Rotten Gods

by Greg Barron

  As if knowing that control was slipping from his grasp, the President, Colonel Chadli Bendjedid, announced major reforms, including free speech, the right to form and join political parties, and ultimately, democratic elections. The most powerful new party was the Front Islamique du Salut, the FIS, led by Abassi Madani, a university professor.

  The 1990 elections were won by the FIS over the hated Chadli regime. The second stage, the parliamentary elections of a year later, would have finished with the same result had not the army stepped in, annulled the elections, and suspended the second stage of voting, effectively taking control of the country. The FIS and the general populace were enraged. Algeria embarked on a civil war that became known as La Sale Guerre — The Dirty War.

  The path to extremism and violence was inevitable for Sami. His three brothers fought for the FIS, and he was thirteen when they carried the eldest home on a broken door, his left arm hanging from the bloody shoulder muscle by a thread. He lived for three hours before loss of blood took his life. This was the day that Sami learned to hate. The day he picked up a weapon for himself.

  As a teenager, Sami fought the dirty war like a hardened adult, blowing up electricity installations, burning churches, ambushing foreign workers, and beheading captured members of the security forces. He developed a talent for killing, but also political awareness, learning from events in the rest of the Muslim world; from the Shi’ites who were then pioneering suicide-bombing techniques in Lebanon, with devastating effect.

  By the end of the war, he was a trusted lieutenant to the GSPC’s Hassan Khattab, and was chosen to attend an al-Qa’ida-sponsored training camp in Sudan. Here, the training was fifty per cent martial, fifty per cent spiritual. He learned to fire, strip and clean a dozen different handguns, assault rifles and submachine guns. He learned to aim and fire an Igla 9K38 shoulder-mounted anti-aircraft rocket launcher, to manufacture explosives and Molotov cocktails. He learned to control and inspire men but most of all, to use his faith to break down barriers. His spiritual cup was filled by days of instruction by Salman al-Awdah, an advisor to bin Laden himself.

  Sami learned that saving Africa and the tenets of his religion were intertwined. That the only possible future was under Sharia law.

  There, at the camp, mingling with men of twenty nationalities, he was no longer Sami Kazaati, becoming instead Zhyogal — so named by a Chechen member of the mujahedin, for his stealth, his endless cunning, and his way of moving silently, looking in all directions as if sniffing for danger. Urged on by men of Iran, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, he adopted the rigorous interpretation of the Sharia as practised by the men around him.

  Books such as Teaching to Pray, by Dr Abdullah bin-Ahmad al-Zayd, called for all Muslims of purity to unite, preaching that it was not a sin to execute those who followed what the author regarded as impure forms of Islam. Zhyogal was also taken with the works of Syed Qutb, a revisionist thinker, and inspiration to modern Sunni activists.

  It was through a man of about his own age, however, a Nigerian called Saif al-Din, that Zhyogal came to al-Muwahhidun. The initiation was complex. Under the pale light of the shawwal moon, the sign that marks the end of Ramadan and advent of Eid al-Fitr, Saif slit the throat of a living goat and removed the jugular like a hose, using it to fill a bowl with dark, sticky blood, warm as sunshine.

  Their hands joined in the bowl while Saif led Zhyogal through an oath, accepting the sacred entrustment that authorised the use of evil in dire circumstances, as a necessity to defeat His enemies. And what time could be more dire than now? When only God’s law could save the people of North Africa and Arabia from the West, who have raped the earth and her people to the point of destruction.

  Almohadism was a drug to fill the empty places of his soul — the soul of a true warrior. Saif al-Din became more friend than teacher. He was like no one Zhyogal had ever met, with eyes like beacons. The two were inseparable: learning together; sleeping huddled for warmth on desert exercises.

  Zhyogal became what he had always thirsted to be: ghazi, an Islamic warrior in the tradition of the fabled janissary, yet so much more. In Nigeria’s Delta Region, he and Saif al-Din commanded their own force of elite mujahedin, joining a wave of terror fighting, attacking government soldiers wherever they could be found, slaughtering any man wearing a uniform; stopping vehicles and killing; breaking down doors and killing; on and on until the smell of death became the smell of life. A dozen times they blew up oil pipelines, once making world headlines with the severing of Chevron’s main pipeline south-west of Warri.

