Sandstealers. Ben Brown
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the humidity, Becky began to shiver. The flashback came to her as it always did, unexpectedly, like a mugging in a darkened alleyway: before her yet again, he was dying while she prevaricated. All these years later, she could still hear his pleas for help as the blood emptied out of him and soaked the snow, his ever-weaker voice calling out her name—calling, calling, calling—and her legs running to him, going nowhere. Now, as then, there was only one logical conclusion: that she had killed him.
It took another four or five minutes until she calmed herself enough to ring the others, but her finger still trembled as she dialled their numbers: Rachel first, then Kaps, then Edwin.
Soon they were huddled in the Presidential Suite, its two landlines and their assorted mobiles in frantic, perpetual use till nightfall.
They talked to the New York Times. Even though Danny had gone freelance, the assistant managing editor said he would be on the next flight, bringing with him an ‘investigator’—a former Special Forces guy. He would work out of the bureau. Danny’s older sister was on her way in from Dubai, where she was a big shot at some investment bank. The company was pulling out all the stops to get her to Kuwait and from there she’d pick up a US Air Force C-130.
They talked to Danny’s elderly parents in Pittsburgh. Lukas and Eliza Lowenstein were originally from Germany, and the hint of an accent was still there as Eliza repeated, over and over, ‘My baby boy.’ They realised she would never remember him as they did, but as the infant she’d cradled in her arms.
They talked to Sabeen, Mohammed’s widow. What would become of the children, she demanded of Becky in English every bit as fluent as her late husband’s; how would she support them? Becky would have liked to assure her, ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be well looked after, you’ll want for nothing,’ but since Danny no longer worked for any organisation, she could make no promises.
They talked to the Iraqi police, the US military, diplomats and politicians, and—a novel experience for all of them—they talked to the press. The embassy Hostage Crisis Group had recommended a media blackout, so now it was down to the Junkies to persuade their colleagues to hide from the world the news that a fellow journalist had disappeared.
Much of the press corps was staying in the Hamra too; it had become famous for its raucous poolside parties, where reporters, aid workers and diplomats would talk and dance the night away while Danny held court. These gatherings ceased as a mark of respect for him, their missing warrior; the Baghdad party was on hold. No one used the pool at all now. It was as if it had suddenly become contaminated.
The journalists agreed to the blackout—after all, what if it were one of them? Still, they wanted answers for when they finally ran the story. What had he been doing down there? Why hadn’t he told anyone he was going? Did his friends think he was dead or kidnapped? And if the latter, how did they rate his chances? For once the Junkies knew what it was to try and fend off these ravenous birds of prey.
‘We really can’t say much at the moment,’ Edwin and Kaps kept repeating. They had decided a party line and were determined to stick to it. ‘The embassy and the military have told us it’s best not to get into any speculation.’ They were stonewalling, and the Danny they knew would have railed against it.
The sun he had cursed that morning was slowly dying, slipping away unmourned behind Baghdad’s higher buildings. Shadows of those still on the streets fell long and curfew beckoned. In the morning it would be one day exactly since he had disappeared. His friends wondered if, after that, it would be one week, one month, one year, until all the anniversaries began to flow into an ocean of time where Danny Lowenstein would exist only as a fading memory.
The moment Camille Lowenstein stepped nervously off the Hercules from Kuwait, a phalanx of embassy security guards swarmed around her, weighed down with M16s and 9mm Beretta pistols strapped to their thighs. They wore wraparound sunglasses and tight T-shirts showing off muscles that bulged and tattoos that boasted of lost loves or units. She had never been in the presence of so many big men and big guns. This was her brother’s world, she realised, where violence and fear were the norm, peace and tranquillity banished to a distant universe.
She was flanked by Tommy Harper, the lanky executive despatched by the New York Times, even though—strictly speaking—Danny was no longer on their payroll. Harper wore little round spectacles and clutched a briefcase. Camille’s first impression was that, if she was out of her depth here, so was he. Alongside Harper was Munro, a small, muscular Scot hired by the paper to find out more about what had happened to their distinguished former correspondent. Harper had told her, in reverential tones, that Munro was ex-SAS: ‘You know, Brit Special Forces.’ So what’s he going to do, Camille felt like asking, bring my brother back to life if he’s been shot, or rescue him single-handed if he’s been kidnapped?
Something about Munro made her feel uncomfortable. His body language implied he didn’t see what she could achieve. She didn’t even know herself. Baghdad, she supposed, was a dangerous city for those who weren’t sure what they were doing; it was a place for certainty, not for doubt.
It was the tremor in her mother’s voice that had convinced her to come. ‘Please, honey; we need you there for us, for the family,’ Eliza Lowenstein had begged. ‘He’s your brother, after all. Who knows, maybe you can help him.’ Help him like you didn’t do before, in other words—or was that just how Camille had chosen to interpret it, through the prism of her broken conscience? Besides, there was no excuse. Camille was in Dubai which—if you were looking at a map in Pittsburgh—seemed pretty much next door to Iraq.
Camille had been called out of a meeting to be told the news. She had stood there in the glass palace where she worked, staring out at its panoramic views of nothing. She had supposed she ought to cry, but no tears would flow. Perhaps it was the shock, she thought; perhaps they’d come later. She’d gone home, tossed some clothes into a suitcase and made sure her secretary cancelled everything in her diary, except the dinner date with the man she’d met two weeks earlier: Camille wanted to make that call herself. He hadn’t sounded particularly sympathetic nor very bothered that she wouldn’t be around. At 52, she couldn’t help thinking she was too old for dates anyway. As the bank’s limousine eased her past Dubai’s lavish skyscrapers, she wondered whether her brother would be dead or alive when she saw him again. Either way, she resolved she wouldn’t come back until she knew for sure. That much at least she owed him. She plugged in her iPod headphones and put on some Janis Joplin. It always reminded her of Danny. But she asked herself another question: was it bad taste to listen to music when the corpse of your only sibling could be lying in a ditch somewhere?
At Baghdad International Airport, a lone immigration officer in a slightly tatty uniform waved her through without even opening her passport. He gave her a look that said: Trust me, if you’re crazy enough to come to my country, I really have no plans to stop you. Then, as Harper and Munro shepherded her to the waiting motorcade, a plump diplomat in a white shirt and tie stepped forward to greet them.
‘Hi, I’m Adi—Adi Duval.’ Camille noticed with mild revulsion two dark ovals of sweat around his armpits. ‘You need to know we’re doing everything, and I mean everything, to find your brother.’ Adi assured her that army intelligence was on the case, with spy satellites and unmanned reconnaissance planes searching 24/7. They hadn’t yet established which group was responsible, but they had a list of suspects. CIA analysts had made it their top priority, and they’d crack it soon, he was sure they would. Danny was a ‘distinguished American citizen’ who deserved ‘our best and fullest resources’, he went on, his tone implying that the country’s less impressive passport holders might receive a slightly inferior level of service from their government.
He handed her a flak jacket and helmet.
‘You’ll need to wear these, Miss Lowenstein—just for the ride into town.’
Camille, Harper and Munro were driven at unfeasible speed to the Hamra Hotel, the gleaming white GMC Suburban—bulletproof, of course—swerving and screeching its way through the fiendish chicanes designed to slow traffic. At intermittent checkpoints ordinary mortals were having their papers checked and car boots searched,