The Ghost Runner

by Parker Bilal

  ‘You set fire to the place. Was it because she wasn’t your daughter?’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about it.’ Musab looked at Makana in the rear-view mirror. ‘Why so much interest?’

  ‘He’s working for some rich lawyer in Cairo.’

  ‘Ragab?’ Musab sneered. ‘Well you can tell him from me I wouldn’t stoop that low, either for her, or that whore of a mother of hers.’

  They drove on for half an hour before Musab murmured, ‘There they are.’

  Makana followed his finger and could make out two heavy shapes that stood out against the sand. Rigid, square shapes that looked like lorries. The Lada pulled up alongside and Musab got out. ‘You’ll do the driving from here,’ he said to Sergeant Hamama. ‘I’ll direct you.’

  Makana thought they looked like the Magirus-Deutz lorries he had seen at the depot on the road out of town. They looked empty. A couple of figures broke away from the shadows to meet Musab as he approached.

  Sergeant Hamama climbed in behind the wheel. ‘I don’t like this,’ he murmured.

  ‘A little out of your depth here, are you, Sergeant?’

  ‘I don’t know who these people are. This wasn’t what I understood at all.’

  ‘What were you told?’

  ‘Like with any shipment, I would guide them into the depot and then check the goods and that would be the end of it. I get my share and the goods go out according to supply.’

  ‘So you had no idea what they were bringing in?’

  ‘Certainly not weapons for the Palestinians.’ Sergeant Hamama was chewing gum fiercely. ‘You don’t get involved in politics. That’s the rule. This is a business deal.’

  ‘That’s what Musab told you.’

  ‘Between you and me I wasn’t that keen on letting him back in, but he made out that he had money to invest. I figured we do one deal together and see how it goes.’

  ‘So he played you.’

  Sergeant Hamama twisted in his seat. ‘Can you see anything out there?’

  Makana looked. ‘Probably Sharqi and his men.’

  ‘No, they would be coming from over there.’ Hamama pointed a little further to the left. ‘And I can’t see any sign of them either.’

  Musab returned and climbed into the passenger seat. ‘All set,’ he said.

  ‘The sooner the better,’ said Hamama, as he started the engine. ‘You lied to me.’

  ‘Take it easy. This is a good deal. It pays well and it puts the security forces in our debt. We will have a friend to call on if we ever have trouble in the future. So just relax.’

  The big diesel engines broke into life with a sharp series of coughs. They grumbled as the drivers revved them up. Each of them flashed their lights to signal they were ready.

  The Lada took off with an awkward lurch and Musab pointed them south again, further into the desert.

  ‘Did you take care of Wad Nubawi?’ Musab murmured.

  ‘Yes.’ Hamama had other things on his mind. ‘How do you know we can trust them? They’re State Security. They could turn us in at any moment.’

  ‘Why would they do that?’ Musab asked. ‘Look, trust me, it’s almost done. All we have to do now is transfer the weapons to our lorries and hand the shipment to Sharqi. He’s probably expecting a medal or something.’

  ‘And then you’re free?’ Even Hamama seemed incredulous.

  ‘Oh, well, you know how it is.’ Musab gave a dismissive wave. ‘I promised to keep passing them information.’ He glanced over at Hamama. ‘What’s the matter? Not happy?’

  ‘I just don’t trust them, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, you don’t have to trust them, I do. If you had any idea what they did to me in that place . . .’ Musab stared straight ahead of him, at the unbroken darkness. ‘You wouldn’t believe it.’

  ‘Hamdilay salamah,’ muttered Sergeant Hamama.

  ‘The point is that I’m back. We’re partners now. Things have changed.’

  Sergeant Hamama tossed his gum out of the open window and reached for his tobacco. They changed direction. The wind threw sand grains at them that screeched softly along the side of the Lada like the scrape of tiny fingernails. Out through the windscreen a pair of yellow eyes glowed briefly in the headlights before vanishing. A desert fox? A nocturnal creature of some kind? What appeared silent and empty was in fact no more than a soft veil drawn over teeming life. The Lada was old and held together now more by habit than by sound mechanics. Although the handrail was not entirely solid it was still firmly attached. Makana worked it back and forth to loosen it.

  ‘I thought I saw Daud Bulatt back there.’