  A few years later, Zhyogal, now a seasoned freedom fighter, leader and strategic planner — met with two high ranking men at a Somali version of the Khalid bin Waleed training camp, a facility of the same name once having been located in Afghanistan on the road to Khost.

  One of these men was called Abdel Bakhi and the other Mounir Khalaf. ‘It is time,’ they declared, ‘for you to join al-Jama’a al-Ashara, the council. It is time to show the West that Muslim lands can no longer be ravaged at will. That we will not permit them to poison the earth indefinitely.’

  That moment changed Zhyogal’s life. No longer was he merely a man waging jihad, but a leader of a semi-mystical movement that would save the world and bring all God’s lands back into His fold. His heart felt as if it would burst with emotion, and that year he made the hajj for the second time to show his gratitude and increasing piety.

  Zhyogal took on this new role with unsleeping fervour, slipping across borders, meeting in halls and forest clearings with leaders of fifty disparate tribes, people united by their passion for God and His Prophet. Recruiting. Spreading the faith. Showing these people that the storms and droughts that ravaged their crops were the direct result of the industrial powers of the West. That tampering with the earth’s core through deep drilling and fracking was causing seismic unrest on an unprecedented scale.

  With Saif, he organised and outfitted an Algerian cell of al-Muwahhidun which parked a school bus loaded with two and a half tonnes of nitrate fertiliser outside the United States Embassy in Algiers, blowing the eastern wing of the building into dust and rubble. Eight Americans and forty-two Algerians were killed.

  The organisation, funded by donations from all around the world, sent technicians and money through a clearing house and communications centre in Sana’a, Yemen. From his position on al-Jama’a al-Ashara, Zhyogal became privy to information just a handful of men around the world shared.

  Always he remembered the words of the Lion Sheikh, Osama bin Laden, as passed on by Yaqub Yusuf.

  The West will not listen without massive bloodletting. They heed only fear and death.

  Al-Moler, the TBM, weighs just under sixty tonnes, with a diameter of four-point-seven metres and a length of twelve. The business end is a cutting wheel, and behind it, a conveyor system that carries earth away from the face. An array of hydraulic jacks both support and move the mechanism as it bites into the earth.

  Faruq watches the unloading like a Western father might watch his wife give birth. The ten-tonne Hitachi excavator scrapes out the initial bed for al-Moler, filling a procession of dump trucks with yellow soil in the predawn light. Contractors have been at work during the night, fencing off the site. Signwriters have affixed massive blue signs announcing that a hotel will be built. People are used to that here. It will raise few eyebrows and, if God wills it, before traffic starts moving on the roads, al-Moler will be deep underground doing what she does best: eating the earth like a beast.

  Faruq knows from the sting in his eyes and ache in his shoulders that he is tired, yet mentally he feels alert. It has been interesting to see what he can do, working outside the world of permits and regulations — just picking up the phone and saying, ‘Go, go, go.’ No environmental assessments, no cultural impact statements. Watching doors open. Taking phone calls at three o’clock in the morning from suppliers of everything from prefab concrete ballast to water tankers that will be required as work
in the tunnel progresses.

  The purpose-designed crane that supports al-Moler in its slings is not tall but squat, the body covering a massive area, with thirty-two lugged, solid rubber tyres and floor stands to keep it from tipping.

  Faruq lifts the radio handset and presses the transmit button. ‘Idiot! Slower. Hold her still. Do you want to keep your job? Would you rather shovel goat shit for a living?’

  Al-Moler stops, swinging in its slings.

  Faruq lifts the radio again. ‘Now, move.’ He turns to look at the excavator in the pit, its bucket arm locking and unlocking with the dexterity of a human wrist, dumping a car-sized load of earth with each scoop, filling one truck before the next moves into line.

  Faruq strides ahead of the crawling crane, the smell of raw earth thick in his nostrils — a smell that to him is as intoxicating as any drug. The pit is twice as wide as al-Moler and one and a half times as long. In depth it is perhaps six metres, and the floor has a five to one gradient in order to give the machine an angle to work with, aiming her down to the planned operating depth of thirty-five metres.

