The Haha Man

by Sandy Mccutcheon

  Trembling and shocked, Karim turned and started to walk away as fast as he could without attracting attention, but as he turned into a narrow twisting lane to his right he heard a scream behind him.

  ‘Hazara Mongol!’

  Karim ran, ducking and weaving through alleys and laneways as the cries behind him grew louder. A couple of bursts of automatic fire echoed close at hand and rounds ricocheted off walls and paving stones. He could hear running feet and the cries getting closer. At any moment he expected a bullet would rip into him. He was moving blindly now. This was not an area he knew and the only sanctuary he could think of was the mosque. But in which direction? He rounded another corner and leaned against a wall, gasping for breath. Behind him he heard the Taliban calling to each other. They were spreading out, combing the streets systematically. Karim pushed himself away from the wall and lurched further down the narrow street. It was a dead end.

  Then, when he knew he could run no more, a small door in the wall opened and a man gestured frantically to him to come in.

  ‘God is great!’ Karim gasped and stumbled into a tiny enclosed courtyard cluttered with bicycle parts. The skeletons of old frames were stacked against a wall, and wheels, bicycle seats and inner tubes lay in piles around a small workbench. Behind it was a round building with an opening to an adjacent street; a shopfront. For a second Karim considered running again, but collapsed on the ground, fighting to get air into his lungs.

  ‘God is not looking,’ his rescuer replied, as he bolted the door. ‘The Talibs are everywhere. I have been watching them from my roof. They are killing every Hazara they come across.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have put yourself at risk…’ Karim stopped. From outside in the alley came the sound of voices followed by a crash as a rifle butt slammed against a door. There was an eerie silence punctuated by two more shots. The Taliban were working their way along the alley house by house.

  ‘There is no time,’ the man snapped. ‘Throw this round your shoulders and get some dirt on your hands.’ He pushed a stained and oily shawl into Karim’s hands and, not waiting for Karim to reply, reached out and rubbed his filthy fingers across his face. ‘Start cleaning one of those.’ He pointed to a pile of bicycle chains. They were tangled like a heap of dead metallic snakes.

  Karim wrapped himself in the shawl and, squatting on the ground, picked up a rag and started work on a grease-covered chain. ‘Shouldn’t we run?’ It seemed senseless to sit in the dirt waiting for the Taliban to come to the door.

  ‘Those animals are on a killing spree and you want to go out there? The west of the city is in flames.’ The man shrugged and nodded in the direction of a squalid-looking building to the right of his tiny shop. ‘My wife and two children are inside. If God wants me to die then I die at home.’ There was a sudden loud banging on the door. The man shot Karim a glance. ‘I am Mohammed Sarwar.’

  ‘I will repay you, if we live.’ Karim put his head down and tried to look as though he knew what he was doing.

  ‘Insh’allah, Sarwar replied and then called to the men hammering on the door, ‘Be patient, brothers, I’m coming.’

  But patience was the last thing the men had in mind. As Sarwar slid the bolt free the door was thrown open and two young Talibs burst in. Karim, fighting to remain calm, stood up to greet them. Breathing heavily, their eyes shining with excitement, neither boy could have been more than nineteen years of age. Before he could move Karim found himself pushed up against the wall beside Mohammed Sarwar.

  ‘You are Hazara!’ One of the boys chanted, ‘Mongol Hazaras are not Moslem, they are Shia. They are kofr — infidels. The Hazaras killed our force here once before and now we have to kill Hazaras.’ It was like a recitation; something they had learned by heart. All Karim could think of was that these were the people responsible for killing his father. For a second he had a flash of his wife, Saara, and their children, Danyal and Halma. How would they survive without him? But not even that seemed to matter as his mind numbly focused on the barrel of the rifle being pressed against his head.

  The traveller had come a very roundabout route. By the time he landed in Port Sudan he was exhausted. Yet there was another journey before he could rest.

