War of the Encyclopaedists (33 page)

“I would have, too, Tricia. Jesus.”

“Well, he doesn't explain anything. That's the real problem. I ask questions and he gets annoyed that I'm trying to figure out how to maneuver in this war zone. What you can do, what you can't. So I'm left just doing things and figuring out the consequences later.”

“Now you know how the Army feels,” Montauk said. “Ba-dum-tshh.”

41

“Wooah, ho ho ho,” said Jackson softly. “Worked
over.
”
He reached down to the Chinese walkie-talkie tied to his vest, and the news started wending its way through the platoon like word of some prodigal's return to a snowbound village.

“It's Ali Gorma?” Joh said into his walkie-talkie, resting in the shade of the Priority bunker behind the fifty.

Yeah
. The voice wasn't quite identifiable through the cheap handset, but probably Ant.

What the fuck does he want?
Thomas, over the talkie net.

Sergeant Nguyen is talking to him.
Jackson again.
Looks like he got hit by a steamroller.

Montauk stood on the lower lip of a T-wall, looking out over the traffic circle. He had his walkie-talkie switched on, the better to monitor the platoon chatter, although as a rule he responded only to official communications on the company net, which presently came alive with the voice of Staff Sergeant Nguyen.

Two-Six, Two-Two. Can you come down to Routine Search?

“Two-Two, Two-Six. On the way.”
Montauk spat out some dip and hopped down from the T-wall. The soles of his feet felt hot and tender in his boots, and he knew they'd be reeking when he pulled his socks off.

Ali Gorma was indeed worked over. He had on his usual baggy trousers and a button-up, but his cheek was covered in gauze, and a
huge shiner spread across his eye up to his forehead. The tip of his nose was scabbed over, and his arm was in a sling and covered in more gauze from wrist to elbow. The gauze was crusted over with yellow fluid that had seeped through.

“Ali Gorma. What happened?”

Nguyen replied for him. “Says he got beat up by the AIF, sir.”

Montauk led him up the lane toward the command post, walking slowly to accommodate Ali Gorma's new limp.

“Somebody attacked you?”

“Yes, they attack me.”

“Do you know who it was?”

“Yes, I think so.”

Montauk racked his brain for relevant episodes of
Law & Order
. Gorma had not been back to the checkpoint since Montauk had fired him last week. He was now coming in to report that he'd been attacked by terrorists, probably for working with Montauk's platoon. Did Gorma want protection? Montauk was fairly certain that 3rd Brigade was not in the witness protection business.

He felt like he was about to enter the familiar drill of listening to a local's grievance, saying he'd forward the concerns to his commander, and
Insha'Allah,
something would be done. He'd come to think of Baghdadi complaints as if they were complaints from girls—
stop trying to fix everything,
an ex once told him.
Just listen to me.
If Gorma really was attacked for (barely) working for Montauk, wasn't he taking another big risk by coming back to talk with soldiers? Aladdin's dead face materialized in Montauk's head. He threw it out of his thoughts, something he'd been getting better and better at.

Montauk pulled out a plastic chair for Ali Gorma in the CP. He laid his rifle on the desk's plywood top and fished a couple of cold Mr. Browns from the recycle bin. “So. First of all, I'm sorry you were injured. I hate to see you like this. Can you tell me what happened from the beginning?”

Gorma shifted in his chair and glanced at the satellite map of the checkpoint taped to the concrete wall. Sunlight passed through the city's haze and the CP's camouflage netting before settling on Gorma's
bandaged face and oiled black hair. “I receive a note on my door, and it is from mujahideen, saying I work with Americans, and they kill me if I work with Americans.”

“When did you get this note?”

“I get it last week.”

“While you were still working here?”

“No, no, just after.”

“Do you have the note?”

“What the note?”

“The note on your door? Do you have it?”

“No, no. I put in garbage.”

