The Ghost Runner

by Parker Bilal

  Contents

  Prologue

  I CAIRO

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  II SIWA OASIS

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  A Note on the Author

  By the Same Author

  Also available by Parker Bilal

  Prologue

  Denmark, February 2002

  The wind cutting across the dark, deserted streets was an icy blade that dug deep into his bones. He shivered and, for the millionth time, cursed his luck at having landed in this country. Seven years he’d spent here and not a day went by when he didn’t wish himself elsewhere. A warm place at least, if not home. The weather and the constant reminder of his being different. It had strengthened his sense of purpose. That much was true. If he had never known Westerners before coming here, now he felt he knew them well enough to last a lifetime. His features, his skin, his faith, all marked him apart. For seven years he had lived as a shadow. They looked down on him, almost as if they expected him to apologise for his existence.

  A gust of icy wind cut short his thoughts. It whipped through any amount of clothing you cared to put on. It made his head ache. It was inhuman to expect anyone to live under these conditions. The rain that poured down day after day, week after week. The locals didn’t seem to care. The way it ran off their backs they might have been ducks. Muttering a silent curse under his breath, Musab hugged the cheap jacket to him and carried on walking. Already he was beginning to think he might cut short his evening stroll. The wind that shook the bare trees made him uneasy and he had the sense that something unearthly was about to come down on him. As if summoned from his thoughts, a handful of snowflakes flew out of the darkness to strike his face. He let out a groan of dismay. Underneath the long parka he wore a gelabiya and beneath that a set of thermal underwear he had purchased from a Turk bandit in the market in Aalborg. The kuffar had overcharged him, despite all the aleikum salaams that Muslims used in this forsaken corner of the earth to lull you into a false state of trust.

  Pausing for a moment at the corner, Musab turned to gaze back the way he had come. The large black Transit van was still there. Its lights were off, but from time to time he could make out movement inside the darkened cab. He was not unduly worried. He was aware that PET, Politiets Efterretningstjeneste, the Danish intelligence services, were keeping an eye on him. It wasn’t surprising. In the last few months everything had changed. Ever since the attacks on the United States last September they had taken a renewed interest in him. The people of this country had taken the attacks personally, as if they had been launched against them, not against the great Satan of the United States. Sentimental. They sucked in all things American unquestioningly, so that their own culture was barely distinguishable. He had watched from his living room, images of the Twin Towers tumbling down. It had dug deeply into him, a sense of pride, yes, not that he had been involved in any way, but at the audacity of it, the nerve to pull off the most spectacular attack in history. Carried out by young brothers, devoted to the jihad. He had watched the images on the news of people weeping in the streets here. They took it personally. They held memorial services, in schools and warehouses. The nation wanted to send a message of sympathy. It made Musab laugh. How stupid. But he felt the change soon after that. Taxi drivers were dragged from their cars and beaten, for wearing a turban. Nobody cared if it wasn’t Muslim. Women had their headscarves pulled off in the street. Children were set upon by their classmates. He himself was spat on in a train station. Nobody turned a hair. It was as if 9/11 had released a hatred that had always been there, simmering just below the surface. That was when they had hauled him in. Once, twice, three times. Always the same questions. Did he know of any attacks planned for this country? Did he understand that his permission to stay in this country was conditional on his co-operation? This was a bluff. They were legally bound to defend his right as a political refugee, no matter what his opinions were. That much he knew. The Danes prided themselves on being progressive, on defending the weak and the downtrodden. They couldn’t just turn on him now. His lawyer had made this clear. They couldn’t touch him. So instead, they kept an eye on him. It wasn’t a problem. He had noticed little signs. Phone calls where nobody was there when you lifted the receiver. Amateurs. They left little traces of their presence everywhere they went.

  Laughter and music spilled over him as a car rolled by. A young man stuck his head out of the window and yelled something that was snatched away by the wind. A bottle flew by to splinter against the ground as the car accelerated away in a trail of curses and cackling howls. Drunken fools on their way to hell. The music sank into the silence as the car disappeared around the next corner with a screech of rubber. There was a chance they would come back, if it amused them to humiliate him further.

  Musab had spent three years in an asylum holding centre, a rusty old passenger ferry docked in Copenhagen harbour, while waiting for his application to be processed, for the various offices to verify his story, to investigate his claim that he was a political dissident. In the end they concluded he was telling the truth, that if he ever went back to Egypt his life would be in danger. They granted him the right to stay in this country, fruit of their noble aspiration to be seen as civilised and humane. It made him laugh. Where else in the world would he be treated like this? They had no idea what things were really like, away from their fairy-tale land. Still, they didn’t just set him free. There were conditions. The state declared he was to be sent to a remote town in Jutland. It might as well have been the moon. There was nothing and no one here. The long winter nights were interminable and the wind was cold and merciless. At night the lights on the fishing trawlers in the harbour bobbed on the water, the sea as slick and heavy as diesel oil.

