On The Threshold Of Catastrophe
Frank Glen and Maxwell Matheson begin their final day in Iraq
Frank Glen didn’t know what time it was when the sunlight pierced through a slit in their tent, reflected off his gold wedding ring, flashed into his eyes and awakened him. Over four years had passed since his wife Veronica’s death and even though he was seeing another woman in New York, while he was away on these assignments; he still found comfort in the ring. He struggled for a moment to reposition himself so that the sun did not come into his eyes, but no matter how he turned, he couldn’t find a comfortable position.
“I think it’s best if you give up on it,” Dr Matheson spoke, startling him. “It’s a lost cause if there ever was one.”
Frank turned his head and could see Dr Matheson sitting on his cot.
“I don’t think I have ever been so uncomfortable,” Frank complained, as he grimaced, and thrust himself into a sitting position. “This is certainly not what I expected when I accepted this assignment. I felt like I had been lost for a while, and I am finally getting my bearings.”
“Unfortunately, I’ve had many such nights.” Dr Matheson acknowledged. “I have had my share of tragedy. But I’ve come to accept whatever circumstances come my way!”
“How long have you been up?” Frank asked.
“About half an hour,” Dr Matheson answered.
“I never liked mornings,” Frank asserted.
Frank could feel the sweat on his back glueing his shirt in uneven creases to his skin.
“Stephanie has already been by. She said we’re leaving for the site in about thirty minutes.”
“What time is it now?” Frank asked.
“It’s six thirty-seven by my watch.”
“If I were to pinpoint the exact beginning of when things began to go wrong with Western Civilization,” Frank commented, “It’s when man in his folly created the first clock.”
“It was the Sumerians who invented the first recorded timepiece,” Dr Matheson responded. “So, by that reckoning, all of written history has gone awry.”
“You won’t hear any protest from me.” Frank stretched his arms into the air. Then in one huge lunge forward, he rose to his feet.
“Did she mention when she came by what’s on the itinerary for today?” Frank asked.
“No, she didn’t, but I’m sure it’s more of the same.”
“How long have we been here now? All the days seem a blur.” Frank asked.
“As of this minute, 82 hours and 17 minutes give or take thirty seconds.”
“You’ve got it down that exactly?”
“Chronometry is a hobby of mine. How we measure time. I’m sure you must know how clocks slow down and speed up depending on velocity. But I have an even more existential view of time. I’m not certain that this regularity of time is anything more than a creation of our minds. How can we prove that one minute is the same as any other, when it’s all contingent on our fallible perceptions?” Dr Matheson proposed.
“That’s a little too much to think about this early in the morning.”
Frank approached the wash basin in the eastern corner of the tent and washed his face and hands. After drying himself with a coarse towel, he returned to his cot.
“I really should begin writing the outline for my article,” Frank acknowledged.
He reached into his bag, removed a notepad and pen and laid them both atop the cot.
“I wonder if they’ll really let me write an article about those spheres, and who would believe me? I don’t even have a photograph.”
“You’d be surprised the capacity people have to believe,” Dr Matheson responded.
“My grandfather was a physicist who went to visit Nicola Tesla’s laboratory in Colorado Springs a hundred years ago. He saw things there that I still find incredible. He didn’t have a single photograph, but I remember his stories and I believed him. You know Tesla gave the world the electrical grid,” Dr Matheson explained.
“I’ve read a couple of books about Tesla. I’ve read a lot in the last year, as you can probably tell,” Frank responded.
For a few moments, it was quiet. Frank reflected on what Dr Matheson said. He looked for a moment out of the tent and could see in the distance New Eden. Iraqi soldiers and diggers were walking to and from a small encampment and filling their canteens at the well.
A loud thunderclap roared through the site. The ground began to tremble, as the sounds of soldiers running and shouting violently erupted.
“What in the hell is going on?” Frank shouted.
Both men jumped to their feet, and they could see explosions coming from the direction of the site. There was whistling and hissing and then another large thunderclap. Frank looked up and he could see what looked like airplanes several thousand feet above them and small objects dropping from them. They whisked through the sky, and looped back around, releasing their payload on several targets.
“Oh my God, they’re bombing us!” Frank shouted.
He could see Stephanie and Sir Richard running for the Land Cruiser. They put it in drive and began to drive towards the large obelisk at the site’s center. The three-story building collapsed inward, with several tons of solid rock crashing upon them. The Land Cruiser swerved and safely cleared the ensuing debris field. Soon other explosions followed, growing more intense and then what sounded like cluster bombs began to go off like a long string of firecrackers. The smell of incineration soon filled the air and a sense of panic was beginning to sweep over them.
