The Godless One (29 page)

"Yes, Lieutenant, but the
captain has also killed himself."

"I saw him yesterday. He
was fine."

But had he been? Qusay
Hussein, Saddam's second son, was in overall command of the forces
in this area, but with the arrival of his brother, Uday, it was
understood something special lay in store for the local
inhabitants. Ghaith was ordered to bring his platoon to Joufer
Safa, the 'beach of rocks', where Captain al-Dulaimi was forming
the company. This could only mean that more rebels had been
captured and were slated for execution. Within a short time,
Ghaith's platoon was ranked before fresh mass graves. Prisoners had
already excavated new ones. Captain al-Dulaimi stared somberly at
the nearest one. There was a roar up the road, and suddenly a
bright pink Lamborghini hove into view, followed by several BTR's
chock full of bodyguards.

The Lamborghini jounced
over several of the graves before coming to a halt in a cloud of
dust and flying rocks. An instant later, out stepped Uday, in
uniform, his beret tilted jauntily over his forehead. From the
passenger seat emerged Hussein Kamel, Saddam's son-in-law. He was
speaking into a handheld radio.

Uday grinned when Captain
al-Dulaimi saluted, reached back inside the car and pulled out a
round bottle of Dimple. It was early morning, and the Scotch was
already half gone. He pulled out the stopper and wrapped his buck
teeth around the mouth of the bottle. Hussein said something to him
and Uday nodded. A few minutes later, squads from another company
marched thirty men onto the beach of rocks. Their hands were bound
behind them. Some wore old trousers, others white dishdashas. One
had a black turban. Their reaction when they saw the graves was
familiar to Ghaith. This was why he drank so much Clan MacGregor at
night—or anything else he could get ahold of.

Curses, tears, the Salat
al-Kwawf—the prayer of fear and danger.

"Anyone who speaks will be
immediately shot!" yelled a colonel striding onto the scene. The
curses and prayers stopped. The colonel walked up to Uday and
saluted. Uday laughed and took another swig.

"Bring out the fucker," he
said.

A soldier in a dark green
uniform was marched out, hands bound. He was bruised and haggard.
His arm patches bore the red triangle of the Medina Armored
Division. He was halted about ten yards from Uday. A dreadful
silence fell across the field. Ghaith spent a moment trying to
admire nearby date palms, then gave it up as a bad job.

Uday handed his bottle to
the colonel, who looked befuddled but sober. The President's son
clasped his hands behind his back, as if imitating the bound
prisoner before him. He began to rock his head forwards and
backwards, murmuring to himself and nodding agreement at his own
words. Then he turned to Captain al-Dulaimi.

"Do you know this
man?"

"No, Sir!"

"But he's from your
division!"

"A different company,
Sir!"

"Do you know where his
company is?"

"I believe the gunshots we
are hearing from the south belong to his company, Sir!"

Uday went red. His
prominent teeth flew out and retracted. "What the fuck is this?" he
demanded of the colonel. "I wanted this man's company
here!"

"We were unable to extract
them, Sir," said the terrified colonel, holding the Dimple bottle
as though it was a bomb. "They are fighting the
Shaabanists."

"Fuck!" Uday shouted.
"Don't
we
!
You
were unable to
extract them!"

The Dimple shuddered in the
round bottle.

"Fuck! Fuck!" Uday walked
in a circle, pulling on his clasped hands so tightly that he seemed
to be screwing himself into the ground. "What's the point of all
this, then?"

"Sir," the colonel
stuttered, "I'm sure word will get back to his unit. They're all
part of the Medina—"

"Shut up!" With that, as
though striking out at the colonel, Uday kicked the captive soldier
behind the knee. The man gave a shout and fell. This improved
Uday's mood. He turned to the assembled company. "Very well, then.
You'll have to do. Now…brothers…do you remember what we suffered
just a few months ago, when the invaders slaughtered your comrades?
It was a sneak attack! We were in the middle of negotiations! We
honorably held our fire while the Americans and Jews sneaked into
our country and stirred up this filth." He unclasped his hands and
pointed at the prisoners near the open grave. "We were stabbed in
the back! You fought with courage, while these sons of whores cut
our legs out from behind. Now it's our turn!"

