Absolution

by Paul E. Hardisty

  But penitence is for after.

  Who was the woman in the car with Hamid and Eugène, the day they were killed? I ask her. What were they doing, presumably together, from the time Hamid collected Eugène from the crèche that day until their fateful arrival at the waste management plant in Crétail? Apparently, she looks like me, this woman. Enough to pass for me at a distance, anyway. Was this all part of the plan to frame me? Was this woman the assassin?

  The only thread I have is Yusuf Al-Gambal. Something happened to Hamid here in Egypt in the months leading up to and after his trial, and I need to know what it was. If only for the sake of my sanity. I know I cannot bring them back, that they are in paradise now, but my life has been ripped apart, and I need to know why. And if I am to continue on, somehow, I need to prove my innocence, at least of these crimes. The thought that this woman is out there, somewhere, tortures me. She knows what happened, and she knows why. I must find her.

  I have rented this small room in one of the old houses in Ma’adi. Even the smallest hotel was too conspicuous. A woman alone, even today in supposedly modern Egypt, is subject to constant and intense scrutiny. After a while you get tired of men assuming you are a prostitute, approaching you in that way they do when they think that you are for sale. I have lost track of how many times in the last few days I have uttered the words ‘I am waiting for my husband.’ After the second day, I bought a hijab and disappeared behind my veil. I can now move about the city unmolested, and relatively inconspicuously. Conform and survive.

  I have been here three days and have made no progress. My calls go unanswered, my enquiries are politely brushed off. The moment I open my mouth, everyone here knows I am a foreigner. My Arabic is perfect, but it is the formal classical Arabic of school and government and academia, not the accented dialect of the Cairo streets, with its extensive slang. But I am learning quickly. A few more days of practice on coffeeshop attendants and ladies in the markets and I will be speaking like a Cairenian.

  How everything can change from one week to the next. It is not as if I am a stranger to sudden convulsions, to abrupt changes in the direction of events, but one forgets. Happiness weakens you. The sense of loss grows within me and at times becomes overwhelming. I cry for hours at a time, usually at night, here alone in this dusty room so far from my home. My home. Not our home any longer.

  I think of our flat in Paris, of our possessions, the furniture and clothes, the photographs and books, the paintings and trinkets, all the things that we surround ourselves with, the things that somehow are supposed to express our individuality within the constrained conventions of society. I imagine our apartment block in Paris, all of the people who live there – the Randous next door; Madame Lechenault two down; Monsieur Tryphon across; the Blernier family along the hall with their two children – stripped of the adornments and coverings they use to claim a degree of differentiation. The whole block, the entire street, the city, all of us as we arrived and as we will depart: naked, frail, vulnerable, with our breasts and genitals and arses there for all to see, come face to face with our God. The image makes me gasp. We are animals.

  One person was killed today and four more injured in the Egyptian resort of Taba, on the Red Sea. A bomb went off in a café frequented by tourists. All those killed and injured were members of staff – four Egyptians and one Syrian, preparing for morning opening. The detonation appears to have been timed to ensure that no tourists were killed. It was in all the Cairo newspapers this morning. The Islamic splinter group called Al Gama’a al Islamiyya has claimed responsibility. In a pre-recorded statement, The Lion regretted the loss of life, but warned that the restraint they have shown in protecting foreign tourists has limits. He claims that government repression and corruption defy the teachings of Islam and impoverish the people.

  These people are fanatics, wilfully misrepresenting the words of God for their own purposes, tarnishing all of Islam. The government has announced a curfew in the area and has arrested suspects. Tourism is now such a big part of the Egyptian economy that such incidents are considered a major threat to the national interest. The president himself has condemned the attack.

  The world is a lunatic asylum, and we are all inmates.

  And now I am going to walk along the Nile and then I am going to make some calls.

