‘Well actually, Prime Minister,’ said Sandra Cowling, the Home Secretary, ‘I think we’re quite focused on how powerless the government’s looking right now.’ The rest of the table nodded into their coffee cups. ‘The wolves are circling.’
‘They’re learning from the vultures, then,’ said Michael.
‘Michael, the media’s baying for blood over our promised banking legislation,’ said his Chancellor, Duncan Verso. ‘With respect, it’s a shambles and if we don’t look as if we’re dealing with this—’
‘You’re right,’ Michael interrupted, ‘appearances are everything, Duncan.’
He took responsibility for his government’s failure and lack of direction; he was clearly not in control. But he felt his pos-ition more closely resembled a young prince who gets thrust into being king, his court ignoring his authority because he belongs to the realm of the child: a risk, Michael mused, of a leader who talks in fairy tales.
The Kidnap of Hanif Salah
We have kidnapped the storyteller Hanif Salah. If you care for his release, watch online at www.serendipityfoundation.org tomorrow at 7pm.
The name was unfamiliar to the majority in the neighbourhood. The elder teahouse patrons remembered Hanif as a young man, but they hadn’t seen him since the 1970s when the last generation of professional storytellers ebbed away from the public squares and cafés. He did not grow up locally; some recalled him arriving from a village on the banks of the Nile where he had learned his trade. But his history was soon confused with the onrush of nostalgia.
The demand appealed to a dark voyeurism. While many, especially from the younger generation, failed to register much concern for Hanif, the ransom stoked a desire to witness the consequences. All were united in their longing to see what would happen next.
Café owners set up streams from their laptops on to the televisions that hung on the wall. Grandparents pestered their grandchildren into giving brief tutorials on how to navigate the internet. The demand proved an ethical minefield. Some parents, fearing the worst, warned their children against watching, while other families sat down together as seven approached.
The online stream buffered at seven. The webcam revealed an elderly man, dressed in a traditional beige tunic – the galabeya. The figure was spotlit against the darkness of the room. Grey stubble peppered a hollow face. Hanif’s expression was one of animation rather than fear.
‘Please bear with me,’ he said as he leaned forward towards the camera. ‘My life will not be safe until I have finished what I have to say.’
All those watching on smartphones, laptops and TVs leaned in to meet him. For now, they were immune from the distractions that usually monopolised their attention.
‘I have a story to tell you. It concerns a group of murderous bandits who terrorised the city of . . .’
For the next hour Hanif spun a story that flowed from modern Cairo to twelfth-century Baghdad. Characters pulled from Arabian Nights morphed with descriptions of groups that seemed unerringly familiar. They felt like clues, as if Hanif were trying to lead the audience to his cell. After 40 minutes a gun entered the frame, aimed at Hanif. A computer-camouflaged voice shouted, ‘Come on, finish the story. You’re out of time. Finish the story.’
But Hanif’s story continued: one cliff-hanger followed the next; characters who had been introduced 20 minutes earlier reappeared.
The kidnappers once more demanded closure.
The audience were transfixed, as Hanif fought his fate with the continuation of a story that refused to end. Teahouses were silent as they willed Hanif to weave another narrative web to delay his captors. The young ignored the unread messages on their phones.
It was eight.
‘OK, fine. You win tonight,’ came the voice from the side of the camera. ‘But let’s see if you are good enough to do the same tomorrow night. See you at seven.’
The stream went down.
Miller and Jordie
Thursday, April 30th
London
‘You’ve been AWOL over the last few days,’ said Lucy as she joined Miller by the kettle in the grey, sparse staffroom. ‘I thought you got back on Monday.’
‘I know, sorry. We were given a few days off.’
‘So what happened?’ She was one of the few people he felt comfortable holding eye contact with. Early in their friendship there was a drunken embrace in a club. They formed a consensus that alcohol, not attraction, would be their chosen scapegoat. They both suffered private doubts that this was the case. Their colleagues were less private in their questioning. She once described Miller as nerd-chic in appearance, and in return he called her homely. Realising the mistake, he argued this was because he would happily put a mortgage down on her. In truth, he had not decided if she was beautiful or plain: her full cheeks and lips rested naturally in an open-mouthed, vacant frown, which transformed during conversation into a crackling vitality. He was much confused.