At a discreet signal from
their officers, the soldiers shouted,
"Allah Akbar! Allah Akbar! Allah Akbar!
"

"Yes!" Uday said, yanking
the bottle out of the colonel's hand and taking another swig.
Keeping the bottle, he unsheathed a janbiya and strode back to the
captive soldier, who had worked his way back up to his knees. "This
scum was one of your comrades, a man you trusted. Or the men of his
unit trusted. And where did they find him? Fighting for the
Brothers of Atiq, a bunch of Shia fucks who don't know how to wipe
themselves. He betrayed you! He betrayed all of us! And this is how
we treat treason!"

Ghaith could not turn his
head without risk of punishment, or even death, but he could avert
his eyes. He took succor from the palm trees basking in sunlight,
even as the soldier's screams assailed his ears. The torture was
prolonged. Uday had had a lot of practice.

And then…a miracle.
Suddenly, from the prisoners at the grave, came a shout:

"Hey, Bucktooth, I made
your mother wet last night!"

Ghaith could not help
lowering his eyes to see Uday's reaction. This meant also seeing
the torture victim, recumbent on the dry soil, burbling in his own
blood, parts of him gone, still unspeakably alive.

"Who said that!" Uday
screeched, leaping up. He whirled on the colonel. "Which one of
those shitholes said that?"

The colonel's finger
drifted uncertainly over the prisoners. It was obvious he didn't
know who had insulted the Defense Minister and his beloved mother.
Uday picked up his Dimple and marched over to the open trench. "Who
said that?" he demanded of the guards. They had been watching the
soldier being flayed alive and had not been paying attention to the
other prisoners. One of the guards, terrified by his own ignorance,
pointed randomly at a man near the center.

Because Uday was covered in
blood, his pistol almost slipped out of his grasp when he pulled it
out of its holster. He shot the prisoner in the back of the head.
Instantly, he turned back to the frightened guard. "Are you sure he
was the one?" he cried out. "The bastard insulted my mother! You'd
better make sure. Maybe it was that one over there. A mean pile of
camel dung. Are you sure it wasn't him?"

"Well…"

Uday went over to the man
in question and shot him. Suddenly, the line of prisoners
shifted.

"Sir!" the colonel came
running. "I'm responsible for your safety!"

Suddenly realizing he might
have blindly put himself in a dangerous position, Uday nodded at
the guards. "Do it!"

The guards raised their
Russian rifles and began shooting.

Captain al-Dulaimi had not
moved, nor had anyone else in his company. Of course, had they been
ordered to join in the massacre, they would have quickly done so.
It would not have been the first time. During the Medina's drive
south, many rebels had been put to the sword, one way or another.
The captain’s men had wrapped themselves in cloaks of indifference,
cloaks so dark they could not see each other or even themselves. It
was a dreary insanity, and even the sadists among them began to
sicken at the stench of Hell. But on this day they were reprieved,
because no one thought to give them orders.

If Captain al-Dulaimi was
one of those very odd fellows who suffered from scruples, he picked
a strange day to play his final hand. But Ghaith refused to believe
he had killed himself. He rose from his cot and strode past the
sergeant, half-convinced that the captain had been cleaning his
weapon and accidentally shot himself. As he crossed the campground,
he gave a nervous glance at man climbing a nearby palm
tree.

"He's not a sniper,
Lieutenant," the sergeant assured him. "The farmers are pollinating
their dates."

"You're a farm boy?" Ghaith
asked.

"I am, Sir."

"It's a very peaceful
existence," Ghaith said, stopping to watch the farmer reach out to
plant the long white stems bearing male pollen into the center of
the female.

"It used to be," said the
sergeant.