From behind his desk, Montauk could see the apartment buildings across the street, with their crazy lattice of wires and rooftop satellite dishes. Electricity had become a free-for-all in occupied Baghdad; people regularly climbed telephone poles to splice wires into the power lines so they had extra sources of power during brownouts. Down on the street level, hidden from Montauk's view by T-walls, a ring of trash bags was stacked three high against the building like some putrescent buttress system. Montauk decided to play chief inspector, since he didn't really have a choice.

“You threw it out. Of course. Do you know where the trash bag is?”

“No, I don't know.”

“It would help if you could find that note and bring it to us. It will help us to identify your attackers.” A growing part of Montauk felt disassociated from the present moment and viewed the conversation from above. How absurd it sounded. Second Lieutenant Montauk asking former translator Ali Gorma to dig through trash bags to find a note from the AIF. It would never happen.

“Hmm, okay. I will look for it.
Insha'Allah, Insha'Allah
,
I will bring it to you.”

“Did they contact you again before the attack?”

They had not. Ali Gorma had been walking home after visiting one of his uncles in the neighborhood just southeast of the checkpoint when a car slowed down next to him, a revolver pointed out the window. Three men got out of the car and walked him into the alley and
beat him and stuck the barrel of the revolver in his mouth. Montauk scribbled the details in his notebook with a ballpoint. His handwriting was like a personal encryption.

“It is the same men, I think,” Gorma said. “The same who kill Aladdin.”

Montauk stopped writing. After nailing his proverbial gold doubloon to the mast and slogging through that week of useless interviews, Montauk had done his best to quash any hope of finding Aladdin's killers. It wasn't going to happen. He knew that. And it distracted him from his job. But now it all came rushing back at him, that anger, that desire for black, metallic revenge. Holy Christ, if those motherfuckers had done a number on Gorma, then maybe he'd find them after all.

“Do you know them?” Montauk asked.

“Only one. His name Abdul Aziz.”

“How do you know him?”

“He lives near to me.”

“So he's not Al-Qaeda from Yemen or something. He's Baghdadi.”

“Yes.”

“Sunni or Shia?”

“I think he is Sunni.”

“You think? You don't know?”

“I know. He is Sunni.”

“Is he working for Zarqawi? Muqtada al-Sadr? Someone telling him what to do?”

“No, no. I don't know. Maybe Zarqawi, but—”

“Oh right, because Al-Sadr is Shia, but Abdul Aziz is Sunni.”

“Yes, yes.”

“So, where does Abdul Aziz live?”

“He live near Karada Kharidge.”

“Near the middle traffic circle?”

“Yes.”

“In an apartment?”

“Yes. Babil Apartments.”

“What apartment number?”

“I think he is number eight.”

“Abdul Aziz, Babil Apartments, number eight. Near Karada Kharidge.”

“Yes.”

“Can you point to where it is on the map?”

They walked a few steps to the T-wall, and Ali Gorma pointed to a spot on the satellite photo with his unbroken arm.

“Wow, that's close,” Montauk said. And it was—a little over half a kilometer southeast of the checkpoint, in the Mansour neighborhood, nestled in a twisted knot of buildings and alleys that reminded him of a trip to Naples with Corderoy, the rooftops and upper alleys hung with wash, spidery electrical wires. Montauk began to calculate the number of troops he'd need and whether he could fit a Bradley down into that neighborhood.

“Yeah, it's really close,” he said again.

Montauk sat across from Captain Byrd and handed him the photos of the building. He'd marked an
X
over the door that Ali Gorma had identified as the apartment of Abdul Aziz.

“You trust Gorma?” Byrd asked.

“He was lazy,” Montauk said. “But I doubt he'd lie to my face. And someone clearly did a number on him. Gorma says it's the same guys who killed Aladdin. We have to do something, sir.”

“I hear you. Can't lose any more translators. We oughta hit back.”

“I asked Olaf to search the Connex for a battering ram,” Montauk said.

“What's the scheme of maneuver?” Byrd asked.

“Third squad goes in, Second on perimeter security, First in reserve in the alley.”

“Work up a full brief,” Byrd said. “I'll approve it—
if
the intel is any good. I ate a mouthful of shit last month when Third Platoon booted a family out of their house at gunpoint—including Grandma and baby—because intelligence said they were AIF. I don't want to get burned again.”

