Soul

It was true. Many soldiers secretly—or openly—enjoyed the adrenaline-fuelled challenge of a risky environment, even among those few who had endured the most brutal conflict. In actuality, an average of two out of every one hundred combat soldiers never suffered post-traumatic distress disorder—and it was this two per cent that fascinated Julia. The geneticist had spent the past three months in the Middle East on a research grant from Harvard, testing and interviewing such men: Israelis, Pakistanis, Americans and Brits. Julia didn’t take sides—her agenda was scientific not political. This was her last day; she was booked on a flight back to California the following morning.

The Humvee bounced over a pothole in the dirt track. Ahead, the hillside fell away to reveal a staggering view. They turned a sharp corner, only to be blocked by a flock of long-haired black goats being herded across the road by a wizened old man in a dusty, stained robe and a pale blue turban. He waved his staff at the bleating animals, seemingly impervious to the vehicle. Julia wondered why the driver didn’t blast his horn, then realised he was trying not to attract unnecessary attention. She sensed the driver and the soldier tensing up. Five miles from the combat zone, and theoretically inside friendly terrain, an ambush was still possible.

Her companion glanced at the driver who shrugged. ‘I hate this bullshit!’

Muttering darkly, the lieutenant clambered out of the Humvee and yelled at the goat herder. The old man’s wrinkled visage stared back at him without a glimmer of comprehension.

In an instant, the old man dropped to the ground. The lieutenant spun on his heels, looking around wildly for a possible sniper, but before he had a chance to react Julia heard the rhythmic pop-pop-pop of automatic gunfire. The soldier’s body thudded against the Humvee, smearing blood as it slid down the window.

The driver accelerated straight towards the startled goats, which scattered, bleating, across the path. Julia ducked, huddled against the seat. Glass rained down as bullets shattered the front window and the tyres were shot out. Swerving wildly, the Humvee bumped across the stony ground and skidded to a halt.

Julia could hear the dying driver groaning. Then silence, filled only by the bleating goats and a bird cry Julia imagined to be an eagle. Suddenly there came the chanting of their assailant: Allahu akbar, Allah is great, Allah is all powerful. The Arabic words were defiant, hypnotic and horribly musical. Although her senses were taut with panic, Julia gleaned that there was one voice, one set of footsteps. She waited, amazed by the clarity with which she seemed to be functioning—her single objective, survival.

The Humvee door was wrenched open and a dark face materialised: brown eyes, beard, skin peppered with acne. There was the incongruous smell of chewing gum and, faintly, hashish. Grabbing her by the shoulder, he pulled her out of the car then wrapped one arm around her neck.

‘Scream and I kill you.’

Julia said nothing, her heart pounding now from anger not fear. Her legs scrabbled against the rocky ground as he dragged her backwards. He was smaller than she was, she estimated, about five foot six to her five foot ten, and slight, his arm bony and sharp around her neck.

In the corner of her vision she saw he carried a jambaya—the traditional Arabic knife, curved and embossed—in his belt. With a sudden sideways lurch, she forced him to trip and allowed her full weight to fall directly on top of him, pushing them both to the ground. She jabbed her fingers into his eyes. He screeched. The AK–47 he’d been holding rattled against the stony ground as it rolled away. In the split second he lay there stunned, his arm still circling her neck, Julia reached down and pulled out the jambaya, then plunged it deep into his side. It sank without resistance as his screaming battered her eardrums. Vaguely remembering a briefing on the mechanics of close combat, Julia tried to pull the knife up through his body. He groaned deeply, his grip on her neck slackening.

Julia rolled to the side and scrambled to her knees. The AK–47 lay on the ground beside her. The man clutched at the hilt of the knife in his side, his face already grey. She picked up the gun and pointed it at his torso. The calm voice of the briefing instructor returned to her in an instant: ‘Squeeze the trigger…don’t pull.’

She flicked the safety catch and fired directly into the man’s chest. Then she waited—what for she wasn’t sure. The precision with which she saw and heard everything around her stretched time and space with a razor sharp clarity. There was no thought; just the listening, and the smell of pine cones and goats’ dung, and now the faint metallic tinge of blood on the breeze rolling down from the mountains.