‘Let’s just say the relationship we built with the community was a little more abstract than we would’ve liked.’
Jordie approached across the staffroom. ‘Lovebirds.’
‘Nice shirt,’ Lucy said.
Miller looked at him frostily.
‘I read somewhere that stripes are a thinning pattern,’ said Jordie.
‘Shame you aren’t wearing three shirts,’ said Lucy.
‘You cheeky mare. I was hoping you two might announce your wedding now and distract Fairweather with some good news before we go in,’ said Jordie.
‘A thoughtful offer, but I’ve come to accept my role as perennial bridesmaid,’ said Lucy with a glint in her eye.
‘Fairweather wants to see us now?’ said Miller, uninterested in the whimsy.
Jordie nodded gravely. Lucy read the tension and decided to take her leave.
Jordie had initially avoided Miller when he arrived at the organisation three years earlier – as he did with anyone he suspected of harbouring idealism. But over a brief lunch conversation, Miller admitted that he had seen Jordie speak at a festival his mother had arranged in the Cotswolds 15 years earlier, and Jordie had since secretly taken credit for Miller’s career choice. Miller was his protégé, and he vowed to continue his role as mentor.
‘Keep calm. Coming clean now won’t save us. In ten minutes we can put last week down to experience,’ said Jordie in hushed tones.
Miller ignored him as they knocked.
‘Come in,’ Fairweather’s voice called theatrically.
They entered to see him standing by a table in the middle of the room, where he was joined by Carol Sutton – the head of the Political Economy team – and an unfamiliar tall blond boffin. John Fairweather resembled a mad professor whose wife struggled to make him presentable. No one could remember seeing him without a bow tie. Carol’s wardrobe consisted largely of black velvet and her movements were accompanied by an unaccountable clinking and jingling. Miller had no idea how they were taken seriously as the heads of a think tank: especially in Fairweather’s office, which housed a mish-mash of paraphernalia from his world travels, including Amazonian blow-pipes, Malian masks and paintings drawn by Peruvian shamans.
‘Gentlemen, welcome, I’d like you to meet Olaf from our Norwegian funders Nynorsk Solar. I sent him the skeleton report you sent earlier this week about your trip. He was as excited about it as I was,’ said Fairweather.
Miller and Jordie distractedly shook Olaf’s hand.
‘In what way?’ asked Jordie.
‘In what way! The jokers!’ said Fairweather as he put his arm around Jordie’s shoulder and led him to the table. ‘This village is perfect. Your work was brilliant: incisive, sensitive, you really brought the place to life even after the unfortunate event with the camera.’ On the table was an enlargement of the map they had faked, using monopoly hotels for houses.
‘Olaf spoke to his guys yesterday, and they’re keen to push this pilot through ASAP,’ said Carol. ‘It’s a huge relief: we’ve kept it quiet, but times a
re tough here at the moment. Your work might well have saved a few jobs.’
‘It looks like you’ve received bad news,’ Fairweather said in response to Miller’s expression, as he pulled him towards the model village. ‘He’s a hard one to please,’ Fairweather explained to Olaf. ‘Incredibly high standards. Never known a moral backbone like it. It’s as if poverty killed his family and he’s seeking payback.’
‘But . . .’ said Jordie, his third chin wobbling, like his career. ‘We made it clear in the report that an NGO was already doing a similar project in the same village.’
‘What was the name of the NGO?’ Olaf asked.
Jordie looked at Miller nervously; the other three followed suit. ‘The . . . er . . .’ Miller’s brain froze. ‘The Foundation of Srinath.’
He was met by four vacant looks.
‘Never heard of them,’ said Olaf. ‘Must be a local group. Sound a bit culty. Our organisation is a global leader in this area and we want to expand further into the developing world. This village is perfect, and you know what these local organisations are like. The village won’t care who provides it.’
