Rotten Gods

by Greg Barron

  Isabella’s eyes fix on Zhyogal — the lover’s mask removed so that he is no longer handsome, but the face of death itself, with skin stretched tight as tissue paper over a kite frame, the sunken cheeks and the eyes recessed, showing the hatred freely now. For just an instant their eyes meet and there is no regret there, only triumph.

  She feels other eyes on her. Her own people. It seems to her that they know she is the one who betrayed them. Betrayed those who employed and trusted her for so many years. Helped bring this viper into a room that holds the most powerful men and women of her generation. Of course they had not told her what was inside the briefcase, but she had known in her heart.

  Head in her hands, Isabella begins to weep. Wanting it to be over, knowing she does not deserve this. She has always been so sensible.

  Until she met him in Nairobi.

  The role of British assets in protecting and ensuring the delivery of humanitarian aid to the refugee camps in Northern Kenya was politically sensitive, and it was her job to smooth the way. Hard, demanding work against bull-headed negotiators, many of whom saw the mere existence of the camps as a threat to national security.

  Rami caught her at a weak moment — handsome, debonair, charming, apparently a financier. The meeting seemed to be an accident, a traveller sharing her table at the crowded Kengeles restaurant, unhurriedly engaging her in conversation.

  Nairobi can be a lonely city, even dangerous when you are by yourself …

  At first she resisted, but he was persistent. Cancelling a planned engagement at the embassy, she accepted his invitation to dinner.

  I’m single now. Hell, why shouldn’t I have any fun?

  Nightclubs frequented by Westerners in Nairobi are few, and have in the past been the target of terrorist attacks, like the grenade strike on the Mwauras Club that injured twelve people a few years earlier. Isabella hesitated when he first suggested they go dancing, but felt safe in his arms at the popular New Florida Club, the décor of which was once described by travel writer Paul Chai as looking like a spaceship crash-landed on a service station. Kelly and the children watched DVD movies back at the hotel while Isabella and Rami shared their first kiss.

  On the second night she went to his charming suite at the Safari Club on University Road with its antique furniture and colonial feel, a willing subject to an intense and intelligent seduction. When she moved on to Yemen, trying to patch relations with a country devastated by the long revolution, he followed. They spent two more nights together in Aden.

  ‘My English rose,’ he joked.

  ‘My desert stallion,’ she laughed back.

  The knowledge that the man who now patrols the conference room with a gun, touched her as a lover, makes her shake with anger and shame. When he catches her eyes it is with complete detachment. She glares back with all the vitriol and hatred that floods her soul, remembering that moment at Aden Airport when she realised that the girls were gone. Remembering how the luggage carousel blurred. How the man who had introduced himself as Rami gripped her arm.

  ‘What are you doing? You’re hurting me.’

  ‘Stop drawing attention to yourself. Your daughters are safe, for the time being.’

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Safe. Listen to me. Continue your journey as planned. Tell anyone who asks that your daughters are with relatives.’

  ‘No, please, I need them … Rami.’

  ‘Shut up, woman, my name is not Rami. Listen to me. You will be contacted and given further instructions at Rabi al-Salah. Make arrangements to stay at the centre itself. If you alert police, or anyone at all, your children will die. Understand this. They will die a terrible death … I will personally cut their hearts from their chests.’

  Isabella looked at the man who had touched her in the most intimate way. Believing his words.

  ‘They are calling your flight. Board it. Now.’

  Walking on as if in a nightmare, holding back tears …

  Day 1, 12:00

  Zhyogal’s voice, when it comes, is the self-satisfied howl of a wild dog that brought down its victim in the night, of a cat with a mouse lying quiescent between its paws. The voice of an anti-god who promises destruction and death. That of a man who has sifted poison and hatred from a system of belief.

  First he restores communications with a flick of the bank of switches, then places both hands on the dais and glares out at the cameras and the delegations in their rows. ‘On behalf of our brothers in all lands, we make the following demands. First, the United States must withdraw its troops from Saudi Arabia, home of the two most sacred Islamic sites, Maccah and Medina. If they do not, every person in this room will die.

