CUKURCA

 

2.1

Ford came across the refugee camp in the late afternoon.

In pursuit of a lone mountain goat he stumbled to the peak of a steep embankment with a rock in each hand – breathless, sweaty, light-headed, and above all hungry. Directly under his feet the land swooped down to a city of grey-green tents curved to the crater’s smooth incline.

Startled by the view, he stopped at the edge. Two boys with rifles attended a loose herd of goats on the opposite slope. In the camp, bearded men congregated in front of their tents. Women scooped water from the edge of a cloud-bright lake. Black dogs ran feckless along the shore. Smoke rose in wayward strands. For two days he’d been certain he could smell food, and here in rising threads hung the tasty scents of braised meat and some kind of bread. All of this detail, tiny, toy-like, distinct, protected by a natural stone bowl.

He made a divot for himself in the shale at the crater’s crest and hunkered down to watch the camp. He couldn’t guess how many people the camp housed nor for how long the settlement had been established (the tracks between the tents could be weeks or years old). A dumpsite of barrels and plastic crates, an area set apart for fuel canisters, a separate corral with a water cistern and hand pumps, were evidence of organization, not longevity. After an hour watching armed men and half-wild dogs he decided to avoid the camp. If he came across strangers on the open road it would be another matter, but here in the mountain desert, two days from any village, he looked nothing but suspicious.

He’d slept in the afternoons to avoid the heat, and walked through the night in worn boots and slack clothes across a rising landscape of scree and scrub, a full moon cold on the rock. While he walked he fretted, conflating the bare facts of his flight with notions that did not make sense – so he lost himself to his discomfort, to the alternating heat and cold, to the certain fact of one footfall set before another. He told himself that he was in shock, although he knew this not to be true. In two or three days he would reach Kuzey and the Turkish border, but more immediately he needed water and he needed food.

Uncertain if he was nine or ten days away from Amrah City, he began to draw his route in the dirt. Day one, the flight from the southern desert, Amrah City to Baghdad. Day two, military transport to Balad Ruz, to be taken to a small field hospital where his hands and face were treated for burns and cuts, then back almost the entire way before curving up to Khanaqin and driving east toward Iran to see the faint spill of fire along the horizon. On day three, a free ride on a school bus with steel plates welded to its sides packed with Sorani Kurds shipping to Halabja for work. Then private transport the next morning, by-passing Sulaymaniyah, to Fort Suse with an American engineer – a sturdy man from Butte, Montana, convinced that the Iranians were poisoning their own people and that nothing could contain the toxins, because borders and frontiers, when you think about it, offer no real protection. Ford couldn’t disagree, the bandages on his hands and his wandering confirmed it. He managed ad hoc, day by day, progressing from this place to that with the rising doubt that he had made the journey unnecessarily complicated. From here, days four and five, he travelled by taxi to a military checkpoint, then on to Arbil, continuing his northern zigzag with a Jordanian driver who took pity and gave him names of other contacts: a man with a car to sell (although the car turned out to be a ’53 trail bike pilfered from an American contractor), and a man at Kuzey who could see him across the border. The days now became confused and Ford scratched out the route: days six and seven, or seven and eight, by motorbike, a painful ride along a dry riverbed toward Sarsil, toward Amedi, where he finally removed the bandages although his hands were still blistered and numb. From here he wasted two whole days heading west instead of north and lost the last of his food to rain. The same rain clogged the bike with mud which later hardened to stone, and forced him to walk through the scrub, complaining at his pure bad luck.

His ambition remained the same. Once he hit Turkey he would head for Cukurca, a small town fifteen miles north of the border. He would find a hotel, a hostel, wait out until he was sure he was secure, then find a bank and transfer the money out of the junk account. He would return to Bonn, give up his apartment, pay his debts, sell what he owned, send the money back to England. Living in a small cabin for six weeks had taught him what he did and did not need. His life would become simple, lived day to day with modest self-sufficiency. He would almost certainly leave Europe. The moment this money was secured he’d leave the Middle East and never return. The attack on Southern-CIPA was a hard lesson, separate from his arrangement with Geezler, that life could change in one instant. In his backpack: two hundred and fifty-three American dollars, one litre of water. Not much of a plan, but a plan nevertheless. Among the flecks of sand Ford found a piece of seashell. He took the shell in one hand and tested his fingers, pressed the shard into the skin to gauge the loss of sensation, and thought that this was improving now the blisters were gone and the cuts were largely healed; although he could not yet feel heat or wetness, he could sense pressure. And while he considered how far he was from any ocean, he fell asleep, slipped from one world to another as a man falling backward through a window. In his dream debris flew about him as a tranquil sky turned black. Among the scattering dust: a window joist, paper, his boots flung hard and far, a man diving in a perfect arc, his clothes on fire.

*   *   *

He woke to the sound of approaching aircraft, with pins and needles running from his fingers through his forearm. Above him the sky sang with the drone of engines, a busy vibration of many unseen craft. Too exhausted to walk, he slept curled about a boulder. An hour later he woke again, as a single fighter tore over, and so it continued through the night with troop carriers, bombers, jets laden with menace, passing above the low-lying clouds. In the distance the blistering sound of gunfire, too regular to signal combat. At night these nations spoke in coded rumbles, one to the other, in whispers and threats.

*   *   *

He cowered until daylight and woke sensing that he was alone – the goat, and his ridiculous idea to kill it, gone. Unable to escape the mist that settled about the slope he headed downhill but never seemed free of the mountain or the cloud salted with grit. When the ground levelled he followed a track of compacted stone out of a ravine to emerge in a lowland fen of grasses and marsh and open blue sky. Beside the road, in ditches and clearings, lay abandoned hideouts with military camouflage, stacked sandbags slopped with mud. Above him, strung across the mouth of the gulley, hung a Turkish flag, blood-red, immense.

2.2

A message to call the London office of Gibson & Baker arrived in the early morning, as an email with an attachment, which he picked up on his phone; the subject line marked URGENT: Call Gibson ASAP. Parson ignored the request. The word urgent worked an irritation in him. A little insulted that the message showed no sensitivity, to how busy he might be, Parson pocketed the phone and started his day. Gibson’s desire to have his staff available at any hour needed disciplining, and he wouldn’t call. Not immediately.

Later in the morning, out in the desert with a tape measure, a camera, a notebook, Parson clambered up a littered shale bank to reach the road, and remembered the message, and thought that he was foolish not to pay it immediate attention. He should have called London, he should have spoken with Gibson, exactly as he was asked. He returned to the vehicle and finished his notes, marked measurements on a diagram of the road – a simple line with a single curve. The road, straight for fifty-three miles, rose on a slight embankment as it turned, then levelled out again and continued through the desert for another thirty-two straight miles. A highway with almost no traffic, and a turn which accounted for a good number of fatalities. Even here, thirty-two miles south of the closest town, the roadside appeared untrustworthy. The siding was indistinct, an embankment of boulders and stones furred with shredded paper and plastic that rattled in the wind. A thick border of potential hazard, which might contain any kind of mess, hide any kind of device.

He took photographs of the tread marks on the road, took shots of the highway, almost of nothing, the sky and land being of equal value, bright and burnt, without particular feature. He braced against the wind to take another photograph of the curve, then returned to the vehicle to write down the details. Seven weeks ago a HOSCO supply truck had missed the turn and careened off the road, blindly launched itself over the drop, a mere three feet: small, but stepped high enough to tip the vehicle to its side before it hit the scree. Pieces from the supply truck could be found without effort, fragments of glass and sections from the frame, rutted aluminium, some pieces of chrome that caught the sun, and as he picked through the debris field Parson re-read the case files. The marks from this incident were hard to distinguish from other marks from other accidents, a history in scorched dirt of drivers falling asleep or just altogether missing the turn and finding themselves, for one moment, mid-air and roadless. HOSCO convoys used the road when security alerts made Highway 80 impassable. Parson never lost sight of the small ironies that made up his work. By seeking a safer route the convoy had come across more predictable enemies – exhaustion, fatigue, inattention – and a translator slumbering in the cabin of the tumbling truck was thrown from the bunk at the back of the cab to the windscreen and broke his neck.

He knew nothing about the translator, Amer Hassan, except that he held a British passport, and had a wife and two children in Darlington, UK. He knew that HOSCO had already terminated the contracts of its American and European drivers and rehired men from Nepal, India, and Sri Lanka. He knew that most of the translators came from Baghdad or the northern cities, and that they would not be able to return home because of their work.

