He never saw the alarmed protests from FO underneath.
****
Two days later, Selim arrived as planned, exactly on time at half past six in the morning. He stopped his engine and hopped off the motorbike. He scanned the area nervously, with eyes glistening with sleeplessness and extreme tension. He looked carefully around the mosque at the corner of the impressive park of Cinquantenaire. Glancing sharply to right and left, he could feel his brain beating furiously inside his skull, every beat an invisible drill gouging huge holes inside his head.
The streets were deserted. Morning traffic had not yet begun. Every now and then, the distant noise of a passing car broke the silence. The trees and shrubs of the park were dripping with the tons of water the Brussels sky had poured throughout the night. The heavens remained pitch dark as the dense cloud of November did not allow the first faint tinges of early daylight to reach the city. The lampposts of the park and the lights in the streets and boulevards were fully on as though the mechanism assumed that it was still fully night-time. Occasional sparrows greeted one another, along with the dissonant voices of crows and magpies sheltering in the sparse shrubbery among the towering bare trees of the park.
Selim locked his motorbike and set the alarm button. Almost at a run, he sped to the entrance of the mosque, where he took off his shoes at the small fountain.
Mechanically, he pushed the loose tap which suddenly turned twice, the water gushing out in front of him. The icy splash revived him somewhat. He filled his cupped hands and splashed the water over his face. Then he washed his face and neck more carefully. He slowly raised the sleeve of his jacket and then his jumper underneath. He went on to wash his arms, then removed his shoes and socks and carefully washed his feet. The more water he threw on himself, the more he felt the chill of the clear shining drops refreshing and invigorating him as they touched his skin.
He finally completed his ablutions and proceeded into the mosque’s main hall of prayer. He knelt, bowed over and allowed his soul to open with his prayer. He thanked Allah for so clearing his mind, and begged him to grant the steely determination to complete his mission of revenge. He would avenge the blood of his innocent family, the high price paid by his parents and his brothers for simply being. They had committed no sin. On trembling knees, he repeated his prayer for forgiveness and absolution. The sure death awaiting him now seemed trivial; it would only be the ultimate redemption of his body and tormented mind, an imperative bitter end of his story. His intention was pure and absolute.
But he would not stain his revenge with innocent blood. When he stood beside the Israeli military attaché and pressed the trigger, he would not kill or injure innocent bystanders.
His position and its responsibilities provided superb camouflage. As he was himself responsible for the security of the Service and the Commissioner, nobody would control his entry. There was no time for second thoughts. He had been granted a unique opportunity and all he asked was the death of the man who had deprived him forever of his roots. All he asked was the administration of justice. Submerged in a dark cloud of black and tenebrous thoughts, he was roused by a small sound just behind him. He sprang up and turned his head towards the sound.
“I come from Ali, my brother. I am Ahmed.” The man, looking calculatingly at him, had a harsh and decisive face, and yellowed eyes that threw flames of hatred in the dim light of the mosque. “It's time, Tair! Now is the great moment, my brother!” he said softly.
“Yes, it has finally come. Today it will all end, brother,” agreed Selim, his voice tired yet determined.
“Today you will be glorified and will glorify the name of Allah. You will become a great hero and go directly to Paradise as promised by the Prophet,” continued the other. “Let’s go outside, I have everything we need in my car, it’s parked a few metres down.” Selim followed him silently.
After a few seconds they were standing by Ahmed’s bright red VW Golf. In the back seat, a bearded someone in the robes of a Muslim monk sat like a shadow. The three took a path away from the pavement and were soon hidden in the half-dark behind a thick clump of bushes in the courtyard of the mosque, though the wet leaves were outlined in pale gold light from the streaks of dawn that were beginning to penetrate the cloud.
With quick movements and the help of Ahmed, the Muslim monk produced two carrier bags containing a detonator, ten kilos of plastic explosive and a wire. In the semi-darkness the only witnesses were a few oddly silent birds nearby. Deftly, the monk packed the inside pockets of the baggy jacket Selim had purchased especially for the occasion with the bars of explosive.
