He doesn’t, thought Nat miserably. But I do. She turned back to her newspaper, leaving Mikhail to sit in docile silence. Eventually Anton turned up, looking every inch the drowsy-eyed lothario.
‘You took your time,’ said Nat.
‘A pleasure to see you too, Ms Kocharian.’
He was wearing a pair of pointy tan loafers and carrying a cream jacket that was obviously fresh from the souk. As he hung it on the back of his chair, his eye was drawn to a smudge on the cuff and he set to brushing it away with the back of his fingers.
‘For fuck’s sake leave the jacket alone,’ said Nat.
‘You’re a big poof,’ said Mikhail.
‘Maybe you guys should have followed my example and stayed in bed,’ said Anton.
‘You been fucking that girl,’ observed Mikhail sagaciously.
‘What can I say? Love-making puts me in a great mood.’
‘You’ll have to tear yourself away,’ said Nat, ‘because you and Mikhail are going to Smara.’
‘Where’s Smara?’
‘A fourteen-hour drive south. I’m meeting someone who may know where Nikolai is,’ said Nat. ‘I want you two there as backup.’
‘Backup for what?’
‘Backup in case I need help from a retired gym-bunny and a gigolo?’ said Nat. ‘How the fuck should I know? If you don’t fancy it, Anton, stay here with your casino whore. I’ll go alone.’
‘I would never let Nikolai down,’ said Anton theatrically.
‘I’ll arrange the transport. Get back here for midday. Bring your passports and be ready for an overnight trip. I’ll call you tomorrow in Smara.’
James took a double dose of ibuprofen, bound his knee with canvas and set off north. The sun swooped and swung overhead, beating the air into glassy shapes, filling every iota of sky. He was a blip on its radar. It was following him. His tongue was starting to thicken, his knee throbbed where the shrapnel had twirled, the hole in his side wept. He wasn’t drinking the water in the last tube round his waist, though he knew he should take what he needed – knew that in deserts just like this men had preferred to die of thirst than face the despair of finishing their last drop.
The pain kept his mind from circling in on itself, from swaying into darkness. One step at a time, he said out loud. Count them. Before he’d reached a hundred, the words were back: al Bidayat. Anemone. You could walk to their beat, one step per syllable, eight in all. Repeat. Ten times for eighty steps, or eight hundred, or eight thousand. Better than counting. Where are the guards in the Land Rover who will take me back to my yellow-curtained room, to my shower tap and my bloodstained mattress? The sun was moving towards its apex, land and sky so ferociously bright he could barely open his eyes. Al-Bid-ay-at. An-em-o-ne. You could do it for ever.
James saw the man some time later. He came out of his trance and watched him, half a mile off, his outline wobbling like poured water. Beware of light-headedness. That’s when your thoughts unravel and scamper behind your eyes. He drank from the tube and raised the Parker Hale to his hip. The man started to walk away, a patch of colour drifting over the scorching void. James followed. They walked in tandem for ten minutes. I’m not gaining on him. If anything, the gap between them was wider. He realised he wasn’t walking, but shuffling. He forced his legs to swing and straighten properly, and watched the man’s gait intently, hoping for signs that he was tiring. His eyes ached from squinting. There’s no one, he thought, I’m chasing something my own mind put there. The ghostly howl of the one o’clock sun flattened everything. Another ten minutes and the gap had closed again. Had it? The man broke into a trot. It had. James lengthened his stride. Stay in touch. He wondered when to make the decisive move. Whether he was capable of making the decisive move.
Twenty minutes passed. He wasn’t gaining any further, but lurching along on empty. The dogged, desperate pursuit was in stalemate. His tongue was gagging him, a wedge of dry gristle in his throat. He sucked from the tube at his waist and felt his mouth fill with plastic-scented air.
He must catch this man now, or the chase would finish him.
Concentrate, the way Sam would demand.
