The Abrupt Physics of Dying Read online

  A road block just outside Ibb slowed traffic to a walk for miles in both directions. Clay inched along behind a dilapidated Toyota Hi-Lux heaped with fresh vegetables and sacks of grain. The vehicles in front stopped. He waited. After a while he killed the engine and got out to have a look. Ahead, every vehicle was being pulled over and searched. Soldiers swarmed over big eighteen-wheelers, opening cargo containers, inspecting documents. Two tanks, an armoured personnel carrier and a dozen heavily armed soldiers watched over the scene, weapons ready.

  He glanced back along the queue and caught sight of the Pajero six cars back. Glare on the windscreen obscured any view of the driver. Zdravko usually drove a new-model black Land Rover, but that meant nothing. He could readily have switched vehicles to disguise himself. If it was him back there, Clay could use the roadblock delay between them – five vehicles to be inspected, five drivers to be questioned – to get a head start and hide in the hinterland off the main road. He considered strolling back along the queue to get a clear view of the driver, but thought better of it, got back into Abdulkader’s Land Cruiser.

  After a while, the queue moved forward. Clay started the engine, moved a few more car-lengths towards the road block. Another halt, longer this time. Again, he shut down the engine, got out, leaned against the Land Cruiser’s passenger door, and looked up along the line of vehicles towards the makeshift roadside village festering around the checkpoint. He glanced over his shoulder. The Pajero was still there, a lone figure behind the wheel, a dark shape through the glare. Clay looked at his watch. An hour wasted here already, an hour he didn’t have.

  He was about to get back in the car when a detonation split the air, loud and close. Clay’s knees gave way autonomously, pure reflex. Before he had time to register the noise, he was on the ground. Adrenaline burst through his heart, pounded into his feet and hands. Up ahead, more gun shots, two quick pops, a shout, the death rattle of an AK, then silence.

  Clay looked up. Soldiers emerged from huts, clambered down from the tank, and gathered around one of the vehicles. Clay stood, brushing the dirt from his clothes. He watched as the soldiers pulled two men from the vehicle. They were limp, their clothes covered in blood. The unfortunates were dragged through the dirt and deposited at the roadside to lie open-mouthed with the rest of the detritus, the plastic bags, the animal carcasses, the rotting scraps and peels, the hulks and husks. Another man was marched away at gunpoint by two soldiers. His hands were tied behind his back and he was bareheaded. He slowed, stopped. The soldiers were shouting, pushing him forward. The man stumbled, fell to the ground. Unable to break his fall he rolled side-on to take the impact on his shoulder. One of the soldiers grabbed him by the back of his shirt and hauled him to his feet, pushing him along with the butt of his weapon. Clay watched the man disappear into a sandbagged bunker. Soldiers pushed the bullet-riddled car to the side of the road.

  Finally, almost two hours after joining the queue, he reached the barrier and was directed to the side of the road. He offered his papers to an officer in a camouflaged jumpsuit and black beret.

  The officer leaned in through the open window and scanned the inside of the car with flicking, nervous eyes.

  ‘What is your business here?’ asked the officer in English, staring at Clay’s passport, the smell of booze heavy on his breath.

  ‘Inshallah, I am going to Sana’a to visit a friend.’

  ‘Get out of the car.’

  Clay drew breath, held the air in his lungs, then let it go. It took ten or eleven long seconds. Then he opened the door and stepped down onto the smashed rubble of the shoulder.

  The officer’s head tilted back as Clay stood to his full height. His eyes narrowed and he took two full steps back, his hand reaching for his holstered sidearm. ‘What are you doing in Yemen?’ he said.

  ‘Petro-Tex,’ said Clay. That was usually enough.

  The officer nodded, waving two bare-headed conscripts forward. The youths started going through the Land Cruiser, flinging open doors, peering under seats.

  ‘It is not a good time to travel,’ said the officer. ‘The border may close at any time.’

  ‘Border?’

  ‘Inshallah, not.’ The officer flipped through Clay’s passport, looked at the photo page. ‘However, I suggest you turn back.’

  ‘It is only for a short time.’

  ‘Go back. And consider leaving Yemen soon.’

