The Power of Five Oblivion (36 page)

They hurried towards him. There was no breeze at all but it was drier and more pleasant than it had been inside the terminal. Scarlett was very aware of the silence. It was the last thing she would have associated with an airport and she felt lost in her surroundings, with the ground, completely flat, stretching out in front of her and a mile of glass and steel blinking in the sun behind. The pilot of the Airbus – if that was what he was – saw them coming and dropped his cigarette. He reached into his pocket and even before he had drawn his hand out, Scarlett knew that it would be holding a gun and wished that they hadn’t been quite so quick to make themselves visible. They could be anyone. So, for that matter, could he. He could shoot them both down before they even had time to tell him their names.

But it was too late to stop now. Richard had raised his hands, showing that he was unarmed. And with a fifteen-year-old girl beside him, he couldn’t have looked like too much of a threat. The pilot lowered his gun but remained wary.

He was young, fair-haired with a thin face and crumpled cheeks. As they approached, he had taken off his sunglasses to reveal watchful blue eyes. He was athletic-looking, quite wiry. Scarlett thought he had the body of a surfer and could easily imagine him on the beach in brightly coloured shorts. But he kept himself out of the sun. His skin was pale and he had placed himself in the shadow of the plane. Despite the heat, he hadn’t rolled up his sleeves.

“Who the hell are you?” he demanded, when Richard and Scarlett reached him. He gestured with the gun. “Don’t come any closer – all right?”

“It’s OK.” Once again, Richard lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender. “We’re friends.”

“Everyone’s friends,” the pilot responded. He spoke with an Australian accent. “The question is – who are you friends of?”

“We’ve only just got here,” Scarlett said. “We don’t know what’s going on.”

“Got here? From where?”

“We were in Cairo.”

The pilot whistled. “You came all that way? How did you get here?”

“We drove.” Richard gestured back at the terminal. “We have a Land Cruiser. It’s parked out there.” He lowered his hands. “You’re Australian,” he said.

“That’s right.” The pilot hadn’t lowered his gun. “And you sound English. What were you doing in Cairo? Are they still fighting?”

“Yes. They’re still fighting. What we were doing there is a very long story. My name is Richard Cole. This is Scarlett Adams. You wouldn’t have any water, would you? We’ve been driving all day and it took us a while to find our way out here.”

The pilot examined them both carefully. He was clearly weighing them both up. Then he came to a decision and put the gun away. “OK. You can come on board if you like. But I’m warning you, if you try anything fancy, I’ll shoot you right between the eyes without giving it a thought. The name’s Martins, by the way. I’m from Sydney – or I would be if Sydney were still there.”

“Are you the pilot?”

“No. The co-pilot.”

They followed him up the steps and into the plane, and saw at once that the Airbus had been adapted. All the seats had been taken out apart from a few at the front, leaving a long, cigar-shaped space that was filled, floor to ceiling, with crates. Martins reached into one of them and took out two plastic bottles of water, which he passed to Richard and Scarlett. “Let’s go upstairs,” he said.

There was a spiral staircase leading up to what must have once been the business-class cabin. The upper area had also been adapted. It had been turned into a bedroom and a living room with two single beds, a couple of armchairs, and an area with a PlayStation and about a hundred games, scattered across the floor. There were also dozens of old food cartons, empty plastic bottles and overflowing ashtrays … the last thing Scarlett would have expected to see on a plane. The air smelled of cigarette smoke. A half-empty bottle of whisky and a glass stood beside the bed and there was a pile of paperback books with cracked spines and dog-eared pages. The cockpit door was open and, looking through, Scarlett could see the two seats with the joysticks and the banks of controls. Richard nudged her and she knew that he was thinking exactly the same as her. There was every chance that this plane could fly.

Martins had thrown himself down on one of the beds, but had arranged himself so that the pocket with the gun faced up and could be reached easily. His eyes were still wary. Richard and Scarlett took the chairs, opened their bottles and drank. The water was warm and tasted stale.

“So where have you come from? Martins asked. “I mean, how did you get to Cairo? What were you doing there?”

“We were prisoners,” Richard said. “There was a freedom fighter called Tarik.”

“I know Tarik. I’ve flown supplies in for him. How is he?”

