The Burning Gates

by Parker Bilal

  Santos addressed the Iraqi. When Samari did not respond he leaned over to pull him to his feet. In one smooth motion Samari came up, his arm flying out. Even at a distance, Makana could see the scarlet arc of blood as it fountained into the sunlight. Santos screamed and staggered back, both hands to his throat as he sank to his knees. Samari slipped back into the shadows beneath the arcade while Hagen tried to help his friend. The bodyguards renewed their efforts. Over by the cars, the driver had located the sniper and sent a long burst towards the first-floor windows where the wooden shutters threw off splinters as bullets smashed into them. The second man loosed off several wild shots at Hagen while advancing to protect his boss. Hagen ducked behind a pillar. Santos was dead on his knees. Blood still poured out of him in spurts. Then his hands dropped and he fell onto his face and was still. The driver had paused to reload. Hagen threaded his way through the arcades as he jogged away.

  By now shouts were coming from nearby. People peered cautiously from windows and doorways. Makana watched Samari hurrying towards the second BMW. One of the two bodyguards made a move towards his fallen colleagues, but Samari waved him back. They all climbed aboard and both cars sped off. People began to come forward to examine the dead and the wounded.

  ‘It’s time for us to go,’ Makana said to Cassidy. Sirens in the distance were drawing nearer.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  When they got back to the Thunderbird, Makana told Sindbad to drive away slowly.

  ‘No sudden moves and keep your foot light on the accelerator.’

  Sindbad edged into the road and cautiously rumbled through the crowds now spilling into the street in front of them. Even the police sentry had reappeared and was trying to take control of the situation. He waved at people to stand back. Little attention was paid to the Thunderbird.

  Samari’s cars had taken off at high speed and disappeared from sight. Following him was now out of the question. He would be fully alert and intent on making a clean getaway. More sirens were converging from every direction. The city was in turmoil, as if the attack had somehow triggered off a series of shocks that rippled outwards.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Makana to Cassidy as they moved off.

  ‘Lucky for you I decided to follow you.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Makana. ‘Lucky for me.’

  ‘You can thank me when you get me Kane.’

  ‘I didn’t see him back there.’

  ‘Kane’s too smart to be caught in the middle,’ Cassidy said. ‘He would have been behind the scenes, coordinating things.’

  There was something else bothering Makana. ‘How did Kane know about the tailor’s appointment?’

  ‘Perhaps he just followed you, like I did.’ Cassidy sank down in the back seat and lit one of his Camels.

  It was possible that Kane had followed him, but Makana thought it unlikely. It wouldn’t have given him enough time to set up the ambush. It had all been carefully planned. Kane and his men had studied the location well. They had weapons and transport in place. They had worked out their escape route.

  As they drove Makana realised that he was going to have to trust Cassidy in some way. He had saved his life, after all. Perhaps an American could help him to understand how someone like Kane thought. Whatever the explanation for Kane’s appearance, he knew it wouldn’t take Samari long to work out who had betrayed him. He dialled Bilquis only to be rewarded by the engaged tone. A police car, lights flashing, cut across their path, causing the Thunderbird to screech to a halt.

  ‘Where are we going, ya basha?’ Sindbad asked. His voice was trembling. Makana could see that his hands were gripping the wheel tightly. The shooting had upset him.

  ‘It’s all right, Sindbad. We’ll be okay.’

  Without a word, Sindbad pulled up, opened his door, leaned out and vomited quietly into the gutter. After a moment or two he straightened up and plucked a scented paper tissue from the box he insisted on keeping on the dashboard.

  ‘Where did you get the help?’ Cassidy asked.

  They drove first to the club in Maadi, where Makana leaned on the buzzer until the door opened. The house was sleeping the day away. None of the bouncers was in sight. Upstairs Gigi herself opened the door. Wearing a housecoat and with her hair in curlers, it took him a moment to recognise her without the make-up and the glamorous clothes.

  ‘What do you want at this hour?’

  ‘Is Bilquis here?’

  ‘Control yourself. What do you think this place is? A twenty-four-hour supermarket? We need our rest just like everyone else.’