  ‘Sir, may I ask a favour?’

  The officer put his hands on his hips, mulled this over. It was probably the first time he had heard that one today.

  ‘May I take something from the car?’

  ‘Please,’ said the officer. ‘Slowly.’

  Clay stepped to the car, reached under the seat, pulled out a plastic bag containing two bottles of Jack Daniels and handed it to the officer.

  The officer took the bag, looked inside. He stood a moment examining the contents. Then he closed the bag, looked up along the road and back, put the bag at his feet. ‘I hope the one you will visit in Sana’a is a good friend,’ said the officer. ‘There will be many checkpoints.’

  Clay grinned. ‘Inshallah, she will become a very good friend.’

  The officer looked up, smiled. ‘If you wish to return South, do not stay more than one day in Sana’a.’

  Clay jutted his chin towards the bullet-riddled car at the side of the road. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Southern extremists trying to come North. They killed one of my men.’

  Clay frowned.

  ‘He is in paradise.’

  ‘Al hamdillulah.’

  The officer flicked up an eyebrow, stood staring at Clay. Then he repeated the invocation, thanking God. ‘Go,’ he barked, handing Clay back his passport, waving to the guards to raise the barrier.

  ‘Shukran.’ Clay started the Land Cruiser, and put it in gear. ‘The white Pajero, six back,’ he called to the officer as the Land Cruiser started to roll forward. ‘You may want to check it.’ Before the officer had a chance to react, Clay was through the barrier and accelerating down the road towards Sana’a.

  No Shortage of Bastards

  It was almost dusk when he reached the hotel. It was one of the last old Yemeni establishments left in the city. Not far from the Bab Al Yemen gate – where only yesterday, according to one of the truck drivers he had met on the road from Ta’izz, a thief’s hand had been amputated and hung from the stone arch – the four-storey whitewashed funduq stood serene within its ten-acre walled garden, an oasis. The gate guard hinged the steel panel door aside and Clay steered Abdulkader’s Land Cruiser into the compound. The tyres crunched and popped along the winding gravel drive. King palms towered overhead, ancient. Birds darted among the woody acacias. He parked in front of the main entrance and turned off the engine.

  The hotel seemed to have been sculpted rather than built, the alabaster mortar smoothed and layered on by hand over soft mud, artisanal. There was not a corner or edge to be seen. Inside, the lobby was cool, the blue tile-work floor like a glacial pond under a carved roof of ice. A spiral stairway, the steps hewn and polished from the same compound, swirled away to the upper parts of the palace. A portrait of Crown Prince Muhammad al-Badr, the last Imam of Yemen, hung from the near wall. Defiance shone from the canvas.

  ‘You’re late.’ She stood at the bottom of the stairway in a floor-length robe, black with embroidered edges, flowers red and yellow. Her hair was swept back under a diaphanous black headscarf. His pulse took a jump.

  ‘Beautiful,’ he said.

  She smiled.

  ‘You live here?’

  ‘I know the owners, a very old Yemen family.’

  He looked down at his dust-covered trousers and boots. ‘Sorry it took me so long,’ he said. ‘You’d think there was a war on.’

  ‘Soon there might be.’ She stepped towards him and offered her hand. It was soft and cool, like a child’s. ‘Come,’ she said, pulling him towards the stairs. ‘I booked you a room. How long can you stay?’<
br />
  ‘Just tonight. I can’t risk getting stuck here if war does break out.’

  Rania frowned. ‘I wanted to show you Sana’a.’

  ‘Maybe next time.’

  ‘If there is a next time.’ She smiled. Pale enamel flashed between glossed lips.

  He washed and changed and met her on the third-floor balcony that overlooked the gardens. Beyond the ataxia of Sana’a’s rooftops, barren olivine and iron oxide cliffs hulked in the late afternoon heat. A waiter brought tea and departed. They were alone.

  ‘I was followed,’ he said, unscrewing the cap of his hip flask. ‘I think I lost him at the checkpoint near Ibb.’

  ‘You are a popular man right now, it seems.’

  He fortified his tea, offered her some.

  ‘No, thank you,’ she said. ‘I don’t drink.’