  ‘Who?’ Sergeant Hamama asked, tucking snuff into his cheek.

  Musab glanced back at Makana. ‘What do you know about Bulatt?’

  ‘Only that he’s a fairly dangerous character to mess with.’

  ‘In Kalonsha? You can’t have seen him there.’ Musab sought out Makana’s eyes in the mirror.

  ‘Maybe I did, and maybe you don’t know who you are dealing with.’

  ‘It’s not your concern.’

  ‘I think it is, since you’ve decided to hand me over in exchange for him.’

  ‘Who is this Bulatt you’re talking about?’ growled Hamama.

  ‘He’s a jihadist,’ Makana said. ‘The serious kind, not like our friend here. He lost an arm to Soviet special forces in Chechnya.’

  ‘And where does he come into this?’ Sergeant Hamama spat carefully out of the window.

  ‘He’s what this is all about,’ said Makana.

  ‘I like this less and less.’ Sergeant Hamama cursed and spat again, this time getting most of it on his uniform.

  ‘It’ll be fine. He’s trying to make you nervous.’ Musab gave Makana a wary glance.

  Through the rear window Makana saw the two lorries moving quickly behind them. Beyond that he caught a brief glimpse of something glinting in the starlight. Sharqi and his boys following along at a distance.

  ‘What is that?’ Sergeant Hamama was squinting out through the side window.

  ‘What?’ asked Musab.

  ‘There. To the right. I thought I saw something.’ Hamama had slowed down and was squinting out of the window. Makana saw nothing. ‘Where are they supposed to be meeting us?’

  ‘We’re not there yet,’ said Musab, glancing at his wristwatch. ‘They should be waiting for us up ahead at the well.’

  Almost before he had finished speaking five sets of powerful headlights came on to their right, illuminating everything. The inside of the Lada was lit up as if the sun had suddenly appeared over the horizon. Hamama cursed and slammed on the brakes.

  ‘What is this?’ Musab asked.

  There was a long silence, broken only by the hum of engines. In the distance behind them the hiss of hydraulic brakes could be heard and the lorries came to a halt.

  ‘What is this?’ Musab repeated, opening the door.

  ‘Don’t get out,’ Hamama warned. He sounded nervous.

  ‘Don’t stop here, keep moving.’ Makana felt the handrail give.

  ‘Don’t be stupid. We have to stop. But this is not where we agreed. Let me see what’s wrong.’ Musab slipped out and began walking towards the lights, one hand held up to shield his eyes from the glare.

  ‘Drive on,’ Makana urged Hamama. ‘There’s still a chance, but you have to move now.’

  It was too late, though, much too late. Heavy-calibre machine guns mounted in the back of the vehicles fired with a dull, regular thump. Musab disintegrated in the blast. His upper body came apart. Bullets slammed into the Lada. The wheels sank onto their rims as the tyres burst. The windows cracked, smashed, flew into shards, the engine expired. The whole car rattled and shook as if in the grip of a fever. Makana flung himself out through the door. He heard Hamama give a terrible cry. Shells slammed into the upholstery, the framework. Makana crawled behind the rear wheel and drew his knees up, squeezing himself into the smallest possible size. He heard Hamama groaning in the front se
at. Further away the roar of diesel engines as the lorry drivers turned and fled. The shooting stopped. The Lada was still making noises. Steam hissed from the front and hot metal was clicking somewhere. The lights went off and the world was plunged back into darkness.

  ‘Help,’ Hamama groaned. ‘Help me, please.’

  Makana waited until he heard the whine of the Land Cruisers racing away, then he slowly straightened up. There was blood on his face and arm where he’d been hit by flying glass or metal. His legs were shaking so hard he could barely stand. The Lada was riddled with holes. A blue flame flickered beneath the engine. When he pulled open the driver’s door Sergeant Hamama fell heavily into his arms. As he lowered him to the sand he screamed in pain. Both his legs had been shattered.

  ‘You have to help me,’ he pleaded, clutching Makana to him.

  ‘A moment ago you were happy to hand me over to certain death.’ Makana found the key in the sergeant’s pocket and freed himself of the handcuffs.

  ‘Come on, I had no choice. Those were the terms.’ Hamama’s voice was hoarse, his face twisted in agony. ‘You’ve got to help me. I need a doctor.’

