Saddam Hussein had no idea how he came to find himself in such a strange place. It was an unfurnished and utterly characterless expanse, though it seemed to be indoors, in which he could not even trace the source of that strong but shadowless light, which made his hands look as smooth as a child's.
Surreptitiously, in case anyone should see, he held up his polished watchband, and tried to look at his reflection. It was more than illusion, he thought. From his face, the effect of decades of sin, cruelty, sleeplessness and fear had fallen away, to leave a wiser, more knowing version of the young man who had left Takrit so long ago.
There were stranger things to come. He thought of the sort of place he would feel most at ease, and it was as if his thoughts brought a military headquarters into being around him. As if from the corner of his eye, he thought he half-saw uniformed figures passing and repassing in the distance, and he could hear a distant chatter of male voices, and the sound of heavier boots than his associates wore.
Turning around, he almost bumped into a desk which had not been there before. A young man rose to his feet and saluted, with the unforced respect which Saddam had heard of, in the days when he still read books. He was uniformed, though with no badges of rank, and his face and form were of an almost unearthly beauty, his manner that of an extraordinarily good aide-de-camp.
For a moment Saddam bristled with the resentment he felt around taller men than himself, but that must have been some kind of illusion, for the man turned out to be just his own height, or perhaps a little less. Or had Saddam somehow thought the man smaller? He would have preferred him to be less handsome, too... And this time there was no mistaking it. The man's face had somehow grown coarser and less benign, in response to Saddam's will. Perhaps he was turning into a god - which did not, when he thought about it, seem such an unreasonable thing.
"You!" Saddam bellowed. "Where... Ah, what's going on?"
"You don't know, sir? They very often don't. You're dead, sir."
"Dead? That's impossible! Why, just a moment ago I was in a meeting, with my family and friends... "
"Family, sir, yes. Not friends, as it turns out."
"Oh, I see. I'll kill them, the traitors! No, worse than killing, I'll - "
"No, sir, I'm afraid you can't do that. You're dead."
"All right then, I'm dead," said Saddam, who was, if you make your definition narrow enough, a brave man. "So what am I doing here?"
"Surely you must realise, sir? We have to make sure you get what's coming to you."
"Oh."
Saddam, who had kept his composure through years of fear, mistrust and, he supposed, guilt, was for a moment overcome. He had, of course, been exposed to his religion's very literal concept of Hell, and had long since dismissed it as a myth. But death is no time for denial, and for a moment he saw, heard and smelt the eternal fires, and felt their searing breath.
"So what are you going to do to me? Where are the... the arrangements?"
"That depends entirely on you, sir. You can have anything you like."
