“IED! IED! DUCK!”
The men inside the hummer cringed into fetal positions, screaming instinctively, as the vehicle careened around the street, the wheel freely spinning in Hoffman’s hands. IEDs were mostly homemade bombs, the weapon of choice for insurgents in many parts of the country. Up above, his ears plugged with opium and Ravel, Ancelloti lolled in the gun turret, oblivious.
“I! E! D!” Behruse punctuated with a lit cigar and split his sides laughing.
“What the fuck, Behruse?” Hoffman said, righting the vehicle. “What the hell is wrong with you? That shit isn’t funny.”
“False alarm,” Behruse said. “Oops. You should have seen your faces.”
“Where the hell are we now? I’m fucking lost.”
“Next two right turns, then hundred yards, then left, then third right, then ask me again after two hundred yards,” Behruse said.
“You’re getting us lost deliberately,” Hoffman said. “But I got GPS, so fuck you, Behruse.”
“Fuck your GPS,” Behruse said good-naturedly. “And where we’re going, you have to follow certain routes. They tell the neighborhood that you’re safe. You want the watchers to start taking shots at us?”
“More of your secret service shit?” Hoffman puffed on a clove. “I thought you guys were all hiding under your grannies’ mattresses.”
“Hey, don’t disrespect the Mukhabarat,” Behruse said. “We were good. Damned good. We fought wars, man. And we kept this place running, and we would have kept it running too if you fools had had the sense to use us.”
“Hey, I’m just a foot soldier,” Hoffman said.
“And you think we’re just gone now?” Behruse scoffed. “What, we just forgot how to do shit? Sold our guns? Let me tell you, my friend, your governors have already started making enquires…taking resumes…hiring, you understand?”
“You going back legit, Behruse?” Hoffman asked. “Or just reminiscing?”
“All I’m saying…those faggots growing beards and waving Kalashnikovs had better start remembering how to shave again,” Behruse said, serious all of a sudden, the crinkles in his eyes fading, making Hoffman remember with a shiver what the man had once been and might become again. “Pull over. We walk from here. Sidearms only, just you and me.”
Into a rabbit warren of buildings now, Behruse taking deliberately obtuse routes, which narrowed to a single file of rough, lichen-scrawled bricks, wet to the touch, the sharp ammonia of gutter water making Hoffman’s eyes tear up. He lost all sense of direction after a while, retaining only the feeling of being pressed by ancient masonry and people alike, unfriendly eyes watching from above, blue slatted windows blinking in and out of existence in the darkness.
Many minutes of this mind-numbing disorientation, Hoffman barely restraining himself from clutching at Behruse’s broad coat tail, like a child seeking reassurance. Some corner of his mind reflected that the Mukhabarat craft was basic and effective, as good as anything they taught in Abu Gharib or Langley. These secret policemen had their own successful techniques in this old, old city. At last, they stopped in a nondescript archway, shielded from sight in front of an unlatched door. Behruse stopped him here.
“Hoffman, listen,” the big man seemed curiously hesitant. “The man we are visiting he is not like us. He is a very learned man. He was unwilling to see you. I had to call in a personal favor. You have to treat him with respect. I don’t know what agency you’re with or what agendas you have, and to be frank, I don’t want to know. I need your guarantee that this man will be off limits and off any official transcripts.”
“You have my word,” Hoffman said promptly. “And for your information, I am following a brief to locate the bunker of Tarek Aziz at all costs, where I fully expect to find weapons of mass destruction. Now, who is this guy? Some kind of old spook? Will he be of any use?”
“You’ll see,” Behruse pushed open the door. “Just remember, after tonight, he doesn’t exist for you.”
They entered into a dingy hallway cluttered with canes, umbrellas, shoes, and hats in varying stages of disrepair, as well as other paraphernalia required for negotiating the different climates of Baghdad. Clambering over this junk, they reached a door almost grimed shut.
“He doesn’t get out much,” Behruse said apologetically.
It took the full momentum of his weight to effect an opening. Inside was a rectangular room slashed with irregular lighting, permeated with the tang of machine oil strong enough to send Hoffman reeling. He saw a vast jumble of mechanical devices, electric arc welders, precision lathes, milling machines, transistors, dismantled radios, racks of soldering irons and hand borers, and an aged IBM mainframe the size of a sofa, among the things that he could actually recognize. In the far corner in an island of well lit calm, an old man in a dirty smock stood at a long work table covered in green felt, moving his hands lightly over a set of minute tools, seeming, from far away, like an ancient croupier presiding over some insane casino.
As they approached, he looked up and greeted them, showing a thin, aristocratic face, somewhat marred by the jeweler’s monocle attached to his left eye, which made his pupil appear horrendously large. On the baize in front of him were six minute gears the size of match heads and a set of jewelers’ tongs and calipers.
