by Nick Louth
‘Which hotel are we going to?’ Cantara asked, but the driver just grinned lasciviously at her, and drove off. Within a mile, he stopped outside a car hire office, where Rifat got out, and took his bag from the boot. ‘I’ll catch you up later, Cantara,’ he said. ‘Tofi will take care of you.’
Cantara’s dismay was lost in the slammed door, and the gunning of the engine as the car set off. Tofi put on the radio. Deafening Islamic music crackled through the car, and he banged his hands in time on the steering wheel and sang, badly, to the choruses. They headed towards a row of giant glistening hotels. But instead of turning left towards the Red Sea coast, Tofi turned right and headed along Dahad City Road, north into the mountains.
‘Where are we going?’ Cantara asked in Arabic. The man’s shouted reply made no sense to her. She persisted, and he finally turned down the music and spoke to her in broken English.
‘Desert Palm Resort. Don’t worry, Miss.’ He winked horribly at her in the mirror. As he chuckled, his bad breath filled the car. A line of violet mountain ridges crawled across the horizon, against a salmon pink sky, and the land to either side of the road got rougher. First the street lamps ended, then the painted kerb, then the tarmac became rough and potholed.
Cantara opened her small leather backpack and slid out the phone Rifat had given her. She’d had little chance to find her way around it. She turned it on, and the sharp beep alarmed the driver. ‘What is Miss doing?’ he said.
‘Just a phone call to Rifat,’ she said.
He laughed. ‘No phone in Sinai.’
It was true, she couldn’t get a signal at all. They passed a huge squat army base, ringed with towers and with coiled razor wire that snaked far across the scrubby wastelands. Finally, after another hour, the light attenuated to a faint glow and the first stars began to emerge. Without warning Tofi brought the car skidding to a halt on a gravelly apron edged with rubbish. He cut the engine, went to the boot and fished out a prayer mat. Then, surrounded by a sea of billowing plastic bags, crushed water bottles and fruit peel he turned his back to the final flourish of the setting sun, knelt and prayed. Isha, the sunset prayer. Feeling somewhat guilty, Cantara knelt on the back seat of the car, and made her own obeisance. After he’d finished she asked him how long before they got to the hotel.
‘Nearly there. Just a few minutes. Trust me, Madam.’
Another fifteen minutes passed with no sign of habitation. Cantara was only able to tell that the land was rising because of the contrast between the black rocky outcrops and the midnight blue sky. Her heart was pounding, and she felt a pain, low in her abdomen, behind her scar. This wasn’t right. This definitely wasn’t right. Finally, she plucked up courage. ‘Stop the car! This isn’t right. We’ve got to go back for Rifat!’
Tofi ignored her. She undid the door catch, and eased the door open. The sound of gravel filled the car. ‘Stop now, or I’ll jump out!’
The driver accelerated. ‘So brave,’ he chuckled. ‘To want to die and be eaten by Bedouin dogs.’
‘Let me out!’ She yelled.
Tofi laughed, and shook his head. ‘Crazy madam. Crazy.’
Cantara looked through her backpack for something to use as a weapon. Thanks to airline security, there was nothing. Not even a nail file. The driver had no seat belt, there were no headrests, nothing detachable in the car that she could see. After thinking for a few minutes, she undid her hijab, and placed it on her lap. The driver watched intently in the mirror, as she freed her hair, running the fingers of her left hand languorously through her gentle dark waves. Meanwhile she trapped one tip of the hijab under her shoe and pulled it out and over the outside of her thigh with her right hand. It was about three feet long. She found some coins in her trousers, and placed them in a pile in her lap, on the corner of her hijab. She then waited for the driver’s gaze to return to the road. They were now heading sharply down on a winding road into some kind of canyon. The passage of a military truck, lights dazzling on full beam, in the opposite direction gave the opportunity. She deftly knotted the coins into the end of the hijab, where they had a pleasing weight. She waited until they passed some kind of building, a squat blockhouse, but the first of any kind she had seen for some time.