‘But,’ Jordie said, ‘the, uh . . . the elder won’t be pleased. Mr . . . Mr . . . Ranjiv.’
‘What about Mr Ranjiv?’ said Carol.
The question surpassed Jordie’s creativity.
‘Mr Ranjiv,’ Miller took over, ‘lives here.’ He pointed to one of the monopoly hotels. ‘His brother – who lives next door – works for the Foundation of Srinath, so I can’t see him standing for us muscling in.’
‘Ah.’ Olaf stroked his stubble. ‘That wasn’t in the report.’
Miller blushed. Even given the situation, he did not like people finding holes in his analysis. ‘No one else knows that Mr Ranjiv’s brother works with the organisation. I only heard it privately. For some reason he doesn’t want the Gavaskars to find out.’
‘What could the Gavaskars possibly have against him working for a charity?’ asked Fairweather. He seemed incredu-lous, as if this went against everything he previously thought the Gavaskars stood for.
‘I heard it had something to do with their daughter.’ Miller had no idea where these lies were coming from.
Carol shook her head, as if this were a microcosm of everything that was wrong with the world. ‘You couldn’t make it up, could you?’ The five of them nodded at the complexity of real life.
‘Well, that settles it,’ said Olaf. ‘I’ll join you two on a visit to the village, and we’ll have a talk with the Ranjivs and the Gavaskars and see if there’s any way we can smooth things over. How about we fix it for when you two get back in ten days?’
‘Sorry, get back from where?’ said Jordie, confused. There was too much new information to know which bits he should object to.
Olaf smiled. ‘I think that’s my cue to leave. So . . . see you in ten days.’ He shook everyone’s hand and left the room.
As the door closed, Fairweather smiled and clapped excitedly to himself. He kissed Miller and Jordie on the cheek in turn. ‘Brilliant. Amazing. You are the kings of this poverty-alleviating castle. The relationship with his organisation could save us. And it’s all because of you two. He loves your work. And to think people were trying to convince me that you were turning into a loose cannon,’ he said to Jordie.
‘As part of this relationship,’ Carol said, ‘Olaf has just found a funder for a similar solar energy project, but in an urban environment, and he wants us to help implement it. But we have to move quickly.’
‘When?’ asked Miller.
‘Tomorrow. For seven days,’ Carol said.
‘If that’s too much of a turn-round, we can maybe look at bringing your India visit with Olaf forward,’ said Fairweather.
‘No,’ Miller said loudly. ‘No, tomorrow will be fine.’
‘Where?’ said Jordie.
‘Ah, yes. I forgot about that detail. North Africa. It’s an area that is invalua—’
‘Fuck Africa,’ said Jordie.
‘Look, Jordie, I know you—’
‘I’ve made myself clear on this before. I’ve agreed to work on African projects, but not to be sent there. I hate Africa, and Africa hates me.’
Jordie was the guy who hated Africa. It was his niche. It all started getting personal after he got posted to Sierra Leone two days before the outbreak of civil war. Four days later he was home with shrapnel wounds. He then had to evacuate a jungle village from armed gangs in Liberia, before bouts of malaria (Congo) and typhoid (Zambia) tried to bring him down from the inside.
‘I know, I know,’ said Fairweather. ‘You’re the MP who won’t go to Westminster, or the cricketer who won’t play at Lord’s. I feel terrible for this being how I repay you. But jobs are at stake; think of your colleagues. Think of all the poor who’ll suffer because of our cutbacks.’ Fairweather motioned towards the pathetic model village on the table. ‘Think of them.’
Jordie felt Miller’s angry stare: a trip to Africa would buy time to work out how to avoid a visit to an Indian village of their own invention.
‘North Africa, you say,’ said Jordie.
‘Cairo,’ said Fairweather.
‘It’s barely Africa,’ added Carol.
‘It’s barely African,’ added Fairweather.
‘Call it West Jordan, and I won’t look at a map,’ said Jordie.
