‘OK, let’s go, let’s go!’ I jumped into the back of the Oldsmobile before the driver had time to object. Dirty foam burst from slits in the seats, and roses evaporated from a bottle of car-freshener plugged into the lighter socket.
One of the young guys opened the driver’s door and leaned in. ‘You pay dollars?’
‘Yep, dollars, no problem.’
He smiled, climbed into the driver’s seat, and turned the ignition key. ‘Where do we go?’ His English was good, and he obviously wasn’t fazed by having a white guy in the cab after a contact no more than two hundred metres away.
‘The Australian consulate. You know it?’
He nudged into the flow of the traffic, then checked junctions left and right as we went along. Most traffic-lights weren’t working, and even if they had been, nobody would have paid much attention. It reminded me of Africa. He turned his head. ‘That’s far away, Mister. It must cost a twenty.’
I smiled at him. He could have asked a hundred, for all I cared. ‘No drama, mate.’
His face fell. He’d just realized he could have got away with a lot more. To console himself, he threw a cassette into the player and George Michael sparked up through the speakers. ‘What you do here at night, Mister?’ He turned his head again. ‘No good one man. Big trouble.’
‘I’m a journalist. The car broke down. They’re trying to sort it out, but I’ve got to get to the consulate. I’ve lost my passport.’
He nodded and started singing along quietly with George. I kept an eye on the road for Hummers and cars with flashing blue lights, but the only thing I saw was one of the red double-decker buses that operated in the city passing the other way. Sweat sluiced out of every pore as my body started to recover.
What the fuck had all that been about? Did the CPA want to suppress a Bosnian story so badly? That couldn’t be it. Killing US citizens would have looked even worse on the front pages. So was Benzil the target? More likely; it sounded like anyone connected to Nuhanovic was on a hit list. But who had done it? In this fucked-up place, anyone from a cast of thousands. I bet Nuhanovic would know.
62
I slumped back into the seat, keeping as low as I could without making the driver suspicious, and started to pick the glass out of my hands. This was getting to be a bit of a habit.
The driver still hummed away to George belting out ‘Faith’. ‘Where you from, Mister?’
‘Australia.’
‘Oh. I go to London soon. My sister lives there. I go to drive taxis of her husband. Three more weeks!’ He nodded to himself, very happy. ‘You go to London, Mister?’
‘Not if I can avoid it.’
We hadn’t been in the cab more than twenty minutes when I saw the half-illuminated sign of the al-Hamra. Either Rob had really got into those anti-surveillance drills on the way out, or it had just been busy. ‘I thought you said it was a long way?’
He smiled into the rear-view mirror. ‘You lucky, Mister. Some drivers take you to the bad places for money. The bad people in Saddam City pay me fifty dollar like that. But I am good taxi driver. I am good London taxi driver.’
We were still on the main drag, just short of the turn-off for the hotel. ‘You might as well drop me here. I’ll walk.’
He pulled over. Huge artics rumbled by on their way into the city centre. I gave him twenty dollars, and an extra thirty to cover what he could have got in Sadr.
I turned left down the approach road to the al-Hamra. There was power on the hotel side of the street, but none on the other, where the shop was lit by candles. A bunch of barefooted kids in shorts and a collection of Premier League T-shirts kicked about in the gloom.
I bent under the scaffold pole and carried on to the main entrance. Two more Aussies were on stag in the driveway. As I nodded at the Iraqi on the door, I looked up at Rob’s room. The light was on and Jerry was on that fucking phone again. He disappeared from view as I went inside. If the CPA were tracking it, we’d be in the shit.
The old man was chatting to a few locals at the counter, every one of them with a cigarette on the go. I got a cursory look up and down, but they’d seen enough blood and sweat in their lives not to be too concerned at a little more splashed about on some white guy. Through the glass door by the lifts, the underwater lights filled the air with a blue glow. The poolside tables were crowded. The world’s media were back from a hard day at the office.
A good friend was dead, and what might have been the best job I’d ever be offered had been shot to fuck. But at least I was in one piece and Jerry was alive; I supposed I had done what Renee wanted me to – so far. We still had a way to go.
I got to the door and put my hand on the knob. It was locked.
‘Who is it?’ Jerry sounded worried.
‘Nick. Open up, quick, quick!’
He fumbled with the lock and the door half opened. ‘Fuck, what’s happened to you, man?’
I walked in and closed it behind me. A fuzzy BBC World was conducting a silent interview with Blair.
Jerry’s camera was on the coffee-table with the cable attached.
‘Who you talking to? You sending pictures?’
‘Just testing the kit. What the fuck’s happened?’
‘The car got hit. The other two are dead. Get your stuff together, quick. We’re getting out of here before curfew. Test or not, you had the fucking thing on – they’ll find us.’
63
This time, we had a forty-seater minibus to take us across the tarmac. Jerry sat next to me, his right leg sticking out into the aisle because I’d taken up too much room. I was knackered and wanted to lean against the window as I listened to Now That’s What I Call Mosque 57 playing on the tape-machine. The driver bopped away in time with the music as he spun the wheel with his elbows. I could just hear the rotors of two Blackhawks; I turned my head and watched them hover the last few feet before hitting the pan alongside about another eight of the dull green things. My hands, knees and elbows were scabbing up nicely after my tour of Baghdad’s back alleys, and in a few days, I knew, I’d have a hard time trying to resist picking them.
Jerry hadn’t said much since we left the al-Hamra. That was OK, I needed time to think.
The bus was full of self-important businessmen checking their mobiles as they roamed for the new signal, and others holding their diplomatic passports firmly in their hands like some sort of talisman. I never knew why, but the people who have one always think it gives them better protection than body armour.
‘Hello, General,’ someone brayed behind us, in the kind of voice that could only have been shaped by Sandhurst, the Guards and a lifetime’s supply of Pink Gin.
It got worse. ‘Ah, David, old boy. Been back to the UK, have you?’ the general boomed, as if talking from the far side of a parade-ground.
‘Three weeks’ leave. New father and all that. Got there just in time to see the sprog drop.’
‘Splendid, splendid. I was a young major when the memsahib had her two. Away on exercise both times. Damned good thing, if you ask me. Boy or girl?’
‘Boy. Nine pounds six ounces.’
‘Marvellous. Prop forward in the making, what?’
They had a jolly good laugh, apparently oblivious to the rest of us, until one of the very important businessmen’s phones went off in his briefcase. Instant red face as he dug it out: the ring tone was the theme tune for Mission Impossible.
‘Anything cooking in my absence, sir?’
‘All rather rumbustious – as per. Just been to Oberammergau. Meeting about a meeting, you know the sort of thing.’