Rotten Gods

by Greg Barron

  Dedication

  Dedicated to the memory of

  David Montrose Poynten (10/5/61–27/2/00)

  Epigraph

  The effects of global warming have spread to all continents of the world. Drought, desertification and sands are advancing on one front, while on another, torrential floods and huge storms the likes of which only used to be seen once every few decades now reoccur every few years.

  The world has been kidnapped by the heads of major corporations who continue to steer it towards the abyss. The policies of the world today are not being guided by superior intellects to serve the interest of the people; but rather, with the power and greed of oil-robbers and warmongers, the beasts of predatory capitalism.

  Osama bin Laden,

  in an audio tape released to al-Jazeera News,

  January 29 2010

  Contents

  Cover

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  The First Day

  The Second Day

  The Third Day

  The Fourth Day

  The Fifth Day

  The Sixth Day

  The Seventh Day

  Aftermath

  An Excerpt from Lethal Sky

  Book One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Interview with Greg Barron

  Reading Group Questions

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  THE FIRST DAY

  The earth is formed and no longer empty, yet darkness rules over the surface of the deep, and the spirit of God hovers over the waters, polluted with hydrocarbons and chemical residues flowing from city drains, oil wells, and ships’ ballast. These waters are devoid of fish and sea life, harvested to extinction by giant factory ships. Toxic blue-green algal blooms choke the remaining life from the sea.

  Plastic shopping bags, discarded bottles, fishing line, and polystyrene cluster together to form rafts in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans. The largest of these floating rubbish dumps, the North Pacific Gyre, covers an area twice the size of France. Sea levels rise. Current and wind anomalies cause supertides — periodic rises of over a metre in some areas — salting arable land, destroying homes and livelihoods. Storm cells roam the earth like pillaging tribes.

  Conflict flares across North Africa and the Middle East. New, free states descend into sectarian violence and disarray. In Europe and America, public anger over inequality, carbon blowouts, austerity budgets, and food prices turns to fury. A new age of protest gathers momentum.

  In Aden, Yemen, Isabella Thompson, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, sends her daughters, Hannah, 11, and Frances, 14, to the airport cafeteria with a five-hundred rial note to buy chocolates.

  There was evening, and there was morning. The first day.

  Rabi al-Salah Conference Centre,

  Residential Complex, Dubai

  Day 1, 10:35

  Dr Ali Khalid Abukar casts multiple shadows, dark and light, on pastel shades of walls and carpet. A white demitasse coffee cup sits on the table beside an open copy of the Khaleej Times. The blinds are drawn tight against the morning sun.

  Sweat moistens his skin, and the lenses of his glasses fog as he moves across the room to the mirrors that make up the wardrobe doors. He removes his glasses, cleaning them with a handkerchief, and examines his image. Bloodless lips. Armani shirt, crisp with starch. Matching tie. Patent leather shoes.

  Dressed in the trappings of greed and wealth …

  The telephone rings. Ali crosses the room to answer it. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Dr Abukar, security has arrived to escort you through.’

  ‘Thank you. Please inform them that I will be ready in a few moments.’ His voice is gentle, that of an educated man explaining a point of fact to his peers.

  Lowering the handset, he takes a white plastic box from the bedside drawer. Examining it for a moment, recalling the instructions, he walks to the doorway, fixing it to the wall near the entry with its self-adhesive pad. He flicks a switch, and the light flashes, indicating that the infrared sensor will activate in sixty seconds.

  … I will die shahid for the glory of God.

  Counting down the time, he slips a dark jacket over his shoulders and collects the Manzoni leather briefcase from its place beside the bed. With the sensation of passing from one world to another, he leaves the room, closing the door behind him.

  Moving down the corridor towards the residential wing of the conference centre, Marika Hartmann stops to adjust the black gun belt that loops around her waist, the webbing digging hard into her hips. As an afterthought she folds up the cuffs on her dark blue overalls before striding towards the elevators.

  As she walks, her eyes roam through the glass and along the coastal strip — the line of international hotels beginning with the Sheraton and Royal Mirage, all the way to the thirty-nine-storey Burj al-Arab, shaped like a dhow on its artificial island. Further down: the long, sweeping Jumeirah Beach, and the City Centre, shrouded in dust borne on searing desert winds.

  This is Dubai, where for generations oil dollars have come home not only to roost, but to crow. The Palm Jumeirah. Mall of the Emirates. The glass-faced skyscrapers that line Sheikh Zayed Road, dwarfed by the glorious Burj Khalifa. The minarets of private mosques, and wind towers rise from block after block of walled housing. To service this empire, hundreds of thousands of South Asian expatriates rise early each morning in the slums of Sharjah and commute to Dubai to sweep paths, clean windows, cook, and labour at one of the few remaining construction sites.

  Oil revenues have fallen. Debt repayments are crippling the city. Half finished, abandoned buildings dot the skyline. Artificial islands that were planned to resemble the continents of the world lie like irregularly shaped sand bars out in the Gulf. After dark, Dubai is young and beautiful, adorned with diamonds and pearls. Under the merciless Arabian sun, however, the wrinkles are plain, and the gems are made of glass.