The soldier escorting Parson (one of two, the second behind the vehicle), picked at a hair in his nose, and asked if Parson was ready. Small-talk done between them, Parson nodded and put away his work. He disliked travelling in the HOSCO jeeps, and disliked passing through the small towns. He disliked how men watched, heads turning as the truck drove by, some rooted calculation in their minds. He disliked the trash by the roadside, the dogs, the children who sometimes ran after them, the plumes of roadside fires spiralling into flat blue skies. He disliked the dust, the flies, the heat, the sweat, the way he thought these days of them and us. He disliked how he could be miles from anywhere, cutting through the desert on some unbending road, and how he would still see plastic bags or water bottles, or clothes. He disliked every moment he spent outside the camp compound, but these visits were unavoidable, so he conducted them as precisely as possible, as early in the day as he could arrange.

*   *   *

Back on base in a hut that passed for guest quarters, Parson laid out the case files. An accident. Simple enough, a ranking of ‘no culpability’ with ‘mitigating circumstances’, which he trusted HOSCO would translate sympathetically. He sat with a bottle of tepid water. It bothered him to be resolving issues in the field which could be decided in a comfortable office in London that faced the river and the Temple, with plain views of temperate browns and greys, of occasional river traffic and pedestrians, a welcome dullness to the prospect and the work. In London he would argue the matter.

Because he could not receive a signal in his hut, he traced his way to the mess hall, bought another water, and sat under a mural of New York with the Twin Towers restored, an eagle above them, wings outstretched. That the water was cold made him happy. He retrieved Gibson’s message. Without doubt the call would mean another delay in his return home, another site visit under police, military, or private guard, another delay in which he spent his days at a hospital, a military barrack, a roadside, speaking through an interpreter, interviewing people who would rather not talk. This call would mean more evenings lost to reports to determine if HOSCO was or was not liable. He opened the attachment and enlarged the image, a headshot from an identity photo, the man’s expression slightly bewildered, eyes wide, a little startled, and couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to this man. The image set in the past tense. The call passed quickly to Gibson.

‘Who am I looking at?’

‘His name is Stephen Sutler. He’s with HOSCO. Have you kept up with the news?’

‘Haven’t had a chance. To be honest, I’m closing cases. I’m looking forward to coming home.’

Gibson hesitated, the comment sat without remark. ‘The picture you have. He’s British, and he’s missing. He was at the local government office five days ago when it came under attack and now he’s missing.’

‘Kidnapped?’

‘Doubtful. What do you know about the Massive?’

Parson imagined Gibson in his office, stooped, as he always stooped when he spoke on the phone, voice raised, his accent a little pushed.

‘It’s a proposal to expand a small military installation in the southern desert. HOSCO won the bid earlier this year. Washington have poured no end of money into the project. Stephen Sutler was HOSCO’s man on site, in charge of the initial development, but he’s disappeared and no one can find the money.’

‘You said he’s British?’

‘That’s almost all we know about him.’

‘How much?’

‘Well, here’s the thing. No one knows exactly. The data was destroyed in the attack. It’s being calculated as we speak. We’re certainly talking several million dollars.’

Parson allowed a respectful gap before asking why they were involved.

‘They want someone to go to Amrah and see the Deputy Administrator at the government office, a man called Paul Howell. He physically managed the money, oversaw the accounts. He’s almost certainly involved. It needs to happen soon, though, as soon as possible. Howell has an attorney, and I understand it’s all starting to get complicated. They want Sutler found. No one else seems to be getting anywhere. They’ve also arrested two of the guards, and you’ll need to speak with them as well. Ask about Stephen Sutler, see what everyone knows. Oh,’ Gibson added, not so much an afterthought as a warning, ‘Howell has friends in the State Department. He isn’t someone you want to annoy. I doubt he’ll come out of this clean, but he’s seasoned. Find out what you can about the financial organization. See what’s known about Sutler, and leave the rest to the lawyers.’

‘You’ve explained that this isn’t what we do?’

‘There isn’t any choice. HOSCO are our clients and we want to keep them. It’s unusual, but it’s in the vicinity of what we ordinarily do. They say they aren’t liable, that the money was organized by the government office. Anyway, I want to show them that we’re available, and that we’re happy to help. They need someone immediately, and they’d prefer this person to be British. By the time they find someone else and send him over, Stephen Sutler could be anywhere.’

‘So I speak with these men and report back to you.’

‘You’ve misunderstood me. They want you to find him.’

*   *   *

He waited for the flight with the printout in his hands. Two names written on the reverse, Stephen Sutler, Paul Howell. The paper folded twice with care. The delay on his return wasn’t completely unexpected and when he called his wife she took the news with resignation. In return she gave him little news of her own, and it bothered him that he didn’t know her thinking, not to the usual detail.

The proper force of his reassignment struck him mid-flight. A black night with the knowledge of desert and stone waste beneath him, a bad month behind him, and this one fact that he would now have to stay in the country, amid all of this calamity. Beside him sat American soldiers in full kit: tourniquets, boots, helmets, in mottled desert MARPAT. One replaced plates into pouches. Another – tight mouth, bored – shook with the craft and refused eye contact. Parson looked at the men and wondered how they could tolerate the plain unworkability of the situation. I should not be here, he told himself. I do not want to be here.

*   *   *

Parson arrived at Camp Liberty before sunrise and was taken immediately to collect Sutler’s belongings. An hour later, in possession of a single kitbag in a sealed military sack, he boarded the helicopter for Amrah City. The kitbag would go to the team investigating Stephen Sutler’s activities, a mix of US Federal Marshals, Iraqi prosecutors, and representatives from the ministries, with a few interested private attorneys. While Parson was officially seconded to this team, he would report directly to Mathew Gibson, who would filter the reports to HOSCO.

Parson focused on the view, unsettled by the craft’s sideways pitch he picked out a single Humvee as it cut through the compound in the early light. The camp, marked by water tanks, latrines, a line of Portakabins, and a single Quonset hut, lay alongside another unbending road. Back in the desert he could see a number of black oblongs, the burn pits, with lazy smoke trails thinning into ghost vapours. Nothing more than seven black holes and a curve of shacks as provisional as a movie set, its impermanence amplified by the lack of scrub grass, palm groves, or any natural sign of water. A practical logic determined these locations: to protect signals, facilities, borders, supply lines, strategic zones, or some pre-existing feature, but here the logic was lost and the road cut into the desert in a clean unnatural line with the camp and outpost set as nodes on either side – which could, and might as well, sit anywhere along its length. In twelve days this unit would be disassembled and shipped, flat-packed, to Kuwait and Camp Navistar.

He shut his eyes to imagine the unit wiped off the map so that nothing remained except morning light, sunburnt dust, cracked stone. It was easy to imagine it gone, the desert here being ungraded rubble, ridges scorched of colour. Sand filtered into the sky, blurring the land with a pink funk. The flight from Camp Liberty to Amrah City crossed two lines of control: from American to British, from British back to American. The craft descended in a corkscrew, sidling down to avoid attack.

*   *   *

Howell’s attorney laid out the problem as they walked. They – representatives from HOSCO, the military, the New Transitional Assembly, the various Danish, British, and US consulate representatives and their advisers, four internal ministries (which included the National Bank, the Oil Ministry, the Ministry of Industry, and the Ministry for Labour) – wanted Stephen Lawrence Sutler. She counted the authorities on her fingers. ‘But instead of Sutler we have Paul Howell and two civilian contractors,’ meaning Mathew Clark and Carl Simon Pakosta, the men arrested alongside Howell at Southern-CIPA and charged with impersonating military personnel. ‘Which is…’ she squinted across the asphalt to the hangar, the light about them solid and over-bright, ‘useless.’

Parson nodded.

‘It’s sticky.’ The attorney explained the situation in tiny bites. She shifted a collection of bound files under her arms to free her hands, then drew her hair, straight, black, shoulder-length, behind her ear. The heat pushed on Parson’s shoulders; the sun sparked sharp across the airfield from chrome on cars and aircraft. He studied the attorney through pinched eyes and thought her younger than he’d first imagined.

‘At the moment they can’t agree on anything. There’s no decision on the presiding authority, so there’s no consensus on whether Howell should be handed to civil or military authorities. Right now, until the charges are formalized, the decision is academic, but nobody wants to decide.’ She smiled and shook her head. ‘If, or when, they make that decision they’ll have to decide which military or civil authority takes precedence. It’s very sticky.’

They continued their walk; the guard a step ahead, a curve of sweat wetting the small of his back.

‘Everything’s made a little more complicated because Howell holds dual citizenship with Denmark and the US. He also worked for the State Department, which doesn’t make matters easier. Both the military and HOSCO are making a strong case to have him returned to Washington. You understand the complexity?’