  Faruq himself shot the laser levels they used to get the pit right, but he trusts his eyes more. He lifts the handset again. ‘Kamal, take the skin off the back rear. There is a hump there.’

  In just a few scoops it is done. The last truck rolls away, and the excavator tucks the bucket up and rumbles backwards.

  Now the crane positions al-Moler above the pit.

  ‘That is well done, Salamah. You have learned to drive, praise God. Now, nice and slow.’

  Lifting his eyes over the pit, Faruq sees the waiting concrete trucks, snail-like rotating tanks turning, mixing the wet aggregate inside. Flat bed trucks are stacked high with steel reinforcing, for as soon as al-Moler moves off, the pit will be poured with quick-setting cement before the business of shoring up the tunnel begins.

  Now, however, al-Moler settles to the ground and Faruq is first into the pit, thick yet agile fingers lifting off the hooks that fasten the straps. Then the crane arm drifts away and Faruq looks up to see the sun almost ready to peep over the horizon. He grins to himself. Hadn’t he promised that al-Moler would be operating by dawn? And that he would be at the controls?

  Other men swarm over the machine, ready for the series of checks that precede al-Moler entering operational status. Faruq works his way towards the hatch. This will be the pinnacle of his career. His name might soon be famous. It is worth a week of diversion to be that way.

  Abdullah bin al-Rhoumi wakes on a chair, back creaking and eyes gummed with fatigue. Rising without a word, he hurries past the men and women at their workstations, heading for the bathrooms, carrying a small leather case.

  Finding an empty corner on the smooth ceramic bench he opens the case, removing a toothbrush and toothpaste. He cleans upper and lower teeth — backs, sides, and fronts. When this is done he washes his face and hands, combs his hair and then, with a sharp pair of scissors, trims his beard.

  Finished, he stares back at his image in the mirror, eyes sunken into deep pits, red with veins. Wiping his face with a paper towel, Abdullah picks up the shattered pieces of his psyche, rolls them together and grits his teeth.

  Don’t let me fall apart now, please God, he says to himself, then walks through the doors and back into the control room. On the other side of the door an assistant is waiting.

  ‘Coffee,’ Abdullah tells him, ‘and toast, please.’ The latter is a Western habit but a useful way to eat in a hurry. ‘Then I want a briefing — assemble the team leaders in my office …’ Abdullah smiles to himself. This is it, back in control, keep the momentum, never let them relax, never let them know you are tired, or that your back hurts. Don’t let them know that you are human; that you have needs like everyone else.

  The coffee goes down like honey, and he eats as they talk — situation reports, succinct, factual. The Frenchman, Léon Benardt, speaks first. ‘The engineer, Faruq Nabighah, has started drilling …’

  Next is one of his managers from GDOIS. ‘We have lost contact with our two operatives in Somalia …’

  Abdullah feels a twinge of remorse — the Australian, Marika Hartmann, was a good agent despite her failure to recognise the impending attempt on the centre. He had liked her a lot. Even so, he puts his personal feelings aside. ‘That line of inquiry is finished. There is no time to get someone else in there. What else?’

  ‘We have had contact from two of the hostages. Both via MMS.’

  ‘Didn’t the militants collect all the phones?’

  ‘They did. Just not those two.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘One is a British analyst: Isabella Thompson. Her contact is Tom Mossel, Director of the DRFS. He’s passed her on to us. She is prepared to send further information when possible.’

  Abdullah recognises the name. ‘Isabella Thompson is the one the British are investigating in regard to aiding and abetting the terrorists. Yet it seems that she acted under duress.’

  The Islamists have taken her children, he thinks to himself, yet she is prepared to do this. The woman has courage. They will kill her if they find her with a phone. Yet why not let her atone for what she did? It may help her when this is over, and we are all still alive to answer for our crimes and inadequacies. ‘Who is the other one?’

  ‘Raphael Perreira, one of the Brazilian President’s bodyguards, brought in as an advisor. He contacted his embassy here in Dubai, and we’ve sent through a direct number for him to use.’

