Rotten Gods

by Greg Barron

  Simon feels himself swoon, the growing heat off the concrete dock becoming a malevolent force. ‘But she is OK, isn’t she? I had one text message from her, but nothing since.’

  ‘We are in contact with her. She is in a position to help us out.’

  Simon feels his breath catch, then a growing anger. ‘Don’t you dare put her at risk.’

  ‘No risk, she’s just passing on some information.’

  ‘You’re using her. That has to stop. Right now.’

  ‘Simon, your wife can help save a thousand lives, and do I need to remind you what she has done? Let her vindicate herself, for Christ’s sake. We all have to be able to live with ourselves.’

  ‘They are holding her children,’ he flared. ‘How dare you —’

  Mossel’s voice is as low and cold as a whisper. ‘I hear what you’re saying. But I have no choice. No more choice than she did.’

  Still holding the phone to his ear, Simon walks closer to the empty berth, hollow and afraid. Squatting down and reaching out with his free hand, he touches a bollard worn to shiny smooth metal by years of heavy lines looped over the rusty iron.

  ‘The boat was called Sa-baah,’ Mossel says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The boat they took your daughters on. Sa-baah means “Morning”, I’m told. A Danish-built tug retired from a thirty-year career towing Saudi offshore rigs. Purchased by a Yemeni company five months ago. I must congratulate you on getting this far. Nice detective work. You look tired, though. Bet you’d love clean clothes. You can’t keep recycling the same ones forever.’

  ‘You bastard, can you see me?’

  ‘Had an idea you’d get here sooner or later. The company that now owns the vessel lists its sole director and shareholder as one Da’ud Iqbal, a Saudi lawyer with links to several terror organisations, including the Algerian AQIM and these Almohad bastards. We found him on holiday, pretty sure he was laying low. Had him picked up in the resort city of Taif. He hasn’t talked yet, but we’re hoping he might.’

  ‘You didn’t answer my question. Can you see me?’

  ‘Of course. Turn around. You’ll see a man in a white shirt and sunglasses; he’s holding up a cell phone.’

  Simon turns.

  ‘Now walk over there. His name is Juwain, he will take you back to the airport, get you through customs and on a plane.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Here. London.’

  When Juwain takes a stride towards him, Simon feels the first stirring of panic. ‘My girls are on board the boat you’re talking about?’

  ‘We think so.’

  ‘Where are they headed?’

  ‘That we can’t be sure about, but we suspect Socotra.’

  The name hammers away in Simon’s head. Socotra. The pirate capital of the Indian Ocean. Inaccessible and unapproachable, in the news for all the wrong reasons. ‘Why are you telling me all this?’

  ‘Because I want to impress on you that we are way ahead. We have resources that you cannot compete with. Go with Juwain now, Simon, work with us — I’ll keep you in the loop, I promise. We can do so much that you can’t: aerial surveillance, a network of informers. Navy. Air Force. We’ll find them.’

  Simon takes three steps towards the man with the camera then terminates the call, slipping the phone into his pocket. Turning his back, he begins to run, almost colliding with a labourer pushing a trolley of industrial equipment along the concrete dock, swerving just in time. Ahead, a crowd disembarks from a tourist catamaran, and Simon joins the throng, finding himself carried along. Most are Arabic, and have, he assumes, just concluded a sea tour of the famous Sirah Fort that lies just off the coast.

  The layout of the port makes little sense, and Simon uses this to his advantage, turning in to a side street and running. Across the road is a souk, and he moves into the jungle of tables, basket sellers and carpet weavers, spruikers singing their musical invitations.

  At the other side, when he looks back, the man with the cell phone is gone.

  Day 3, 13:00

  When Jafar Zartosht, steady of hand and eye, first learned to shoot, his instructors, veterans of the Afghan jihad, could hardly credit that a newcomer could shoot so straight. He was given a Russian Dragunov SVD sniper rifle and trained until, he joked, he could shoot the wings from a fly at a hundred paces.