  ‘The United States must disband its AFRICOM military command, and remove all troops from the continent: Somalia; Mauritania; Nigeria. States moving to Sharia law will do so without interference. Foreign journalists will leave these countries without delay, or every person in this room will die.

  ‘All Western troops, military advisors and security firms will abandon their crusade against the nations of Islam: Iraq; Libya; Afghanistan; Somalia; Pakistan; Yemen. They must withdraw immediately. Or every person in this room will die.

  ‘Catastrophic global warming is killing Africa and Asia. Coal-fired power stations will be shut down. Immediately. Coal mining will cease. Immediately. High-emissions industries will stop production. All major cities must provide free public transport … the manufacture of luxury goods must cease … the production of immoral products such as Western music and fiction books …

  ‘The governments of the West have seven days to act. If they do not, at the moment of Maghrib — sunset — on the seventh day, this room and everyone inside it will be destroyed.

  ‘I make the following arrangements for the physical needs of the people in this room. There will be no tea, no coffee, no cakes, no biscuits. At sixteen hundred hours this afternoon I will allow the main doors to open while supplies are brought in. The only allowable food will be United Nations-issue emergency humanitarian ration packs.’ His voice rises. ‘Let the leaders of nations eat what refugees eat, what the luckiest of those dispossessed by their policies subsist on. You are free to use the toilets but no cubicle door will be closed. You will know what it is like to lack privacy.

  ‘Finally, I warn that war criminals present in this room will be tried under Sharia law. Those found guilty will be executed, beginning one hour from now.’

  The mujahedin appear at the ends of the rows, weapons gripped tight, waiting with that same hunting-dog eagerness, barely controlled savagery on their faces.

  Zhyogal’s face twists with rage as he goes on. ‘These are the war criminals. Bring them to me. President Martin Bourque of France; President Edward Purcell of the United States; President Eitam Yedidyah of Israel …’

  The mujahedin move in pairs, identifying the targets and sliding down along the rows, grasping men under the arms and dragging them back to the aisles and down the carpeted steps. One or two fight back, and their attackers respond violently, swinging rifle butts onto the sides of heads, depositing victims in a row on the carpet on the dais, pushing them down, and all the time shouting, ‘Kneel, kneel!’ Blood flows from nostrils and lips onto the carpet.

  The voice drones on: ‘Hussein Malik of Pakistan; Wasef Ansari of the Afghanistan Transitional Government …’

  Muslim leaders are treated more savagely than the Westerners, suffering hammer-like blows from pistol butt and boot, as if a special breed of hatred is reserved for them.

  Someone shouts, ‘For the love of God, leave them alone.’

  The speaker is identified and a lone mujahedin leaves the pack, drags the man from his seat and beats him about the head until he slumps to the floor, a groaning, bloodied, mess.

  The war criminals kneel in a row that extends across the dais, some shaking, others weeping openly.

  Day 1, 12:35

  Simon Thompson has flown everything from a Piper Aztec to a Boeing Y3, working his way up
through the British Airways hierarchy from trainee pilot to first officer, and finally captain, four gold bars on his epaulettes. He has seen it all — force eight storms over Greece; flying through black, fortress-like cumulonimbus cloud formations with St Elmo’s fire dancing on the wingtips; visited every major country on earth; and been propositioned in both the sexual and the criminal sense.

  Still, after ten years in the cockpit he loves his job, loves the rush as the full-bellied 747-8 rises up through thirty thousand feet, loves to see the Gulf from the air, set against the brown desert landscape of the Emirates.

  Beginning the initial adjustments that will see them land in some thirty minutes, he smiles to himself. With Dubai the scheduled stopover on the way to Singapore, he has two hours at the airport. Isabella will be busy at the conference, but Kelly has promised to bring the girls out from the Towers Rotana on Sheikh Zayed Road to see him. They’ll have lunch, and talk a bit before he has to board. If he has time, he will choose a gift for each of the girls at the airport shops — a book perhaps. Frances, the eldest, reads teen romance novels that stop short of sex with vampires but make up for it with plenty of suggestive neck puncturing. Simon smiles when he thinks of her — a pretty girl, so attractive that one of Isabella’s brothers mumbled once: Boys are gonna slash their wrists over that girl, you just wait and see.

