“I need your help,” he said.
And in a life spent saying many, many stupid things, I said one of the stupidest.
I said, “OK.”
His name was Dayling, Andrew Dayling, and I’d last set eyes on him about ten years back, at a Registry get-together in Berlin or Berne or somewhere. It only stuck inside my mind because at one point he had taken me aside and told me he was leaving Field Ops. “I mean, you can’t do this forever, can you?” He’d asked me for advice. I’m not sure what I said and don’t imagine it was any help, but he’d seemed pleased, and for my own part, I’d felt flattered to be asked. (I found out later he’d approached a half a dozen others at the same event, each in the same hushed, confidential tones. But never mind.) He’d closed the conversation with a running joke, a little gag we used to do that always made him laugh.
He’d asked me: “Any tricky jobs lately?”
“Yeah,” I’d said, waited a beat, and he’d joined me in the punch line: “All of them.”
He’d grinned and clapped his hands together. “Later,” he’d said, and, as I’d assumed, walked straight out of my life.
Till now.
He hadn’t changed a lot. His face had filled out—too much bamia, perhaps—and his hair was touched with gray; there was a look of strain about the eyes, maybe, though no worse than I’d expect from living in a place like this. I’d recognized him instantly. In a profession that accepted, even fostered, certain shows of eccentricity, Dayling had been resolutely straight-edge. A shirt-and-tie man through and through. Today he wore a linen suit, stained under the arms, his tie held with a small pearl pin. He looked every bit the Englishman abroad, remnant of an empire long ago dissolved and vanished into memory. We had been friends once, or, more accurately, friendly. We’d worked jobs together, kicked back and relaxed when we were done. He was charming, attentive, usually good company. Yet when he’d left the field, I hadn’t kept in touch, and didn’t know anyone who had.
Nonetheless, it should have been an amiable reunion. It should have been a lot of things. Most of all, it should have been a different job.
“I was told this was a quick assignment. In and out. Not a bloody two hundred mile trek through warring desert tribesmen. Come on—”
“Hardly tribesmen. They’re pretty sophisticated these days.” He raised the lid on the bowl nearest him. “This isn’t Lawrence of Arabia, you know.”
“Shame. I know how that one ends.”
“The militias here are well-armed, and they’re ruthless. I won’t lie to you. But it’s a hundred to one that you’ll run into them. I’ll tell you: you’re in a lot more danger here and now than you could ever be, out there.” He spooned a reddish tomato-smelling stew into a bowl and handed it to me.
Well, I thought, if I was going to die, I’d rather do it on a full stomach. Perhaps the bamia was worth it after all.
He said, “You are currently in one of the most over-crowded cities on the planet. Killing’s easy here. It’s a daily occurrence. And they don’t discriminate. You’d think that Shia would kill Sunnis, and Sunnis would kill Shia, but it’s not like that. I’d feel safer getting out of here myself. Who wouldn’t?”
“I’d feel safer back at home, watching it on telly with my feet up. Personally.”
This he ignored.
“One truck,” he said. “Middle of nowhere. Unscheduled. Visible, it’s true, but tough to hit. If anybody’s bothered. Which they won’t be.”
“Comforting.”
“We have a bodyguard lined up, former Royal Marine. Scots chap, top man, handles our security. Very reliable. He’ll be assigned to you directly.”
“My very own Scotsman. Is it my birthday?”
He laughed now, as if I’d actually said something funny. It ended quickly.
“The interpreter’s a local man. Again, we’ve worked with him before. He’s sound. You couldn’t be in safer hands.” He put his own hands on the tabletop and spread his fingers. “Really, Chris. Would I steer you wrong? Try the stew. Go on. Just try it.”
So I tried the stew.
“Good?” he said.
I nodded.
I looked at his hands, the knobby wrists protruding from his sleeves, so tanned they looked like they’d been dipped in paint. And I remembered, years ago, a girl saying, “But have you seen his arms?”
I hadn’t at the time, and it was quite a while before I did.
“The thing is, Chris, see—thing is this. It’s all a bit hush-hush, and I’m sort of . . . restricted in what I can tell you. But the fact is, you were recommended for this job. More than that. Requested, as it happens.”
“Yeah. Well, I’ve made enemies.”
“How’s the bamia? Good, I hope? I’d suggest the kibbeh or kofta to follow. You can eat well here if you know the right places.”
“And you don’t get killed.”