He cleared everything from his mind, everything but the long, fluid movements of his arms and legs, the steady pumping of air in his lungs. The gap closed to five hundred yards. The man noticed, picked up speed. But he was crossing rough, untracked desert, and the harder he ran, the more he stumbled. James closed on him again. His quarry veered towards the smoother surface of the dirt road James was on and the angle he took worked against him. In a few minutes, James could bring the Parker Hale to bear. He quickened again, willing his mind to overcome the heaviness tugging at his bones. His breath was losing its precious rhythm, whooping and rasping in his throat. The pursued man was struggling through a series of dips and ridges, but soon he would reach the road and the race would even up.
The effective range of a Parker Hale was no more than 150 yards, but you could get a bullet to kick up the dirt at twice that distance. The man scrambled up a short rise and on to the road. James came to a standstill and unslung the machine gun, aimed it a couple of yards above the man’s head.
‘Stop!’
The word disappeared like a scrap of confetti in the turbid layers of superheated air. His quarry did not stop. James fired a burst from the Parker Hale and saw flickers in the sand just short of the man’s heels. He aimed up and left, fired again, then sent another burst to his right and sprinted forward. The man was running full pelt, but panic disrupted his steps and he spun to the ground. Now he was in range, and James had the machine gun snarling in triumph, ripping up the sand around his victim’s ankles.
The man didn’t get up, but turned to face him. It was Salif.
Chapter Fourteen
Nat watched the landscape tilt and flatten as the little Cessna tore into the sky. They banked sharply to the west, and all life seemed to be set out below: the city of Marrakech with its dense, jumbled centre and desiccated outskirts strewn with tiny houses, the lines of tarmac strung with beads of traffic, the patches of cultivation like pieces of a half-finished jigsaw; and beyond them, the crumples and gashes of the pristine desert stretching to the far horizon.
‘I confess I don’t quite like these aerial antics,’ said Zender unhappily. ‘I tell the pilot not to veer in so dramatic a fashion, but air traffic control shout at him until he has left the commercial lanes. ‘Ouf! Dear me. . . ’ he exclaimed as the little plane hit a thermal and dropped like a brick, the pitch of the engines whizzing up a register as the propeller mashed the lighter air.
Nat had been treating Zender with icy reserve, awaiting the moment to confront him with the fact that as co-owner of the Casino des Capricornes he must at the very least know more about Nikolai’s disappearance than he had so far let on. She’d made another connection, too: according to Aisha, the rich men who owned the casino hadn’t just told her to set Nikolai up, they’d ordered the disfigurement of her friend. One girl, they cut her lips. . . But Claude could not be capable of such a thing – not knowingly, anyway. Aisha must have got that wrong, Nat concluded – it was something else altogether. But the taint of the story would not quite leave her.
‘Every time I fly in this toy,’ said Claude Zender, ‘I vow never to do so again. This seat was designed for an underfed child.’
‘If they made a seat for you, it would be the only one on board.’
It was the kind of jibe she had delivered many times before – but it came out as an insult. The hostility penetrated Zender’s funk and he looked at her with curiosity – but if he was composing a reply, it was silenced by another patch of turbulence. Soon, the plane levelled out and skimmed south through calmer air. Claude rearranged himself and pulled a leather-bound flask from the pocket of his jacket. He poured a tot into the glass top and knocked it back gratefully, then took several deep breaths.
‘I said we were visiting a client of mine. But perhaps now is the time to explain that I still have possession of
the IPD400.’
Natalya turned to face him.
‘Fuck the IPD400! What have you done with my brother?’
‘Your brother, yes. The Improbable Hulk, as I think of him. You know that as well as marching up and down outside Zizou’s and patrolling the casino like a trainee Cheka, he used my name to obtain a free rug worth two thousand dirhams from my friend Mr Choukri in the souk?’
Nat was thrown by this – what had Nikolai been thinking of?
‘I thought he was an envoy from my past – I have enemies who would employ men just like him to take their revenge. But I should have guessed, after this extraordinary act of chutzpah, that he must be a Kocharian.’
‘Where is he?’
‘You will be reunited with him in due course.’
‘He has nothing to do with this.’
‘Nothing? You did not bring him to Marrakech in the belief that having a small-time Ukrainian gangster at your side might prove useful in your pursuit of the IPD400 and the riches you expect it to bring you?’