Eyes bright, the attorney spoke of patience. None of this was easy or pleasant. Howell was cooperating, while at the very same time he was being stripped of his assets. Each day brought worsening news as his public and private lives were ransacked in the search for the money. ‘When the office was destroyed they lost most of their records.’ At the very least he would lose his house in Charlotte, North Carolina, his apartment in Washington, DC. His bank accounts, already frozen, would be cleared. A team of government and civilian lawyers had already divided the claims. ‘HOSCO will sue for what they can. The transatlantic flights, the hotels in Damascus, Dubai, London, and every expense relating to these and other such visits during the period of the charges will be clawed back. They’re intent on it.’ By mid-September Howell’s Danish-based properties would be seized. Not that any of this could yet be proved to come from the money they believed he’d extorted. The attorney curled back her hair. Did Parson understand how unjust this was? He’d yet to be proven guilty. He’d yet to be formally charged.

Whatever the outcome, Howell’s reputation lay in pieces. She said this as an aside and allowed her hand to waver, so-so. She spoke about Howell as if he were a remote element, which Parson found distracting, a quantity they could coolly consider and assay. ‘Now Stephen Sutler,’ she again curved her hair behind her ear, ‘is a whole other matter. We’ve had sightings in Iran, Bahrain, Sulaymaniyah, Basrah, Kuwait, Damascus, Aden.’ Everywhere except the oil-rich wastes of Al-Muthanna and the dusty tracks of Amrah City. A phantom Sutler crawling through the Middle East left open too many possibilities. She pointed in the direction of a hangar. The airfield swam in a humid light. ‘Remind me, are you looking for the money or the man?’

‘The man.’

‘You’re from HOSCO?’

‘I work for Gibson and Baker. We advise HOSCO on insurance settlements that concern the UK and British citizens.’

‘You investigate claims?’

‘And we advise on litigation, we investigate fraud.’

‘You’re part of the clean-up?’

‘I’m a public adjuster. There are other people looking for him. I’m here to gather information and because they want my advice.’

‘As an adjuster? They’ve sent a claims adjuster on a manhunt? Can you see why I find this interesting? We’re in a country where graduate students run public services, I shouldn’t be so surprised. Do you know how much money is missing?’

‘I have an idea.’

‘Yesterday’s estimate hit fifty-three million,’ she pronounced the words in pieces, ‘dollars.’

‘And how did he manage this?’

‘No one knows. When you find that out, you find the money. They have no idea.’

‘Why have they arrested Paul Howell?’

‘Because, like you, he’s here.’ The attorney nodded and drew in breath. While there could be no doubt about Howell’s complicity, it just wasn’t possible that Howell could have absconded with fifty-three million dollars, tra-la, like some magic trick. It wasn’t logistically possible. It couldn’t be achieved. ‘The bulk of the money came through his office, so we have to assume that he was involved. Witting or unwitting.’ She tucked the files tight under her arm. ‘Stephen Lawrence Sutler is a very interesting man. He doesn’t appear on company documents. There’s no record of him coming into the country. Like you, I’ve been looking and I’ve found nothing. HOSCO hired a ghost. Shall we?’

With a signal from the attorney the guard unlocked the door to the hangar.

*   *   *

The interior of the hangar was made out as a makeshift ward, empty of patients but busy with equipment. Green cots, litters, stanchions, and stacked boxes of medical supplies. Some areas appeared to be organized into stations set about black-framed rickshaws to transport the wounded. An American flag hung high above them. Parson couldn’t tell if the area was used as a field hospital or for holding patients for transport, and suspected that the function depended on demand.

The attorney walked to a table on which lay a number of files. ‘This is everything that survived.’ She offered Parson a seat. The guard stood close to the desk.

‘Can I see him?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Howell.’

‘Howell?’ The attorney looked to Parson, at first confused then amused. ‘No. He’s in Baghdad at Combat Support. You didn’t know?’ She sat back, took in the long view of the hangar. ‘I thought you wanted to see the documents from Southern-CIPA?’

‘I came to speak with Howell.’

‘Well, he isn’t here.’ She leaned into the desk and indicated the files. ‘Paul Howell was thrown out of the offices when they were hit. He needs surgery.’ Of the three people in Howell’s office only Sutler, they believed, survived without harm. The boy, Kiprowski, was cut to pieces.

The attorney drew out photographs from a folder. ‘This is Paul Howell.’

The man appeared more delicate than Parson had imagined. Recently shaved, the Deputy Administrator wore a smart white shirt and sat upright with his hands flat to the table, angular, poised as if stuffed. His most striking feature, remarked in every report, was his platinum-white hair, which gave him an unreal quality, slightly other-worldly. Howell didn’t match Parson’s idea of how an embezzler should look; trim and sensitive, with no hint of greed. He could intuit an element of pride in the man’s presentation, clean shirt, clean-shaven, a small miracle given the heat.

Parson looked over the images. He couldn’t recall the attorney’s name. The introduction had passed too quickly, his mind in any case occupied with the strange geography of her office: one desk, hidden away in a field hospital in an aircraft hangar set distant from the base and surrounded by a temporary cordon – a game of Chinese boxes, all of which seemed to intensify the heat. He looked from the attorney to the guard. The attorney spoke in a hushed voice, aware of the current limitations and the presence of the guard. She produced another folder and laid out a loose stack of faxes and newspaper cuttings.

The details of Howell’s arrest played across the pages of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times. She spread out the papers and turned them for Parson to read. The London Times, Die Zeitung, the Corriere, ran a photograph of the offices at Southern-CIPA – a building bunkered behind sandbags and razor wire. The Charlotte Gazette reported that Howell’s family had escaped their homes dressed in sunglasses and wigs and checked into motels along Highway 85, hiding out in the hope that a decent week would staunch the fierce interest now focused on them. Parson looked from one to another and took in the information without reaction. The New York Times ran a photograph of pallets of cash, stacked and swathed in plastic, blocks of money rimming the black-ribbed mouth of a Hercules. Paul Howell standing hand on hip with Stephen Sutler beside him, similarly posed, face obscured by shadow. Sutler, the author of this disaster. Stephen Sutler, the vanishing man.

The attorney settled back and looked again to Parson. ‘Does this help?’

‘It helps.’ Parson sat forward. ‘Tell me how this worked. How well did Howell know Sutler?’

The attorney shook her head. ‘I doubt he knew him at all.’ Her voice remained flat and factual.

‘But each time Howell transferred, how much?’ Parson looked to his notebook. ‘Five hundred thousand. Seven hundred thousand. Ten hundred thousand, all in American dollars.’

The attorney levelled her shoulders. A slight aggression leaked into the gesture. ‘All by legitimate order. It’s all documented. The only interesting feature here is that Sutler chose to receive the money in such small amounts.’

‘So a small two hundred thousand?’

‘It is small.’ The woman paused and cleared her throat. ‘How much do you think it would cost to build a new facility in a desert? Imagine? Scale it down, and picture them building one thing, a house, say, what would that take? You have to house the workers, feed them, transport them in and out. Then you have the materials. In principle Sutler commanded a budget of fifty-seven million, which had to be allocated in seven months. Howell had no influence over how he performed this. Camp Liberty was a waste dump for the oil ministry, then for HOSCO, none of this had anything to do with the regional government. Sutler was supposed to design a new facility and prepare the site. I don’t see how this could be done in bites of five, seven, ten hundred thousand. His budget covered the basic set-up of the facility, water, power, security, workers’ housing. Sutler was one of nearly thirty or so project managers out of the five hundred contractors the regional government dealt with directly, day to day. On top of this they managed payments for all of the ministries based here in the south. Howell dispensed between one and one and a half million dollars per month on wages to each ministry, and all of these payments were made in cash. The monthly operational budget ran into the tens of millions, on top of this were the payments to contractors for reconstruction, not all of them HOSCO projects – schools, power stations, oil facilities, water and sewage, and so on – all approved by Baghdad. Sutler was one of many, and he always collected the money himself.’

‘This is documented?’

‘We know the dates.’ She pointed at the files.

‘But other people saw him? Who did he come with?’

‘I don’t know.’ The attorney paused to consider. ‘There was the man who was killed in the attack, I’ve no information on the other occasions.’

‘And this was Steven Kiprowski?’

‘The boy who died. Stefan. Yes.’

‘And Howell always dealt in cash?’

‘Yes. The American dollars were kept in Howell’s office. But as Sutler was working for HOSCO he had an open card. This wasn’t the only expenditure Sutler managed. He had access to accounts back in Washington.’

‘Which Howell authorized?’

‘Doubtful. And there’s no record to show this. I doubt that Howell was a gate-holder for any money held out of the region. Those accounts could be managed online, it would be easy for Sutler to manipulate the accounts, he could have been anywhere to do that.’

‘When did he last see Sutler?’

The woman looked up, surprised, and when she spoke her voice curved a little higher. ‘He would have given the money directly to Sutler. So that morning.’

‘Just before they were hit? Just before the strike?’

‘Yes. There wasn’t any warning. We have reports from other people in the outer office who say that Howell had just come in to speak with them. It’s confused. Everyone in the second office, in accounts, was thrown down. Howell was in the doorway.’