  ‘I need you to tell me if she’s here,’ said Makana slowly.

  Gigi pouted. ‘She hasn’t shown up yet, and I won’t be surprised if she doesn’t.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because she’s trouble. Always has been, right from the start.’ Gigi folded her arms. ‘She used to do her job and not answer back. Then all of a sudden she thinks her life is going to change. Somebody needs to teach her a lesson.’

  Makana was already heading for the stairs. On the way down he tried Bilquis again. As he reached the ground-floor veranda, a wall fell on him. As he flew sideways and tumbled to the ground, he watched his telephone come apart as it skittered across the floor. When he looked up he saw the fat bouncer. He looked bigger from this angle. He was chewing something and was frowning so fiercely his eyes seemed to meet in the middle of his forehead. Perhaps he was angry at having his lunch disturbed.

  ‘You should know better than to come around here annoying people when they are trying to rest.’

  Makana tried to sit up and felt a sharp pain in his ribs.

  ‘Look,’ he began, holding up a hand. ‘I don’t have time for this.’

  ‘Oh yeah? Well, let me tell you what I don’t have time for.’ Underneath the fat there was clearly a lot of muscle. He hauled Makana to his feet with as much ease as a normal person might scoop up a kitten. Then he hit him again, in the stomach this time. Makana folded over.

  ‘I don’t have time for liars. I don’t have time for people who pretend to be invited guests when they aren’t.’ He wasn’t even breathing heavily. Makana saw the foot coming up towards his face and managed to turn away so that the blow struck his shoulder. It was still powerful enough to send him flying backwards into the wall. The bouncer lumbered closer. Makana wasn’t convinced of the wisdom of getting to his feet at this point, but he knew that if he stayed down he would be kicked senseless in a matter of minutes. He feinted left and moved right. The fat man laughed. Makana managed to get in a low kick to the man’s right knee which stopped him in his tracks. The fat man’s expression hardened.

  ‘Now you’re starting to really annoy me.’

  ‘Any trouble, ya basha?’

  Makana was never so glad to see Sindbad. The bouncer turned to face him.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m the one who teaches you a lesson.’

  The fat man weighed Sindbad up and grunted to himself in satisfaction, or perhaps it was anticipation. On a normal day Sindbad looked fairly big, but next to this man he seemed to have shrunk. Makana wasn’t too concerned. He had witnessed Sindbad’s skills on a number of occasions and had never failed to be impressed by how lightly such a large man could move. If you watched him carefully you realised he carried a lot of his weight in his shoulders and arms. His waist, despite the years of married life, was relatively slim. But it was his legs that were the most impressive, because they were actually quite slender. He moved on his toes, slipped to his left with effortless ease, closing in on the bouncer with speed. His hands flew out, delivering a combination of blows that stopped the fat man in his tracks. A look of bewilderment came over him. He threw a punch that Sindbad swatted aside as he stepped in to deliver a body blow that brought the bouncer to his knees. It hardly seemed like a fair match. Makana retrieved the pieces of his telephone as the bouncer crashed to the tiles face first with a crunch that made him wince. Sindbad was rubbing his knuckles. He seemed
to be enjoying himself.

  ‘I really need to start training again. You know how you can let things slip? What with the job and the family, I never seem to have the time.’

  ‘You’re doing fine, Sindbad, believe me.’

  Cassidy was waiting for them by the gate.

  ‘Okay, so I can see how he can come in useful at times.’

  ‘We have to get across the river. I can’t reach her on the phone.’

  The traffic was sluggish. They crawled slowly towards the river, then onto the bridge, edging their way up. It felt like a monumental task, like building a pyramid. Off on the horizon the sun glowed a fierce red.

  Makana was making no progress with putting his telephone back together. It was as if he had too many pieces. Feeling his frustration mounting, he dumped the whole collection in a heap on the seat next to him.

  ‘Having trouble?’ Cassidy asked.

  ‘See if you have better luck than me,’ said Makana, passing the pieces to the back seat.

  After a time, Cassidy sat back and whistled. ‘Well, now we know how they found out about the meeting.’

  ‘What have you found?’

