‘Open up, G,’ said Clay. ‘I’ve got your money.’
The sound of the chain being pulled back, the bolt sliding. G peered out from a darkened room. ‘Fuck, Straker. Wait a minute, man.’
G made to close the door but Clay jammed his boot into the opening and pushed the door open.
G stumbled back. He was naked, blinking in the light from the hallway. ‘Fuck me,’ he gasped. ‘I said wait, man.’ Behind him a Nubian girl lay sprawled on her stomach, legs parted. She was naked. Her mahogany skin shone with perspiration.
Clay closed the door behind him, drew the G21 and levelled it at G’s balls. ‘I told you to back off.’
G covered his nakedness with his hands, stepped back and bumped into the corner of the bed. The girl gasped, flipped over onto her back, pulled the sheets up under her chin then lay staring at them open-mouthed.
‘What’re you talking about, Straker? I did what you said, man. The AB thinks I’m still hunting you down.’
‘Get rid of her,’ said Clay.
G turned to the girl. ‘Yallah,’ he barked. ‘Get out, stupid cunt.’
The girl slipped from the bed and started dressing. She looked very young, her breasts mere thimbles. She was speaking rapidly in Arabic, pointing at G.
‘Pay her,’ said Clay.
G sidled up to the desk, peeled off a couple of notes and tossed them on the bed. The girl grabbed the money, slipped a dress over her head and hurried to the door, shoes and purse dangling from her hands. She closed the door quietly behind her.
‘The woman,’ said Clay. ‘In Giza.’
‘Shit, man,’ he hissed. ‘I didn’t do that.’
‘I know you didn’t. But you were using her to get to my friend.’
G smirked, but wiped it away.
Clay buffered his anger, held it back. ‘Why were you there?’
‘They want something. Some document. They’re willing to pay for it. They think your bokkie has it. I thought she might have hidden it in the shack.’
‘That’s why you didn’t lead the cops there yourself.’
‘Gotta protect your sources, man.’
‘So, you’re working for these assholes from the Consortium, now.’
‘Shit man, I don’t know anything about any “consortium”. It’s the AB, Straker, like I said. They and the locals, they’re working together. Common objectives, all that shit.’ He ran one hand through his hair, kept the other over his cock and balls. ‘Shit, man. I don’t know what these fuckers get up to. As long as they pay, I do what they tell me.’
‘A lot of that going around.’
‘Keeps you alive, man.’
Clay breathed deeply, fought back a wave of vertigo. He was getting better at managing the episodes, hadn’t been crippled by one for a while. ‘You still want the deal?’ he said. Perhaps G was venal enough. ‘Or should I just blow your balls off?’
G’s eyes widened, focused on the gun. He nodded. ‘Calm down, man. You told me to wait. That’s what I did.’
Clay stood, gun still aimed at G’s groin.
‘Say something, Straker. You’re giving me the bossies, man.’
Clay caressed the trigger. ‘Lying bastard.’
G shrank back. ‘Look man, it’s all set up, yeah? I contacted them, like you said. Told them I could get you. I couldn’t just sit around for three days doing nothing. They’d know.’
Clay lowered his weapon.
‘How about you put that away, yeah?’
Clay jammed the Glock into his waistband.
‘You got the money?’ said G.
Clay threw a wad of cash on the bed. ‘Forty-eight hours. Then tell them.’
G’s eyes lit up. ‘And the proof?’
‘We do it now.’
Clay reached under his shirt, unsheathed his neck knife in a reverse grip. Then he placed its tip inside the top of his right ear, pointing forwards. ‘I’ll know if you haven’t told them.’
G nodded, staring at the blade.
Clay fixed G’s stare and drew the blade in a smooth arc, down and back. The top of his ear fell to the carpet. Blood welled from the wound, ran across his jaw and neck.
G recoiled. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he muttered.
Clay resheathed the knife, the pain starting to come properly now. ‘You got a camera?’
G pointed to his duffel bag, on the floor by the TV.
Clay pulled out the G21. ‘Slow and careful.’
G stepped back, rummaged in his bag and produced a small instamatic.