‘And Sutler?’

‘Everyone assumed he was dead. The blast took everything. Howell’s office was obliterated, and the outer office lost almost three walls. One of the guards in the outer office was hit by debris and everyone was concerned about him. You have to understand it was very confusing.’

‘And Kiprowski?’

The attorney fell silent for a moment. ‘He must have been very close.’

To Parson’s surprise the attorney began to smile. ‘There’s no way of knowing any of this until Sutler tells you himself – he was supposed to prepare for one of the largest engineering projects ever attempted. A new city in the desert, and don’t forget, the gateway to the world’s largest oil reserve. It was supposed to make up for the failures in Baghdad, Amrah City. This plan was so large, so extraordinary, that no one had their eyes on him. The man is a blankness, a black hole.’

‘You’re saying we won’t find him?’

The attorney thought carefully about the question, and wanting to be honest she said that she just couldn’t see it.

2.3

After Cukurca Ford followed the service road that ran parallel to a river (then a fuel line and later a railway line), and throughout the first day he hid from the supply trucks and road tankers, from military craft, all Turkish, all heading east, small flags quivering on the first vehicle.

Now, in Turkey, he was simply John Jacob Ford, engineer – although he guessed it would be wise to keep himself away from the police, the military, away from any kind of official attention, at least until he was well away from the border. Stephen Sutler was gone, he admitted this with a little regret, and understood that he needed to destroy any evidence which would connect him to the name.

*   *   *

Ford couldn’t help but fret, until he had the money he wasn’t entirely secure. It was possible, even here, that there would be interest in Sutler. He wanted to speak with Geezler and learn more about what had happened, although he knew Geezler would not welcome his call.

At one o’clock on his second day in Turkey, he caught sight of a dun-brown military jeep at a distance of two, maybe three miles. Ford winced into the sun and gave himself four minutes as an estimate. Four minutes. Time enough to form a plan. Salt in his eyes, the taste of zinc in his mouth. He’d trusted himself that once he reached Turkey everything would become easier, but, after an entire morning of silence, only one solitary jeep approached, right where the highway temporarily curved from the protection of the river, the pipeline, the train track. The open plains, gentle and naked, offered no shelter. He could be half a mile off the road and still be seen.

He gave himself three minutes.

The lower right pocket on the front of his backpack held four pieces of identification.

Ford took out the cards and papers. Among the papers he found the list of accounts for the Massive; the list of eight-digit numbers. He couldn’t remember putting the list in his pocket after taking it back from Howell – but here it was, safe in his hands. Three chances, he thought, one of them gone. He tucked the paper with his passport into his pocket then set about destroying Sutler’s ID. He rubbed the card across a rock and grazed the photo, the name, the magnetic strip, and felt that he was cutting bonds and ties to a project he could not now return to. The jeep could not be seen. Rooks settled close to him. One, three, then five. They approached when he looked down, retreated when he looked up, strange bobbing witnesses. Not ravens, he remembered, but crows with grey breasts and black hoods.

He snapped the cards in half and buried them in the dirt, then squinted at the jeep – lost for the moment in the road’s soft dip. He watched it reappear, closer. Two people, jolting in unison, neither in uniform. Better to wave it down than risk another day in full sun with no food, no water; like this could be some ordinary day and some ordinary place to be found walking.

*   *   *

The woman in the passenger seat took off her sunglasses. One hand held her hair in place, fingers split, uncertain, while the other signalled the driver to slow down. When the vehicle drew to a stop beside him the woman dipped forward and stared, busty, cartoonish, head tilted in recognition. She called him Roger. Roger from the Australian. Right? Roger? And then a quizzical, ‘It is you?’

Ford extended his arms, offering himself, innocent.

The woman shook her head. ‘Incredible,’ she apologized, ‘crazy.’ She spoke in English to Ford and German to her companion. ‘You look like him,’ she said. ‘I mean it’s unreal. How are you here? It’s not possible. This area is cut off. The military are all the way to the border.’

The driver began to shove aside the luggage in the back of the jeep. He patted the seat in invitation. As Ford clambered aboard the woman asked if he understood English. Ford said yes, sat down, and found he couldn’t stop nodding. He began to explain himself. ‘I was heading east. I was following the convoys and they commandeered my vehicle. I’ve been here for two days. They took my car. Left me in the middle of nowhere. I’ve been walking but there’s no one.’ He pointed over his shoulder, then offered his hand realizing that he’d taken up the offer of a ride before the proper introductions. ‘Paul Howell,’ he regretted the name even as it slipped out of his mouth.

The woman didn’t catch the name. What was it? ‘Erwell?’ She looked hard back down the highway. ‘It’s impossible for you to be here. The roads have been closed for three days. Entirely closed. Where did you sleep? And food? What about food and water? You have only one bag?’

For the first time Ford realized what a mess he must appear: his trousers worn and dirty, his boots white with dust. Unshaven with sweat sticking his shirt to his shoulders; he stank, he knew this.

‘I was supposed to be back this morning. There will be people looking for me. If you drop me at the next town, I can make arrangements from there. Everything I had was in my car.’

The driver and the woman looked at each other, and the man began to drive. Ford leaned into the wind, his eyes half-closed, cat-like. The woman watched Ford in the rear-view mirror and appeared unconvinced by his story. At the driver’s suggestion she offered him water and bread. They had nothing else, she said. There was nothing to share. Ford’s feet knocked against bottles, soft packets wrapped in a supermarket bag. Cheese, he thought. Meat. Exploring with his boot. They had food.

‘What happened to you?’ The woman indicated the cuts on his face and hands.

‘An accident, not so long ago. A car accident.’ He closed his eyes to prevent more questions.

Sleep bore down on him so that he heard only pieces of what she was saying. They were journalists, Susanna Heida and Gerhard Grüner. The three days of one-way traffic meant trouble. ‘After Israel,’ Heida swept her hand out, ‘look, after Egypt, Libya, anything is possible. The Iranians have taken over the western oil-fields and no one has stopped them. The Kurds attempt to declare an independent territory. Everybody wants something. Everything is in collapse. We passed refugees all the way from Semdinli.’ She looked to Ford, expecting him to understand. ‘The military have closed the villages, blocked the roads. These people are trapped. There have been attacks over the border in both Iran and Iraq. First it was the Shabak and Yizidi, now it’s more mainstream Kurd. Iraq is inside out. It’s crazy.’ To really see what was going on they needed to be in Iraq, she said, but everything, everywhere, was now closed. The borders were impassable.

Ford gave in to the hum of tyres on the tarmac, the hot wind, and slept sitting forward, eyes three-quarter closed.

*   *   *

The journalists stopped at the station forecourt to let Ford clamber out of the jeep. As she said goodbye the woman looked him over again, the calculation clear in her expression that although he wasn’t the journalist she’d first mistaken him for, he looked mightily familiar.

‘Rowell?’ she said. ‘Horwell? What was your name?’

A crowd obliterated the open bays in front of the station. The road, monitored by armed soldiers, remained passable. Behind the coach station rose the slim stone minarets and the gold-ribbed dome of a mosque, behind that, five miles north, smoke guttered up from a refinery. An eggy stink clotted the air and stuck in his throat. His thanks came out dry.

Determined to be gone, Ford kept his head down as he straightened the straps on his backpack. With a final hasty goodbye he walked round the back of the vehicle, then slipped immediately into the crowd. His relief at escaping the journalists was tempered with alarm at being back among so many people after a week of near absolute solitude. Even as he entered the crowd he felt separate and distinct, in no way part of them.

Once inside he watched over men’s shoulders as the jeep inched out of the forecourt. A bus, however slow and meandering, remained his best option.

*   *   *

He bought a bottle of water, paid with an American dollar, and washed himself over a corner basin in a small mirrorless room. The heat made him dizzy and the water caused the small cuts in his face and hands to begin to spot and bleed. He changed his clothes, found a place to sit at the back of the waiting room and when he settled he caught his reflection in the mirrored side of a soft-drink dispenser. The plastic compressed his face, which appeared in any case longer; his cheek-bones so pronounced that it took a short moment to recognize himself. Used to shorter hair, a fatter face, the change fascinated him. With a beard, his skin dark from the sun, abraded and cut, his eyes sharper, a little harrowed, he could pass by people who knew him and be ignored.

While he waited he kept his eye on the soldiers and security guards, the men at the small booths selling halva, cashew nuts, and Coca-Cola, men in couples loitering within the bus station, and the loners stalking the darkened bays. Soldiers armed with rifles minded the entrances. Across the aisle two others slumbered arm in arm, one man’s head rested against the other man’s shoulder. The floor crammed with civilians who slept head to toe. Men in drab suits with their arms wrapped about their luggage.

