The Girl in Green Read online

  ‘I have this theory that everything you truly need to know,’ Arwood said, ‘I mean, deep down and for the duration, can be learned from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. The fact that there was no sequel only proves that there was nothing left to say. To me, the army is Principal Ed Rooney, and you need to be Ferris.’

  ‘If I go, you won’t tell anyone?’

  ‘I’m not paid to keep you in. I’m paid to keep them out.’

  ‘They don’t have Ben and Jerry’s. Mostly popsicles. Also they might not have any. There were economic sanctions after Kuwait was invaded, and there’s been a war since. And it could melt by the time I’m back.’

  ‘I’m prepared for you to take that risk.’

  ‘Are you sure you’ll be there when I return? I don’t want to get shot as I approach the checkpoint. How’s your eyesight?’

  ‘Come back the way you came. I’ll be here all day. Same bat time, same bat channel.’

  ‘I don’t have any money,’ Benton said.

  ‘No charge, dude.’

  ‘No, for the ice-cream. I need to buy it. I’m not going to steal an ice-cream, am I?’

  ‘I … hadn’t considered that,’ said Arwood. ‘You don’t think he’ll be friendly, and give you one?’

  ‘He might, but it’s presumptuous. I think it’s inappropriate to ask, and if he gives me a gift it’s customary practice that I return the gesture with a gift of my own.’

  ‘It really is like a whole different place over here, isn’t it?’ Arwood was no longer leaning on the gun. He had perked up like a flower exposed to sunlight at the thought of an ice-cream. ‘I don’t have any money either. What kind of gift?’

  ‘Something of the same value and significance as an ice-cream, otherwise he’ll feel further in my debt and want to even things out, which is not what we want here,’ Benton said.

  ‘OK …’ Arwood bent down and pulled a comic book from his rucksack. ‘How about this Amazing Spider-Man #312, Green Goblin versus the Hobgoblin? It’s from 1989, and I paid a buck. It isn’t current, but the trade is only for an ice-cream, so I think it’s fair. There’s got to be some kid over there who hasn’t read it yet.’

  ‘I don’t know if they read comic books.’

  ‘Jesus. How foreign are they?’

  ‘Fine, give it to me,’ said Benton, who stood up, dusted himself off, and put the comic book in his own rucksack, beside his camera and incidentals.

  ‘So you’re going?’

  ‘It’s half-twelve now …’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘It’s twelve-thirty now,’ Benton translated, ‘and I figure I can walk there in half an hour, spend about three hours or so interviewing, and be back by four o’clock, which is well before dark. You’re sure you’ll still be here?’

  ‘I’m on until eighteen hundred.’

  ‘I really don’t want to get shot coming back.’

  ‘I will not let anything happen to you. I promise.’

  ‘All right then. Audaces fortuna iuvat, right?’ said Benton.

  ‘I don’t know about that, but Ferris got Mia Sara.’

  2

  Benton drank from a bottle of water as he walked toward Samawah under the blue dome of heaven. His feet were hot. He wore cheap socks that were woven with nylon and polyester. He knew better, but had still done nothing about it when it came time to pack. They couldn’t breathe as he stepped from rock to rock across the broken earth toward the squat city and its muted people. This always put him in a mood.

  Closer, he found the small city unremarkable. He might have been in Jordan, or the West Bank, or Bahrain as he looked at the flat roofs and the canopy of satellite dishes made dirty from the sand and the winds and the absence of rain or the social pressure to clean them. Around the city was its litter — the discarded refrigerators and tyres, the bed frames and canvas bags. There was no topsoil. There was surely a proper reason for this, but Benton imagined that too many feet had walked here for too long in search of too much.

  He approached a derelict oil truck in a wide and unused parking zone. Someone had painted, in giant white letters, ‘We want Fredum. Bleads help Iraq peple.’

  Benton put the empty bottle of water back into his satchel, intending to throw it in a bin later.

