Huang, Toon and Voss were asleep on the floor, weapons and flak jackets propped against the wall.
Lucy and Amanda sat in facing armchairs. Money and pills on the table. Half-eaten flatbread and lamb kebab.
Rain lashed the window.
‘Did you see Toon?’ asked Lucy. ‘Did you see him walk into line-of-fire?’
Amanda shrugged. She swigged vodka. ‘We’re coming apart. All of us. My ears are shot. Ringing. It never stops.’
‘I think we’ve used up our luck,’ said Lucy. ‘Playing Russian roulette each time we roll out Assassin’s Gate.’
‘I’ve been broke. I don’t want to be broke any more.’
Amanda’s dad kicked her out when she was seventeen. She slept in a car for a year. Summer. Winter. Parked each night in the lot of a Holiday Inn.
‘Tell me about the guy.’
‘It was a prisoner transport,’ said Amanda. ‘An old guy. Ex-Republican Guard. He told me about a convoy. A bunch of military vehicles escorting an armoured truck. A shipment of stuff taken from the vaults beneath the National Museum days before Baghdad got hammered by Tomahawks and looted to shit. Said they took the truck way out into the desert. Said it was still there.’
‘What was in the truck?’
‘Gold. Lots of gold.’
‘Where is this guy?’
‘Abu Ghraib.’
‘Do you trust him?’
‘I don’t trust anybody.’
A table lamp flickered on and glowed steady.
‘Hey.’
The room powered up. The rising hum of air-con. A beep from the wall phone. A click as the TV returned to standby.
‘Let’s talk to the guy,’ said Lucy. ‘Hear what he has to say.’
She closed her eyes and basked in the breeze as the ceiling fan stirred the air.
Doc ID: 575JJUFG
Page 01/1
08/21/05
MEMORANDUM TO: Project Lead, D.Ops
SUBJECT: Spektr
Colonel,
JABRIL JAMADI has been separated from former regime elements currently interned at JSOC’s temporary HUMIT screening facility at Balad, and is now held in solitary confinement at Abu Ghraib, Tier Four. I believe, sooner or later, he will inadvertently reveal the precise location of our objective at the SPEKTR site.
We will continue covert electronic surveillance of his cell. We have a listening device with an independent power source wired into the light fitting. We monitor visitation requests. We have resources available to track his movements following the authorisation of his release. I feel this subterfuge is likely to prove more efficacious than rendition to our black sites in Egypt or Syria. JAMADI has so far proved impervious to standard interrogation techniques. I suggest we allow him to make contact with confederates outside the prison. We should look for an opportunity to turn him loose without arousing his suspicions. I am confident he will lead us to our objective.
Jabril
‘The Place of Ravens’. Saddam’s grim Lubianka. Site of torture and summary execution.
The site was divided into three zones:
‘The Hard Site’. The prison itself. A square mile of bleak cell blocks and courtyards. A concrete perimeter wall, high as a cliff face. Pylon floodlights and panopticon watch-towers at each corner. Cells used by coalition forces to isolate high-value detainees for interrogation by military intelligence and the CIA.
Camp Ganci. An adjacent tent city surrounded by razor wire and wooden guard towers. Home to prisoners accused of Iraqi-on-Iraqi crimes such as car theft, rape and looting.
Camp Vigilant. Home to ex-Ba’ath party officials and prisoners accused of attacking coalition forces. Holding pen for those likely to be tried for crimes against humanity and profiteering.
Lucy slowed the bullet-scarred GMC as she approached the blockhouse. Multiple checkpoints and blast barriers. Coils of concertina wire.
She lowered the side window and got a face full of rain. She flashed her provisional authority pass at an MP in a poncho. A hick reservist with a German shepherd on a leash. He checked his rain-sodden clipboard. He ticked Lucy and Amanda, then signalled the main gate.
The reception hall. Empty holding cells lined with wooden benches. Manacle rings set in the concrete floor.
Lucy shook rain from her prairie coat. Amanda slapped rain from her hat.
They badged a guard behind ballistic bank-teller glass and signed the log book. They cleared their weapons and passed them across the counter. They were patted down and scanned with a detector wand. They handed over their phones.
A big sign on the walclass="underline"
They clipped visitor tags to their lapels.
A young MP introduced himself.
‘Staff Sergeant Castillo.’
His rank and name strip were blanked out with duct tape in case prisoners used ex-pat contacts in the US to target family members for blackmail or reprisal.
They handed Castillo a form. Justice Ministry. Permission to interrogate a detainee. Cost them a box of Dominican Cohibas to get it stamped.
He consulted a clipboard.
‘Jabril Jamadi. A weird one. Guy walked out of the desert half dead. Picked up by a foot patrol. They held him at Balad for a while. Speaks very good English. We call him Jeeves. We’ve been holding him at the hard site while we enquired into his background.’
‘Can we talk to him?’
‘If he were an intel target, absolutely not. But his dossier is totally empty. He’s got prints, a mugshot and a magistrate number. We’ve got nothing on him. He’s a non-person. MI say they have a feeling he’s senior Ba’ath. He matters. He’s a player. But they can’t place him anywhere in the party power structure. Sooner or later we’ll have to hand him to the locals. Maybe they can beat something out of him.’
Castillo turned a key and pulled back a barred gate.
‘The lights are out, I’m afraid. Rain. Something blew.’
Castillo led them through the prison. They each held yellow cyalume above their heads.
Dank corridors. Papers scattered on the floor. Pervading odour of sewage.
A woman shouted through the food hatch of a cell door.
‘Heh-dee, bitch,’ yelled Castillo, as they passed. ‘Shut your noise.’
‘You hold women?’
‘Whores. We don’t put them in the main camp.’
Flashing light from the tier above them. Echoing rock music. ‘Welcome to the Jungle’. Strobes and a CD player hooked up to a car battery.
‘What’s that?’
‘Nothing and no one.’
Ghost detainees. Softened for interrogation by a few days of sleep deprivation.
Castillo unlocked a cell.
‘I’ll wait outside.’
Jabril was lying on a bare bunk. Lean, fifties, white beard. He wore an orange jumpsuit and sandals. He had an ID tag clipped round his left wrist. His right hand was missing.
Jabril shielded his eyes from the sickly amber glow of the cyalume sticks.
He looked Lucy and Amanda up and down. He checked out high-end tactical gear. Expensive boots, slick drop holsters, clean Kestrel armour.
‘Salaam alaikum,’ said Lucy.
‘Alaikum salaam. You’re not with Intelligence.’
‘No. We’re civilian contractors.’