Now bored, Ford sat forward with his chin on his hands and decided to steer away from the border and the coast and head further inland. He would find a small hotel, a hostel, a pension. He would keep away from the larger hotels and bars, the cafés that catered to westerners, the tea houses and public thoroughfares. He would sleep and wait, and while he waited he could be certain that anyone searching for Sutler would push forward and lose momentum.

For most of the evening Ford sat with his head in his hands, miserable with the cold. A child slept beside him on a heap of gathered coats while her mother kept watch. These pauses and delays tested his nerve. Wherever there were refugees there would be police and security forces, roadblocks and checks, and they needed to be avoided.

At midnight the electricity failed, and in the darkness broken by the tiny lights of soldiers’ cigarettes, he at last felt secure.

In this silence he concerned himself with the attack, and consciously dismissed every thought of Kiprowski. At Camp Liberty the threat of such an attack had sat with them through every moment, awake, asleep, so he now felt a kind of deflation, commingled with relief and alarm. Relief that this had happened, it was over: and what were the chances of it happening a second time? And alarm at how the event remained unresolved. He couldn’t easily dismiss his concern about Kiprowski. Think of something else now. Wipe him from your mind. But as he consciously sought less troubling thoughts, his skin prickled in memory of the heat riding over him, bullying him in one hot complex shove, a mess of hands shunting him head over heels so fast and with such force that it stripped the boots off his feet. Surely: if he had survived, then so had Kiprowski. Not thinking of Kiprowski, of course, was thinking of Kiprowski. There he is, like that man there, or him, or him.

*   *   *

He missed being Sutler, and halfway through the night believed himself in transit, heading to, not from the desert of Al-Muthanna and Camp Liberty. The call from Paul Geezler. A five-twenty red-eye from Bonn to Düsseldorf that opened twenty-eight hours of transit flights and slow connections. Geezler wanted him deployed as soon as possible. Think Vietnam, think Da Nang. The Massive would transform HOSCO, and Ford, travelling under his own name, slipped into Sutler.

Wide awake, Ford could remember the exact moment he received Geezler’s call, and could recall himself, phone in hand, at the window of his small apartment overlooking a street on which nothing moved: the hotel rooms and apartments set above hardware shops, the boutiques and cafés dark and shuttered; the streets leathery wet, the greyness of the view, the ashen un-black sky suggesting a city set on a river.

Up to this point Ford had worked on small schemes, contract by contract: car parks for mini-malls; refits of East German factories; signs for autobahns; ground clearance in Croatia for the Corps of Engineers. All small. Ford knew that Geezler liked him. He knew he had the man’s attention. And this was that promised opportunity. It won’t come again. I’m serious. You don’t need expertise in business, what you need are people who can do, in one instant, exactly what you ask of them. Are you that man? Are you ready for change?

*   *   *

The first buses were scheduled to leave at six, all of them heading west or north-west.

The call to prayer came as a dislocated wail amplified through small speakers. Men knelt where they’d slept and bowed in prayer. Women shrank to the sides of the room, minding children, luggage, and themselves. Except for Ford and the soldiers, only one other passenger remained seated, and they looked at each other across the rows of empty benches. The young man, unprepared for the cold, wore open sandals, loose tan shorts, and a navy-blue sweater. He sat with a paperback open on his lap. Occasionally he looked up and scanned the room, his expression dulled by reading, and Ford wondered why such a boy – surely a tourist, a student – would be so close to a war zone.

2.4

Susanna Heida and Gerhard Grüner ate a small breakfast in their room, although neither was hungry. Grüner cut the feta with a pocket knife then sized up the blocks. Bored with him, Heida switched on the television.

The room stank of a zoo-like mustiness. Outside, suitcases and packages lined the stairwell and hallway.

Grüner sat naked at the table and read from his computer screen. A tissue spread out with olives, feta, bruised tomatoes, and bread beside the laptop and an open map of Turkey. Relatives of the hotel staff had paid to have their belongings stored in the empty rooms, and once these rooms had filled up they’d started using the public areas. This was his theory. The hotel would be more secure than their homes, he said, and it was true, the hotel was protected by armed guards. He’d seen this before, in Pakistan, although in Pakistan there was more money and these people had weapons like you wouldn’t believe, and bodyguards, ex-SAS, who slept in the corridors. Grüner had a good idea about what was going on.

Heida nodded, conceding to his experience. Crazy. The whole thing. Yes, crazy. There were small fires in the street. People cooking in family groups. People keeping themselves warm, waiting to see what would happen. She switched her attention from the window to the television, clicked through channels and watched the signal jump.

Grüner checked RSS downloads for the current news. ‘It looks the same,’ he said. ‘The border is closed.’ He pushed food into his mouth, his attention taken by the computer, the slow download, the erratic link. ‘We need to keep moving. They’re siphoning gasoline from the cars. The military is running out of fuel. Agri, Van, Hakkari, Siirt, Kurtalan, Mardin.’ He plotted an area on the map, point to point. ‘The only transport now is north and north-east. These towns are all closed. If we can’t get visas by Friday then we’re in trouble. We can’t go back and we can’t go forward. We should have stayed where we were.’

Heida nodded and Grüner nodded back, mouth full. ‘There’s no news about the visas. There’s a message from yesterday saying the border will remain closed.’ He glanced up, lips greasy with oil. ‘The only flight into Baghdad is from Düsseldorf. That’s it. Everything else is military.’

‘What about Damascus? If we go to Damascus or to Haleb, maybe there’s something from there, a convoy or something?’

‘There’s nothing. That’s it. And anyway, by the time we get there it will be too late.’

Evidence again of Grüner’s fatalism. Heida cruised through the channels looking for news. ‘Crazy,’ she said, ‘it’s just crazy.’ Grüner set the computer aside, stuffed the last of the food into his mouth, and, chewing, reached for her buttocks.

Indifference, this was the word she wanted. This was what she felt about the people outside, about their visas, and about Grüner, especially Grüner, too tall, ungainly, with his fat mouth and busy hands. And there, without warning, appeared the face of the man they’d dropped at the bus station. Heida gasped.

Misreading the signal Grüner pulled her down to his lap. She shoved him away, regained her balance, and pointed to the television. She watched his expression change from hurt to open-jawed amazement.

‘It’s Howell.’ The name came to her, clear and correct. ‘He said his name was Howell.’ She placed her hand on the screen below Ford’s face and pointed out the name Stephen Lawrence Sutler. ‘Now we can leave.’

Within moments they were searching for clothes. His scattered carelessly about the floor, hers folded one item on another.

2.5

At the last moment Parson asked if he could interview Pakosta and Clark, the contractors arrested alongside Paul Howell. If possible he wanted to speak with both men at the same time, as one man’s memory might prompt the other. He wanted an idea of Sutler’s intentions prior to the event. If the man was running with a plan, something set in order, there would be a thread to discover, a trace at the very least.

Parson sat outside a row of uniform grey unit offices while he waited for the response to his request. The security wing, manned by contracted non-combatants, was uncomfortably quiet. The furniture, doors, and partitions marked with stickers: HOSCO, Hampton Roads, Virginia, USA. Manufactured with Pride.

Bothered that he knew the facts but couldn’t see under the skin of them, he figured through Sutler’s last morning. A collection of dockets and transport passes provided no detail about the events of that morning. Within thirty-five minutes of Stephen Lawrence Sutler’s arrival at Southern-CIPA, the offices had come under attack, and Sutler had walked from the devastation through a compound heavy with dust and open gunfire, leaving one man in pieces. His flight, from its outset, unnatural, contrary to instinct. Parson couldn’t see how any man could so thoroughly vanish unless he was vulnerable, foolish, naive, or halfway gone to start with. People like Sutler rarely managed to disappear unless accident or foul play played some part.

These buildings, provided by HOSCO, were little more than seaside trailers. Flimsy frames and fire-retardant material. Nothing much of anything.

*   *   *

Clark and Pakosta were held under military supervision, dressed in standard orange overalls, and confined to a small, temporary cell. They answered questions about the weekend prior to Sutler’s disappearance, and admitted with a little discomfort that Paul Howell, as Deputy Administrator for Project Finance, had paid them to accompany him on a visit to the Royal Palm Hotel in Bahrain. Whenever Howell needed to leave Iraq on his own business he took a group with him, partly for security, and partly to make an impression. Under this simple fact lay the itch of another story. ‘Once or twice,’ Pakosta explained, ‘that’s all it was.’ On these trips the men were provided with military uniforms. ‘As far as we knew this wasn’t a problem. He told us to wear them.’ There were gifts involved. Watches, whisky, cash.