Then she made her move. In her right hand she grabbed the hijab in a bunch half way along, then leaned forward, swung it out and left, around the driver’s neck. She then grabbed at the weighted end on the far left as it swung around by the driver-side door. She got it, but Tofi grabbed her wrist, hard, and hit the brakes. As the car slowed she shot forward and the front of her head smashed painfully into the back of his. She sank her teeth deep into his right ear, and tasted blood. He screamed, and cursed her. His grip on her wrist eased for a moment, giving her enough time to pull the weighted end of the hijab back, under his jaw, and then twist the ends. The car slewed sideways to a halt, she fell across the back seat, but kept her grip on the scarf. The driver’s head was pulled painfully back over his seat, his neck fully exposed. His legs were kicking out, and he was trying desperately to twist towards her. He made a gargling sound as he clawed at the scarf, and Cantara began to feel the huge strength in him. It far exceeded hers. She twisted the hijab again, and then a third time, tightening the noose. Lying with her back on the seat she raised a foot to the back of his head and braced while she pulled the scarf as tight as she could. But she soon realised that she needed more leverage. She didn’t want to kill him, but she probably wasn’t even going to be able to immobilise him. She could get out and run, but where to? In his kicking the driver had knocked open the glove box, which had its own dim internal light. It was still bright enough to discern the squat shiny outline of a gun. He was straining towards it, but couldn’t reach.
She had to have it.
Cantara gave one final tug, then dropped the hijab and lunged over the passenger seat for the glove compartment. Just as she got there, her hand on the butt of the gun, the driver kicked at her head. She fell into the front of the car, head first, gasping in pain, but she had the heavy revolver in both hands pointing it at him. ‘I’ll shoot!’ she yelled. He dived at her, growling, his sweat and stink and animal strength swamping her. As they wrestled, the passenger door burst open and she fell out, the gun still in her hand.
She scrambled to her feet and pointed the gun at him again. He gasped, as he tried to extricate himself from the car. ‘What is your problem? I’m asked to drive madam, to look after her. Then she try to kill me!’ He lunged at her, and as she jumped back she involuntarily squeezed the trigger.
Rigid. Nothing happened. Tofi was lurching out of the car now. There must be a safety catch. She had never used a gun before, but there were enough around in the Lebanese camps for Cantara to know full well that every weapon had a safety catch. Tofi was now out, and his graveyard of mottled brown teeth was set in fury.
She turned and ran back up the rough road. Her head was agony. Her teeth hurt, where they had sunk into his head. Her wrist was painful too. She ran back towards the blockhouse, two hundred metres, where a pale light burned high on the wall. Tofi had got back in the car and, from the urgent whine of the transmission, was reversing up the slope towards her. She arrived at the blockhouse whose sign declared it an underground pumping station. The door was padlocked. Cantara used the light to inspect the gun, and quickly found the small slide which controlled the safety catch. She pushed out the chamber and found there were three bullets. Plenty enough if she had to shoot.
The car stopped next to her, and Tofi started to get out. Cantara turned and ran up the sloping ground behind the blockhouse. She leant against the cold wall, and listened to the whump, whump, whump of the pumps turning within. Tofi would come after her, she knew that. He knew Sinai, and she didn’t. He had the car and she had the gun. But there was no water, except perhaps within this pumping station, and no food. And she would freeze.
Tofi was following. She could hear his breath. He may be strong, but he wasn’t fit. She had an idea. She feigned a limp, w
alking on and up the steep slope, keeping to the ridge where her silhouette would break the skyline. Pausing more often than she needed. She could hear Tofi’s footsteps accelerate, encouraged by the prospect of catching her. Turning, she saw him a hundred metres back, halfway between her and the pumphouse. She moved behind a ragged clump of thorny bushes, and scouted out an alternative route down as her eyes adjusted to the starlight. There was a gravel path off to the left, which led down to the road a hundred metres back where they had come from. Tofi was almost up with her now. As his silhouette broke the skyline, she darted back around the bushes, and bounded down the path, sending gravel flying. She could hear Tofi curse. She ran like the wind to the road, then sprinted down to the pumping station and beyond, to the car.