What in the hell do we do?” Frank questioned.
“We run. We run to at least a half mile away from the site,” Dr Matheson proposed.
“Why in Christ’s name would they be bombing here?” Frank asked.
“They’ve been bombing here since the Gulf War was over. That’s why I asked you if you have any enemies,” Dr Matheson answered.
“We can’t just run like rabbits away from here,” Frank objected.
“I hope you’re not suggesting we run in the direction of the bombs,” Dr Matheson suggested.
They both could see several large clouds of dust coming from the vicinity of the site and Frank could barely restrain himself from running toward it. As he began to move in that direction, Dr Matheson grabbed him.
“It’s my job to protect you just from this kind of foolishness.”
“I don’t need protecting. With you or without you, I’m going to the dig.”
Frank rushed into the tent and retrieved his bag. He wrapped the strap around his shoulder and began to sprint in the soft sand toward the ruins.
“Are you coming or not?” he shouted back to Dr Matheson.
“Alright, it’s the moment of decision.” He too began to run, dashing forward with all his strength until he was running beside Frank.
“You know we’re both getting too old for this kind of sudden strenuous exercise,” Matheson told him.
“It’s not going to induce a heart attack,” Frank responded.
“What do you hope to do once we get there?” Dr Matheson asked.
“I hope to document whatever senseless destruction has happened.”
“But you know about Iraq?” Dr Matheson objected.
“I know all about Iraq.”
Matheson was having difficulty breathing, as they ran in tandem, and began to fall a few paces behind. When they reached the site, he stopped a moment to catch his breath. Neither of them was prepared for what they discovered. The damage was overwhelming. Flames had completely engulfed the large structure in which they had seen the helicopter and two of the trucks were on fire. Two charred bodies also lied beside the trucks. The sight of the charred bodies was eerily familiar to Frank as though he had seen a similar image before, but he searched his memory and could recall no time he had ever seen charred remains.
Removing his camera from his bag he began to photograph everything, every gruesome image of man’s unsurpassed capacity for destruction. He remembered what Einstein had said about war, that he didn’t know what weapons armies would use in World War III, but in World War IV, they’d be using stones and sticks, and as he saw Stephanie and her father running from tent to tent, he was overcome with emotion.
“I know sentiment against Iraq is overwhelming in the States. We could blow up the whole country of Iraq and most people couldn’t care less. But how in the world could this be considered a military target? In any stretch of the imagination?”
He took picture after picture of the burning structures.
“Six thousand years of our history lost because we’ve been unable to curb our unbridled passion for violence,” Frank commented.
“I know,” Matheson responded. “I know so well.”
“Let’s go down and assess the damage.” Frank proposed.
Then, unexpectedly, the hissing began again, and further explosions followed. A missile struck one of the large trucks and the concussion pressure from the explosion completely flipped it over in seconds before their eyes. They could also see that the entrance to the tunnel had taken a direct hit and its front end had collapsed on itself. Clouds of stone dust filled the air.
At this moment Stephanie was running and shouting, “My father’s been hurt. My father’s been hurt.”
“Come on,” Frank coaxed. “We have to help her.”
“We’re going to run down into that. I don’t think they’ve finished,” Dr Matheson objected.
“Yes. That’s why I am here. I understand that now.”
Frank began to sprint down toward where Stephanie was standing, and Matheson reluctantly followed him. As they passed them, two of the Iraqi soldiers pointed skyward toward two fighter bombers, which had dropped the bombs and appeared to be flying away.
“My father’s been hurt,” Stephanie kept repeating.
She led them into a tent where the soldiers had carried Sir Richard, obviously seriously injured. He was bleeding profusely from a wound in his abdomen.
“I don’t think I’m going to make it. I’m so sorry for bringing you to this God forsaken place. I’m sorry for taking you away from your friends, and from that boy at NYU,” he told her.
“I came here gladly, Daddy. I came here for Lionel. These past five years have been a blessing for me,” she told her father.
“But this is senseless. It’s not a military target. I argued with the Iraqis not to bring the military here.” He began to cough.
“Save your strength, Daddy. Medical help is on its way.”
“You’re going to have to carry on this work without me.”
He cringed in great pain. “Where are James and Hassan?”
“They’re down in the mine,” she responded.
“They should be safe there,” her father told her.