Ghaith found the scene in
the captain's tent much as the sergeant described it. Othman
al-Dulaimi lay on his cot, his knees drawn up. His Tariq was still
in his mouth. The 9mm slug had come out the top of his head,
leaving a hole surrounded by blood and brain spume in the tent
canvas. Ghaith tried every imaginable way to twist the facts away
from self-destruction. A rebel infiltrator might have gotten in and
arranged the murder to look like suicide. The captain might have
been cleaning his gun, but that was not something you often did
with your tongue. The facts refused to be twisted, and the letter
next to the cot cut the string between wishful thinking and
reality.

"I can't do this anymore. Allah forgive
me."

"Should I go get the other
officers?" the sergeant asked.

"Of course." But Ghaith
stopped him as he began to leave. "Why did you come to me,
first?"

"Because you seem like
someone who would understand."

"Understand
what?"

The sergeant didn't
answer.

"You're wrong. I don't
understand anything. And neither do you. Now go get the
others."

After the sergeant left,
Ghaith spent several minutes brooding over the corpse. He heard the
whispered injunctions of the dead.

"Yes, you're right," he
told the dead captain. "You're a better man than I am."

A month later, Ghaith was
posted north, to the more congenial task of hunting down and
assassinating Kurdish rebels.

For three days Ari lay in a motel
bungalow on Route 1 south of Richmond. The air was sterile, seemed
to be filled with fine white powder; very reminiscent of
Mesopotamian flatlands. It was a land of the rejected and ejected,
a conglomerate of poor whites, blacks and Hispanics who were lucky
to get a job as a clerk at Dollar General but most often ended up
as temporary muscle at one of the many warehouses that dotted the
highway. Between jobs they got drunk, fought and staggered
alongside the road, to the dismay of tourists following the Civil
War Trail from Richmond to Petersburg. Ari, in his current state,
fit right in. But no passersby saw him. He remained in bed, his
head clear, knowing it would be useless if he tried to overcome his
injuries through an act of sheer willpower.

"You’re very heroic, Colonel," said Abu
Jasim on the afternoon of the second day, looking down at him on
the motel bed. Ari shot him an inquiring glance. "Staying in bed
like that, I mean. I know how it galls you." He turned and brought
forward a stranger. "Here, this is Ahmad, my brother’s
son."

"Canadian?" Ari asked.

"Chicagoan. He didn’t even have to
cross the border! Flew here straight from O’Hare. He’s
all-American."

"You can’t do this to me!" Ahmad
wailed. "I can’t be here! I have tickets to the game! Do you know
how hard those are to get?"

"What game?" Ari asked.

Ahmad gaped at him. "The Super
Bowl!"

"What did I say?" Abu Jasim scowled,
slapping Ahmad on the back of the head. "All-American."

"Have you ever heard anything about
me?" Ari asked the young man.

"Nothing," Ahmad admitted.

"He’ll do," said Ari.

"No!" Ahmad practically wept. "It’s the
Bears against the Colts!"

"It’ll be my fist against
your skull if you don’t shut up," Abu Jasim reprimanded. "Anyway,
Colonel, he’s just here for errands. His father will kill me if the
boy gets his head blown off. Oh, and he’s good with gadgets, like
all the kids these days. He bought a whole bag of disposable cell
phones for $10.00. He can even do
conference
calls on
them!"

"That might come in handy."

There was an outburst of venomous
shouting next door. Although the walls weren’t connected, the din
of crashing furniture made talking in a normal tone almost
impossible.

"I thought they would have worn
themselves out by daylight," said Ari wearily. "But they
still—"

"Say no more, Colonel," Abu Jasim
interrupted. "Ahmad, make yourself useful and go tell those idiots
to shut up."

"But I don’t speak Spanish!" the young
man protested.

Abu Jasim mulled this over. "Excuse me,
Colonel," he said, reaching under the bed mattress and pulling out
the .500 Magnum. "Here, they’ll understand this."