  His face was numb with cold, his lungs ached with every breath. In the distance he could make out the hum of cars passing on the motorway. Really he had nothing to complain about. His needs were taken care of. He had a roof over his head and there was no work for him. The state provided him with clothes, furniture, food, spending money. Musab was in no doubt that if he went home he would be arrested, just being abroad under these circumstances would have made him look guilty of something. And if there was one thing in life he didn’t want to do it was return to an Egyptian prison. So he bided his time though the idea of returning home was never far away. He longed for the familiar sounds and smells, to be among people like him. Sometimes the loneliness was so bad he wondered if death might not be a better alternative.

  Another car raced by, disturbing his thoughts. A halo formed around the street lights, each orange orb glowing like a matchstick. The snow was now bl
owing in thick flurries, out of the darkness, across the bare fields beyond the houses. The soft flakes filled the air like weightless insects, glowing like warm silver in the orange glow of the overhead lights.

  The Transit van slid up behind him, a smooth, silent shadow that he felt rather than heard. His woollen cap pulled down tightly over his ears. Overhead, the tops of the tall trees stirred in the wind. He had just begun to turn when something hit him from behind, pushing him to the ground. The air was knocked out of his lungs and he lay on the icy ground, stunned, unable to move. A snowflake landed on the pavement in front of his face. He watched it, suspended between the blades of a tuft of grass. For a brief second it remained there. Then it vanished and was gone for ever. It was the last thing he was to remember from this place. A jolt of current went through his body and he blacked out.

  When he tried to open his eyes he found that he couldn’t. He felt an engine surging beneath him. His body was numb. Through the narrow gaps around the blindfold he caught a fleeting glimpse of light and shadow hurtling past him. Then he passed out again. When he woke up he breathed in the dragon’s breath of aviation fuel, heard the screech of jet engines warming up. Now the cold vanished from his bones, replaced by fear. His feet scraped along the tarmac as he was carried between two powerful men, then up a short flight of steps. His wrists were strapped together. He could not feel his legs. A needle went into his arm and the world seemed to float away from him. The engines rising to an insane scream as they hurled along a runway. He lay like a corpse, unable to lift his head.

  After that there were confused snippets. Flashes of the world turning around him. A glimpse of unfamiliar stars through a porthole. The jolt of a landing. Voices. Again into the air. The same plane or another? Some part of him was aware that he ought to be taking note of what was happening around him, but the rest of him was so far gone that he didn’t care. He was floating in a stream of warm fluid. Even turning his head was a challenge. Night passed into day and then night again. The next time he opened his eyes he was shivering inside a narrow cell so dark he could not see his hand in front of his face. He was naked but for a filthy diaper around his loins. It stank like a cowshed. Where was he? He was hungry and freezing. Most of all he was scared. He seemed to have fallen off the end of the earth. The door was flung open and two men stood there. One of them opened up the jet of a high-pressure hose and he was flung back against the wall by the force of the water. It was so cold he felt his heart stop. He gasped for air, convinced he was going to die, to drown, or have a heart attack. When the water subsided the two men entered. They threw a set of clothes at him. Underwear and a jumpsuit and waited for him to dress. Then they manacled his feet together and tied his wrists with a plastic loop that dug into his skin. Then he was inside another aircraft, only different, bigger this time and more noisy. He was stretched out on his back on a hard floor that vibrated with the hum of powerful engines. His eyes were covered.

  ‘You can forget about the world you know, buddy,’ came the voice of a man bending over him to check his bindings, ‘you’re a ghost now.’ Then the rising whine of jet engines and the movement of air around him. He lost track of time and sensed they were approaching their final destination.

  He smelt it first. A familiar stirring in his memory. And the warmth of the air. No longer the frozen Nordic climate. No snowflakes and ice. A flutter in his heart told him this was the dust he had known as a child. He began to struggle again, twisting and wrenching himself from side to side, feeling the thin plastic bands digging into his wrists and ankles. The metal floor of the transport plane was hard against his back. He sensed they had stopped moving and lay still. He heard the whirr of a hydraulic system and sensed, rather than saw, the rear cargo door lowering. Then he felt the sun touch his face, and the slow spread of warmth over his body. His limbs seemed to be coming alive. The way a king might stir when the door to his tomb has been broken open after being buried for centuries. Like Ramses, meeting the dawn as the sun crept in along stone passageways.

  Instinctively, he tensed as a pair of boots approached. Someone knelt beside him. ‘Relax,’ a voice confided in Arabic, ‘you don’t need to fight any more. You’re home.’

  I

  Cairo

  April 2002

  (4 months later)

  Chapter One

  A necklace of tail lights arched across the skyline like a twisted rainbow. No two pairs were quite the same. Red was not always red, but perhaps a shade of orange, a garish green or even blue. Here and there the carnival spin of a twirling amusement flashed in a rear window to alleviate the boredom, coloured lights bursting like tiny explosive charges. Many vehicles showed no lights at all, either because they were defective or because their drivers found them an unnecessary expense. Makana had had plenty of time to study the subject. Years in fact, and tonight the Datsun had been stuck in traffic for what felt like hours but was probably only about forty-five minutes. They were now suspended in mid-air on the 6 October flyover in Abbassiya. Like upraised horns, the twinned minarets of the Al Nour Mosque rose up alongside them.