“They’ve blown up the tunnel. There’s no way to get down there,” she acknowledged.
“I hope you have no regrets, my child.”
“No regrets, Daddy.” The tears were streaming down each of her cheeks.
“Goodbye, my precious, Stephanie,” he took one more swallow and then died in her arms. She hugged him and cried uncontrollably.
Frank remembered the moments before his wife had died. The image of her frail childlike face as she struggled for every breath like an explosion burst into his consciousness, all the private fear, the unspoken sufferings of his life, as though a fever suddenly seizing him, brought him down to his knees, where he began to cry uncontrollably on the ground. Matheson, unsure of how to respond, knelt down with him, placed his arm around Frank’s shoulder and held Frank for a moment while Frank cried.
“I’m so sorry for losing it like this. But I hate the very thought of death,” Frank responded.
After a minute or two, he regained his composure, wiping his eyes with the cuff of his shirt. He stood up a moment began to look around in all directions, making a complete circle inside the tent. It was at this moment that three Iraqi soldiers, one an officer, entered the tent, and gestured with their machine guns for them to follow them. The officer grabbed Stephanie’s arm and pulled her away from Sir Richard.
The soldier began to speak to her in Arabic and she hesitated a moment and answered him. A second soldier took the bag from Frank’s shoulder and removed the camera, which he opened and exposed all of the film.
“No pictures,” he spoke in a strong Arabic accent.
“Where are they taking us?” Frank asked.
“I don’t know,” Stephanie responded. “But they think one of us has something to do with this.”
“What do we have to do with this?” Frank asked. “This is as much a shock to me as to anyone else.”
“We should go with them,” she almost pleaded.
As the soldiers led them outside the tent, she began to speak to them furtively in Arabic, almost pleading. One of the soldiers appeared to be getting agitated and began to shout back to her in Arabic.
“Do you have any idea what is going on?” Frank asked Matheson.
“She wants to go to her cabin to get a photograph,” he answered. “She says it’s important to her.”
This was her photograph of Liam from NYU.
“A photograph at a time like this? Why would she want a photograph?”
He could see the soldiers were reluctant to comply with her request. Finally, the officer gestured for her to go and she jumped into the Land Cruiser and began to drive toward the base camp. She was gone around fifteen minutes and when she returned, she held a photograph firmly in her right hand. She immediately rejoined Frank and Matheson. She didn’t say anything but held onto the photograph like it was her most prized possession.
The soldiers led them all outside to a truck which was waiting for them. Using the barrels of their guns, nudged them to climb into the back of the truck.
“Where are they taking us?” Dr Matheson asked. “Are they going to kill us?”
“I don’t think so,” she responded. “But to be honest, given what’s happened, I don’t know what to expect.”
“They’ll let us go, I hope,” Frank spoke with an anxious edge in his voice.
“I don’t know what to expect,” she repeated. “We just have to keep our heads.”
“What about Hassan and Mr. Jamison?” Dr Matheson asked her.
“I think we have more pressing concerns,” Frank responded.
The soldiers tied the canvas cover, sealing them inside and then the truck began to move.
After fifteen minutes of anxious silence, as each of them crouched on the bed of the truck, Dr Matheson was the first to speak.
“You know these people. They’re not going to torture us, are they?”
“Relax, Dr Matheson,” Stephanie attempted to calm him. “They have no reason to torture us.”
“Which means they do,” Dr Matheson stammered. “They do torture people.”
“No one is going to torture us, Max,” Frank interposed. “We’re not spies.”
“Do you still believe this was some kind of Disneyland ruse?” Stephanie asked. “My father and I never lied to you.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry about your father. I don’t know what to believe,” Frank responded.
They drove for nearly half an hour, over terrain, which kept bouncing them like balls off the bed of the truck and when they finally stopped, every muscle in Frank’s lower body was throbbing in pain. The soldiers then unloaded them from the truck and through the steel entrance of a fortified underground bunker. Inside the bunker, they were searched, Frank and Matheson by two Iraqi soldiers and Stephanie by a woman in full Muslim dress. The three of them removed everything from their pockets. Then the soldiers led them down a small corridor to a room, barely six meters by six, with a small wooden table and four chairs. The soldiers gestured for them to sit down then bolted the door behind them.
“I guess this means we won’t be eating in the base camp,” Frank tried to break the tension in the room.
“I don’t think they’re going to do anything to us,” Stephanie expressed, though with the uncertainty in her voice, it was obvious that she too was afraid.
