to be a passive little puppy at Luc's heel. She was going to define the terms of their working relationship. And so far all she'd done was follow his suggestion to have a dip. Great. She watched out of the corner of her eye for the Three Musketeers, watching her out of the corners of their eyes. Then felt stupid for caring about poolside flirtations. Especially with these guys. She thought back to her freshman year, when she had been persuaded to attend one of the Columbia Rugby Club's spring parties. After many months of collegiate life in the Big City, she'd finally been Hit On, Neanderthal-style, by a drunken rugger who'd told her that her tank top had “a good fit,” just the way she had it on, “like that, all [unintelligible] like that.” She shut him down and went to sleep happy that night but had to keep the crowing about it to a minimum, as he had more luck with one of her friends.

She spotted Luc waving for her to come over. She swam straight there in accordance with his impatient hand gestures and regretted it as soon as she hauled herself out of the water and walked in her soaking-wet bikini toward the two men.

“Tricia from Harvard, yes? Luc tells me you're a first-rate scribe. Pleasure to meet you. Barney.”

Barney's accent came through big English lips and a face that sported the hot blush of a Liverpudlian drinking beer in the desert. He smiled drunkenly as he took her wet hand in his, which was hot, meaty, and sunscreened.

“Likewise,” Tricia said.

“Lovely, lovely to have you. Anyone fancy a lager?” He held up his bottle and pointed to both of them in turn. Before they could answer, he said, “Brilliant. This way,” and led them to a small plastic table.

From a distance, the Musketeers way outclassed Barney, but she suspected they would turn into Blackwater assholes up close. Barney was on the downslope, the way he was day-drinking. Luc was explaining that it would be difficult to follow up on rumors and interview locals in the city now that the insurgency seemed to be picking up the pace. He seemed to be asking about hiring mercenaries.

“We specifically don't take on locals, though,” Barney said. “Because of the security risk.” He was looking at Tricia, as if undermining Luc were a method of hitting on her.

“How are locals less secure?” Tricia asked.

“Because they know the people you'll be interviewing, so they'll be in a spot to wheel and deal for some blond American hostage, you see? But if you hire security from Kurdistan, right, their loyalty is to you alone, and they've got no love for the locals.”

“And the locals don't trust them.”

“Precisely. So they won't make an offer. It's far less hazardous. You don't fancy yourself Nick Berg, right? You know, some of these jokers will take your head off even if you're not Jewish, won't they?”

Luc was about to speak, but Tricia drowned him out. “Of course there's risk,” she said. “But our purpose here should mitigate that risk, especially if we have locals to explain what we're doing.” Luc seemed annoyed and stared at the pool. Tricia's projected confidence wasn't having the desired effect. She glanced at Luc's navel and the wispy happy trail dipping into his shorts.

“Doubt Zarqawi will look twice at your press badge, love,” Barney said. “No offense.”

Tricia rolled her eyes behind her Ray-Bans. A cannonball impacted the deep end of the kidney-shaped pool. The dark, lean Musketeer laughed, arms crossed on the pool's ledge as his compatriot came up for air. He looked over at her as she looked at him.

“I'll bet
you
could get one of them to do it for free,” Barney said, following her gaze.

“Funny,” Luc said.

“Yeah, I'll go ask,” Tricia said with a snide smile. Luc touched her arm softly to stop her.

“That a problem?” she asked. Luc backed off, and Tricia strutted over to the pool, feeling powerful in the aura of his unease.

But the feeling evaporated as soon as she slid into the water. She pulled herself forward and under, wetting her hair, trying her best to feel relaxed amid the chaos. She swam a few lazy half-laps, then parked herself in the corner not far from the Musketeers.

“Not from around these parts, are ya,” the lean one said.

Tricia acted vaguely annoyed. “You don't look very Iraqi yourself.”

“I am from Adhamiyah, only half-kilometer away!” he replied with a forced accent. “Why you come to my country?”

Tricia glanced back at Luc, who was not looking in her direction, though Barney was.

“I'm an unembedded journalist,” she said. “We're looking to hire some personal security.”

