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 him of a vacancy. Because James was vouched for, the firm offered to cover his air fare, and pay him an initial salary of $8,333 per month, rising to $12,000 on completion of three months' service. It was too good to turn down. In August 2004 he flew to Baghdad.
Chameleon Security Services, better known by the acronym CSS, had secured a contract to guard the employees of an American engineering firm. CSS was run by four directors - two Americans, an ex-Special Forces man from Britain, and a Kuwaiti backer.
The precise details of how CSS had won the American firm's business were unclear, but in the volatile post-war climate, contracts frequently changed hands. New companies continually emerged as former soldiers saw the profits to be made in the private sector; the principal qualifications being an impressive military CV and the ability to provide manpower. The logistics of running a successful financial enterprise were often far from being the main priority.
CSS's sole contract had enabled them to rent a large building in the affluent Mansour district of Baghdad, close to where the British contractor |
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| There were two rules: keep the safety catch on your weapon off, and avoid news crews |
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Kenneth Bigley had met his fate.
To avoid similar problems, CSS employed Kurdish guards to secure the building's perimeter, while a machine-gun nest on the roof provided an additional deterrent to anyone approaching uninvited.
James and the other men lived on the military base at Baghdad international airport in a former Iraqi Ministry of Transport building. They were a strange mix of nationalities
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and ages, with the oldest being comfortably into his fifties. Ex-Ghurkhas, US Rangers, Marines, SWAT cops and Vietnam veterans worked side by side.
The days soon fell into a familiar pattern for James: an early start, breakfast in the US personnel mess hall, then off to the CSS HQ for the day's work instructions, returning to the base before nightfall.
James quickly learned there were two rules to follow in Iraq: keep the safety catch on your weapon off at all times when off-base, and avoid Al Jazeera news crews, on the reasonable assumption they knew something you didn't. Another feature of life on the base was the daily mortar fire, which was sufficiently accurate to raise suspicions that the insurgents were receiving information from Iraqis working for the US military.
Some of the older hands could remember being able to visit restaurants in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam, but those days had long gone as the violence continued to spiral. Instead, evenings were spent watching CNN, or swapping stories over a few beers. The common unspoken thought was how each man would react if there was a 
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