The Kills: Sutler, the Massive, the Kill, and the Hit by Richard House Page A
Authors: Richard House
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Not thinking of Kiprowski, of course, was thinking of Kiprowski.
There he is, like that man there, or him, or him
.
He missed being Sutler, and halfway through the night believed himself in transit, heading to, not from the desert of Al-Muthanna and Camp Liberty. The call from Paul Geezler. A five-twenty red-eye from Bonn to Düsseldorf that opened twenty-eight hours of transit flights and slow connections. Geezler wanted him deployed as soon as possible.
Think Vietnam, think Da Nang
. The Massive would transform HOSCO, and Ford, travelling under his own name, slipped into Sutler.
Wide awake, Ford could remember the exact moment he received Geezler’s call, and could recall himself, phone in hand, at the window of his small apartment overlooking a street on which nothing moved: the hotel rooms and apartments set above hardware shops, the boutiques and cafés dark and shuttered; the streets leathery wet, the greyness of the view, the ashen un-black sky suggesting a city set on a river.
Up to this point Ford had worked on small schemes, contract by contract: car parks for mini-malls; refits of East German factories; signs for autobahns; ground clearance in Croatia for the Corps of Engineers. All small. Ford knew that Geezler liked him. He knew he had the man’s attention. And this was that promised opportunity.
It won’t come again. I’m serious. You don’t need expertise in business, what you need are people who can do, in one instant, exactly what you ask of them. Are you that man? Are you ready for change?
The first buses were scheduled to leave at six, all of them heading west or north-west.
The call to prayer came as a dislocated wail amplified through small speakers. Men knelt where they’d slept and bowed in prayer. Women shrank to the sides of the room, minding children, luggage, and themselves. Except for Ford and the soldiers, only one other passenger remained seated, and they looked at each other across the rows of empty benches. The young man, unprepared for the cold, wore open sandals, loose tan shorts, and a navy-blue sweater. He sat with a paperback open on his lap. Occasionally he looked up and scanned the room, his expression dulled by reading, and Ford wondered why such a boy – surely a tourist, a student – would be so close to a war zone.
Ford: Atlas
thekills.co.uk/johnjacobford
2.4
Susanna Heida and Gerhard Grüner ate a small breakfast in their room, although neither was hungry. Grüner cut the feta with a pocket knife then sized up the blocks. Bored with him, Heida switched on the television.
The room stank of a zoo-like mustiness. Outside, suitcases and packages lined the stairwell and hallway.
Grüner sat naked at the table and read from his computer screen. A tissue spread out with olives, feta, bruised tomatoes, and bread beside the laptop and an open map of Turkey. Relatives of the hotel staff had paid to have their belongings stored in the empty rooms, and once these rooms had filled up they’d started using the public areas. This was his theory. The hotel would be more secure than their homes, he said, and it was true, the hotel was protected by armed guards. He’d seen this before, in Pakistan, although in Pakistan there was more money and these people had weapons like you wouldn’t believe, and bodyguards, ex-SAS, who slept in the corridors. Grüner had a good idea about what was going on.
Heida nodded, conceding to his experience. Crazy. The whole thing. Yes, crazy. There were small fires in the street. People cooking in family groups. People keeping themselves warm, waiting to see what would happen. She switched her attention from the window to the television, clicked through channels and watched the signal jump.
Grüner checked RSS downloads for the current news. ‘It looks the same,’ he said. ‘The border is closed.’ He pushed food into his mouth, his attention taken by the computer, the slow download, the erratic link. ‘We need to keep moving.
There he is, like that man there, or him, or him
.
He missed being Sutler, and halfway through the night believed himself in transit, heading to, not from the desert of Al-Muthanna and Camp Liberty. The call from Paul Geezler. A five-twenty red-eye from Bonn to Düsseldorf that opened twenty-eight hours of transit flights and slow connections. Geezler wanted him deployed as soon as possible.
Think Vietnam, think Da Nang
. The Massive would transform HOSCO, and Ford, travelling under his own name, slipped into Sutler.
Wide awake, Ford could remember the exact moment he received Geezler’s call, and could recall himself, phone in hand, at the window of his small apartment overlooking a street on which nothing moved: the hotel rooms and apartments set above hardware shops, the boutiques and cafés dark and shuttered; the streets leathery wet, the greyness of the view, the ashen un-black sky suggesting a city set on a river.
Up to this point Ford had worked on small schemes, contract by contract: car parks for mini-malls; refits of East German factories; signs for autobahns; ground clearance in Croatia for the Corps of Engineers. All small. Ford knew that Geezler liked him. He knew he had the man’s attention. And this was that promised opportunity.
It won’t come again. I’m serious. You don’t need expertise in business, what you need are people who can do, in one instant, exactly what you ask of them. Are you that man? Are you ready for change?
The first buses were scheduled to leave at six, all of them heading west or north-west.
The call to prayer came as a dislocated wail amplified through small speakers. Men knelt where they’d slept and bowed in prayer. Women shrank to the sides of the room, minding children, luggage, and themselves. Except for Ford and the soldiers, only one other passenger remained seated, and they looked at each other across the rows of empty benches. The young man, unprepared for the cold, wore open sandals, loose tan shorts, and a navy-blue sweater. He sat with a paperback open on his lap. Occasionally he looked up and scanned the room, his expression dulled by reading, and Ford wondered why such a boy – surely a tourist, a student – would be so close to a war zone.
Ford: Atlas
thekills.co.uk/johnjacobford
2.4
Susanna Heida and Gerhard Grüner ate a small breakfast in their room, although neither was hungry. Grüner cut the feta with a pocket knife then sized up the blocks. Bored with him, Heida switched on the television.
The room stank of a zoo-like mustiness. Outside, suitcases and packages lined the stairwell and hallway.
Grüner sat naked at the table and read from his computer screen. A tissue spread out with olives, feta, bruised tomatoes, and bread beside the laptop and an open map of Turkey. Relatives of the hotel staff had paid to have their belongings stored in the empty rooms, and once these rooms had filled up they’d started using the public areas. This was his theory. The hotel would be more secure than their homes, he said, and it was true, the hotel was protected by armed guards. He’d seen this before, in Pakistan, although in Pakistan there was more money and these people had weapons like you wouldn’t believe, and bodyguards, ex-SAS, who slept in the corridors. Grüner had a good idea about what was going on.
Heida nodded, conceding to his experience. Crazy. The whole thing. Yes, crazy. There were small fires in the street. People cooking in family groups. People keeping themselves warm, waiting to see what would happen. She switched her attention from the window to the television, clicked through channels and watched the signal jump.
Grüner checked RSS downloads for the current news. ‘It looks the same,’ he said. ‘The border is closed.’ He pushed food into his mouth, his attention taken by the computer, the slow download, the erratic link. ‘We need to keep moving.
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