  In the last week he had met in Switzerland with a hawalader, a man who could move money around the globe. He was expensive, but using the traditional hawala system he left no paper trail, no trace, no electronic footprint. For a five per cent commission plus a deal on the exchange rates, he could transfer funds in twenty-four hours. His agents in one country accepted funds and, in the target country, others paid the money to the designated person, in cash. The traveller, Mohammad bin Ibrahim, considered such expertise was certainly worth paying for. They made an in-principle agreement.

  This had been followed by an early morning flight to Hamburg where things were not so smooth sailing. There had been an extremely unpleasant four hours with a Yemeni national, whose contacts in the shipping world could have been a real asset to the mission if the man himself wasn’t such a liability. He was a fanatic whose hatred of the West in general and the United States in particular fuelled more than his endeavours — it fuelled his tongue, and in this game that was likely to prove fatal. The traveller, Mahmud Yassin here, excused himself, and later that day sent a message that would eventually result in the offending tongue being removed.

  The next stop had been London, where he introduced himself not as Mr Yassin or Mr Ibrahim, but as Ali bin Saleh. The English were always welcoming of their friends from the Gulf States and they assured Mr Saleh in no uncertain terms that if he purchased an aerosol-manufacturing plant from them they would be friends for a long time. Mr Saleh was duly impressed and left with a promise to confirm the contract once his board had sighted the specifications. The English were so friendly that they included two copies of the technical specifications and a beautifully constructed scale model so that the directors could fully appreciate what they were purchasing.

  Then it was across to Nairobi and a leisurely opportunity for the traveller to view some splendid wildlife around a watering hole. The next day had dawned reluctantly under a pewter sky, and then deteriorated. The wind and lashing rain, however, did not deter Hassan al-Mahdi from being picked up from his hotel by a driver. They drove in silence until they came to the game reserve and, after negotiating a muddy track bounded by tall elephant grass, came through a wild electrical storm to their destination. They stopped on a small rise overlooking a dark rain-pocked pool. Hassan al-Mahdi was relieved to find that the weather had acted in their favour. They were totally alone. No tour coaches, no mini-vans, no private cars.

  For an hour the driver talked about the mission and what it might accomplish. He listened to Hassan’s report of his previous meetings and went over each of them several times, forensically picking through the information until he was convinced that nothing had been said or done that might compromise his plans. Hassan was in awe of the way the man’s mind could home in on any inconsistency and tease out the implications. Hassan knew that he too was being examined and if he was thought to have failed in any respect he would end up in the elephant grass; carrion for the vultures and hyenas. Yet he had no fear, for he prided himself on the meticulous way he carried out his leader’s tasks. And it was a pleasure to be in his company; to talk with a man whose deeds were legend, even though his name remained unknown to the world. It had been an honour to be trusted to meet like this, and almost beyond belief that he could sit in the back while such a man drove as though he were some lowly chauffeur.

  From Nairobi it had been on to Khartoum and a change of aircraft for the trip to Port Sudan. As they circled out over the Red Sea, Hassan the traveller thought how strange it was that he had ended up here, so close to his own home. It was probably no more than three hundred kilometres across the water to Jeddah, and suddenly he longed to be there. He imagined his wife’s cooking and the smell of fresh coffee. He pictured the look on his five-year-old daughter’s face when he walked in. He wo
uld scoop her up in his arms and hold her above him and lower her slowly down until she was clinging to his neck. A few more hours, he told himself. Concentrate.

  So now he walked to where the car was waiting for him. But a driver was also waiting. That had not been the arrangement. After a brief altercation, and the payment of an outrageous sum, he dismissed the man. For half an hour he drove around the old town, putting on a reasonable show of interest and even stopping to purchase a pretty string of shells for his daughter. But Hassan was too tired to keep up the farcical display and, having known right from the beginning that he wasn’t being followed anyway, he headed out of town to meet Kroger, the man who would deliver the weapon he needed. When their leader had recruited the man he had referred to him as ‘the Chemist’ and, despite the fact that the man’s medical speciality wasn’t chemistry, the name had stuck.