“You’ve dealt with these people,” Dr Matheson asked her. “What can we expect from them?”
“They’re not monsters,” Stephanie answered. “They’re upset by what has happened.”
“But we’re not responsible for that,” Frank observed.
“Try to look at it from their perspective. They don’t know that.” She paused. “My God, Daddy, you’re gone! He would have known how to deal with this.”
They sat for another thirty minutes, each of them beginning to say something, but then stopping, until they could hear someone unbolting the door. A meticulously dressed Iraqi man with a gold ring on his left ring finger with a Muslim crescent moon entered the room. The Iraqi soldiers bolted the door behind him.
“Welcome,” he began speaking articulate English with a taint of an Arabic accident. “I’m Ali Omar Hussain.” He nodded a moment. “I’ve come to ask you a few questions about our tragedy.”
“We didn’t have anything to do with that?” Frank blurted out and Stephanie put her finger over his mouth to silence him.
“I’m sorry about my colleague’s poor manners,” she expressed. “As you can see we are all upset by what has happened.”
“As we are upset by the passing of your father. He was a good man!”
“Yes he was,” she acknowledged.
“As you must know with incidents such as these, there are always questions,” he continued. “Uncertainties which must be reconciled.”
“Of course, we are all more than willing to answer any questions you may have,” she responded.
“Then we shall try to make this as painless as possible.”
He pulled a chair back from the table and leaned it against the wall and he sat down on it.
‘There are certain things that you must know,” he spoke slowly and deliberately. “Things I know, you, being cut off from the news, must not hear.”
“Of course,” she replied.
“Last night at about nine o’clock PM, the United States president’s plane disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean and the American President, and a number of his top aides are believed dead.”
“We didn’t know,” Stephanie responded.
“According to American news stories, a terrorist group calling itself Omega has taken credit for the incident. We thought it highly unusual that in the middle of such a political crisis that an order would come for a bombing.”
“We’re not privy to the decisions of the American military,” Frank interrupted. “I am here for a news magazine.”
“We didn’t think so either,” he continued, “but then we find this in Mr. Matheson’s pocket.”
He held up a card with a large Omega on it.
“If I am not mistaken, this is an Omega,” the man said sarcastically. “Though we all like to believe in coincidences, it does seem highly unusual.”
He paused a moment and there was silence.
“Well, tell him, Mr. Matheson, what the card is all about?” Stephanie coaxed.
“Do you think that if I were part of a terrorist group called Omega, I’d be carrying around a card like this? It is a novelty card.”
“Mr. Matheson, I am an experienced interrogator,” the man smiled, “educated by the American CIA. You must know I don’t believe that.”
“Tell him about the card, Max,” Frank snapped at him. “This is no time to be playing games with people.”
“Alright, I’m part of a group called Omega. But they’re not a terrorist group. I was sent to keep an eye on Mr. Glen.”
“Sent by whom?” the Iraqi man questioned.
“I don’t know, by some man I met in a coffee shop in St. Louis Missouri.”
“Give me one reason why we shouldn’t turn you over to internal security as a suspected spy,” the man’s voice grew harsher.
“I’m not a spy.”
The official knocked on the door and the soldiers opened it. Then he gestured for them to take Matheson out of the room. Dr Matheson began to struggle, and they took him by force.
“So, what’s going to happen to him?” Stephanie asked.
“Nothing, if he tells us the truth!” he answered.
Frank tried to remember the last time he had faced such a predicament and it was in Costa Rica when he was covering a workers’ strike and they had taken him and a number of other journalists into a military compound. With the intervention of the US State Department this situation had been diffused, but he did not know who would intervene under these circumstances.
The official sat quietly with them for another ten minutes and then again knocked on the door.
He spoke to the soldiers in Arabic and Stephanie translated.
“Take them to a place more comfortable,” the official told the soldiers.
The soldiers gestured for them to follow and they were led down another corridor to a larger room with two mattresses lying on the floor and a small wooden table between them. Atop the table sat a basin and a pitcher of water. One of the soldiers spoke to Stephanie in Arabic and she responded. Then the soldiers gestured for them both to enter the room. The soldiers locked the door behind them once they entered and then left them there.
“Are we going to get through this?” Frank asked her as sweat was flowing profusely from his face.
“Be calm,” she sternly responded. “These things take time.”
Frank sat down on one of the mattresses and Stephanie folding her legs beneath did likewise.
