The Golden Scales

by Parker Bilal

  The Volkswagen had climbed up over the thin metal railings which had bowed outwards, bending down towards the river like long, trembling stalks. The car was perched with its bonnet in the air, the front wheels still spinning. Through the open door Makana could see his wife, stretched out across the passenger seat. Blood traced a line across her face. Extending one hand towards her, he struggled to get up. Muna lifted her head. She was reaching for him, trying to speak. What? What was she saying? He dragged himself over the road towards the car. Ten little fingers appeared in the rear window, reaching up, then his daughter’s face as she raised herself to look out, dazed and bewildered by what was happening.

  ‘Nasra!’ he called, urgency increasing his efforts, trying to get to his feet.

  It happened very slowly, or so it appeared in his mind, the countless times it had played itself out in his head over the years. The car gave a lurch that seemed to begin somewhere in the region of his heart. The metal bars groaned as the railings gave the final few millimetres which spelled the difference between life and death. Then the battered old Volkswagen began to tip, like an enormous set of scales. Makana flung himself forwards, but he was too late. He let out a cry that was lost in the rushing sound of the air as the car somersaulted through it, slowly turning over before plunging down towards the dark water. It struck the surface with a sound like a giant door crashing shut.

  Then he was at the railings. Below he could make out the frothing water erupting in glassy bubbles from underneath the upturned chassis. Hands seized him from behind and pulled him back. He struggled, finding the strength to hold his assailants off for a brief moment as the car sank out of sight in the river. Kicking and punching, he tried to rip himself free and throw himself into the water after his family. But there were too many of them. They pinned him down. No matter how hard he struggled, he was unable to do anything but open his mouth and roar.

  ‘Let him up,’ said Mek Nimr eventually.

  They hauled Makana to his feet, dragged him back to the railings. There was nothing to be seen. The dark water had closed over the car, over Muna and little Nasra. Like a veil falling over his life, all that remained was the smooth swirling black surface. Nothing more.

  ‘I’m going to let you go,’ said Mek Nimr quietly. ‘Do you understand?’ He turned and pointed off into the distance, beyond the bridge, the low houses, the streetlights like glowing matchsticks and the endless darkness.

  ‘I’m doing this for old times’ sake.’ He paused. ‘Go,’ he said. ‘And don’t come back.’

  Makana tumbled, fell, stood, fell again, got up and carried on. A solitary figure, already lost in the dusty road that lay ahead of him, limping down off the bridge, into the dark web of night that settled over him like a cloak. He never looked back.

  Chapter Forty-one

  A flashlight clicked on, the beam playing up and down, allowing Makana to see that he was actually in a fairly big room. The light was reflected back from walls still covered by white ceramic tiles. Here and there the broken shaft of a pipe stuck out at an odd angle. He was in an old bathroom, in an institution of some kind, he guessed.

  ‘They used to bring the madmen here, back in the days when anyone cared what happened to madmen. Now they just let them run riot in the streets.’

  The man’s voice rumbled out of the cavernous gloom. In the glow of the flashlight’s beam Makana could make out a solitary figure moving around the room. The reflected light revealed a gaunt silhouette. He appeared to be wearing a combat jacket over loose-fitting clothes. A tracksuit. The left arm of the jacket was tucked into a pocket. The beam moved, settling on a corner of the room. Shadows lengthened and stretched about it.

  ‘You know who I am?’

  ‘Daud Bulatt.’

  The man came closer now, squatting on his heels in front of Makana. After playing the light over himself, he set the big torch down on the ground so that the beam rose up to spread across the ceiling like a fan. Makana could just about make out the other man’s face.

  ‘Looks like you managed to find me after all.’

  ‘I was at the hotel when the bomb went off. I followed your men.’

  ‘To act so impulsively, a man must be either very brave or reckless. Which one are you?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  Bulatt tilted the beam to settle it on Makana’s face.

  ‘I feel as though I know you somehow.’

  ‘You’re the one who was following me?’

  ‘Not myself. My men watched you.’

  ‘One of them took a shot at me.’

