Rotten Gods (7 page)

She pushed him away. ‘I don't think I'll fall in love with you, though.'

‘Why not?'

‘You're too nice. I think I've got a thing for rogues.'

‘I can be a rogue too.'

‘Can you?' Her tongue was just visible behind the parted lips.

‘Yes, I can.'

‘There's a quiet place down by the old canal. We could go there if you like.'

 

Simon remembered how it felt, that first time, how she lay back in his arms in the reclined seat afterwards and confessed her virginity.

‘Really? I thought you must have …'

‘Because I was so forward. Sorry, but you just happened to come along at the right time. I was ready.'

Simon hugged her tight. ‘It was my first time too.'

‘Was it good?'

Simon's voice took on a languorous tone. ‘I rather think it was.' A pause then, ‘Do you think we might try it again?'

 

The relationship sustained them through his pilot training and Isabella's Bachelor of Political Science. Marriage followed. Children. Fatherhood. Simon came to understand that to be a parent is to live not one, but two, three or four lives. That you share every fall, every success, every tear; every disgrace. That you feel each more keenly than your own.

A blur of years followed. Soon there were bad memories, too. Fights. Sullen silences that went on for days. Unbridgeable gaps.

More than anything now, Simon wants the wasted time back again. How could he have let it happen? He shudders to himself. If there is ever another chance … If she survives this. If the girls survive this. Simon steels himself. It is up to him to make sure that they come through, but first he has to find the girls. Without them there is no future worth living.

 

CNN runs the story dispassionately, while FOX presents Dr Abukar as a once loyal servant, now deranged, having teetered off into extremism. SKY News labels him as a complex villain; a
fundamentalist on a mission to save the world. Acting presidents and prime ministers promise that they will not cave in to terrorism, not even for the life of their own leader.

Men and women all over the world gather information, draw their conclusions, perpetuate their prejudices, air their opinions over backyard fences, and on Quora, Scribd, Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Diaspora and Namesake. Amateur news gatherers use Twitter to disseminate information hours ahead of traditional news services.

The general opinion is that Dr Abukar will be content to make his point then walk away. The demands are unworkable, and he must realise this. Zhyogal is another matter. The word evil is bandied about by people who should know better. Clever journalists uncover evidence of his earlier exploits, including footage of a massacre in an Algerian village, and predict dire results this time around.

In student unions, East and West, young men and women cheer and raise their glasses, while working-class strollers, polled by rough-and-tumble street journalists, click their tongues at such a treacherous lack of patriotism. ‘After all,' fifty-three-year-old Isaac Stanton of Bethany, Pennsylvania, tells FOX and the world, ‘he's our president. Even if I never voted for him myself I wouldn't like to see him blown into little pieces.'

The name Zhyogal takes on the media-fuelled proportions of a Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin or Slobodan Miloševíc, an uncomplicated vision even Isaac Stanton of Bethany, Pennsylvania, can understand. Dr Ali Khalid Abukar, however, is condemned as a traitor to the world that once gave him his living. Reports that a substantial UN salary is still being paid into a bank account in his name outrages the moral majority, leading to a rapid and comprehensive freezing of his assets.

The team behind Inspire, the al-Qa'ida magazine launched and originally edited by the American born martyr, Anwar al-Awlaki, rushes to upload a special edition. This ten-page feature praises the brave mujahedin at Rabi al-Salah, and takes pains to link al-Muwahhidun with their own organisation, devoting half a page to details of the original association between Osama bin Laden and Yaqub Yusuf.

Financial markets, never secure in these troubled times, reflect the possibility of a world without leadership. The Dow Jones dives, and the Hang Seng suffers its worst one-day loss since a wave of water destroyed the Miyagi prefecture's coastal strip and an ageing nuclear power station went into meltdown years earlier. The index creeps back when the
Tokyo Times
reports a possible negotiated end to the crisis. This report proves to be false, and another round of selling begins, cut short by the close of trade.

