More Than You Can Say by Paul Torday Page A

was difficult to tell what age or nationality he was.
    ‘Get your men inside, Captain Gaunt,’ he told me, jerking his thumb at the dark doorway in which he had been standing a moment ago. ‘We’ll give you your local briefing first, then show you your quarters.’
    ‘Local briefing?’ I asked.
    Mr Harris smiled, revealing firm white teeth. It was not a comforting smile.
    ‘We’ve been asked to tell you a little about what life is like in this great city.’
    Once inside the building we were led to a large cool room in which several rows of chairs had been set out, with a map of Baghdad on the wall. All of us sat down. Then Mr Harris came in and sat in front of us. His shirtsleeves were rolled up,revealing forearms that looked as if they were made from some knotted tropical hardwood. His belly strained at his shirt but he did not look unfit. Patches of sweat stained his shirt under his arms but he did not look hot.
    ‘You’re here …’ he began, then stopped and said, ‘Fucked if I know why you’re here. Anyone got any ideas?’
    ‘We were told we were to provide support for a counterinsurgency operation, sir,’ I said, feeling that someone should say something. Then I remembered the injunction against rank. ‘I mean, Mr Harris.’
    ‘Counter-insurgency? Forget that bullshit. We’re in the real world now. Call them insurgents if you like.
We
call them criminals and terrorists. The people we are mostly fighting,’ he said, ‘were part of the Iraqi army, only some clever schmuck fired the lot of them, just after the invasion ended, without pay. They took to the streets, of course, so the war goes on, only the enemy isn’t wearing a uniform. That’s the only difference. The war never ended. And right now, we are in real danger of losing it.’
    He paused, letting the silence grow, looking at us as if we were children in our first day at infant school. Perhaps that is how we appeared to him.
    ‘You are here to fight the terrorists,’ said Mr Harris. ‘The Mahdi Army, al-Qaeda, Ansar al-Islam – it doesn’t matter which. When they’re dead they all look much the same. Your intel will come from the Joint Support Group, and from us here at Green Park. Your orders come from Task Force HQ. I am here to offer advice and support and to teach you the wicked ways of this sinful city.’ It sounded dangerous. Mr Harris hadn’t finished with us yet either.
    ‘Now, you’re all experienced soldiers. You were in Kosovo, right? Tell me, how do you fight terrorists?’
    There was a silence while we all tried to recall our training manuals, but Mr Harris wasn’t really interested in anything we had to say. He curled his hands into two massive fists and smacked them together.
    ‘You fight them like that,’ he said. ‘You crush them. You fight terror with terror. You make sure these people are so frightened of you that all they want to do is hide under their beds.’
    He stood up then. He was an old man: God knows how many wars he had fought in. God knows where he came from – Sergeant Hawkes told me later he thought Mr Harris was Mossad, drafted in by the Americans to give them the benefit of Israeli experience in counter-terrorism. There were some strange people in Baghdad that year. But wherever he came from and whatever he had done, Mr Harris looked as if he knew everything there was to know about terror. He looked as if he had dished it out in his time. He had probably fought in most of the dirty conflicts around the world since the last world war, and we were already more terrified of him than the insurgents who waited for us somewhere outside in the Red Zone.
    ‘Time to go to work, boys,’ he said. ‘Mr al-Najafi will see you next. He will show you your quarters and give you a geography lesson.’
    That was the beginning of the best and worst few months of my life. Whatever I had been expecting from my tour in Baghdad, it was not what happened. That was the last time I felt as if I was alive: really,