  ‘And you broke the ribs of another. That would make us even, don’t you think?’

  ‘Why the interest in me?’

  ‘We weren’t sure how much you knew.’ Bulatt stood again and prowled around Makana in the dark. ‘We have some mutual acquaintances.’

  ‘What acquaintances?’ Makana strained his neck to follow his movements.

  ‘All in good time, my friend. Now tell me, what was your business with the Russian?’

  ‘I am trying to find someone,’ Makana croaked, his throat dry. ‘Your sister’s boy.’

  ‘You’re wasting your time, Adil is dead. Another good reason for the Russian to die.’

  ‘You think Vronsky killed him?’

  ‘What do you think? Adil went to see Vronsky. No one has seen him since.’

  Bulatt moved away, leaving the lamp where it rested on the ground, the beam aimed up at the ceiling. Makana listened to him moving through the shadows, the sound of his feet stepping carefully over the uneven ground.

  ‘You’ve been asking a lot of questions about me.’ The voice receded into the darkness. Makana craned his head painfully, trying to follow it. ‘Did Hanafi hire you to find me?’

  ‘Hanafi thought you were dead. Everyone did.’

  ‘Except you.’

  ‘Adil found out the truth about who his father was. It didn’t come from Hanafi. It could only have come from someone else, someone who was there back in the old days.’

  Bulatt was silent for a time. Makana listened but could hear nothing. When the other man spoke again, his voice was so close he appeared to be standing right behind Makana.

  ‘Years ago you tried to have Hanafi killed,’ said Makana quietly.

  ‘I was unlucky. The men I hired to do the job failed. Hanafi was too smart for me.’

  ‘Did Hanafi take Alice Markham hostage?’

  ‘She was his insurance policy. If I tried anything else, he would kill the girl. Not that I cared about her. I didn’t even know her.’

  ‘Liz never told you she was pregnant?’

  ‘After she left this country, I thought I would never see her again. Some men went after foreign women like her, hoping they would marry them and take them to live in Europe. But I didn’t care about that. I had a life of my own.’ It might have been his imagination, but Makana thought he detected a touch of sentiment in Bulatt’s voice nevertheless. Perhaps there had been more to his relationship with Liz Markham than simply a holiday romance.

  ‘What did you do when you heard Hanafi had survived?’

  ‘What could I do? I gave myself up, went to prison. Hanafi couldn’t touch me there.’ Bulatt’s voice hardened once again at the memory. ‘Inside, I realised the error of my ways. I made mistakes when I was young. I lived a bad life. I drank and chased women. I used to hang around the hotels for fun. The foreign girls were easy targets. They fell to us like doves.’

  ‘Just like Liz Markham.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bulatt slowly, ‘just like her.’

  ‘Why did you kill her then?’

  ‘What makes you think it was me?’ Bulatt looked down at the automatic held loosely in his hand.

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘Who was interested in finding me? Ask yourself that.’

  ‘She was asking questions about you.’

  ‘She was harmless. All she cared about was her daughter. Our daughter. Actually, if there is anyone to blame for her death,
it is you.’ Bulatt looked Makana in the eye as he went on: ‘They saw her talking to you.’

  ‘They?’ But Makana already knew the answer before he asked the question. ‘You mean Colonel Serrag?’

  ‘Serrag was on Hanafi’s payroll back in the old days when he was an inspector. He knows that I know that. He wants me more than anything in the world. He thought Liz would lead him to me, so he tortured and killed her.’

  Makana closed his eyes. Suddenly the pain and the fatigue brought down a weariness on him that he couldn’t fight.

  Bulatt’s voice loomed nearer. ‘This is not about revenge, Makana. It’s war. Our war to rid this country of the kufar, those infidels who have infected the Islamic world with their corruption.’

  ‘Sounds like a nice speech, but I thought that all ended in Luxor?’

  ‘Nothing ends. The war will not end until we are victorious, inshallah.’

  The words sounded rehearsed, as if Bulatt had spoken them thousands of times before. He no longer needed to believe them. He stood up again and moved away.

