THE PLAINS

 

Rem kept a newspaper transcript of an interview with Paul Geezler.

In its way, he thought, it was a work of art.

On hindsight: We could see how things were going, I doubt anyone knew the scale exactly, but it was possible, early on, to see the circumstances, if you like, the pre-existing conditions, but none of us knew what would happen. The system was more vulnerable than any of us realized.

I can see why this has drawn the attention it has. We’re six weeks on from the assault, and we’re still finding out what happened. We’re coming up to an election and if there’s a new administration they’re going to want answers. I want answers, and we’re working hard to find them. Everyone wants to know why this happened and how it happened, and hopefully this is something the hearings can resolve next May.

On Sutler: We’re committed to finding this man, to bringing him to justice. Like everyone else the first I heard about him was the day Southern-CIPA was attacked. We have good people out there looking for him, and I’m confident he’ll be found. It’s only a matter of time.

On the burn pits: We know a lot more now than we did two, three weeks ago. New information is coming to light about these rogue operations. The pits at Camp Bravo were abandoned, and we’ve since learned about the illegal burnings there, and given that the same thing was happening at Camp Liberty it’s clear that projects like these were not appropriately monitored. More globally, it’s clear that the speed at which everything was ending wasn’t manageable. Anyone could see that the burn pits were a problem at a number of levels. You can’t close down an operation of that size in such a short time.

On his culpability: By the time we get to the hearings it will be almost a year after the fact. The enquiry is digging in all sorts of directions and we’ll have to see what comes up. Given the work I’ve done since, the responsibilities I’ve undertaken, and all of the changes HOSCO has undergone, it’s not a surprise that my name has come up. It’s after the fact. I have to accept that the work I’m doing will make me a target in some way. I did, it’s true, accompany the European Division Chief to Amrah. We were there one night. I think we made fourteen visits to other sites across Europe also in the same month. You have to look closely at the other testimonies, and how they say I was involved. I’m supposed to have spoken with Sutler on the phone. On the phone. There’s no record of those calls. More importantly, there’s no record in Southern-CIPA of any involvement from any of the staff from Europe. Southern-CIPA handled the money. Paul Howell was the man responsible for the funding, he’s the man to concentrate on. This, I hope, is where the enquiry will focus.

On the day of Geezler’s appointment as Deputy Director to the Middle East, Santo called Rem. ‘He stepped on our backs, he rode us the entire time.’

*   *   *

The Chicago train arrived early morning at Kansas City. Bound for Los Angeles, it paused in the station for several hours, and while this was Rem’s stop he decided to wait for the moment, sleep, get off the train before it departed. But when the heating clicked off the carriages quickly cooled and the dim light and bustle on the station kept him awake. It made little sense to him that the train would be so slow, that something so American could be so backward, so of another period. The trains in Europe were sleeker and faster.

He walked stiffly at first, and made his way through to the terminal, then set his cases beside a bench and decided to sleep sitting upright until a reasonable hour. Samuels lived in a town called Topeka several hours away. As he wasn’t expected, Rem imagined that any time between midday and late afternoon would be the best time to arrive, the best time to conduct the kind of conversation they needed to have.

*   *   *

He drove over the plains, the rising downs, a soft snow slipping into rain already settled in the bristled fields. The roads rode the backs of the hills, small and regular enough to suggest an endlessness. Little changed, and when he came to Topeka he thought it familiar: the Holiday Inns and motels bordering the highway, the closer lots of white clapboard houses, the train line skirting the centre, an unremarkable main street of coffee houses and closed-down stores. You’d fight hard to leave such a place, and it would live on in you in some way, a measure for every other town you’d visit.

At first he couldn’t imagine Samuels living here, and drove through the centre to see how far the town stretched. When he arrived at a golf course he turned about, and thought that the place was hollow, dropped down rather than evolved. This definition was Cathy’s. Having come from a small town herself, she had the belief that these smaller places followed one of two possibilities. Either they morphed out of the landscape and had a peculiar logic (grain stores at the railyard), or they were deposited, designed elsewhere and dumped. Much like Camp Liberty, Topeka could be erased by one strong wind. The evening before the trip Rem had sought out Camp Liberty on the internet, located the very spot identified by Watts by GPS and found nothing: in six weeks they’d wiped it clean, packed it up like it had never happened.

On his second approach he made a more direct route, and found the Samuels’ house without trouble. Sat on a corner lot, fenceless, slightly raised from the street on a small hill; the lawn rode up to the house, which, being raised and ringed with posts, gave the impression that it stood on tiptoes. A familiar variation on familiar features: a sunroom, an enclosed patio, a raised veranda, a separate garage.

