Evolution of Fear

by Paul E. Hardisty

  The water was cold, numbing the pain in his shoulder, the burns on his face, the cuts around his eyes. It felt good. He followed the hull around to the bow, noted with admiration where Gonzales had neatly repaired the bowsprit. He grabbed the chain, filled his lungs, slipped his head below the surface and followed the chain down. He opened his eyes, letting the cold brine flood over his cornea. The water wasn’t deep here, only about four metres. He looked up. Flame’s shadow hung above him, a dark shape against the silvery firmament of the surface. The anchor was clearly visible against the moon-pale sand. It hung half a metre above the sea floor, its flukes open like wings, snared on something.

  Clay dived and reached the sea bottom. The anchor was fouled on a cable, about an inch in diameter, smooth, newish, sheathed in some sort of plastic. The anchor had pulled it up from the seabed in a loop. Both ends of the cable disappeared under the sand. It appeared to run parallel to shore, buried perhaps twenty or thirty centimetres into the sand. The cable was wedged between the blunt end of the flukes and the hinge of the anchor’s stem. Pulling against it only wedged it in tighter. He would have to go back aboard, let out chain, then come back down and work the cable free. That would take time. If the police had sensed a wider involvement in the incident at the farm, patrol vessels might be on their way. They had to make miles as quickly as they could. He would have to leave the anchor behind. He pinched the anchor’s shackle screw between his thumb and forefinger and turned.

  A moment later he burst to the surface and clambered aboard, the chain hanging slack now in the water, the boat drifting. He went forward and brought in the remaining chain. Shivering, he returned to the cockpit and started Flame out to sea. Hope threw a blanket over his shoulders and began to tend his wounds, picking bits of car window from his forehead and arms, two heavily deformed pieces of lead shot from his shoulder. They hadn’t penetrated far, most of their energy dissipated by the car’s metal sheet and glass. It looked worse than it was. She doused the holes in antiseptic, bandaged him as best she could. She was very gentle in this, he thought, very serious.

  Soon they were sipping hot coffee, the compass showing southeast, and somewhere out there, Syria.

  A few hours later they watched the sun come up in an overcast winter sky, burn red on the horizon then cool to yellow, softening away to a flat grey daylight. They motored on in calm seas, clear now of TRNC waters, Hope silent, brooding. A fishing boat appeared, chugging away on the horizon, and then was gone, melted into the sea, Cyprus just a smudge in the distance. After a while Clay killed the engine, tore off the bandages Hope had applied, pulled a coil of line from the port locker, cleated one end, and threw the line into the water. Before she could react he was over the side, Glock in hand.

  For a long time, until he was numb, Clay floated on his back in the cold, flat sea, letting the brine lick his wounds like a dog’s tongue. He let the gun slip from his hand.

  Later, they struck south, and then southwest, back towards Larnaca.

  Hope again dressed his wounds. ‘Do you want to look in a mirror?’ she said. ‘You look like a stray without a home.’

  Clay trimmed up the main, patted the cockpit scupper. ‘This is my home.’

  Hope sat with her back against the cabin bulkhead, watching him as he trimmed sail, corrected course. After a long while she looked him in the eyes. Her face was set hard. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I’ve always been taught that death is a good thing.’

  Clay locked her gaze. ‘So was I.’

  ‘Do you think it is, Clay?’

  ‘In the way I was taught? No.’

  ‘The war.’

  Clay nodded. ‘It’s not good or bad, Hope. You can’t think that way. It’s inevitable, that’s all.’

  She paused, hung on this a moment. ‘It’s inevitable because evolution demands it. Death keeps the genetic code fresh. Therefore it must be good.’

  ‘QED?’

  She drew her knees up to her chest, wrapped her arms around herself. The breeze wisped her long hair about her face. ‘Our chromosomes are capped by repetitive strands of DNA that protect them from fraying. Telomeres they’re called. As we age, these telomeres gradually burn out, like fuses. And when they do, we start to die. Death is programmed into us from the start.’

  Clay traced the horizon with his eyes. ‘Those men didn’t die of old age.’

