Still Balit said nothing.
‘Apart from anything else, Nawal would not want me to.’
The colonel smiled. ‘Are you sure? How do you know? I believe I have seen her more recently than you. She was not looking as resolute as you suggest.’ He finished his wine. ‘I instruct my men to use softer measures when they are dealing with women but sometimes they get carried away.’ He looked around the room. ‘I think our evening is over.’ He called out for Mr Akar who appeared almost immediately. Balit stood and stretched his back, readying himself to leave. ‘Think about my offer. You have until midday tomorrow. You can tell Mr Akar here what you decide.’
Carver stood. ‘I have a story. With or without Nawal. I have other evidence.’
Balit glanced at the hotel manager, who shook his head.
‘No you don’t.’ The colonel smiled. ‘I think this makes my offer even more generous.’
Jean opened the bedroom door and stood to one side. Her room had been turned upside down. Carver went straight to the side of the bed and knelt down on the floor. He reached beneath the frame and groped around for a minute or more although he knew in his heart that the canister was gone.
William woke the next morning drenched in sweat, nightmares clawing at the edges of his sleep. He ate breakfast alone and when Jean found him and asked if she could join him for coffee his response was a shrug. She attempted a few conversational gambits but Carver wasn’t interested.
When Mr Akar arrived, he pretended that he had happened upon the pair by accident. He exchanged a few banal remarks with Jean before asking the question he needed to ask.
‘So, I am following up on that offer, Mr Carver. I am afraid I need an answer now.’
William nodded. ‘The answer’s no.’
Akar paused. He stared at Carver. ‘I see. You’re sure?’
‘I’m sure.’
Jean waited until Akar was well out of earshot before allowing curiosity to get the better of her. ‘What was that all about, Billy?’
William paused, preparing the lie. ‘Akar offered me another fortnight here – at a reduced rate if I said yes straight away.’
‘I see.’
‘But I decided to say no.’
‘I heard.’
‘I said no.’
Zahra had been dialling Nawal’s number at least once an hour ever since she’d gone missing. Just after three that afternoon, she dialled it again and after half a dozen rings, someone picked up.
‘Nawal?’
‘Mn hdha?’
The man who answered told Zahra he’d found the phone along with a lot of other handsets and sim cards at a rubbish dump near Hykestep military base. He said he’d kept this one because it was the most modern. Zahra knew Hykestep; there was a prison there as well as a military base.
She was trying to arrange cover for her shifts at the hotel, so she could catch the bus to Hykestep, when she received a phone call from the El Borg Hospital. A body had been found by the roadside, on the outskirts of Cairo, and a private ambulance had dropped it off at the hospital morgue. Zahra’s phone number had been found among the deceased’s personal effects. The driver of the ambulance wanted to know who was going to pay him for his trouble. Zahra said that she would come and she would pay. She was perfectly calm. She called Carver and asked him if he’d accompany her to the hospital.
28 Personal Effects
DATELINE: The El Borg Hospital, Cairo, Egypt, February 3 2011
The morgue was two floors down from reception in the basement of the hospital; it was a low-ceilinged room with white tiled walls and half a dozen caged neon lights that buzzed and flickered and generally messed with your head. The attendant met them at the door; he was an anxious-looking young man with shaving rash and a facial twitch that appeared to mimic the flickering strip lighting. Zahra’s presence in his place of work made him even more nervous than usual. He took the piece of paper the hospital receptionist had given Zahra and read it through twice before walking her and Carver to the far end of the room. Here there were two steel tables, bolted to the cement floor; one was empty, on the other lay Nawal, naked apart from a bright white sheet, which covered her thin frame from thigh to chest. Zahra glanced briefly at her face.
‘Her mouth. Why does her mouth look like that?’
The lower half of Nawal’s face appeared sunken.
The morgue attendant nodded. ‘Her teeth were broken, snapped. Some have been removed. She was also—’
Carver coughed loudly. ‘Are all these details in your report?’
The young man nodded.
‘Then we can read that if we want to know more. We don’t need—’
Zahra turned away, heading for the door, and the young man hurried after her.
