Prologue
Turkish–Syrian border, 2014
‘I can’t believe you got a car.’ Lee looked around the spartan interior of the old Toyota Hilux, impressed.
‘Of course I got a car.’ Cunningham looked across at her and winked, the hot wind blowing his dark hair back, his eyes hidden behind his aviators.
She shook her head with a sigh. He could charm the devil. ‘How’d you do it?’
‘Fifty bucks and all my smokes.’
She arched an eyebrow. ‘All of them?’
‘Well, maybe not quite all.’ He grinned, reaching into the pocket of his flak jacket and handing some over.
She shook her head.
‘You quit?’ He sounded incredulous. Cigarettes and whisky were some of the only pleasures to be had out here.
‘Trying to. Those things will kill you, you know.’
He threw his head back and laughed, replacing the cigarettes in his jacket pocket. ‘Yeah, right – it’s the cigarettes that’ll get me.’
She smiled too, dropping her head onto the armrest, feeling happy to be back. The windows were open – the air con had died in this car long before war had broken out – and she could feel the sun beating ferociously on her arm as it lay flat on the ledge.
Her camera lay on her lap, ever-ready, but for once she didn’t pick it up. She wasn’t working yet and her eyes grazed the empty landscape, looking for beauty – a green tree, a high-flying bird, cattle grazing, some flowers. Instead, they were amid an unbroken panorama of red, baked earth, mountains at their backs, the mighty Euphrates a few miles south. Every so often, they passed a stray coil of barbed wire twisted on the ground, a deep gash in the ground where an IED had gone off, tumbling concrete ruins of what had once been villages, plumes of dust in the sky from not-so-distant gunfire and mortar attacks.
She closed her eyes, enjoying the feeling of her blonde hair tickling her face in the breeze, trying to resist sleep. She had only been back out here for three days but those three days had been spent on the road trying to catch up with Cunningham since her flight into the military airbase in Hama, the region where they were supposed to have met up. She had gone home for six weeks for a badly needed break but Cunningham hadn’t stopped moving in that time: she had left him in Raqqa, he’d journeyed through Hama – seemingly without stopping – and now, here they were in Aleppo province, nudging the Turkish border.
To Lee – momentarily softened again by her retreat to the land of electricity and hot running water, of luxury cars and feathered beds – it felt like standing on the knife-edge of the world, the horizon found and captured with nothing else beyond. The colours, the heat, the noise – everything was raw here. Conditions seemed to have deteriorated in the time she’d been gone; she wouldn’t have thought that was possible after Homs, but somehow the level for rock bottom kept dropping down.
The road was in desperately poor condition, deep potholes and ruts bouncing them around alarmingly; it seemed unlikely the old Toyota’s suspension could take it, and yet somehow the little car kept motoring along, blooms of dust in their wake.
‘I saw you hooked up with Schneider.’ She arched an eyebrow.
He looked across at her and gave a bemused laugh. ‘Now don’t you get jealous. I had to use someone. I didn’t know if you were even gonna come back.’
‘I said I would, didn’t I?’
He gave her one of his looks, the ones that went where words wouldn’t. They both knew how she’d been when she’d left here. Homs had been brutal, a relentless, pounding bombardment that had pulled the marrow from the bones of even the most seasoned reporters.
‘He’s not a patch on you, Fitch, and you know it.’ He gave her one of his famous grins and she couldn’t help but grin back – she did know it – both of them feeling the adrenaline surge that came from doing this job. By any normal definition of the word, they were mad, driving headlong into a conflict zone and actively looking forward to it.
How many assignments had they been on together now? Eleven, twelve? Pretty impressive given the areas they’d worked, given this had been an accidental partnership in the first place. But Homs had been a pivot for them both. She’d thought she’d seen the worst there was to see, she’d thought barbarity had lost its shock value for her and no depravities remained to break her heart. Until the barrel bombs had started falling from the skies. Even now, the sight of a helicopter, the sound of its distinctive drone, made her blood stand still in her veins.
And what was it for? Why did she and Cunningham put themselves through this, dismantling their own souls, putting their lives on the line when it didn’t change anything? Words on the front page of a newspaper weren’t enough; a photo of a child’s terror, a mother’s desperation, wasn’t enough to stop those bombs from falling, because still they fell, and harder than ever. But she was drawn back here – against her better judgement, against all reason – for the very simple reason that if not her, then who? People only believed what they could see; she had to be their eyes. These stories had to be told. These people had no one else. And neither did she.
Cunningham reached over and squeezed her thigh. ‘It’s good to have you back, Fitch. I missed you.’
‘Yeah, I guess I missed your ugly mug too. Although I’d have appreciated you telling me to meet you here, instead of a hundred miles away,’ she said with a sarcastic smile. ‘That was three nights’ sleep I’ll never get back.’
He chuckled, his fingers tapping lightly on the top of the steering wheel. ‘Gotta go where the stories are, Fitch.’
‘There’s stories all over this hellhole. You can’t move for stories. There’s not a person in this country who doesn’t have a story.’
He looked across and winked. ‘Not like this one.’
Something in his body language caught her attention and made her antennae twitch. ‘Oh God,’ she groaned. She had seen that look only a handful times over the course of their partnership but she knew exactly what it meant. ‘What have you got?’
‘A tip-off.’
‘Uh-huh,’ she mumbled, waiting for more. Cunningham prided himself on his network of contacts; it ran across the country, criss-crossing regions like a gossamer spider’s web, unseen but for a tiny vibration in the wind.
‘There’s a small village, Khrah Eshek, eight miles west of here. There’s a guy there I want to talk to. Name of Moussef. I helped his cousin, Abbad, in Raqqa—’
She watched him as he talked, seeing how burnt his skin was, the dust in his hair, fatigue as worn upon his body as that shirt. Did he even notice any more? She had only been gone six weeks but her perspective was fresh again. She saw this place with new eyes.
‘—get his three kids out of their house when it took a direct hit. His little girl was pinned beneath a lintel. We managed to get her free but both her legs were crushed.’
‘How old was she?’ She winced, already seeing it clearly in her mind’s eye. How many other little girls had she photographed in the same anguish?
He shrugged but she saw the little ball pulse in the corner of his jaw. ‘Six?’
‘Will she walk again?’