An Enemy Within (17 page)

When she finally had the young man’s attention, she explained she needed a new hard-drive.

‘I could normally do that while you wait, Ma’am,’ he said, flashing a grin and taking the modem out of Alex’s large holdall bag. ‘But just now…’

‘That’s okay – I have to do something else. I’ll be back in twenty, though,’ she said by way of warning.

Turning left out of the store, she began the walk three blocks north to a post office she often used. On edge, she stopped at a shop window, pretending to be interested in the display, glancing back nervously. She felt foolish, but if Northwood was on to her she’d have to play his silly games.

Crossing a junction at the last minute a block further on, she turned round halfway, darting back on a red light and almost knocking a man over waiting at the kerb. He seemed to have stood in her way on purpose.

‘Well, pardon me,’ she blurted, indignant. Glancing at him, her embarrassment came king-sized when she saw the guy was carrying a white stick and wearing shades that were impenetrable. ‘Oh, sorry,’ she murmured.

‘Ain’t no bother, lady,’ the man said, nodding his head as if listening to music on his headphones – even though Alex couldn’t hear anything.

‘Okay, green for go now,’ she said as the lights changed, feeling obliged to lightly guide him by the arm.

‘Well, thank you kindly, Ma’am,’ the man said, sweeping the stick before him as if searching for mines. ‘Say, you goin’ far?’

‘Post office,’ Alex said.

‘Hey, me too,’ he drawled.

*  *  *

‘We have contact, sir.’

In a secret CIA office on East Forty-Eighth Street, near to the United Nations headquarters, Richard Northwood leant over the shoulder of a technician watching two red dots on a screen map of central Manhattan moving side by side.

‘Heading?’

‘She said the post office, sir,’ the technician added.

Northwood smiled to himself. He had to hand it to Kowolski, it was a sheer piece of inspiration that he’d called the bureau in Baghdad after searching Alex’s hotel room at the Palestine. Finding nothing of note among her things, Kowolski suggested they might want to bug her cell phone. So they’d sent round one of their surveillance experts to carry out the simple task.

‘Sometimes small insurance policies pay big,’ Kowolski had remarked as he’d watched the CIA man take off the back cover, remove the lithium battery from inside and replace it with an identical-looking one.

‘Two thirds battery, one third GPS tracker,’ the guy had told him. ‘She won’t know any difference.’

Northwood returned his gaze to the twin red dots. He knew he was playing a hunch. But long shots came in every day.

*  *  *

Inside the post office, she guided the blind man to a counter and stood in front of him in the line, eventually buying two envelopes, one smaller than the other.

‘I’m done – it’s your turn now my friend. Good luck,’ Alex said, ushering the man forward.

Moving over to an empty counter, she wrote a hurried note on the front of the smaller envelope: ‘Dear Mom, Please put this packet in a REALLY SAFE place for me – it’s a back-up file of important pictures. xxx.’

Quickly retrieving the memory stick of Aban’s material from her pocket, Alex slipped it inside the package, secured it, and placed it in the larger envelope, which she addressed. She suddenly became aware of someone standing close by and turned round sharply. The blind man was at her side.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said. ‘If you want the way out, it’s directly behind you.’

‘I didn’t say thanks back there – so thank you, Ma’am,’ he said, slowly moving off towards the exit, nodding his head to his music and sweeping the floor with his cane.

Alex found a counter clerk who was free and said she wanted it sending by registered delivery, watching as he tossed it nonchalantly into a nearby red mailbag.

If only he knew what the contents were, she thought, he might just have treated it with a little more reverence.

She headed back to the electrical store in a more positive frame of mind, even managing to hum one of her favourite songs to herself. At least Aban’s material was now safe – no matter what Northwood and his crew got up to. She’d decide how to broadcast it to the world as soon as the McDermott show was over when she would have the time to sit and think. Steve might be able to help, too, she thought. Sometimes an outsider could see the wood from the trees.

*  *  *

When Alex had gone from his sight, the man took off his shades, folded them, and put them in the inside pocket of his jacket next to the stub of his collapsible white cane. Then he strode purposefully into the post office and asked to see the most senior person in charge.

*  *  *

The electrical store assistant was serving someone else as Alex entered the shop, but he raised his hand to signal he’d seen her. Presently, he joined her.