  He checked his watch. Dhuhr prayer was around 11.30 a.m., and Asr prayer shouldn’t be until around three-ish. He figured he had a workable window to get oriented and at least conduct a few discussions.

  Towns have eyes in the Middle East. This one, however, felt blind — as though it were resting in the midday sun in preparation for a long stretch of work in the cooling night yet to come.

  A boy appeared. He was thin, about twelve years old, and carrying a platter of glasses of tea over his shoulder like a French waiter. The boy wore sandals and had thick black hair. He was unhurried, and focussed on his task of delivering tea and lunch to the shopkeepers.

  When the boy saw Benton, he stopped and fixed himself to the earth, paralysed. Eyes wide, he was motionless until an inner force shot into his limbs, making him jerk erratically. He twitched his head right and left and back to Benton, as though Benton might issue instructions that would end his indecision. Benton could hear the glasses rattle on the thin, silver platter as they amplified the boy’s vibrations and started dancing to the arrhythmia of his heart. Soon enough, the cups could not keep up. One by one, the cups fell, smashing themselves on the hard earth, and the sweet water poured from the platter onto the boy’s feet, scalding his exposed toes and forcing the boy to join in the dance he had inadvertently started.

  Hopping in pain, the boy dropped the platter, and he turned and ran as fast as he could, back the way he had come.

  Not loudly enough, not by a long shot, Benton called out, ‘I’m not going to hurt you. I promise.’

  But the promise never reached the boy’s ears, and in a moment he was gone.

  Alone again, Benton trudged toward the first buildings and into a narrow alley between them. It was shadier between the buildings, and cooler. He paused to scratch one foot with the other through his leather boots. It was unsatisfying. He’d have to take the boot off, and perhaps the sock as well.

  Kneeling with his shoe untied, Benton heard a rumbling ahead of him, through the mouth of the light and narrow alley. It sounded like water. It was an impossible notion, but he half expected a tidal wave to come bursting into the passageway, a crest of salty white foam gushing around him to his waist, to flood his boots and cool his feet.

  It was only when they were almost upon him that he understood the sound as a wave of human voices, foreign and excited.

  His shoe tied, he stood and looked back, unconvinced by either choice of staying or going. The choice was made for him as he deliberated. They poured in as a flood to a wadi. They were silhouetted by the bright light of the Iraqi sun, and in that moment they overtook him and drowned him. Hands gripped him, and he shielded his face as people started pulling him, surrounding him, and pushing him out into the city. They called and yelled in Arabic. His bag was pulled from his shoulder, and he was no longer sure of anything at all.

  He shouted for them to wait, but his voice failed him for the second time in Samawah. There were too many people, and too much emotion. When his head struck something hard, he fell to the ground.

  Benton did not pass out. He was, however, bloodied and incapacitated. Two men were holding him up. They smelled bad. Their shirts were made of cotton and were sweaty. He couldn’t see their faces. There was blood in his eyes. It came from his head. He raised a hand to find the source. He was pulled into a building and then pushed into a chair. There was a voice.

  ‘American?’

  Benton couldn’t see who’d asked the question. The man was standing too close. The smell of all the people was overpowering. The sunlight was poking through the spaces around the man’s face and through the shoulder
s of those around him.

  ‘American?’ the man said.

  ‘I’m British,’ Benton said.

  ‘American?’

  ‘British, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘English?’

  ‘Yes, yes. I can’t breathe.’

  The dark face in front of him yelled something in Arabic and then stood up, pushing the other people back. He shushed the people around him, bringing silence, order, and calm.

  He handed Benton a cloth and a bottle of water.

  ‘Thank you,’ Benton said.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m Thomas Benton. I’m a journalist with the Times. I’m here to understand what’s happened and to learn what you’re all going to do next. I’m … I’m hurt. I don’t want to upset anyone or get anyone else hurt. Can we talk?’

  There was mumbling and then Benton said, ‘Do you speak English?’

  ‘Yes, yes. Everyone speaks English. Everyone-everyone. You are not American? You are not here to help us?’