Nat lost her temper. She threw herself forward, wrapped her arm round the neck of the pilot and tightened with all her strength. The pilot’s hand jerked the joystick and the plane banked and set off into a shallow upward arc.
‘Stop, you’ll kill us!’ Claude bellowed.
‘Where is my brother!’
Claude tried to reach out for her arm but his seatbelt held him back and when he released it the angle of the plane’s ascent sent him crashing against the exit door. The pilot was grunting for breath, hand clamped on the joystick but unable to push it forward sufficiently to bring down the nose of the aircraft. With his free hand he clawed at Natalya’s arm, but her grip was tenacious. The fuselage started to rattle as the engines strained to haul the plane upwards.
‘We will stall,’ Claude shouted, heaving himself forward in his seat. ‘Let the pilot go, I beg of you!’
‘I don’t care if we die! What’ve you done with Nikolai?’
The plane was losing momentum as its climb steepened, fast approaching the point of weightlessness when gravity would outweigh the propeller’s thrust.
‘I swear to release him, I swear it! Let the pilot go!’
Natalya released her grip and slumped back in her seat. The pilot’s hand shot forward. The plane gave a shudder and hung in the air like a kite in a dying breeze. For a moment it seemed that there would not be enough power to get the tail up. They must fall back. . . Then the Cessna tipped sideways. They dropped for several seconds, not flying but tumbling. The plane began to corkscrew. Air roared over the wings. Nat’s bag banged against the front windscreen. Claude lurched forwards and clung to the empty co-pilot’s seat. Five slow seconds passed. As the pilot fought the joystick, the spin became a broad spiral, and then the spiral opened into a long, breathtaking swoop. The Cessna vibrated with the ferocious velocity, then flattened off at last. Once again, they were shooting through the skies on level wings.
‘You still want to play your fucking games with me, Claude Zender? Do you?’ Nat shouted, trying to keep her voice from trembling. She hadn’t realised how close the pilot had been to losing control of the plane. But Zender was in no state to reply: he was wedging himself back into his seat, clamping his seatbelt shut with trembling hands. His face had the hue of codfish belly, and sweat mixed with blood from a graze on his forehead streamed into the already sodden collar of his shirt.
‘Tie her up!’ the pilot yelled. ‘We’re going to land.’
‘Shut up and fly,’ said Nat.
‘Point made, Natalya,’ said Zender, when his terrified panting had abated sufficiently to allow him to speak. ‘Though it is hard to imagine a more foolish way of doing so.’
‘I don’t like to be cornered.’
Claude closed his eyes and began to breathe heavily. His mouth dropped open. Then he lifted his head and glared at her. ‘If I die in this foul aircraft, they won’t know what to do with your brother other than to kill him.’
His monstrous head fell back and he closed his eyes again. Natalya watched the jowls below his jaw quiver every time the plane bumped. A few minutes later, they hit another pocket of turbulence and he jerked upright, looked at her accusingly, drank from his flask, then lay back again. Nat thought she would like to open the door and push him out, watch him plummet until he were no more than a speck in the pale brown landscape below.
Their transport was an ageing Peugeot 504 estate which their driver, a nervous, dark-eyed old man, had decked out with an array of religious artefacts covering both the Christian and Islamic faiths, Virgin Marys and crucifixes jostling for space with a compass decorated with a picture of the Shrine of Kaaba and a selection of prayer cards. These apparently gave him licence to drive at a relentless pace. As they catapulted past the vans and lorries grinding up the hills south of Marrakech, Anton imagined the Holy Mother’s benedictory hand embedding itself in his back teeth. Mikhail, meanwhile, had stretched out on the back seat, arranged a T-shirt over his face, where it was held in position by the bristles on his cheeks, and gone to sleep.
At three o’clock, they stopped and ate houmous and chips off paper towels. Their meal was interrupted by a furious whining overhead. Anton looked up to see a single-engined Cessna whir up into the sky, then flip over into a chaotic dive.
‘This country would be a fuck of a lot safer if they still went around on camels,’ he observed.
After Agadir, the road straightened and emptied.
‘Souss-Massa National Park,’ said their driver, jabbing his finger into the west. ‘Bald Ibis. Many other birds.’
