The Abrupt Physics of Dying Read online

  Clay knew better than to rush the Arab to words. He waited. The stars turned. After a while Clay said: ‘He’s not going to let us go.’

  ‘Inshallah, he will.’

  ‘God willing? No, Abdulkader. If we’re going to get out of here alive, we’ve got to do it ourselves.’

  Abdulkader threw another log on the fire. It flared and caught. ‘Only Allah gives life. Only He takes it. Allah akhbar.’

  ‘Allah akhbar,’ Clay repeated, a habit now after so many days in the desert with this man. God is great, the words engraved on the silver ring Abdulkader wore on his right index finger, his only adornment, his father’s prized possession.

  Yes, perhaps God is. But Clay doubted it. He glanced over at Abdulkader, but his driver’s expression remained as immutable as the rock of the plateau, the dark andesite skin fissured by sun and thirst, head and jaw hidden behind the green-and-black keffiyeh of the Hadramawt, his eyes shielded beneath shocks of wiry grey hair.

  ‘The Land Cruiser isn’t far,’ he whispered.

  Abdulkader rocked back on his heels, squat on his haunches, and poked the fire.

  The rockslide was no more than twenty or thirty metres away, a few seconds at a sprint. Once inside its labyrinth they would be undetectable. They could pick the right moment, get to the car, and be gone before anyone had time to react. It was dark. There was no moon. He had seen only the two gunmen, the two who had hijacked them. There could be more farther down-wadi, but the darkness would give them a chance.

  ‘Al Shams has the key,’ said Abdulkader.

  ‘I can start it. I’d rather take my chances than wait here for Allah to decide.’ A violent surge of adrenaline shot through him, jerking him to his feet. ‘Let’s go.’

  Abdulkader stretched out by the fire and cradled his head in his arm. ‘No. If we run, they will kill us. Sleep. Trust Allah.’

  The old ghosts were here now. He drew out the plan in his head, assigned roles. ‘Get up, Abdulkader. It’s time to ontrek.’

  But Abdulkader did not move. He stayed as he was, curled up by the fire; he looked up at Clay through narrowed eyes and did not look away for a long time. ‘You should pray,’ he said.

  ‘You’ve told me before.’ They had all done it back then, good Christian boys, in their holes with SWAPO raining down kak, believed with every part of themselves that they would be heard, spared. And the emptiness of it had been revealed in each shattered corpse he had pulled from the ground. Prayer was for the weak, the unscientific, the deluded. You had to believe in something. But not that.

  He stood there for a long time watching the firelight dance on the overhanging rock. Like Africa, the rocks here, the sky, the rolling expanses, these green intrusions forced up through cracks in the Earth’s concrete. Thirteen years wound back and Eben was there, swimming in the river, smiling and waving from the deepest part where the water was dark and cold, his limbs pale, moving ghostly in the tannin-brown Cunene water, Clay on the bankside watching for crocodiles, R4 assault rifle at the ready. So long ago now, only days before that last mission into Angola, Operation Protea the generals had called it, after which everything changed and nothing was ever the same again.

  Clay forced a laugh, coughed, looked across the fire at Abdulkader. The man’s stoic fatalism – that granitic belief in a higher power – was something he had never understood. Empirically, it made no sense. Observation denied it. And yet envy flooded through him now, raw, thirsty, an insatiable dark negative that seemed to pull in everything around him, leaving him standing alone and naked, the last torn strips of his logic hanging like rags from his frame.

  ‘The accident,’ said Clay, throwing his voice out into the void. ‘Who pulled me out?’

  Abdulkader looked up at him a moment, his face painted orange by the firelight, then lowered his eyes.

  ‘You did, Abdulkader.’

  The Arab looked up again, said nothing.

  ‘It wasn’t God.’

  ‘It was his hand.’

  ‘No, Abdulkader. It was you. You decided. You saved my life. This is exactly the same.’

  ‘No man decides, Mister Clay. Only Allah. You must give yourself.’

  Clay turned and walked towards the ledge. Away from the fire the cold came quickly. He looked over the precipice, down to the darkness of the wadi floor. The rockslide was there, its patchwork of jumbled surfaces just visible in the starlight. The gunmen were gone. There didn’t appear to be anyone between them and the slide. He turned and faced Abdulkader, ready to try one more time. But his friend’s body rose and fell in untroubled sleep – he had prayed with the sunset, and now he was ready for whatever would come.

  Clay moved closer to the dying fire, sat. Loneliness came. He tried to recall the vestiges of the Lord’s Prayer, dredging deep harbours of memory, but the words that came made him shudder, a hypocrite calling to the heavens. It was Allah, apparently, and not JC, who would decide.

  He closed his eyes.

  Soon, the dreams came. Thirst always made them worse.