Her prayers were answered, The door was unlocked. She had never driven, but had seen it done. Idiots can drive. In Lebanon, every idiot drives. How hard could it be? She slid onto the driver’s seat, slung the gun on the passenger seat, and looked at the ignition. There were no keys. She felt in the glove box. Nothing. Looked on the floor. Felt above the sun shade. Nothing. And now Tofi was almost there, wheezing. She pressed the central locking button, hoping it wouldn’t require the ignition on. The satisfying clunk showed she was in luck. But a second later the lock unclicked, and Tofi tugged the passenger door open, the remote lock fob still dangling in his other hand. Staring down the barrel of his own gun, he hesitated.
Cantara had a split second to make a choice. Either kill, or get out of the car. Instead, on impulse, she released the handbrake. ‘Keep away,’ she shouted as the Hyundai began to coast, one door open, down the dirt road. Cantara slung the gun back on the dashboard, and laughed with relief. All she had to do was steer down into the valley bottom. Even a beginner can use brakes and a steering wheel. She tested the pedals, recalling that the middle one is the brake. Coasting downhill would put miles between them. It would take Tofi hours to catch up, and she would have a chance to find help. She turned the lights on, then flicked them to full beam. The car continued on the gently descending right hand bend, and started to gather speed as the bluffs on either side fell away. Ahead and steeply below was a bridge and a sweeping left curve. Only then did she try turning the steering wheel to make the left-hander.
It wouldn’t budge.
It was locked into that gentle rightward turn. The free play was less than a centimetre each way. She wrestled with the steering lock, wasting valuable seconds as she diverged right from the road, drifting down the camber of the thin potholed tarmac, then onto a dirt strip and finally a fan of gravel that led in a hundred metres to a cliff edge. She stamped on the brake, and the wheels locked. The car shook violently and the back spun around, accentuating the rightward turn. She screamed, and gripped the wheel even tighter as the vehicle ground to a halt, driver’s side parallel to the precipice, a metre away. She wriggled out of the passenger side, grabbed the gun and plucked her bag from the boot. Tofi would be five or ten minutes behind. It gave her time to find a torch, a cigarette lighter, a half-full plastic water bottle, a walkie-talkie radio, a small grimy toolbox and a jerry can of fuel. From her own bag she put on the lightweight black jacket, something she had fondly imagined she would wear at evening soirées at Sharm el-Sheikh. She changed into flat shoes and tied her hijab back on.
Protected from the gathering chill, she reflected on her situation. She had the advantage: the car and all its contents, tools, water and the gun. The trouble was, she couldn’t keep it all unless she stayed right there. Against that Tofi knew where they were, and was presumably amongst his own people. He was remorseless. Fearless and furious, humiliated and dangerous. She needed help. Where was Rifat? She was angry with him, but she couldn’t spare the time to think through what had happened, and why he had behaved so strangely. Right now she had other priorities.
With the torch she explored around the car. There were some scrubby bushes back towards the bridge and a pile of discarded plastic bottles and other rubbish. She took the tools and jerry can and buried them amongst the pile. In her small leather backpack she squeezed in the water, walkie-talkie and gun, safety catch back on. She tried her mobile again. No signal.
The car had to be dealt with. If she left it, Tofi would use it to chase her. It had to be put out of action. That was easy. It was still on a slope, pointing away from the bridge down a rough goat track that would soon become too narrow for it. She leant in and released the handbrake. It needed a nudge to get going, but soon gathered pace. It careered away into darkness, clattering down a rocky slope and then flipping noisily onto its side. Cantara moved back towards the road. Tofi could be seen in the light of her torch, a few hundred metres away, walking steadily down towards her. He whistled at her, a piercing noise. She set off in the other direction, jogging to keep warm, finding that the slope downwards made for big strides and an easy gait. Until she was five years old she had barely been able to walk, yet alone run. Her twisted foot had been an awkward weight, tying down her spirit. But after the operation, she had discovered the power of flight. Running, jumping, skipping, dancing; every childish pursuit had filled her with joy. For the first time she had been able to play boisterously with her older brother, and he soon found he could rarely catch her. Now she needed all those skills to save her life.