  Marika, taking one last look as she enters the elevator, draws comfort from the complex’s proximity to the water; having grown up so close to the beach in the Sydney suburb of Bondi that she would walk home barefoot, hang her towel on the Hills Hoist in the backyard, over close-cropped lawns and yellow daisies. In her mind she hears the slamming of the screen door. The drip of salt water on the linoleum floor.

  Salt water. Impatient seas lapping at levees and flood barriers the world over. Heatwaves and firestorms once labelled by conservative science as ludicrous. The rise of the African Salafis, the Taliban of a new age. The collapse of national economies under the groaning weight of debt. The Secretary-General of the United Nations said it himself: ‘This is a civilisation in crisis, a world on the brink. Only goodwill and honest effort can turn the tide.’

  A world on the brink. A self-perpetuating reality television show, where the media spectacularises violence to such an extent that the public can no longer differentiate the latest blockbuster film from twenty-four-hour news channels. A world where personal freedom is subjugated by ever more invasive rules, yet children grow up with unfettered access to internet pornography, social networking, and the undermining influence of American underculture. A world where acts of terror, even those of marginalised amateurs, attract publicity that becomes a goal in itself.

  This is a world where the United States of America spends more money on its ‘defence’ than the rest of the world put together spends on theirs, maintains a thousand military bases at home and seven hundred overseas. Where the nuclear club includes some of the most volatile nations on earth and a million children carry guns and fight grown-up wars in
thirty different conflicts.

  A world of startling inequality, where one per cent of adults own forty per cent of the world’s assets. Where eighty per cent of the population lives on less than ten dollars a day, and fifty per cent lives on less than two. Where bankers and moguls draw salaries in the millions and dine with politicians who pass laws to perpetuate the system and maintain the status quo at all costs.

  After school, Marika entered Duntroon Military College as an officer trainee, completing a degree in Political Science at the nearby Australian National University. She was one of the first female frontline infantry officers in the Australian Army, women who were, for the first time, permitted to kill and be killed.

  Special Forces training, and a foray into Afghanistan, fuelled her need to understand why peace was so hard. She graduated top of her class in Military Intelligence, and a desire to be at the frontline saw her posted to Europe, cutting her teeth at the secret Alliance Base in Paris before volunteering for the new DRFS Directorate of Britain’s MI6.

  Assignments that would never make the news took her deep into Pakistan, Africa – the Maghreb, and Sahel. The world changed constantly, defying experts. The Arab Spring took even the most insightful commentators by surprise, launched when Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in a Tunisian market, catching the collective imagination of a generation of tech savvy but repressed youth.

  In Mali, during a freak storm, Marika saw something that would be engraved on her soul. She was stationed in the village of Yanfolila, after reports filtered through of a militant training camp in the area. A ‘secret base’, that turned out to be a few teenagers and old men with guns who dreamed of glory.

  Waiting for a chopper pick-up in a makeshift LZ, Marika watched a man and woman build a house. They cut poles and bearers from acacia trunks, then weaved together thousands of dry branches to make up the walls. Next the woman carried wet clay from the river and, in a purpose-built pit, the man mixed it with cow dung and dry straw. They laboured to fill the spaces between the laths of sticks, packing the clay in tight to provide a weatherproof seal.

  When it was done, just as they began weaving palm fronds for the thatched roof, a storm blew in from the west. Torrential rain followed. Husband and wife slapped on more fresh clay, trying to hold it together — yet they had only two hands each, and as soon as one place held, another began to subside.

  The rain continued and they became distressed, hands plastering mud over the sticks while the rain washed it away. One or two neighbours, even Marika herself, came to help. More hands, but never enough, trying to keep the mud from washing away. Impossible without fresh straw, dry clay, without more hands, more hands …

  Three floors up, Marika leaves the elevator and moves along a passage carpeted in mauve, prints of famous artworks on the walls. Dwarf neanthe palms and cynerium grass grow in clusters in pots designed to resemble local bronze-age handiwork.

  Dr Abukar greets her with a bow and a tap of his chest with the flat of his hand. His features are soft, almost feminine, with narrow wrists and wire-rimmed glasses. This morning, his usual nervous manner seems heightened. Dew-like sweat coats his forehead, despite the air conditioning. He’s got the shakes. Poor man is about to address a thousand people. Ambassadors. Vice presidents. Ministers of state …

  ‘Follow me, please, sir. I trust you had a pleasant night?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course.’

  Sole occupants of the elevator, they descend in tense silence. Marika says nothing about the change in him. Temperamental delegates are part of a job that has been, so far, a pleasant experience, with just the usual escort and monitoring duties. Security for the conference is provided by a partnership between the Dubai police, and international security organisations, including the DRFS.

  The door slides open. Dr Abukar touches her arm. The expression on his face is strange, almost apologetic.

  ‘The world is not a fair place, Miss Hartmann.’

  The declaration increases her feeling of unease, but she says nothing, merely nodding to acknowledge his words.