  ‘No. I’m a journalist.’

  In the quiet and uninterrupted moment that followed, Benton was able to look around and see where he was.

  He wasn’t in a cave dwelling or an Iraqi torture chamber. He wasn’t even in a boxy apartment with barred windows and a dubbed Western television set playing in the background. He was in a pharmacy — a pharmacy that stocked L’Oréal hair products and Halls lozenges, and was having a twenty per cent–off sale on reading glasses if you used 1.50 magnification and didn’t mind wearing orange.

  The man who had been too close stood back and pulled a white plastic chair across the concrete floor. Sitting, he rubbed his face with a tissue and placed it in his jacket pocket.

  ‘What is going to happen to Saddam?’ the man said.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Benton said, wiping his own face with his red bandana.

  ‘Saddam. We need to know what you are going to do with Saddam. What is our future?’

  ‘I came here to ask you the same question.’

  The man shook his head. No. This made no sense to him.

  ‘You have an army. Big army. You drive Saddam out of Kuwait. OK. Now what? You take Saddam away?’

  ‘Well … no.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘The international coalition was formed to restore Kuwait and secure the borders.’

  ‘OK, OK, but the problem is Saddam. We fought a war with Iran, then Kuwait, then America. Always war because of Saddam. So … now it’s time to get rid of Saddam, yes?’

  ‘Isn’t that what you’re doing?’ Benton asked. He felt a cut on his head. ‘Why did someone hit me?’

  ‘No, no. Sorry, your head hit the wall. People were very excited to get news. You are a journalist. So … you have news.’

  ‘No. I’m here to get the news from you, and report it in Britain.’

  ‘They don’t need the news. We need the news. Are you going to get rid of Saddam?’

  ‘It’s our understanding,’ Benton tried to explain, ‘that you’re having a revolution. That you’re getting rid of Saddam. I’m here to understand your plans. You’ve already taken the city. There’s a Shiite flag on the water tank. Are you being supported by Iran? Are you hoping—’

  Another man, wearing the white coat of a pharmacist, interjected. Benton didn’t understand what he said, but the crowd started to disperse, and the man he’d been speaking with nodded, stood up from his chair, tapped the arms of a few people, and then walked out.

  The pharmacist looked at Benton’s wound. ‘I told them we were not being good hosts, that you need some help first, and that we can discuss this all over some food and tea. Clearly, you want to talk to us, and we want to talk to you. We should do it properly. Times are very delicate. Very delicate. I can tell you this, though: the answers to the questions you are asking don’t exist yet. I was educated as a chemist. In chemistry, the answers are out there, waiting to be found. But in life, in politics, in war, the answers aren’t there yet. Your whole profession has a very strange theory in the middle.’

  ‘My head hurts,’ said Benton, not only feeling a throbbing in his head but starting to hear it, too.

  ‘I’ll get you some aspirin, unless you’re allergic. The Republican Guard took most of it. We have a few left. I’d like to put a bandage on you, too.’

  ‘Yes. Fine. Thank you.’

  The pharmacist shooed people out of the shop on his way to a small cabinet. He used a tiny key to unlock it, and removed a white plastic bottle.

  ‘How are you?’ Benton asked.

  ‘How am I?’ he said.

  ‘Yes. How are you?’

  ‘Worried. Very, very worried. But thank you for asking.’

  The pharmacist was pressing down on the childproof cap when he stopped and looked at Benton. They could both hear it. It was as if the air were being sucked from the room and pushed back in, quickly and repeatedly.

  ‘What is that?’ Benton asked.

  3

  Arwood had always liked helicopters. When he was a little boy, he’d make them out of Lego with his uncle, who would come over sometimes when his father was ‘out’ and his mother was indisposed. It has always been one of his fondest and quietest memories from childhood.

