The Code War (22 page)

'What you do?' Lafi's shouted question
sounded panicked.

'I need to know what we're getting
into,' replied Nancy, trying to keep her voice under control.
'What's ahead? What are we facing?'

She had slowed to a crawl now, her eyes
flitting to scan the road ahead then back again to look at Lafi,
forcing him to speak.

Lafi's face was a picture of
uncertainty. Nancy could see him peering forward through the
windscreen trying to make up his mind what to do. Abruptly he
slapped his hand down on the dashboard.

'OK, stop here,' he ordered. 'I explain
now.'

It was the middle of the night and
they had seen no other vehicles for the last half hour. Nancy
stopped the lorry where they were in the road. She killed the
engine, leaving the lights on but kept her hands on the wheel, her
arms covering her breasts. No sense in being provocative out here
in the darkness, far from help. She turned her head sideways to
look at him, her face serious and unfriendly. If he was going to
attack her, at least she'd better make it plain that she would
fight back.

But Lafi continued looking forward,
peering into the darkness beyond the headlights.

'Lorry not empty,' he blurted. 'We
carrying a cargo.'

Dammit thought
Nancy, I knew it. Her brain started wondering what the
cargo could be. A number of likely suspects came to mind. Drugs,
guns, gold. What else was there? Cigarettes? Alcohol?

'We carrying workers. People who want to
work,' stated Lafi defiantly. 'In the north, no work, but many
people. In the south, there is work in the fields, but workers
frightened away by war.'

'War? We're going into a warzone?' Nancy
shouted. But at the same time there was something about Lafi's face
that indicated he wasn't telling the truth. Not all of it,
anyway.

'Lafi, how many people are we
carrying?' Nancy's tone was insistent. Something had subtly changed
in the dynamics of the power battle between them. Nancy was
starting to get the better of Lafi. She was demanding answers and
getting them.

'Thirty five people,' said Lafi.

'Thirty-five?' Nancy was in shock. You
couldn't get thirty-five people in this lorry. They'd be crushed
worse than pigs on the way to market.

'Are they alive?' Nancy couldn't
understand why she hadn't heard them speaking, even above the noise
of the engine.

'Yes, yes, they alive. Of course alive.'
Lafi seemed grateful to be able to say something positive. He
actually smiled.

'But on the border they no like northern
people. They stop them coming. At the border, you must tell guards
the workers are for UN.'

'UN.
'
Habib and Ilan had mentioned pretending to be an aid worker. But
that was for 'medical supplies'. Not people. Nancy was now lost for
a follow up. Medicines, even drugs, she could understand. She was
ready for that. But now she was smuggling people. Not only that but
SHE was now responsible, according to Lafi, for convincing border
guards or whoever they were that these thirty five people, who she
knew nothing about, were in the employ of the United
Nations.

'I can't do that,' she pleaded. 'We have
no papers. No-one is going to believe me, no matter what I tell
them.'

Suddenly Nancy cottoned on. This had
nothing to do with Habib or any of his gang. This wasn't Brother.
This part of the operation was all Lafi's doing. That was why he
was afraid. He was moonlighting - quite literally - and he was out
of his depth. He had to get 35 people across a border and he needed
Nancy's help to do it. In his greed he had dug himself a hole and
he needed Nancy to dig him out.

She looked at him
accusatively.
'This isn't what I was sent
here for. This is you, isn't it? Habib doesn't know about this. Why
should I …?'

Then before Lafi could stop her,
Nancy reached for the door handle, pulled it down, kicked the door
open with her right foot and dropped to the ground. She ran to the
back of the truck and started fiercely untying the knots on the
straps that held the truck's canvas cover to the wooden tailboard.
As one flap came loose, then another, a powerful waft of fresh
excrement assaulted her nostrils.

'Oh, shit,' Nancy wailed and
jumped back several feet. She retched and heaved noisily before
sucking down a mouthful of clean air and looking back at the lorry.
A face had appeared at the loose flap. Then another, then two more.
There was enough reflected moonlight for Nancy to make out their
features clearly. Children.