  Of course she didn’t. He slipped the flask back into his pocket. ‘Look Rania, I know it was sudden, but I need to talk to you. You said you wanted information. Well, I’ve seen something, witnessed something.’

  She was alert now, her reporter’s antennae fully deployed.

  He tried to describe it, stumbled. He reached into his pocket and placed an exposed roll of 35-millimetre film on the table. ‘It’s all there,’ he whispered. He hadn’t dared have the film developed.

  She looked down at the yellow-and-black film canister but did not touch it. ‘The government has already blamed it on Al Shams.’

  ‘That’s bullshit. Have a look for yourself. The Army was there.’ He paused, considering what he would say next. ‘So was the security guy from Petro-Tex. The men who did the shooting weren’t Yemenis, Rania. They looked like Yemenis, but they were speaking another language; it sounded like Turkish, but it wasn’t.’

  ‘Pashtun,’ she said.

  Clay looked at her, a question.

  ‘Afghans.’

  ‘Here in Yemen?’

  ‘Al Qaeda. The government is inviting them in, offering them safe haven. In return, Al Qaeda moonlights doing Saleh’s dirty work.’

  ‘I thought the PSO were the presidential dirt-baggers.’

  ‘The PSO runs Al Qaeda in Yemen; Ansar Al-Sharia they call it.’

  Clay leaned back and took a deep breath. ‘But then why is the PSO questioning me about Al Shams, while accusing him of being Ansar Al-Sharia? It doesn’t make sense.’

  Rania looked over her shoulder and leaned in close. ‘When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, Al Shams was one of thousands of Yemenis who answered the call of jihad. In the early eighties he became a mujahideen, fighting the godless Marxist infidel. Ten years ago he was badly wounded. After a long convalescence in a Pakistani hospital, he returned to Yemen and became the head of Ansar Al-Sharia. That’s what my sources tell me. But two years ago, he went rogue, and now the PSO wants him dead.’

  Clay took a shallow breath, looked up at the newly risen crescent moon, its point plunged deep into the blackened ridge. He and Al Shams had been fighting the same enemy – the communists – at the same time, on different continents. ‘He’s threatening to kill my friend.’

  ‘Just as he killed another Petro-Tex employee last year.’

  ‘Champard.’ Jim’s warning echoed in his head.

  ‘Yes. A French national.’

  ‘I know. I was there.’

  Rania gasped, breathed out between pursed lips. ‘You.’

  ‘They almost got me, too.’

  ‘I reported the story. It was very big news in France. Yemenis who saw the explosion told me that there was another foreigner there, but no one I spoke to in Petro-Tex seemed to know anything about it. About you. You were, are, my missing witness.’

  ‘I was sent home on the next flight out, told to keep quiet.’

  Rania bit down on her lower lip. ‘What happened that day, Clay?’

  He told her.

  ‘Was it a car bomb, an RPG?’

  He’d asked himself that question a thousand times. ‘I didn’t see or hear any kind of projectile. It wasn’t that.’ He knew the sound too well. ‘Thierry never turned the engine off, just kept it idling while I got out. So it couldn’t have been ignition-activated.’

  ‘Remote control detonation.’

  She knew her stuff. ‘That’s my best guess,’ he said. ‘The bomb must have been planted in the vehicle before we left the office that day.’

  ‘And they waited until you were out and safely away.’

  Clay’s heart stopped, restarted. He hadn’t ever considered this.

  ‘Why were you spared, Clay? Do you have any idea?’

  ‘Jesus. No. None.’ Not luck, after all. Determinism.

  Rania sipped her tea, looked out over the city.

  ‘How did they know it was Al Shams?’ he said.

  ‘He claimed responsibility. And, ever since, Petro-Tex has been putting pressure on governments here and abroad to act against the terrorists.’ Rania sipped her tea, replaced the glass on the table, and smoothed down her robe.

  ‘Al Shams told me himself that he didn’t do it.’

  Rania looked at him sidelong, surprise in her eyes. ‘Do you trust him, after what he has done?’

  He didn’t know what to think. There was something about the man. Despite everything, there was honour in him, that was clear – a hopeless, outgunned, surrounded honour that resonated with Clay, defied his anger. He said nothing.