  A short distance out of town he pulled up to a walled compound and waited as two armed goons insisted that he be frisked before entering. He knew better than to protest, but made a mental note to repay the Chemist’s hospitality at some time in the future. The frisking was short and professional, then the gates were opened and Hassan directed through to a dusty courtyard. Kroger was waiting for him in the shade of the central building. The man looked even more unkempt than on their previous meeting. Unshaven, shirt flapping from a pair of grubby shorts that looked too small below an expansive belly. Prematurely aged, Hassan thought, looking at the tangled hair. Or gone to seed.

  The few people who knew about the Chemist agreed that the man was brilliant in his field, but Hassan disliked him intensely. They had met only twice and each time briefly, but as far as Hassan was concerned the man was obnoxious. For a start he was American. Earlier in his career Tim Kroger had been touted as a wunderkind and received staggering amounts for his research projects at a prestigious American university. There had been a scandal involving drug manufacturing and a side order of rather young boys. Before the ink on the charges was dry Kroger had decamped to Columbia and then, via a circuitous route, had ended up in Port Sudan.

  That their leader trusted the Chemist was incomprehensible to Hassan, but he was in no position to argue. He now needed something from the man and if that meant putting up with the offensive body odour and the constant gum chewing, then so be it.

  ‘Our friend sends his affectionate greetings,’ Hassan said as he clasped the man’s huge hands in his. It never ceased to amaze him that such pudgy hands could do the fine work the Chemist was renowned for.

  ‘Yeah? That’s good.’ Kroger’s eyes were squinting as though he was a nocturnal creature unexpectedly in the sun.

  ‘And I have a present for you,’ Hassan said, reaching into the car and taking out the cardboard carton and tube.

  They went inside, to a large and extremely untidy workroom. Through double glazing, Hassan could see the tiled whiteness of the outer lab. To his relief, in direct contrast to the workroom, the lab appeared to be in pristine condition. It had better be, he thought. The facility had been built to specifications laid down by Kroger, but the money had all come from the organisation. And it had been a lot of money because the main laboratory contained within it a smaller and much more expensive area where the real work took place. Hassan had a morbid fear of the inner laboratory and what it harboured, but knew that without it their plans couldn’t be realised.

  After clearing a space on the table he took the plans from the tube and laid them out for Kroger to inspect. Then he took the scale model of the plant and equipment from the box and placed it beside the plans.

  ‘That’s it?’

  Hassan was taken aback. He had expected that the Chemist would be impressed. Instead Kroger was examining the plans with a look of ill-disguised contempt.

  ‘Are they not right? Isn’t this what you wanted?’

  The American shrugged. ‘It’ll do.’

  Hassan clamped down on the anger that had welled up in him. At the moment the man was indispensable. This would not always be so. It would give him great pleasure to kill the Chemist — slowly. To see the look in those piggy eyes as he watched his own blood spilled onto the floor. But he smiled and raised his hand in supplication. ‘Of course if you need a different system, then naturally —’

  ‘I said it’ll do.’ He looked at Hassan as though saying, What would you fucking know anyway?

  ‘And your research?’ Hassan asked, curtly now. ‘Will it be ready?’

  Kroger snorted. ‘Ready? Come on, I’ll show you.’ But instead of going towards the laboratory, he walked to a side door and swung it open. ‘See?’

  Hassan moved forward cautiously and was immediately struck by the smell. It was animal, unclean and unpleasant. He looked out into a small animal enclosure and counted seven mangy-looking goats and two sheep. ‘I’m not sure what this has to do with our —’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t be. That’s why I’m showing you, pal. Ticks. That’s the vector.’ Without elaborating, Kroger spat his gum out into the yard, shut the door and led the way back across the room to the outer lab.

  As the door swung closed behind them, it felt to Hassan as if the temperature had suddenly dropped twenty degrees. Air scrubbers were humming. The room was spotless. Yet it caused a deeper agitation in him than the filthy workroom. He looked nervously at the airlock through to the Bio Level 4 area and hoped that the seals were working and that the pressure differential was being maintained. On his first visit to the lab it had been explained that, in the event of a breach, air would be sucked into the secure environment rather than expelled. That, at least, was the theory. He had always wondered what happened after that. Surely once the pressure was equalised, anything inside could start to flow outwards?