  Hannah, two years younger, likes fairy tales and spooky stories, when she can sit still for long enough to read more than a page or two. Her preference, of course, would be a new charm for her Pandora bracelet. Already she has six sterling silver charms, one gold, purchased from gift shops and jewellers around the world.

  Isabella might get away from the conference and bring the girls out herself. A little jolt of electricity sparks through his chest. Three months have passed since the separation, and still he wishes she did not look so perfect, that she would not smile at him in quite that way …

  Lost in his thoughts, he looks up as Penny Maynard opens the bulkhead door and enters the cockpit, immaculate in her red scarf and dark blue British Airways blazer.

  ‘You wanted me, sir?’

  ‘Just thought I’d let you know that there might be some moderate turbulence on the way down — thermals off the desert. Could be a bit uncomfortable. Let the passengers know it’s nothing serious, will you?’

  ‘Sure. Is that all?’

  ‘That’s it, thanks.’

  The door closes behind her, leaving a lingering and expensive scent. Simon half smiles to himself, enjoying the fragrance, while returning to the series of manoeuvres that will soon see the giant craft taxiing down Runway 12L at Dubai International.

  The SELCAL light on the aircraft communications addressing and reporting system lights up, and a beep sounds, signalling a ground-to-air voice communication. Vince, the first officer, pushes the VHF-R microphone selector switch on the ACP.

  Simon assumes the call is routine, but Vince’s forehead creases into a frown. Something is wrong. Vince is prone to the occasional overreaction, but not so obvious as this. A knot forms in Simon’s stomach while he waits for the call to conclude. ‘What’s going on?’

  Vince turns, shifting the mike to one side. ‘Just had a message from ATC. The Rabi al-Salah conference. Isabella’s a delegate, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes. She’s there.’

  ‘There’s been some kind of terrorist attack. The conference centre’s locked down.’

  Simon’s hands freeze on the controls. ‘Jesus. They said the damn thing was impregnable.’

  ‘Apparently not.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘They don’t know at this stage.’

  Isabella. Christ. Are you OK?

  Simon’s next thought is for the girls. Kelly, the nanny, will be with them, but at best they will be worried. Panicked even. Intense pain, searing hot, comes out of the blue and settles in his chest. He takes the wheel, scarcely breathing, barely in control.

  When the plane stops rolling, Simon conducts the post-flight checks without thinking, waiting for the final straggler to leave his seat and get his hand luggage from the overhead locker, cursing how some passengers seem to think that lingering until last is a hallmark of experience. Finally, he takes his bag from a nook on the flight deck and hurries down the passenger tube.

  One of the stewards calls after him. ‘Sir, why are you taking your bag? Aren’t you coming back?’

  Simon hurries into the terminal, where a crowd has gathered below a wall-mounted LCD screen. Al-Jazeera news footage shows the Rabi al-Salah complex from the air; the heavy beat of a chopper and the voice of a journalist, who cannot hide a note of triumph coming through the speakers.

  ‘The capitalist leaders of the West … forced to listen. Forced to eat the rations of the dispossessed; to live like refugees …’

  Watching for long enough to ascertain that so far there have been no deaths among the delegates, Simon moves on, through the colossal extravagance of Terminal Two, where silver columns and mirrored ceilings rear to impossible heights. With one hand he digs into his bag for his passport, opening it for the customs officers in their shemagh head cloths and spotlessly white kandoura, enduring their distracted, unsmiling gaze. Green uniformed police stand in tight little groups and passengers hurry past.