A clatter of stones falling down the slope of the hillside caused her to swing round, but the old goat herder was nowhere in sight.

Julia got to her feet, still holding the gun, and walked a few steps away from her dead assailant. Turning her back on him, she looked down across the ravine to the ancient pine trees still frosted with snow, indifferent and timeless. She was suddenly overtaken by nausea, a clutching at her womb—not delayed shock or disgust, but something else, something Julia had suspected ever since she’d bought a pregnancy test in Kabul. Watched by two doubtful goats, she doubled over and vomited.

Afterwards, she was horrified to discover that she felt relief but nothing more—no fear, no repulsion at her own actions. Above her, she could hear the rotating blades of the returning helicopter.

3

Los Angeles, 2002

AS SHE PUSHED THE TROLLEY loaded with her old leather suitcase, the battered rucksack covered with stickers from obscure hotels in obscure destinations, the steel case marked ‘Scientific Specimens’ balanced on top, Julia tried to control the growing excitement drumming at the pit of her stomach. There’s always that moment of apprehension, she thought, as you walk through the customs exit and onto the ramp leading to the arrivals lounge. Anticipation tainted with apprehension—will you recognise him?

Will you feel the same jolt of intimacy and love you’ve imagined night after night during the weeks apart? Or will estrangement betray you?

The spectators leaning over the rails came into sight. Children, their faces mobile with trepidation, clutching the long strings of silver helium balloons painted with hearts saying ‘I love you’; an aged father holding up a home-made sign painfully restrained in its controlled emotion—‘Welcome Emilio!’; a mother, dressed as if for a party, bright blue eye shadow folded into optimistic creases as she tried not to cry. These were the moments that made up the mythology of families, Julia observed—arrival, departure, birth, death. She wondered why she was always so uncomfortable at such events, as if her nature kept her one step apart, defined her as the commentator.

It was crowded at the bottom of the ramp. The flight had been delayed, security at customs unusually tight, and Julia sensed restlessness in the anxious spectators.

She scanned the crowd, looking for her husband. A large man, Klaus was always visible. She found him standing back, watching her looking for him. Their gaze fused and there it was, that jolt Julia was always so afraid would one day vanish. Abandoning the trolley, she ran into his arms.

‘Welcome home,’ he murmured into her hair.

At six foot five, Klaus was taller than Julia by almost a head and was the first man who had been able to envelop her entirely. Every other lover had made her feel ungainly and awkwardly unfeminine because of her height. This feeling of being cradled had been an unexpected revelation: a liberating sensation that made Julia—a woman who preferred to be in control—finally surrender.

She buried her face in his shoulder and breathed him in. Afghanistan had already started to recede as the normalcy of LA airport and her husband’s touch anchored her. There and then, she decided she would never tell him about the ambush and her reaction. Levelling her eyes with his, she kissed him.

‘I was going to ask you to marry me but I seem to vaguely remember we’re married already,’ she whispered. Forgetting they were in a public space, she slipped her hands in his trouser pocket to rub against the blind bulge of his penis: the lucky talisman of their love.

He groaned softly then extracted her hands. ‘So that’s what this is for,’ he said, grinning and holding up his left hand to indicate his wedding ring. Turning he started pushing her trolley to the exit. She followed reluctantly. ‘Where’s the car?’

Two men came into sight—a limousine driver and another individual Julia recognised immediately. Colonel Hank Smith-Royston was head of the psychology division of the Department of Defense—the official who had originally authorised her research trip. Why were they here, she wondered nervously. Had she violated some protocol she wasn’t aware of? A report of the ambush in Afghanistan had been filed, and, after assessing her for any psychological trauma, they had debriefed her in Kabul and reassured her that any account of her behaviour was both confidential and sealed. So why the escort now?

Reading her face, Klaus squeezed her hand reassuringly. ‘Sorry, but the DOD insisted—apparently they have a proposal that can’t wait, and I couldn’t resist the prospect of a stretch limo. But don’t worry, I’ll sit in the front seat like a good boy.’