  ‘There are no doctors out here, and I can’t carry you.’

  No sign of Sharqi and his boys either. Maybe that was part of the plan too. Or maybe they just ran for cover. Makana surveyed the darkness around him. The thick mass of stars overhead. The silence that had absorbed the noise and fury.

  ‘Hey! Where are you going? Come back! Help me!’

  Makana considered the idea. Then he thought about Rashida and Luqman and finally about Zahra. He didn’t look back. He simply turned and began walking, straight into the darkness.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  After the immense silence and open space of the desert, the city fell over him like a cloak. And while the congestion felt oddly alien, it also came as a relief. The traffic surged with the same feral intensity, lights flashed in quick succesion like a series of silent detonations, people hurried through the shadows as if seeking shelter from the onslaught. Sindbad was waiting by the battered old black and white Datsun, a sorrier and more welcome sight Makana could not imagine.

  ‘Ahlan wasahlan, hamdilay salamah, ya basha.’

  Sindbad looked in vain for a bag to carry and, loyal as he was, concealed his dismay at the lamentable state of Makana’s clothes.

  ‘The journey was fruitful, I hope?’

  Makana sighed as he climbed into the car, removing a damp package of what appeared to be a large fish wrapped in newspaper.

  ‘My wife,’ muttered Sindbad in a tone of despair as he chucked the offensive passenger into the back. ‘She insists we eat fish twice a week. I tell her if Allah had intended for us to eat that much fish he would have given us whiskers and a tail. A man needs meat, wouldn’t you agree?’ He broke off when he realised that Makana was not in the mood for idle banter. ‘A thousand apologies, ya basha, and a thousand blessings for arriving safely.’

  Makana sat quietly. For a moment he felt as though he was still detached from this place, still in that bus rolling through the desert. In time the memory would fade from his body like a fever, leaving only a distant trace of its having passed through him, but for now he felt like a man who hovered somewhere between this world and the next. A time that now seemed like a long dream. For two days he had slept and walked and shivered and sweated. He lay on the ground and listened for the approach of scavangers. Two days was the time it had taken him to walk back to the main road and find a lift back into Siwa. Two days during which he was no less than a step away from dropping to the ground and letting the sun do its work.

  They sat there in the car for a time. Makana smoked a cigarette and Sindbad said nothing; he knew better than to disturb the great man while he was thinking. After a time Makana stirred and turned to look at Sindbad as if wondering how he had got to this place.

  ‘There are a couple of stops we have to make before you take me home.’

  ‘I am at your command, ya basha.’

  Sami Barakat was expecting Makana. They had already spoken on the phone and so he was somewhat prepared, although his friend’s gaunt appearance shocked him more than he cared to admit. Rania let out a cry of alarm when she set eyes on him and the two of them stood there staring at Makana as if he was, indeed, the ghost of the person they had formerly known. When their business was concluded they agreed to meet again the next day to talk things over at length.

  It would be safe to say that Magdy Ragab on the other hand was not expecting Makana, who had chosen not to announce his arrival by telephoning ahead. Being familiar with his client’s habits, Makana had a fairly good idea that the lawyer would be home on a Friday evening at this time. A maid showed him into an elaborate salon for receiving visitors. The room was weighed down with a heavy assembly of furniture in the ornate Louis XIV style so popular among the middle classes. Chairs and divans with clumsy feet and tightly buttoned upholstery, the arms and back adorned with elaborate carvings. A large green marble mantelpiece framed a fireplace over which a stained, gilt-edged mirror revealed the sorry state Makana was in. His hair was full of sand, his face blasted by wind and sun and his clothes tattered and torn. Makana turned his back on his own image, thinking that this probably explained the maid’s look of disapproval. It may also have applied to the acute concern in the expressions of Ragab when he entered the room, and his wife who arrived close on his heels.

  The couple were dressed informally. He wore slippers and a paisley dressing gown over a white shirt and dark trousers. He was smoking a pipe and looked for all the world like a character who had stepped out of a French period drama. His wife was dressed somewhat less stylishly: a dull-brown tracksuit whose shapelessness did little to complement her dumpy figure. They sat together on the divan, while Makana preferred to remain standing, his back to the mirror.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you, having not heard . . .’ Ragab began. Right from the outset there was an air of disappointment, as if nothing Makana could say or do would rectify this breach of protocol. He reached into the pocket of his gown to produce an envelope which he placed on the low white coffee table. ‘I suppose this is what you came for.’

