The Girl in Green (13 page)

Outside, the stars shine, the men talk, and the buzuq sings a song for which there will never be any words.

11

The interior walls of the prefabricated office are the off-white of a 1970s space station. When the door opens, the whiteness falls away into dead space. The illusion is so complete that Benton is startled not to be pushed into the cosmos.

Instead of an astronaut stepping in, though, it is a time traveller. She is still blonde and still attractive, both for the qualities she has and those that remind him of the woman he once knew. She is fuller than when Benton last saw her, which is not unpleasing, and her eyes have turned from a glassy blue to a fine lead crystal.

Benton glances at her eyebrows. ‘Hello, Märta,' he says.

‘Hello, Thomas.'

Märta settles into one of the visitor chairs in front of her own desk. She looks at Thomas Benton. He has darkened with time. His face is fractured: it has become more delicate, like old pottery.

She smiles.

He smiles at her.

Neither says a word.

‘Oh, come on, people,' Arwood says. ‘The line is, “Of all the refugee camps in all the towns in all the world, he walks into mine.” It's sitting there like a penny.'

‘I forgot you were a movie buff,' Märta says.

‘Where have you been?' Arwood asks her, deciding that Benton has passed on his own chance to speak. ‘I thought you'd have been here hours ago.'

‘I've had a very bad day.'

‘Compared to what?' Arwood asks.

‘Every other day for the past few months,' she says.

Even Arwood has no reply to that.

‘What happened?' Benton asks.

Benton's voice is as soft as she remembered it. It is familiar, but changed. It is lower. It is older. Which is to be expected.

‘This is as bad as I've ever seen it. The Syrian government is performing summary executions in al-Bayda and Baniyas. They're aerial-bombing civilian populations. They're razing entire neighborhoods. Everyone's focussed on the chemical-weapons attacks, but they weren't even the worst atrocities. Aleppo is a nightmare. They're targetting doctors — did you know this? Targetted assassinations of medical personnel, so they can't help the wounded. They're using unprecedented kinds of cluster munitions, supplied by the Russians. They're—'

‘We know,' Benton says quietly.

‘It bears repeating, though, doesn't it? The World Food Programme is demanding access to get food into areas where the Assad regime is actually besieging and starving to death the local population as a means of warfare. They're collecting people — thousands — and murdering them, documenting it, and lying to the families about their fates. The
Guardian
is reporting on ten-year-olds having their teeth pulled out with pliers. And then Assad says, on US national television, no less, “No government in the world kills its people unless it's led by a crazy person.” They seem to suffer no cognitive dissonance when they say this.'

‘We know,' Benton says.

‘And meanwhile, these people calling themselves ISIS, or ISIL, or whatever it is—'

‘Märta. We really do know.'

‘Do we really?'

This wasn't the first conversation Benton wanted to have.

‘A few months ago,' he says, trying to regain ground, ‘one of my colleagues got sick, and they asked me to go to Syria. I had to report on the beheading of a Syrian soldier. I was metres away from it. I was invited. I was there with an Al Jazeera journalist who had witnessed four of them that same day. Maybe he was one of the soldiers you described. Maybe it was an innocent boy. I don't know. What I know is that the crowds were cheering around us, women ululating, children clapping, as a man murdered another man with a small knife and then carved his head off. I couldn't sleep for days. The journalist from Al Jazeera — I called him. He's not the same. We really do know—'

‘I had to help one of them today,' she says, interrupting him. ‘This morning. Our medical team saved one of their regional commanders.'

‘What do you mean?' Arwood asks.

‘A commander of ISIL. It was near the Syrian border, but on the Iraqi side, where we have a mobile surgical unit. They limped across. His name is Abu Malik al-Almani.'

‘Always Abu,' Arwood says, sipping some booze. ‘Abu Abu Abu.'

‘What happened?' Benton says.

‘A lot of the fighting is in the Syrian north-west. But they come back to Iraq for supplies and recruits, and to stir things up here, too. They know we have medical units on this side of the border but not in Syria, because we're not allowed in, so they bring people to us and other NGOs when they're shot up.'

‘Why don't you turn them away?' Arwood asks.

‘Well … three reasons. We're obligated by international humanitarian law to treat all non-combatants equally. Their wounded qualify. Also, we can't have access to non-combatants unless we're allowed access by the belligerents. Humanitarian space is negotiated and maintained through relationships with people like this — people who hold territory. And the third reason is that if we don't treat them, they'll kill us.'

‘It's nice when things line up, isn't it?' Arwood says.

‘The word from some of the refugees here,' Märta says, ignoring Arwood, ‘is that al-Almani's group went into a village near the border, gathered up over a hundred women who they said weren't dressed appropriately, and murdered them in front of their families. There was some local resistance, and this one — Abu Malik—'

‘Abu Abu Abu,' Arwood says.

‘—we patched him up,' Märta continues. ‘Before he left, he thanked me. I had to shake his hand. He extended it, and his men outside were armed and fresh from killing people. I had no choice. I've been in situations like that before, in Afghanistan with the Taliban. But this was worse. This girl of yours, the one you're both so keen to find — we suspect that her group was coming from a village east of the one that was slaughtered. They must have gotten word of what happened, and decided to risk the walk to Iraq. She survived that, only to die in the mortar attack on this side. So, yeah, sorry I'm late.'

