The Command

Aisha compared the ID with the face she’d jigsawed together. The photo was good. The ID was good. The trouble was, Base Security said Achmed Hamid Khamis had been fired the year before. Not only that, he’d been in his fifties, and weighed 110 kilos. The broken body under the sheet would barely weigh 60 and was twenty years younger.

“You’ll take charge of the body?” the sergeant said hopefully.

“What other identification did he have?”

He showed her, reluctantly. An Omani passport, but in a different name from the base ID. Blood had soaked into one corner, bright arterial red, like raspberry juice. Same man, same face, but a different name. Another photo ID. Reading the Arabic with some difficulty — she spoke it better than she read it — she found it was a Bahraini driver’s licence in the same name as the base ID. But this photograph was of a different man, with a longer jaw and smaller eyes, one of which did not look directly at the camera.

“Have you called the SIS? Major Yousif?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“It’s your decision, of course, But this may be something he’ll want to look into.”

The sergeant went back to his car, shooing children away from it. They scattered, throwing clods of earth at him and some at Aisha, too. He shouted and they fled, brown bare feet kicking up in the sunlight.

Left with the body, she turned the head to one side and then the other. Looking for scars, tattoos, earrings. Bone shifted beneath her fingers. They came away wet with a thin, clear, slimy liquid she figured must be cerebrospinal fluid.

With a quick, violent jerk, because she hadn’t seen enough of this yet not to be horrified and disgusted, she peeled the sheet down to the waist and lifted the shirt. The trousers were black polyester with a cheap belt and brass-tone buckle. Above it, the midriff had been can-openered. Here, yes, bowel contents, urine, the warm organic gush-ings of shit and death.

She covered it again, swallowing to keep nausea from overwhelming her, and went on to inspect the hands. You could tell a lot from hands. These were ringless. The watch was a cheap Casio, still running despite the impact.

She was thinking of fingerprints — she had a portable kit in the car — when she turned the unresisting, still-warm hand over. On the underside of the wrist, just above where the cuff of the long-sleeved shirt would cover, was a smear of ballpoint. She lifted it to the sunlight, trying to make it out. Arabic lettering, but smudged. Stretching the skin and looking closely, she thought it said Imaamah. She didn’t know what the word meant. But that, after all, was what photographs were for.

* * *

Yousif arrived just after she put her camera away after close-ups of the truck, the bicycle, the face, the midriff, and the smeared letters on the wrist. Bahrain wasn’t so large an island he couldn’t have come direct from headquarters. He was in the British-style uniform of the Special Intelligence Service. He bowed with a tight smile. “Sabaah el-khair,

Agent Ar-Rahim.”

“Sabaah an-noor, Raa’id Yousif.”

“Kayf haalik? How is your health today?”

“Praise to God, I am well,” she said. “And you?”

“Praise to God, well.” He looked at the body. “American? Is that why you are here? Or is the driver one of yours?”

“Neither, I think. Though the sergeant thought he might be. He has a U.S. base ID, but it’s”—she searched for an equivalent for the word “bogus,” but didn’t know any—“mosh kowayes, no good,” she finished.

“Is that right?” He looked into her car. “Where’s Robert?”

“In Naples.”

“I see.” He looked at the body again, but didn’t touch it. “The sergeant says you found something else amiss with his papers.”

She showed them to him, and he nodded halfway through her explanation and took them. He picked at the military ID with a thumbnail. Flipped through the passport, peering at the visa stamps. Then pocketed everything as an ambulance filtered down the narrow street. “We’ll take care of it from here,” he told her over his shoulder, switching to English. Which he spoke almost flawlessly, only having trouble with the fs, as she’d noticed Arabs often did.

“You’ll take care of it?”

“He’s obviously not one of your people, he’s not in your records. And the death occurred in town. So he’s my problem. Raqeeb! Sergeant!” Switching back to Arabic. “Any of these scum see what happened?”

“They say he made a turn without looking and the truck was backing out.”

Aisha said, “I’m wondering what he was doing with a base ID.”

“I wonder that, too. Did you take prints?”

“Not yet. Do you want me to?”

“No, we’ll do it at the autopsy.” He used the English word, as if he thought she might not know the Arabic.

“So you’ll do an autopsy?”

He smiled at her. “Inta betettallam. Oh, yes.”

“Can I be there?”

“Of course. I’ll call you when it’s scheduled.”

“And if you find out who he is, meanwhile, will you let us know?”