Clay reached his stump up to his ear, smeared it in blood and dragged it across his chest. Then he lay on his back on the carpet and splayed his arms, the G21 still pointed at G. He opened his mouth, letting his eyes drift. ‘Get going,’ he said.
G hovered above him, fumbled with the camera and snapped off half a dozen shots.
After, Clay stood, backed away to the bathroom, grabbed a towel and held it up against his ear with his stump. ‘Forty-eight hours,’ he said.
‘If I can get the file, I might be able to convince them that I killed your bokkie, too.’
Clay nodded. ‘If in two weeks I’m clear, I’ll tell you where you can get the file, and I’ll wire you the rest of the money. Write down your bank details.’
G reached for a pencil, knocked it to the floor, stooped to pick it up then scribbled the details on a slip of hotel paper and handed it to Clay. His hand was shaking. ‘Did you tell Crowbar?’
‘Ja, definitely.’
‘What’d he say?’
‘He said thanks.’
G’s face twisted into a gapped smile.
‘He also said that if you sell us out, he’s coming for you, broer. You know what that means.’
The smile was gone. G grabbed the cash, started flipping through the notes.
‘Got it?’ said Clay, wiping the blood from his face and neck.
‘Sure, man. Got it,’ said G. ‘Just disappear good, okay?’
14th November 1997. Cairo, Egypt. 09:20 hrs
It has been more than four hours now since you left, and still you have not returned. I did not want you to go alone, but you insisted. We argued. I know that Atef and his family heard us, though we closed the bedroom door. You want to protect me, and part of me loves you for it. You are a man. This is your purpose. This behaviour is programmed into you. I know this. But you are wrong when you say that you can do these things better alone. No one is better alone, ever, in anything. Nothing is stronger than a team. I told you: for us to be together, we must learn to trust each other. I know that you do not trust me.
We leave for Luxor tonight. The hours between now and then stretch almost to infinity before me. Eugène, my sweet little boy, what has become of you? Are you even in Luxor, even in Egypt? All we have is one name, a partial address in a database. It is not enough. If I were this woman, Jumoke – and it seems that I almost am, or she me – I would go anywhere but the place recorded as my address. Unless of course she feels invulnerable, protected somehow. And of course, if she was acting for the Consortium, that is exactly how she would feel. It seems even the Directorate is not immune to the Consortium’s reach.
The girls are disconsolate. They have been weeping all morning. Grief cannot be denied. It can only be surrendered to. Claymore, you must also learn this, if you are ever to be whole again. As must I.
Atef and his wife are at work now, their son at school, and I am alone with the two girls. I considered taking them to the mosque so that we could pray together, but I do not know the area, and we must stay hidden. Instead, we knelt together on the carpet in the lounge room, faced Mecca and prayed together to Allah.
I miss Samira already. If she had never met me, if she had never offered me friendship when I needed it most, she would still be alive. Her daughters would not be here, in a stranger’s house, as orphans, if not for me.
They Can’t Own You
Clay disinfected and bandaged his ear, cleaned himself up as best he could then donned the Nubian headdress and thaub that
Mahmoud had given him. When he left the room, G was sitting in the chair by the window counting out the cash Clay had given him, laying the bills out in fanned piles of ten, a thousand US dollars to a pile. He didn’t even look up as Clay left.
On the road outside the hotel Clay flagged down a taxi and showed the driver the address that Tall had written on the card. He was pretty sure now that it wasn’t a trap. Tall’s information about G had proved good. He had taken a big chance speaking to Clay as he had. What had been his motivation? He’d said he had kids. Was he one of the people Mahmoud and Atef had spoken about – one of the many Egyptians longing for change, secretly working to undermine the power structure that had run the country since 1954? Was this his own small act of rebellion?