  ‘If I were you I would be very careful, Clay. Don’t mention what you have seen at Bawazir to anyone – not yet anyway – especially not to your Petro-Tex colleagues. These are very dangerous people.’ She scooped up the film canister and put it into his hand. ‘And hold on to this.’

  There was a rap on the shutters and the waiter appeared at the veranda doorway. Rania stood and walked over to where he stood. A brief conversation ensued. She closed the louvered door and returned to the divan. ‘I hope you’re hungry. I’ve asked them to bring up some food.’

  He told her about Al Urush, about the boy Mohamed and his harp of spokes, of the lost sample and his suspicion of a link between the oilfield operations and the illnesses. He told her about Al Shams’ warnings, about his confrontation with Karila and Parnell’s threats, Abdulkader’s misfortune.

  ‘If I were you, I would be very wary of Vance Parnell,’ she said. ‘He has, how should I say, a history.’

  Clay looked into her eyes, waited for her to continue.

  ‘Three years ago, he was dismissed from an American multinational’s Thai operations. He had been caught bribing high-level Thai government officials using money from a special corporate account. When the story hit the Thai press, the company made Parnell the scapegoat. A few months later he showed up in Jakarta, this time with one of the European oil and gas majors, divorced and in debt. Within weeks he was the victim of a car bombing, supposedly in retaliation for previous indiscretions. He survived, but was badly burned and spent months in hospital. He went back to work, but within a year was fired for assaulting a local employee. Apparently he took a baseball bat to one of the houseboys, almost killing him. After that, none of the big multinational oil companies would touch him. He arrived in Yemen shortly afterwards as GM for Petro-Tex. There is more, of course. Trouble follows this man like the plague.’

  ‘Or he follows it.’ That’s why we pay you. Clay breathed deep.

  She was quiet for a long time, looking out over the city as the sky atomised.

  After a while she said: ‘How serious is the illness?’

  ‘Serious enough: dozens of children suffering the same symptoms. I’m told there have been miscarriages.’ He thought of the girl in the village, the despair in her eyes as she watched her baby burn.

  ‘What is causing it, Clay?’

  ‘The villagers say it’s something in the air, but the more I think about it the more I figure it’s the water. That would explain the kids getting sick and not the adults. With their lower body mass, and more frequent exposure, ingested toxins would have a greater and more immediate effect. But there is no obvious
source, and higher salt content alone wouldn’t cause the symptoms we’re seeing.’

  The increase in salinity could be natural, of course, a consequence of the drought that the region had been experiencing for over a decade. Others could be to blame: farmers over-pumping the shallow coastal aquifers for irrigation. There was no way to know for sure without extensive fieldwork – aquifer testing, sampling, lots more chemical analysis. Most of the time all you had were a few bits of scattered data, a coarse idea of the geology, and a gut feel. And at the moment, his guts were in turmoil. He leaned back into the cushions and combed his fingers through his hair.

  ‘You could ask them to let you test the air and the water,’ she said.

  ‘I tried. They’re not interested. They say they’re too far away to have any effect.’

  ‘In that case, they have no need to worry. The tests would come out negative.’

  ‘They are afraid, Rania. They don’t want to know.’

  She leaned closer. He could smell the perfume in her hair. ‘And Al Shams?’

  ‘He wants me to find out what’s causing the illness.’ Clay looked up at the moon, clear now of the hills, angry Mars strobing retrograde in the twilight. ‘I have five more days to do it. If I don’t, he kills my friend. Does that sound like Al Qaeda to you?’

  ‘Kidnapping and murder? Actually yes, it does.’

  ‘I mean the motive, Rania. He just seems to want a fair shake for his people.’

  She clenched her jaw and looked away. ‘You sympathise with him?’

  ‘I just want to get my friend out of there.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I’m going to the regulators, Rania. I’m going to ask the Environmental Affairs Ministry to look into it, officially.’

  A cold front passed across her face. ‘If you do, you are putting yourself at grave risk. The PSO will know that you are agitating. They will accuse you of working for Al Shams. Besides, the ministries are all controlled by Saleh.’