After two nights in Coalition Camp Montezuma with the 82nd Airborne, Ashe was transported back south, to Baghdad’s Green Zone. Richmond had swung Ashe basic quarters in the Defense Intelligence Agency HQ, close to the Assassins’ Gate entrance to the Green Zone. The drawback was that the HQ was mostly underground. While relatively cool compared to the stifling streets outside, being so close to bomb-damaged sewerage pipes, it could also get mighty smelly.
Ashe observed Richmond’s daily operations, mostly high-risk sorties against suspected insurgents and hunts for arms caches. Street-by-street battles, interrogations, area reconnaissance, rescue missions – these were the order of the day, and they all took their toll on the nerves. Ashe was learning to adjust to the cruder conversation of those around him, and to their much coarser humour.
Alongside the thrill of action and reaction ran the perennial downside of casualties, treachery, false leads, frustration with equipment and with the number – as well as quality – of men available, not to mention the often depressing news from home.
The war had become a political football to competing parties in Britain, the US and elsewhere. Supercilious opposition was widespread throughout Europe. Morale was on a knife’s edge, but the desire to fulfil the mission and install a democratic government in Iraq in less than a year kept the forces going. This was a worthy objective for those wishing to be seen as fighting the good fight. As a visiting colonel put it to Ashe one night over a game of poker, ‘Hell, son! If some bastard tried to steal our democracy back home, wouldn’t y’all expect a bloody battle?’
This was the sort of question that did not invite a response, and Ashe chose to listen rather than assert his own observations of the situation. Buttoning his lip, however, made his secretion in the bowels of Baghdad a kind of prison, but he would just have to wait; experienced source handlers could not be summoned from the air at will.
Ashe was sitting in the DIA canteen reading the New York Times one afternoon when a sweating Richmond marched in. Smiling, he tossed his helmet onto Ashe’s table.
Ashe studied Richmond’s bloodshot eyes. ‘How’d it go, Major?’
‘Tough one, Toby. Can I get you a fresh beer?’
Richmond showed his chit card to the Kuwaiti steward; he didn’t carry loose change into combat. The major turned to Ashe. ‘Someone I want you to meet.’
Through the double doors burst a big man in an Hawaiian shirt, with a gut that tumbled over his shorts like a snowdrift over a precipice. His broad forehead was dripping wet.
Ashe got up from the steel table. ‘Vincent Zappa, I presume.’
‘Vinny. It’s Vinny.’
‘Vinny, hi – I’m Toby Ashe.’
‘Very pleased to meet you at last, Toby. Simon here’s told me a lot about you.’
‘Beer, Vinny?’
‘Sure, Major. Large one. And a bourbon chaser. Christ, Toby! Hell of a day out!’
‘Tell me about it?’
‘Sure, I’ll tell ya. Yours truly was escorting a subject back to the Green Zone, OK? Major was out in front. I had two guys in a Humvee behind. I got the suspect cuffed next to me. Terrified. Next thing, a landmine’s detonated under the wheels of the guys in front. The suspect leans back, kicks the driver in the back of the neck, head butts ol’ Zappa here, somehow gets out the car while it’s skidding up the sidewalk and rolls to the side of the street. Our car rams into the side of a house. The guy gets picked up by insurgents. There’s AK-47 fire from all sides. The driver’s hit. I’m down on the floor of the car. The Humvee team’s under heavy fire. Major’s outta the Snatch in no time, throws a grenade – hits some bastards on the roof. Our team strafes the windows – there’s more fire coming straight outta there. Air’s filled with stone and concrete and Lord knows what else. The guys inside the house start chanting some Arabic stuff. Then the damn house blows up. Booby-trapped. Our guys behind are showered in shit – and then, before you could say “the Alamo”, the street’s empty. We got one dead, one severely wounded and we lost our suspect. But hear this, Toby, your guy Richmond. Jeez! What a fuckin’ hero.’
Zappa sank the bourbon in one, then demolished the beer. ‘My shout, Major.’
Ashe noticed Richmond looking pensive, his face taut, his eyes red. ‘Did you get that, Simon? You’re the hero of the hour.’
