Rotten Gods (17 page)

 

Abdullah bin al-Rhoumi wakes on a chair, back creaking and eyes gummed with fatigue. Rising without a word, he hurries past the men and women at their workstations, heading for the bathrooms, carrying a small leather case.

Finding an empty corner on the smooth ceramic bench he opens the case, removing a toothbrush and toothpaste. He cleans upper and lower teeth — backs, sides, and fronts. When this is done he washes his face and hands, combs his hair and then, with a sharp pair of scissors, trims his beard.

Finished, he stares back at his image in the mirror, eyes sunken into deep pits, red with veins. Wiping his face with a paper towel, Abdullah picks up the shattered pieces of his psyche, rolls them together and grits his teeth.

Don't let me fall apart now, please God
, he says to himself, then walks through the doors and back into the control room. On the other side of the door an assistant is waiting.

‘Coffee,' Abdullah tells him, ‘and toast, please.' The latter is a Western habit but a useful way to eat in a hurry. ‘Then I want a briefing — assemble the team leaders in my office …' Abdullah smiles to himself. This is it, back in control, keep the momentum, never let them relax, never let them know you are tired, or that your back hurts. Don't let them know that you are human; that you have needs like everyone else.

The coffee goes down like honey, and he eats as they talk — situation reports, succinct, factual. The Frenchman, Léon Benardt, speaks first. ‘The engineer, Faruq Nabighah, has started drilling …'

Next is one of his managers from GDOIS. ‘We have lost contact with our two operatives in Somalia …'

Abdullah feels a twinge of remorse — the Australian, Marika Hartmann, was a good agent despite her failure to recognise the impending attempt on the centre. He had liked her a lot. Even so, he puts his personal feelings aside. ‘That line of inquiry is finished. There is no time to get someone else in there. What else?'

‘We have had contact from two of the hostages. Both via MMS.'

‘Didn't the militants collect all the phones?'

‘They did. Just not those two.'

‘Who are they?'

‘One is a British analyst: Isabella Thompson. Her contact is Tom Mossel, Director of the DRFS. He's passed her on to us. She is prepared to send further information when possible.'

Abdullah recognises the name. ‘Isabella Thompson is the one the British are investigating in regard to aiding and abetting the terrorists. Yet it seems that she acted under duress.'

The Islamists have taken her children
, he thinks to himself,
yet she is prepared to do this. The woman has courage. They will kill her if they find her with a phone. Yet why not let her atone for what she did? It may help her when this is over, and we are all still alive to answer for our crimes and inadequacies.
‘Who is the other one?'

‘Raphael Perreira, one of the Brazilian President's bodyguards, brought in as an advisor. He contacted his embassy here in Dubai, and we've sent through a direct number for him to use.'

The meeting ends with a short prayer, and as he watches them go, Abdullah wonders at the risk these people inside are taking. He wonders if this will mean death for a wife and mother.

 

Marika wakes not long after dawn, her body so bruised that she takes time to come to a sitting position. Outside, at some distance, a rooster crows. Her headache is an organic, living thing, moving from room to room and kicking the furniture to bits in the doll's house rooms of her mind.

There is a new sound, yet distant. At first it reminds her of the sea. It has the same power. That irrepressible force.

As she comes awake, Marika realises that it is not just one sound, but many. The movement of feet, voices, wailing infants. Then singing, starting off softly, but growing, taking over from the other noises, overwhelming them.

The singing is unique, African, full of anger and pain. Shouts, raised voices, yet still at a distance. Like a swell rising with a storm front, the sound reaches a crescendo. The crack of a gunshot echoes out across the stillness of dawn. Another follows.

Again inverting the mercifully empty latrine, she reaches for the bars of the high window, gripping them with two hands.
Arms trembling with the strain, she eases her body and head upwards so that she can see outside between the bars, over a makuti thatched rooftop and down across the compound.