  23:10 hrs

  Finally, some progress…

  I went to the main post and telephone office in the centre of the city and I left another message on Yusuf Al-Gambal’s answering machine. Then I called Hope. She was home. It was wonderful just to hear her voice, like a breath of jasmine from the climber that grew outside my window in Algiers when I was a girl. But right away I could tell that something was wrong. She was flustered and upset. Kip was crying in the background, and I could hear her dog barking. She was packing for a trip, she said, but she would not tell me where, only that Jean-Marie was in trouble and had told her to get out of Cyprus. I could hear the strain in her voice, the worry. Claymore is with him, she said, I passed on your message.

  The sound of your name sent a fizz through me, and then a bolt of dread. If Crowbar of all people feels threatened enough to worry about the safety of his family, then I know that you, too, are in danger. The dread echoes within me still. It is as if the world is spinning out of control, as if everything has let go all at once.

  Can I call you in a few days? she asked. I gave her the number for my room. Egypt, she said, I understand. Night-time is best, I said, but be careful. And Hope, I said, it is Veronique.

  I made a few other calls, but nothing came of them. I wandered the centre of town for a while, sleepwalked through the Egyptian Museum, seeing but not seeing. I returned to my room before nightfall, fixed myself something to eat. My appetite has gone. I left most of it. I tried to read, cried, dozed a while.

  And then, just now, the telephone in my flat rang for the first time. A voice introduced himself as Yusuf Al-Gambal. I had almost given up on hearing back from him, so many messages had I left. On the voicemails, I had identified myself simply as a colleague of Hamid Al-Farouk. As we spoke I maintained this vague identity. He was guarded, as was I. We talked only briefly. He had heard about Hamid’s murder in Paris and expressed his condolences. He has agreed to meet me tomorrow, God willing.

  * 9 *

  This True and Constant Force

  3rd November 1997

  Latitude 4° 26' S; Longitude 39° 48' E,

  Off the Coast of Kenya, East Africa

  Clay trimmed the mainsail, checked the compass. They were making good time in a following wind, the lights of Pemba now gone under the southern horizon.

  Crowbar took a swig of whisky. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, passing the bottle to Clay. ‘They’ll be fine, ja.’

  Clay drank, felt the alcohol burn into the uncertainty. ‘Definitely.’

  Before leaving Unguja, Zanzibar’s main island, Crowbar had gone ashore to find a doctor. Clay had gone back into town for Zuz’s grandmother. He’d taken Zuz with him, shattered though she was. Together, they’d convinced the old lady to leave the island and that both she and her granddaughter were in danger, real danger. The kind where you are killed quickly and without pity.

  Zuz’s grandmother had a sister on Pemba, the northernmost island of the Zanzibar archipelago, remote and little visited. Later that night, Crowbar had returned, patched up and drunk, and they’d slipped anchor – Clay, Crowbar, Zuz and her grandmother – and set sail.

  By morning, they’d reached Pemba, eighty nautical miles north. Clay accompanied Zuz and her grandmother to the sister’s village just outside Chake-Chake. He told them not to worry. Crowbar had learned that both Big J and Dreadlocks had died of their wounds, and that the police had dropped the case. Clay gave Zuz’s grandmother twenty thousand dollars in cash. He told her there was more for Zuz’s education, when she needed it. The girl was bright. If she studied hard she could go to university, learn medicine, languages, engineering, philosophy. He’d once had a friend who wanted
to be a philosopher, he told them.

  They’d promised to stay put, to be careful, not to be conspicuous with the money; never to mention any of what had happened. And then he told Zuz he would come back one day, when he’d done what he needed to do. Zuz had cried, and held him for a long time, her arms wrapped around his waist. And then he kissed the hooped wire piled on the top of her head and walked away and did not look back.

  ‘She’s a pretty little bokkie,’ said Crowbar. He lifted the bottle to his mouth and took two big gulps. Clay could see his throat working in the wan and fractured starlight reflecting from the dark surface of the water.

  ‘Smart, too.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Clay reached for the bottle, drank hard. ‘I happened.’

  Crowbar sat for a long time, saying nothing.

  Clay passed him the bottle. ‘They’ll never stop, will they?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m going to kill him,’ said Clay. Then it would be over. One way or another. The mainland was only half a day away, less if the winds freshened. ‘I don’t give a shit what they do after that.’