Parson asked if the civil contractor Stephen Sutler had ever accompanied them on these trips and the men shrugged (although they were not men, but boys aged nineteen and twenty-one). Sutler had attended one or two of these excursions, he came with them to Bahrain, but not Kuwait. Even when he did go he wasn’t much of a participant. Clark supposed he was at the bar. Pakosta said he was too involved to care about what Sutler was doing.

Parson changed direction. ‘What can you tell me about the Massive?’

‘What did we know? We didn’t know anything. He had us digging holes, putting up posts, and putting them back up when they blew over. Before Sutler our job was to manage the burn pits and keep the road open for the oil tankers and the convoys. That was our job. That’s what we were there for.’

‘Then why did you impersonate security?’

‘I said, already. I explained. Howell wanted security for his trips. It was good money. He paid in cash. He provided uniforms. He said there wasn’t any problem with it.’

Parson turned his attention to Clark. ‘What do you know?’

Clark sat upright, hands open in front of him. ‘I know there were plans to build a new facility, and we were helping with that. There were plans for a whole city. It didn’t make much sense, there’s nothing but sand. He was looking at bringing in water, he was blocking out where everything would go.’

Parson returned to his notes. ‘You accompanied Stephen Sutler to Southern-CIPA. You were with him on the flight from Camp Liberty to Amrah City. Did he talk about going somewhere else? Did he ever talk about what he would do when he was done in Iraq? Did he say anything about what he planned to do?’

Pakosta shook his head, and Clark said no.

‘Did he speak with anyone else?’

‘Kiprowski. They spent a lot of time together.’ Both men agreed.

‘He never spoke about home? Did he ever mention his family? Did he ever mention that he was married?’

Clark tucked his hands under his thighs and sat forward. ‘He never spoke about much of anything. Not to me. Maybe to Kiprowski, you’d have to ask him. I don’t remember him talking about anything except the project. That’s all he was interested in.’

Parson read a list of names. The other men at Camp Liberty with Clark and Pakosta: Hernandez, Watts, Samuels, Gunnersen, Chimeno, Kiprowski. ‘That morning at Amrah City, did you see him into the building?’

‘We were outside,’ Pakosta answered for them both. ‘Neither of us went inside.’ Pakosta’s head tipped sideways, slow and with meaning, and Parson asked himself if this intended threat or irritation – if this indicated that he was lying.

‘And Kiprowski? Where did he come from?’

Clark looked to Parson, puzzled by his use of the past tense. ‘He’s from Chicago. He’s from the north side.’

‘I meant that morning. Why did Sutler choose Kiprowski? Was there any reason for this?’

A nervous Clark continued shaking his head. Pakosta paused, then answered. ‘Maybe he just liked Kiprowski more.’

Parson queried the statement. Exactly what did Pakosta mean?

‘He had us digging holes in the sand. The only person who didn’t dig was Kiprowski.’ Pakosta shrugged. ‘Kiprowski ran after him like a dog. When there was real work he always found something else for him. Some other business.’

‘And on other occasions?’

‘You mean visits to CIPA? That was it. There weren’t any other occasions. That was the one time he went to collect money.’

Parson took out a sheet of paper from his notes. ‘Howell gave Sutler five hundred thousand, seven hundred thousand, ten hundred. All in cash. All on different days.’

‘No.’ Clark shook his head vigorously. ‘When?’

‘July twelfth, nineteenth, twenty-fifth…’

‘He didn’t go more than once or twice before that last time, and that was the only time we were with him. You need to check those dates.’

‘There are records of Howell giving him money. On five, six, seven occasions. More.’

Pakosta appeared startled. ‘Then Howell is lying. It didn’t happen. Sutler went to CIPA with his little plans, a roll of maps, maybe – maybe – three times. He kept coming back complaining that Howell was making him jump through hoops, causing delays. He was waiting on money to bring in materials, to start something, but Howell kept stalling. He never had money.’

‘This is what Sutler told you?’

‘We saw him. We saw him take the flight. We saw him come back. He had nothing with him but a roll of drawings. He didn’t even have a flak vest. Like he landed in the desert with nothing.’

Parson asked Clark to confirm.

‘He took a bag, one time. One time only, and that was the last time. The night before he was talking about how big it would need to be. He didn’t know if his bag would be big enough, and he was excited about the money because everything was going to start, just like he wanted.’

‘How was he paid until then?’

Pakosta shrugged. ‘He didn’t take any money, there were no other times. Day to day we all managed on credit and account.’

‘Did he carry much cash?’

‘We were in the desert. Nothing to spend it on. He probably managed the same as us.’

‘But you can’t be certain that Sutler never took money from Howell.’ Parson allowed a short pause, the men appeared confused. ‘You know nothing about the money he collected from Southern-CIPA? You can’t be certain? After the incident, did you see Sutler leave?’

Again, Pakosta answered first. ‘I didn’t see anything once he was inside. I was right at the door. Smoking, right by the door. I came out before everything kicked off. I didn’t see Sutler. I didn’t see Kiprowski.’

Then Clark: ‘I was outside with the duty guard. I felt the blast, and right after I heard live fire from the perimeter. After that I don’t know. I was on the ground. The blast came from the back, but the shots were close. There was smoke. I had my head covered waiting for incoming.’

‘One hit?’

‘Mortar.’

‘You saw it?’

‘Clear as day.’ Pakosta lazily scratched his neck. ‘You’ve seen the result? You get to Amrah?’

‘Where did it come from? What direction?’

‘It came from the factory. From the south.’

‘And you saw this? What about you? You saw this, Clark?’

‘We both saw it,’ Pakosta answered for Clark, ‘clear as day.’

Clark sat forward, his hand hesitated close to his mouth. ‘I heard it coming. Right from the south. There’s a market and some old factories, light industry. Most of those buildings are secured. Most times they drive up and lay down everything they have, but this was just the one. And I guess one was enough.’

‘Stephen Sutler, describe his face. His hair? How long?’ Parson abruptly stood up. ‘Is he taller than me?’

The answer from both came as a shrug. Maybe, said one. Yes, the other. Both unconvinced. Sutler looked British but they couldn’t clarify why.

‘So about the same height? And build?’

Stockier, they agreed. Maybe. Heavier by ten or fifteen pounds, or twenty even, twenty-five. They couldn’t say.

Parson collected his papers and drew out a photocopy of Stephen Sutler’s ID, the image enlarged, his face washed of distinguishing features. ‘There’s nothing more you can tell me about this man? You saw him enter a building surrounded by security forces, from which, it appears, he vanished during an assault. And you had no idea about the money?’

‘I swear.’

Pakosta asked if that was it, and Parson said yes, that was all he wanted. With the interview over Pakosta and Clark stood up.

‘Why all this interest in Sutler?’

‘Because Sutler has disappeared.’

‘But what about Kiprowski?’

‘Kiprowski hasn’t disappeared.’

‘You found Kiprowski?’

Parson gave a simple nod. He stopped at the door and waited as it was unlocked.

‘What happens now?’

‘I don’t know.’

As the door drew open Parson placed his cap back on his head. In the centre of the door a single key with a scuffed metal tag in a single keyhole. Parson kept his eyes fixed on the key as the men were escorted from the room.

2.6

An hour out of Kopeckale the coach began to ascend the central plateau. Ford drifted in and out of sleep as the mountains beside the city fell away and the horizon took on a smooth uninterrupted curve. Each time he woke a sense of disconnection veered him back to Amrah City and he returned to the present with a slight pang, a regret that Sutler was done with, and that he would not see the project advance, and that the Massive would develop without him. All of this needed to settle in the past. Ford pressed his forehead to the window and allowed the judder to shake up his thoughts as the land on either side became white, parched, and lunar. Away from the desert the project seemed less about ambition, the pure improbability of building something from nothing, and more about hubris, pride and greed, about the oil, about the minerals, about maintaining presence and influence long after the withdrawal of troops.

Once on the plateau the road became level and the plains gave way to bare fields sectioned by low stone walls. To their right an irrigation ditch ran parallel to the highway, to their left the creosote-caked oil lines; the pipeline irregularly set with field stations, some abandoned, some burned, some scrawled with graffiti, a few transformed into temporary shelters. Ford’s eye scuttered along the course and passed over the refugees, figures strung single file in clusters of four or five, seldom more. The driver sounded the horn to drive the vagrants off the road, and they stepped, automatic, onto the margin without gesture or complaint. Heads protected from the sun with cloth or plastic hoods.

*   *   *

Villages set back from the main highway appeared undisturbed by the war; the scars of mortar strikes scored the roadside as rough black craters, as certain truths; a few buildings, remarkably few, pecked with gunshot, fewer still were simple roofless shells – all signs of the earlier insurrection. Signs of the current troubles were limited to the skirting squatter camps of makeshift tents and tarpaulins. Ford watched, indifferent, he would be happier once they were on another route.