  ‘No, they didn’t,’ she said in a whisper, barely audible over the wind. ‘It was evolution’s other imperative.’

  He eased the main sheet, trimmed up the Genoa. ‘Don’t overanalyse, Hope.’ Not now. Later you will have time. More than you could ever want.

  ‘The killing gene,’ she said. ‘A throwback to our days as hunters. We’re programmed to kill.’

  Clay said nothing.

  ‘More than that, Clay. To enjoy killing.’

  Clay looked out to sea, pushed this away. ‘Don’t, Hope.’

  ‘It’s part of you, Clay.’

  He considered a reply, abandoned it. After a while he said: ‘I can tell you, theory doesn’t help.’

  They lapsed into silence again, the breeze fluking across the flat grey sea. A couple of gulls sideslipped over them, wingtip close, then disappeared towards Syria.

  ‘You saw what they painted on the wall,’ Clay said, breaking the quiet. ‘Neo-Enosis.’

  She frowned, nodded. ‘Chrisostomedes has been warning for months that they would take action.’

  ‘What is Guenyeli?’ he said.

  Hope curled up against the forward cockpit bulkhead. ‘On Christmas Eve 1958, Turkish Cypriot militia across the island attacked Greek Cypriots in their homes. Hundreds were killed, including women, children and old people. The village of Guenyeli was one of the worst. Thirty people, mostly children, were locked inside a schoolhouse and burned alive.’

  ‘1958. Jesus Christ.’

  ‘Revenge has no statute of limitations. Here especially.’

  ‘Just what you’d expect from Neo-Enosis.’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘But there’s something I don’t understand.’ He’d not had time to consider it until now. ‘Those men tonight, the ones with the guns.’

  ‘Murderers.’ She put her head on her knees a moment, looked back up at Clay. ‘This will make the Commission’s work almost impossible. If people were scared to talk before, just imagine how difficult it will be to get any credible testimony now.’

  ‘There’s something else.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Those weren’t Greek Cypriots, Hope. Any of them.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Were you listening to them?’

  ‘No, I…’

  ‘They were speaking Russian.’

  29

  Looking Down Through Blood

  They passed the Ayia Napa headlands just after noon the next day and brought Flame into the Larnaca marina four hours later. They’d spoken little, taking turns on watch so the other could sleep below. Now they stood by Clay’s rental car, the late-afternoon sun slanting across the marina car park. Clay could see the stress on Hope’s face, the circles under her eyes like bruises, the lines around her mouth deeper, more anxious than before. A few hours can change the way you see everything.

  They agreed that Clay would drive Hope to her house near Paphos. It was Wednesday, Maria was looking after the seminar, and there was no reason for Hope to go back to Nicosia and the university. Weekends she usually spent working at the Lara Beach research station she’d set up almost five years ago with a series of grants from the EU and the Government of Cyprus. Clay knew she didn’t want to be alone.

  They drove along the coast road, watching the Med flash past, the tired fields littered with stone, the soil stripped away to reveal the island’s bare white bones, the forests that once covered this place centuries gone now, hacked away by successive empires. Just after dusk, Clay stopped at a roadside periptero. Hope got out, stretched her legs and disappeared into the shop. Clay walked through the dust of the par
king lot to a payphone booth wedged up against a lamppost.

  Crowbar answered first ring. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ he barked in Afrikaans.

  ‘Guess.’

  Crowbar hesitated a moment. ‘That was you?’

  ‘You heard?’

  ‘It’s all over the papers today.’

  ‘And you, broer?’

  ‘We have to meet.’

  Clay gave Crowbar Hope’s address.

  ‘Tonight, then.’

  ‘Hope says it’s hard to find.’

  ‘Fok, Straker, you growing an old woman’s beard now? See you there in two and a half hours.’

  Clay put down the phone and walked back to the car. Hope was already sitting in the passenger seat, the dome light on, a copy of the Cyprus English-language daily spread across her lap. A photo of the wall, the slogan clearly legible, the burnt-out buildings in the background accompanied the headline: Six Dead in Karpasia Revenge Attack.

  Clay started the car and pulled onto the coast road heading west.

