Secret Skin

by Frank Coles

  The pictures on Verity’s wall were happy times pictures. In my apartment there were no memories of my life before Dubai. Nothing to remind me of where I came from apart from the angry culture shock I lugged around with me everywhere I went.

  Excess baggage always cost more over the long haul.

  I should have tried to enjoy myself more instead of plunging head first into every dark crevice I could find. I should have taken the pre-packaged lifestyle lessons, the sailing, the kite-surfing, the scuba diving, the sky-diving; I should have gone on a desert safari, clashed heads on the rugby pitch, smelled rubber on the race track and barbecued on the beach. I should have taken that car loan and bought the flash high powered motor.

  Shoulda, coulda, outghta have done all those things. But I couldn’t. I was compelled by…no…already addicted to the darkness that knowledge brings.

  The should haves were dangerous phrases that made us feel our lives were incomplete. And if I should have, what about the people who should not…enslave, rape or murder?

  What about them?

  Verity’s girlish light was quickly snuffed out by the encroaching mood swing, the somber realization that I had left Yasmin in harm’s way while I was safe inside another woman. I’d told Yasmin I wouldn’t desert her as soon as I had my story, but I’d lied.

  I fumbled for my phone. Called her number. No answer. I tried again. No answer. I rang a third time and someone picked up. I heard a man breathe, deciding whether to speak, each breath labored and heavy. He hung up.

  After that her number went straight to answer. I sent a text and two hours later had still heard nothing back.

  Although it hadn’t stopped anything neck breaking happening in the bedroom whiplash meant I shouldn’t drive anywhere. But I had to leave. If I stayed I would only make a fool of myself and spill my guts to Verity. I needed to find Yasmin. I’d face Faisal if I had to.

  I took one last look around me, at the potential of a woman like Verity in my life – joy and happiness – hopeful emotions pushed their way to the surface. I pushed them back down.

  I would call Verity later to say sorry for not being there. She would tell me not to worry about it.

  ***

  Outside the embassy my small but reliable hire car started first time. I threw the neck brace onto the passenger seat and cruised the streets around all the low rent hot sheet holes, five star palaces, street corners, shopping malls, restaurants and hotel apartments on Yasmin’s list. It was a long list, last item: Faisal’s hotel. It would be unwise to go back there but I hadn’t found her anywhere else.

  The lights of the city dulled the glow of a beautiful Middle-Eastern moon. A queue of cruising cars, police cars and waiting taxis started a half kilometer before the slip road. One of the only queues in Dubai where people stayed in line, I took my place.

  It was a party atmosphere and as before deals were being made in every direction. The cars moved slowly through the eager crowds. As I neared the hotel I caught a glimpse of distinctive white hair between the busy waists and hips moving around the entrance. The young girl held someone’s hand.

  I felt the skin prickle on the back of my neck. When the bodies cleared I saw that the hand belonged to Yasmin.

  I started to speak and then realized she wouldn’t hear me. The cars nudged forward a few feet and I found myself looking directly up the stairs to the front of the busy hotel. I pressed last number redial. No answer. Either she didn’t have her phone or it wasn’t her.

  The look-alike?

  No. The car behind me honked its horn and faceless hands shook through open side windows. Yasmin looked directly at my car. She saw me and smiled. I grinned foolishly back and forgot everything around me.

  Her eyes looked sad. Then she mouthed the word, ‘Go,’ and the world quickly snapped back into focus. Faisal walked down the steps beside her, his muscled arms flexing with each stride.

  The girl frowned at Yasmin; then followed her gaze to my car and saw what Yasmin had been looking at. She yelled out and Yasmin yanked her arm. Too late. Faisal stared straight at me.

  I accelerated quickly ahead, no more than fifty feet, and found myself back in line.

  Faisal’s head appeared in my wing mirror. He waved a hand and a bouncer joined him.

  I pulled off the road onto a sand lot on my left filled with prostitutes and hawkish johns that refused to move. I pounded the horn, but they wouldn’t budge, clueless to the world outside their own heads.

  I was being too damn polite.

  I flicked my lights onto full-beam and gunned the engine, long legs and suits scattered to either side. The car surged forward a few yards and then slowed as the wheels lost traction in a patch of deeper sand. In my rear view I saw Faisal and his friend trot towards me.

  If I increased revs my wheels would only dig in further. I took a deep breath and patiently crawled forward. The bouncer placed one hand on the rear of my car and I began to count and breathe, trying to resist the urge to accelerate.

  One: they broke either side of me.

  Two: Faisal appeared at my window.

  Three: He punched the glass of the locked door and began to shout.

  Four: The tires gained traction. As the sand leveled out I blocked out his furious voice.

  Five: The car shot forward and I accelerated through an angry crowd of near misses. I didn’t stop when I slammed onto the tarmac of the main road, or for the next two sets of traffic lights. I didn’t slow until I was in the darkness of the poorly lit ring road, the long route home, far away from other drivers, and especially policemen.

  As I lost myself in the night I reached a decision. I’d been going about this all wrong, working to a set of internal rules that belonged in another culture. Like a tamed hawk on its first day in the wild I was still circling when I should have been attacking.