“As a matter of fact, he wasn’t looking too good when we left.”

“I’m sorry to hear it. So you’re English. The girl looks Indonesian. What are you doing together? You meet on the road?”

This was always the difficult bit. Richard never knew how much to say. He’d never had to explain himself to Tarik because Rémy had been there and knew all about the Gatekeepers. Anyway, Tarik had seen shape-changers in Cairo and after that, any story about magical doorways, the Five and the war against the Old Ones would make some sort of sense. But this man might make nothing of it. In which case, it might simply be easier to lie.

“We’ve been travelling for a long time,” Richard said. “We met in Hong Kong and we’ve sort of been thrown together since then. We want to get to Antarctica.”

“Antarctica?” The co-pilot didn’t sound as surprised as Richard might have expected. “It’s funny you should mention that,” he went on. “I’ve been hearing a lot of chatter about that on the radio.”

“You have radio!” Scarlett said. Things were beginning to come together. The plane had power (the video games had hinted as much). And the world wasn’t quite as empty as she had thought.

“Not national radio,” the co-pilot replied. “But there are plenty of amateurs out there. Radio hams, they used to be called. I listen to them at night. Everyone who can has headed south. Whatever planes they could find … boats … they’ve gone overland to the tip of South Africa or South America. People say they’ve been having dreams about Antarctica. It’s like some crazy religion.”

“Could you fly this plane to Antarctica?” Richard asked.

The co-pilot shook his head. “Not on my own.”

“So where’s the pilot?”

“That’s a long story. Do you have any idea what’s happening here in Dubai?”

“I already told you,” Richard said. “We only just got here.”

“And came straight to the airport. Well, I guess I’d have done the same. As you’ve probably seen, there aren’t many people around.”

“Where is everyone?” Scarlett asked.

“They’ve all gone.”

Martins reached out. He poured himself a glass of whisky and lit another Marlboro Lite. Scarlett noticed that he had hundreds of cigarettes, still in their duty-free cartons. Maybe he had looted them from Dubai Airport or from somewhere else on his travels. She suddenly saw that this plane was more than his way out. It was his home, his depot, his survival pod. He turned on his back and blew grey smoke in the air.

“Don’t ask me to explain the history of the world,” he said. “I never paid much attention to it when I was in school. All I ever wanted to do was fly. And when I got a job with Emirates, I was as happy as Larry.” He smiled to himself. “Since I mention it, Larry is the name of my pilot. Larry Carter. He’s a nice guy, except that he doesn’t completely trust me. For example, he’s never given me the codes that allow me to get into the on-board computers, which is one of the reasons why I’m sitting here instead of being on my way to somewhere a little more pleasant.”

“What has happened in Dubai?” Richard asked.

“I was just getting to that, Richard. Would you like a Scotch?”

“No thanks.” It had been a long time since Richard had drunk alcohol, and if it had been a cold beer he might have been tempted. But the idea of a whisky without ice in this confined space in the middle of the day slightly disgusted him.

“What happened to Dubai actually happened a very long time ago,” the co-pilot explained. “It went bust. In the beginning there was oil, but that ran out soon enough. Well, it didn’t matter because Dubai had set itself up as a playground for the super-rich, a sort of never-never land based on business, shopping and property. They built these islands that were shaped like palm trees, with multi-million-dollar houses that were bought by Hollywood actors and footballers. You saw the Burj Dubai in the centre of town? Well, you couldn’t miss it, could you! That was what it was like here. Everything had to be the biggest, the tallest, the most expensive, the best. They say that at one stage, ten per cent of the world’s cranes were operating here in Dubai. That’s one hell of a lot of cranes. But they were all needed, to help build the miracle in the desert.

“Only the miracle wasn’t as miraculous as everyone thought. Once the recession hit, the pop stars and the footballers stopped coming. Half the properties here were suddenly empty and the palm-tree islands never worked properly anyway because they fouled up the tide and suddenly people started noticing they were surrounded by sewage. Then the business dried up too. Nobody was doing any shopping. And here’s the funny thing. It was actually illegal to go bankrupt in Dubai. You weren’t allowed to do it. And finally, one day they woke up and found that Dubai itself was bankrupt.