‘All done, Ma’am – a new hard drive installed and here’s your old one.’

Alex turned the lump of metal in her hands, checking it had the two fine scratches she’d made on its outer casing. She ran her finger over the marks. Was she becoming paranoid about all this? She quickly dismissed the notion. If the Badgeman could be FBI, then anything was possible.

‘Say, do you have a hammer back there?’

‘Think so,’ the assistant said, disappearing behind the counter. He returned with a heavy lump hammer. ‘This okay?’

‘A backyard?’

‘Follow me.’

He unlocked the rear door. Alex found herself in a highwalled enclosure, the tops decked with rolls of razor wire – just like Baghdad, she thought. Placing the hard drive on the concrete floor, a jumble of images and fears flooded her mind.

Pent-up frustration taking over, she raised the hammer and began smashing the metal for all she was worth. If the CIA were going to put her life under the microscope, they’d get no help from her.

The last two blows were particularly satisfying – one for Gene Kowolski, the final one for Richard Northwood. Her arm aching, Alex stared at the twisted piece of scrap, allowed herself a contented smile. She just knew Northwood would soon make contact.

And she reckoned she was now ready for him.

13

‘You okay, Lieutenant? I mean, if it’s all going too fast, you just holler.’

Kowolski paced the floor, clicking his fingers in frustration, and hearing with increasing boredom McDermott’s version of the raid. It was so matter-of-fact, so one-dimensional, he knew the media would find themselves scraping the barrel to colour it up.

‘Well, it was sorta’ like I said, sir, routine sort of stuff,’ McDermott blustered.

‘No, no, no,’ Kowolski interjected, irritably. ‘Wasn’t routine at all. No, SIR.’

If McDermott noticed the sarcasm in Kowolski’s voice, a withering impatience brought on by the feeling he was not giving it his best shot, he did not show it.

‘Surely, it’s more like this.’ He ran a hand through his hair as if the dark mop was a fountain of inspiration. ‘Okay, you were not sure what to expect – intel is never that precise – then you came under heavy fire. You and your men were in grave danger. It was a tricky situation with it being dark and all, but you had the best equipment the US Army could provide, illumination flares, night sights, powerful spotlights from the Bradley… and, of course, the firepower and the best of trained soldiers in the unit. That’s right, isn’t it?’

McDermott blinked. It was a nervous twitch, both eyes at once, that Kowolski had noticed earlier. ‘Well, sort of, sir.’

‘Okay, remember what I’ve just said. Learn it off by heart. Then what happened?’

‘Well, we kinda just let rip an’ all – there was no taking any chances.’

‘Exactly, Lieutenant, nice pitch. There was no way you were going to risk the lives of any of your men in such a combat situation because they’re all like brothers to you – that’s what you say, right?’

He nodded, blinking some more.

‘So you followed your training, your instinct as a soldier, the way they taught you rigorously at West Point where you learned… let’s see now… yeah, courage, discipline, exemplary behaviour – remember that, Lieutenant, CDE, easy enough.’

‘Yes sir.’ It was beginning to dawn on McDermott that this was all going to entail a lot more than he had ever envisaged.

‘And your haul – what was it?’ Kowolski read from a copy of the commendation. ‘Fifteen enemy combatants, all killed. A large cache of armaments, let’s see… bomb-making equipment, guns, ammunition, RPGs, a very substantial amount all told. It doesn’t say here how many you personally knocked off? Be great if you could say, you know, one of my guys was about to be hit when I opened up… something like that.’

‘Sir, it wasn’t really like that.’

Kowolski began to feel his temper rising. ‘Well, tell me soldier, what was it like for Chrissake?’

McDermott stared at him for a moment, indignant at Kowolski’s tone. Okay, he was no prude and, in the heat of the moment out there on the street, he was now forgiving his men the odd cuss or two. But there was no pressure on here. The major had said this was going to be just a friendly little chat.

Kowolski, sensing the atmosphere he had created, picked up a chair, moved it closer to McDermott, his voice more conciliatory. ‘Look, Lieutenant, I know it’s difficult. Battle-hardened soldiers like yourself – well I guess you don’t like talking about certain aspects of war. Hey, my old man was in ’Nam and could I ever get him to open up?’ He snapped his fingers loudly. ‘Schtum – like a clam.’