  After a while Hope folded the paper, switched off the dome light. ‘It says that two men are now in hospital suffering from burns and smoke inhalation, but are expected to recover.’

  Clay said nothing, drove on.

  ‘You saved them, Clay,’ she whispered.

  Grey tarmac scrolled away under a myopic funnel of light.

  ‘The Turks are making a big noise about it,’ she went on. ‘They say they have identified three of the dead attackers as Greek Cypriots. They are demanding that the Greek Cypriot government round up the senior members of Neo-Enosis and bring them to justice. It also says that the Turkish Cypriot police have evidence that at least two others who were involved fled the scene on foot that night, possibly to the coast and by boat to the south. They are wanted for questioning. There is no mention of my friend.’

  But Clay wasn’t thinking about the fire, or the shootings. He was thinking about Rania. He’d gone ashore that night hoping that the villagers might provide something that would lead him to her, perhaps tie her disappearance to Erkan. Knowing that Erkan was there, in his monastery in Karpasia, had given him the vague hope that he might have been able to press on, confront the bliksem one more time, find her there, bring her home. Now he had nothing, just a scared scientist and more police after him.

  It was dark by the time they reached Paphos. Hope directed him through the town to the coast and along a maze of narrow roads that snaked through the rocky carbonate hills rising up from the sea. After a while they came to a small hamlet, twenty houses perhaps, perched on the edge of a rocky hillside, the coast a fractal white line half a dimension distant, the sea stretched out across the whole world, dark and foreboding, as if you might fall into it. The road was barely wide enough for one car. Clay slowed and looked back over the darkened hills. A pickup truck sauntered along the winding valley-bottom track towards the coast road. Hope waved them on past a series of abandoned homesteads – there were so many here, derelicts of crumbling masonry and caved roofs, the arches slumped and ragged, the keystones dropped like old teeth.

  ‘Here,’ she said, pointing to a narrow, tree-lined lane. ‘Stop.’ Hope jumped out of the car, opened a tin postbox, pulled out a clutch of letters and sat back in the car. ‘Just down here,’ she said.

  Clay pulled the Beretta from his pocket and checked the action. Then he guided the car down the lane to a rock-edged turnaround, where he switched off the engine. Hope took him by the hand and led him on foot through an old stone archway into a night garden of thick underbrush and tall, swaying trees, their branches black against a moonlit sky. The house was old, limestone brickwork casements and corners, clay-tile roof, wood-shuttered windows, a tiled veranda set with wicker chairs and a wooden table, and everywhere the cascade of vegetation, as if the place were clothed in it. She opened the front door, lit a hurricane lamp and led him through the house, carrying the lamp before her by its handle. A black-and-white tile floor, a stonework fireplace, flashes of framed watercolours on the walls, hand-drawn, washed sketches of sea creatures, turtles and fish and crustaceans of the kind you see in guidebooks. Hope handed him the lantern, opened up a set of French doors, then unlatched and folded back floor-to-ceiling shutters. A cold breeze flooded the house. The Med sparkled under a cloud-strewn night sky.

  Hope left him on the balcony and reappeared a moment later with a couple of beers, handed Clay one, put the lantern on a small side table, and turned it low. Then she crouched to a small outdoor fireplace and struck a match. Soon a fire crackled in the clay hearth.

  Hope turned her back to the fire, warming her hands behind her. ‘I’m off grid,’ she said. ‘I have a twelve-volt solar photovoltaic system, gas for cooking, and my water comes from a spring out back that runs all year. This is my sanctuary.’

  Clay checked his watch. Just over two hours since he’d spoken with Crowbar. There was no way he’d find the place. Hope was curled up in her chair, arms clasped over her shins, like he’d seen Rania do sometimes.

  ‘Okay?’ he said.

  She nodded.

  ‘Don’t worry. We’ll find her.’

  ‘I miss her.’

  Clay bit down, said nothing, sipped his beer. Me too.

  Hope opened her letters, slicing open the envelopes on their short end with a polished wooden opener, glancing at the contents, setting them aside. ‘Bills,’ she said. She drank some beer, then picked up the last letter, opened it, unfolded the thick bond paper, read, turned it over, and reread. She looked up at Clay and let out a little laugh, setting the paper with the others.