‘Well, just in case, consider the map of the Middle East redrawn in the name of progress,’ said Fairweather. It wasn’t as if reshaping the boundaries of the Middle East had led to any complications before.
They were on their second pint, in a crowded pub near Waterloo. They had negotiated a small table with two stools. Miller had so far refused to tell Lucy what had been troubling him all day.
‘Here’s the deal. As you won’t tell me what happened, you can at least rate out of ten how close your troubles are to those of famous fictional protagonists.’ Lucy’s addiction to literary references was a trait Miller was on the fence about.
‘First up. Meursault from The Outsider. Out of ten.’
‘Who?’
‘Gets dehydrated. Shoots a stranger.’
Miller lifted his glasses and rubbed his eyes. ‘Um. I guess I got a little dehydrated. Say a three.’
Lucy sucked some of her shoulder-length blonde hair as she weighed the answer.
‘Interesting . . . Let’s try Josef K. from The Trial. You’ve always reminded me of a modern-day Kafka.’
He smiled while he tried to remember something about the book. ‘Anxiety, a suspended sense of judgement. Say a five.’
‘Ahhh.’ Lucy stared at him intensely. ‘It’s falling into place now.’ She nodded thoughtfully as if she had discovered a vital clue. ‘Finally, I put to you Pinocchio.’
Miller narrowed his eyes at Lucy in mock angst. ‘You’ve got me there. A ten,’ he said, as if being forced to confess against his will.
‘I knew it.’ Lucy clapped. ‘Heatstroke created an alienating system that’s forcing you to lie. No wonder you’ve been so quiet.’
Miller shook his head dismissively while being taken aback by her deductions. ‘I only meant that I have dreams of becoming a real live boy.’
Lucy scrunched up her nose at him. ‘Liar. Anyway, it could be worse. You could be going on a seven-day trip to Africa with Jordie.’
‘Thanks. Don’t mind the plague as the apocalypse is coming.’ Miller said it in good humour, but his face betrayed the panic that had built up since he met Fairweather, Carol and Olaf.
‘Cheer up,’ said Lucy. ‘I know things are a bit shit at the moment, but you and Jordie are capable of going there and doing a great job.’
Miller held his pint glass and shrugged. ‘I just don’t understand what the point of what I do is any more. I’m a different person in the field. I get stage fright, as if all this is a perform-ance. I can make the world a better place on the page, but not in reality.’
Lucy placed her hand on Miller’s, her fingers flirting with interlocking with his
. ‘We all doubt what we’re doing every so often. It’s only natural. Things will get better. I promise.’ She pulled her hand away slowly.
Miller watched it slide back, the silence between them saturated with possibilities. He realised he was holding his breath. The crackling energy of the unsaid pulsed through his fingers. And as always, in such moments of intensity, he instinctively tried to dispel it. ‘Maybe I need to do something radical. Shake things up a bit.’
Lucy’s smile, poorly supported by a brief look of sadness in her eyes, attempted to put the involuntary rejection behind her. ‘Maybe best to start in your own country. Egypt may be a little weary of Brits going over there and shaking things up.’
‘My sights were set below creating an empire. But just in case, be prepared to come and rescue me if things go wrong.’
Lucy took a sip from her pint. ‘We going to rescue Jordie as well?’
Miller pursed his lips, giving her comment more consideration than she thought it deserved. ‘On second thoughts, don’t rescue us. It’d be nice to have an excuse to miss the next month or so.’
Liam
Friday, May 1st
London
‘You should give your opinion on the actions of all current terrorist groups,’ said Ronston, performing to his colleagues nearby as Liam took his seat in the office. ‘Distract them from the violence they were planning. Lure them into heated debate instead of jihad. You could yet be a force for good.’ Nearby faces smiled politely to appease Ronston.
Since the news had broken that a Yemeni group had asked him for a retraction, Liam’s name had circulated internationally. His ego could not resist basking in the attention. It should have been a return to the moral high ground of his youth, yet #IStandWithLiamPowell remained immune from global trending. Instead, years of criticising others meant those he had wounded came out in turn to pull apart the myriad holes in his book’s case studies.
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