Free News From the Red Desert by Kevin Patterson Page A

Ten years ago he would have fired him on the spot. Not now.

    Stewart Robinson walked off the RAF Herc and hoisted his bag over his shoulder and looked around. He put his Oakleys on and silently took in the familiar hills south of the airstrip, even as a Major Horner—with dual appointments in public affairs and the base adjutant’s office, the man quickly explained—fell in beside him. The major said he was really quite pleased that Robinson could come. He imagined that the book tour for
Country of Stone
had been pretty exciting. As he had discussed with Robinson’s publicist, he had arranged a reading for the soldiers that night. There were ten media requests for interviews, seven of them television. Was there any way Robinson could extend his stay? Had he followed the reviews in the American and British press and did he ever expect a response like this?
    By this point, they had reached the holed and patched-over building they all called Taliban’s Last Stand. Its rooms were being used as offices now. Horner and Stewart paused for a moment and looked at the pock-marks of machine-gun fire on its walls.
    “You have powerful memories of this place, I’m sure,” Horner said.
    “I do. It’s where it all started, you know.”
    “Your writing career?”
    “No. The Taliban.”
    “Oh, of course.”
    “So what’s next?”
    “I’ll bring you to your room and let you get cleaned up. Then we’re having lunch with the ISAF battalion commanders on base.”
    “Who wants to interview me?”
    “Peter Morgan from CBS, Tom Parry of CBC, Caroline Rudolph from NBC, Jim Ackers from Fox, Clark Smith from ABC.”
    “Is Deirdre O’Malley here?”
    “Yes. She’s been back for a few weeks.”
    “Has she put in a request to interview me?”
    “No. But I’m not sure she knew you were coming. She’s been out on patrol a lot.”
    “Does she go by the press tent?”
    “Only when she needs something from someone.”
    Robinson grinned. “Have you ever worked in the media?”
    “I was a reporter for the
Times Picayune
for a couple of years before enlisting. That’s in New Orleans.”
    “Six years ago?” Robinson asked, glancing at his rank insignia and calculating.
    “Yes.”
    “Was it a good decision?”
    “Are you kidding? Best decision ever. I was going nowhere as journalist. Hardly anyone was. And it’s even worse now for the print media, I think.”
    “Think we’re getting much done over here?”
    Horner paused. Brits—even ones immersed in the intelligence world—are not Americans. “It’s a really tough job we’ve taken on. We might not succeed.” He prayed he would never be quoted saying that. “But that would be a strange kind of effort—only trying when you know you’ll win.”
    Robinson conceded, “It’s got a better chance of working out than Iraq does.”
    “Iraq will work out, too.”
    “Will it?”
    “Already has, partly. We’ve gotten rid of a genocidal tyrant.”
    “That’s not the story the Iraqis are telling one another these days.”
    “If we’re going to win, we have to change that story,” Horner said, smiling.
    “Or the facts that drive it?” Robinson asked.
    “I heard you wrote a book,” Horner replied, his smile growing ever wider, and his eyes narrowing almost imperceptibly.
    Okay, he was smarter than Robinson had thought. Maybe no more interesting. “I did. I told a story about people I met and what they told me.”
    “Why?”
    Robinson let that hang and they walked a while more, until Horner stopped them in front of a barracks. “Is this where I’m staying?” Robinson asked.
    “It is. Room 104. Here’s the key. I’ll meet you here in an hour. Don’t drink the tap water.”

    Horner returned to his office while Robinson was cleaning up. He found a stack of messages on his desk. The one on top was a high-profile memo, addressed to public affairs personnel in theatre. Signals intelligence had recorded large volumes of data being exchanged through