‘I’ll call Gibson. He has contacts with the RAF. He’ll send some planes,’ Parson replied, ‘we’ll take Wilford off the map.’
‘You promise?’
‘I promise. The name will be forgotten. It will be a crime to speak of Wilford. Superstitions will start.’
It took them longer each time to close the conversation.
‘Soon,’ she said, ‘I’m not counting, but stay in Turkey.’
‘I’m not sure it’s possible. If nothing comes up they’ll send me back to Iraq.’
Laura consoled, advised, suggested solutions which would not fit, ideas which illuminated the gulf between how he spent his days and how she spent hers. He couldn’t begin to explain.
‘Isn’t there anyone you can speak with?’
Parson said no. It simply didn’t work like that. As long as the claims kept coming from Iraq, Gibson would keep him on site. It was simply cheaper than sending someone from London every time.
You’ll think of something, she said, because you have to. ‘You’ll figure this out. You’ll cook something up.’ Her voice rang with a clear faith, or this is what he supposed she intended.
Parson promised he would do what he could, and the line clipped short.
* * *
He sat in his car, sulky at the prospect of an eight-hour drive back to Kopeckale, his wife’s voice lingering with him. The whisky he’d drunk tasted of smoke, of cigarettes. Laura was right. The longer he remained in Turkey the less likely he would return to Iraq — and Gibson would send him back to Iraq the moment the search concluded. As he slipped the printout of Sutler into the folder an idea occurred to him: If you set a device in an office, if you knew that this was going to explode, you would be running, and you would be running away. You would be running with your back to the explosion. You would not face the blast if you knew it was coming, not without protecting your face. You would not have scratches on your face. It would be unlikely.
There could be many reasons why Sutler had turned: a door that would not open, an unexpected delay, but surely, he would have protected himself, cringed, shied away? It would only be natural. The simple fact that Sutler had not escaped the building restored his idea that the man was moving by accident, not design. These new ideas did not sit well.
He sat for a long time and considered the situation. HOSCO had refused to settle with the widow of the translator Amer Hassan, and while this was not related, he found that he could not sympathize with their current trouble. It seemed just to him that HOSCO would have to struggle, and he no longer liked the idea that he was assisting them. The longer he ran after Sutler the less time he would spend in Iraq. He saw no harm in manufacturing, no, not manufacturing, but enhancing evidence. He did this already when he needed to sway a claim one way or another, although he’d failed to do so in the Hassan report. These shifts, these inflections, would depend on tiny amplifications, nothing concrete, nothing extravagant, just a matter of small unconfirmed sightings, hotel bookings, taxi rides, travel arrangements, spare and harmless details to keep Geezler off his back while he continued with his search. Geezler also remained a question in his mind, although he could not properly formulate why. The information about the bank accounts, about Sutler being responsible for the attack on Southern-CIPA, about Sutler giving gifts of watches and whisky to the men at Camp Liberty (when Pakosta and Clark had admitted that Howell had provided these gifts), was all conjecture. Too eager to bend the facts to suit a particular reading Geezler sounded like a man trying hard to convince. He probably didn’t even know he was doing this.
3.9
Ford waited in the van with Martin, while Nathalie, Eric, and Mehmet ran errands in the market. Martin elected to stay with the equipment and sat with the camera nestled between his legs. Still peevish he leaned out of the window and avoided conversation, pretending he couldn’t hear because of the street. Parched, Ford hoped that Nathalie would remember to buy bottled water. She’d made a list but left it on the seat, and he suspected some other agenda behind the trip. Late afternoon and the sun scalded his bare arms.
He began to entertain Eric’s ideas that Martin preferred men, or rather boys, or rather his students, and that through some perversity he was attached to Nathalie, who could, in her own manner, be considered peerless. How then, and why, would such a woman satisfy herself with such a man? Whatever Martin’s charms, whatever his appeal, Ford couldn’t see it.
Martin, lost to his thoughts, tugged at his beard.
Ford redirected his attention to the town.
Larger than Narapi, Birsim’s streets span out from a central market. Mehmet had parked facing the main square and left them with a packet of coloured pencils to hand out to children. It was better, he said, to give crayons, but the children wouldn’t accept them. Instead they bothered Martin for cash, or took the pencils and poked him with them, then slapped the van’s sides when he refused to give them money. Bored, Ford watched a line of mules progress toward them. A whole other order of information: sweaty and exhausted beasts hauling sticks and sacks of concrete with tourist shops on either side; glass windows, white tiled floors, then these animals of bone and pelt tethered one to another, exhausted by the heat. The streets busy. The shops empty. No tourists, not this far east, not this season.
A gentle percussive ba-boom, nothing more suggestive than a firework pop, reverberated down the street. Martin perked up, sat forward, and some moments after the stink of scorched rubber overpowered the air. From the far side of the market rose a pall of grey smoke. Martin sniffed and muttered that something was on fire. The smoke, now black, ran thick across the square and clogged the mouth of the street. Wisps of ash — burnt paper, rubber — coiled delicately down upon them.
The crowd immediately became confused. People facing the square collided with people escaping so that the street became impassable. Alarmed by the acrid stink and the unearthly black snow the mules stopped immediately alongside the van. One slumped hard against the door so that the vehicle began to lean. Camera ready, Martin struggled with the door in an attempt to shove the beast aside, but the animal would not budge. Ford clambered into the front seat, wound down the window, and pulled himself out, then up, to the van’s roof.
Martin struggled after, and Ford helped him up, his arms streaked with ash. When children attempted to scramble onto the van he pushed them down and they slipped back into the adult crowd. The smoke began to thin, and from their vantage point they could see the source of the fire.
On the far west side of the square smoke pumped through the open windows of a burning bus, the contents of the hold — shoes, clothes, baskets, suitcases, fruit, tatters of paper — spat out across the market. Flames roiled from the undercarriage.
Martin filmed the muddle using Ford as a support, and Ford sighted Eric and Nathalie among the crowd in the square with a pinch of relief. Behind them, a good number of red and black berets of the military police. Bothered by the crowd Nathalie wrapped her arm about Eric’s shoulder and Eric directed her forward. Behind them, only just in view, came Mehmet, surrounded by soldiers. When he spotted Ford and Martin on top of the van he began to shout.
* * *