The Girl in Green (14 page)

‘I still cover international. Less fieldwork than before.'

‘What's your take on what's happening now?'

‘No one ever asks me.'

‘Tell me.'

‘I think the state system is being rejected like a bad transplant. They haven't developed an independent political philosophy to support it, and they can't go around quoting Rousseau and Locke as convincing authorities against the Koran. So now it's a choice between secular authoritarianism and Islam. And not the nice kind. I'm not hopeful.'

‘The bedroom's upstairs on the right. The bathroom's on the left, if you want to shower. I think I left the hot-water heater on. If the red light is glowing, you'll have plenty. If not, you might want to use a cloth instead. It's frigid. I'll shower down here.'

The red light, happily, is on, and Benton takes off his clothes carefully to avoid looking in the mirror. The hot water splays down into the peach-coloured bathtub with a water pressure that would be the envy of Kensington. A thin layer of dust forms a perimeter around the spreading water until Benton steps inside and disrupts the flow. As the water pulses down on his face and chest, Benton closes his eyes and imagines he is standing right there.

Downstairs, Märta showers quickly and wraps herself in a terrycloth robe as though she were stepping from a Swedish or Finnish sauna. She plugs in her laptop, then her iPhone in the kitchen, and takes a long drink of water from a plastic bottle with a blue top. She runs her fingers over the countertop and sees the dust that's collected there. She has discussed this before with the girl. Yes, dust storms produce dust — no denying it. But the point of the young lady's job is to come by afterward and clean it away. Even where jobs are in poor supply, there always seems to be a reason not to do them.

Down the road, the Lebanese have set up a rather impressive supermarket, with many products flown in from the UK, the US, and Egypt. What she can't buy there comes from the
souk
, which has a far better selection of fresh fruit and vegetables than Stockholm.

The fridge is well stocked. She has a chilled Montrose rosé from Provence. It's better than the screwtop suggests. She brings two glasses upstairs.

Benton hasn't yet finished with the shower as she turns down the bed and places the glasses and bottle on the nightstand. Like a college girl, she has draped a thin purple scarf over the lamp to create a warmer mood. Wiser than in her youth, she uses a low-wattage bulb to reduce the fire hazard.

The master bedroom has glass doors that open onto the roof of the first level. Dohuk is surrounded by the Zagros Mountains. From the roof, she has an unobstructed view of the chiselled edges of the jagged hills, and can watch the snow line descend as the nights shorten.

Like everyone else who has a rooftop in Dohuk, she has a plastic dining set so she can benefit from the breezes in summer and the warm tiles and clay on cool nights. She waits there for Benton. She imagines him drying off and sprucing himself up in her poorly lit bathroom, trying to look like James Bond. It makes her smile.

She opens her robe to feel the breeze. No one can see her from here. She wants to feel the day slip off. She can still feel that monster's hand in hers as they shook. He looked her in the eye. He tried smiling. It is not only the fresh air that cleanses her. If this were Sweden, if she were on a rooftop in Stockholm, she would not feel so self-conscious about being undressed. In being herself she can rebel against the noose that is slowly drawing around her.

It's a shame that much of what once made her Swedish is gone now. But one characteristic she has unapologetically retained is her absolute faith in the fundamental pleasure of a good drink. If she were empress of the Northern Vales, she'd instruct the sages to rewrite the calendars so that time would be measured in liquid — by ‘half a bottle ago,' or ‘when the vintage has matured'. Poetry would soar again, and music would fill the halls. It might subvert punctuality. But what really matters — birth, love, death — doesn't abide by the clock anyway.

Märta pours herself a glass, and lets the wind blow her robe.

‘Am I intruding?' asks Benton, stepping onto the rooftop, too, wearing flip-flops too small for his British size-9 feet. She has a few extras for guests, but the Asians don't stock shoe sizes big enough for Western men.

His clothes are ridiculous. His sweatshirt is from the 1980s. The stitching on the shoulders droops off the shoulders, making him look like a giant tea cozy. It is also short. The elastic waistband is comically high. It is the pallid grey of an ancient university sweatshirt abandoned for years in a drawer; it looks as though it has internalised the very darkness.

It says, in big block letters,
PREPARE TO BE FALSIFIED
.

His dark-blue sweatpants are baggy. They are cottonesque and cleanish.

His hair, such as it is, is tussled and wavy. He may have tried using a hair dryer. Perhaps for the first time. As an act of triage, he has brushed his hair back in the hope it will make a difference. In its own way, it has.

‘No, not intruding,' she says, closing her robe. ‘I was expecting you. Or something like you.'

‘I'm older,' Benton says.

‘Your clothes, however, are timeless.'

‘My daughter got the jumper for me. She's a palaeontologist now, if you can believe it. She specialises in a 300 million-year-old shell called a brachiopod. She rattles on about the wonders of phylogenetic systematics and the pleasures of cladistics. She belongs to the Willie Henning fan club.'

‘I don't know what any of that means.'

‘It's a method of classifying organisms in the natural sciences on the basis of shared characteristics called synapomorphies. It's quite a new approach to the science of classification, and it's the most accepted now, as it's explicit in its hypothesising, and it's empirical in its methods. Which, given the state of knowledge today, you'd think would disqualify it. Charlotte was studying earth sciences at uni, and was attracted to this as if it were a church.'

‘It sounds complicated.'

‘The science is, but the logic is admirably simple. Charlotte says that one of the most satisfying parts of her job is knowing for a fact that she is building and contributing to the fundamental wealth of human knowledge. I, on the other hand, am absolutely confident that I am not.'