Then, with great care, he connected all the wires, placing the detonator very carefully on the right outside pocket of the jacket. Throughout the three or four minutes of this strange robing, Selim sat erect and motionless, like a stone statue. His mind was emptied of any kind of human thought or hesitation. All he could think of was the target, how to approach the target as closely as possible. And when he had succeeded, there was a little red button on the side of the detonator in his pocket to be pressed. A small movement of the forefinger of his right hand and that was it. It would all be over then. This red button, barely the size of a shirt button, was the final solution.
“Are you ready, my brother? Just beware of sudden movements... Good luck in the name of Allah! The name of the Almighty is great!” whispered the young monk in his ear. Ahmed too wished him good luck in the name of Allah and, “Death to all enemies of Islam!” In an effort to encourage him against cold feet at the last minute, he slapped him lightly on the back saying: “Do not forget, brother, today you will be glorified and will glorify the name of Allah... Do not forget the great evil done you by the unbelievers! Finish the preaching of hate!” With this last encouragement, he vanished behind the dense foliage of the park to return to the red Golf that impassively awaited them. They jumped quickly into the car and disappeared in seconds.
Selim stood alone for a moment, motionless in the same place, listening to the engine of the red Golf fading into the grey morning of the city. He tried to take a deep breath; the saturated air of the park seemed to drown his lungs. He came out of the park and began to walk with slow steps, right hand clenched in his pocket, a fraction of an inch from the vital red button. He approached his parked motorcycle and groped for the key in the back pocket of his jeans. He paused and looked at it for a while. Then he lifted his head and fixed his gaze on the tempestuous sky. The dawn had begun to erase the menacing leaden clouds over the city. He felt suffocated. The stink of humidity and damp decay that filled the atmosphere and his lungs once again disgusted him so much that he could almost vomit. He began to cough as his stomach lurched into his throat. Staring fixedly ahead, he passed the parked motorcycle. He did not stop or look at it... He would not take the bike on this mission. There must be no distractions.
He was suddenly seized by a compulsion to stand beside living human beings for the last time, to feel life throbbing beside him. Even just for a few minutes. Even strangers. To sense the rhythms of human life pounding beside him. Soon he would never feel again the unique ardour of life that beats relentlessly in every corner of the globe, every minute, every second. Life was so powerful! He must pay it one last tribute.
The Merode metro station was within a few minutes’ walk. With slow but resolute steps and fixed, absent gaze, Selim descended slowly towards the station. The pale morning light was starting to grey the houses and streets of the Belgian capital. The traffic had now increased considerably, and the noise of cars, trams and buses jamming the streets reached him as an indeterminate roar as the colourless metropolis resumed its daily routine.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Sixth Stop: Merode – Selim
Selim plunged blindly down the stairs of the metro and into the first carriage of a train that had just pulled in. His body trembled. His head felt as if a hot spike had been driven through his skull. He thought he might explode any minute and disintegrate violently into a my
riad pieces.
“Just a few more minutes... just a few minutes!” It hurt to breathe. There was no air. He was suffocating. With every breath, his heartbeat thundered louder in his ears.
He could discern nothing around him in the grey blur, heard nothing, was aware of no one. Persistent annoying trickles of cold sweat dribbled down his back.
“A few minutes, a few more minutes... just a few more!” He repeated this mantra over and over. His body seemed to have parted from his consciousness. Something monstrous was growing inside him. An icy, slimy monstrosity which would burst out of his belly, like that movie, and coil around his throat and crush the air from his lungs until there was nothing left of him but a gasping rattle...
He was long past any kind of volition. “A few minutes, a few minutes only... a few more minutes!”