  Kroger sensed Hassan’s unease and eyed him with disdain. ‘Don’t worry, pal, I’ve got the little bastards under lock and key.’ He moved to a computer terminal and with a couple of mouse clicks brought up an image on the monitor. ‘There you go. Cute, isn’t it?’

  Determined not to be intimidated by the man, Hassan examined the highly magnified image. It looked like an anorexic sperm with a nasty hooked tail.

  ‘The Kroger variant.’ The piggy eyes shone in admiration of his own work. ‘I took the basic strain and tweaked it.’

  ‘The original virus isn’t deadly enough?’

  ‘It could kill, sure. But I wanted to teach it another trick.’

  There was a pause and Hassan knew that Kroger was waiting for him to ask the question so that he could deliver some kind of punch line. He obliged. ‘And what trick is that, Mr Kroger?’

  ‘I wanted to teach it to fly.’ Kroger dragged up a new image.

  Hassan was confused. He looked at the picture on the screen expecting to see nascent wings sprouting from the virus. It crossed his mind that Kroger was mad. He straightened up. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t quite understand what you mean.’

  Kroger pointed to the screen. ‘That is the Kroger variant, mark four. You probably notice it’s discernibly smaller. That’s not because of lesser magnification. It really is smaller. It is also almost twice as deadly. I am confident we can achieve a morbidity rate of up to sixty per cent.’

  ‘Yes, but what was that about flying?’

  Kroger continued to stare lovingly at his creation, his face pale and glowing in the light of the monitor. ‘Airborne delivery. The perfect delivery system. It has huge advantages.’ Almost reluctantly he closed the image file and turned back to Hassan. ‘The mark four is capable of airborne dissemination not only in the weapon stage, but subsequently from anyone infected to those around them.’ He beamed with satisfaction. ‘Can you imagine how that will increase the death toll?’

  Yes, Hassan thought, it would certainly be a benefit. He had questions, a lot of questions, but they could all wait. Now what mattered was that he was convinced enough of Kroger’s claims to give the mission the go-ahead. ‘The theory is fine. But how certain are you that it will work in practice?’

  Kroger looked at Hassan as if
he had been insulted. For a moment Hassan expected an explosion of anger. But then the eyes narrowed and he gestured for Hassan to follow him. He walked to the wall surrounding the inner lab and unlatched a small observation port. Then he stood back.

  Hassan stepped up and found himself looking into a brightly lit cell. On the floor, in a pool of blood and faeces, was a young man. Once he must have been a good-looking African, probably a Dinka from the south of Sudan. But now all he was, was dead. He felt Kroger step up close beside him. Smelt the body odour, felt the breath as the man whispered in his ear.

  ‘Seven days. My little baby did that in just seven days.’

  The ride to the city was uneventful and Fossey spent the twenty minutes retracing the events that had brought him to this moment; a moment when he was irrevocably stepping across a line that he had for so long ignored. Leaving his job in Canberra had been easy. The death of 183 men, women and children on the Sura Star had not, he now realised, been the only factor. For some time before that he had been uneasy about what he was doing. Nothing definable, but rather a vague sense of unease. In the national interest, the minister liked to say. But was it? And who defined the national interest? It had been easy to tailor the press releases and write the speeches when the illegals — no, he corrected himself, the asylum seekers — had been disembodied statistics, numbers on a page. And he had viewed them through the rhetoric he had assisted in promulgating. It was as though he had crafted a view of the world to someone else’s blueprint and adopted it as his own. Not all at once, and not in recognisable steps, but incrementally. No, it had not been simply the tragedy of the Sura Star. And resigning had not been enough. Maybe it was the need for an act of cleansing or contrition. Or that he had woken up to the realisation that he needed to take a step in the other direction. Well, he was certainly entertaining that idea.

  And then there was Layla.

  Her anger over his work in the department had faded away since he quit the job and they’d moved back to Brisbane, but she was still not ready to forgive him. Things did seem better though. Well — he thought bitterly back to Canberra — things couldn’t have got much worse. He shut his eyes and saw her; in the gloom there, hunched over the computer, head resting on her hands …