Deep Black

61

I came to a turning. Fuck knew where it led to, but it would take me out of the line of fire.

I ducked down it and found myself in a crap-filled courtyard. There was no obvious way out. The shouts behind me were getting louder. The troops were on their way down the alley.

I ran into a washing-line and it snapped with a loud twang. Torchlight flashed along the walls. Orders were shouted in Arabic.

A couple of old pallets were stacked against the far corner. I lifted the top one and leaned it against the breezeblocks as a makeshift ladder. A vehicle drove past about twenty metres the other side of the wall, its lights flickering along the top of it. Grabbing an armful of washing off the line, I scrambled over. As I dropped, two shots rang out, heavy rounds, AK. The fuckers didn’t even know what or who they were firing at, or why. American voices echoed down the alleyway. ‘Hold your fire, hold your fire!’

If these Iraqis had been trained by Gaz, he deserved the sack.

I landed on firm ground and started running again. My hand went down to my waist: the bumbag was still with me.

I got to just short of the road and stopped. There was no follow-up behind me, just plenty of commotion.

I threw the clothes to the ground and ripped off my shirt. A damp T-shirt from the pile got what I hoped was most of the blood and sweat off my face and hands; then I pulled on an old stripy shirt that smelt nothing like washing powder.

I moved out on to the street and turned right, keeping in the shadows, moving quickly, head down. Checking out those weedy pavement cracks again, I gulped in oxygen, trying to slow myself. Sweat streamed down my face, stinging my eyes.

The shops were open, and bare bulbs hung from wires. People sat outside cafés, drinking coffee and smoking, engrossed in their conversations. There was a line of three parked cabs about fifty metres down. Two guys leaned against the first one, a rusty 1980s Oldsmobile with orange wings. I walked up to them with my best smily face on and gave them a thumbs-up. They smiled back. They were both young, hair brushed back, beards a week old. Their shirts hung out of their trousers and both wore sandals on bare feet.

‘OK, let’s go, let’s go!’ I jumped into the back of the Oldsmobile before the driver had time to object. Dirty foam burst from slits in the seats, and roses evaporated from a bottle of car-freshener plugged into the lighter socket.

One of the young guys opened the driver’s door and leaned in. ‘You pay dollars?’

‘Yep, dollars, no problem.’

He smiled, climbed into the driver’s seat, and turned the ignition key. ‘Where do we go?’ His English was good, and he obviously wasn’t fazed by having a white guy in the cab after a contact no more than two hundred metres away.

‘The Australian consulate. You know it?’

He nudged into the flow of the traffic, then checked junctions left and right as we went along. Most traffic-lights weren’t working, and even if they had been, nobody would have paid much attention. It reminded me of Africa. He turned his head. ‘That’s far away, Mister. It must cost a twenty.’

I smiled at him. He could have asked a hundred, for all I cared. ‘No drama, mate.’

His face fell. He’d just realized he could have got away with a lot more. To console himself, he threw a cassette into the player and George Michael sparked up through the speakers. ‘What you do here at night, Mister?’ He turned his head again. ‘No good one man. Big trouble.’

‘I’m a journalist. The car broke down. They’re trying to sort it out, but I’ve got to get to the consulate. I’ve lost my passport.’

He nodded and started singing along quietly with George. I kept an eye on the road for Hummers and cars with flashing blue lights, but the only thing I saw was one of the red double-decker buses that operated in the city passing the other way. Sweat sluiced out of every pore as my body started to recover.

What the fuck had all that been about? Did the CPA want to suppress a Bosnian story so badly? That couldn’t be it. Killing US citizens would have looked even worse on the front pages. So was Benzil the target? More likely; it sounded like anyone connected to Nuhanovic was on a hit list. But who had done it? In this fucked-up place, anyone from a cast of thousands. I bet Nuhanovic would know.