Mike Kenrick.’
They’d spoken only briefly this morning as the convoy of vehicles had taken several hours picking their way north-east along the road out of Al-Hadithah. They had talked about the crappy hotel they were both staying in, a dark maze of cold empty rooms, tall ceilings sprouting loose electrical cables, and sporadic power and running water.
‘Dr Sutherland, call me Andy though,’ he replied offering the American a hand.
‘So Andy, where you from anyway?’
‘Originally a Kiwi. But I guess home is England now. I’ve been living there on and off for nineteen years,’ replied Andy. ‘It doesn’t much feel like a home right now,’ he added as an afterthought.
‘Problems?’
‘Yeah . . . problems.’
The American seemed to understand that Andy wasn’t in the mood to elaborate. ‘Shit, this kind of job does that,’ he added gruffly after a moment’s reflection. ‘Time away from home can bust up even the strongest of marriages.’
‘What about you?’
‘Austin, Texas.’
Andy fleetingly recalled seeing this bloke strutting around the hotel the day before yesterday wearing his ‘Nobody Fucks with Texas’ T-shirt and some white Y-fronts.
Nice.
There were two other civilian contractors currently poking through the remains of the building and photographing it with digital camcorders. Andy had seen them around the compound, but not spoken to them yet. One was Dutch or French, the other Ukrainian, or so he’d been told. They had kept themselves to themselves, as had Andy.
In fact, the only person he’d really spoken to since coming out earlier this week was Farid, their new translator. The four-man field party had been assigned a translator along with the two Toyota Land Cruisers and the two drivers. They didn’t get to choose them or vet them, they just inherited them.
‘You been out here before?’ asked Mike.
‘Yeah, a couple of times, but down south - Majnun, Halfaya. Different story down there.’
The American nodded. ‘But that’s changing as well.’
They heard a disturbance coming from one of the Iraqi police trucks. Andy turned to look. One of the policemen was talking on his cell phone, and then turning to the others, relaying something to them. The others initially looked sceptical, but then within a moment, there were half-a-dozen raised voices, all speaking at the same time. The policeman on the phone quickly raised his hand to hush them, and they quietened down.
Andy turned to Farid and beckoned him over.
‘What’s all that about?’ asked Mike.
‘I find out,’ the translator replied and went directly over to the policemen to inquire. Andy watched the older man as he spoke calmly to them, and in turn listened to the policeman holding the mobile phone. And then Farid said something, gesturing towards the driver’s cabin. One of the policemen rapped his knuckles loudly on the roof and shouted something to the man dozing inside. He lurched in his seat and craned his neck out the driver-side, presumably to ask who the fuck had woken him up.
The guy holding the mobile phone repeated what he’d heard, Farid contributed something, and the driver’s expression changed. He pulled back inside, reached to the dashboard and flipped on the radio. There was music which he quickly spun away from, through a wall of crackles and bad signals, finally landing on a clear station and the sound of an authoritative voice; a newsreader.
‘Something’s happened,’ muttered Andy.
The policemen were all silent now, as was Farid. All of them listening intently to the radio. Then out of the blue the American’s Immarsat satellite phone bleeped. Mike jumped a little and looked at Andy, one of his dark eyebrows arched in surprise as he opened up the little hip-case it came in. He walked a few steps away to answer it privately.
Andy instinctively checked to see if his mobile phone was on - it was, but no one was calling him.
Andy, growing impatient, caught Farid’s eye and spread out his palms, what’s going on?
The translator nodded and held up a finger, asking him to wait a moment longer, as he craned his neck to listen to the news crackling out of the radio.
He turned back to Mike, who was frowning as he listened to what he was being told over his phone.
‘For fuck’s sake, what is it?’ asked Andy, exasperated that he seemed to be the only person left in the dark.
A moment later, Farid stepped away from the police truck and wandered over to Andy, his face a puzzle . . . as if he was trying to work out exactly what he’d just heard.
‘Farid?’
Mike snapped the case on his Sat