  ‘Just a short drive from here,’ he continues, ‘you will find shopping malls filled with designer stores. Armani, Dolce and Gabbana, Gucci, Chanel, Piaget, and many others. They tell me that you can purchase diamond-encrusted sunglasses, with a price tag of just over three hundred thousand US dollars. Sunglasses! And designer dresses can cost enough to feed a village for a year. Within a few thousand kilometres of where we stand, in Africa, fifty million people are unable to procure sufficient calories to sustain themselves. Women from twelve to forty years bear children they cannot feed. Have you ever seen a child dying of starvation, or of AIDS?’ His eyes are earnest, almost pleading. ‘In these last five years of drought and heat, the number of starving Africans has increased by a million people a month. Now that the rising seas — what my people call the Daad — has begun, there will be many more.’

  They step together onto the carpeted walkway. Other groups pass by — UN officials, aides, and journalists. At twenty-metre intervals, Dubai Special Forces troops in grey combat fatigues stand with French-manufactured FAMAS assault rifles either slung or cradled in their arms, grey badges on their chests and dark blue berets tilted over close-shaved heads.

  A checkpoint looms ahead, resembling an airport security barrier, with twin aluminium gateways and a low table. Marika takes Dr Abukar’s briefcase from his hands and places it on the conveyor, watching as he steps under the arched metal detectors and body scanners. The security protocol is rigorous, foolproof.

  The guard opens the case and looks perfunctorily inside: at the sheaf of papers in a manila document wallet; paracetamol tablets, a bottle of mineral water and an apple.

  ‘Thank you,’ he says, ‘enjoy the conference.’

  Ali Khalid Abukar has a sense of unreality so wild it is like lysergic acid pulsing through his veins and infiltrating the frontal lobe, seeing himself through cameras on either side, imagining the security services studying each nervous pace, knowing his intention like mind readers.

  An attractive woman in her mid-thirties hurries towards them. Blonde hair, stylish clothes — neat dark skirt suit, silk scarf. Left shoe scuffed, a button undone halfway down the jacket. Up close, her eye make-up seems to have been unsteadily applied. A name tag identifies her as Isabella Thompson, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. In one hand she carries a briefcase identical to his.

  Thank God, she is here — just as Zhyogal promised.

  Approaching him, she stands closer than would normally be considered polite. ‘Dr Abukar?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I wanted to say how much I admire your work. I just finished reading your paper in the Harvard Human Rights Journal. The one on corporate complicity in African poverty.’

  ‘Ah, yes. You liked it?’

  ‘Liked isn’t the right word. It was horrifying.’

  Watching from the corner of his eye, Ali sees the security woman’s attention wander, gazing out through the glass to where, behind wire barriers, a thousand or more protesters clash with police, surging backwards and forwards like a tide, shouts just audible through the armoured glass; a moving, swelling mass of waving arms and placards.

  The exchange of briefcases takes only a moment. Ali feels the weight, the power of the thing, and slippery sweat coating the handle.

  Isabella Thompson prattles on. ‘It affected me a great deal, and now I look forward to your address this morning.’

  Ali inclines his head. ‘Thank you. I’d best hurry, or I will be late.’

  This is no longer a dream, but reality. He forces himself to breathe, conscious of a growing feeling of vertigo. He has the briefcase, the power to change history, and even the guard who walks beside him does not suspect.

  Continuing down the corridor, the entrance to the conference room comes into view, resembling an oversized bank vault. Guards stand on either side. A backlit screen, shiny as a mirror, blinks up the day’s agen
da in letters two hundred millimetres high. Ali tries not to focus on his own name. It looks too solid, too respectable. At odds with what he is about to do.

  At a distance of some twenty metres, he stops walking, standing with his breath burning hot in his throat. The protesters’ cries sift through the glass. He stares myopically at the animal that has just caught his eye. A German shepherd — russet brown and gold, handsome and massive. The handler half kneels with one arm around the animal’s neck.

  Watch for kufr police dogs, Zhyogal warned him. Despite the masking agents we have used, they may take the scent. Watch for them. Avoid them. Insha’ Allah, you will get through.

  The guard walks on for a few steps before noticing that he has stopped. She turns, eyes narrowed. ‘Doctor? Is something the matter? We need to hurry.’

  He removes his glasses, working at a lens with his handkerchief. ‘I am sorry, Miss Hartmann, but I do not like dogs. They frighten me … a great deal.’ He watches the handler pat the animal around the ruff, muttering endearments, slipping something from his pocket and into the palm of his hand.

  Again the security guard urges him on, brown eyes earnest, pleading. She has a nicely formed face, he notices, with cheerful lips, an upswept nose and high cheekbones. Unconsciously, he is pleased that she will not be inside the auditorium at the final moment.

  ‘I’ll walk between you and the dog,’ she says. ‘Please. We can’t keep them waiting.’

  Ali moves to her far side, takes the first step towards the entrance. The animal sits up, ears cocked, then whines and starts forwards. The handler takes a double turn of the leash around his hand and walks after them, calling out in accented English, ‘Excuse me?’