The Identity Mine

XVIII

‘Been a while since I’ve been here,’ Ethan said.

The Arab Emirates connecting flight from Dubai had landed a few minutes earlier but the airport terminal was virtually silent as he walked with Lopez toward the exits, few international flights moving into and out of the country in the face of near — constant uprisings by Islamic State terrorists and other insurgent tribal groups vying for power and influence.

‘I don’t think much of our chances of hunting any of these people down,’ Lopez replied as they stepped out into the blistering heat outside the terminal, her hair hidden by a native hijab to avoid offending the more religiously sensitive Muslims. ‘The country’s in chaos as much now as it was a decade ago. They could be anywhere, maybe even dead.’

Ethan nodded in agreement.

‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘but they worked for our military and it’s my guess they’ll stay close to what they know.’

Before they had left on the flight to Iraq, Jarvis had provided them with documents taken from Heinrich Muller’s office detailing a number of junior doctors and surgeons who had worked alongside the doctor during his tenure in Iraq.

‘If the implant in General Thompson is the work of Islamic State or a similar organization, most of the people connected to it will likely have been executed,’ Lopez said.

Ethan heard his cell phone ring and answered it, switching to speaker phone as they waited beneath the searing sun for a cab.

‘Ethan, it’s Doug,’ Jarvis spoke to them both, ‘there’s been a new development while you were travelling and we may know the origin of the device we found in General Thompson’s brain.’

‘Go ahead,’ Ethan said. ‘We could do with some leads.’

‘The urgency of the mission has opened up some new channels through the Pentagon, and we’ve had reports that these devices were something being worked upon by the National Security Agency some twenty years ago, operating out of a safe house in Hong Kong.’

‘You mean these things are ours?’ Lopez asked in horror.

‘The technology may have been developed by NSA experts,’ Jarvis confirmed. ‘But four of them went missing in Kowloon shortly before Hong Kong was handed back to the Chinese by the British, who had occupied and governed the city for some two hundred years. The technology was too sensitive for the NSA to dispatch military forces to recover it, and the four men were never seen again.’

‘The Chinese,’ Ethan murmured, ‘but how would they have come to be in Iraq?’

‘I don’t know,’ Jarvis admitted, ‘but if they grabbed the NSA’s technology in 1997 and started work on it, who knows what they could have developed in the time since?’

‘We’ll keep it in mind,’ Ethan replied. ‘We’re on our way to Basra’s hospital. I’ll check in as soon as we know anything more.’

A battered taxi cab awaited them outside the terminal, coated in dust and with faded paintwork blasted by the desert sun. Ethan tossed his bag alongside Lopez’s inside the trunk and got in as the driver smiled and greeted them enthusiastically.

Known as the Venice of the East, Basra was situated on the Shatt — Al — Arab waterway which flowed into the nearby Persian Gulf. Canals and streams intersected the city and were used for irrigation purposes, giving the city its comparison to Venice, but pollution and falling water levels had stripped most vessels of the ability to navigate the canals, further hindering the city’s progress in the wake of the American occupation. The cab pulled away toward the city as Ethan went on.

‘What we really need is a direct lead on this Abrahem that Muller mentioned,’ he said.

‘It might not be his real name,’ Lopez pointed out. ‘He might even be a she, or maybe they got into all of this more recently and haven’t yet committed a crime.’

Ethan used the door handle to wind down the window and let the breeze into the hot interior of the car.

‘It’s not going to be easy and this place is lethal. Basra’s under threat from Islamic State and what law enforcement exists won’t have much left in the way of records after so many years of war.’

Lopez could not add much as the taxi drove them through Basra’s city center, the site of so much conflict and suffering over endless decades of Saddam Hussein’s iron rule and then repeated wars and bombings by both the American military and now militant groups vying for control. Despite the harsh conditions endured by Basra a rebuilding program was underway, largely initiated by the British and American forces stationed at Basra during the conflict, and Ethan could see that in places Basra looked something like it once had before the wars.

Al — Faihaa General Hospital was located in the north west of the city just a few kilometres from the airport. A low, wide white building with a horizontal blue stripe running the length of its first — storey windows, the parking lot outside was virtually empty as Ethan climbed out of the cab with Lopez and they walked inside.

The interior of the hospital was quiet with only a few staff walking around and many of the wards empty of patients. Ethan walked toward the reception desk, grateful that so many of the hospital’s signs were written in both English and Arabic, and spoke to a woman sitting behind the main desk. Within a few minutes, a handsome man in a gray suit and blue shirt walked out to greet them.

‘Mister Warner, I’m Doctor Alin Darwish.’ Darwish’s English was heavily weighted with a British accent. ‘Oxford,’ he explained as he noted Ethan’s reaction.

‘Thanks for meeting with us,’ Ethan said. ‘Is there somewhere we can talk in private?’

Darwish led them into a sparse office and closed the door behind them.

‘We’re looking for anybody at the hospital who might have worked with this man,’ Ethan said as he handed Darwish a photograph.

‘Doctor Muller?’ he asked, recognizing the face immediately. ‘He worked here for many years and for the military contingent at the airport. He is an excellent doctor.’

‘You worked with him?’ Lopez asked.