“Ehm. Welcome, Behruse. Welcome, unknown guest.”
“Thank you, sir.” Behruse did a creditable half bow, the courtliness of the gesture momentarily leaving Hoffman bereft of speech.
“Hoffman, this is, um, you may refer to him as Mr. Avicenna.” Behruse grinned.
“What, is that like some kind of disguise?”
“Forgive our slightly obese friend,” the old man straightened, and put down his tools. “He is merely giving you the Latin version of my name. I imagine he thinks it’s funny. For a fat man, his sense of humor is curiously flat.”
Hoffman pulled up into a full parade salute. From the corner of his eye, he saw Behruse hanging his head, strangely crushed. “Sergeant Hoffman at your service, sir!”
“Hoffman, why on earth are you saluting?” Avicenna fixed his enlarged left eye on him.
“Recognizing a superior officer, sir!”
“Don’t be ridiculous Hoffman,” Avicenna said. “You appear to be a man of sense. Stop this posturing.”
“Merely noting that you appear to be a gentleman of rank,” Hoffman said. “Old Guard? Mukhabarat?”
“Rank?” Avicenna smiled. “Very sly, soldier. No Hoffman, I hold no command nor any title to lands. Any respect I garner is merely… symbolic.”
“Well then, sir, consider my salute entirely symbolic.” Hoffman smiled, still quivering with rigid parade intensity.
“At ease you ridiculous boy,” Avicenna said. “Now I presume you have found me for a reason?”
“I have some friends,” Hoffman said.
“How fortunate for you,” Avicenna said politely.
“They’re in trouble,” Hoffman continued. “You may have heard of the killing of Hassan Salemi’s son.”
“Heard about it? I am surrounded by oafs who speak of nothing else. I am heartily sick of Hassan Salemi and his dead son.”
“Yes, well, my friend might have been…was…responsible for that,” Hoffman said. “Unknowingly, I’m sure.”
“That is most unfortunate,” Avicenna said. “Your friend shot Hassan Salemi’s son. Even now, that man is tearing apart the neighborhoods searching for the culprit. Your friends are most likely dead.”
“Not yet but they will be unless someone helps them,” Hoffman said.
“Do you imagine I can help them?” Avicenna smiled sadly. “Save them from Hassan Salemi? He has an army of gunmen and half of Baghdad’s police force on his payroll. I merely have this workshop full of old trinkets.”
“Yes, about the workshop, I understand you’re a watchmaker,” Hoffman said.
“I am, among other things,” Avicenna inclined his head. “Hassan Salemi, however, is not very interested in mechanical watches.”
“Hmm, it’s just that my friend Dagr, who’s a professor of higher mathematics, by the way, has in his possession a kind of artifact. The Druze watch is what they are calling it.”
“The Druze watch?” Avicenna smiled. “Behruse, do you have any reason to believe this drivel?”
“I interviewed ten witnesses who saw it with their own eyes,” Hoffman said. “It is an old mechanical watch with a large rotating rim and just two equal-sized hands. The man who saw it close up described it as ‘Fouad Jumblatt’s watch, inscribed with a colored Druze star’.”
“Mr. Hoffman, as I am surprised Behruse has neglected to tell you, the Druze watch is an irritatingly recurring meme in the backstreets of Baghdad. Every dozen or so years, thieves and charlatans entertain each other with tall tales of a watch that tells no time, lumbering guardians with superhuman powers, and a secret gathering of evil Druze,” Avicenna said. “I think you have fallen into a tourist trap.”
“Well, this watch actually came with an evil guardian,” Hoffman said. “Someone called the Lion of Akkad, the King of Cats, who possessed inhuman strength, superman speed, and imperviousness to bullets. They ran him off and found the watch in his hiding place, with other papers and books, all of which I have in my hot little hands.”
“I saw it all,” Behruse said. “There are drawings of a watch, diagrams and such.”
“Witnesses, you say?” Avicenna asked. “Hysterical old women and gullible boys?”
“More like gnarly old shopkeepers and street thugs,” Hoffman said. “They hadn’t heard about any mythical watch, and they didn’t care about any Druze either. They were more than happy to hand over everything from the sorry mess and forget the thing ever happened.”
“Tell me, Hoffman, are you a treasure hunter?”
“No, sir.”
“Do you dream of some vast Druze conspiracy?”
“No, sir. I dream only in American.”
“What then, do you want?”
“I want you to help my friends. In return for the watch,” Hoffman said. “Behruse said you were somebody.”
“And who do you represent, Mr. Hoffman?”
“Me? No one at all,” Hoffman shrugged. “I’m just a cog.”
“Alright, we’ll leave it at that for now,” Avicenna said. “When we are further along in our partnership, we might revisit your identity. Now come with me.”