A woman, Samuels’ mother, came to the door, head down, unsurprised at the call, old and disorderly. She listened while Rem asked for Samuels, then looked up, dithering, and Rem could see that she was almost completely blind, her irises clouded, her face used and lined and white. She turned away, squinting, lips slightly parted as if thinking, and walked slowly back into the house, leaving the door ajar, her house-shoes scuffing the floor. Dressed in a nightgown and cardigan, her hair flattened from sleep, she looked not long out of bed, although by now it was almost mid-morning. Samuels came through from the kitchen, leaned toward her and asked impatiently what she thought she was doing, then led her further back into the house. Come on, he spoke, half cajoling, half encouraging, come on.

In the six weeks since he’d last seen Samuels the boy had hollowed out, not a boy so much, but someone like his mother, who looked weary – and how thin he appeared, his stomach scooped out, his T-shirt hanging between his shoulder-blades. Samuels guided his mother to the kitchen, and turned only at the threshold as if remembering that she had only just answered the door – and saw Rem, half in, half out. Unsurprised. He signalled with one hand that he would be a minute.

Rem stepped into the hall to show his determination, and found the house not to be quite so grand inside, a little bare, undusted, unkempt.

Samuels returned with the same sloping stride, feet barely rising from the floor. He couldn’t leave her alone, he said. ‘It’s just us. My father’s at work. You can come in.’

He didn’t ask why Rem had come, or even how he was, and made no comment about how he looked, but brought him into the family room with resignation.

‘We don’t use this room much.’ He indicated a choice of seats. ‘She likes the kitchen. Or she stays in bed. Most days.’ Samuels remained standing, shoulders braced, hands dug into his pockets, he looked at the floor and wouldn’t look directly at Rem through much of their conversation.

‘I heard from Watts.’ Rem offered a gentle start.

‘I heard he had a lung removed.’

‘They took out part.’

Samuels dug his hands deeper and still would not look up. ‘They can do that?’

‘He’s better. He’s out of hospital and back with his wife.’ Rem sat forward and cleared his throat. ‘I’ll get to the point.’

‘I don’t know what I can tell you. I don’t know anything more than I’ve already told the enquiry. I told them everything I know.’

‘They’re saying Sutler wasn’t his real name. They’re saying Sutler was working for Howell.’

‘I don’t know anything.’

‘I’m going to see Kiprowski’s family. His mother wants to know what happened. The family have a right.’

‘I still don’t know anything.’

Rem stared hard at Samuels’ downturned face. ‘They picked him up in pieces. You know that?’

‘You should have called. I could have saved you coming. I don’t know anything. I’d like to help you, but I don’t know anything.’

‘He was running from the office, that’s what they said. They said he was running away. He had his back to the office and he was heading toward an exit.’

‘I work for my brother. I’ll have to go soon.’

‘He was running away. He was trying to leave the building.’ Rem waited. ‘Which means he had an idea about what was going to happen. I think there’s some other story to this.’

‘I’ll have to go. I don’t have my car.’

‘I can take you.’

‘I can walk. I have to go.’ He looked back toward the kitchen. ‘Once she’s up we have a neighbour look in.’ Samuels turned away.

‘Kiprowski talked with you. He would have told you what he was thinking. He would have explained himself to someone before he did this.’

‘I told you, I know nothing. The same as I told the enquiry. The same as I’ll tell them at the hearing. He didn’t speak to me. He never talked to me. I don’t know anything.’

‘I can wait. I can sit in the car and I can wait.’

Samuels, now in the hall, wiped his face with his hands, his cuffs rode down his arms. ‘I’m sorry you wasted your time.’

‘You don’t wear your watch any more?’

‘They took it. They took everything.’

*   *   *

Samuels watched as Rem drove away.

Rem drove about the block and passed the house a second time to see Samuels still at the window. His face behind glass, static, the house bright about him, grander on the outside.

*   *   *

Santo wasn’t surprised at Samuels’ reaction.

‘That’s how he was,’ he shrugged, ‘so it’s not strange to hear that’s how he is now.’

Santo kicked aside a small footstool, made room on the couch for Rem.

‘I don’t mind talking.’ He cocked open a beer, handed it to Rem, then opened a second for himself. ‘I don’t see the sense in telling this at the hearing, but I don’t mind telling you. I don’t mind at all.’

In opposition to Samuels, Santo agreed to talk but would not allow himself to be recorded.