  Approaching the bank of monitors where they had planned to meet, he sees that Kelly and the girls are not there. Swearing under his breath, he takes his phone from his pocket, one of the new credit card-thin Ubiks with IMS, holographic screen, and videophone capability. The icons change as he switches to the voicephone app and selects Isabella’s number from the address book. Her image appears on the screen in high-definition colour. There is no dial tone, only the message. ‘This is Isabella Thompson, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I am unable to take your call at the moment, but please leave a message …’

  ‘Call me, it’s Simon,’ he says, then slips the phone into his jacket pocket. He finds it hard to leave the meeting place, lingering in case they arrive at the last minute, Hannah laughing, everything normal again. Each passing minute increases the worry that gnaws at him. He is on his way to the doors when he sees Vince and a steward hurrying towards him.

  ‘Hey, Simon, what the hell are you doing? You can’t leave a flight halfway through. Think of the passengers, man …’

  Simon ignores him, moving out through the automatic doors. Beyond the pavement, and four lanes of bitumen, water cascades down stone, fringed with green vegetation. This is the shaded lower parking level, yet Dubai’s heat hits him like a hot towel over the face. Choosing one of the ubiquitous white and yellow Toyota taxis, he throws his flight bag into the back, sinking down into the seat, and closing the door.

  Vince is just behind him. ‘Stop, Simon! We’ll be grounded, for fuck’s sake. There’s nothing you can do here anyway …’

  Ignoring him, Simon presses the switch to close the window. The co-pilot’s lips move but there is no longer any sound. ‘The Rotana, please,’ Simon tells the driver, then takes out his phone and tries Isabella’s number, again getting her voicemail, swearing, putting the phone away in time to watch the Pakistani driver speed out of the rank and dart in front of an approaching SUV.

  ‘Have you heard what has happened, sah?’ the man says, swinging through the roundabout and onto Airport Road.

  ‘Yes, thank you.’ The prospect of pointless small talk appals him. To fend off any further attempt at conversation he stares out the window at the constant overpasses, green banners and billboards.

  The traffic is dense but moving at breakneck speed as they pass al-Fatten plaza and red tiled residential villas. Simon scarcely sees the rows of palm trees, nor the water of Dubai Creek as they cross al-Garhoud Bridge and merge onto Sheikh Zayed Road, one of the fastest moving yet busiest thoroughfares in the world, twelve lanes of mayhem, lined with skyscrapers, airconditioned bus shelters and the elevated metro train line on the western side.

  Craning his neck, Simon
sees the Rotana ahead, competing for attention among the cluster of towers around and behind. The driver goes past, then swerves into a service road. As the taxi pulls up, Simon studies the meter, makes a rough calculation then pulls out his wallet. ‘Euros OK?’

  The driver rolls his eyes, as if exchanging the money will ruin his day. ‘OK. One hundred Euro.’

  This is extortion, but Simon is in no mood to care, handing him five twenties. He grips his bag and leaves the cab, waiting at the hotel’s revolving door while a European couple comes through. The woman, at least twenty years younger than the man, wears pearls like bantam eggs on a string around her neck.

  Inside, Simon hurries past the restaurant on his right, and on to the curved, marble topped reception desk, dominated by that red hued landscape painting that Isabella has always loved. The concierge finishes tapping at a keyboard then smiles up at him, dressed in an immaculate cream suit, a pink kerchief in the top pocket, hair slicked back. Almost too clean to be human.

  ‘Good morning, my name is Simon Thompson. My wife, Isabella, is a guest here.’ Ex-wife, you mean, the voice in his head says. ‘She will have left a message for me.’

  The concierge taps on a keypad, eyes fixed on a sleek computer screen. ‘I’m sorry, sir, we did indeed have a booking for your wife but she has not arrived. The car despatched to collect her from the airport returned without her, so I imagine that she arrived on a later flight and chose to stay elsewhere …’

  Turning away from the desk, Simon’s heart feels as if there is a monster inside, doing its best to claw its way out through his rib cage. He walks like an automaton, blundering out through the revolving door, back into the heat, past cigarette-smoking pedestrians, moving around the building and into an adjacent vacant lot of bare earth, where the traffic is not deafening. Taking out his phone he checks Isabella’s accounts on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter, then the RSS feed for news of the Rabi al-Salah attack just starting to filter through.