  Cassidy was holding up a strip of plastic with a circuit printed on it.

  ‘That’s the bit I couldn’t fit in,’ said Makana.

  ‘That’s because it doesn’t belong there. It’s an audio bug. They were listening in on your conversations.’

  ‘They heard Bilquis telling me about the tailor. How could they do that?’

  ‘Well, they must have taken it off you at some stage. A bar or lift. Someone standing too close to you? Notice anything like that? Or they might have bumped into you by accident.’

  Makana remembered the man in the Marriott. The man who had stepped out in front of him and had been about to shoot him.

  ‘Eddie Clearwater.’

  The bellhop had handed him back his telephone. Makana gave the instrument a malevolent glare. It seemed to have borne out all his misgivings. He turned it over in his hands, fighting the urge to fling the thing out of the window and be done with it.

  When they finally reached Sharia Sudan, Makana left Sindbad and Cassidy in the car and crossed the footbridge by himself. Remembering his last visit, he decided it would be wise not to draw more attention than was necessary. As it turned out there was no one around to block his progress. The boys who hung about outside the bakery must have been sleeping the night off.

  The door to Bilquis’s flat was wide open.

  Makana walked cautiously inside, fearing the worst. It was too quiet. He could hear the sounds of the street, someone selling bottles of kerosene for stoves. The main room held the first signs of trouble. One arm had broken off the sofa, a chair had been overturned, broken glass crunched underfoot. The picture of the Kaaba now lay shattered on the linoleum floor. Wisps of smoke drifted from a smouldering cigarette that lay in the tin ashtray on the table. Makana moved into the boy’s room. The bed was unmade. He turned as someone came in through the front door behind him.

  ‘Who are you?’ A stout man in his fifties, with greying whiskers and wearing a gellabiya. In his right hand he held a length of metal pipe.

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Are you a friend of hers?’ Makana nodded. The pipe lowered a fraction. ‘We live next door. My wife usually fetches the boy around this time. We look after him while his mother works.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘It was about the time when my wife usually goes over to fetch him. Suddenly we heard all this noise. We thought maybe they were playing a game. Banging and crashing. We began to grow concerned. My wife tried to go in, she was knocked aside. They took them both, her and the boy.’

  ‘Did you see who they were?’

  ‘They were dressed like businessmen. They took her. That’s all I know.’

  Makana moved to the window and looked out. Nothing was out of the ordinary. At the far end of the street he could see a group of people gathered at the corner.

  ‘How long ago was this?’

  ‘Just now. My wife came screaming. I went back to fetch this from under the bed.’ He brandished the pipe. ‘By the time I got here they had disappeared into thin air.’

  ‘Did you call the police?’

  ‘The police?’ The man jerked back as if stung, a deep frown of incomprehension on his face. ‘Now why would I do that? I don’t want to cause problems for anyone.’ The man scratched his chin. ‘She’s a nice girl, I guess she’s just mixed up with the wrong people. It happens all the time. Take my brother’s son . . . Hey, where are you going?’

  When he came out of the narrow doorway Makana looked both ways and then began running down the uneven alley towards the main street. The crowd he had seen from the window was gathered at the corner. People were offering their opinions, pointing at the moving traffic. A young man was picking up guavas and replacing them in a heap.

  ‘What happened here?’

  ‘What happened?’ The boy glared at Makana. ‘They came out of nowhere, knocked the whole corner down. Who do you think is going to pay for all that fruit?’

  ‘What kind of car was it?’

  ‘Who knows? Big and black and driven by a donkey.’

  Makana made his way slowly back through the crowds and over the footbridge. Cassidy was leaning against the side of the car smoking.

  ‘Samari’s men have taken her and the boy. We need to find out where they went.’

  ‘Does it occur to that maybe you’re taking this a little personally?’

  ‘You’re here to avenge your son. If anyone can understand it ought to be you.’

  ‘I’m just saying, I thought we were looking for Kane.’

  ‘It’s the same thing. Kane can’t stop now. After this afternoon he’ll be on Samari’s trail. Find Samari, and sooner or later Kane will show up.’