“Understood, sir,” Montauk said.

“You find me some corroborating intel, and we'll do this, Montauk. Until then, no dice.”

42

The barber brushed lather across the stubble on Luc's chin and upper lip.

“Mustache, no?” the barber asked. It took a few back-and-forths of pointing and head shaking to convince him. He gave a slight shake of his own head at the end and dutifully took the straight razor to the long stubble on Luc's upper lip, the barber's own luxurious mustache twitching slightly as he did so.

Tricia was transfixed by the music video playing on the barber's screen—in it, an Arab pop star in a flashy suit sang to rows of hot video-girls wearing hijabs and dancing on a set of stairs in a mansion. It was a weird combination of Biggie and Bryan Adams, but with an Arab/Islamic sensibility, or at least with girls who covered their heads (but not their midriffs).

“I heard back from my friend at the IPS,” Luc said. “They loved the mortar piece and want to see more work from us.”

Us? You mean from me? It was like he was pretending he'd never chastised her for visiting the polls, or for wanting to hear the military viewpoint at the press conference, without which her article would have been little more than a snapshot of a mortar in someone's backyard. “That's great,” Tricia said. She had been keeping one eye down the hall, where Bravo Company soldiers could be seen trooping across G. H. W. Bush on the way to the dining facility.

“And I found another lead this morning. A family that was booted
out of their house by the Army. Bad intel, it seems. Thought they were insurgents. We'll try to track them down this afternoon.”

She'd had a few false alarms when stocky young white men with short brown hair and Army uniforms passed through her field of vision. This one looked like him, though. Yes, it was him. “I'm going to the dining hall,” she said. “Meet me in there.”

She wandered past the vendors and fell into line a few people behind Mickey. He signed the roster in silence and continued toward the buffet. A moment later, she signed and was let through, wondering what kind of contract Halliburton had that they were feeding her for free. She caught up with him at the tray dispenser. “Hey, let's talk. I only have a couple of minutes.”

For once he dispensed with arrogant witticisms and followed her straight back to a side table before hitting the buffet line.

“You get my e-mail?” Montauk asked.

“Yeah, so you think it's the same guys who killed your last translator?”

“Maybe. That's why I need your help.”

“What can you tell me about him?”

“About Aladdin?”

“You know that's not his name.”

“No, that's his name. Was, anyway. And that guy over there is Muhammad Ali. So is that guy. Seriously. Anyway. He was a student at Baghdad University.”

Montauk handed Tricia a picture of Gorma and his injuries, then an image of Aladdin he'd printed off the black-and-white LaserJet in the TOC. It had been taken on his first day of work for the company database of possibly useful Iraqi portraiture. He was standing up against the T-wall of the CP with a bit of the checkpoint map jutting into the frame behind him. The grin he wore was not quite familiar to Montauk; it looked like his usual grin, but there was something more hesitant or tremulous about it around the eyes. Probably because it had been his first day.

“He looks nice. Why did they kill him?” Tricia asked.

“Because he was nice. Because he worked for me.”

“That's it?”

“What? Yeah, that's it. I actually can't tell if you're fucking with
me. You are aware of the insurgency, right? Car bombs? Dead bodies everywhere?”

“Excuse me for being curious,” Tricia said. “And stop being a jerk. I can take these to Yasmin and see if she can ask around. You have a suspect?”

“We do.”

“It would help if you gave me a name and address.”

“Can't. I need an independent confirmation. If you give Iraqis some guy's name and ask them if he's a terrorist, they'll be like, ‘Yeah, sure, whatever.' ”

“That's what you think Iraqis are like?”

“Yeah.”

“Aladdin, too?”

“Well, no. Look, if I give you a name and the confirmation comes back yes, I can't evaluate that. But if you can somehow get a name that independently matches the name I got, that suggests it's real.”

“Okay.”

“Independent confirmation.”

“I got it.”

“Obviously, I'm not counting on this. I just feel like you probably have more access to the locals than I do.”

“Ya think?”