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Things started happening on the second day of waiting on what had once been an empty desert road bordering the neighboring emirate of Abu Dhabi.

  The building contractors had been hanging around since dawn on the Sunset Heights site with nothing much to do. They only made themselves look busy when the expensive cars started to arrive a couple of hours later.

  Despite the shiny towers Dubai was still a small town. I recognized the big Russian from Faisal’s club even before the driver opened the door of the custom built Maybach 62, his distinctive white hair reflected the morning light through the luxurious car’s panoramic sun roof.

  Forget the usual production line show stoppers that everyone drove in their struggle to keep up with the Mohammeds, the Maybach was an easy half million dollars worth of refined craftsmanship, only top of the line for the big man.

  I’d been waiting for him.

  The dark haired man who juddered to a halt close behind him had been an easy match with the profile picture on the bank’s website. He was James Lawrence, the man whose nose I’d broken.

  His arrival kicked up a cloud of sand that settled on the buffed gun-metal bodywork of his Bentley Continental. The obedient puppy following his master Vladimir Orsa.

  Lawrence cornered a foreman and began to throw his weight around. What had been a fairly lackluster operation when I’d arrived quickly became just another busy construction site. It was a clear exercise in power for the little man; he knew the project would never be finished no matter how much he shouted.

  The next car to arrive on the lot was a white Mercedes G55, a specialist off-road military vehicle with a powerful V8 under the bonnet. The man at the wheel wore practical unmarked fatigues. I didn’t recognize him, but he had to be one of the Arab partners.

  The three men moved off into the temporary wooden buildings that acted as their site office and I went back to waiting and planning.

  Yasmin and I had seen each other, the connection had been made and I’d kept my promise not to drop her as soon as the story was done, but nothing else. I had no way to ride in on a gleaming white steed and rescue her. All I c
ould do was dig the dirt on Sunset Heights, Faisal’s pals, and use what I found as leverage with him to barter for her freedom.

  It was the long game and my only choice. You couldn’t just pop into the local planning office and find discrepancies in their application. That only happened over there, it didn’t work like that here. You either got the nod or you didn’t.

  That’s why I’d started filming the men as soon as they’d arrived on the shaky long end of what was essentially a tarted up digital stills camera. Broadcast studio quality it wasn’t, but the digital revolution sure beat the murky vhs of yesteryear.

  I wedged myself into the window frame of the car door and practiced keeping the shot steady. After 20 minutes they still hadn’t emerged and my arms began to ache. I could be in for a long wait.

  The wheels of trucks loaded with prefabricated archways, cement mixers and engineering parts threw dust into the air as they lumbered by on the highway beside me in a long sand blasted single file. The vacant eyes of exhausted laborers stared down from the cramped seats of the coaches they had been herded onto. Ancient vehicles with no air-con, they rode with windows lowered and inhaled the whirling detritus from the desert construction sites. Charmed lives.

  The road was the demarcation between the two emirates. In the distance was a large walled area, the immense gardens of a local sheikh, his palace hidden deep within the grounds far from prying eyes. From the road it looked like a small town with its own fortress, but even through the lens it was too far to make out the details.

  To my right on the Dubai side of the border were the beginnings of a new airport, the world’s biggest of course, behind that a new technology city and housing area destined to be filled with even more skyscrapers, villas, manmade lakes and golf courses. The laborers could never afford to live there and would one day be shipped off home or find another place to indenture themselves.

  How complacent we were in the west, we thought we were at the apex of the modern world. We clearly had no idea what was going on out there beyond our television screens.

  The door opened on the wooden office. I swung the camera into place, locked onto the action and saw the Arab stride off towards his car. The flimsy door flew open again and Orsa stood at the top of the steps bellowing.

  The Arab ignored him and continued to walk away.

  Orsa caught up with him as he walked between the Bentley and the Maybach and span him round.

  He shouted into the Arab’s face until he leant back in an effort to avoid the Russian’s wrath. He nodded at Orsa then calmly turned and started to walk away again. The Russian put his hand on him a second time. Something snapped. The Arab moved more quickly than the camera’s digital eye could see.

  He pushed the big man off balance into the side of the Maybach and forced his brawny arm up between his shoulder blades. Orsa roared with pain. I zoomed in until they were both in profile and recorded the Arab as he shouted into the Russian’s ear.

  Orsa clearly didn’t like what he’d been told and tried to thrash and wrestle his way free. The Arab stamped on the back of his knee and the leg gave way. Orsa’s face scraped against the car window, the driver inside unable to think of anything to do.

  He said something else to the Russian and then kicked his other leg away.

  I only wished I could have heard what they said.

  By the time Orsa pulled his face out of the sand Lawrence was by his side and fawning over him. The Arab was already in the 4x4 and driving away.

  The big man hadn’t expected to be beaten. Like a boy told off his cheeks flushed, then a familiar scowl returned to his face.

  To deal with a man like Orsa and walk away from it the Arab just had to be Akbar. He was clearly not a typical dishdash wearing, French fry eating local. He had the decisive moves of someone used to force as the means to achieve what he wanted.