The spark plugs in Nancy's brain
went into slow motion. Children. Thirty-five of them. Thirty five
children. Workers. Thirty-five child workers. No parents. She drew
another deep breath. No wonder the truck felt light. Couldn't be
that many adults. Stench. Poor children in that stench.

Lafi had appeared just as she
pulled the straps free. He made no effort to stop her. Presumably
he had realised that there was no point in trying to hide what he
was up to.

He began to shout at the children in
dialect. The heads disappeared. Lafi tied up the straps.

'You see?' he shouted accusingly.

Accusingly.

'Yes, they children. They going home. I
want tell you but I know you no believe me.' His face was stern and
angry.

It was her fault that he hadn't told
her. Her fault that she had found out. No doubt it was Nancy's
fault that the children were there in the first place.

But amidst Nancy's outrage at Lafi's
inability to accept responsibility for his misdeeds she perceived
something else. He was still lying. Wherever these kids were going,
it wasn't home. They were being taken somewhere to do something
that they certainly wouldn't have chosen voluntarily.

'I'm not doing it. I'm not going
on. I'm not driving them,' she shouted. 'Habib said nothing about
this. What will happen when he finds out?'

Lafi reacted furiously. 'Habib must not
find out,' he hissed. 'If he knows I do this, I a dead man.'

Nancy stepped away. She'd just
threatened to tell Habib what Lafi was doing. And Lafi had told her
it would mean his death. What did that mean for Nancy?

'Oh, well. I won't tell him.
Obviously.' It was weak but Nancy was now grappling with the
significance of what Lafi had just said. Lafi had to assume that
Nancy would spill the whole story to Habib once she was back in
Israel. The only way to stop her would be to kill her. A shiver
went through her body and she started to sweat.

'Why don't you tell him? He won't
mind. He's quite a nice guy. He'll forgive you.' Oh, that was
pathetic.

But Lafi was clearly genuinely scared
and there was real aggression in his eyes as he looked down at
Nancy. 'Habib and Brother, they forgive nothing. They want
obedient. Hundred per cent obedient. They will say I take risk and
put operation in danger. You must promise you no tell Habib.'

'Of course, I promise. It's nothing to
do with me.' Nancy wished that she didn't know about the children.
But even if she hadn't forced the issue now, she reasoned, she was
bound to have found out at some time. Lafi hadn't thought this
through. His lack of planning meant that he had got her into a
position where he would have to take her life in order to save his
own. He would never believe that she would keep mum, would he? It
wasn't fair, getting murdered by someone because of their own
stupidity.

'I'm taking the children back to ..' she
couldn't remember the name of the town. 'Back there,' she pointed
vaguely back down the road they had come.

'Oh, then what you do?' it was Lafi's
turn to ask the difficult questions. 'You go to the police? How you
think I go through Banjul?'

Banjul. Of course. Must remember that.
Nancy stared at Lafi, thinking furiously. He had clearly bribed his
way across the country and she might very easily find herself
appealing for help to the very people who were in his pocket. He
obviously wasn't going to let her casually drive back to Banjul and
take the children into the protective compound of the British
Embassy, even if she could find it. If she ran back to the cab he
would get to the passenger side before she could get the engine
started and would easily overpower her. If she refused to go on she
would become useless to him and he might decide to kill her. He
might decide to kill her anyway. She needed more time to think.

The moonlight dimmed as a cloud drifted
across its face and obscured its light. A soft rain began to
fall.

'All right,' she said quietly.
'I'll do it, I'll go on.' Her body had visibly relaxed. She wanted
him to know she was not about to try and run away.

'We'll go on and finish the job
together,' she continued, her voice subdued but resolute. 'And I
won't say anything to Habib'. That was stupid, shouldn't have
mentioned him again.

But whatever Lafi might be inclined to
do in the future Nancy was fairly certain of one thing. He still
needed her now. The border or tribal boundaries - Nancy wasn't
clear which - still had to be crossed and the guards there,
official or otherwise, had to be charmed or cajoled into letting
them go through.

