The Whisperers

Roddam was a spook of some kind. Baghdad was overrun with them, both genuine and charlatans, and Roddam was a little of both. He was private, not CIA, and he didn’t talk much about what he did, like any good spook. He said that he worked for a small outfit called Information Retrieval & Interpretation Services, or IRIS, but Tobias let it slip that it was basically a one-man operation. IRIS’s logo, not unexpectedly, was an eye, with the world as its pupil. Roddam’s cards boasted offices in Concord, New Hampshire, and Pont-Rouge, Canada, but the Pont-Rouge office turned out to be little more than a tax scam with proximity to an airfield, and the Concord office was a telephone and an answering machine.

Roddam was ex-Agency, though: he had contacts, and he had influence. Part of his role in Baghdad was to act as the middleman between the army and the smaller contractors, the ones who didn’t have their own transport networks and were trying to keep their costs down so that they could bank a bigger share of whatever they were overcharging Uncle Sam to begin with. Roddam arranged for the transportation of anything on which the big boys like Halliburton didn’t already have first dibs, from a box of obscure screws to weapons that were required, for whatever reason, to bypass the regular transport cha

That paid his bills, and more, but it wasn’t his main area of expertise: Roddam, as it turned out, was an expert in interrogation and information analysis, which explained the origins of the name IRIS. There were too many Iraqis in custody for the regular intelligence guys to process, so the little fish were thrown to Roddam. If you got enough little fish, and cross-referenced whatever information could be gleaned from them, it was possible that a bigger picture might be constructed from the individual pieces. Roddam was some kind of genius at analyzing the information coaxed from prisoners, sometimes without them even knowing that they’d revealed anything crucial. Roddam would occasionally deal with prisoners himself, usually in an effort to clarify a point, or in an effort to make a solid co

He never learned how Roddam and Tobias managed to hook up. He supposed that men like them just inevitably found each other. So, when Tobias brought the beer, Roddam came with him. In fact, it was probably Roddam who had sourced the beer in the first place.

By that time, the squad had taken some hits: Lattner was dead, and Cole. Edwards and Martinez were injured, and had been replaced by Harlan and Kramer, and it looked like Hale, who’d been hit by a sniper, wasn’t going to pull through. He’d taken one in the head, and it would be a mercy if he died. The squad had been marked for force protection duties until it could be restored to full strength: no patrols, just guard shifts in the tower, which meant hour after hour of radio checks with Front Line Yankee, and replies of ‘Lima Charlie – Loud and Clear,’ and maybe ducking occasionally when someone in the darkness decided to lob a mortar, or send in an RPG, or just fire off a couple of rounds to keep you from getting bored.

That night, Tobias – or Roddam – had swung it so that they were relieved of FP, so there were eight of them in Tobias’s CHEW: him, Tobias, Roddam, Kramer, Harlan, Mallak, Patchett, and Bacci. After a couple of beers to soften them up, Tobias began to speak. He told them of Hale, and how the rest of his life was going to be a struggle at best. He spoke of other guys that they knew. He told of how men were struggling to get money under Section 8, welfare, the VA, anything; of how the VA had denied Keys, the assistant gu

Roddam was fifty, balding, overweight. He always wore short-sleeved shirts and a tie. His glasses had black frames. He looked like a science teacher. Roddam said that he’d come by some information. He told them about the looting of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad in 2003, and Patchett interrupted and said that he’d been there in the aftermath, and Roddam seemed interested. Later, he would take Patchett aside to talk with him, but for now Roddam simply filed this fact away and continued with his story. He spoke of gold, and statues, and ancient seals. Kramer scoffed some. Joe Radio, the army rumor mill, occasionally threw up tales of Saddam’s hidden treasures, or of gold bars buried in gardens, tales usually originating with shadowy Iraqis who were looking for dollars to grease palms but who would disappear into the night, never to be seen again, if someone were dumb enough to pay them anything. Tobias told Kramer to shut his mouth and listen, and Kramer did.

By the time Roddam had finished speaking, they were convinced, all of them, even Kramer, because Roddam had a quiet, serious way about him. They told him they were in, and Roddam left to arrange the details. They were his creatures now.

He had forgotten what it was like to be drunk. Back home, a six-pack would barely have helped him to get a buzz on but here, cut off from alcohol for months, his mouth always dry, his body always warm, it was as if he had knocked back a week’s worth of production from the Coors brewery. His head hurt the next day, but he was still aware of the promise that they’d made. He was just glad that they were going out in the Stryker and not in some makeweight meat wagon, even as he began to have doubts about what it was they were doing. The night before, with a couple of beers under his belt, and not enough food in his belly, he’d been all gung ho like the others, but now the reality of their situation was impacting upon him. On a regular ‘movement to contact’ mission, the new, kinder name for ‘search and destroy,’ the little FBCB2 screen behind the TC’s hatch would start displaying red triangles once the enemy was located, and that bitch’s voice, both lovely and appalling, would kick in to a

Tobias treated it like a regular patrol: he patted each of them down to make sure that they all had a CamelBak of water; gloves; pads; a clean, oiled weapon; and fresh batteries in the NODs, the night vision goggles. They’d all carried out their own precombat inspection, and they had the OP order in their heads, but, whatever his flaws, Tobias was a stickler for ensuring that everybody knew his appointed task, and had the proper equipment to carry it out. Roddam watched without speaking, uncomfortable in his Kevlar. He was nervous, and kept looking at his watch. Tobias checked the extra ammo for the.50 cal strapped to the right side of the Stryker. It was hard to get to in a firefight, but there was nowhere else to put it, and better to have it out there than not to have it at all. After the check, they performed their own intimate motions, touching medals, crosses, pictures of their families. Whatever routines had kept them alive in the past, they made sure to maintain. All soldiers were superstitious. It came with the territory.