‘She's not dead,' Arwood says, kicking back the last of the Johnnie Walker. ‘I don't know why everyone keeps saying that. What's that thing with the cat in the box and the nuclear vial of quantum stuff? If that fucking cat isn't actually dead, our girl's not dead.'

‘I don't know,' Benton says, ‘whether everyone should be drinking a little more or a little less.'

‘This trip of yours,' Märta asks, ‘it's going to be quick, right? Because — and I'm sorry to say it like this — but this quixotic adventure is not a high priority for me. I'm very happy to see you both and help, but I don't want Jamal out on an unnecessary run for too long. He's my only dedicated driver, and I can't allocate resources because the
Times
wants a story and Arwood Hobbes needs to satisfy his curiosity. This is a favour for old times' sake.'

‘It's a milk run,' Arwood says, standing up, brushing down his jeans, and slurping the last of the whiskey from his cup. ‘I'm going back to my tent,' he says. ‘It's been nice seeing ya, doll face.'

‘No one talks like that anymore, Arwood,' she replies.

‘No one does a lot of great stuff anymore.'

The door closes behind him, and Märta and Benton are alone.

It becomes blessedly quiet. For a long moment, they sit and enjoy it.

It is the first time they have been near each other since 1991.

‘You look reasonably well, considering,' Märta says, sipping her whiskey from a plastic cup.

‘Considering how nervous you make me?'

‘I was going to say, “considering you're over sixty now.”'

‘Gentle.'

‘Would it make you feel any better to know I'm glad to see you?'

‘I suspect it would.'

‘I am glad to see you, Thomas Benton.'

‘You're looking—'

‘No need to say. You've heard about my day, and I haven't showered yet.'

Benton takes the cue. ‘Right,' he says, uncrossing his legs and making ready to go. ‘I have some packing to do, and Arwood has quite a day planned for us. For some reason, he has us on a strict timeline, and I'm still behind on the details. If I didn't say so already, thank you for letting us use the office and providing so much help. It is kind of you. You obviously don't owe us a thing. I'd invite you for dinner when we get back if there were any place to go.' Benton stands and brushes his jacket.

‘Are you still married?'

‘What?'

‘Married. You still have the ring. Women usually take it off afterward, but not always men. Are you still married?'

‘Why?'

‘Because I know a good place to eat. Right now. If you're hungry and have no other plans. And there's a shower there.'

‘Oh,' Benton says, sitting down again.

‘You're shocked.'

‘No, no. I'm just … a little less Swedish than you are.'

‘Or more British, anyway.'

‘That, too.'

‘What's her name? Your wife?'

‘Vanessa. As it so happens, we're separated.'

‘She's there and you're here, that sort of thing?'

‘No. More officially than that.'

‘Here's the thing, Thomas. I'm fifty-six years old. Erik and I split long ago. I very rarely take on new lovers, but I seldom say no to old ones. Surely that's one of the reasons you're here, right?'

‘Um—'

Märta, for the first time, looks perplexed, which was not on Arwood's list of facial expressions.

‘Or … isn't it?'

‘Can I answer that later?'

‘Why are you separated?'

‘I found her sleeping with another man. Which, in a roundabout way, was probably my fault.'

‘Why?'

‘I think it has something to do with my personality.'

‘When was the last time you cheated on your wife?'

‘Well … as it happens, it was with you. So, twenty-two years ago.'

‘You haven't been with another woman in twenty-two years, and that woman was me?'

‘I like to space out my infidelities.'

‘Thomas?'

‘Yes?'

‘Get in the car.'

12

There is a private security guard posted outside the seven foot-high wall surrounding Märta's house in Dohuk. The yellow headlights wake the guard, who had been dozing. In an effort to prove he's been alert the whole time, he springs from his plastic chair and unlocks the padlock on the sheet-metal gate with elaborate Moorish designs across the top. Smiling, he waves them inside.

Märta parks the Land Cruiser on a short and well-paved driveway, and they enter a two-storey house with a flat roof and barred windows that looks the same as every other such house extending from Algeria to Tehran.

Inside, the floors are tiled and the furniture simple, aside from a bright-red Victorian wingback in the living room.

Benton holds his duffel bag and briefcase. He feels like a schoolboy about to be seduced by a friend's mother. He would stockpile this feeling if he could.

‘This isn't so bad,' Benton says, his voice echoing off the walls.

‘We're paying three thousand dollars a month for it in a country where the average annual income is six thousand, but that's the industry these days.'

‘Is it always like this?' he asks, not knowing what else to say.

‘The insane prices? Yeah, pretty much.'

‘I meant your accommodations.'

‘No. It varies. In Iran, during the Bam earthquake of 2003 — you remember that? I had to stay with Médecins Sans Frontières until we were able to set up a temporary base camp of our own. That was tent and cots. Thirty thousand dead. IRSG was doing family reunification. That was especially grisly.'

‘What are you doing here?'

‘In Dohuk? You didn't even check the website?'

‘This has all come out of nowhere for me. I was watching television when Arwood called. I haven't heard from him this whole time.'

‘We're working on child protection and health. We do a little crossover work on community services. It's a good portfolio for us, and I'm glad to be in a stable place. Except when I head to the field and visit the mobile units, like today. Then it's worse. In Iran, everyone was dead. So much grief. Sometimes, though, you bring a child back to its family and the world glows. Without those moments, it can be too harsh. Our turnover rate is high. That's the life, though. You following things in the region?'