The Musketeer smiled awkwardly. “You're already talking to the right man,” he said, nodding back toward Barney. “But if you're looking for a personal masseuse—I might be convinced—”

“Seriously?” Tricia climbed out and walked back to Luc and Barney.

“It's not simply whether they can hit a target, right?” Barney had gone so far as to set down his lager on the white plastic umbrella table. “If you hire some tosser off the street who doesn't know how to handle a weapon, you'll end up with him emptying a magazine when he gets nervy. They're dangerous. You need someone with a bit of professionalism or you're better off on your own.”

“Well?” Luc said, finally turning to Tricia.

“He said to talk to Barney,” she muttered.

“Everyone loves Barney,” Barney said.

Tricia gulped her beer.

“You've got some Kurds?” Luc said reluctantly.

38

The Volkswagen Rabbit pulled out of the Palestine Hotel's barricaded lot and swung east down Karada Dahil. Tricia sat in the backseat with Yasmin, the translator Luc had hired, and looked out the window at the machine-gun towers looming over the traffic circle outside the American checkpoint. She was embarrassed by the sight. Yasmin was carefully applying lipstick with a tiny travel mirror as the car rattled south to the edge of the peninsula. She puckered her lips and turned to Tricia. “Do I look good for kissing?”

“Do you look good for kissing?” Tricia repeated, smiling awkwardly. “Hah. Okay.”

“Okay, what?”

“Yes, you look kissable.”

Luc's head did a quarter-turn of annoyance from the front passenger seat. “How far?” he asked their driver, Adan.

“Not far,” he replied. Adan was also the “security” arranged for them by Barney the Brit. He had taken to them immediately, which was reassuring, although Tricia suspected it was because he was an outsider here and had no one else to befriend. He was a Kurd from Sulaymaniyah, in the north. He looked like he could have been a graduate student at MIT except for the boxy cut of his black suit, which he wore with an open collar.

After a few blocks, Adan slowed down to check the houses against the description he had written down in a notepad. They were looking
for a house that had been hit by a mortar last week. The election was just around the corner, but there was plenty of random violence in Baghdad and Luc wanted to get a local, nonmilitary perspective on the stability and security of the city. The house in front of them was a blocky sandstone affair. Tricia found it weirdly reminiscent of bad L.A. suburban architecture, made ramshackle by bundles of hanging wires.

Adan parked the Rabbit, retrieved his pistol from the armrest, and jiggled it into the holster under his jacket. They walked up to the steel front door of the house, which had a cheap decorative inlay, painted green. Yasmin stood by Luc. Tricia was behind them both, trying to look vaguely Iraqi with the scarf Yasmin had helped her tie on earlier. Adan stood a few feet behind her.

The door opened on a boy who looked to be around thirteen. Yasmin asked him a few questions. The boy answered and then called into the house. An older woman appeared with a head scarf and a gray dress. Grandma? She and the boy pointed out into the street.

“She says the boy's father was hit by a bomb in the street.”

Tricia flipped open her notepad and jotted that down as they walked out toward a small gouge in the concrete with some scorch marks around it.

“She says it flies in here and hit her son when he is standing next to his car.” Grandma raised her voice, jabbing a finger at the gouge.

Yasmin translated as Luc snapped some photos of the scorched hole. The heat of the late morning had just broken some strange threshold, and a small volume of sweat trickled down Tricia's back. She had the feeling that she was writing way too much, but she'd figure out how to pare it down for the actual article. Her first. Luc said he'd find her the right photo and the article would write itself. Yasmin was telling them that the man was at the hospital, but they didn't know when he would be back. They didn't seem to think he was in danger of dying. “She says there is another bomb in the back of the house.”

“What, inside the house?”

“No, behind the house. It is still there.”

Luc glanced at Tricia excitedly.

• • •

They followed the woman behind the house. Her long, gray dress swished as it trailed over the rough-brushed concrete. She stopped at the edge of the patio and pointed at a small greenish metal object half-buried in the brown grass.

“Whoa,” Tricia said.

“Let's not get too close,” Luc said, holding a hand out to keep her back. “That is definitely a mortar.”

A door opened and another young boy came out of the house, carrying a plate with cans of iced tea on it.

“
Shukran,
” Luc said.

“
Shukran,
” Tricia repeated.