  Jafar’s family made up part of Tehran’s one-million-strong Sunni minority, scarcely tolerated by the Shi’ite Ayatollah, who would not allow them a single mosque for their worship. Jafar left this restrictive environment as soon as he was old enough to do so, after a short stint in the Jundullah terrorist group. The Komiteh — Iranian Secret Police — were, by that time, hot on his heels.

  Of just average intelligence, he was able to grasp and follow orders, and did not mind killing when told to do so. One instructor described him as the perfect soldier for a jihad hungry for coffin fodder. In Iraq he joined al-Muqawama al-Iraqiya, the Sunni freedom fighters based to the north of Baghdad; the remnants of the private army once commanded by the deceased Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

  In the capital itself, Jafar was able to mingle with the local population. There he saw Western women up close for the first time. One was a foreign reporter fronting the cameras at the site of a suicide attack on the packed Kazimain Mosque, in the suburb of Doura. Shia worshippers had been attending Friday prayers when the martyr triggered his explosives, killing fifteen and wounding many more.

  Jafar stopped and stared at the reporter — the slacks, the blouse that showed the shape of her breasts and creamy white skin under the open top button. The immorality of her display was breathtaking. How could a woman stand not only in front of a crowd, but cameras also, and flaunt herself like a whore? He knew that he should have been disgusted, but instead felt an immediate sexual excitement that left his mouth dry, skin tingling, and heart beating fast.

  Islamist militants, in general, are recruited as young men, and suffer the usual hyper sexual drive of youth. They are, however, taught that physical love outside of sanctified marriage is an offence to the Prophet and to God. Sexual thoughts must be repressed and, to Jafar and his teachers, American sexual innuendo and flaunting of female bodies is a disgrace, and symbolic of cultural weakness.

  Knowing that it was wrong to do so, he continued to stare. She was closer to naked than any woman he had ever seen and, for a twenty-three-year-old virgin who had boxed up every sexual urge within the tight confines of Mohammedan strictures, it was enough to leave him aching and depressed, outraged and aroused.

  Jafar never saw that particular woman again, but he sought out these whores of the West whenever possible — savouring and hating each experience; staring and watching, removing the few clothes they wore with his eyes; imagining what it might be like to touch them. Later he would pay for the pleasure with hours on his knees seeking al-istighfar — forgiveness.

  My Lord forgive me and accept my repentance, verily you are the acceptor of repentance …

  Jafar acted from compulsion. He had no way of stopping the dreams and fantasies conjured by these visions of whoredom and immorality. He wanted sexual freedom but was afraid of it. Seeing Arab women with uncovered faces made him so angry that, one day in Rabat, he beat one such abomination with his fists until she lay bloodied and senseless on the footpath.

  As elements of the first, second and third infantry divisions, along with the second brigade, 82nd Airborne, prepared for George W Bush’s ‘surge’, Jafar was sent in with a crack terror squad to capture a team of Red Cross workers who had set up shop outside Mosul, patching up victims from istishhad operations and helping Shia refugees through to safer havens.

  Jafar and his team waited for the dead of night, when their targets were asleep. Their knives sliced through tent canvas, rounding up the doctors and administrators still in their pyjamas, lashing out with boot and rifle butt; smelling the vomit-fear smell on their victims’ lips. They killed one who caused trouble, two rounds in the gut so that he squirmed in
his own entrails like a fish in slime. Blood from the shots spattered Jafar’s shoes.

  There is no god but God and Mohammed is His Messenger.

  Cramming the prisoners into a van, driving out into the desert and into the abandoned village honeycombed with tunnels that hid their base, Jafar could not keep his eyes off a young American prisoner. She was around twenty-five years of age, blonde and fair skinned, with blue eyes, like those of a doll.

  Deep underground, the prisoners were locked in separate chambers. Jafar watched the woman for an hour before falling to his knees in the prayer room.

  Afterwards, he approached the guard assigned to the woman. ‘You may sleep now, Kamal, I will take over.’

  ‘Are you certain?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Jafar watched her for a minute or two, giddy with desire. Sex for pleasure was forbidden, yet surely it was allowable to punish the woman?

  He gagged her with a strip of cloth, looking down to watch her buttocks beneath the material of her trousers. Already he was in a state of arousal so strong that he felt dizzy.

