More Than You Can Say by Paul Torday Read Free Book Online Page A

‘Food will be sent to you as necessary. We will call for you when we need you again.’
    I did not argue. Upstairs I sat in one of the armchairs in my bedroom and wondered about the girl I had just met. She was stunning and she was also brave: anyone who defied Mr Khan had to have a certain amount of courage – or else be foolhardy. The third thing I knew about her was that she did not like orange juice.
    I didn’t imagine I would see much more of her. I wonderedwhat was in it for her? Was she a refugee of some sort? Did she agree with this sham marriage? It didn’t matter. Mr Khan would make her go through with it and then I would be free to get back to my life, but ten thousand pounds better off.
    What would happen to her? I wondered. Best not to think about it. I picked up the newspaper lying on the table in front of me and turned the pages without reading them. Rain began to spatter against the window.
    Then, without my being able to do anything about it, the memories started to come back; like a television set I could not switch off, playing nothing but repeats.

Four
    The images had the vivid quality of a film. Time would not dull or blur them however much I wished it would.
    When my half-platoon of specialists first arrived at Baghdad International Airport that spring we were met in the arrivals hall by an American non-com from Delta Force: a large man in desert camouflages holding up a name board with my name and rank on it.
    ‘Captain Gaunt?’ he asked. When I nodded he replied, ‘Please follow me, sir. We have transport waiting.’
    He did not smile or offer his hand. We followed him through the terminal. He walked quickly and we struggled to keep up with him, carrying our kitbags, which weighed a ton. The terminal was surprisingly busy: military personnel, mostly American; and civilians, mostly men, probably contractors, oilmen, journalists or aid workers. When we stepped outside the heat was fierce. It was spring in Baghdad. We had been told it would be getting hot and it
was
: forty degrees, at least. Our last overseas posting had been in Pristina, in Kosovo with KFOR. The springs there had been warm but they were nothing like this.
    Outside, a row of Humvees was parked. I noticed that they were not the soft-skinned ones we had seen in Kosovo, but the new up-armoured version. That was comforting. They were being guarded by another soldier from Delta Force witha C7 Diemaco rifle. We’d heard that the twelve-kilometre journey into Baghdad along ‘Route Irish’ could be interesting. I was looking forward to the ride. I felt excited. I think we all were, although we knew this was an unpopular war at home. It wasn’t like Kosovo, where we knew we were needed to stop the whole of the Balkans going up in flames, or Northern Ireland, or any of the other places I had been to in my last few years with the army. But it was action: better than sitting in Basra waiting for someone to lob a mortar at us.
    I felt sorry for the Iraqis. We’d started this war to help them. Nobody I knew had ever seriously believed they had ‘weapons of mass destruction’. This was about bringing peace and democracy to the people of Iraq, wasn’t it? Only someone had disbanded the Iraqi army about two days after the invasion and had sent them home without pay. Then everyone was terribly surprised when they all turned up again as insurgents wearing civilian clothes; shooting, bombing and generally making the country into the most dangerous place on earth.
    Anyway, we were here now, and Saddam was gone. So that was good. Sergeant Hawkes said we’d started the war to make sure we kept control over Iraqi oil, but he was a cynic. Some of us even suspected him of being too clever for his own good, but I liked him. He was interesting to talk to, and read a great deal more than the rest of us put together. I also knew that, despite his remarks, Sergeant Hawkes felt the same sense of excitement about this new mission as the rest of us.
    The