  The whirling carnival lights around the rear window of the minibus ahead of them were a distraction that ticked away in the back of Makana’s head, as was Sindbad’s constant stream of earthy comments and philosophical insights. The real focus of his attention was a black car just ahead of them on the right. It was quite a distinctive-looking vehicle. Old. Makana guessed at least thirty years. The first time he had seen it he had had trouble identifying it.

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘That, ya basha?’ Sindbad licked his lips in anticipation, always pleased to show off his knowledge. ‘That is Benteley. English car. Very good quality, from the old days of the Ingleezi.’

  It was a source of wonder to Makana where Sindbad ever came up with such nuggets of information. He never seemed to read anything but the sports pages and yet a layer of information, a seemingly random sample of obscure and unrelated facts, had built up in his head, like a sandbank deposited in the Nile over centuries. It could hardly be said that he was a connoisseur of automobiles, since he was content to drive around in this well-beaten bucket of a Datsun, yet some part of him aspired to the craftsmanship and quality of an entirely different class of car.

  The distinctiveness of the Bentley made it a little easier to follow. Tonight the sole occupant of the car was a small, compact man, who wore a set of expensive, ill-fitting and rather worn suits. Short-legged and paunchy, he cut an awkward figure who looked as though he had dressed in a terrible hurry. His shirt collars were never straight, his tie was badly knotted. His name was Magdy Ragab, a wealthy and highly respected lawyer in his late fifties. His dull appearance matched his daily routine. For almost a week now Makana and Sindbad, alone or together, had followed the lawyer as he was chauffeured from his home in Maadi to his office downtown and back again. He visited the legal courts, briefly, ate lunch at his desk and worked long hours, often not finishing until nine or ten at night. It was eight thirty now, which was early for him to be heading home. The cars ahead of them slid forward, bringing them to within two cars of Ragab’s Bentley, the right-hand lane having not moved. Sindbad cleared his throat, which suggested he had something on his mind. In anticipation, Makana lit a cigarette.

  ‘How much longer do you think she will need to decide his innocence?’

  Sindbad’s question implied their subject was innocent. Proof was always hard to find in such matters. According to Islamic jurisprudence three witnesses were required to prove adultery, a demand that had always struck Makana as a neat way of sidestepping the issue. After all, what were the chances of locating three people willing to swear a couple had been engaged in sexual relations? But of course it never went that far. Guilt by association. Two people seen talking together was often all the evidence needed to condemn them. In a society preoccupied with purity, sex became an unhealthy obsession. Displays of physical affection were frowned upon in public, even between married couples, which did
n’t make Makana’s job any easier. How do you prove infidelity? The usual signs were gifts, clothes, a car, an apartment where they could meet in secret. For a man, it was possible to engage another woman in an informal contract of marriage without too much difficulty. It was harder for women and the consequences were harsher. Many husbands didn’t care too much about evidence. They were only too happy to apply their own brand of justice, which was often less forgiving than the courts might be. The mere suggestion of infidelity could ruin a woman’s reputation. Often such cases ended in an impasse. The person who suspected their spouse of infidelity allowed the investigation to go on until they decided enough was enough. Patience ran out, or money, or nerve. Then it could go either way. Makana had, on occasion, been summoned to bear witness before an impromptu hearing in the presence of a judge, but that was rare, and even then inconclusive. Men responded predictably when confronted with evidence against them. Stringent denials on the heads of their mother and children and anyone else they could think of. Those not prepared to swear their innocence inclined to violence. Grown men hurling themselves across the room to try and strangle their wives for having spied on them, oblivious to the people around them, let alone the judge.

  What Sindbad was really asking was how much longer they could expect Mrs Ragab to pay them to follow her husband around. They had seen no evidence of infidelity on his part. In Makana’s view, Mrs Ragab would probably never be fully convinced that her husband was not planning to desert her for someone else. She was overbearing and difficult to deal with. Certainly, she did not give the impression of being the kind of woman to turn a blind eye to her husband’s errant behaviour. In her imagination perhaps there would always be a younger woman somewhere waiting for Ragab to come to her. All Makana could do was report back that so far Ragab’s behaviour was about as normal as you could hope for.

  The Datsun had slid forward another few metres to where it was almost parallel with the Bentley, bringing Makana to the point where he was sitting alongside Ragab. Turning his head, he glanced across. The lawyer sat staring ahead at the two rows of cars that rose upwards ahead of them like an illuminated path to the stars. What was going on in his mind? For the first time in a week he had broken with routine. For the first time he was heading in an unexpected direction. And he seemed preoccupied, glancing at his watch and tapping the steering wheel impatiently. The right-hand lane began to move. As it did so, Ragab glanced sideways. His eyes met Makana’s. It was only for a fleeting moment, but it was probably enough.