‘I really don’t give a fuck,’ said Anton.
‘Tiznit: two hours. Guelmim, Tan Tan, border – maybe eight hours. I don’t know. Maybe many more hours.’
The landscape of ochre hills and black rocks rearing out of the rumpled sand made Anton feel depressed. Where was everyone? He longed for the comforting plumpness of Maria’s bottom wriggling on his groin. He was actually fond of the girl. He closed his eyes and pretended to go to sleep. At Tiznit, a town of salmon pink buildings with blue doors, they stopped to drink mint tea and be stared at by a café full of thoughtful Berbers. Three hours later, they arrived in Guelmim.
‘Why would anyone build a town here,’ said Anton.
‘On route to Timbuktu,’ said their driver. ‘Sahara begin now.’
‘And I thought we were about to come out the other side.’
‘Sahara is big,’ said Mikhail, whose capacity for sleep appeared to have reached its limit.
‘Oh thanks a fucking lot for that, Micky, I didn’t know we had a tour guide with us. Anything else you can tell me about this fascinating land?’
Mikhail gave a bellow of hilarity. ‘I tell you it is big. Now I tell you. . . ’ He was barely able to get the words out between wheezes of mirth: ‘It is sandy.’
‘Wow. And it’s hot, right?’
‘Yes. . . ’ Mikhail gasped, snorting mightily. He could say no more but fell to nodding and mouthing the word hot over and over again.
‘Ignore him,’ Anton said to the driver. ‘Which way now, then? Let me guess: straight on?’
The road seemed a tenuous thing, its verges lapped by scurrying eddies of sand. Up ahead, the two lanes narrowed into a thin grey line and vanished at a point unnervingly short of the horizon. Anton pictured them three months hence, arrangements of leathery flesh and parched bone imprinted in the dust.
Salif glowered at James from beneath one eyebrow. The other was too swollen to move. James tied his hands, then searched him. Salif carried nothing except a canvas bag with two plastic bottles of water. James took one and drank until he felt he could speak without choking on his tongue.
‘What are you doing out here in the desert, Salif?’
Salif raised his head and looked at James, but didn’t answer. Anger flickered in his eyes, but there was no outright hostility as far as James could see, and he remembered the conciliatory look Salif had given him after his treatment at the ha
nds of Etienne and Mansour. Just then, he heard the drone of a light aircraft overhead – a twin-engined Cessna, dropping low over the desert to the east and apparently intending to land not far from the compound.
‘Let’s go,’ James said.
‘Have dirhams?’ Salif asked, a censorious frown creasing his forehead.
‘Yes, I’ve got your money.’
They set off north along the dirt road, James limping a few paces behind with the Parker Hale levelled at the small of Salif’s back. His prisoner hadn’t yet explained what he was up to, so James tried again.
‘Why did you leave the compound?’
‘Look for you,’ said Salif.
‘The big man in the black cap sent you?’
‘No. Not work for him. I come alone. I am Polisario soldier. Good for fight Moroccans.’
‘Are all the guards Polisario?’
‘Guards not Polisario men.’ He turned round to waggle a bony finger and glare at James, as if the suggestion were an insult. ‘I am Polisario soldier. Younes Polisario soldier. Report to Colonel Sulamani.’
‘Sulamani was the officer who shot Hamed, the one they tried to execute?’
‘Yes. Colonel Sulamani is Polisario officer. I work for him many years. My people always work for Sulamani people.’
‘Won’t he be angry that you left the compound?’
Salif looked crestfallen. ‘I let you run away. Sahrawi men proud. Proud people.’
‘So who are the other guards?’ James asked, prompting Salif to start walking again.
‘Report to Commander Djouhroub.’
So that was the name of the big lump of muscle and bone in the black military cap who’d presided over Mansour’s botched execution of Hamed. James had thought at the time that there was something confused about the relationship between the commander of the guards and the dignified old officer who had shot Hamed – that they must operate under different lines of command.
‘Then who pays Commander Djouhroub and his guards? Who gives them their orders?’
Little Sister (A James Palatine Novel) Page 21