A crowd has gathered outside the main gate. Perhaps two thousand, three thousand souls — women in brightly coloured kanga and kikoi; men and children in everything from football shirts to kanzu robes and keffiyeh — press against the chain-mesh fence. Men with guns stand shoulder to shoulder before the gates, firing over the crowd, smoke puffing from the barrels of the assault rifles, staccato bursts of sound following microseconds later.

The singing stops, replaced by screams and shouts of fear, and the tramp of running feet. This is loud at first, then recedes. The crowd is in full retreat, and Marika wants and needs to keep watching but the strain on her arms is insufferable, and she is too high for the latrine bucket to support her. She lowers herself to a height from which she can drop to the ground and sits with her head in her hands, trying to cope with her own pain and what she has just seen and heard.

The cell door opens and an earthenware bowl of porridge appears. After what she has just seen she lacks appetite, but eats because of a determination to keep up her strength, without putting herself through the angst of examining the meal too closely. It is made from an unidentifiable grain, glutinous and thick. The taste is neutral, and the smell is of rank milk. It is, however, filling.

When she has eaten, she reaches for the coke bottle of water she was given the previous day. She screws her eyes shut and swallows it in a few long pulls. The liquid seems to help her headache, and the food provides a new energy. More for something to do than anything else, she removes her headband, brushes her hair with her fingers and ties it back.

Just as she begins to feel somewhat human there is a tramp of feet and the shadow of men behind the grate. The door swings open. Three men enter the cell. The captain, the interpreter and the Taser-equipped guard. A fourth man arrives, burdened with an automotive lead acid battery, a bundle of wire and a black electronic device. After a single glance at her, he places the battery on the floor and begins connecting wires from battery to machine. Marika watches the activity, then turns to the interpreter. ‘You bastards better not be planning on connecting that thing up to me. No one does that kind of thing these days.'

‘Unfortunately for you, the captain intends to extract the required information before Dalmar Asad returns. It would give him stature, and therefore he seeks your cooperation in telling him what he needs to know now. If not, he will be forced to use these archaic and brutal means to make you speak.'

Marika feels her breakfast as a bitter lump at the base of her throat. She turns to look at Wanami. There is a bloodstain on his lapel that was not there the previous day. A big one — surely connected to the screams and moans in the night.

‘You bastard,' she says. ‘Why don't you just let me go? This has nothing to do with you.'

The interpreter's voice is gentle. ‘That is not possible. You have come to our country to spy on us and Dalmar Asad wants to know why. The captain is being a loyal servant and taking steps to extract the correct information from you.'

At that moment, Marika makes the decision that she will not allow these men to place those sharp-toothed little alligator clips on her body without a struggle. She knows the theory: the little black box is a transformer, designed to multiply the current from the battery. The charge will be highly painful. Not only that but she knows that the shock will be greatest when attached to the
moister membranes of her body: lips, tongue, eyelids, vagina, anus …

The captain grins, and takes a step towards her.

Marika lunges, swinging hard at his head but he weaves, leaving only air. Again she strikes with her left arm and this time finds the sternum. He leaps back, almost tripping over the battery and other paraphernalia, avoiding the worst of the blow, but still she hears breath leave his lungs.

The guard with the Taser fires, and again she reels with the shock. The captain moves in before she can recover, a flurry of blows and a side kick that connects with her midriff, then a punch to the side of the head that feels like it's delivered with a sledgehammer.

Somehow recovering her balance and her wits, she tries to strike back, but he is too quick for her, again punching to the head. Disoriented, she falls to the concrete floor. He gives her no breathing room, but straddles her, producing oversized plastic cable ties from his shirt pocket. These he uses to bind her wrists and ankles, leaving her moaning, doubled up. With more cable ties he secures her feet to the bars between her cell and the adjoining one.

When he speaks she can see the excitement on his face.

You bastard. You're enjoying every minute of this.

The interpreter smiles. ‘This is your last chance to speak. The captain wants to know which American spy organisation you work for, and why they sent you here.'

‘I work for the United Nations. That is all.'

As soon as the words are out, Wanami moves back and lets his underling work, attaching one alligator clip to her lower lip and the other to her left nostril. The clips are themselves a small agony and she thrashes from side to side in an attempt to rid herself of them.

