“Yeah, well, I found you,” Fowler said. Pulowski’s chatter, its faint edge of panic, both irritated her and felt familiar in its irritation. An abrasion she had missed.
They were standing there in the entryway of the 16th Engineer Brigade. Past the sergeant, there were rows of desks, maps pinned to the wall, glowing computer screens, and the little wooden stands that you could buy at the PX, where you could hang your body armor once you got to the office, as if it were Mr. Rogers’s sweater. This was the moment when, if she was going to stand on ceremony, she was going to need to do it. She could’ve asked him what the hell he was thinking even asking her here, what the hell he had been doing when she’d needed him during the past four weeks. On the other hand, that would’ve meant she had to be prepared to turn around and walk out that door permanently and accept never being irritated by a Pulowski story ever again.
“You know I’m not real comfortable in places like this,” she said.
“Well, thank fucking God for that,” Pulowski said. “Because if you were, I would have had to ask somebody else.”
* * *
They climbed three flights of concrete stairs and pushed out through a red-painted fire-exit door onto a flat, industrial rooftop. There were five or six white shipping containers on the rooftop, shaded by blue tarps, their sides marked with the red logo PODS. Major McKutcheon waved to them from the doorway of the third, bareheaded, with a sunburned, thinning scalp, each follicle strangely stout, so that his skull appeared to be sprouting mechanical pencil leads. He grabbed Fowler’s hand with his stubby, baby-soft fingers (Pulowski was a few steps back, out in the heat) and said, “My God, Lieutenant, I am so appreciative of you being able to come here, in the middle of — well, I mean, look at us — you have my — I am so sorry about—”
“Sorry for what, sir?” Fowler asked, before he could mention anything about Pulowski. It was the last thing she needed, the idea that their separation had been broadcast out over the network, so remarkable as to find its way here.
“Yeah, sorry for what?” This voice, to her dismay, belonged to Beale. They’d steered clear of each other ever since, in Beale’s view, Fowler had sold him out to Seacourt and gotten him demoted. Or saved his ass, in hers. But there he was on a rolling chair beside a wooden shelf that ringed the inside of the pod, staring up at a television bolted to the ceiling. “That’s one thing we don’t do around here is apologize.”
Turning, she gave Pulowski the stink-eye. He reacted like a Broadway singer, eyes bugged, hands flapping as if he’d thought that inviting Beale would be a good thing. Which, four weeks ago, would’ve been the case.
“Why would I apologize?” McKutcheon said. “I have no idea. Maybe I just figure we’ll screw something up here eventually.”
“Like Frenchy here?” Beale asked, staring at the TV. On it, Lance Armstrong pedaled through a mountain meadow in France, his shadow racing out in front of him.
“He’s an American,” McKutcheon said.
“Really?” Beale said, squinting. “Well, there’s your answer. I’d damn sure apologize if I got caught riding around France in a yellow shirt.”
“I don’t think he intends to get caught,” the major continued smoothly. “Speaking of which, I understand you’ve been having some trouble with the colonel.”
“Who told you that?” Fowler asked warily.
“My understanding,” Beale said, “is that the lieutenant and the colonel have a hell of a good relationship when it comes to covering each other’s ass.”
“Did I say that this has anything to do with covering the colonel’s ass?” asked McKutcheon, who was either entirely oblivious to the tension or experienced enough to ignore it. He picked up a stack of xeroxes and waved them in the air. “As the chief information officer for the First Battalion, Twenty-seventh Infantry, I would neither confirm nor deny such a thing.”
The A’am al-Bina’a newsletter, which McKutcheon handed out, was a battalion publication, printed in Arabic and English, publicizing the improvements that Colonel Seacourt had brought to their AO. Fowler was relieved for the break. They were on the verge of what felt to her like almost total anarchy. The three of them — Beale, herself, and Pulowski — all at odds, all resentful, all bitter. The only person who knew why they all felt that way was her. As for the newsletter, it described exactly the kind of reconstruction work that Colonel Seacourt had promised the battalion would do when Fowler’s platoon had been training at Fort Riley: COALITION REBUILDS SALMAN PAK ELEMENTARY, WATER PLANT REPAIRS PLANNED FOR MUSAYYIB, BAGHDAD IS BEAUTIFUL PROGRAM A SUCCESS. Beale laughed, a stringy, surprisingly cynical yip. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “Who writes this? Captain Kangaroo?”
“The question is, is this better than what you’ve been doing?” Pulowski asked. He’d hunched into the crate by now, leaning in the doorway, lanky and poorly shaved.
This was dangerous territory around Pulowski, the closest they’d come to the subject they’d argued about before he left. “Look, I’m for rebuilding some kid’s school,” she said. “I just don’t see what that has to do with me and Beale.”
“The main problem with the Salman Pak school,” McKutcheon said, “is that it has since been blown to smithereens.”
“All right, then, what about the Musayyib Water Treatment Plant?”
“Also blown up,” Pulowski said. Then in the scalloped profile of his face, lit by the slate blue of the Mac screen, she saw a twinge of uncertainty, as if he’d answered too quickly. “Wasn’t it?” he said to McKutcheon.
“Read that one, Lieutenant,” McKutcheon said to her, dropping his earlier politeness. There was a bit of the geek tyrant in his demand, generous to sycophants, but vain as Napoleon with his equals or better, Fowler would’ve bet. Women especially.
She could also tell by McKutcheon’s tone how this was going to go. Disaster following disaster. Not one word accurate on its face. What surprised her was that Pulowski and McKutcheon still saw her as the kind of officer who would be shocked that Colonel Seacourt would put his name on this kind of transparent crap. “‘The Musayyib Water Treatment Plant in Babil Province is currently pumping water directly from the Euphrates River into the city’s drinking water system with little or no filtration,’” she read aloud. “‘This type of treatment was insufficient for fully treating raw river water.’”
“Ya think?” Pulowski said. There was a forced pleasure in his voice.
“‘The coalition recognizes that operations and maintenance of public infrastructure is one of Iraq’s biggest challenges,’” Fowler continued.
“Translation,” McKutcheon said, still sounding like Thurston Howell III. “The last two foremen on this project had their heads cut off and their bodies dumped into the main … thingy, whatever it is. The place where the water would be going. Reservoir?”
Pulowski sat on the floor with his legs stretched out in front of him, looking about as cynical and blank as McKutcheon. Except for the brief burst of nerves that she’d seen flash across his face when she’d first shown up for their meeting, she hadn’t been able to get a read on his intentions. Was he trying to humiliate her? Or did she just feel that way? “I don’t know about you guys,” she said, “but this sure cheers me up.”
“I wanted you to know the risks,” Pulowski said.
Beale made a fart sound. Which Fowler appreciated, mightily.
“The risks of what?” she asked.
“The cameras I’ve been working on are designed to prevent stuff like this. Give us a chance to monitor sensitive areas and projects outside the wire,” Pulowski said. “The colonel wants them deployed ASAP. I’m asking you for an escort. But I wanted to make sure you had good reasons to say no if you felt that way.”