  ‘But you don’t know where Samari has gone,’ Cassidy pointed out. ‘You haven’t a clue.’

  ‘No.’ Makana thought for a moment. ‘But maybe I know someone who can help us with that.’

  They drove back down the Dowal al-Arabiya Street. Outside the white mosque Makana told Sindbad to pull over.

  Zayed Zafrani was busy supervising the unloading of a van full of old clothes. On a row of tables heaps of them were being sorted through by a legion of women dressed in black.

  ‘More aid for the needy?’

  ‘Our work is never done.’ Zafrani clasped his hands together and allowed himself a little smile. The women rushed back and forth moving things from one trestle to another. Hard at work, they resembled a crowd of furious birds, pecking away. ‘What can I do for you today?’

  ‘Do you remember that the last time we met I asked you about a young man, Na’il Abdelkarim?’

  Zayed Zafrani lifted his hands in a confession of ignorance. ‘I’m sorry. I have so many things to concern me. Why do you ask?’

  ‘I saw him this morning. He was quite dead. Someone tried to make it look like a road accident, but he had been beaten to death.’

  ‘Such a line of work.’ Zayed Zafrani shook his head in despair. ‘Allah willing, you will be rewarded in the next life.’

  ‘I wouldn’t count on that.’

  ‘I don’t understand why this concern brings you to me.’

  ‘The last time I saw that young man alive he was on the receiving end of your brother’s wrath.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. I wish I could teach my brother to be patient, but he has a troubled soul.’ Zafrani struck a tone of lament. ‘If I could change him I would do so in an instant.’

  ‘Ayad is mixed up with some important people. He’s trying to gain political interest.’

  ‘He’s an ambitious man, in his own way.’

  ‘He has some powerful friends, people he does favours for. Eliminating Na’il was partly that. A favour. But he also had his own reasons. He suspected Na’il was working for a rival, someone who was trying to muscle in on his territory. That’s why he beat him to a pulp.’
r />   ‘He has a furious temper.’ Zayed shook his head like a man dismayed.

  ‘The thing is, I can’t think of many people who would dare to go up against your brother. His reputation is rivalled by few. Of course you had a fairly formidable reputation yourself, before you took an interest in charity.’ Makana smiled.

  ‘Always a pleasure to talk to you, Makana, but as you can see, I am rather busy.’ Zafrani made to move away. Makana raised his voice.

  ‘I kept asking myself, who would dare to go up against a man like Ayad Zafrani?’

  Zayed Zafrani pushed his spectacles back up his nose. Light glinted on the glass. Some of the women were now looking in their direction.

  ‘Na’il peddled recreational drugs. Amphetamines, Prozac, ecstasy, Viagra, the kind of things that allow the beautiful people to party all night, to indulge their lusts and float through this world on a happy cloud of chemical dust.’

  ‘Why is this of interest to you?’ Aware of their audience, Zayed Zafrani lowered his voice.

  ‘I’m trying to help someone who I believe is in danger.’

  ‘What has any of this to do with me?’

  Makana produced his telephone. ‘Pharmaceuticals are produced in batches. They have serial numbers to help trace them. The police are searching his property now. I imagine they would be interested to know where he got his supplies. They might like to try and match them to the stocks you have here.’ Makana tilted his head towards the warehouse.

  When Zafrani spoke again there was a hard edge to his tone. There was no trace of the old benevolence.

  ‘I shall give you some advice, Makana, as an associate, if not a friend. Do not interfere in matters that do not concern you.’

  ‘Perhaps I should have a word with your brother before I talk to my friends in the police. He might be more receptive.’

  ‘You are treading on dangerous ground. Better drop the matter while you still can.’

  ‘You’re the only person who is capable of challenging your brother. You said yourself that he steers his own course. You wanted to bring him back to the true path, didn’t you? You set up Na’il as your emissary, to peddle his drugs in order to convince Ayad that someone was trying to muscle in on his business. Then what, an anonymous call to the police? Perhaps close the club down for a while? It wouldn’t last long because he has powerful friends, but maybe it would encourage him to take your ideas about legitimising the business more seriously.’