Day 1, 20:00

As stars appear in the darkened sky, visible through the single high window, the conference room lights remain on. Isabella sees eyes close and sleep arrive for many of the delegates. Of course, she has scarcely dozed in seventy-two hours, and for at least an hour, she too sleeps. When she wakes it is with an unpleasant jolt. Someone has dimmed the lights.

The man who once introduced himself as a suave and urbane businessman called Rami  — now revealed as terrorist and murderer Zhyogal — prowls the room, scarcely glancing at her now.

At least one of the hijackers is asleep far across the room, lying on the carpet beside the wall. The mujahedin, she decides, must be taking turns to rest, sleeping in relays.

Rather than enlivening her, the short sleep fills Isabella with despair at what has happened to Hannah and Frances, at the memory of what she has done — that she is to blame, in part, for this. Her eyes fall on the shoulder bag near her feet, remembering the spare phone still inside. Using one foot she hooks the bag closer, waiting until she is sure Zhyogal and the others are not watching.

Trying not to think of what they will do to her if she is caught, she leans over, delves into the bag, and brings out the phone in its blue silicone case. She covers it with both hands and waits again.

Delegates withholding a telephone will be shot.

Isabella presses the power button; there is a soft electronic beep. Again she hides the machine and looks around before choosing the ‘silent' option and looking at the screen. Three missed calls flagged in red. She checks the numbers — Simon. She almost sobs with frustration. Then, seeing that an SMS has come through, she opens it up, reading the words in their light grey LCD bubble, fighting to keep the tears from her eyes.

What have you done? Frantic. Looking for girls. Where? Simon.

Isabella looks around again. The mujahedin have not stirred, but she meets the eyes of another delegate a row behind. She is certain that he has seen her with the phone. He is pleasant looking, with a clean jawline and athletic shoulders, his brown hair longer than that of most of the other males in the room, and his smile open and honest. They exchange what she decides is understanding. Is he part of the large American delegation? She thinks so, for the President — still the most powerful man in the world, if control of nuclear warheads, ships and men with guns is a true measure of power — sits nearby, surrounded by a gaggle of aides and inferiors.

Looking up between letters, Isabella uses her thumb on the virtual keypad to reply.

Simon. Forgive me. Girls taken from Aden airport. My heart is with you, along with all my hopes and trust.

She pauses, wanting to say more. Everything seems so petty now. At that moment she feels closer to him than to any human being alive — the man who held her hand while she screamed in pain and brought forth the children they conceived together. She could never doubt his love for his children and thinking of him warms her heart. Still, it is all too complicated — the wounds so fresh. What can she say that will not undo all that was so hard to do? Moving her thumb back to the keypad she picks out the final word — Isabella.

Sitting in the dull light, she gathers courage. Now she has the means to explain herself, then to help; to pay back some of what she owes. She composes a text in her mind. It has to be short, and to the point. The next question is who to address the message to.

Isabella's immediate superior is a genuine Dame — the honour bestowed because of her charity work — Shelley Chandler. She is a capable woman with a busy social life of openings and exhibitions, but can be a little vague, and might sit on the message until she decides what to do with it.

Almost a year earlier Isabella was approached by a Director at MI6 to provide intelligence on the East African and Middle Eastern region — just incidental stuff  — and since then she has passed on bits and pieces as they cropped up, nothing serious or consequential. In this way she has met Tom Mossel half a dozen times. She freezes inside when she thinks of him. He is just one of many people who must feel let down by what she did. They would all know by now — of course they would.

Again she holds the phone low between her knees. Mossel is both smart and discrete — she will not need to spell things out.

How can I explain? Was tricked and used. Girls abducted Aden airport, acted under duress. Please find them, heart is breaking. One m'tant asleep. AKA awake and Zhyogal. How can I help? IJT

Without stopping to think too hard she thumbs the ‘send' tab.

Looking around, she moves her hand inside the waistband of her skirt and all the way to her knickers, slipping the phone underneath. Out of despair, worry and fear, a new determination is rising.

