Nouri was watching me.
“You are worried, friend.”
“I’m fine.”
“He’s worried,” said Carl.
“I’m cool.”
“Worried.”
I stared into the night, my head filling with visions, daydreams, near hallucinations: some crazed gunman charging at us from the dark, some nutter with a grudge and a Kalashnikov, or else some mad old woman strapped with gelignite— “No,” I said. “It’s going to be an easy job, I think. Once we’re there I’ll do a survey, and then we’ll know—”
“The job. Aye. Right.”
“OK.” I looked from one of them to the other. “I’m worried. That suit you? Shit scared, if you want to know. How’s that?”
“Only a fool,” said Nouri, “isn’t worried.”
“I don’t do this. Places like this. Jesus—”
“Aye. And you can tell your boss, your Mr. Dayling, we don’t bloody do it, either. Not without some preparation and the full security, no way. Still,” Carl said, “here we are. So I guess we do do it, after all. And so do you.” He sucked air between his teeth. Then he said, “Want lessons?”
“Lessons?”
“Aye. Iraq 101. War for dummies. You want ’em?”
The whole time he’d been talking, he’d been looking at the road, the darkness either side, the country slipping near enough invisibly along beside us. He hadn’t once looked at me.
Maybe that was my first lesson.
Chapter 3
The Car Wreck
There was a strange effect, almost an optical illusion, which I noticed once we’d left the other vehicles and moved out into open country. The lights from the truck lit up a little of the roadside, giving the impression, not of flat land, but of two low walls running on either side of us. We seemed to be passing through some quiet residential suburb—the weird illusion I was still in England. For some reason, this soothed me, and in spite of my anxiety, I found myself starting to doze, drifting off into this dreamy little fiction.
Darkness peeled back slowly over palm trees, telegraph poles, little houses squat as pill boxes.
Then sunrise. The heat came almost instantly, like switching on an electric fire. Nouri blew cigarette smoke through a half-inch crack in the window. We passed a small boy leaning on a staff with goats all round him, like something from the Bible.
Mirages of lakes, water on the tarmac up ahead, folding into nothingness as we approached . . .
I nodded off awhile, dreaming of home. Then Carl shook me awake.
“Huh? What?”
He jerked his head to indicate.
There was something in the road. Dark shapes, what seemed to be the roofs of vehicles, then a movement, detaching itself. A man walking around as if wading in water, ripples shifting all about him . . . but no water. Obviously. The light moving instead.
“On the floor.”
“What?”
“Floor. Now.” Carl wasn’t offering debate. “Our mission is to protect you. Down.”
I sank into the footwell, but kept myself propped partway on the seat, peeping out.
“Might be nothing. Might be legit. Safest to assume not.”
I heard a click, realized Carl had his pistol ready.
“Oh fuck,” I said.
Two old Toyota flatbeds had been pulled across the road. There were four or five men in the uniform of the Iraqi army; a bunch more sitting or standing at the roadside. Carl pulled up a way before them, waiting for them to come over. They beckoned him, but he wouldn’t move. “Down,” he said to me. I was on my hands and knees now. Nouri’s tennis shoes were right next to my face. He wore no socks, and I could make out every detail of his ankles, every curl of hair, the red blotch of an insect bite on one leg, the scabby graze above his ankle.
I heard him wind the window down, call out in Arabic.
Someone threw a sheet across me.
And I waited. I heard talking. Nothing I could understand. I tried to analyze the harsh, guttural syllables, desperate to work out what was happening. Desperate and scared. It seemed to take a long time. Then I caught the salaam of good-bye. I heard an engine start; one of the flatbeds moving out the way. “Stay down,” said Carl. We crept forwards. We were well away before he let me up.
“What’s that about?” I said.
Nouri reached a hand down, helped me back into my seat.
“Nothing, my friend. Just a check. They say there is a car smash up ahead. A mile, maybe two. Is all.”
I looked at the pair of them. “You knew we were going to be OK, right?”
Nouri showed his palms. “If we are good, we are good. If not . . .”
Carl said nothing.
“You knew it was legit? The roadblock?”
“Aye, well.” Carl lit up a new cigarette. “Truth is, the other kind can look legit as well, sometimes. You never know until it happens. Aye?”
“True, my friend. Very true. You never know until it happens.”