And while doing all that and
driving Lafi's lorry and transporting his drugs and solving his
problems for him and digging him out of his hole, Nancy had a
bigger problem. Timid, wouldn't hurt a fly Nancy, Nancy who loved
finding holidays in Torquay for retired teachers and study trips in
Israel for impecunious students had to solve the biggest challenge
of all. She had to find a way to save her life.

Heaven's
Shore

The tiny air marbles vibrated and
gave off a purring sound.
'Agatha, you
shouldn't have. That's real thoughtful of you.' Jabez took the bean
bag out of its packaging, put it to his ear and listened. It was
the most relaxing sound imaginable, virtually guaranteed to reduce
stress. There was another, smaller package for him too, as there
was for Luke and Ruth. All three opened their parcels and clapped
their hands with delight. Each parcel contained a pot of fresh hot
tea together with a bone china cup and saucer, a large thimble of
milk and a tiny jewel box of cane sugar with a silver spoon. A dish
of three fresh-baked ginger biscuits, still warm from the oven
completed the set.

'How did you manage to arrange for all
of this, hot tea and cookies, to all of us in different places
separated by several hundred thousand miles of Heaven?' asked Jabez
as he slumped gratefully into his soft, purring bag.

Agatha beamed triumphantly. 'Well, you
know, one has contacts that one can sometimes ask a favour
from.'

'Ah'd say one has some very excellent
contacts,' declared Ruth smiling appreciatively while stirring a
spoon of sugar into her cup.

Jabez, Luke, Ruth and Agatha were
all present - three of them by globe - in Agatha's apartment. Her
'pad' as she called it, was a large old-brick warehouse structure
with wooden bookshelves and Turner prints adorning the walls. A
kitchen range at one end could have come from an English early 20th
century stately home while at the other end was a little Shaker
chapel lit by soft mood lights and fragranced with fresh-cut
wildflowers. Hundreds of candles perched on wrought iron candelabra
provided the light while a pair of sheepdogs yawned and slept in
front of a cherry-log fire.

Agatha had chosen the centre of
her pad, laid out with sheepskin rugs, for the meeting. In the
background the Music played. Choruses of male angel baritones and
tenors chased each other in perfect counterpoint. She subdued the
volume as a mark of respect to their hermit team leader.

Jabez called the meeting to order.

'Thanks for all being here on time,' he
began. 'I've been thinking a lot about something we discussed at
the last meeting, that the enemy has the initiative and we're
trying to play catch-up. I'm very keen that we create a strategy
that will allow us to wrong-foot our fiendish foes and put us back
in the driving seat. It's time they reacted to us, not us to them.
If we can achieve that we may force them into making a
mistake.'

'What have you got in mind?' asked
Luke, pushing up the brow of his Stetson.

'Right now I don't have a concrete plan,
just some thoughts and suspicions based on what we know about
Brother. Ruth, I need to know what you've learned. That may help us
decide our approach.'

Ruth carefully swallowed the remains of
her first biscuit and washed it down with a sip of tea. She placed
her cup and saucer on a nearby table and then folded her hands in
her lap and regarded them all.

'Well y'all, I
've gone back through Nancy's family tree and gotten a good
look at many of her ancestors,' she began. 'Particularly I was
searching for something unusual, something that the enemy could
latch onto and use for a sinister purpose. Now almost all Fourth
Dimensioners have a more interesting heritage than they think they
have. Nancy's no exception. But I've uncovered something that may
just be the basis of how they mean to make her
powerful.'

Ruth could see that she had everyone's
full attention.

'As you know,' she continued.
'Ruth is a Jew. Though it doesn't seem to really mean nuthin' to
her. Her folks were all Jews from Russia. They been there since
leaving Byzantium in the fifteenth century at the time the Turks
all rode in there.'

All three nodded, they knew the history
of the city also known at different times as Constantinople and
Istanbul.