‘Miss, your friend’s belongings, my report, you need to take all these.’ He went to his desk and returned with a white A4 envelope and a plastic zip lock bag.
Nawal al-Moallem had few personal effects: a wallet that the ambulance driver said was empty when he found it, a set of keys and a little black notebook that Zahra had given her for her birthday. The book had Zahra’s name and number listed under emergency contacts and tucked inside the pocket at the back of the book were two photos. Zahra glanced at the pictures then handed them to William. One was a formal studio shot – a photograph of a young Nawal sitting alongside a woman.
‘Her mother?’
Zahra nodded ‘She died when Nawal was twelve.’
‘No dad?’
Zahra shook her head.
Carver looked at the other photo; there was something familiar about it, and he took a closer look. It was a photograph of Zahra, both hands held open in front of her – feeding pigeons. She had a broad smile on her face, the air around her a blur of wings. In the background was the immense head and mane of a lion.
‘Trafalgar Square?’
‘I went there for one day when I was studying in England. I don’t know why she even has this picture, it is so stupid. I look bad and the picture is blurred. She didn’t even ask me if she could take it …’ And then she broke down, her legs buckling beneath her. Zahra fell to the concrete floor and wept.
DATELINE: The Seti Hotel, Cairo, Egypt, February 4 2011
Carver had no appetite; he skipped breakfast and headed instead for the hotel garden. Perhaps some air would help. The tables around the pool bar were empty; he sat at one of these and took out his notebook from his plastic bag. His tape recorder was in there too – he’d told Patrick that he’d meet him later. Carver sat and leafed through his notes, his spidery black shorthand scrawled across page after page. The only distraction was the little Russian girl who was doggy-paddling about in the deep end. She’d outgrown her armbands in the space of a few days. Carver wondered when he’d last learned something useful in that space of time.
‘I brought you some coffee.’
Zahra was in her work uniform, black hair piled unevenly on top of her head.
‘Thanks.’ Carver sighed. ‘I thought Akar had given you a few days off?’ If he’d known there was any chance of running into Zahra then he would surely have stayed in his room.
‘He did, but being at home was no good. And I needed to talk to you.’ Zahra sat down opposite him. She looked like she’d had even less sleep than he had – her eyes were swollen and red, her skin grey. ‘I have had an idea.’
‘Okay.’ Carver took his glasses off and rubbed at his face.
‘We can still make Nawal’s story work.’ She pulled her chair closer. ‘I thought about it all last night. I can say that I was at that demonstration, I found the canister. I saw what Nawal saw. You can record the interview with me instead of her.’
Carver stared at Zahra. ‘That would be a lie.’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘I mind.’
Her chair scraped noisily on the stone as she pushed herself back from the table and stood.
‘That’s a better idea, Zahra. Leave me alone.’
She turned to go t
hen changed her mind. She stopped and stared down at the man. ‘I know that you’re upset, William. I am upset, I am … empty. But you did everything that you could.’
Carver looked up at her. ‘You have no idea what I did.’
She shook her head. ‘You took Nawal’s story seriously, you are investigating it, you—’
Carver stood. ‘Please, I’m begging you, Zahra, just fucking leave me alone.’
He went to his bedroom and hid there. He texted Patrick telling him that he’d have to find someone else to help him out. He unplugged the room phone and switched off his mobile. Carver bought a single ticket for the early morning flight from Cairo to London and then he took a couple of sleeping pills.
DATELINE: The Seti Hotel, Cairo, Egypt, February 5 2011
A security guard was manning the reception when Carver left the hotel at five thirty the next morning; there was no sign of Zahra. His relief at this small mercy was short-lived. Jean was sitting in an armchair next to one of the white sphinx statues, waiting for him.
‘You pulled a moonlit flit on me once before, I seem to remember.’
‘This is different.’
‘Sit for a minute.’
Carver looked at his watch.
‘You’ve got time, you’re early – like always.’
William sat but said nothing.