  ‘When Adil first came to me, I was prepared to kill him. I hated Hanafi so much.’

  ‘But Adil was your sister’s child.’

  ‘I came up with a sweeter way of taking my revenge.’

  ‘So when Adil came to seek you out in Khartoum, you decided not to kill him?’

  ‘Adil was a lost soul. An illegitimate child who never knew his real father. He spent his whole life trying to please people. He played football for them, like a trained monkey. Then he convinced himself he could become a film star. All he wanted was to belong.’

  ‘And you offered him a way?’

  ‘I told him the truth about who his father was. I showed him how we could take our revenge and take over the company. We would destroy Hanafi.’

  ‘You set up the Green Nakhala Reserve Fund to start buying back Hanafi’s debt. In return Adil told you about Vronsky.’

  ‘Things became complicated, mostly because Adil changed his mind. He was sentimental, couldn’t bring himself to get even with the old man. He tried to persuade Hanafi to run away with him, on a safari or something, then he just disappeared.’

  ‘That’s why you came back here, for revenge?’

  There was a slight shifting of weight as Bulatt moved round to squat in front of Makana again, his face looming out of the dark into the cone of light, thin and dark, bisected by hard planes.

  ‘This is about more than personal revenge. Hanafi is a symbol of everything that is wrong with this country. If Hanafi Enterprises collapsed it would bring down the national bank. There would be an economic crisis.’

  And crisis would lead people back to the mosques for assistance. Makana considered the possibility that Daud Bulatt was a very disturbed man. He was certainly very dangerous. It didn’t matter to him that the majority of people in Egypt cared little for the Islamist militants. They only wanted to work, to feed their families.

  ‘You want to make the whole country pay.’

  ‘“Let evil be rewarded with like evil.”’

  ‘“But he that forgives and seeks reconciliation shall be rewarded by God,”’ said Makana, completing the quotation. Bulatt smiled, his face still illuminated.

  ‘The old man said you were smart.’

  ‘Old Yunis?’

  ‘In the old days he was a poet and a painter. A strange figure. But like the rest of us, he needed money to support his cause. So he turned his hand to forgery. He’s good. One of the best in the business. Did he show you his work?’

  ‘He showed me a scar you gave him.’

  Bulatt chuckled. ‘He was a lot tougher in the old days, and he used to drink. Did he tell you that? No, I didn’t think so. Now, he says he’s not part of our fight, but old ties are difficult to break.’

  Bulatt leaned closer and lowered his voice to a whisper.

  ‘In Tora they placed me in a hole in the ground. A shallow grave. I lay on my back and could not move. My arms touched the sides. My nose pressed against the cover. When they closed me in it was like being buried alive. I told myself that I was already dead, that I was in the ground awaiting Judgement Day, the end of time, and that on that day I would rise up with the dead and watch those who had condemned me burn in eternal hellfire.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’ asked Makana.

  ‘You are a man who has known prison. Some men are broken by the experience. I grew stronger. I think you did too.’

  ‘How do you know that? The old man didn’t know I was in prison.’

  ‘No, that came from an old friend of yours.’ Bulatt was silent for a moment. The metal in his hand flashed dully in the light. ‘You haven’t forgotten Mek Nimr, have you?’

  Makana was silent for a long time. ‘No,’ he said finally. ‘I haven’t forgotten.’

  ‘Your country gave me a home these last three years. We were scorned here, treated like outcasts, after all the sacrifices we had made.’ Daud Bulatt grunted and rocked back on his heels. ‘When I came out of prison I was a changed man. I wanted to put my former life behind me. I wanted to cleanse myself, to do what was right. I wanted to defend Muslims everywhere in the world. First in Bosnia. After that Chechnya. I was prepared to die, to sacrifice my life in the cause of Islam, fighting the infidels.’

  ‘Of course you were,’ said Makana drily.

  Bulatt’s head jerked angrily at his ironic tone. ‘You don’t understand that kind of devotion. You are not a religious man.’

  ‘I had a bad experience.’