If only her stomach would stop aching.
After the bridge and another long descent, Cantara could make out the valley floor. There were lights in the far distance, the only twinkling specks of hope in a serrated wall of darkness. Perhaps an hour away. She had been thinking about the walkie-talkie, whether she dare use it to call for help. Would Rifat be on one of those channels? Or had he somehow abandoned her? She couldn’t believe that he would. He was like a brother to her. The brother she had so long ago lost. She really needed his help.
* * *
Rifat sat on the balcony of his room at the Hyatt Regency in Sharm el-Sheikh and watched the sea change colour with the sunset. As the light gradually faded into darkness, he opened his laptop. He brought up two separate GPS tracker displays. As he expected only one was registering a signal.
This was on Zainab’s phone. It showed her movements around the musallah in West London in the last hours before her departure for Cairo. Rifat had carefully checked her equipment as she prepared for martyrdom. The distinctive red sports bag with the false bottom and five hundred grams of PETN, to be put under the seat in front of her, and the phone with just twenty grams to go inside the bag. A phone which could be detonated by a text message, but only from his phone. He hadn’t quite trusted Zainab to detonate it herself. Though she was devout and true, it would only be natural to hesitate. So Rifat was going to send her the text when the jet was high above the Mediterranean, and out of reach of all signals. But as soon as the plane descended over the coast around Alexandria and came into range of the first cellular towers, the text would be delivered, the phone would ring in vibration mode and the charge would detonate. That small explosion would in turn set off the larger charge in the bag without it needing to have its own detonator. There was no way the jet could survive such an explosion in the over-wing window seat he had booked for her. The fuel tanks were just below.
The other tracker remained comfortingly blank. Rifat had arranged that Cantara should be guided deep into the mountains of Sinai. Deliberately beyond the reach of any cell tower, of the Internet, in fact out of all communication. Yemen had kindly provided a unit waiting to keep her safe until needed. She would be kept away from any knowledge of the death of her beloved Wyrecliffe. In his dealings with Cantara, Rifat had learned much. The ‘innocent jihadi’ as Irfan Tiwana had called her, needed to be given clear reasons to be where they needed her to be. Her innocence worked only so long as she wasn’t suspicious. Even under the protective carapace of the musallah, in which only a filtered glimpse of the outside world came in, Cantara had allowed an old infatuation to get in the way of their plans. Rifat had been forced to find a way to build that into the plan of how to use her, and
to do so quickly. His biggest worry now was that the device within her would fail before it could be used. The surgeon had said that after ten days the antibacterial coating on the pouch cloaking the device would begin to dissolve. There could be some danger of infection, especially given the size and weight of the bomb.
After another hour checking e-mails, Rifat realised that Tofi should now have Cantara in safe keeping. Why hadn’t he heard from him? As he reached for the walkie-talkie it suddenly crackled into life. There was a burst of static, a muffled voice then nothing. Rifat picked it up.
‘Say again, Tofi. This is Rifat, over.’
There was a breathy gust of static then a voice. ‘Rifat! It’s Cantara! Oh, I’m so glad to hear your voice. Listen, Tofi tried to kidnap me.’
Rifat was too stunned to respond. His mind raced.
‘Rifat, can you hear me? He’s taken me away into the mountains. I’m nowhere near Sharm el-Sheikh. Can you get the police? I can’t get any reception on my phone.’
‘Cantara,’ Rifat answered softly. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine, but I need your help.’
‘How did you get the radio? Where’s Tofi?’
‘He’s chasing me. I got away. But I wish you were here to help me.’
When there was no reply, Cantara pleaded. ‘Rifat. Please answer. You need to get the police. I’m really scared.’ Rifat could hear what sounded like gentle sobbing. It made him angry. All his plans were unravelling. Again.
‘Cantara. Listen. Go back to the car. We can find the car. If you’re out in the desert no-one can find you.’ I’ll find you, he thought. Inshallah, I’ll track you down.
‘I can’t go back to the car. It’s destroyed. But I’m okay for now. I have warm clothes, water. And I have got Tofi’s gun.’
