An Enemy Within (22 page)

She’d always considered the space between them as opaque and impenetrable. To a large degree, she was sure this was still the case. He was still the enemy. But, were holes beginning to appear in the barrier between them like the mesh in front of her? Recalling his ranting at the time, she was amazed her picture had touched him. She only remembered his flashing, steely eyes and set jaw. There’d been no semblance of any feeling other than anger.

Kowolski was a loner, no family, no real friends. Why had he reached out to her? Had he just given her a glimpse of the real person? Did he feel some sort of bond between them? Perhaps there was a hint of humanity about the guy after all, she thought, as the taxi pulled up outside the photo lab. She pushed a twenty bill through the mesh and told the driver to keep the change.

*  *  *

The lab’s production people had assured her countless times they were in sympathy with her aims and would translate them to her satisfaction. Until she viewed the final product, however, she couldn’t be sure. So it was with a certain amount of trepidation that she entered the building. Met by the company’s art director, a Slovak called Milo, she was ushered with great ceremony down a narrow hallway towards the main studio.

‘This is where we ask clients to close their eyes,’ Milo said with a fanfare as he opened the door.

‘Right, you can look now,’ he shrieked excitedly, clapping his hands in delight.

In front of her, suspended wall to wall, her montage. Measuring some 30 feet long, almost 6 feet deep, it thrilled her more than she’d ever imagined. From the planning stage to reality was sometimes a leap too far in her business. She’d known colleagues whose pictures had been annihilated in the lab. Shaking her head in disbelief, she scanned the work. Her face creased into her first smile for a long time.

‘Milo, it’s fantastic,’ she said, hugging him in delight.

‘Will look good on the stage, high up and behind your hero,’ he beamed.

‘Sure will,’ she said, moving closer to examine each shot in more detail. One of the photographs was of the Bradley squad, Bobby-Jo at the end of the group giving a thumbs-up.

‘This poor boy’s dead now,’ she said, gently running a finger to caress Bobby-Jo’s cheek. She gazed at the impish face staring out of the canvas and a shiver of remorse snaked through her.

‘You want to keep him in? I mean, we can take him out if…’

‘No, no, of course I want him in – he’s very important. They’re heroes, all of them,’ she said, the melancholy all too apparent in her voice.

‘I guess it’s tough out there, huh?’

‘It’s hell,’ she said firmly, ‘for everyone.’

Eventually, Milo gestured to another room. Here, her large monochrome photographs adorned the walls, laid out in smart recessed mounts with black borders, hung on portable screen boards ready for wheeling into the hotel foyer for her exhibition.

The art director stood back admiring the work. ‘You like?’

Alex put both hands up to her face, felt a tear trickle down. ‘They’re amazing.’

‘But we are merely the conduit. You are the artiste,’ he said, a note of deference in his words. After a few minutes, he took her by the hand. ‘Come, Madame, you can study them in greater
detail later – we are not yet finished.’ He led her back towards the main studio. ‘I present to you the
pièce de résistance.’
He rapped on the door. It was opened quickly.

Milo stepped to one side. ‘We cannot do it full justice here, Alex. But, on the side of the hotel and over several stories deep, I’m sure it will knock them dead.’

Alex’s jaw dropped. Hoisted up to the high ceiling, a giant canvas in full colour of McDermott and the toddler he’d picked up in the Baghdad street. Several assistants unfurled the canvas as best they could so it spread towards them on the floor. Now, Alex let the tears flow freely.

It was a remarkable picture; McDermott’s uniform and the glimpse of a gun barrel a stark reminder of the brutality of the conflict, the little boy in a red sweater with a worn pair of shorts displaying his little chubby legs. Alex had captured the child’s brown eyes looking up into the soldier’s face. And McDermott’s expression was one of almost sublime beatitude, one hand looming large in the foreground, protectively around the boy’s waist.

‘We put some colour in the hero’s face – it was a little too white on every shot,’ Milo exclaimed.

Suddenly, Alex was back on that dusty, debris-strewn street, the stench of raw sewage assailing her nostrils, the stultifying heat that elevated water over oil as Iraq’s most precious commodity. And, there, with trembling fingers and a deathly pale, McDermott and his mystifying reaction to an innocent child.

‘Yeah, it’s the intensity of the sun out there,’ Alex bluffed, immediately shutting the memory from her mind to concentrate on this surreal vision before her.