The student from the station sat two rows ahead, his feet struck across the aisle, the paperback open on his thigh. The boy’s sweater slipped from the overhead rack and one sleeve swung over his scalp, his hair cropped, the skin white, untanned. A horizontal scar, one inch long and lightly raised, tapered to a point above his left ear. On the back of his white T-shirt a logo of a large red star in a red circle. An attendant distributed towels scented with rose water. After the man had passed by, the student dropped the towel under his seat and wiped his hands on his shorts. His arms were lean, muscular, formed through sport.

*   *   *

Mid-morning he woke addled and uncomfortable. Slowly rising to the present, he realized that the coach had stopped and they were at some kind of checkpoint – and there were soldiers mounting the bus.

The military police stood in a line in front of a barrier, the road curved behind them, rising, bare, a tractor and trailer packed with refugees stopped beside the embankment. Passengers assisted each other from the trailer and stood side by side on the hot white scree, sulky and agitated but visibly humble; a few of them held out documents as if offering a petition while the soldiers, regardless, tossed their luggage onto the road. From what Ford could see there was no explicit purpose to the search.

One gruff and baby-faced soldier barked instructions at the coach driver. The driver civilly repeated the soldier’s demands and the passengers rose without complaint and began to disembark. The student peered over the headrest, startled, poised a little like a flightless bird.

The passengers began to assemble beside the coach. Their lethargy struck Ford as a sign of assent, a sign that this was not unusual. The student held back, then with a deft stab he tucked a small plastic bag between the seat and the seatback. A guard leaned into the bus and told them, as far as Ford could understand, to get out. The soldier’s face became a comedy of infantile demand, plump, sulky.

Off the coach and out of the air conditioning the heat pressed down. Ford rolled up his sleeves and stood with the passengers feeling a wash of heat; everybody squinting at the coach’s silver side while the driver sorted through the luggage in the hold. The student waited beside him. The driver, labouring alone, passed Ford the wrong rucksack. The mistake became immediately obvious as soon as he lifted the pack; this rucksack being newer, cleaner, was also heavier than his. The label, a clear plastic star, gave the name Eric Powell, and an address in France on one side and in New York on the other. Ford handed the rucksack to the student and returned to the hold to claim his own.

The student waited with him and asked if he understood what was happening. American, he spoke in quick bursts. His accent, East Coast, precise and educated, sounded different to the supple Midwestern drawl Ford was used to. Ford retrieved his bag from a line of luggage, the boy followed and picked out a small metal case then walked back to the line of passengers. He repeated his question and Ford said he didn’t know, whatever it was it didn’t look out of the ordinary. Ford looked back at the tractor-trailer. Unsupervised, the refugees, mostly women, huddled in a pack as if hiding, luggage loose in the road. The passengers from the coach, mostly men, and most of them smoked, strung out in a line waiting for the patrol to check their papers and belongings. The student set his case close to Ford’s feet, looked clearly into his face, and gave a nod, as if Ford had asked for assistance, as if the small silver case were his.

‘It’s film,’ the student said, indicating the case, ‘undeveloped sixteen-millimetre film. Shots of landscape. That’s all it is. Every time I’m searched they open the camera.’ His hands gestured the unspooling of film.

The student stood a distance away with his rucksack, leaving a gap of three or four paces between them. Ford could not see the purpose of it and did not like the boy’s assumption that he was sympathetic. Even so, he did not step back.

They waited in line with their backs to the sun as the soldiers inspected the bus. The road cut into an escarpment, a curved chalk wall. In front of them ran the straw-coloured plains of Anatolia. It was good that this was only the Turkish military. If they were British or American he would be nervous – despite the day, the bright sunlight, the broad view of open fields.

One soldier examined the hold and shuffled on his knees through the empty compartment. Above him two soldiers searched the cabin, to check the floor, the seats, and the racks. The coach wavered in the full midday heat. Another soldier, pug-faced, younger than the others, led a muzzled Alsatian between the passengers and their luggage. He held the leash high and tugged the animal between the baskets and suitcases. A compact semi-automatic slung over his shoulder, battered and hand-me-down. The soldier stopped the dog in front of the student and forced the dog’s muzzle to the student’s backpack. He indicated that the student should open it. To Ford these soldiers were boys. Smug, fresh, untested.

The student crouched and unzipped a side panel to show folded shorts, T-shirts, rolled socks. Tangled inside the main body of the bag lay an assortment of climbing gear: bright-coloured cord, strong steel buckles. The student mimed what they were for, and repeated, climbing. It’s for climbing, until his gestures became cocky, suggesting that the soldier was a little dumb. Cli-ming. Climbing. He pointed to the white rockface behind them, then the ropes and steel clips. How obvious did he need to make this?

‘You speak any Turkish?’ he asked Ford.

The soldier spoke to the boy rapid-fire, aggressive, he snapped the dog to heel and toe-tapped the backpack. The boy became angry, and Ford expected a confrontation.

A shout came from further up the queue. Suddenly nervous, the passengers broke out of line and scattered, and there in the widening gap a slim green snake zippered across the white gravel. The soldiers grouped about it, one flicked a cigarette, another kicked stones and the snake changed direction, twisting in a strange undulation, fast, but not fast enough. A third soldier picked up a rock, a flat white slab, dropped it then laughed. Ford watched the snake wind about itself, its skin a sharp fresh green, the body as thin as his little finger. Head mashed to a crimson stump, its silver underside caught the sun as it rolled into tight coils.

The student asked if it was poisonous.

Ford said he didn’t know but thought that colour gave some indication.

The student turned the snake over with his foot. The body twisted about his sandal and he gently shook it off. He looked up at the soldier. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Seriously. What was the point?’

The soldier picked up the snake and slung it across the road – and the student swore loud enough to be heard.

‘I think he might know that word.’

‘They probably hear it enough.’

Ford returned to his backpack, uninterested in the student’s disagreement.

The soldiers walked on, attention taken by another vehicle drawing up the highway. The officer in charge slapped the side of the coach to dismiss them; others began to move the barriers and open the road. As a group the passengers picked up their luggage and returned to the coach. Leaving the first group gathered by the tractor-trailer alone. The student returned for his case. Catching up with Ford, the boy offered his hand.

‘My name’s Eric.’

*   *   *

A wave of cold air blew through the cabin as the coach drew back onto the road.

The student turned about and held up the plastic bag he’d stowed away earlier. A bag of digital memory sticks. ‘Two days ago the army raided a village on the border,’ he explained. ‘They came in trucks. About fourteen of them, and they shipped everyone out. Then helicopters wiped out the village. They used rockets.’ He shook the bag and spoke in a low conspiratorial tone. ‘They’re making all of this happen. None of this is any accident. For days they’ve been bombing their own border and blaming the Kurds. Every time trouble kicks off in the Middle East they move against the Kurds. Fact.’

When the boy turned back Ford smiled to himself. He should have guessed the boy was doing noble favours, picking other people’s fights, working an adventure to take back to his campus, to become someone who has been somewhere and done something.

*   *   *

The stops became less frequent; the villages became smaller and the refugee camps so few that Ford forgot them and imagined himself to be in a country unaffected by war.

In the early afternoon they stopped at a small trading post, a restaurant girdled by a market – a supple chaos of stalls set up in the dust with passengers haggling for produce: fresh dates, dyed pistachios, halva, cigarettes, toys, CDs and DVDs. Young boys sold flags, iced water, sodas, and pastries wet with honey. Smoke blossomed from a row of barbecues and Ford bought two lamb skewers and finished before he could find himself a seat. The attendant who gave out the rosewater and paper towels sat at a separate table, smoking, eyes narrowed on Ford.

Ford wandered through the stalls. Men sold jewellery, bracelets and beaded bangles, small handcrafted pieces. One man punched names into metal dog tags. He set the letters into a punch and imprinted the tags in a small vice. Ford stopped in front of the table and idled through a tray of Zippo lighters. The man spoke to him and he smiled but did not reply.

‘American?’ the man asked. ‘English? You want your name?’ The man held up one of the tags to show Ford. The man had a lazy eye, not so acute, but noticeable. He wore a jacket and no shirt. When he looked up the lazy eye shifted with a slight but perceptible twitch, the movement so subtle that Ford found himself watching to catch it. The man waited, all patience. Searching for money, Ford pushed his hands into his pocket and found the note with the account numbers. An idea occurred to him and he held up the note.

‘How much,’ he asked, ‘for only numbers. These numbers.’ He opened out the paper and showed it to the man. ‘Five tags.’ He held up his hand, five wide fingers. ‘Five. You can do numbers? How much for five tags?’

The man squinted at the paper then smiled as he looked up and Ford could not be sure that he’d understood. He found a pen on the table and began to write out the numbers to be stamped on each tag. A separate number on each sheet. ‘You understand?’ He set a tag on the paper. ‘This for this.’