The cans were cool to the touch but nowhere near cold. Tricia smiled and popped hers open. She sipped its cloying sweetness and stared calmly at the mortar as Yasmin continued talking to Grandma.

“I'm telling her that it is dangerous, but she says it is been here for almost two days.”

“Have you called the police about it?” Luc asked, fishing through his camera bag for another lens.

“She says the police want too much money,” Yasmin said.

“Maybe I can find some soldiers at the embassy who could come over and take a look at it,” he said to Tricia. “I know some of the Brits and Australians.”

“You don't want to ask the Americans?” Tricia said.

“I'd be concerned about that, as they often don't treat civilians very well.”

“The Brits do? There's an unexploded bomb in her yard. Seems like a risk she should take, maybe.”

“I'll ask someone at the embassy. Yasmin, tell her I'll try to get someone to take that bomb away.”

“She wants to know if you can just take it,” Yasmin said.

“No, we can't handle explosives. It could go off.”

Yasmin translated, and the woman raised her eyebrows and looked to the sky, nodding in a way that seemed oddly sarcastic to Tricia. Though how could you ever really tell when your mannerisms and cultural cues were worlds apart?

Luc walked off with his phone to his ear, looking as important as
he could. Grandma began talking to Yasmin and gesticulating. After a few exchanges, Yasmin turned to Tricia. “She says that she will tell her son to take it when he gets back from the hospital.”

“That's ridiculous.” Tricia glanced back at Luc, then lowered her voice. “Why can't we just ask the American troops?”

“I think here, in Baghdad,” Yasmin said, “you must call who you know. You help to someone and later they help to you.”

Of course Yasmin was right. Luc was making use of his contacts. But in a broader sense, shouldn't they be currying favor with the most powerful force in the region, the group that could help them—and impede them—the most? Luc would never. But that wouldn't stop her from making a few inquiries.

Luc returned with a satisfied grin. “Yasmin, tell her that I left a message for some Australians at the embassy who may have bomb disposal teams that can help her with this.”

“How long will that take?” Tricia asked. “There's an American checkpoint around the corner.”

Luc glared at her.

“Fine. Then can you ask her what she thinks about the election?” Tricia added.

As Yasmin spoke, the woman put a hand to her heart; she avoided looking at Luc. Tricia wondered if this was because older women were not supposed to look at men. Yasmin jotted down notes as Grandma answered her questions. The suggestion of a breeze crept through the alley from the sluggish Tigris, putting pressure on the heavy air without quite being able to move it. Adan kept looking back toward the street. He seemed nervous. There was a smell in the air of tar or trash mixed with dirt. It was a little like Mexico, Tricia decided.

“She is doubtful,” Yasmin said. “She does not think the election will change anything. Still there will be bombs and guns shooting in her neighborhood. And there is not enough gasoline, she says, for cooking and heating.”

Tricia nodded while transcribing. Luc took a few photos of the mortar. They thanked the woman and headed back to the Rabbit.

“This is perfect,” Luc said as they climbed in. “If you can get this written up tonight, we'll send the piece off to Matthias at
Truthout
.”

That was it? Time to write the article? Was this supposed to be breaking news? An unexploded mortar in Baghdad. “Maybe we should talk to some people who haven't been mortared,” Tricia said.

“That's not a story,” Luc said.

“I thought we wanted to get a local picture of the stability of the city.”

“I just did. It's a picture of a live mortar in that woman's backyard.”

“I'm not trying to be difficult,” Tricia said.

Luc turned to look back at her as Adan weaved through traffic. “Tricia. Think about the size of the embedded media machine, sitting behind the fence, pumping out stories vetted by the military. It will take all our efforts in collecting stories like this to counter that even a little. Okay?”

Tricia sighed.

“Your first publication from Baghdad,” Luc said. “You should be excited.” He smiled. She forced a smile and a nod until he sat back in his seat.

The Rabbit turned onto the arterial, and the checkpoint's gun ­towers reappeared in the distance. Yasmin reached across and held Tricia's hand, like she was some college friend in a taxi after a breakup. Tricia swallowed hard and looked out the window at a small clutch of boys bouncing a soccer ball between them in an alleyway. The Rabbit began the slow curve around the traffic circle, a black barrel from a gun tower lazily tracking their progress.