  Crowbar tilted back the bottle, drained the last. ‘I spoke to Hope,’ he said, tossing the empty bottle over the side. ‘Called her when you took the bokkie and her ooma ashore.’

  Clay waited for him to continue.

  ‘Told her to take Kip and get the hell out of Cyprus. Go to her mother’s place in California.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Fokkers touch either of them…’ Crowbar trailed off into silence, stared out to sea, mouth set hard, eyes narrowed. Clay had seen that look before.

  ‘They’ll be good, oom,’ said Clay. ‘Hope’s smart.’

  ‘As they come, Straker. Definitely. But she couldn’t fight her way out of a baby shower with a Parabellum.’

  Clay clipped back the early edge of a smile. ‘Mombasa is less than six hours away. Get on a plane. Go to her.’

  Crowbar looked at him hard, didn’t let go.

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s something else.’

  ‘Jesus, Koevoet. Just tell me.’

  ‘Hope spoke to Rania.’

  Kinetic energy surged through Clay’s spine, fizzed in his extremities.

  ‘She’s in Egypt,’ said Crowbar. ‘And she’s in trouble.’

  Clay looked out across the star-lit horizon, felt the water humming against the rudder, flowing across the hull, tried to process this.

  ‘She needs your help, seun.’

  Clay stared at his friend, his mentor, his commanding officer once, in another life – and in so many ways, still.

  ‘That’s what she told Hope. She needs you.’

  The human brain is a chemical reactor. Dopamines light up pleasure centres. Hormones regulate mood and desire. The amygdala sends bursts of proteins triggering flight and fear in ways that bypass deductive processes. It was as if all of it had ignited inside him at once, a simultaneous cascade of fear and desire and the deep, pure drive to kill.

  ‘We get to the airport in Mombasa, get out fast,’ said Clay.

  ‘They’ll be watching the airports.’

  ‘Good.’ The sooner he could get to Manheim the better.

  ‘Think it through, Straker. What’s more important? Get to Rania. Leave Manheim to me.’

  Crowbar was right. ‘Overland?’

  ‘Too far, too risky.’

  More than two thousand miles separated the port city of Mombasa from Egypt’s southern border. It would take them at least ten days, probably more, over some of the worst roads on the continent – through Kenya, Ethiopia and war-torn Sudan. But Flame was too slow. The journey by sea up around the Horn of Africa and through the Red Sea would take at least a month; time they, Hope, and Rania, did not have.

  ‘I know someone in Mombasa who might be able to get us a small plane. We could fly out of a private airstrip. Much less chance of being detected.’ Crowbar adjusted the sling that supported his right arm. ‘We could be in Cairo in four days.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘I’m coming with you, seun.’

  ‘What about Hope?’

  ‘Either way, we both have to get out of Kenya. Then I can deal with Manheim. We get you to Cairo, I go on to America. It’s the only way.’

  Clay nodded. ‘We need to find somewhere on the coast where we can leave the boat.’

  Crowbar went below deck, returned a moment later holding the chart. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Up the river at Funzi. About a hundred clicks south of Mombasa. A big estuary. Quiet. No villages.’

  Clay nodded, pushed the tiller. Stars spun, Rigel notching a few more degrees to starboard, big and close to the horizon. He watched the compass dial swing behind the needle, this true and constant force in the world, this reliable magnetism. Zuz would be alright. Now, it was time to get to Rania.

  Suddenly, four days seemed a lifetime.

  3rd November 1997. Cairo, Egypt. 13:00 hrs

  This morning I met Yusuf Al-Gambal. He was not at all what I had expected.

  We met in a small café near the Ibis hotel in Ma’adi. I arrived early. I had removed my hijab and was dressed in a blue business suit, jacket and knee-length skirt and just-high-enough heels. As a Muslim gentleman, Hamid would have considered it highly inappropriate to show a photograph of his wife to a male colleague, so the risk that Al-Gambal might recognise me as his lawyer’s wife was low. But I kept my headscarf on nonetheless and wore my oversized sunglasses. As I waited, I realised that something had changed within me. Now that my husband is gone, it is as if I never really knew him.