‘There’s no use for that. No point at all. This is for your ears only.’ He sipped his beer and waited for Rem to switch off his phone. ‘Kiprowski always stood up for Sutler, but Pakosta had it in for him from day one. You knew how it was. The boy was too sensitive, less use than Samuels. He had no business being there. You should speak with Pakosta. Once Sutler arrived everything went south. The pits were closed, Watts left, the translator died.’

‘It didn’t happen like that.’

Santo paused, thinking. ‘You’re right. It didn’t. We took those trips, you know this, and there was everything you’d want, and we knew that Howell had his own thing going on. It was obvious the first time in Kuwait. He was spending money and it was clear that he didn’t want for security, he just wanted us there. I don’t know why, but he wanted us there alongside him. He had us shoot, that first time. He had a car – we were coming back from basic training, we had our guns with us, and he just pulled up the car, drove it off-road a ways and had us shoot it. He wanted to see us shoot. He wanted to see how the car stood up to it. No one wanted to do it at first, but once it started. So we wasted the car, for no reason. I think Pakosta knew something was up even before then – the others? I don’t know. I don’t think they wanted to know. Clark might have had some idea. We talked a little about it, about how strange it was that we’d be in these hotels, and how Howell was always pushing to take this, or use that, or do something. The man knew how to push. Pakosta didn’t like it at all. And then there were those gifts which we didn’t say no to exactly.’

Rem watched the cat stretch out on the newspaper and wanted it out of the room.

‘You know he’s from a religious family.’

‘Pakosta?’

‘Both his parents run some kind of ministry, some kind of nut-jobs. He talked about it once. Said he wasn’t into any of it, but that they didn’t like him being in Iraq. They were against the whole idea, but he owed money to his father, couldn’t get himself ahead, and this was the quickest solution. It didn’t hurt once those gifts started coming in. At first it was a watch, then some cash. On the second trip there was a whole lot more money going around, and Pakosta used this to pay off the debt to his father, which meant he could keep his house. Which isn’t how things turned out. It was after that second trip that things started happening. Howell had been speaking with all of us, sending emails like he was our new best friend, and he knew what our situations were, and he started helping out, saying he could make a loan, help with payments on this and that. The third trip was a mistake. I don’t know why Howell wanted Sutler and Kiprowski there. Like they were some kind of tourists or something. Kiprowski just wasn’t made the same way as everyone else and he wasn’t having any of Howell’s gifts and couldn’t see why we would either. You know Kiprowski stood up for Sutler? Kiprowski was convinced he wasn’t involved. Said he was convinced that Sutler had nothing to do with it. But when Sutler explained how the money worked, and how much money was involved in the contracts he was writing, it started to make sense that Howell was just messing things up. Sutler said something about an inspection, that all of the finances for the civil projects were automatically investigated by HOSCO. I didn’t understand, but it sounded like there was no way that Howell would get away with what he was doing. This all came out one evening, Sutler was just talking about business, I don’t think he realized, and when he left, we all got to talking about the things Howell had done for each of us, small things, some not so small, and we realized he’d done that with everyone. The truth is we all talked about what to do. We all agreed that something had to be done but didn’t have the nerve. The final straw was the news from Camp Bravo, and how lawyers were going after everyone involved in the burn pits. We didn’t know what we were burning. No one knew. It wasn’t any one person’s idea. But we all agreed that this wouldn’t go away unless we did something, and it wasn’t like you could just tell Howell to stop. Pakosta put it all together. The idea was to get rid of the records. Howell’s records, and the records for the burn pits. We knew that they wouldn’t be able to trace anything if those records were destroyed, and that was the basic idea. Kiprowski volunteered because he didn’t think Sutler was responsible, and because he didn’t trust anyone else to do it properly. Sutler said that everything was recorded and kept in the Deputy Administrator’s office. Pakosta had the idea that if it were all destroyed then there wouldn’t be any proof.’

Santo leaned back and downed the last of the beer. ‘It’s not what you want to hear, I know that. But everyone agreed. As soon as we heard there was an inspection we knew we had to do something. You understand? We were all of us working toward something, it’s not like we had a choice. The only thing we could do was destroy whatever records were in Howell’s office. Make some chaos. Divert attention. Kiprowski just got it wrong, that’s all. He knew what he was doing, but he just got it wrong. It was unfortunate, but he knew what he was getting himself into. He volunteered. Everybody had too much to lose. I know how that sounds. But that’s exactly how it was.’