Inches away from the first door of the first metro car, Selim Çelik, once called Salim El Amin, and looking confused to the point of madness, tremulously counted down the last minutes and seconds that separated him from his rendezvous with death. “I, Tair the Avenger, will destroy mine enemy in the name of Allah. He awaits me, the fiend from hell.... Oh, Lutfi, my father and Fatima, my mother, Kamal my brother, Ismail my lost brother, at last I will avenge you! There is no God but Allah!” He closed his eyes, suddenly perceiving that he was surrounded by people, none of whom was his foe. “Where am I now? Who are all these people? Where is he, the Ben Geffen demon? Not here... not here...” A thought skittered across his mind and was gone. What might have been in another life... Feridé Ökem, a warmth he would never know, never meet... “and I hold that demon’s life in my hand... where is my hand...?” He was clutching the detonator unit so tightly that his fingers were numbed. “There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet...” he repeated under his breath.
Keith stretched his body and made to get up from his seat. Then he changed his mind, pulled from his coat pocket the iPod which was playing Charlie Winston’s ‘Kick the Bucket’ and pushed the off button. His last thought, as he slowly coiled the tiny headphones around it before restoring it to his pocket, was that he had taken a really important decision, and how much the revelation of the scandal and the final release would mean for him and for the memory of his beloved Maeve. His whole life until that moment, his close personal encounter with the face of death in the flooded basement elevator, had taught him one thing: that if you believe, something will surely bless you. He buried the iPod back in his inside pocket as far as he could and got up slowly.
The electronic beep sounded once more for the loudspeakers in the train to announce the next stop. A few metres before reaching the station, the train preparing to stop gave one of its sudden jerks, obliging the travellers to struggle to regain their balance.
All of a sudden, the carriage was filled with a strong smell of burning as a dense white smoke began to boil out from inside Selim’s jacket, a step away from Keith, Sévérine, Giovanni, Feridé and Kasja.
A terrible shriek rose from the throat of the dark chap in the elaborate jacket. All reason lost, Selim cursed the moment which had wrecked the ultimate purpose of his life. In that lurch of the train, his hand had depressed the red button he had been so carefully holding among the crowd of innocents. This was not his intended plan!
He cursed loudly. “Was this His will?” His eyes became mad. “Very well; my original plan is dead! Insh’allah!”
His scream was echoed throughout the car as panic spread. “It’s a bomb!” “Get out!” “Pull the alarm!”
The ‘Belgian Basilisk’, Valerie Noutens, had already jumped up and was charging at Selim. Because of her police training, she alone had immediately realised what was happening and in a hopeless effort, leapt like a wildcat to overpower the bomber. With a skillful headlock, she managed in a fraction of a second to flip him over and with a second movement, threw him down as she fell upon him like a wild jungle animal. By now everyone was screaming and pushing in an attempt to reach a safe distance from the human bomb. At the same instant the loudspeaker’s familiar female voice had begun to announce ‘Next stop...’
But the phrase was never completed. A deafening explosion rocked the carriage. The blast that followed dispensed a violent river of destruction, sweeping away everything in its relentless path. With a sickening crash, the glazed windows and doors of the train shattered into a thousand pieces. A huge ball of fire, a grisly reminder of hell itself, filled the carriage, consuming everything in its path. Nothing could resist that inexorable firestorm. The plastic explosive, overloading in Selim’s pocket, had not only failed to reach its intended target, but in one instant, had dissolved the joys of random, innocent fellow passengers, their sorrows, their anxieties, their expectations, aspirations, concerns, doubts and questions, and those of some whose lifelines had crossed and tangled, although they had never met. The hideous flame of the terrible explosion incinerated everything in a dense cloud of smoke and annihilation.
And so, Keith, Feridé, Kasja, Giovanni Sévérine, Valerie and Selim confronted together for a second and last time the merciless and God-fearing face of death, the ‘final loss’ in the words of grandmother Maura of Sallins in County Kildare. On an ordinary, grey, Brussels morning, colourless and trivial, a morning so like all other mornings. Caught in a complex web of relationships which they would never know. In the dark burrow at the entrance of Schuman station, the deafening and raging fire-breath of hatred and revenge signaled a tragic and fatal epilogue.
The steel rails would go on, but there would be no next stop.
THE END
The Next Stop Page 23