Later, she left the lab with her spirits raised, her immediate anger blunted. Her work had been polished so it shone like a beacon. Did she have the nerve to call everything off? She would speak again to Steve and tell him her dilemma. He was such a good listener.

*  *  *

‘Babe, you’ve just gotta do it.’ Steve was as enthused over her pictures as she’d been when describing them. ‘Forget about everything else for a while and just think about yourself, your career and all.’

‘Maybe,’ she said, only half convinced. ‘Be pragmatic you mean?’

‘You’ve had a rough time. I only wish I could have been with you, put my arms around you and given you a real Philadelphia squeeze.’

Alex laughed, a girlish giggle that tinkled in her throat.

‘So do I,’ she murmured.

There was a moment’s silence between them. She heard Steve’s voice waver a little.

‘Alex… I think I’m falling in love with you,’ he said, clearing his throat.

She pressed the receiver as close as she could to her ear.

‘What?’

Detecting a split-second hesitation, she heard him swallow hard.

‘I said I think I’m falling in love with you.’

Feeling her face flush, her words came out in a whisper. ‘So am I with you. There, we’ve both said it now.’

‘Alex, sweetheart, you’ve made my day.’ Then he roared. ‘No, not my day, my month, my year – my life!’

They both burst out laughing in a fit of relief and delight. She eventually hung up, her heart soaring. This was madness, exhilaratingly so. But wasn’t everything just plain senseless at the moment? Turning to the photograph of Steve at her bedside, she blew it a kiss.

‘Lovely, crazy guy,’ she said, turning off the light.

*  *  *

McDermott walked slowly along the hospital corridor, limping. Dressed in uniform, he held a walking stick in one hand and a small bag in the other.

Kowolski watched him approaching. ‘You’re doing good Lieutenant,’ he said, relieving McDermott of his bag. He’d hoped the soldier would have remained on crutches – so much better for the media. The doctors, however, were pleased with McDermott’s recovery and agreed with the physiotherapy people that a stick would be sufficient. Still, Kowolski mused, a walking stick was nearly as good. The sympathy when he met the press and TV would be nearly as emotive.

‘We got one of your buddies to pack your gear and send it on to the airport,’ Kowolski said, ushering the lieutenant into the back of a waiting SUV, sandwiched between a Bradley and a Humvee.

‘Sir, what time’s the flight?’

‘Whenever we’re ready, Lieutenant. This is a first-class trip.’

An army photographer met them at the airport, spending longer than Kowolski had planned taking his shots.

‘I don’t suppose we could get you up on the Bradley, Lieutenant?’ the photographer gestured.

Kowolski cut him short. ‘Son, we got a prized cargo here and you wanna risk him doing his other knee? Go take a jump. Anyway, you’ve got enough – we’re outta here.’

The pictures would soon be on-screen on the army’s official website, married to a press release from Kowolski’s own hand. He thought it only fair to give the army first bite of the ripened cherry. He’d primed the prominent home media, of course, telling them to watch for the piece and take from it whatever they wanted as a teaser story for their own websites. By Kowolski’s reckoning, the President’s Silver Star hero would be on his way to full launch by the time they touched down on American soil, ready to face the waiting media pack.

*  *  *

Kowolski fastened his seat belt and braced himself for take-off. Fiddling with his hands, he rubbed one against the back of the other as if washing them, finally screwing his eyes shut as
the plane reached critical speed. When he opened them, still flustered, he glanced at McDermott. The lieutenant was staring out of the window, seemingly unaware of Kowolski’s discomfort.

‘You like flying, Lieutenant?’ Kowolski said, shifting in his seat. ‘Makes me kinda nervous.’

McDermott fixed him with a strange smile. ‘Perfect love casts out all fear, sir.’

Kowolski raised his eyebrows.

‘John, chapter four, verse eighteen sir.’

‘Er, right,’ Kowolski said, bending down and opening his briefcase.

‘No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us,’ McDermott added.

Kowolski smiled thinly. This guy was weird, just like the lot of
them
.

He gestured with his head towards the window. ‘Not much love down there, Lieutenant… I see only hate, yes sirree, just hate and fear.’