*   *   *

Rem called Cathy from the motel room and sat on the bed counting folds in the curtain while he waited for her to answer, one wall a yellow curtain dressed with sour streetlight. How much time had he spent in such rooms: a room with two beds, a door beside a window, a bare light, centre-ceiling. The room, depressing enough, had no effect against the idea that he was alone, and how he’d never imagined this, could never have conceived that he would be separated from her in such a way.

After a shower he found a message from his wife in which she talked about HOSCO, only HOSCO, the information was accurate, certain of its facts. All of the men at Camp Liberty had received payment of some kind. A watch. Cash. A car. Rents paid. Loans paid. Advances made to mortgages. Medical payments erased. Debts settled. None of these payments were ever over five thousand, so they were easy enough to hide, and in each instance the payment or donation came directly from Howell himself or was traceable to him through his manipulation of the account system used by Southern-CIPA. ‘I don’t see anything in it but greed.’

Cathy, but not Cathy.

‘There is a kind of logic. If you think of him like a child in a candy store, the unpopular kid buying friendship, that kind of thing, but it’s clumsy, and he wasn’t very good at it. There’s evidence he was spending money then making it back by pilfering from other accounts. I’m guessing that storing the vehicles was a crude way of stocking up, putting together a marketable resource. One thing I don’t get is how the companies he was working for, HOSCO, Credita, SIMLAC, Venture, given the contracts these companies were managing, especially HOSCO, how none of them were on to him sooner? They all have separate account trails. I’ll have more of this together by Friday.’

When the message ended, he realized she’d called the wrong number, and when the phone began to ring again he leaned over the bed, watched Cathy – Cell light up the screen, the small phone vibrating the sheet.

She’d called the wrong number. She was sorry, but not sorry in a way, because she needed to speak with him. Actually, she didn’t need to speak with him, but she had something to tell him. She had some things to say. First, she hadn’t changed her mind. It wasn’t didn’t want so much as wouldn’t have. She wanted to explain the distinction because, yes, she still loved him, she thought she still loved him, in fact she knew this to be the case, but she couldn’t bear to go through this. After working so hard at the separation, she couldn’t see herself working equally hard or possibly harder at getting back what they had. And there was no guarantee that they would even get back there, not really. All that work and no guarantee. She didn’t have it in her, and doubted that she would find it. She wanted to explain, but couldn’t find anything that wasn’t clichéd, and wondered if that was how it worked? You get so tired that even the words, the phrases you need, are exhausted? She was worn out, and maybe if she was any other age and not thirty-seven she’d feel something else about the matter and find the energy to continue, or the fear not to be alone, but no, at thirty-seven she found she had nothing to invest and no real fear in starting over.

She wanted to say more, she said, but knew that this would be cruel.

She didn’t want to see him, not at Thanksgiving, not at Christmas, that the effort required just to be in the same space with him right now was beyond her. She’d switched off. It was sad, but that’s exactly how she felt about it, and she didn’t imagine that this would change, although, who knows, she could be wrong.

As one final favour she gave him her final analysis on Camp Liberty: her idea on what had happened.

‘You let people take advantage of you. It isn’t that you’re stupid, it’s just that you don’t see it. They were all running circles round you right from the beginning. The simple fact is you just continued to make the same mistake for the same reasons. You took a job without properly knowing what it involved, you stumbled into it and couldn’t see your way out, so rather than drop what you’d gotten yourself into, you just continued.’ And this, she thought, was the reasoning of an animal, something caught in brambles that pushes deeper into a briar without calculating and reasoning the best way out. ‘It isn’t your fault that you were used. Someone saw you coming, they recognized the kind of person you are, the opportunity was waiting for someone just like you to come along, and once you did, well … Did you ever seriously think any of this through? Did you ever sit down and ask yourself what you were doing? Did you ever think through the possibilities of what might happen? The consequence of this is real. One man is dead, another missing. Two men are sick, perhaps all of you, because you can’t work yourself out of trouble.

‘I know this isn’t fair. I know this is holding you responsible for other people’s actions. But you were part of it, and you’ll have to come to terms with that. One way or another. You are, at root, entirely responsible.’

*   *   *

Rem lay in bed, sleepless. Sounds from the highway pressed upon him, busy, irregular traffic with no real lull or rhythm – the room disturbed with other people’s noise, sliding doors, walls that unaccountably cracked, the air-conditioner’s poorly tuned complaints. Just noise, and too much of it.

She didn’t want him.

This idea made no sense. There wasn’t anyone else. Baggage. This is what it all came down to. Trouble. You’re all inside out. You start where other men stop. Everyone else bears their trouble inside, but you, you dress yourself in it, it comes flying at you, attaches itself. You’re too expensive to be around, it just takes too much.