  Lawrence on the other hand was wedged so far up the big Russian’s backside I was unlikely to get anything from him without a rubber glove.

  But Akbar was what I had been waiting for. He could be my way in.

  I threw the camera onto the passenger seat and started after the G55 disappearing in the distance. I threw my little car through the slow moving trucks into the fast lane and stamped the accelerator to catch up with the 4x4 at the highway entrance.

  His car ran on dirt tracks through the construction site along the other side of the highway and then aimed for the road; he effortlessly joined the oncoming traffic and headed in the other direction.

  I was going the wrong way.

  Damn. With the crash barrier between me and his side of the highway I would have to drive to the next roundabout, double back and try and catch up with him. I knew that would never happen. I’d lose him and be back on the side of the road watching the dust settle.

  I weaved my way into the column of trucks and buses in the slow lane, took a deep breath, and span the wheel all the way to the right. The flatulent horns of the passing vehicles deafened me as I straightened up and headed the wrong way down the hard shoulder in pursuit of Akbar, the means to keep my promise to Yasmin.

  The hard shoulder move was something I’d seen impatient mothers do when they missed the turning for the school run. This was Dubai after all, where only the weak indicated or gave way to other road users.

  I pushed the car as fast as it would go, catching glimpses of the Mercedes through the gaps in the column of trucks on my right. I matched his speed and kept following. I was so intent on not losing him that I paid scant attention to the hard shoulder ahead, not until the warning horns of the trucks became a fan fare.

  The steering wheel shuddered as I brought the car to a dead halt.

  In front of me an articulated lorry was jacked up on three wheels, a lone Indian driver busy changing one massive blown out tire for a fresh one. It was an outlandish sight; the enormous tires were bigger than he was.

  If I drove around him and through the desert my car would get stuck in the loose desert sand.

  I looked helplessly at the trucks on my right. The long line tapered off into the distance, several hundred wide loads that by law couldn’t overtake one other within the city limits.

  As they hurried between pick up and drop off point the slowest vehicle in the long line set the pace. I could wait all day for something slow.

  I took another deep breath and lurched out into the oncoming traffic my tires squealing with what might have been fright.

  The approaching bus slammed on the brakes. Smoke billowed from its wheels. I accelerated for a jacked up truck length and swung back in. The bus neatly clipped off my wing mirror as I pulled onto the desert shoulder.

  The laborers yelled and slammed their fists on my roof as I passed under their open windows. I remembered to breathe.

  My heart pounded and my hands shook, but I couldn’t stop and I couldn’t slow down. Not if I wanted to catch the man in the 4x4.

  When I searched for him again I found a roundabout instead.

  ‘Oh hell,’ I said.

  With no time to consider my options I drove onto the roundabout facing the wrong way and turned hard into five lanes of speeding metal. I accelerated into the anti-clockwise flow of traffic and scooted into the correct lane.

  The other drivers weren’t even slightly fazed by my arrival. Despite my heightened sense of fear I was just one more homicidal lunatic on the road. By habit I’d even managed to indicate in the right direction, which made me better than most, the guy next to me indicated right and then swung left cutting across the lanes ahead.

  I caught sight of the Arab’s distinctive high sided vehicle in the distance and followed him as he turned off towards the desert side of downtown Dubai.

  Tracking him from three cars back I flipped on the radio and came down from my time on the hard shoulder. Maria B was in session but today there was none of her growl, just a funky retro ident between songs.

  No more babble on and on – just the music – with Babylon FM.

  Ultra Nat�
�’s twisted lyrics worked their magic and I got back to myself with Depeche Mode telling me I should see how it feels with my feet on the ground and my mind on the job ahead.

  So how could I get close to Akbar?

  I tried to figure out an opening that would stop him from doing to me what he’d just done to Orsa. But as we drew nearer to Dubai proper I was distracted by an unexpected sight. An enormous wall of dense fog rose several stories into the air and straddled the highway. The cars ahead of me plunged into it and disappeared from view.

  Akbar vanished into it and I accelerated into its broiling innards after him. On the inside the heavy air dampened the sound of the traffic and the city. Visibility was left to prayers and blind luck.

  The tourists were easy to spot; you nearly crashed into them when they slowed down to a safe crawl. Everyone else just used the easy anonymity as an excuse to overtake. Now you really could get away with murder, nobody would see you until it was too late and nobody could read your number plate as you sped off.

  To my relief Akbar had pulled into the slow lane and drove within the speed limit. Despite the congested gloom I saw his head bobbing towards the buildings of the Business Bay and Downtown developments. I slowed down and followed one car back at a sedentary 120kph.

  I lost sight of him and almost overshot the sharp turn he’d taken onto a concealed exit marked ‘Military Vehicles Only’. At the last moment I swung onto the dusty path and followed from a distance.

  There were no check points on the road. The military vehicle sign seemed more than enough to deter the badly behaved citizenry of Dubai.

  The road wound its way ever deeper into the first ring of towers in Business Bay and then the tarmac ran out. Akbar’s 4x4 kicked dust up into the fog as he beat a path into the haze. I could make out signs for malls and hotels that hadn’t broken ground yet, he picked up speed and the dust clouds grew.