‘Mission was a failure, Toby. And the casualties… The driver was a lovely guy.’
‘Sure, I’ll drink to that.’ Zappa was ready for another trip to the bar. ‘Don’t take it so bad, Major. You did all a man could.’
‘Give me five minutes, Vinny. I’ll think of something.’
‘But we don’t get that extra five damn minutes, do we, Major? That’s the whole damn thing. You can’t be ready for everything. Progress is treading in dog shit and avoiding it in future. Now drink that fuckin’ beer, Richmond; that’s an order!’
Richmond raised his eyes from the floor and gave a rueful smile.
‘Come on, my man! We’ll make the motherfuckers pay, next time round. Just thank the Lord we got a next time. And by the way, Limey…’
‘Yes?’
‘Thanks for saving my life.’
‘It was nothing.’
‘Maybe to you, boy. But to me – hell! – it’s all I got!’
Richmond smiled again, nodded and drank deep. ‘All right, chaps. You get to know one another. I’d better go and write the report – and the letters home.’
Zappa got up and shook Richmond’s hand firmly. ‘Thanks again, buddy.’
‘You just look after my friend here.’
‘You bet, Major.’
Richmond grinned unconvincingly and sloped off.
‘Sometimes you Brits can be so damn cool. And other times, so fuckin’ sensitive.’
‘We feel the same about you.’
‘You do?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, how about that! I gotta tell ya, Toby. I didn’t have all that much respect for you English guys before this war began, but I sure as hell do now. Goddamn! Between us, we’re gonna have to save this whole chicken-shit world!’
‘Do you think the world’s ready for that, Vinny?’
‘There ya go again, asking questions. You think too much, my man! If you’d been out there today, you’d soon see, Toby, that in this life you got two squares to stand on. Black or white. And if you get caught jumping from one to the other in an unbalanced way, you’ll get your balls blown off!’
‘Very Masonic way of looking at it.’
‘Sure, I’m a Freemason. You?’
‘Lapsed.’
‘Don’t give Uncle Vinny that “lapsed” shit! Once a Brother, always a Brother!’
‘Have you read the request from Desk, Vinny?’
‘Wha’d’ya mean “read”? Desk don’t do paper, Toby.’
‘Right.’
‘Hell, son. You should know better, after all I heard about you. Damn hell, I heard you were some kind of a magician or something.’
‘Not quite. You Brits! Here’s to ya!’
Zappa had located another bourbon. ‘Right, Toby, shoot!’
‘The issue is whether or not you have a source, or may obtain a source who can put me in touch with—’
‘Yeah, yeah. Those Kurdish guys. OK. I’ve just come back from Kirkuk in the north. And neither the Kurdistan Democratic Party, nor the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan is a hundred per cent sympathetic to Kurdish agitators within Turkey. I refer to the PKK.’
‘As far as I know, neither of the guys I’m looking for are extremists. They might even be Freemasons – in Istanbul.’
Zappa raised his eyebrows and paused for a few seconds.
‘Be that as it may, my man. I don’t know what they expect to achieve by speaking to Massoud Barzani or Jalal Talabani. You say Turkish agents are tracking your guys in Iraq. If Barzani or Talabani got wind of that, they’d stay outta sight.’
‘Officially, perhaps. But as I said, these deputies are probably moderates. Or appear to be.’
‘OK, Toby. But you can be sure Turkish intelligence suspects they’ve got some relationship with the PKK. Why else would two Turkish Kurds come to northern Iraq?’
‘Maybe they’ve come for protection, simply to avoid arrest. The point is, we don’t know. I need to know.’
‘Desk informed me there was a terrorist attack on your department in England.’
‘Suspected.’
‘Makes no sense at all to me, Toby. No fuckin’ sense at all.’ Zappa shook his head.
‘Can you get me to these guys, Vinny?’
Zappa looked Ashe right in the eye. ‘Look hard at these eyes, Mr Ashe, sir. In North Carolina, my family they hunt foxes. Ain’t no pussy face gonna stop us neither! Unlike you guys, we don’t think it sport to let the critters go. I’ll find your source, old chap. And all you gotta do is sit right down there and rehydrate!’