  Jafar unslung his rifle and leaned it against the wall. He touched her right shoulder and pressured her to turn. Her scent filled his nostrils.

  Even then she tried to fight him, lashing out with her hands, forcing him to grip her tight and use his weight to drag her down, whispering endearments in Farsi as they slid to the floor together, snatches of love poetry he had read as a teenager. Oh, my beautiful darling, you are a flower, waiting for the bee with his pollen.

  Jafar felt as tall as a mountain, as hard as iron, his spear as sharp and ready as that of a fabled warrior of the janissary.

  Even now, years later, Jafar becomes aroused with the memory. He looks around, checking if Zhyogal has noticed his daydreaming. It seems not. He relaxes, grateful to God for the opportunity to be part of this team. Should martyrdom come he will welcome it with open arms. Death as part of an operation is unique to the jihad; a powerful symbol, proving a depth of commitment that the kufr cannot match.

  Here at Rabi al-Salah, there is one who draws his eye most. The one from the British delegation — not as young as some, but voluptuous, with large breasts. The one who Zhyogal seduced as part of the cause. Isabella. The cell leader had told of his reluctance to perform the duty, of her fat white breasts and the repugnant smell of her sex when aroused. He told them how much she had wanted to be violated, how she had begged him to enter her, and how he had closed his eyes and thought only of God while he did his duty so that the mission might succeed.

  Jafar’s encounter with the woman in the bathroom inflamed him, and now his desire reaches fever pitch. He wants her as much as he has ever wanted anything in his life. He dreams of parting the petals of her womanhood and delving deep inside. He feels guilt at this thought and prays for forgiveness.

  Day 3, 19:00

  Footsteps in the corridor. The door opens. Marika looks up, expecting Captain Wanami and his interpreter. Instead, a pair of armed Somalis open the door, saying nothing. The closest of the two, a short man with a paunch, crooks one finger in an unspoken order to get up.

  ‘Polite bastards, aren’t you,’ Marika comments, but stands and allows them to escort her down the corridor. Once outside, they lead her past the gate that a thousand hands had pressed against that morning, towards the largest of the buildings. Like the jail, this edifice is built of stone, and some attempt at a garden has been made — rock-bordered beds outside the veranda. A row of withered flower stems adorn the dry soil.

  Inside, combat boots thump on timber floors, and Marika finds herself in a room furnished as a dining hall, yet might once have been a courthouse, an impression heightened by heavy timbers and vaulted ceiling. Men occupy a number of tables.

  As she approaches, a giant of a man stands from his place at the head of one table. He is perhaps the largest human Marika has ever seen — at least seven feet in height and with powerful shoulders and arms. Even his neck is packed tight with muscle and sinew. Moving closer, she sees that his pigmentation is not uniformly black, but varies in swathes across his face and neck: white in places; jet black in others. The effect, coupled with his size and musculature, is startling.

  ‘Good gracious,’ he says in a cultivated voice. ‘They did not tell me that you are beautiful. Merhika, isn’t it?’

  ‘Marika.’

  ‘Apologies, my men are not very literate, and have a poor ear for foreign words.’

  ‘That’s fine.’ Marika has already decided that being pleasant and cooperative might be her best chance of not going straight back to the cell. ‘Your English is very good.’

  ‘Of course it is. I have worked hard on it over a number of years. It is useful for us to share a language, don’t you think? There is no need for us to communicate with signs like monkeys.’ He leans down to take her right hand in his, making it look small and white. Delicately, he raises the hand to his bulbous lips and kisses it just above the middle knuckle. ‘My name is Dalmar Asad. It is a pleasure to meet you — we have few, er, uninvited guests in this part of the country and, as you can imagine, it is very refreshing when it happens.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Marika finds herself reluctant to break the touch. His voice and the feel of his skin are compelling.

  ‘Now we will go to where we can talk in private.’

  Dalmar Asad leading the way, they leave the room, accompanied by the two guards who collected her from the cell. Halfway down the corridor the big Somali opens a door. The office behind it is furnished in the kind of old-fashioned elegance Marika remembers from Sunday night period serials. The desk is of dark timber but covered with leather to within a hand-span of the edge. The books on the shelves are beautifully bound, with the names of classic authors on the spines. The visitor’s chairs are upholstered in washed-out royal blue.