“. . . We are shutting down all traffic in central Baghdad while the polls are open. Details on further precautionary measures will be kept secret for security reasons until the day of the elections. Yes, Jim.” The press colonel nodded toward a reporter in the front row. Tricia had seen his press badge when they'd walked in.
Washington Post
.

“I understand that over seven thousand candidates on the electoral lists are choosing to remain anonymous for fear of being assassinated. Understandable, given that at least eight political leaders, including Baghdad's provincial governor, have been killed in the last month. Why not postpone the election until voter and candidate safety can be guaranteed?”

It was a good question. How were voters supposed to make informed decisions if they didn't know who the candidates were until they reached the ballot box? Luc had told her that going to the press conference would be a waste of time, that she'd get nothing but propaganda. But she'd insisted. It was insane that he thought she could write a decent article about the Stability of Baghdad on the Eve of Elections after visiting a single house. She at least had to hear the official Coalition story.

“A delay will only prolong the increased violence we've seen this month,” the press colonel said. “It will also likely bolster the insurgency, whose campaign of violence has been aimed at derailing the vote.”

Tricia was trying to come up with questions to ask (although she didn't quite have the guts to raise her hand, sitting as she was in the cheap seats behind the “actual” reporters—the ones paid by official news outlets). She was also listening to the press colonel's answers, comparing them to everything she knew, and trying to divine what they were intended to convey or hide. She looked around at the reporters in front of her and was a little chagrined, but not surprised, that she didn't recognize anyone. Of course she didn't—these were journalists, not anchors or talking heads. Luc had pointed out to her some people he knew from
The
Chicago Tribune
and
The New York Times
. And she'd been furtively glancing at people's press badges, noting multiple APers and a woman from
Bloomberg
.

“Bullshit,” whispered the guy to her left. Tricia looked at him and he leaned closer. “They know the violence won't decrease post-­election. The major Sunni parties are boycotting it. The Shiites will vote themselves into power, and then we'll probably have civil war.”

The press colonel was wrapping up. “We ask all journalists to use extreme caution tomorrow,” she said. “To abide by the prohibition on automobiles and to be very careful to avoid any behavior that could be construed as attempting to influence the elections.”

The press conference began to break up. “I'll introduce you to some people,” Luc said to Tricia. “Just give me a minute.” He walked off toward the front of the room.

Tricia turned to the guy who'd whispered to her. “Who do you work for?” she asked him.

“I'm with AP. Ivan Volokh.”

“Tricia Burnham, nice to meet you. I'm with IPS.”

“IPS?”

“Interpress—”

“Oh yeah, yeah. Unembedded, right? You a reporter back home, too?”

“Well, no. I'm at the Kennedy School.”

“You're a grad student? Hell of a study abroad!”

Tricia laughed, trying to cover her sudden annoyance.

“You having fun with it? Hitting the journo parties and all that?”

“Journo parties?”

“Oh, God. It's like Sarajevo, basically. I suppose you're a bit young, but in Sarajevo there was the same deal—danger, uncertainty, stress. It's inevitable. You end up having terror sex.”

“Terror sex?”

“Oh, yeah. You've never had an affair until you've had one in conditions where you could get kidnapped or killed pretty much every day. It's intense.”

“I'll look forward to it,” Tricia said. She was realizing that this Ivan character was some kind of conflict-journo slacker who studiously affected a deep cynicism and aloofness from the profession. Either that or he was trying to hit on her. She didn't like him.

She ducked away from Ivan when she saw Luc walking up with a tall woman in a blue suit. “They could easily be lying,” Luc was saying. “Ah, Tricia. This is Kate. Kate's with the
Tribune
.”

Kate shook Tricia's hand, then ignored her. “No. Actually,” she said. “Because if the Coalition lies and we catch them, they have egg on their face. They'd much rather mislead or misdirect, leave things out. It's no less deceptive, but the public doesn't have the context, so they'll never get called on it. We can pretty safely assume that nothing they're saying is a straight-up lie, which means we can probe the edges of what they don't say. If it were all bullshit, coming here would be a waste of time. Why do you think we show up?”