Taking a sheaf of papers from the case, he handed a set to McDermott. ‘This is the itinerary – better study it. You know we’ve got a small reception tomorrow night, a sort of eve of the big ceremony. You’re booked in a real swish place, the Carlyle on Madison Avenue. White-gloved waiters everywhere. You heard of it?’

‘No, sir, I’ve never been to New York before.’

‘You’re gonna like it. Hey, I’ve even booked Alex in there next door so you’ll have a friendly face.’

McDermott nodded his agreement. It would be good to see her again. He’d been troubled for some time about something she’d said when they’d last met – the reason the US was in Iraq. He’d like to talk to her further about the subject. It was extremely important to him right now.

Taking his Bible out of his hand case, he began reading from
a bookmarked page. After a few minutes, he turned to Kowolski.

‘Can I ask you something, sir?’

‘Fire away, Lieutenant.’ Kowolski immediately regretted his turn of phrase, not sure if McDermott would have recognised the irony. Besides, he thought, from what he’d seen of this soldier, he wasn’t totally convinced McDermott was capable of firing at anything at the moment, despite his undoubted act of past bravery.

McDermott’s demeanour, his whole appearance in fact, had caused Kowolski some debate with himself in the past few days as he made final preparations for their trip. In one sense, presenting the media with the hackneyed vision of a US soldier, a beefy, uncomplicated young man with a ready smile and a slap on the back for all and sundry, would have been the simple solution.

But a guy who looked as if he’d just come out of college? Fresh-faced and a trifle gangly, there was no way McDermott fitted the stereotype. Some might even wonder if he had the strength or the stamina to march around Baghdad with a 33 lb supply pack on his back, never mind tackling a bagful of bad guys. Still, Kowolski concluded, a studious-looking McDermott might fit the bill in another way; it would show that the US Army had room for the thinking soldier. And if someone like McDermott was willing to put his life on the line, it might even reinforce the public’s acceptance of the invasion.

‘Have we found any evidence of WMD yet?’ McDermott stared at him, blinking several times.

Kowolski eyed him, uncertainty playing in his mind. Several months ago he would have told the lieutenant it was only a matter of time before a whole raft of mass destruction weapons were found in some secret desert hideaway. Now, he not only doubted it himself, he wondered if it was worth keeping up the pretence to a hero like McDermott. He glanced at the open Bible in the lieutenant’s lap, the thought suddenly reminding him that he’d never found McDermott a book on Iraq.

‘You’re a good kid, Lieutenant. You gonna stay in the army forever?’

‘I don’t know, sir. I guess I never thought about it until recently.’

‘Recently?’

‘Being out here, seeing what it’s really like. And lying in bed in hospital, thinking.’

‘What if we didn’t find any WMD – that bother you?’

McDermott slowly raised a hand to his face, rubbed the side of his chin. ‘I don’t really know, I mean, why are we here?’

Kowolski pursed his lips, put both hands to his mouth, fingers together. To an outsider, it would have been misconstrued as a conscious act of praying. ‘You’re glad we toppled Saddam, right?’

‘Sure, everyone is.’

‘Well, that might be the sum total of it – isn’t that enough?’

‘And al-Qaeda?’

Kowolski shrugged without answering.

McDermott stared at him expectantly for several moments. When there was no further response, he turned his head to the window. ‘Thank you, sir,’ he said resignedly, gazing at the clouds.

‘But you stick to the official line, soldier. That’s your duty,’ Kowolski cautioned.

Moments later, Kowolski closed his eyes to try for a nap so he was unable to see McDermott staring straight ahead, lost in thought, the corners of his mouth turned up in a deeply contented smile.

It was if he had just made a monumental decision – and was pleased with himself for doing so.

*  *  *

Kowolski couldn’t sleep. His was a deeply troubled mind. Restlessness prevailed, bombarding him with a barrage of reflections. He’d put his heart and soul into this whole Iraq war
media project, McDermott merely the sugar paste on a perfectly-formed slab of preconception. His masters were pleased, passing on their congratulations, delighted at the amount of ‘media control’ his vision was delivering.

But did anyone back in Washington count the true cost of their actions? Were they ever touched by the actuality? The architects drew their plans with glee, but never saw the ramifications of the shapes they were trying to create. Did Rumsfeld and Cheney and Wolfowitz and the President never see the blood? More frightening, if they saw it and didn’t care – while Kowolski struggled daily to rid his nostrils of its deadly stench.