*   *   *

He parked opposite the store and asked himself if he couldn’t do this in some other way?

Phone, email, letter?

This didn’t need to happen face to face.

The car clicked with the heat. Midday and no other traffic, which couldn’t happen on any other main street.

He couldn’t see into the store with the sun hard overhead, a sign saying ‘Kiprowski’ in small gold script.

Kiprowski’s mother – he knew the woman from first sight – with a crate of mangoes, leaned forward as she elbowed sideways out of the door.

With the mangoes set on a stand the woman still leaned forward, straightened when she saw him, noted his hesitation and told him he’d have to hurry if he’d come about the job as she was expecting someone.

In the window: a hammer, replacement blades for a bandsaw, a single dead wasp.

*   *   *

Back in the car one block on, he could remember the wasp and how it curved into itself, but couldn’t form the woman’s face, except the hair, that brown bob. Young hair, old face.

He hadn’t told her that her son was not liked. That he wasn’t popular. He hadn’t explained how distraught her son had become on the death of the translator, a man from the Yemen who was married, had children, and who’d died in an accident, a death only slightly more pointless and senseless than the death of her son.

What had he said? He’d said what anyone would say who did not know her son, blank niceties about his popularity and character and how sorry he was, mostly, just about how sorry he was.

He started the car and checked the mirror and found her standing on the corner, not coming toward him, and not retreating, but fixed with the sun hard on her shoulders. He could drive, he thought, leave, as none of this was his business, but he wanted to know how long she would wait, and if this waiting would produce any kind of result. Finally, the smallest of gestures – an unclasping of her hands – drew him out of the car.

She waited for him to approach. ‘I have work and I have a room if you’re still looking.’

Rem, now fixed in place, squinted back at his car, everything in this town hard and unrelenting, concrete, brick, and glass, laid flat or vertical.

*   *   *

She returned to find Nut on the sidewalk, sat beside the door, and came into the apartment to find it also unlocked.

Nothing appeared to be disturbed. She checked the bedside cabinet for her jewellery – small pieces from her family, all of little value. Money she’d left out on the counter was not taken, and as she walked about the apartment she thought of Roscoe. Would he do this? Doubtful. He’d have taken the dog.

Papers were missing from her desk. Her files also, but not all of them, and the chair was set at an angle, as if someone had, at their leisure, sat down and read through every single scrap of paper.

As far as she could tell, every piece of information about Paul Geezler had been removed.

*   *   *

Mud on the porch threatened to make its way into the house courtesy of three sets of feet, despite her mother’s agreement that she would keep the heating on if they all but entirely disrobed in the entrance. Jackets, pants, boots, anything spattered with mud should stay in the vestibule. Cathy’s mother had used this word once, years before, as a joke and it had stuck. A word that sounded like boiled candy. There had to be a less formal word. Cathy settled against the shoe rack, stacked with coats and boots and hats, and the soft wall of coats to read Rem’s letters.

He called her ‘honey’ in his letters, a word he never used in person, and she liked that he found this tenderness when he addressed her, although she felt none of this herself. If he can still love me, she reasoned, then he can love someone else. She liked how he fought to keep his writing legible, how he insisted on writing as well as sending emails, and that these letters arrived without anticipation. Rem was awkward, easily embarrassed, not so unlike her father, or perhaps any man, and did not like to appear to be a fool. She held the letter to her stomach, now tight, and still she hadn’t told him. And there was more news to tell him.

In the afternoon she would speak with a student radio station, a friend’s daughter’s project, a favour she did not mind making. The call had come through, a request that took some time to organize because she was becoming a figure, she was told, a name, someone hard to get hold of. Unpractised, Cathy worried that she would say the wrong thing, or that she would somehow become part of an aural wall, that anyone who listened to her would hear the same words of any other soldier or contractor’s wife, and she did not like that category. She would instruct the student not to mention her pregnancy, the material would be available on the web, anyone could hear it, her pregnancy was private business.

*   *   *

The reporter, a girl of about seventeen, left her boyfriend in the car, who would not be persuaded to come inside. Cathy looked through the kitchen window and watched him, a boy wearing sunglasses on an overcast day, strong short black hair, head nodding, and the slow thud of some music. It was easy to imagine his body under those loose clothes. The girl, she kept forgetting her name, had an unbelievably bad complexion. She needed sun, make-up, a make-over. She needed not to be eating whatever she was eating as her lower jaw was lined with a rash. The girl appeared so sticky-looking that Cathy wiped the surfaces in her mother’s kitchen as she talked to keep from staring. She wasn’t pretty, and she imagined that the girl would allow her boyfriend to do pretty much whatever he wanted with her, because that’s what it would take to keep him interested, a girl who would do anything.