Jean studied him for a time. ‘I don’t know what it is you think you’ve done’ – she held up a hand to stop his interruption – ‘and I don’t need you to tell me. But whatever it is, Billy, I know you did it for the right reasons.’
Carver shook his head slowly. ‘I’m not sure that’s true. And even if it is – it’s not enough. Not this time.’
They sat in silence for a while. On the other side of the glass doors Carver could see a couple of waiting taxis; he wanted to be in one of them but Jean hadn’t finished with him.
‘Zahra came to see me, she thinks she’s done something to upset you.’
Carver shuffled in his seat.
‘She’s worried that you might give up on Nawal’s story – because of her. I told her you wouldn’t. That isn’t a lie, is it, Billy?’
‘I don’t think so.’ Carver looked at Jean. ‘I need to go. She’ll be safer without me here.’
He told Jean that he’d speak to his London contacts, follow the story upstream and hassle the company that manufactured the gas. He thought he made a pretty convincing case.
‘Sounds good, Billy.’
Carver attempted a smile. ‘Why don’t you come too?’
‘Eh?’
‘Back to London, we could travel back together?’
Jean shook her head. ‘I can’t. Not yet.’ She put a hand on his arm. ‘But that’s the most tempting offer I’ve had in a long, long time, Billy. How about you hold it open for me?’
On the plane, he begged a bottle of red wine for pretend pre-flight nerves and drank it like medicine. When a lanky British backpacker took the seat in front and started playing with the recline button, Carver tapped him on the shoulder.
‘I’ll give you a tenner if you leave your seat like it is.’
The guy turned and sized him up. ‘Twenty.’
‘Fine.’
The plane took off half an hour late. Carver drank one more bottle of wine, pushed his seat as far back as it would go and let the turbulence rock him to sleep.
PART THREE
@tsquarelawan
29 A Man’s Word
DATELINE: The Taxi Café, Asmara, Eritrea, February 5 2011
Gabriel stirred another spoon of sugar into his dark beer and stared down the Dekemhare road. He had agreed to meet Adam Adonay without hesitation, assuming that the smuggler had news of his grandsons and confident that this news would be good. Now that Adam was sitting in front of him, fanning himself with a Taxi Café menu and sweating from every visible pore, Gabriel wasn’t so sure.
‘Perhaps you’d be more comfortable without your jacket?’
Adam was wearing his usual uniform of electric-blue business suit, white shirt and red leather tie.
‘No, no. I am quite comfortable’ – he looked at his watch – ‘and I cannot talk for long.’
Gabriel pointed at the Tag Heuer. ‘The watch works well?’
Adam nodded. ‘Excellent, yes. It has not dropped a second.’ He paused. ‘Thank you.’
Gabriel gave a gracious nod and topped up Adam’s glass with the last of the beer. ‘So I am assuming that this is about Gebre and Sol? How are they? Either their phones ring out or else they don’t connect at all. I haven’t been able to reach them.’
Adam nodded. ‘That is to be expected, where they are – the signal comes and goes. Mainly it goes.’ He smiled and his gold tooth winked at Gabriel. ‘They are well of course, very well, just as I promised. So far, so good as the saying goes.’ The tooth winked again. ‘They are with my colleagues on the Libyan coast, staying in luxury’s lap.’
Gabriel raised his old eyebrows. ‘They have reached the sea?’
Adam nodded.
‘Then they are nearly there. What sort of crossing have you arranged?’
‘Well, yes, this is as yet … undecided.’
Gabriel stared at the sweating man. ‘Undecided? What do you mean? I paid the total sum up front. I paid for the VIP crossing as you call it. So put them in the best boat you have.’
Adam folded his hands across his stomach. ‘If only life was so simple. This is why I wanted to meet. It turns out that the nature of your grandsons’ crossing is rather up to you.’
Gabriel sucked as his teeth in disgust and reached for his wallet. ‘More money! Of course. A man’s word is worth nothing in these times.’
Adam shaped his face into a look of great shock. ‘No, no! This is not about money, old Gabriel. This is about friends doing other friends favours. Do you understand?’