  ‘Sit down, please,’ Asad says.

  The guards take up position beside the door, and Captain Wanami enters last, choosing a seat under the bookcase, lolling back, chewing qat like a cricketer chews gum, eyes invisible behind reflective dark sunglasses. Marika feels a knot of fear and pain in the pit of her belly at the sight of him. She sits, her legs weak and powerless.

  After snapping an instruction to one of the guards in Somali, Asad turns back to her. ‘The man who brought you in — Madoowbe — will be here in a moment, but in the meantime, tell me about yourself.’

  ‘I am an Australian. I work for the United Nations.’

  ‘Oh come, we are both adults. Employees of the UN hardly go parachuting into faraway nations under the cover of night. You are some kind of spy or Special Forces operative, and you are here for some specific reason. I’d like to know what that reason is.’

  The door opens and the guard returns. Marika gasps in shock as a badly beaten man is propelled into the room. Dried blood covers his face and one eye is puffed almost closed.

  Seconds pass before Marika recognises Madoowbe. She slides from her seat, kneeling beside him. ‘What have you done to him?’

  Asad shows no surprise, looking at the bleeding figure without remorse or even much interest. ‘I thought you would be pleased, since he is the man who handed you over to us.’

  ‘Violence never pleases me.’

  ‘Then I suggest that you are in the wrong line of work. Let us cut to the chase. I have followed developments at Rabi al-Salah with interest. I know you are involved. This man has admitted your involvement, but unfortunately our questioning has revealed nothing more. Perhaps you will tell us instead.’

  Marika says nothing while Asad stands up and walks to her side, reaching down to cup her chin between thumb and forefinger, twisting her face to look at him. ‘I need to know what you are looking for. This is my domain and nothing happens here without my knowledge. Cooperate, and I’m sure we can work together for our mutual benefit.’ He turns to the guard. ‘This man is bleeding on my floor. Get rid of him.’

  The guard drags Madoowbe away by the legs, a mournful groan emanating from
his lips.

  ‘Let us have the facts, for a start,’ Asad says. ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Marika Hartmann.’

  ‘Who is your employer?’

  ‘UNESCO.’

  ‘Don’t toy with me, Miss Hartmann. The equipment you carry is MI6 issue. You are here on a political mission and we know it has something to do with Rabi al-Salah. I am in a position to help, provided you inform me of your purpose.’

  ‘And if I don’t?’

  ‘I will consider you a threat to the stability and peace of my domains and take steps to extract the information from you.’

  Her eyes move to the silent Captain Wanami, then flick away. ‘Your friend here will be pleased — he seems to enjoy torturing people.’

  ‘It is not a matter of enjoyment,’ Dalmar Asad snarls, ‘but of necessity.’

  ‘You,’ Marika says, ‘have no understanding of human rights.’

  ‘And you are a Western brat with no experience of life in Africa.’ He takes a pistol, a nickel-plated Colt automatic, from the holster at his belt. Marika wonders how many times it has been fired in anger. How many times it has killed.

  ‘In Somalia,’ he says, ‘the gun rules, and the weak do not survive. There is neither time nor reason to feel sorry for them. Do you understand?’

  She says nothing, unable to tear her eyes away from the gun.

  ‘You have a choice: either I hand you over to Wanami, or —’ he twirls the gun, grinning, ‘ — you accept my help and come with me.’

  ‘Where to?’

  Dalmar Asad laughs. ‘Fairyland.’ The other men join in the general mirth.

  Marika frowns, thinking. This is a brutal man, with few morals, yet he takes pains to cultivate the veneer of a gentleman. The choice between a twelve-volt battery and alligator clips or the unknown is not a choice.

  ‘I am at your mercy,’ Marika says, wondering what the hell she is letting herself in for.

  Humid sea air lies heavily over the port area. Simon hovers in the shadows beside a street light, where flying ants circle the humming globe, tiny shadows rising and falling. Checking his watch, he swears to himself, impatient.