Cathy talked about Howell, Southern-CIPA, about HOSCO, but most of all about Geezler. Contracting work to civilians in a military zone was really the single and entire origin of this problem. She used the idea of Howell as a child, selfish, greedy, lonely, buying friendship and influence, but wasn’t so convinced this time. Geezler was harder to quantify. He’d moved up in the world, as the head of HOSCO in the Middle East he was disassembling the company, and she still didn’t quite understand the logic of his manipulations. She couldn’t prove anything she was saying about Geezler because she didn’t have evidence. ‘You have to look at who’s still standing. There’s only one. Paul Geezler.’ She gave the girl the documents forwarded by boston_adams, and when the girl asked where these had come from, Cathy answered, HOSCO, although she couldn’t prove it.

The girl wanted simple answers, but Cathy resisted. ‘If we reduce this to one source,’ she said, ‘to one man, then we’ve failed to see what’s really happening. No one wants to talk about it because it’s too painful. Think about it, we had the public enquiry open one month after the death of the boy at Amrah, and soon we will have the hearings. Think about how long this has all taken.’

The girl’s complexion seemed to worsen. This wasn’t the interview she wanted. Cathy looked at the small digital recorder set on the counter between them, the mugs of coffee, her attempts to be nice.

‘There’s a man called Paul Watts.’ Cathy leaned forward, decidedly maternal. ‘Go and speak with him. He is missing a lung because of the work he undertook at the burn pits. Go and speak with him, speak with the other men who worked at Camp Liberty and ask them about what happened. Ask if they were told anything about the dangers of their work. Then speak with HOSCO, speak with Paul Geezler, and speak to the people who know him.’

*   *   *

Cathy sent the article as an attachment to Rem. In the subject line she typed a row: ?????? The attachment was an article about the country singer Grey Wills and the dispute on a house outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his neighbour, Paul Geezler, who had bought the land and developed a property without apparent permission, then cut down the bordering trees in order to build a second building closer to the ridge and river. The property, a five-bedroom country house in the English style, was built without the appropriate approvals and on inspection violated several county and state codes – and was, to Grey Wills’ satisfaction, ordered to be demolished.

The article, dated five years back, was intended as a last gift to Rem. A kind of statement about the men he’d done business with, how they had always been this greedy, this disregarding of other people, and how they would not change.

*   *   *

Santo drank and insisted on driving. He knew the route, he said, so Rem wouldn’t have to pay attention to the maps. He knew how to get there. South, then west.

Rem watched the last of the city pass behind them. One remaining building from the Robert Taylor Homes, the last out of a scattered wall of high-rise blocks. It didn’t occur to him until later that they were heading east not south – toward Michigan – a mistake which took a further two hours to correct.

The men hardly spoke, and Rem could not be certain what this drive was about, except that they would end up in Austin, see what work they could hustle from one of HOSCO’s subsidiaries, although any debate about this idea soon dissolved into argument: both of them unhappy to return to the company, but neither seeing a choice.

‘Would you go back?’

‘Iraq? No.’

‘Me neither.’

They could make it to St Louis before dark, find a motel on the other side of Memphis. It wouldn’t be beyond him to drive all night, he said. ‘We make Highway 10 at Baton Rouge.’ Once in Louisiana they would soon be in Texas. Sealy first, then up to Austin, after which, who knows.

At Sealy they would locate Cathy. Find her at her parents or her sisters. ‘She’s sending you this information. She’s still thinking about you. See?’

Rem rolled in and out of sleep. Santo opened energy drinks, answered his own questions and did not seem to mind if Rem was or was not listening. The smell, nutmeg and honey, of cold spice, brought back memories of Fatboy, and Fatboy’s small room – the cab of Santo’s car feeling almost as tight and airless.

‘Your parents alive?’ He’d never asked Santo about his family, but understood it to be large, that the Hernandez family were spread generously across North Chicago, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis, St Paul.

‘At one point we lived close. My grandparents, aunts, uncles. There was a fire, but up until then we were all together. After the fire my father had to start over. His business was destroyed, so he had to find work elsewhere. After the fire we started moving around, things were spread about. It happened quickly, but I don’t remember much. To me there was this fire and then people left, and there were new people about us who we called aunty and uncle. Things were hard for a time.’

Santo smoked, opened the window to flick out his ash. Commented on the landscape.