  Makana picked up the envelope and peeked inside at the bundle of banknotes. He set it quietly back on the table.

  ‘I think perhaps you’d better hear what I have to say first.’

  ‘Very well,’ nodded Ragab, folding his arms and sitting back. ‘First of all, I am assuming that you have not managed to solve the case. You didn’t find the man who killed Karima?’

  ‘I’ll come to that in a moment. But to begin with I’d like to take you back to the beginning,’ Makana said. ‘Mrs Ragab, you were worried that your husband was involved with another woman, which is why you originally contracted my services.’

  ‘I know,’ she twittered coyly. ‘I can’t think why I ever got such a foolish thought into my head.’ She glanced at her husband. Clearly the matrimonial rift had been healed, if it had ever existed. There was no gesture of physical affection, which would have been unseemly, but the degree of intimacy and trust between them was plain. For his part, however, Ragab looked uncomfortable at such displays in front of a stranger. He scowled at the bowl of his pipe as he tamped down the tobacco with his finger and bent the flame of an expensive gold lighter to it.

  ‘In a way,’ he puffed magnanimously, ‘we could say that we owe you a debt, Mr Makana. You have brought our marriage back to life after all these years.’ He gestured at the envelope. ‘That is the reason you will find I have been a little more generous than necessary in calculating your fee.’

  ‘I’m very grateful, I’m sure. But if you will bear with me,’ Makana said. ‘I need to just lay things out in the right order. Now, as you know, I followed you for several days and discovered nothing that justified any of Madame’s suspicions. Until the final day, that is, when I followed you to the Garnata Clinic and Karima.’

  ‘Yes,’ Ragab shook his head to himself. ‘Such a
tragedy.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. And unnecessary.’

  ‘Unnecessary?’ Ragab queried. ‘How can you say that?’

  ‘The fire was started by someone. We are agreed on that. That is what you asked me to investigate. I believed it was connected to Musab. He was on the run. He had returned home and something had gone wrong. I learned that he had been recently tortured and that can turn a man’s head. He was terrified of being caught again and sent back. He was also suspicious of Karima. He never really believed she was his daughter. He had been convinced that Nagat had been unfaithful to him while he was in prison. In short, Mr Ragab, he believed Karima to be your daughter.’

  Ragab champed his teeth down on the stem of his pipe. ‘It’s true that he was paranoid, even in the old days. He trusted no one, including myself. I assured him many times that I would never have committed such a dishonourable act. But I told you all of this before.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Makana tilted his head in concession. ‘I just need to clarify things.’

  ‘I understand, for the record. Very well, please go on.’

  ‘Well,’ said Makana. ‘I began to wonder if perhaps Musab was not the only person to suspect Karima of being your daughter.’

  Mrs Ragab had appeared to have lost interest in the conversation. She not only did not speak, she barely seemed to be breathing. When Makana’s eyes came to rest on her she shifted in her seat.

  ‘Who else might have suspected that all those years ago her husband had been unfaithful? Even more, that he had maintained the outcome of that brief liaison secret all these years? Wouldn’t that be enough to provoke a fit of jealous rage?’ Makana paused for long enough to light a cigarette. He tossed the matchstick into the fireplace before realising that it was meant as mere decoration. ‘Somebody started that fire with the deliberate intention of trying to kill Karima, regardless of who else was in the house.’

  Neither of the Ragabs said a word. Makana went on. ‘For a long time I struggled to try and make the facts fit into this picture. I couldn’t. The problem was that I assumed Karima’s death was the result of jealousy, or some twisted sense of honour. Either on the part of Musab, or . . . someone else.’ Makana glanced at Mrs Ragab but left the rest unsaid. He reached in his pocket for the sheet of paper Sami had given him. ‘I took a chance in going to Siwa, but I was angry about Karima. I wasn’t thinking clearly. All I could think was that she had been young and she had died a painful and unjust death. I was convinced Musab was the key and that I would find him in Siwa. It was a risk, but in this business sometimes you have to take risks to make progress.’