Clay looked at his watch. Suez was more than a hundred kilometres away, but there was still plenty of time until the RV with Mahmoud. He knew it was a long shot, going to Luxor. But it was all they had. And Rania was going nowhere without finding out what happened to her son. Every day they delayed leaving Egypt put them in further peril. Not just him and Rania, but all of them – Atef, Mahmoud, their wives and children, Samira’s girls even. If the Consortium and the AB were working together, as now appeared certain, then the danger was multiplied. These were not people who compromised, or forgot. He had to make Rania see this. She was acting out of desperation, holding fast to the thinnest of probabilities, a blurry CCTV image of an infant, a picture she hadn’t even seen herself. A passport photo that could have been obtained anywhere. Her son was dead. He had to make her see this. Perhaps whatever this Al-Gambal knew would help her understand. Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, he had to try.
Outside, the work morning traffic lay stalled along the banks of the Nile, gasping under a blanket of ethylated lead and partially combusted hydrocarbons that thickened the air into vapour. Clay pushed the tail of his jelabia over his nose and mouth, shallowed his breathing. Finally leaving the corniche, the taxi driver turned east, towards New Cairo City and Suez. The Moqattam cliffs loomed above the haze-shrouded minarets of the citadel then faded in the distance. Forty minutes later the taxi was speeding east through a desert of construction waste, miles and miles of it, spread like a pox in millions of individual truckloads across the sand plains. Cairo’s buildings faded in the rear window, swallowed in an inversion of brown smog.
By the time they reached Suez it was just gone eleven in the morning. The driver, unfamiliar with the area, stopped several times to ask for directions, was sent this way and that. Finally they arrived at a low-rent apartment complex, a half-dozen identical five-storey buildings set around two opposing semi-circular roads. Crumbling pavements spilled sand onto the tarmac. A few dead palm trees, withered and bent, perhaps planted at the grand opening years ago, lay slumped and toppled in a field of smashed brick and rubble. The driver stopped the taxi and pointed at a building. Half the windows were boarded up with plywood. Arabic graffiti snaked across the walls of the entranceway.
‘Are you sure?’ said the driver.
Clay gave him half the fare. ‘Wait here,’ he said, stepping out of the car.
Clay climbed the stairs to the fourth floor. Apartment forty-seven was at the end of the hall, towards the back of the building. He stood outside the door, listened a moment but heard nothing. He knocked, waited. After a minute, he knocked again, louder this time. Nothing. He raised his hand to try one last time when the door opposite cracked open against its chain. An unshaven face peered out from the darkness.
‘Upstairs,’ came a voice. ‘On the roof.’
Clay mumbled his thanks and started back to the stairs.
Yusuf Al-Gambal was sitting in a canvas director’s chair facing the Gulf of Suez, smoking a cigarette. He was bare-chested and wore tinted Vuarnet sunglasses. A can of Coke swung hinged between the thumb and index finger of his other hand. He turned as Clay approached, ran his gaze over Clay’s face and frowned. ‘What took you so long?’ he said.
Clay stopped a few paces away but said nothing.
Al-Gambal took a puff of his cigarette, raised his chin and blew the smoke skywards in a slow, steady, exhalation. ‘If my father were alive, all you bastards would be behind bars.’
Still Clay didn’t reply.
‘Do what you have to do,’ said the young man. ‘I don’t care anymore.’ He flicked the smoking butt of his cigarette over the lip of the roof. ‘Burn in hell.’
‘I probably will,’ said Clay, his Arabic so much better now than it had been just three weeks earlier. ‘But I’m not who you think I am.’
Al-Gambal set down his Coke, pushed himself out of the chair and stood staring at Clay through his reflective lenses. Clay looked back at a dual image of himself, the sky warped dark blue and vanadium behind him.
‘You’re bleeding,’ said Al-Gambal, in English.
Clay reached up to his neck. His fingers came away stained bright red.
‘Who are you?’ said Al-Gambal
‘A friend.’
‘I don’t have many of those left.’
‘Neither do I,’ said Clay, stepping closer. ‘I’m a friend of Madame Al-Farouk, Hamid’s wife.’
Al-Gambal took off his sunglasses, narrowing his eyes against the sun.
‘She’s here in Egypt,’ Clay continued, ‘and she’s trying to find out what happened to her husband.’
Al-Gambal nodded slowly. ‘I met a woman a few days ago. She said she was Hamid’s private secretary. She said her name was Veronique Deschamps. I didn’t believe her.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ said Clay.