“Stop breaking my balls, all right? I'm fighting for justice here. That's not even a joke, I'm being serious. I'm fighting for fucking justice.” As soon as he said it, he felt proud and moral in a way he hadn't until that moment. Maybe it was Tricia's presence. But he still wanted to drive a spike through the killer's eye socket. That was okay. Vengeance and justice weren't mutually exclusive.

Tricia was struck by his seriousness. When she'd met him in Boston, he'd seemed to be some sarcastic wit, bopping through life.

They noticed Luc's appearance at the table. Tricia slid the photos into her pocket. Luc said, “Tricia. And is it . . .”

“Mickey.”

“That's right. And how do you know each other again?”

Tricia looked at Montauk. “He went to college with my roommate in Boston.”

“So you went to university. And then you chose to come here.”

“I was ordered to come here.”

“I thought you were all volunteers.”

“We volunteer for the military, in my case the reserves, but deployment orders are based on what unit you're in.”

Tricia had also assumed that Mickey had volunteered for Iraq. She noticed his face beginning to darken and wondered if he disliked Luc because of a rivalry over her or because he was annoyed at the line of questioning. She felt fatigued and wanted nothing more than a long, cool shower followed by a long sleep in a cool, soft bed with the crisp New England night outside her walls. She'd lived like a princess back in Boston, in comparative terms. Her insulation and airflow and midshelf sheets and coffee press were items of luxury never seen or perhaps imagined by the vast majority of humans in history, and probably, no, definitely not by the majority of people in the world today. And yet that was her default, what she'd grown up in. Tricia forced herself to focus.

“. . . I don't fight for Bush. We follow Bush's orders because he's the president. If Kerry won, we'd be under Kerry.”

“And if he was elected unconstitutionally?”

“So we should all break out the UN Charter or whatever and give it a good read, and if we decide in our wisdom that the war is unlawful, then we should just turn in our stuff and go home?”

“Why not?”

“Gee, I never thought of that. I'll go ahead and spread the word, maybe we'll have a mass desertion. Then we can storm the White House, oust that charlatan cartoon villain, and install a military junta.”

“This is a serious question. If the war isn't lawful—”

“Well, on that note, I'm gonna grab me some chicken parm or whatever they've got. When we get to D.C., I call the Lincoln Bedroom. Trish, a pleasure, as always.”

Tricia gave him a quiet wave as he stalked off. Luc turned to her with a smile that was halfway sad. “I don't quite get it. Does he not understand these issues or does he just not care about them? I usually assume it's a little of both, but he's been to university.”

“Maybe he thinks it's complicated.”

“Oh, I don't think it's so complicated. I think people pretend that it's complicated so they don't have to make the hard choices.”

It sounded like something she had said a dozen times. She still believed it, mostly.

Three days passed. The usual potshots. The usual VBIED scares. Another anonymous body in the river. Then, finally, Montauk received an e-mail from Tricia saying she had something for him. He hopped out of the Millennium Falcon after his shift and went straight to the Al Rasheed. He strode over Bush's face. The sheen of sweat exposed to the air was chilled far below his body temperature, though he was cooking sous vide inside his armor and fatigues. Molly Millions bounced gently against his chest as he walked past the elevators and barbershop and into the Al Rasheed's café.

He found Tricia sitting at a table sipping a Turkish coffee and smoking a Gauloise. “Pretty liberating, right? Smoking right here in the hotel?”

She exhaled. “You can do it in France.”

“It's banned on dirigibles these days.” He rested Molly against the booth and began taking off his armor. The Velcro made a loud tearing sound as he opened it up, and he actually felt a gust of hot air escaping as he slid out of it and exposed his soaked uniform blouse to the air-conditioning. She was wearing a tight tank top under a khaki safari-type jacket.

“How's everything going?” she asked.

“It's kind of dragging right now, to be honest. Pretty boring.”

“That's good. Isn't it?”

“Found another body under the bridge, so that was something. It's getting harder and harder to get the cops to deal with the corpses. Maybe you and Luc could set up a side business in riverine corpse disposal.”

She glared at him.

