The Tower: Part Four

She nodded.

‘Ah, he’s a good bloke. When we first set up the project here he came and helped us out a lot. I heard he was in some kind of trouble with the law.’

‘He was. He is.’

‘Well I hope he’s OK.’

‘So do I … You said you were working down south.’

‘Yeah, way down in the southeast the other side of Baghdad in the Mesopotamian marshlands, or what’s left of them. The people there were pretty badly persecuted by Saddam and his mob after they rebelled against him in ’91. As part of his system of punishment he built huge canals to redirect the Tigris and Euphrates away from the marshes to drive the tribes out. He was pretty successful too. There’s only about ten per cent of them left. Then the war came. As soon as Saddam started losing, the locals blew holes in the dams and dykes and let the water flow back in again. We were sent to help monitor the water quality and manage the restocking of the wetlands with reed beds. There were sixteen of us.’

‘What happened to the others?’

‘Gone.’ He took a drink then carefully placed the glass down on the counter. ‘We’d been working together for six months. It was good work. The people were returning, the reeds were growing, we were even seeing some of the wildlife coming back. The marshes used to be a major staging post for millions of migratory birds until Saddam buggered it all up. Every day more life returned – both man and bird. Then all of a sudden the plug got pulled on us. It had something to do with what happened to Gabriel. Our headquarters are in Ruin and he was arrested on suspicion of being a terrorist or something, trying to blow up the Citadel using Ortus resources. The upshot was that all of Ortus’s bank accounts were frozen while the charges were being investigated. Which meant we could no longer pay for anything and weren’t getting paid ourselves.

‘We kept going as long as we could, hoping the money would get unfrozen but pretty soon we started running out of food, fuel, you name it. So we pulled out and headed back towards the border.’ He rolled the water around in the glass, staring at the liquid, deep in thought.

‘So how come you ended up here? Did you get lost?’

‘No, nothing like that.’ He continued to stare at the glass, as if the answer might lie in it somewhere.‘I’m still not really a hundred per cent sure what happened. We were travelling north, heading for the Turkish border in a four-vehicle convoy, which is the only safe way to travel on these roads. We were making pretty good time, considering all the roadblocks on Highway 8, had made it as far as Al-Hillah and we were getting ready to push on as far as Baghdad when I got a feeling that we were going in the wrong direction. I can’t really explain it. It was like I knew that the maps, the GPS were wrong. I wasn’t alone, Eric and Mike felt it too.

‘The rest of the guys thought we’d gone mad. They told us to shut up and keep driving but we couldn’t do it, none of us could. It was such a strong feeling. For me it was like a magnet pulling at some kind of metal core inside me.’ He looked up and smiled. ‘I’ve always been a bit of a nomad, never really stayed in one place for too long. No matter where I ended up and how good a time I was having there would always come a morning when I’d wake up with an overwhelming urge to be somewhere else. And this was exactly like that, only instead of wanting to head off into the unknown it felt like I was returning somewhere. Like I was coming home.

‘It’s like – for the last six months or so, ever since I’ve been working on the marshes, I’ve been watching the birds: flamingos, pelicans, hooded crows, teals. Some of these guys fly halfway round the world from as far north as the Arctic Circle and as far south as Africa and India to end up in the exact same place where they hatched. They’ve been doing it for thousands of years, hundreds of thousands probably, and we still don’t really know how they do it. It’s just an instinct in them, a natural urge. Then a few years back the marshes vanished, I mean there was nothing there at all but cracked earth and the odd abandoned boat. But as soon as the water came back, they knew. Somehow they just knew that’s where they needed to be. That’s what it felt like for me. I felt such a strong pull to be here, though I didn’t know what this place was, or even if it was here. I’ve never been here before in my life, but I felt like I was coming home. Explain that.’

Liv shook her head. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘But I felt something like it too.’

Behind her the door opened and she smiled when she saw Tariq standing there looking better than she’d seen him for a while. Her smile faded quickly when she saw the look of concern on his face. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘You better come see for yourself.’

57 (#ulink_20001d5e-db48-5e55-9052-fd4a96bd3e12)

Liv saw why Tariq had fetched her the moment she stepped out of the main building. A thick column of dust was rising in the eastern sky heralding new arrivals.

‘Soldiers,’ a voice shouted down from the guard tower.

‘How many?’ Tariq called back.

‘Difficult to tell. There’s one Humvee and one truck. The truck could be empty or it could have twenty men inside.’

Tariq looked over beyond the perimeter fence to where a group of workers were hurrying back to the compound. He waited until the last of the grave-digging detail had slipped through then shouted, ‘Close the gate and man the guns.’

‘No,’ Liv said. ‘We’ve been through this. We cannot meet everyone who comes here with suspicion and loaded weapons.’