‘This place needs hills. Seriously. It needs landscaping. It needs the Hernandez family to sort it out. You know, there’s some pyramids out here. Maybe Indian, I don’t think they even know, but they found these chambers where they’d buried people alive. I don’t know how they know this, but there were these stone chambers underground that you could get into but not out. Like a sacrifice or something. A slow sacrifice.’

Rem half-listened, looked out at the fields of corn stubble.

*   *   *

Across the road from the parking lot Santo found a private members’ casino. He won $50 in his first game and then lost every time after. Nevertheless his mood lifted, Rem could see it in his gestures, how he became broader when he was playing, his arms widening to express his failing luck. He accepted the free drinks, sent beer over to Rem who sat apart, alone, the appeal of the place not extending beyond the ring of tables and slot machines. Sat next to a sticky wall in a vast half-darkness, Rem drank and waited, tapped his foot along with an entertainer who sang to a backing track, and wondered how the police didn’t shut the place down, and realized, it was all police – the gamblers, the drinkers, the investors.

When Santo came back, smiling, he shook Rem by his shoulder. ‘I know exactly what you need,’ he said. ‘After tomorrow, you’re going to feel better.’

As they walked out Santo leaned on Rem for support.

*   *   *

The countryside out of Santa Fe appeared contradictory, the air thin, mountain-like, but the land flat and stony, a desert, sure, but not the desert of Al-Muthanna. Here there was scrub, spiny and dusty-green, even some grass in place, piñon trees, larger boulders, a substantial flat plate of sky, a numb blue, a breathless blue, and the definiteness of the rocks, their honey colour, their solidity.

Despite Rem’s questions Santo still wouldn’t explain himself. This wasn’t Route 10, it wasn’t Louisiana, this desert wasn’t the swamp. Not even close. They were so far from Louisiana, he said, he couldn’t even imagine it. The further they drove the dryer and more weathered the land became, and as they turned off the highway and came slowly through a gate Santo hitched forward in his seat and drove with more attention. ‘Not long now,’ he said, and appeared to look for clues. ‘This is Peterstown.’

‘This is where Geezler lives?’ The name struck Rem in an instant.

‘Not quite. This is where he had a house.’ Santo couldn’t hold in his smile. ‘You think we might call in?’

‘He won’t be here. Neither will the house. This whole situation is five years old. The house will be gone. Besides, it’s a bad idea.’

‘It’s here all right. I looked it up. The man just can’t live in it. And anyway, we’ve arrived.’

He pulled the car round a long curve, the land opening out to a gravel paddock, and a low-lying building, roofless, but with long tan adobe walls.

‘The man likes horses. Can you imagine? And what was he? A deputy? An assistant? This was going to be a stud farm. He fucking breeds horses.’

Not a picture to keep in your head, Rem agreed.

‘I had to see this. I love this story. He built this house, and then they made him take it down – only one floor though. So that’s it. That’s what he has. One floor of nothing.’

‘Why are we here?’

‘It’s no accident. We’re not calling because we happen to be close. You think we’re the only people he fucked with?’

He let Santo get out of the car, watched him walk to the boot, take out a crowbar, then saunter toward the building and clamber over one of the low-lying walls. He waited, determined not to follow, but also curious.

*   *   *

The land split in front of the house, a vast narrow canyon, so that the house topped one side. The rooms were laid out, concrete, cleaned, and roofless. The walls had been cut, so the entire house held the appearance of being sawn horizontally in half. The range of the rooms, laid out like a villa, something you’d see on a holiday programme, where the presenter would speak about the possible activities that might once have happened in such a place, evoke a lifestyle by looking at stunted walls, views and prospects.

In what Rem took to be the lounge, the largest defined space, a staircase, a clean oblong dropped through the concrete.

‘Get this,’ Santo called up. ‘There’s more down here.’

Rem came carefully down the steps and found Santo in a concrete chamber, working on the door. With nothing else to take out his frustration on, he swung the crowbar and knocked off the handle. Still inside, he let the door close.

Rem stood on the bottom step. Santo, unable to get out, banged, first with his fist, then with the crowbar. The sounds seeming soft, distant. Rem had to push hard to open the door.

‘That’s not funny.’ Santo stepped out, alarmed. ‘There’s no windows. You know how dark it is in here?’

‘Shouldn’t have messed with the lock.’

Rem returned up the stairs, there was nothing to be gained by looking at this place.

He sat in the car and waited for Santo.

‘There’s one thing I don’t understand.’

Santo dug in his pockets for his cigarettes.

‘Kiprowski. He didn’t have to go to Amrah. I don’t see why he did what he did.’

