“Quite.” He put the spoon up to his mouth again. A line of red clung to his upper lip, looking unpleasantly like blood. “We’ve got a big, big presence here. The Registry, I mean. You won’t read about it in the press, but it’s true. Still,” he said, “this one site, we’ve held off on. Till now.”
He let me eat a little more. Then he asked me, “Interested?”
“Why should I be?”
“Well—it’s a job, for one. And you’re professional.”
“Not good enough.”
“You’re Field Ops.”
“That’s on my card.”
“What’s more—” He leaned back, one hand stroking his wrist. I wondered if he could still feel the scars, even after all this time. “What’s more,” he said, “you’re proud of what you do. No, Chris, you are, I’ve seen you. You take a real pride in it. I know this because it’s—well, it’s one reason I’m not in Field Ops anymore.”
He gave a small, self-deprecating smile.
I held off asking for as long as I could. Then I said, “Go on.”
“Simple. I saw it mattered to you, that’s all. But to me, it wasn’t like that. It was a job. To you—it was important. Getting it right. Doing it well.” He shrugged. “I had some bad experiences, and . . .”
“Well. We’ve all had that.”
“You got out for a time yourself, I heard.”
“Few years, yes.”
“But you got back in! That’s what I mean! With you—it’s in the blood, Chris. It’s what you do. And—well. This job’s special, like I say. You’re going to want this job.”
“Try me.”
“This is—this is probably the oldest entity so far identified. It goes back, I don’t know, thousands of years, at least. Hm?”
“OK. Risk of death aside, I’ll say that I’m intrigued.”
“I’m giving you the chance to be alone with it. Take a day, a night, however long you want. Talk to it. Commune with it, if that’s what you do. Because you know that once you get it back, you’re never going to see the thing again, don’t you? It’ll disappear into some workshop or research facility, or get left in one of those big bloody storerooms for about ten years till someone works out what to do with it.” He made a gesture with his hands, placing an unseen bundle on the table. “What I’m offering you—what I’m offering is a chance. To know what it knows. I can’t promise, but I can give you the chance. And I think you’ll take it, won’t you? Yes?”
I didn’t answer him.
“You’ll take it, because—well. Because somewhere in the world, there’s a god walking around with your face, and that bothers you. I’ll tell you, frankly,” he pursed his brow, “it would bother me.”
He raised his water glass, watching me over the rim of it.
“Half right,” I said. I raised my own glass, made to clink with his, but then pulled back. “It hasn’t got my face,” I said. “Not anymore.”
“No?”
“Update your intelligence.” I put the glass down carefully in front of him. “One of us got older. I don’t suppose it looks much like me now at all.”
Chapter 2
Night Moves
At 3 a.m. Baghdad is almost quiet. The restaurants and cafés are in use, but nobody goes in or out. The doors stay shut. Diners who dropped in for an evening meal stay on till 5 a.m., when curfew lifts and everyone goes home. It’s like the world’s biggest lock-in. Equipped with papers and an escort, you can stand there in the dark and listen to the music drifting from a window twenty yards away. It’s dream-like, spooky . . . laughter on an empty street. Nighttime in the land of ghosts.
And then the trucks start up. Big engines grumble, big tires grinding in the dirt. Another US convoy setting out. They move at night, each night—but this time would be different. This time, we were going with them. Out of town, and then a few miles more. After which, the plan was, they’d head one way, and we—well. We’d be on our own.
It was just as Dayling had described it. One truck, retrieval gear stowed in the back. A local guide named Nouri, chain-smoking his PX Marlboros, occasionally remembering to blow the smoke out of the window. Carl was the driver. Heavy forearms mottled with tattoos, accent probably Glaswegian; the most I’d had from Carl so far had been a quick, obligatory, “All right?” when we’d shaken hands. After that, it was all business. He seemed sharp, confident, experienced. Somehow that didn’t altogether calm my nerves.
We drove with windows down. I could smell petrol fumes. A dog barked somewhere. Then, astonishingly, children’s cries. It was the middle of the night, but on a half-cleared bomb site in the ruins of the city, kids were playing soccer. They paused to watch us pass, ready to run if need be. Instead we waved to them, and someone in the Humvee up in front yelled, “Go Colts!” and the kids called back, “Beck-haaaam!” and the game went on.
Nouri clapped his hands.
“You see? Only the children now are brave.”
“How’s that then, Nour?” asked Carl.
“Because the rest of us,” said Nouri, “we lock ourselves away. We say, yes sir, no sir. But the children, they don’t care for stupid rules. They do as they please!”
“They’ll care if they get shot,” said Carl.
“No one likes getting shot, I can be damn sure. Especially by interfering foreign squaddies like yourself, eh? No offense,” he added, amiably.
“Ah, none taken, pal. None taken.”