“That was when everyone left. They drove out of here. They took planes. Some people even rode out on camels. They took everything they could carry with them – you may have noticed that most of the shops are pretty empty. But that still left enough for people like me. You want a nice Rolex watch for yourself, Richard, or maybe a diamond necklace for your young friend, I can show you where to find one. There’s plenty of food and water too. This city’s got everything! Except people.”

“So where is the pilot?” Richard asked. “It looks to me as if you’re stuck here without him.”

“I am stuck here,” Martins agreed. “I suppose I could put this hunk of metal up in the air. I have thought about it. But the fact is, I’m better off where I am … at least until the booze runs out. After that, we’ll see.” He reached for his glass. “Larry was an idiot but until he turns up, there’s not very much I can do about it.”

He threw back his whisky and swallowed, screwing up his eyes. It was hard to tell if the liquid gave him pleasure or pain.

“I say that everyone got out of here,” he went on. “But actually, that isn’t true. Dubai always had a royal family … you know, a sheikh. And the man in charge when everything went down the pan was Sheikh Rasheed Al Tamim. He has a palace overlooking Dubai Creek, although I don’t suppose the views will have been quite so pretty since the water dried up.”

He poured himself another whisky.

“He’s still there. He’s got a wife … and several kids. He’s surrounded by ministers and advisers. Sheikh Rasheed is an important man. As well as being king, he’s president of the United Arab Emirates and vice-president of the Supreme Council of the Union. He has an extensive military bodyguard. And then there are the diplomats, the civil servants, the advisers … everyone you’d expect to find in a busy court. And there’s something that everybody knows but that nobody ever says. Here are the two things you need to know about Sheikh Rasheed. One – he’s an evil bastard. And two – he’s completely, utterly and certifiably mad.

“Maybe he always was. These people, locked up in their palaces with billions of dollars in their pockets and everything they could possibly want … it’s probably all too easy to lose touch with reality. Or maybe it was the shock of waking up one morning and realizing that he was the absolute ruler of absolutely nothing! The city was empty. Everyone had gone and his beloved Dubai had about as much relevance as—” he searched vaguely for the comparison— “as a check-in desk in an airport with no planes.

“So here’s what’s happened, Richard. Sheikh Rasheed goes on ruling. He has important meetings in which he discusses new building projects that are never going to happen, traffic control schemes that are never going to be implemented, education policies that no longer matter and state banquets to which nobody is going to come. Last week he inspected his army. It’s a shame you weren’t here. He stood on a balcony and they marched the same one hundred soldiers round and round the building for three hours, making him think he was in control of thousands. Oh yeah – and they brought out the tank too. There is only one working tank. But he stood there, taking the salute, with the deputy prime minster on one side and all the other ministers around. I was there too. I saw him. And I’ll never forget the idiot grin on his face.”

“Why do the ministers stick with him?” Scarlett asked.

“Because he’ll shoot them if they try to leave. They smile and they bow and they applaud when he says something witty – and they’re all terrified of him. More to the point these people chose to stay behind and now they’ve got nowhere else to go. There are tons of supplies stockpiled in the royal palace. He controls the electricity supply and he’s even got his own desalination plant for water. Provided they play ball and try not to say anything that will get them killed, they’re probably more comfortable in Dubai than they would be anywhere else. So why rock the boat? Maybe some of them have even managed to persuade themselves that the streets are busy and the shops are full. That’s one of the reasons they keep the traffic lights running. It’s all part of the illusion. The point is, nobody steps out of line.”

“What did Larry do?” Richard asked.

“Larry was stupid. He and I had been talking together. Things are OK here. Apart from anything else, there’s still a certain amount of aviation fuel at the airport and we were doing plenty of jobs for Rasheed, running stuff up and down into Egypt. But at the same time, we were getting bored. It’s not much fun being the only sandwich at the picnic when everyone else is a fruitcake. So we agreed we were going to do a runner. We’d heard there’s a community doing OK in the Northern Territory in Australia, near Alice Springs, so we thought we’d fly out and join them. The trouble is, Larry got greedy. He decided to help himself to some of the sheikh’s very considerable treasure. You might wonder who needs diamonds the size of ping-pong balls when the whole world is slipping down the gutter, but maybe Larry was thinking ahead.