"Don't worry about me," Matt said. "Good luck to you guys. And don't lose contact with me."
He climbed out and crossed the intersection without looking back at them.
The day was warm, and the new vehicle had no air-conditioning. Fahimah already had her back window open. Rather than staying in front, Austyn moved into the backseat with her before Ken pulled out into traffic.
"You don't mind playing chauffeur so that we can get some work done back here, do you?" Austyn asked Ken.
"It doesn't matter if I mind or not. You're going to do it, anyway," the other man grumbled.
"Exactly." He patted him on the shoulder.
"We have a hundred fifty miles to go before we reach Halabja," Ken told them as he settled into the flow of traffic. "There will be a number of roadblocks between here and there."
"Who's manning the roadblocks?"
"Mostly Peshmerga, the Kurdish armed forces," Ken explained. "There might be some others set up by individual villages. I told you, the people here are sick of violence."
"How about Americans?" Austyn asked.
"There's one roadblock, but that's not a concern," Ken said. "They know we're coming. Most likely, we'll be waved through."
"What do the Peshmerga look for at the roadblocks?" Austyn asked.
"Mainly Arabs." Ken looked in the mirror at them. "I'm not exaggerating. There's racial profiling to the max around here. The Kurds hate Arabs."
Austyn saw Fahimah look out the window. She wasn't contradicting anything Ken was saying.
"And what else are they looking for?" he asked. "Weapons?"
"Maybe. They might search the car for God knows what… maybe something else that they'll like and decide to keep."
"Will they check papers?" Austyn asked.
"You never know, but that's a possibility. They might want to know what you're doing here, where you've been and where you're going and all that. They could be as tough as the Iranian guards you'll face crossing the border. So you have to get your stories straight before we get to any of these roadblocks."
Austyn pulled out the envelope Matt had given him and emptied the contents on the seat between him and Fahimah. She looked over, watching what he was doing.
"Do you know what you're going to tell them?" he asked her.
She nodded. "I am a professor of political science at the University of Baghdad. My name is Fahimah Banaz."
"What are you doing here?" Ken asked her from the front seat.
"I'm visiting family at Halabja. That's where I am from originally," she said. "Of course, I'll answer all of this in Kurdish, and they'll have no problem with it. My Argentinean colleague here could have a problem."
"Only if you tell them to pee in my tea," Austyn said under his breath.
She smiled and Austyn found himself distracted.
"How about crossing to Iran? What are going to tell them if they stop you?" Ken asked.
"The same thing. And I'll tell them I'm looking for some family members that might be in one of the refugee camps across the border," she said. "I'll tell them I want to take them back to Iraqi Kurdistan with me."
"That's the magic word," Ken said. "I've heard they're so overcrowded in the camps that any time you're going there to bring someone back, they have no problem with it."
"What about if they ask for the name of your family?" Austyn asked her.
"I can give them three dozen names… perhaps even more. I have many family members who went missing during Saddam's campaigns of terror," she said quietly. "I will also be speaking Farsi with them, so that's another feather in my cap."
"That works for me," Ken commented.
Austyn replaced his own passport and documents with those establishing his Argentinean identity. "Where do you want my real passport?" he asked Ken.
"There's a slot that leads to a compartment under the rug behind your seat."
Austyn made sure there were no cars tailing them or anyone to see what he was doing. There was an advantage in leaving when they had. There wasn't too much traffic and the neighborhoods were beginning to thin out. He looked over his shoulder and found the spot Ken was referring to. He deposited the extra papers there and pulled the rug back over the slot. He opened the passport and studied his new name and information, which he went over with Fahimah.
"Someone might ask what you are doing with this guy." Ken said when they were finished. "What will you say?"
"He contacted me through the university because I teach political science. He's writing a book about Kurdistan and the refugee camps. I was going to Halabja, anyway, so I offered to bring him along."
"And going over the border?" Ken asked.
"The same thing. I'm serving as his translator. He doesn't speak Kurdish or Farsi," she answered simply.
Austyn was impressed. She spoke with such authority that it was difficult to challenge what she said. He guessed she was an excellent teacher.
"Won't they find something majorly wrong with the fact that you're an unmarried woman and traveling with a foreign male?" Ken asked.
"No, not at all," she said confidently. "We are in Kurdistan, and I teach at the university. This will stop anyone from asking such a frivolous question. The Islamic fundamentalists don't have so much influence on the way people live in the north. At least, they didn't five years ago. And based on what I saw on the streets last night and heard from my friends, I'd say things are—"
"Well," Ken said, interrupting. "This came up sooner than I thought." He slowed the van.
Straight ahead, the traffic came to a standstill. Past the half-dozen cars, armed Kurdish soldiers were checking every vehicle going in either direction.
"They usually do this when people are coming into Erbil, not leaving it," Ken commented.
"What are we doing traveling with you?" Austyn asked Ken.
"I'm giving you a ride."
"Why?" Austyn asked.
"I'm on leave for forty-eight hours. Sightseeing. Met at the hotel and, rather than let the two of you travel by bus, I offered to give you a ride."
"U.S. soldiers are instructed to travel in groups when on leave," he pressed. "What are you doing alone?"
They inched forward.
"My girlfriend is stationed in Sulaimaniyah," Ken said smoothly. "I'm going there to meet her. I don't need a crowd with me."
They moved ahead a little more. The soldiers were checking the car ahead of them.
"Your girlfriend? Aren't you married?" Austyn asked, testing.
"I'm making up stories, remember?" Ken replied.
The car ahead of them left the checkpoint, and a Peshmerga soldier waved them forward. Ken stopped where he was directed. The soldier looked in the van at Ken's uniform and nodded.
"IDs, please," the soldier said in a thick accent.
Austyn handed over his fake passport and Fahimah's university ID to Ken, who handed them to the soldier. Another armed Peshmerga fighter circled the van, looking in.
The soldier looked briefly at Ken's and Austyn's documents and handed them back. He glanced at Fahimah's next and tapped on her window. She opened it. He looked at her ID again and stared at her face a couple of seconds.
"Jawerrwani," he said, walking away and taking her identification. The soldier waved to two other soldiers, who moved in front of the car, blocking them.
"What did he say?" Austyn asked.
"He said to wait," she answered.
"We're not starting out too well, are we?"
"I don't know what the heck this is about," Ken grumbled, taking the phone out from under the seat.
It wasn't like Fahimah to get nervous, but Austyn saw her tuck her hands under her legs. She looked anxiously in the direction the soldier had gone. He was now talking to someone sitting in a car across the road. Whoever it was, he seemed to be in a position of authority. The other man took the ID from the soldier and looked at it, too. He yelled out something to the two Peshmergas blocking their path.