The man nodded. Ford continued to write out the numbers and did not notice the student approach.

‘I didn’t get your name.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Your name?’

Ford concentrated on the numbers. The boy wanted a name. ‘Michael.’

‘Michael, not Mike?’

‘Right, it’s Michael.’

‘You’re English?’

Ford nodded. He finished writing the last of the numbers and handed them to the man. One account number per tag. The workman held up his hands to indicate that he would be ten minutes.

‘That’s all? Ten minutes?’

The man nodded and began to set the numbers into the punch.

The student followed Ford back to the restaurant. ‘My mother’s English. She still has her accent.’ Without asking he set his book on the table and sat opposite. Tucked between the pages a small black notebook. ‘Do you know Winchester?’

For the first time Ford noticed that the restaurant sat in a field. The coach had driven off the road and over rough land to reach it. To steer the conversation away from himself he pointed at the book and asked what the boy was reading.

‘This? I’m just getting into it. I’m not that far.’

They were talking, he guessed, because the boy felt some common ground between them, something more than the simple coincidence of travel. The silver case, the snake, the confidence about the film, connecting elements, at least for the boy.

‘It’s making its way round campuses. There’s a whole story about it. The guy who wrote it was a student, and he disappeared before the book came out. It’s about how these guys, these brothers, copy a murder from another book, a thriller.’ He held up the book. ‘It’s true. They pick someone up from the train station, then cut him up in a basement room, just like the story, then pieces of him are found in the street. It happened in Naples, Italy. There’s any number of versions on this story – the original book wasn’t published in English till about ten years ago – but the writer, this student, went to Naples and wrote about the people who still lived in the apartment where the murder happened, and then he disappeared. You’ve not heard about it?’

Ford said no.

‘There’s a film also. I think it’s just out in the States.’ The boy grimaced. ‘I haven’t read the original book yet. The one the brothers copied. But imagine. You write about something like that, a thriller, something gruesome, and someone copies everything you’ve written for real.’

‘What’s it called?’

The boy unfolded the cover and held the book up for Ford to read. ‘The original book or this? There’s a buzz about it online. Anyway, it’s huge on campus.’

‘So what’s it called?’

‘The original is called The Kill. You’re not supposed to say the title or something bad will happen. You disappear.’ He nodded toward the coach and grinned. ‘I saw you at Kopeckale. You look like you’ve been in an accident.’

Ford automatically touched his face. ‘It isn’t anything interesting.’

‘So where are you going? Narapi?’

‘I haven’t decided.’

The boy shied away from the smoke rising from the brazier. ‘If you want to stay in Narapi there’s a place called the Maison du Rève. It’s good. Nothing fancy. Doesn’t have a pool or anything, just two or three rooms around a courtyard. And it’s reasonable. I have the address. I’m going through Narapi to do some climbing, but I’ll be back by the weekend and this is where I’ll be staying.’ The boy took out his mobile and while he talked about himself Ford pointedly stood up to go. A copy of the Herald stuck out of the boy’s bag. ‘You want this?’ The boy offered the paper. ‘There’s something in there about what I’ve been talking about. Something about the movie.’

Ford held up his hand. Thanks but no. There was nothing he cared to see in a newspaper. Nothing he needed to be told. Making his apology he stood up and said he needed to retrieve the dog tags.

*   *   *

Back on the coach he held the dog tags in his fist, a certainty about them that he liked. The metal, thin steel or tin, quickly warmed to his hand. His ran his finger over the ridges, double-checked that the numbers on each were correct, set them in order, then tore the paper into small pieces and let the paper drop to the floor. He threaded the tags onto a small-ball chain which he wore about his neck. The weight of them was reassuring, pleasing, an indication that things were going well. He should email these numbers to himself. Store the numbers where he would not lose them. Better still, he should get online and transfer the money. He wondered if the money was really there, waiting.

*   *   *

The outskirts of Narapi appeared modern, a new road flanked with boxy concrete houses. Wisps of grass sprouted on unfinished walls. The town itself lay in a long hollow interrupted by an oblong flat-topped plug of rock: a bald stone nub.

The student turned and pointed. ‘It looks something like a meteor, no?’

Ford asked how far it was to the next town and the boy guessed that Birsim was another hour, maybe only forty-minutes or so. Eager to sleep in a real bed, he decided to stay in Narapi.

As they waited for a place at the terminus Ford asked the student to repeat the name of the hotel. From the back of the coach came singing and clapping. The boy tore a corner from the notebook and wrote down the hotel’s number and address, and Ford felt some relief that his journey, for now, was over. The town was far from the border, remote and secure.

‘I might see you if you’re still there this weekend.’ He held up his hand. ‘Eric,’ he said, ‘remember, Eric.’

A child with a bandage at his neck signalled the coach into the bay.

*   *   *

The student watched Ford as the coach pulled away. Ford checked the label on his rucksack, although he could tell from the weight that he was carrying his own. A few saplings planted either side of the square wilted in the late-afternoon sun; their small bay-shaped leaves hung down, crackling in a light wind. As he walked through the town Ford realized that there was no military presence: no Humvees, no roadblocks, no patrols scattered cautiously across the streets. It wasn’t that he missed them, but he noticed they were absent. As he walked the dog tags lightly swung against his chest.

2.7

On the Thursday night Anne received two messages. The first, a message on her voicemail, reminded her of a seven o’clock booking at John’s in the East Village. You’re late. You’ve forgotten, haven’t you? Her friend’s voice bristled with irritation. Something had happened, she said, and it needed to be talked out. The second message, a text message, came from Anne’s son, Eric, who was travelling in Turkey.

Already in a cab heading downtown, Anne did not immediately read the message, Eric used a shorthand she didn’t always understand, and her glasses, tucked into the side pocket of her small bag, were temporarily misplaced. Unable to read the text, she stored the message, listened a second time to the voicemail, then, with a small apology, asked the driver how long it would take to get downtown.

The driver shrugged. ‘Fifteen, if we’re lucky. Maybe twenty? Who knows, right?’

In two days Anne would depart for Rome. She had organized her last week in New York with care, so it irritated her that she would forget this one appointment and took it as something subconscious, a kind of undeliberate/deliberate gesture. More and more, Marian’s emergencies coincided with Anne’s departures.

She called her friend. ‘I’ll be with you in ten minutes. I promise.’

‘Nowhere is ten minutes away.’ Marian didn’t disguise her irritation. ‘Well, hurry because I’ve found you somewhere. We’re talking Malta. Marsaskala. Town on one side, uninterrupted sea view on the other. You’ll love it. An honest-to-god palazzo, totally private, so spacious you’ll think you’ve lived life in a closet. You can have parties, and you can have it as long as you like. This place is an absolute find. A steal. Nobody knows about it. And by the way: big favour, very big. You owe me.’

The taxi took Anne alongside the park. Outside the Met couples walked down the steps, some animated, some arm-in-arm. Lights on in the building for a late opening. One wagon on the sidewalk sold pretzels and knishes. All of this familiar, quaint in a way, but still foreign: the people, the vendors. As the cab changed lanes she felt the phone vibrate in her pocket. Hearing a siren she paused and looked out of the cab and automatically at the sky above the midtown apartments and skyscrapers. Beside her, an acid blackness swam between the last of the trees. The word foreign caught in her head. After finding her glasses she properly read the message from her son: on coach – meet N+M l8r – in ist fri 4 2 wks – call whn u arriv

Anne calculated the time difference, but as the taxi made its way down Broadway she became distracted by the drive. Twelve years in New York City and the streets viewed from a cab still appeared foreign to her. Readable but unstable. The mood of any given street shifted between blocks, a blunt reconfiguration, different each time, brutish and harsh. The streets gave character to the people, she thought, not otherwise. The last time she had drinks with Marian they had disagreed in a sulky, dissatisfied way, and on the taxi ride uptown they had attempted a reconciliation, Marian suggesting that Anne shouldn’t be such a tourist all of the time.

It would be Friday morning in Turkey, early, barely dawn. She imagined Eric tired but awake, riding on a bus and heading toward his friends. She’d heard more from him on this trip already, than the entire time he was in Cuba with Mark.

It would be Marian who would tell her about the bombing of the refinery, and how the Turkish government blamed the attack on the PKK and was clearing the villages and settlements close to the border. Marian questioned how Anne could not have seen the news. It was everywhere. For three days. Unavoidable. The region was in chaos. She had meant to call earlier to make sure that she was OK.

‘They won’t let reporters in. First it was Syria, then they closed their border, and now it’s Turkey, all of these refugees, and they’ve cleared the villages so no one has anywhere to go. These people have come out from Iraq, desperate, and no one wants them. It’s what happened with the Armenians, you burn the villages and you keep them moving. Like animals. Herding people like cattle.’