‘I was an intern then,’ Darwish explained. ‘The war gave us opportunity to learn fast, sadly. Most of the doctors have long since left Iraq because of the violence and oppression suffered here since the British forces went home.’

‘Why do you stay?’

‘Because this is my home,’ Darwish replied to her. ‘Would you leave America if war came to your door?’

‘No,’ Lopez admitted.

‘People here need my care and that of my colleagues. However, I thought that Muller also returned to America some years ago?’

‘Germany,’ Ethan corrected the doctor. ‘It was there that we’ve learned he was working for militant groups.’

‘Muller?’ Darwish asked in horror. ‘But he was one of the most generous doctors we ever had. He saved lives when we no longer had sufficient resources to do it ourselves, became something of a hero to the younger nurses and doctors working here, including myself. I don’t believe that he willingly colluded with militants — he hated them.’

‘He may not have worked directly with the fighters,’ Lopez said, ‘but he sure as hell worked with the organizations. He gave us a name: Abrahem.’

Darwish raised his hands in supplication.

‘Such a name means the Father of all Races,’ he said. ‘It is a common name in Iraq.’

‘Muller was likely paid from the top of the organizations, possibly even by benefactors in Iran and other nations sympathetic to seeing the American mission in Iraq fail. He took the money, Dr Darwish, in return for conducting medical procedures without the knowledge of his patients.’

‘Not here he didn’t,’ Darwish snapped. ‘This is ridiculous!’

Ethan slid another picture across the table to Darwish.

‘This was Major General Frederick Thompson,’ he explained, ‘and he recently killed dozens of his own countrymen in a gun attack in Georgia.’ Ethan slid another image across the table, this time of the implant found in Thompson’s skull. ‘This is what the autopsy uncovered. It was lodged in his frontal lobes.’

Darwish looked down at the image and frowned. ‘What is it?’

‘A device that penetrates the brain and allows indirect control of the person’s actions,’ Lopez replied. ‘It was inserted by Muller at military hospitals in Berlin and Basra. We traced the origins of the devices back here. Somebody at this hospital must have been involved. Now, who worked with Muller who may have had sympathy or an allegiance to militant groups active during his tenure here?’

Darwish rubbed his temples as he stared at the image of the device.

‘I didn’t even know such things were possible,’ he said. ‘There is nobody here with even the remotest ability to create or surgically implant these kinds of devices.’

‘We figured that,’ Ethan replied. ‘But who might have had cause to support such an action? Did anybody at all assist Muller in any way?’

Darwish looked up.

‘One of our interns, Abu Hazim, was a major benefactor to the hospital during the darkest hours of the war. He worked here and also gave money to purchase supplies and often brought in casualties from the battles.’

Lopez frowned as she looked at the list of names Jarvis had supplied them with. ‘He brought casualties here himself?’

Darwish nodded. ‘We knew that they were probably militant fighters, injured during skirmishes with the British soldiers based here, but we needed the money that Hazim had access to. It was an unspoken agreement — medicines in return for treating injured militants.’

‘Where is this Hazim now?’ Ethan asked.

‘He still works here,’ Darwish replied. ‘He’s on the wards right now.’

Ethan stood without another word and looked at Darwish expectantly. The doctor took the hint and opened his office door and they walked out together. They were halfway down the hall when Darwish gestured toward one of the wards ahead and a young doctor standing over a patient’s bed.

‘There he is,’ he said, and called out; ‘Abu?’

Ethan saw a short, stocky doctor look at them through square lensed glasses, his eyes fly wide as he looked at Ethan and Lopez and then he whirled and dashed away down the hall.

Ethan broke into a sprint in pursuit of Abu, Lopez alongside him in an instant. They thundered down the corridor as Abu crashed through swinging doors ahead of them and turned left.

‘He’s heading for the exits,’ Lopez called as she shouldered through the door just ahead of Ethan.

Ethan turned the corner in the corridor, saw the sign on the wall directing them toward the exits and Abu fleeing ahead of them. Nurses leaped out of Abu’s way as he flew past them and then they saw Ethan and Lopez in pursuit. Two trolleys and a cloud of medical swab packs flew into their path as the hospital staff, fearing for their colleague’s safety, hurled obstructions out in front of Lopez.

Ethan saw her vault lithely over the trolleys, barely breaking her step as he plunged into them and smashed them aside. The metal trolleys clattered noisily down the corridor as Abu smashed through the exit doors and outside into the bright sunlight.

Lopez shot through the doors just ahead of Ethan, who crashed through them into the brilliant sunlight of a courtyard just as a deafening crescendo of machine gun fire shattered the air around him. Ethan hurled himself to the left as fear pulsed through his heart, bullets impacting the walls behind him as he saw Lopez throw herself down behind a crumbling wall.

Ethan hit the ground and rolled sideways as bullets showered him with dust and mortar chips and he curled up in a narrow recess. He peeked around the edge and saw Abu Hazim vanish down an alley opposite the courtyard, his footfalls echoing away into the distance.

Ethan peered up and saw a gunman on the roof of a building across from the hospital, his silhouette clear against the bright sky as he fired a last burst and then vanished from sight.

‘Clear!’

Ethan leaped out and sprinted toward the alley alongside Lopez.