  Al-Gambal arrived on time, to the minute. I had pictured him as a professional protester, of the type one sees on the television news in Europe – bearded and dreadlocked, dressed as if he had just emerged from the forest after two months chained to a tree. But he wore a suit and tie, was clean-shaven. He smelled nice – an airport duty-free cologne; Hermes perhaps – and his hair was impeccably combed. His shoes were Italian, leather, expensive, well polished. It was as if he was there for a job interview or a date. He was a lot younger than I had expected too, mid-twenties I guessed. His English was excellent, almost perfect. I suppose the son of a High Court judge can either rebel or conform. It seems he has done both.

  Yusuf ordered tea for us. I thanked him for seeing me and explained that I was following up on some aspects of the case on which Monsieur Al-Farouk represented him.

  I have spoken with the senior partner at Hamid’s firm, said Yusuf. There is no person with the name Veronique Deschamps in their employ.

  My heart jumped in my chest. I do not work for the firm, I replied. I am Mr Al-Farouk’s private assistant.

  He never mentioned you.

  I smiled. Good, I said.

  This seemed to fluster him. He called to the waiter and ordered more tea.

  Then I hit him with it. What is this? I said, putting the spreadsheet file on the table between us, the one my friend at the Directorate had printed for me.

  His reaction was quick and strong. I could see the fear in his eyes. Where did you get this? he whispered, placing a newspaper on top of the document and leaning back in his chair, as if to put as much distance as possible between himself and the offending object.

  I told you, I am – I was – Monsieur Al-Farouk’s private assistant. I handled all of his correspondence and did research for him.

  This is … He stumbled … This is confidential. It is one of the terms of my acquittal that information from the case not be divulged – to anyone. Hamid knew that.

  Yusuf looked around the café. I could tell he was getting ready to leave, to run. I had to keep him engaged, or I would lose him.

  I leaned in towards him. Let my blouse fall open. He didn’t even glance.

  Please, I said. Monsieur Al-Farouk has been killed. His son also. The police have accused his wife of murder. I know Monsieur Al-Farouk cared for you very much. He often spoke to me of you. I know you cared for him too.

  That seemed
to hold him. I continued: Monsieur Al-Farouk never explained what was contained in this file. And of course, I did not ask.

  I paused, hoping he might respond. He did not.

  Something happened to him, I went on. Here in Egypt, while he was defending you. Something that might explain why he was killed and bring the real culprits to justice. Please, I said, dropping my head, I need your help.

  I gathered myself, let him process this.

  He sat a while in silence. The tea came, and cooled untouched. Then he looked at me. I could see the conflict in his eyes.

  I am very sorry about what has happened, he said. Hamid was a good man. But this is the time we live in. Everywhere, good is silenced. I am sorry, he said. I cannot help you. There was something very sad about him, a deep resignation. Please do not try to contact me again, he said. Then he placed some money on the table – enough for the tea and a small tip – and stood. He reached to shake my hand. Perhaps this will help, he said. Then he turned and walked away.

  I sit here now, back in my room, and look at the card he slipped into my palm. It is an ordinary business card for a Mr Sayed Amadallah, Operations Manager, Fabrika el Hamra Company, in the Hadayek-el Koba district of Cairo. Phone and fax numbers. An address. And on the back, in a neat hand in blue ink, a name – Mehmet – and a telephone number.

  I am now sure that we were being watched. Everything about Yusuf’s demeanour spoke of caution, paranoia even. Whatever he was mixed up in, his acquittal in the courts clearly has not been the end of it. I do not know if he believed my story.

  18:45 hrs

  Chéri:

  My fears are confirmed. This evening I was visited by the police.

  They were plainclothes detectives of some sort, two of them. I had no sense that they knew who I was. I asked them for identification, which surprised them. A woman does not challenge authority in that way. They asked to see my passport, pored over it for a while, kept glancing up at my face. The taller one asked me a few questions one can only describe as routine – if one lives in a police state. What is the reason for your visit to Egypt? Tourism, I answered. How long are you planning to stay in Egypt? A month. But they quickly became more specific.