  The meeting ends with a short prayer, and as he watches them go, Abdullah wonders at the risk these people inside are taking. He wonders if this will mean death for a wife and mother.

  Marika wakes not long after dawn, her body so bruised that she takes time to come to a sitting position. Outside, at some distance, a rooster crows. Her headache is an organic, living thing, moving from room to room and kicking the furniture to bits in the doll’s house rooms of her mind.

  There is a new sound, yet distant. At first it reminds her of the sea. It has the same power. That irrepressible force.

  As she comes awake, Marika realises that it is not just one sound, but many. The movement of feet, voices, wailing infants. Then singing, starting off softly, but growing, taking over from the other noises, overwhelming them.

  The singing is unique, African, full of anger and pain. Shouts, raised voices, yet still at a distance. Like a swell rising with a storm front, the sound reaches a crescendo. The crack of a gunshot echoes out across the stillness of dawn. Another follows.

  Again inverting the mercifully empty latrine, she reaches for the bars of the high window, gripping them with two hands. Arms trembling with the strain, she eases her body and head upwards so that she can see outside between the bars, over a makuti thatched rooftop and down across the compound.

  A crowd has gathered outside the main gate. Perhaps two thousand, three thousand souls — women in brightly coloured kanga and kikoi; men and children in everything from football shirts to kanzu robes and keffiyeh — press against the chain-mesh fence. Men with guns stand shoulder to shoulder before the gates, firing over the crowd, smoke puffing from the barrels of the assault rifles, staccato bursts of sound following microseconds later.

  The singing stops, replaced by screams and shouts of fear, and the tramp of running feet. This is loud at first, then recedes. The crowd is in full retreat, and Marika wants and needs to keep watching but the strain on her arms is insufferable, and she is too high for the latrine bucket to support her. She lowers herself to a height from which she can drop to the ground and sits with her head in her hands, trying to cope with her own pain and what she has just seen and heard.

  The cell door opens and an earthenware bowl of porridge appears. After what she has just seen she lacks appetite, but eats because of a determination to keep up her strength, without putting herself through the angst of examining the meal too closely. It is made from an unidentifiable grain, glutinous and thick. The taste is neutral, and t
he smell is of rank milk. It is, however, filling.

  When she has eaten, she reaches for the coke bottle of water she was given the previous day. She screws her eyes shut and swallows it in a few long pulls. The liquid seems to help her headache, and the food provides a new energy. More for something to do than anything else, she removes her headband, brushes her hair with her fingers and ties it back.

  Just as she begins to feel somewhat human there is a tramp of feet and the shadow of men behind the grate. The door swings open. Three men enter the cell. The captain, the interpreter and the Taser-equipped guard. A fourth man arrives, burdened with an automotive lead acid battery, a bundle of wire and a black electronic device. After a single glance at her, he places the battery on the floor and begins connecting wires from battery to machine. Marika watches the activity, then turns to the interpreter. ‘You bastards better not be planning on connecting that thing up to me. No one does that kind of thing these days.’

  ‘Unfortunately for you, the captain intends to extract the required information before Dalmar Asad returns. It would give him stature, and therefore he seeks your cooperation in telling him what he needs to know now. If not, he will be forced to use these archaic and brutal means to make you speak.’

  Marika feels her breakfast as a bitter lump at the base of her throat. She turns to look at Wanami. There is a bloodstain on his lapel that was not there the previous day. A big one — surely connected to the screams and moans in the night.

  ‘You bastard,’ she says. ‘Why don’t you just let me go? This has nothing to do with you.’

  The interpreter’s voice is gentle. ‘That is not possible. You have come to our country to spy on us and Dalmar Asad wants to know why. The captain is being a loyal servant and taking steps to extract the correct information from you.’

  At that moment, Marika makes the decision that she will not allow these men to place those sharp-toothed little alligator clips on her body without a struggle. She knows the theory: the little black box is a transformer, designed to multiply the current from the battery. The charge will be highly painful. Not only that but she knows that the shock will be greatest when attached to the moister membranes of her body: lips, tongue, eyelids, vagina, anus …