  ‘What is it?’ said Clay.

  Hope shook her head. ‘It’s…’ She picked up the letter, looked at it again, crumpled it in her hand and dropped to the floor. ‘It’s nothing.’

  Before he had time to ask again, a rapping sound echoed through the house. Clay pulled out the Beretta and walked quickly to the front door.

  ‘Die fokken duer oopmaak.’

  Clay opened the door. Crowbar stood on the veranda, stamping his feet on the tile. He was wrapped against the cold in a thick woollen jumper and black leather jacket. ‘Fokken Med, ja? Is supposed to be fokken hot, ja? Fok I miss Afrika.’ His gaze wandered over the cuts on Clay’s face, the singed eyebrows, the puffy red burns on his forehead and nose. ‘Fok mie, Straker. You get better-looking every day.’

  Clay shrugged and led Crowbar through the house to the veranda.

  ‘Hope, this is my friend Crowbar. He’s helping me find Rania.’

  Hope looked her new guest over. ‘Crowbar?’

  ‘Koevoet,’ said Crowbar. ‘That’s how you say it.’

  Hope brought him a beer. ‘Here you go, Mister Koofoot.’

  Crowbar smiled at the attempt and took a slug of the beer. Then he reached into the pocket of his jacket and placed a folded newspaper on the table. ‘She’s alive, broer.’

  Clay grabbed the paper, opened it up and tilted it towards the light. There it was, on the front page of that day’s Independent. The headline read: ‘North Cyprus Land Grab Terror’.

  Clay looked up at Crowbar. ‘It only happened the night before last.’

  ‘So she must have filed yesterday, ja. She’s here, on the island.’

  The title of the piece also clearly ruled out Erkan. A cascade of relief washed through him, like being in the field hospital and the doctor looking down at you through a blood-spattered surgical mask, the blur of people moving all around you, yelling, screaming, the moans of the wounded and the dying, and his muffled voice telling you not to worry, that you’re going to make it and you believe him.

  ‘And if she’s writing and filing stories, then she must be free,’ said Hope, breathless. ‘She hasn’t been kidnapped at all.’ Her smile was big, like her name.

  ‘Then why hasn’t she contacted anyone?’ said Clay, looking at Hope. ‘Not even you.’ He could see the words hit her, the smile die, the pain spread through her. It felt good for a second, faded fast.

  Hope gra
bbed the paper, read the article in silence, put it down.

  ‘Rania writes here that the murders we witnessed were made to look like the work of Neo-Enosis, but that in fact it was Erkan’s men, hired guns. Not simple retaliation for some old grievance, she says, but an attempt to silence those who would speak out against the land grab in the north.’ Hope frowned. ‘She doesn’t want to make contact. She’s hiding. How else could she have accessed this kind of information?’

  It made sense. Rania had been trained by French intelligence. Clay knew that if she wanted to disappear, she could. But then, why the note left in the hotel room in Istanbul? Had he misread it after all, willed into it some meaning that was never there?

  Hope said, ‘The Turks are saying that the gunmen were Greek. Rania appears convinced they were Erkan’s men, Turks. You told me you thought the gunmen were speaking Russian.’

  ‘Not thought,’ said Clay. ‘They were.’

  Hope glanced up at him. ‘Okay, then. They were.’

  ‘Russian?’ said Crowbar.

  Clay nodded.

  ‘Why would Erkan hire Russians?’ said Hope.

  Crowbar drained his beer. ‘Why not? This place is crawling with ’em. Funnelling cash out of Mother Russia as fast as they can milk those big fat tits of hers.’ Crowbar stood, wandered off towards the kitchen.

  Hope looked at Clay. ‘Your friend. He’s … colourful.’

  Clay said nothing, let the silence sit between them.

  Crowbar returned with three beers clawed in one hand, set them on the table.

  ‘Do help yourself,’ said Hope.

  Crowbar grinned at her and opened a beer. Then, speaking to Clay in Afrikaans, said, ‘There’s something I need to tell you.’