‘Hamid was murdered,’ said Al-Gambal.
‘Why?’
‘Because he challenged the system. Because of how close we came to exposing them.’ Al-Gambal replaced his glasses. ‘I always knew they would come after us.’
‘Was it the court case?’
Al-Gambal turned away, walked to the edge of the roof and looked out across the water. A freighter appeared from behind the breakwater that marked the entrance to the canal.
‘Yusuf,’ said Clay. ‘Please. I don’t have a lot of time.’
‘I am not able to discuss any matters associated with the case,’ he said, still staring out to sea.
‘I can protect you. Get you out.’
Al-Gambal laughed. ‘You don’t understand, do you?’ he said, his voice wavering. ‘I’m already dead.’
‘Your choice, broer. Then it won’t matter. So tell me.’
Al-Gambal glanced at Clay, looked back out across the Gulf. The freighter had moved away from the breakwater now and was plying south towards the Red Sea, trailing a long plume of black smoke against a flawless sky. ‘I suppose I could…’ he began, but let it go.
Clay reached into his pocket, pulled out the dead Kemetic’s camera and showed Al-Gambal the photo of the three men and the woman in front of the court buildings.
‘Where did you get this?’ said Al-Gambal.
‘That doesn’t matter now,’ said Clay. ‘What were you being tried for?’
‘High treason,’ replied Al-Gambal. ‘The prosecution was asking for the death penalty. A little ironic, don’t you think?’
‘But you won.’
‘We didn’t win. But we made it difficult enough for them that the attorney general offered us a deal: our silence, and in return they drop the charges, and we go free.’
‘And you took it.’
‘I didn’t want to. I wanted to fight. So did Ali.’
‘Ali?’
‘My colleague from the project. The official story is that he hanged himself in prison. It happened the day after we were offered the deal.’
‘Jesus.’
‘He was twenty-four.’ Al-Gambal flicked the end of another smoke off the roof. ‘It was his first job.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Clay, meant it. He’d seen far too many young guys die before they’d had a chance to learn how to live.
Al-Gambal inclined his head. ‘We thought Hamid wanted to fight, too. He was very, ve
ry good at what he did. Very passionate, very skilful. But then Ali died, and something else happened…’ Again he stopped short, let his sentence trail off.
‘So you made the deal.’
‘Yes. But then, when I heard on the news that Hamid and his son had been killed in Paris, I knew. They killed Mehmet a few days ago. I’m next.’
‘Mehmet?’
Al-Gambal pointed to the third man in the photo, the one Clay had found dead in his flat. ‘My oldest friend.’
‘Jesus,’ said Clay. ‘What happened to change Hamid’s mind?’
Al-Gambal placed his hand on his bare chest, covering the place where his heart was. ‘Me. It was my fault.’
‘Tell me.’
Over the next fifteen minutes, Yusuf Al-Gambal told his story. Whether he wanted someone to hear his version of events before he died, or just needed to get it straight in his own head, he let it all come out.
He’d been working as a scientist on a new project funded by the Canadian foreign aid agency, looking at air pollution in Cairo and how to improve air quality. He and Ali spent over a year installing monitoring stations across the city, collecting and compiling data. And what they found was far more disturbing than anyone had expected. Of course, you could see the smog. Everyone knew that air quality was poor, especially in the summer months when big inversions would lock the city in a gas chamber of its own making. But as they analysed the data and started to model toxicity, it became apparent that the air was far more poisonous, in considerably more ways and far more often, than anyone had imagined when the project had been set up.
Yusuf lit another cigarette. ‘Lead,’ he said, smoke pouring from his nostrils. ‘That was the big one.’
Yusuf and Ali ran some preliminary calculations on human toxicity, focusing on lead. Then they got permission from the project manager to do some blood testing on selected children, working with a few local schools in the worst-affected areas. It wasn’t in the original project budget, but the project manager told them that if they could find savings in their other monitoring work, he would allow them to apply it to the blood testing. They collected samples from thirty-two children in the end.
Absolution Page 26
