An Enemy Within Read Online Free PDF Page A

have been a little easier had there been someone else to blame. But there was only herself.
    Pity had turned to loathing, frustration to anger. A whole mix of feelings magnified to manic proportions, usually by the first glass of wine from the second bottle she was drinking most nights. Taking the best part of the day to try and figure out why she felt so down, the cycle would begin again each evening. She knew it had to stop – but it was getting harder. The sides of a pit seemed all the more slippery when you dug it yourself.
    Her sleep was being disrupted with frightening regularity, too. The disturbing legacy of her last job abroad in Afghanistan left her with decisions she couldn’t find the courage to face.
    Letting out a deep, shuddering, sigh, she opened a drawer, took out a couple of shirts and folded them neatly into the bag. She picked up the black beret she’d worn on that fateful day in Kandahar, which brought memories flooding back. She’d been one of the first photographers to land in the province after the defeat of the Taliban. Even the most liberated media outlets had baulked at some of her pictures. To see how the Afghan tribal fighters had treated their Taliban enemy was triple X-rated stuff.
    It also raised the question of what she was trying to achieve by recording such hardcore scenes. Her answer always used to be the same; to portray the truth – however horrific. Her passionate, obsessive fight against war seemed to know no bounds.
    Her best friend once asked her, ‘Why do you do it, Alex? Being so anti-war and all?’
    ‘Everyone’s got a voice. Some don’t use it. I just hope my work shouts a lot louder,’ she said.
    But Alex had come to realise the cost of such high principle was now proving emotionally expensive. Doubts about her future as a war photographer surfaced uppermost in her mind.
    Once, it had seemed so simple. Inspired by the countless books of iconic photographs on her bookshelf, the transition from staffer on a New York glossy to freelance warphotographer proved seamless. She packed her bags – and off she went. No thought of danger, her belief in the pictures she produced and the shows she got outweighed everything else. Her own personal crusade.
    Now, she faced the ultimate impasse that many of her battle-hardened colleagues had warned about: the loss of nerve. A contributory factor lay in that very honesty she aimed to portray. Writers, she knew, often stretched the truth and got away with it. Alex wondered if stretching the acceptability of the truth had reached snapping point with the magazines and newspapers she worked for.
    She knew she must come to the junction before much longer: to turn left or right?
    As her mind wandered, she found herself gripping the beret tightly and when she looked down, her hands were shaking.
    Flavours of her bad dream flashed by like a familiar taste. Shivering, she let the beret drop to the floor. Memory rampant, it overruled her attempts to shut them out. She was drowning in a sea of corpses, frantic for air. Pinned down by grotesque lifeless arms and legs, the same suffocating scenario replayed – a bloodied arm splayed across her throat, heavy and choking. Relief only ever came at the last minute – a sudden petrified consciousness that always left her drained, sitting up in bed, bathed in sweat and gasping for breath.
    Her phone rang. She went into the living room, quickly trying to compose herself. Answering it, she tried to sound as bright as possible. But the voice of her ex-lover, Richard Northwood, destroyed her calm in an instant.
    ‘Richard,’ she croaked. ‘I thought we agreed we wouldn’t…’
    ‘We did, so I’m sorry for the call. This is business,’ he said without trace of emotion. ‘I hear you’re off to Iraq with Mr Rumsfeld. There’s something you could do for me and the department – for old time’s sake.’
    A growing sense of shock consumed her. Her hand reached for the top button of her shirt. He was