“I’m truly sorry about your father. Who would have thought this was how the day would end? This is turning out to be far more complicated than I imagined!”
“We knew how dangerous it was to be here, but it was work we were both committed to. I loved being so close to the past,” she explained.
“So, you don’t think we’re going back to the site?” he asked.
“No, they’ll probably deport us. I’ll go back to England, and you’ll go home to wherever that is.”
“And what will happen to the site?”
“Who knows? They will probably turn it over to the Iraqi Defense Ministry for some military application. We saw history, a chance to glimpse into the past, and it will be forever forgotten. We’ll tell stories about it and no one will believe us. We’ll be like those UFO abductees, you read about in the tabloids, who claim they saw something truly extraordinary, but have only their unsubstantiated testimony to verify it.”
She spoke these words with such anguish in her voice.
“And they will laugh at my father’s life work and say it was all for nought. Just a few trinkets unearthed and put in an Iraqi museum.” She paused a moment. “And the Iraqis won’t say a word about it for fear of a full-scale invasion to seize it.”
“So then you’re saying I have no story?” He questioned. “After all this, I have no story.”
“None that will be published anywhere,” she acknowledged.
Then they waited. Hours it seemed, staring at each other from atop the two mattresses. Periodically, Stephanie would remove the photograph from her blouse and stare at it.
“You said something about Lionel when you were with your father?” Frank asked. “Is that the person in the photograph?’
“No, Lionel was my brother. He died five years ago in Egypt in a tunnel collapse. I had just finished my graduate studies and it was after Lionel died that I came to help my father.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So who is this person in the photograph?” Frank asked.
“He was the love of my life and my father wouldn’t let me be with him. He wanted me to help him with his work.”
“How long has it been?” Frank asked.
“Ten years,” she responded.
“A lot can change in ten years. He could be married.”
“He’s not. If we get out of here, I’m going to New York to find him.”
“I live in New York,” Frank responded.
“I know. But I have to find my own way. Do you believe we’re all somehow connected to each other?” she asked. “Sometimes I still have dreams about my friend.”
“Once I didn’t, but now I do. These past few months have been a huge change of perspective about so many things.”
“He used to say that people didn’t take notice of him, that they couldn’t see who he was and because of that they overlooked him. But I could see immediately who he was, and I remember him every day and every conversation we had. That’s what’s kept me going and I want to hear his voice again,” she spoke with anguish in her voice.
“Sounds like a great guy. What’s his name?” Frank asked.
“Not now, not here. They’re listening to us,” she responded.
After this, they waited anxiously and quietly for the Iraqis next move. They both worried what was happening with Matheson. In such anxious moments of anticipation, when the mind focuses on each sound as though an eternity, and time moved as slowly as they could imagine it, they waited for some change in circumstance. They had no idea how much time had passed when the soldiers finally opened the doors and tossed Matheson with his face bruised and bloodied onto the hard concrete floor. The soldiers locked the doors and departed.
“Are you all right?” Frank asked him as Dr. Matheson slid toward one of the mattresses.
“I think they’re satisfied I’m not a terrorist,” Dr Matheson acknowledged.
“Stephanie went to the table and poured some water into the basin, and she returned with it to where Matheson had settled. After she ripped off a small piece of cloth from the bottom of her skirt, she dipped it in the basin and began to wash the blood from his face.
“There’s no cause for this, “she expressed, ‘to bloody you up this way.”
“They didn’t need a cause, just some target to take out their frustrations on. I’ve long since grown past surprise on how brutal human beings can be.”
“You know they’re upset, over ten years of sanctions and the recurrent bombing,” she explained. “It’s misdirected rage.”
“Misdirected is the keyword here,” Matheson spoke. “I think they’re going to let us go. But not without us sweating it out a while.”
“You know you can’t dismiss a whole people because of misdeeds of their leaders,” she continued. “They want the same things that you or I want, enough to eat, a peaceful environment in which to raise their children. Most of them are as disinterested in these great political struggles as the average American or Brit.”
“I know all that,” Matheson responded. “But I still want to go home.”
Soon the same Iraqi official, who had met them in the room, opened the doors for them and gestured for them to stand up.
“We’ve decided that we’re taking you to Baghdad and from there will release you to your respective embassies.”
“What about my father?” Stephanie asked him.
He did not respond.
“I hope we can all put these unfortunate experiences behind us,” the official responded.
“We left our things at the camp,” Frank reluctantly told him.
“Any personal belongings shall be packed up and sent to you.”