‘You have five seconds,' the interpreter drones. ‘What spy organisation sent you here and what is your mission?' A pause, then. ‘One, two, three …'

Marika discovers a world of pain that she had, to that point, never imagined. It has many forms: an overall jolting ache that begins in her spine and spreads like a mushroom cloud through her sinuses and the bones of her skull. There are also precise, dentist drill-fine agonies. Her teeth, her nose and lips. Behind her eyes. The base of her head.

There is no time to scream. No ability to suck in the necessary air. Only a roaring in her ears and a strange awareness of her own mortality, at how fragile her grip on life.

Mercifully, it is soon over, and she finds that she has sagged back onto the concrete cell floor, having bitten her tongue, without remembering how and when she did so. When the pain becomes manageable she opens her eyes, and Wanami pushes her torso up so that she is in the sitting position.

The interpreter leans close. ‘The pain was very bad, was it not? The captain says that as soon as you tell him the truth he will leave and have you brought good food, and perhaps let you stroll outside.'

Marika shakes her head, trying to steel herself for the next surge of current. Before it can happen, however, a man appears at the cell door. He is subservient to the captain, lowering his eyes respectfully. A conversation ensues before the man disappears. As soon as he is gone, Wanami issues an instruction to his assistant, who begins packing up the battery.

The captain himself produces a Swiss Army knife and cuts Marika's cable ties. The interpreter smiles down at her.

‘Do not think for a moment that you have escaped. This is a short reprieve only. Dalmar Asad has called and asked that the
questioning waits until he returns, some time in the afternoon. A delay, nothing more.'

‘What will he do to me?'

‘I imagine that first he will want to rape you. He likes Western women, and you are, if you will allow me to say so, rather nubile.'

The interpreter leaves the cell, then the guard and his equipment. Captain Wanami lingers until last, his face clouded by apparent disappointment as he closes the door behind him. Finally he, too, is gone, and Marika wipes at the sweat that coats every square millimetre of her skin.

Day 3, 09:10

Approaching the al-Tawahi port area, Simon watches the crowded streets from the car window  — women in balto or intricately patterned sitara veils in groups of twos and threes, escorted by their maharams, male chaperones, hurrying past men lounging outside coffee shops. Political posters adorn brick walls, moustached men staring imperiously at the artist, bold Arabic type above and below. The red, black and white Yemeni flag is everywhere, whether from nationalistic fervour or an attempt to appear so, Simon is not sure.

‘Here, too, climate change has taken its toll,' Hisham explains. ‘Sea levels have risen enough to inundate the lowest docks at high tide. Many have been extended and rebuilt, and some lower slopes of the volcano that were once exposed are now under water.'

Simon looks down and sees the low-lying areas that have flooded, the shadowy shapes of old jetties under shallow water. He is no stranger to the phenomenon. The London City Council has, over the last five years, spent hundreds of millions of pounds
on strengthening the famous Thames Barrier and other flood defence works. Even now no one is able to predict just how high sea and estuary levels will rise. The only consensus is that they will go higher, much higher.

‘I am sorry I cannot do more,' Hisham says. ‘If I did not have to work I would walk the streets with you today.'

‘You have given me a bed, and some hope,' Simon says, grateful for the chance to wash and shave, change his clothes and sleep.

‘I pray to God that you find your girls. Fathers are the same everywhere, no matter what their religion.'

Simon leaves the car with the feeling that he has made a friend, but walks down along the road without a backwards glance. Shops on both sides of the street are opening, their keepers out on the footpath, engrossed in that quaint ritual of praising God and asking Him for a day of good sales and profits to bank at the end of it.

At another time, Simon might have enjoyed the magic of the scene, but today he hurries on. Homeless children, huge brown eyes staring as he passes, sit on the flattened cardboard beds where they have slept. One or two approach, begging, and his small supply of coins is soon exhausted. This is the tragedy of war and political unrest  — the orphans, the abandoned, the flotsam of chaos that a broken system has no way of supporting.