“Sorry.”

“Is this a good place to do this?” she asked.

“No. There's a place upstairs. C'mon.”

Tricia left five bucks on the table and followed him back down the hall to the elevator bank. Montauk looked around warily but didn't see anyone he knew. The door opened to an empty elevator, and he followed her inside, his nerves picking up at her proximity. He dropped his armor and hit the button for the seventh floor. He was acutely aware of how desperate he was for her and how easily that desperation could cause this whole operation to fall apart. Operation Horizontal Blonde. Operation Urgent Sex. Just the scent of her in the enclosed elevator was making his heart pump faster. The old tragicomic paradox about girls and action was that the more you needed it, the less likely you were to get it. A little tension was a good thing, though. The seventh floor was empty when the doors opened. Down the hall and to the left, to the infamous Room 710. It was unlocked and relatively clean. He ushered her in and locked the door behind them. Fly casual.

“Did this place get bombed or something?”

“It got hit with a rocket last year when the place was full of CPA types. It was kind of the opening salvo of the insurgency. There was an Air Force colonel in here at the time.”

“Did he die?”

“Something like that.” From what Montauk had heard, the Air Force colonel had been distributed across the walls and ceiling.

A tarp was duct-taped over the window where the rocket had come in and detonated at the foot of the bed. The wallpaper was torn up, but they'd replaced the bed for some reason. Montauk piled his gear against the wall and took out a green Army-issue notebook. Inside was a folded paper where he'd copied down several of the incident reports in the neighborhood. The sound of large truck engines wafted through the rippling window covering. Tricia sat down on the edge of the bed beside him and took the paper.

“I translated some of the Army-ese for you. It's probably a patois you should learn a little of, anyway. Do you get what the grid squares mean?”

“Hmm.”

“Because the thing is, if you take a bunch of military grid squares
and just give them to Luc, he'll probably assume I gave them to you. Or at least that you got them from some US Army source.”

“Right.”

“So I think our options are: one, you get ahold of your GPS, plot the points, and turn them into street intersections; or two, I could plot the points myself, but that will take me a while, and you might start getting day-old intel.”

“And we have to stop meeting like this,” she said.

“Of course.” He looked at her lips, then back at her eyes. “It ain't free, though.”

She shimmied out of the safari jacket and retrieved a scrap of paper from a front pocket. Montauk noted that it was not necessary to take off the jacket in order to reach that pocket. Her breasts were cupped snugly in the green tank top. He peeled his eyes away reluctantly to check the proffered paper.

Abdul Aziz, Babil Apartments, #8, Karada Kharidge
. That was the place. He stared at it for a few seconds. Holy shit. The analytic side of his brain was in a brownout due to the power demands of the animal side. “So I just gave you the pictures and names of the translators, right?” Montauk asked.

“Yeah, that's what we went off of.”

“So who came up with the info?”

“I went through Yasmin. She asked around. I didn't pry too much.”

“Okay, wow.”

“Is it right?” Tricia asked.

Independent confirmation. The raid was on. They were going to get that scumbag. He looked back at her. She was the picture of soft youth, a cool mind and driven spirit, padded out with just the right dimensions . . .

“Yeah,” he said, and folded it back up, smoothed it out, and buttoned it into his own chest pocket.

“What are you going to do?” she asked, putting a hand on his chest.

He pushed some hair back from her forehead and slipped his hand behind her neck and kissed her. She gave a soft moan and kissed him back, draping her arms around his shoulders. “My God, you're soaking wet!” she said.

He laughed, unbuttoned his sodden uniform top, and threw it over his gear. He started unlacing his boots. “You know what? I'm going to give my dogs a rinse.”

“What?”

“Sweat is one thing, boot sweat is another. Just give me a sec.” Montauk's feet were absolutely swollen and soaked. He stumbled over to the bathroom, peeled off his socks, threw them in the corner, and quickly rinsed off his feet in the sink, balancing awkwardly on one foot and then another. He had some kind of tropical foot rot going on for sure. He turned around, and to his huge relief, there she was, on the edge of the bed, smiling at him.