Day 1, 20:30

Abdullah bin al-Rhoumi, head of GDOIS division, Dubai police, sits in his office with his head in his hands. He is a tall man, sixty-seven years of age, with faint crow's feet in the corners of his eyes. His nose has a prominent dorsal hump falling away just above the nostrils. He wears the white kandoura robe at home and when going about the city, but at work he prefers a grey, off-the-peg Western suit, coupled with a shemagh head cloth, tied with the black woollen aqal rope. A city engineer has just briefed him on the possibility of building a tunnel from Interchange Number Seven to the fortified bunker that lies deep beneath the Rabi al-Salah Centre.

This is
his
Dubai.
His
world. That makes it hard to believe that al-Muwahhidun have brought their abhorrent brand of terror to the city that he has loved from its beginnings.

 

In the earliest years of Abdullah's childhood, Dubai was a nondescript, local port centred around Dubai Creek, a silted,
disturbed channel of water. Pearl diving and the trading of dates and copra were the main economic activities. Oil had recently been discovered in the area and, while men whispered of its potential, nothing changed until hired barges came and dredged the creek. The biggest oil discoveries were a hundred and fifty kilometres to the north, and it seemed that little would change here.

Like most of his peers, Abdullah lived in a thatched hut without running water or electricity, and received a basic schooling in the local madrasah. His family were of the merchant al-Tujjar class, and thus wealthy. They ate yoghurt and flat bread each day for breakfast, washed down with dark coffee. Lunch, the main meal of the day, was a happy, chatty event with the brothers sitting with their father. The women ate in the kitchen. All dined on fish or meat, rice and vegetables, supplemented at times with dates or olives.

When he was ten, the British, long-term rulers in this part of the world, packed up and left. The United Arab Emirates were formed in 1971, from a rabble of Sheikhdoms. To Abdullah, this changed his life only a little. The Sheikh of Dubai, Mohammed, once titular ruler for the British, was now de facto head of the greater Emirates government. Abdullah's father moved from trading pearls to importing Western consumer goods for a growing market.

Abdullah's passion was his horse, a roan gelding called Mulham, the inspired one. Like the other children, he rode bareback, yet with a skill that amazed his contemporaries: moulded to the back of his mount; becoming one organism; swifter than the wind; gliding over the desert sands. Arab horses are among the most beautiful of all living creatures, and over thousands of years of Bedouin life only those of good temperament and manners were permitted to breed. Prized specimens were stabled inside the family tent, and interacted with their owners like few other species. Such horses are easy to love.

In his teens, Abdullah discovered endurance horse riding — the sport of a million steps, as it was called, conducted over desert courses of one or even two hundred kilometres, in the most forbidding terrain. These were dirty, difficult affairs where riders and horses were fortunate to finish, and even more fortunate to do so without injury.

Sheikh Mohammed, meanwhile, planned to inspire Dubai's growth via massive investment in infrastructure. An ambitious new port and airport went from drawing board to mortar and steel. Both facilities, however, remained lightly used until the strategic thinker Ahmed bin Sulayem suggested to Sheikh Mohammed that they should set up a free-trade zone, where international companies could trade without income tax, tariffs, or duties to trouble them.

This was the spark that would ignite the phenomenon of Dubai.

Abdullah, at twenty-three, returned from London with a degree in economics, placed it in his bottom drawer and went straight to the stables, disinterested in work as many young men can be.

A few weeks later, however, competing in a Djibouti endurance race, he saw Ahmed bin Sulayem, who had been a few years above him at school, and was now the official in charge of the free trade zone. Ahmed rode a beautiful stallion, fifteen hands high, with all the hallmarks of the best Arabian breeding: wide nostrils, a slight jibbah-bulge between large, inquisitive eyes, and a broad, strong back. The horse carried his tail high, almost arrogantly.

In the closing stages of the race, Mulham, then eighteen years of age, lost his wind and Abdullah was forced to walk. He was surprised when Ahmed slid off his own mount and walked with him.

‘What are you going to do with your life, Abdullah?'