‘We tried it your way last time,’ Tariq replied. ‘First we talk, then we let them in. I cannot risk all our lives again.’ Then he walked away before she had time to argue.

The Humvee and the truck pulled to a halt about fifty metres short of the gate and sat there for a while, engines running, shrouded in a cloud of their own dust.

‘American,’ Tariq said, reading the markings on the side of the vehicles.

Liv was standing next to him, inside the perimeter gate waiting to greet them. ‘What are they doing?’ she asked.

‘They are being cautious,’ Tariq replied, his eyes never leaving the lead vehicle.

‘Can you blame them.’ She glanced up at the .50-cal gun in the guard tower, a man standing behind it, poised and ready.

She noticed Tariq’s hand tighten on the grip of the AK47 slung across his back and wondered for a fleeting moment if he wasn’t spoiling for a fight. This was the problem with letting men do the negotiating. Sooner or later their hormones took over and it usually ended in battle. ‘HEY,’ she shouted at the Humvee, ‘OVER HERE.’ She waved her hands over her head and jumped up and down to get their attention.

‘What are you doing?’ Tariq looked at her as if she had gone insane.

‘You said we should talk first so I’m talking. HEY. I’M AN AMERICAN.’ She pulled a keffiyeh from round her neck and started waving it in the air. ‘USA. HELLO.’

‘You can stop now,’ Tariq said. ‘I think they heard you.’

The Humvee started to creep forward along the tracks in the dirt leading to the gate. It was impossible to see who was inside because of the sun on the windscreen, a bright slash of light that shimmered as the hard wheels crept over the rough ground.

‘Can you do me a favour?’ Liv said out of the corner of a fixed smile, ‘take your hand off your rifle strap.’

Tariq reluctantly obeyed just as the Humvee crunched to a stop ten feet short of them. The door popped open and a rangy corporal got out. Liv felt Tariq stiffen beside her as he saw the M-4 the soldier was cradling in his arms, eyes shielded by the standard-issue Oakleys most of the soldiers seemed to favour. He stood by the vehicle saying nothing. By the slight tilt of his head Liv could tell he was scoping out the guard tower and the .50-cal cannon that had tracked the Hummer all the way to where it now stood.

‘Hi,’ Liv said, smiling through the tension. ‘I’m Liv Adamsen. I’m an American. Who are you?’

A hand let go of the M-4 and pointed at the name badge stitched to the left breast of his desert fatigues. Liv squinted against the glare coming off the Humvee’s windscreen and read the name. ‘Williamson. You got a first name?’

He nodded. Liv’s smile was starting to hurt now. ‘Want to give it to me?’

The soldier ignored the question, looking straight past her at the fountain of water shooting up from the spire of the drill in the centre of the compound. ‘What is this place?’ His voice was soft, almost childlike and totally at odds with the hardened image the rest of him radiated.

‘It’s …’ Liv paused as she realized she did not have a ready word to describe it.

‘It’s beautiful,’ the soldier whispered, his shaded eyes taking in the lines of the rivers snaking away across the dust. Behind him the truck’s engine fell silent. It rocked on its springs and other men emerged, dropping down one by one to the ground, six of them, all wearing the coffee-stain camouflage of the US military. Liv was reminded of the welcoming committee she and Gabriel had encountered crossing the border from Turkey what seemed like a lifetime ago. Three more uniformed men climbed out of the Humvee. And though they were wearing uniforms and carrying weapons, there was nothing threatening or hostile about them. They just seemed like a bunch of cautious guys edging their way into a party they weren’t sure they were invited to. Tariq must have sensed it too. He raised his hand to the man in the guard tower and the .50-cal cannon swung away as the man stepped back.

‘Where you from?’ The soft-spoken corporal removed his shades and squinted at Liv with pale blue eyes that looked like they should be peering out at a wheat field from beneath a faded starter cap.

‘I’m from New Jersey,’ she said. ‘You?’

He shrugged. ‘I’m from all over, I guess. Illinois originally but I wouldn’t exactly call it home.’ He looked back at the spout of water shooting up from the ground, like a kid watching a firework. Then he smiled. ‘Did you feel it too?’

Liv frowned. ‘Feel what?’

‘The pull to this place. We all felt it. We all volunteered to stay behind when orders to ship out came through – the rest of the men were off like rabbits, they been pining for home for weeks, never seen homesickness like it. But none of us have any real homes to go to …’ His hand clenched into a fist and tapped on his chest above his heart. ‘But then we felt the pull to come here. So we came.’

Liv looked up at Tariq. ‘Why don’t you come on in,’ she said.

Tariq glanced down at her then back at the row of soldiers. ‘How many are you?’

The Corporal shrugged. ‘Just what you see here.’