‘You're envious.'

‘Envious, yes. Jealous, no. She's earned her peace of mind.'

‘It's a cute jumper, all the same,' Märta says.

‘I'm told,' Benton says, looking down to his top, ‘that it is very funny if you're a scientist.'

‘You mean on account of what it says?'

‘Ouch.'

‘There's a glass and bottle just inside near the bed. Bring them out, will you?'

Benton does as he's told. There is a small box on the rooftop, and Märta opens it and then hands Benton a pristine terrycloth and motions that he should clean off the lawn chair before sitting on it. He does this and then takes a seat, folding the cloth and placing it beside himself on the next chair. Märta does the same. He pours himself a glass and tops up hers.

‘Skål,' she says.

‘Skål,' he replies.

After a sip, he stretches out his legs and takes a deep breath.

‘Dohuk isn't a bad duty station,' she says. ‘The shopping is adequate, they're tolerant of foreigners. Violent crime is low. It's more of a wrong-place, wrong-time problem. Unless, of course, you've come here looking for trouble. Have you?'

She leaves the notion hanging for a moment. Benton's countenance is hard to read.

‘I found you,' he says, spinning the glass by its stem.

‘What are you doing here, honestly? Did you even know I was here? I was sure you did until I saw those clothes.'

‘I didn't, if you can believe it. Arwood knew you were here, but he didn't tell me. I really am here about that girl in the video and because of how strongly Arwood feels about it. Which doesn't mean I'm not very happy to see you. It's comforting to know that people from your past are still out there. Still here on the planet with you. Part of getting older, I guess. We're only missing Herb Reston now, and that Frenchman. I forget what everyone called him — something from
Winnie-the-Pooh
.'

‘Tigger.'

‘That was it.'

‘They're here, too.'

‘Of course they are.'

‘No, really, they are.'

‘What are you talking about?'

‘It's not as though they were wandering down the street and I bumped into them. I hired them and brought them here. I hired Tigger first — ages ago. I was at UNHCR when we all met. I worked next for the Red Cross. I asked Tigger to come with me to the IRSG when I took a management position. The support group said I could pick my senior team. Tigger was in French intelligence, got out, did some political analysis as a policy wonk for a while, then wanted to get back into fieldwork. Like me, he found the development people too ideological, and so came over to humanitarian field operations, which is more pragmatic. Tigger and Herb eventually became good friends. I think of them heckling the world stage like those Muppets in the box seats. What were they called?'

‘Statler and Waldorf. How are they?' Benton asks.

‘Grown up. Both are married. Both have children. Now we're back in Iraq, after the Americans and everyone else has left. They're four weeks on, two weeks off, for six months, and then they return home with a healthy pay packet.'

‘How long have you been here?' Benton asks.

‘Thomas,' Märta says, ignoring his question, ‘if you're wearing those clothes, then you really didn't fly here to see me. In which case, what are you doing? You really need to tell me. It can't be for this story you're talking about. This mortar attack. It's a fly in the ointment around here. There's no way the
Times
would follow up one crime in ten thousand.'

‘Do you remember,' he says, ‘when we met in that tent in the mountains—'

‘Wonderland.'

‘Yes. I told you that something happened in the south before we met, but I didn't want to go into it. What happened was that a girl died in Arwood's arms. It was a girl in a green dress, one who bore a striking resemblance to the girl in the mortar video he's hoping to find. The first girl's death was pointless and cruel. It was also invisible. No one saw it. The girl in the video, though — her death, which was also pointless and cruel, was nevertheless seen by the entire world. The first one happened in front of us. The second one happened in front of us all. We didn't go back for the girl in '91. We left her body behind. We had no choice, but this time we do. I think Arwood is here for the girl in the video because he's fixated, and he's broken, and he needs to either bury this girl or return her body to her family, if that's even possible. That may seem a mad reason for coming to this part of the world. Personally, I don't think it is. I've seen people do a lot more to achieve a lot less. As for me, I'm here for Arwood, because he saved my life, and I ruined his.'

‘So you're here out of loyalty?'

‘As I said,' Benton says, ‘I'm old-fashioned.'

‘Do you trust Arwood?'

‘I believe he wants to solve this for reasons I understand. So … yes. We'll drive to the spot, confirm her death, see if there's some way to learn her identity — papers, brand of clothing, anything — return her to her family, if we can, and write a story so people know that the images they saw on television didn't end in a dramatic puff of smoke like all the CNN coverage did back in '91 and now all the drone attacks do, too. I want to clear the smoke — maybe for the first time in my pathetic career. As for the details, I won't know until tomorrow, when he briefs me on the mission.'

‘There's a mission?'

‘It's a turn of phrase.' Benton smiles and then sips his rosé, wishing it were Talisker.

‘It's getting cold,' Märta says.

The mountains have retreated into the night. There are no lights on the high ground. Nothing is separating them from the sky except the absence of stars.

‘Inside, then?' he asks.

‘Are you feeling guilty?'

‘About Vanessa?'

‘Yes.'

‘I'm enjoying being with you.'

‘When you said “separated” …'

‘The morning after I caught her with the other man, I told her I wanted a divorce.'

‘Do you?'

‘No.'

‘Why did you say it?'

‘It was the cruellest thing I could think of at the time, and I'm something of a coward.'

‘Do you think staying with me tonight will punish her?'

‘I think I want to see what's under your robe.'

When they finish, Märta does not immediately disappear into the bathroom. She pulls up the blanket and lies back into her pillow. Her left leg touches his right. She has angled her body away from his to make room for her full relaxation.