Santo set the cigarette on his lap. ‘He wanted to go. He had his own reasons.’ He found the lighter and tested the flame. ‘You remember that map? The road that didn’t exist.’

‘It came from CIPA.’

‘CIPA funded projects just to get rid of money. That road where the translator died – it used to be straight. They had a roadwork project that was supposed to improve connections between remote villages. Only they didn’t do anything. They dug up roads and re-laid them. They put a curve in a road that used to run straight.’

‘How did he know this?’

Santo lit the cigarette. ‘He asked Howell. Said the road was straight on all the maps. Howell came right out with it, told us about a number of projects just like that. None of them any use. Just a way to spend money.’

‘We’re here because of a curve in a road?’

‘I think you know there’s a little more to it than that.’

Santo blew out smoke. Both men looked ahead at Geezler’s house. Another incomplete project.

*   *   *

He woke with a headache, and felt more tired on waking than he had when he’d lain down. The room was otherwise empty, and Santo gone. The car also gone.

Santo had left an envelope on a small Singapore Airlines bag. The envelope contained a DVD and a note: Watch the DVD, I’ll call.

*   *   *

Santo sent two SMS messages mid-morning. Rem had risen properly, showered, and sat on the bed. He watched the sunlight slip across the floor and considered how he was going to get back home. It wasn’t just about deciding the next moment, the next couple of hours, but a larger, more difficult question. Why return? What to do?

After the second message, Rem slipped onto his knees and figured through the small complications of playing a DVD on the motel monitor. He sat on the floor and watched with the sound turned low.

*   *   *

On the first segment, a small image sank into the screen, large pixels vibrated unevenly, unstable, material shot on a handheld phone. The image dipped and opened to a figure in a doorway, silhouetted by giddy light, a voice, male, off-camera, close and wet: <How about that>, a white hand pointing into the room.

A woman on her back on a bed, a sheet pulled up over her crotch, her breasts shining, her hand dug between her thighs. A man with a cigarette and credit card was told to <Fuck her, just get on top and fuck her>, and the woman kicked the sheet back to her ankles.

Rem couldn’t guess her age, young, surely, without doubt, long black hair, dark eyebrows, so that she might be Middle Eastern, he could not be more specific, the camera divided her body into flat plains, light and dark.

Santo, now close, smoking, rubbing his gums, <Try this>.

Another man, Pakosta, standing over the girl, <I’ll leave you here>.

Instructions: <No, fuck her, get on top>.

Pakosta in another shot, closer now, seen from the back, labouring, flopped forward, slow then active, naked on top of the girl. A leg in the way, interrupting. Then on her side with two men, Clark and Santo, the woman propped between them, their skin shining, making one animal out of the three.

<You up her ass? Fuck her, fuck her, she doesn’t care>.

Pakosta walking into the room, undressing and thrusting his hips as an example. <I’ll have some of that>.

A soft downlight now, a different shot a different camera, infinitely more detailed. Pakosta, bleary-eyed, face messed with powder, opening perfumes and smelling them, pouring out the contents. The woman spread-eagled on the bed. Then Clark thrusting over her head.

Pakosta laughing: <You’re gonna choke her>.

Santo again, aggressive with the woman, working on top, turning her over, hands gripping her breasts, pinching hard, and no reaction from the girl. In this shot it is clear that she is young, clear also that she is not aware of her surroundings.

<Thank you, thank you>.

<That was inspired>.

*   *   *

Santo rang about an hour after Rem had watched the footage. ‘Who was she?’

‘This isn’t about the girl.’

‘She was, what? Fifteen? Fourteen, fifteen?’

‘She was working at the hotel. What does it matter? Howell paid for her. You have no idea, and when we came back it was like nothing happened. You didn’t want to know. I don’t think you even asked.’

‘This has nothing to do with me. This is you, Pakosta, Clark, and Howell, and whoever that girl was. It has nothing to do with me.’

‘See. The thing is. That wasn’t the problem. The problem is that Howell had us. He took that footage for pleasure, and he wanted more, and he would have kept it going for as long as he wanted. He owned us once he had that material. He made that happen. The day after we returned he sent us emails with these attached.’

Santo wanted to know what Rem had done with the DVD.

‘We were toys,’ Santo said, his voice unnaturally flat. ‘You get that? Howell. Sutler. Geezler. We were the entertainment.’

*   *   *

When the news came that Howell had died of his injuries, Santo called Rem. ‘That’s everyone except Geezler.’

‘You’re forgetting Sutler?’

‘You think he survived? They just haven’t found him yet.’