  When Arwood was ten, they moved on to models with glue and paint. Models worked for them as a shared activity, because it set them on a common task and didn’t require much talk about why they were together instead of Arwood being with his parents. The less they talked, the more helicopters and other machines they would build. They liked to look up the specifications of the aircraft from a dated copy of Jane’s World Air Forces that Uncle Maxwell had bought at a library sale.

  Now he was twenty-two years old, and from this distance it actually looked like a model. It was about the same size. He felt a thrill at first as the massive gunship floated over the ridge and approached the city. The Mi-24 was a primary component of Iraq’s order of battle, and had been used to devastating effect only three years earlier in the war against Iran. It was a Soviet-built brute of a vehicle, with all the charmless industrial hostility that the Cold War could create. It had twin cockpits, one above and behind the other, both encased in glass. To the sides were two massive wings with a twenty-one-foot wingspan. At the front was a 12.7mm Gatling gun with a payload of some 1,500 rounds of ammunition. Under the wings were rocket launchers and mine-dispenser pods. And backing it up, at its six o’clock, was an Aérospatiale Gazelle helicopter, built in France. Together they formed a hunter-killer team.

  Just like his models.

  However, the angle of attack proved to Arwood that, unlike in Iran or in his basement, this team was not going to be used for war. It was going to kill people — regular, everyday, soft people.

  Even at the pinnacle of his earlier boredom, Arwood hadn’t been more than a quarter mile away from the base, and had had a radio. Looking back across the worthless space he’d been defending, he could see Lieutenant Harvey Morgan running down the line, fastening his helmet the way most of the enlisted men didn’t, because — in the complex language of gestural soldier-speak — it meant I’m a rule-following pussy rather than someone who chewed cigars and shot gooks and Nazis.

  ‘Look alive, dimwits,’ he shouted.

  It did not take long, however, for everyone to realise that the Iraqis weren’t heading toward them. The helicopters took their positions over the city. And then, with an experienced and pitiless hand, they opened fire on the hospital.

  The Mi-24 launched two rockets from under its left wing with perfect military precision, blowing in the sides of the hospital, and killing the injured and infirm and those who had taken the Hippocratic oath to help them. Their work done, the air team moved out toward the train tracks, with the intention of killing each and every man, woman, and child where a makeshift refugee camp had been set up and
maintained by those fleeing other towns.

  Arwood radioed his commanding officer and asked, ‘What the fuck, lieutenant?’

  Off to his right, an Apache helicopter was in the air and taking a defensive position over Checkpoint Zulu.

  Arwood cocked and trained his weapon. There was nothing to point at except north.

  Behind him, Arwood’s platoon ran the short distance to his position — the deepest legal position into Iraq — and, once there, started shouting ideas.

  ‘Let’s take it out!’ was the first big idea.

  It was Corporal Ben Ford. He was from Tampa, Florida, looked like a bulldog, and was almost as refined. However, he was not always wrong. ‘Come on, man, let’s waste the motherfuckers!’

  Arwood took one last look down his sights to confirm that there was absolutely nothing whatsoever approaching the checkpoint, and then turned to see Ford appeal to the lieutenant, as though each of them were in the helicopter with a finger on the rocket launcher and the choice was theirs.

  Whoever did have his finger on that trigger could have taken down the Mi-24 with a gentle squeeze. God only knows what that guy was thinking. The angels and devils must have been going nuts on his shoulders trying to separate their messages.

  Arwood had heard that Iraqis and Iranians used to have helicopter dogfights. They were the only nations in history that did. It could be done. And how hard could it be? They hovered there like bottles on a cloud, waiting to be knocked down.

  Lieutenant Harvey Morgan’s West Point education was in full puff that evening, though. He did not order them to take out the Mi-24. He not only knew what his orders were, but somehow — against the philosophy, purpose, tradition, expectation, and standard operating procedures of the army — he even knew why. So the second big idea was to not take it out. Proof of the worthiness of this idea came from paperwork. He had loads of it. Arwood hated paperwork.

  Morgan had a quote from the president. Arwood hated quotes from the president.