  ‘Mek Nimr took care of me. I was almost dead when I arrived there. I owe him a debt. He protected me, gave me a home when I had nowhere to go.’ Bulatt paused, then added, ‘I promised him I would kill you.’ Makana stayed silent. ‘But you are a lucky man,’ Bulatt continued. ‘The other day you saved my life.’ Makana waited for him to go on. ‘I was inside the old man’s shop when you came by. One of my men followed you after you left and saw you getting into a police car.’ Makana remembered the time, how Old Yunis had brushed him off. The day he talked to Okasha. ‘It made me nervous. I changed my habits and that night I did not go back to the place where I was meant to sleep.’

  ‘You weren’t there when Serrag’s men hit it.’

  ‘Allah is generous to those who have faith.’ Bulatt smiled. ‘You should think about saying your prayers more often.’ He stood up and stretched as if his legs were stiff.

  ‘What will you do now?’

  ‘Vronsky’s death has served its purpose. By now tourists all over the Red Sea will be packing their bags and running for the airport to catch the next plane home.’

  ‘They’ll come after you.’

  ‘They have been after me for years. We shall not rest until these kufara are removed from government and true Islam is restored to our country.’

  ‘What about democratic means?’

  ‘Democracy is like love, a lie invented to keep us content and in our places.’

  ‘Some might say the same about religion.’

  Bitter laughter trickled out of the darkness. ‘You have a dangerous tongue, Makana. You should be careful. It might get cut off.’ The empty sleeve of Bulatt’s jacket had come loose. It dangled in front of Makana’s nose, a reminder that things did not always go according to plan. Far above the sound of a helicopter ground its way urgently across the sky.

  ‘Where will you go?’

  ‘Back across the border, for a time. Do you have any message for Mek Nimr?’

  ‘Only the kind you can deliver from that gun.’

  ‘Go in peace, Makana.’ Bulatt withdrew, taking the light with him. The shadows closed in over Makana.

  Chapter Forty-two

  Baba! Wake up, Baba!

  Makana came awake with a start, jerking upright, convinced that Nasra was leaning over him, only to feel his heart fill with the bitter ache of disappointment. There was no Nasra, just faint scurrying sounds off on the other side of the room. The night was beginning to lift. Dawn had broken outs
ide and a faint glow revealed a small window set high in the opposite wall.

  His body was stiff and cold from the beating it had taken on the reef yesterday, compounded by an uncomfortable night on a hard floor. Getting slowly to his feet, Makana groped his way to the door. He pushed and it swung open of its own accord. He stepped out into a corridor, at the end of which he could make out a shaft of light. Stumbling along, he discovered the stairs he had come down the night before. Feeling his way up these, he came out on to an open floor. He made his way through corridors, past vast halls and rooms that were deserted, their windows boarded up. Doors stood open, or hung off their hinges. In places he found traces of the visitors. Discarded empty tin cans. A wall blackened with the sooty traces of a fire. Finally, he emerged into a wide room overlooking the valley below. He stood at the window and gazed down at a spectacular view, stretching down over a stony ridge to the plain below. In the distance he could make out the sea, sparkling bright and blue in the sun. Clean, as Vronsky might have said. The road threaded its way through a gorge from west to east, leading in the direction of the sea.

  He was surprised to find the Mercedes still there. The key was in the ignition where he had left it. He drove slowly down the winding track, passing a metal sign that had been knocked to the ground and mangled. It looked like a tank had run over it. Military Hospital for Mental Health, it read. This was where they had once brought soldiers who had lost their minds. Maybe there weren’t any insane people in the military any longer, Makana mused, or maybe they were running things these days. He followed the road towards the coast. A helicopter rattled heavily above the shoreline.

  The whole area was inundated with military personnel and checkpoints. As usual, they were very excited about locking the stable door after the horse had bolted. Makana had to stop three times before he reached what was left of The Big Blue where a thick cluster of army and police vehicles blocked the road. They had razor-wire barricades and spiked chains dragged across the tarmac. When he tried to get into the driveway of the resort, he found a gun pointed into his face.