“Thanks, but I’m not hungry.”
His career is over by way of association. He’ll always be the point man for the worst attack on U.S. soil since 9/11, unless he figures out how to help. His name will be synonymous with destruction.
I said, “The pictures, Kyle.”
“Dr. Nakamura, you’re sure that when you were on the island, no one mentioned Tol-e-Khomri?”
“I don’t think so.”
Utley looked at the closed file, reluctant to open it even though he’d come with it, and he glanced meaningfully at Izabel. “Need to know, Colonel Rush. You and Major Nakamura have the clearance to see this. But Captain Santo is, er, not in that category.”
He turned to Izabel, expecting her to leave, and she shook her head. Utley turned to me, waiting for me to order her to go. I shook my head also. She wouldn’t have gone anyway. Eddie explained to him, “Look, she stays. If it weren’t for her, Joe and I would be dead. And you’d know nothing about Brazil. You came this far. You’ve already said more than you should. So don’t be stupid. Technically, we’re ordered to cooperate with her. Any fallout is on us.”
Utley sighed, visibly weighing infractions. But in the end he had come too far to stop now. He opened the file. The lesser of two bad choices. I saw with surging interest that the top shot was an aerial. From a drone, reconnaissance plane, or satellite.
Kyle said, “Like I said, it’s the name of a Syrian village, but also the name of a refugee camp in southern Turkey, where the people from that village showed up.”
I was eyeing a tent city, a sprawling mass of quickly thrown-up tents, lean-tos, shacks, and latrines, miles in diameter. Troops patrolled outside a fence. Smoke — choking cooking-fire smoke — made it harder to see details. A convoy of dump trucks snaked in through a front gate, past sandbags, packed with human cargo. I saw tethered goats. I saw a line of women with buckets for water on their heads. I saw a water truck and Red Cross and Red Crescent tents. Thousands of displaced people, desperate ones, were there.
“People fleeing fighting to the south. People trying to get to Europe. More coming every day,” Kyle said.
Next shot, this time a close-up, more trucks, except the passengers were exclusively men or boys.
“They’re not all so innocent,” Kyle said. “Some pretty bad guys are mixed in there, too. They came to disrupt.”
I saw more photos. Life in the camp. A ditch into where men and boys urinated. A shower facility marked in Arabic, WOMEN. Except a lot more women lined up outside than the facility could hold. Refugees standing four deep, a quarter mile back, waiting to eat, or lying listlessly in sleeping bags beneath lean-tos. The sense of building pressure coming from the photos. The sense that two-dimensional images could not hold all the need. I saw angry people, massed, yelling at the soldiers. Fists raised. Signs waving. Hate. Let us out! Feed us! Let us leave this place!
“The jihadists pushed it, encouraged it,” Utley said.
Watching the inevitable progression to outburst was like sitting in a silent movie, as it rolled out frame by frame. I saw the first AK-47. It must have been smuggled into the camp by the jihadists. I saw a Turkish soldier on the ground, screaming in pain. A tent was on fire. A Humvee was smoking. A section of fence was trampled. Women threw rocks and bottles at retreating troops.
“They took over the camp for some hours,” Kyle said. “When the troops came back it got pretty bloody.”
In my hand, people were now running away from the fence. I saw clumps of earth bursting upward, and a body in the air, its limbs folded at impossible angles. The face seemed detached from the shoulders, as if it had materialized from dust. Another face rushed toward the satellite eye so swiftly that the cheek muscles were pulled back as if by g-force, as if the man was an astronaut. Concrete blocks flew in the air, light as Lego pieces.
“Jesus Cristo,” Izabel Santo said.
The riot and aftermath unfolded, and life became death, structure disintegrated, tent fabric became cinders, geometry disassembled into atoms of blood. The soldiers were inside the camp again. The settling dust revealed overturned cooking pots and burned Humvees and the truncated base of what had been a Quonset hut a few hours before. I saw a field of untouched beans, and a small boy, naked, screaming, urinating without realizing it, beside a shredded, smoking cotton chair that lay sideways as if it had fallen to earth from outer space.
I saw bodies, wrapped in blankets, in a row.
“Dr. Nakamura, Dr. Rush, you’re sure that no one mentioned this place when you were in Brazil?” Kyle asked.
“Sorry,” said Eddie.
Utley’s sigh conveyed lost hope. He’d known before boarding the train that his quest for answers was long odds. His hands seemed to move by themselves, turning over more photos. In the next one light was grayer; either clouds had rolled in or time had passed, dusk approached.
Utley said, “During the period when the troops evacuated, these next images occurred.”
More vehicles arrived; a couple of Land Rovers and a Ford Escape. Running toward the wreckage, jihadists left vehicle doors open. One fighter was down on a knee, the body of a woman bent backward over it as he cradled her in his arms. Her right leg, poking from a singed chador, looked obscenely bare. The man’s stricken eyes were upturned as if he knew a drone was there. He cursed God, drones, cameras. His scarf had fallen off. His face was white, his beard dark; the shaking fist pantomimed rage or retribution.
The photo quality was so good that I saw tears streaming. Next shot, the face was closer; it lurched toward me by sidestepping time. The countenance was weathered, in a place where heat and sun suck away human juice. I saw squint lines at the eyes; sunburn and goggle marks disappeared into beard; teeth that were cared for. The close-up was so good that I saw a small gap between the front top incisor and the tooth to its left. Just a bit of extra space.
Kyle said, “We believe this man may be an American.”
Eddie looked up sharply.
Utley nodded. “There are more Westerners there than we care to admit. The dumber ones, low IQ, failures at work, are easy to track through the Web… we have a list. But smarter ones stay away from the Net now. Some have been recruited; others find their way to a certain village in Turkey, a certain inn in Pakistan. They surrender their passports. The more sophisticated groups have started keeping those U.S. or European passports active. They hope to send the owners back home after training. These traitors are told to tell their families back home they’re in the Peace Corps. Or backpacking. Believe me, the disinformation is top quality. Postcards sent to families from vacation spots. Phone calls home. Dad and Mom think little Bobby is on a beach in Thailand, because he says so. His passport has a stamp to prove it. But he’s in Jakarta. He’s in Brazil. Colonel, the bad guys are wising up.”
Eddie nodded, seeing it. “Why waste a fighter on the battlefield when you can slip him home, do far worse damage, and get lots of PR, all over the world?”
Kyle Utley looked miserable. “One rumor is they’re being coached by an American who knows D.C., how it works.”
“Rumor or fact?” said Izabel.
“That’s the problem, trying to understand, isn’t it?”
“This guy in the photo is one of these people?” I asked. “He’s the one who approached you?”
“I wish I knew,” admitted Kyle. “All I know is, the man who threatened me mentioned this place. He was American, I think. See the tooth, in front? The gap?”
“It’s the same guy?”
“I said I’m not sure. Maybe I just want it to be. My boss says it’s wishful thinking,” Utley sighed. “And my guy looked different, except for the tooth. He had an Army tattoo. This man doesn’t.” Utley picked up a Danish, stared at it as if he didn’t know what it was, and put it down. He said, weakly, “I hoped you might help somehow.”