Gabriel shook his head. ‘No, I don’t understand. No one involved in this undertaking is any friend of mine.’
Mr Adam lifted his thin black briefcase on to the table and clicked it open. He removed a single sheet of paper and handed it to Gabriel. ‘This is what my colleagues are asking for. It is not very much. A small favour only.’
The old man ran his eye down the piece of paper. ‘Impossible. You know what I move and what I don’t.’
‘But surely one box is much like another, one lorry looks much like the next. If it’s a question of paying your contacts a little more then that is no problem.’
‘No. I won’t do it. I don’t need you or your friends to help my grandsons, there are other people I can turn to.’
Mr Adam shrugged. ‘So be it.’ He closed his case and stood. ‘But if you are thinking about some sort of divine intervention, Gabriel, then I would advise you to think again. Read the proposal properly, old man, take your time. I will call you later.’
Gabriel watched Mr Adam chatting and laughing with the taxi drivers outside before climbing into the back of one of their cabs and driving off. He could see why, to a man like Adam, it might seem like a small request but for Gabriel it broke every promise he’d made to himself when he first went into business. His pride told him to rip the sheet of paper into a hundred pieces and throw it away. But he could not afford to be proud. He folded the paper neatly and tucked it inside his wallet. He called out for another beer and his spirits lifted a little when he saw that the waiter who brought it was the café’s newest employee. The boy to whom he’d promised the story of the world-famous Fiat Tagliero garage.
‘Sit with me a moment, I owe you that story.’
The boy cast a nervous look back over his shoulder.
‘Don’t worry, your boss will not mind.’
Most people, who thought they knew the history of the garage and its gravity-defying concrete wings, got one key detail wrong. Gabriel delighted in putting them right. ‘I am walking history. Soon I will be history in a wheelchair and then history in a wooden box, buried in the ground. I have to tell as many people the true story as I ca
n, before I’m dead and gone.’
When the first wave of Italian architects arrived in Asmara most locals shunned them. ‘My parents hated them, most people hated them. They were colonialists, racists, fascists – ugly people, that’s what everyone said. But these ugly people were making beautiful things. Beautiful buildings. Not everyone could see it, but I could.’
Gabriel was only ten years old but he had initiative and no fear. He attached himself to one architect in particular: Giuseppe Pettazzi, making himself first useful, then employable and, eventually, indispensable to the Italian. Gabriel was a sponge, learning both Pettazzi’s mother tongue and then the language of architecture very quickly. ‘Giuseppe was not a tall man, he was small but he made monumental buildings. Divine geometry he called it. Pettazzi did not want to build La Piccola Roma or any kind of Little anything.’
Gabriel worked for the Italian on several projects before Pettazzi attempted his masterpiece: the Fiat garage that he wanted to build both as a celebration of the modern and a monument to air travel.
The building that Pettazzi and young Gabriel were sure would become the most iconic building in all Africa was to have cantilevered wings, stretching out a full fifteen metres on either side without the support of pillars. ‘I remember when he was working on the drawings, the sums he did, all the mathematical equations written on scraps of paper all over his study. He said that he had discovered a loophole in the law of gravity.’
The official version of the story was that both his fellow architects and the local authority deemed Pettazzi’s plan structurally unsound. When the huge plane-shaped building was all but finished, a team of inspectors turned up at the construction site and refused him permission to remove the temporary supports that held the long concrete wings in place. There was a standoff and Pettazzi pulled a gun, an Italian revolver, from inside his jacket pocket.
‘People say that he put the gun to the foreman’s head and threatened to shoot him if the supporting pillars weren’t pulled down. But this is a lie. I was there.’ Gabriel paused and gazed across the road at the Tagliero garage. ‘It is nearly eighty years ago now and I remember it as though it was yesterday. He jumped up on to that wing …’ He pointed at the wing furthest from the window. ‘He stood there and put the gun to his own head. Pettazzi said he would kill himself if they didn’t remove the pillars. His builders pulled the supports away and the wings stayed solid – just the same then as they are today. Divine geometry.’
A Single Source Page 24