He watched McDermott’s face break into one of those
half-smiles, a look of understanding. Too distant for Kowolski’s liking; almost melancholy.

There was a knock on the door. ‘Not now,’ he shouted angrily. Then, turning back to McDermott, ‘Look, son, it’s just that I know what it’s like dealing with the media – they’re hungry for information and we need to give them all they need. They want to know every twist and turn, every single burp and fart. That’s why we’re having this little talk. Best if we can operate on the same wavelength, okay?’

McDermott let out a long sigh. ‘Affirmative, sir. I’ll do my best. I… I’ll try not to let you down.’

Kowolski slapped him on the back, got up and paced the room once more. ‘Thataboy, soldier – think of the men in your unit, all the boys here away from home, all the tens of thousands of them. You’re their talisman, Lieutenant, you’ll be speaking on their behalf – they’ll all be looking to you to tell it like it is. You’re in a privileged situation; you mustn’t forget that. You’re going to be the public face of the war in Iraq.’

‘Right, sir,’ he said, gulping.

‘There’s something else to take onboard here. We can go over everything again several times when we get to New York but I just wanted to tell you this. When you get to meet the media, the TV people, the newspapers and magazines, I can guarantee there’s always one smart-ass among them trying to make a name for themselves who’ll ask you a shit question, you know, something awkward.’

McDermott gave him a furtive sideways glance. ‘What sort of question, sir?’

‘I don’t know precisely – just be ready for it coming. What you gotta do is turn it round. You ask THEM if they’ve ever been in Iraq. It’ll be a dime to a dollar they haven’t – that puts them in an inferior position straight away and you can just leave it like that, watch them shrink into their seat. Nothing more needs saying. You understand?’

McDermott looked as if he was about to say something, but merely nodded.

‘If, by any remote chance, they say they have been here, well you play the buddy buddy card, and get them onside like you’re sharing something the rest of the bunch don’t know about: ‘‘Well, as you know from your own experience out there, it’s a real tough situation, an ever-changing event – things move at an alarming rate’’… something vague along those lines. And if you can’t answer a question without embarrassing yourself, simply say that you have no knowledge of whatever they’re asking.’

When McDermott finally got up to leave, Kowolski shook him by the hand, grabbing his shoulder at the same time. ‘Don’t you worry about a thing, Lieutenant, I’ll see you through all this in good style. Believe me, we’ll have them eating out of our hands in no time. Everything’s going to be just rinky-dink.’

Alone in the room, Kowolski’s final words echoed in his own ears as a feeling of dread enveloped him.

Finally meeting McDermott had convinced him it was going to be anything but rinky-dink.

*  *  *

Out on patrol later, Bobby-Jo stamped hard on the Bradley’s accelerator, inducing an immediate clanking deep growl from the 600-horsepower diesel engine as the vehicle lurched forward.

The sudden movement caught some of the men off guard, throwing them out of their leather-padded metal seats.

One of them shouted, cursing him. ‘Hey, Bobby, you leave your fuckin’ pantyhose off today and take a bite on the ass by a sand flea?’

This brought a rumble of laughter from the men, painfully aware of the nasty bites from the tiny mosquito-like creatures. Like the heat, they were another torment, here. To combat this particular pest, the men had taken to wearing women’s nylon tights.

McDermott’s face appeared from the commander’s turret to see what the shouting was about. The soldier caught the lieutenant’s glance, raised his hand in apology at the outburst.

Bobby-Jo was in an uptight mood. He’d been carrying the gloom since the men were told there would be no special leave for them. Only the lieutenant. So he was continually moaning to the rest of the boys that ‘the whole deal sucks’.

It was an opinion shared by several others, but who said nothing – and had no intention of doing so. Sergeant Rath had threatened to ‘get personal’ with anyone who bitched, anyone who mouthed off, about the night in question.

McDermott sensed something was troubling his driver. He shot a downward glance his way, made a mental note to have a word with him back at base. Beyond the raised driving hatch, the lieutenant could see Bobby-Jo’s head, shaking side to side, as he gunned the Bradley abruptly on to a deserted highway. Burned out car wrecks, trash of every description, littered the side of the road, the central reservation scarred with stumps of shattered palm trees.