  Later, how much later he did not know, he woke with a start. The fire had died. His shirt was soaked. His heart hammered in his chest. Axe blades of pain slammed into his head. He pushed himself up, shivered in the cold. Abdulkader was there, cocooned in sleep, his breathing lapping the rockface like water. Clay looked at his watch, up to the sky, dawn still a few hours off. He opened his eyes wide, breathed the cold air, felt it flow deep into his lungs. He held it there as the doctor had shown him, exhaled, breathed in again, tried to fight back the remnant shards of his sleeping hallucinations. But this was their time, and they were determined. Faces came, hovered there in the darkness before him, sounds, the burnt edges of landscapes, gaping wounds pulsing, though his eyes were open, voices and smiles of those long dead breaking the banks of his consciousness, flooding his senses. He opened his eyes wide, focussed on his breathing, reached for the woodpile. His hand closed around a gnarled bone of camelthorn. He raked the stick through the ash, uncovered a few remaining coals, beacons in the darkness. He got to his knees, bent his head to the ash as if in prayer, blowing up a lonely flame. It flickered and died, was reborn in a rush of oxygen. He cupped his hands around it, felt its far-off warmth, urged it to life. He peeled a strip of bark from the twig, touched it to the flame. It flared and caught. Another. Soon the fire was going and the dreams were gone.

  Clay sat close, tried to warm himself. He gazed into the flames, watched the chain reaction build, gases mixing and igniting, impurities bleeding in colour. He fed the fire and watched the sky lighten.

  Stars vanished.

  A hint of colour refracted along the dark edge of the canyon wall, day finally coming.

  Soon, the heat would come, crushing everything.

  Clay rose to his feet, joints stiff, ran his tongue over the dry skull of his mouth.

  Abdulkader looked up at him. ‘Again, you did not sleep,’ he said.

  ‘I was praying,’ Clay said.

  Abdulkader frowned.

  ‘Sabah al khaeer,’ came a voice from the darkness. Al Shams stood in the gloom at the far end of the cave, hands clasped before him. ‘Good morning,’ he said. He was alone.

  Abdulkader rose and inclined his head.

  Al Shams moved closer, emerged from the shadows. ‘I sense you are an intelligent and honourable man, Mister Claymore. So I ask for your help.’

  Clay stepped forward. He was within four paces of Al Shams now, towered over him. He could take him down in one surge, push him over the ledge. You’ve got it wrong, he thought. I’m neither. That was what war had taught him, made of him. He said nothing.

  ‘This you will do for us, Mister Claymore. Go to Um’alat, speak with the mashayikh, the sheikh there. Go also to Al Urush and Al Bawazir. There is evil being done in these places. Desecrations I do not comprehend, corruptions of nature. Perhaps you can understand them, with your science. See for yourself what your oil company is doing. And then deliver this message to your infidel masters: all that is
within this land is a gift from God to those that have lived here since before the Prophet. It is twice blasphemy: to deny them a share in this wealth, and to harm them in its taking. When you have done this and learned the truth, find me. Without this knowledge, our people cannot protect themselves. Now go in peace, Mister Claymore.’

  Clay reached out for the cavern wall, steadied himself. The sandstone was cool and damp, like sandpaper, the silica studs hard, reassuring.

  Al Shams stepped forward and put his hand on Clay’s forearm. ‘I am giving you an opportunity, my friend, to find what you have lost.’

  His gaze cut into Clay’s eyes. The asymmetry was painful. He had lost a lot of things, was pissed that it was so obvious to this man.

  ‘Remember always that God is great.’

  Clay looked away, down at the dust of centuries. Evidence for this would be good. Again, he said nothing.

  Al Shams removed his hand. ‘And no, we are not responsible for the unfortunate death of your Monsieur Champard.’

  Clay took a step back, glanced over at Abdulkader.

  ‘Be serene, Mister Claymore, in the knowledge that there will be a yawm’idin, a day of reckoning, for us all.’ Al Shams raised his hand and the two gunmen appeared from the far end of the ledge – the same two gunmen from the day before. The older man, the one with the hennaed beard, placed something in Al Shams’ hand. ‘You may go,’ said Al Shams, dropping the Toyota’s keys into Clay’s outstretched palm. ‘But your friend will remain as our guest.’

  Who You Might Have Been

  Clay dropped his hand to his side, flicked the ignition key with his thumb so that the blade protruded between the index and middle fingers of his right hand, closed his fist around the bow. Al Shams was close, within striking distance. The kid was a couple of paces behind and to Al Shams’ right; he was left-handed, which meant he would have to swing the AK through almost ninety degrees to get a shot at Clay, and, even then, would risk hitting Al Shams. The older gunman was to Al Shams’ left, but right-handed. Same problem. OK for escorting someone when the danger was external, but no good when the threat was close in, front on. They had it backwards. Neither had slung their weapons. The closer Clay got to Al Shams, the harder it would be for them. Abdulkader was the only problem. He hadn’t moved, stood back by the fire, five paces away from the elder gunman, a clear straight-line shot.

  Clay looked Al Shams in the good eye. ‘I’ll do what you ask. I’ll go to Al Urush. I’ll talk to the villagers, see what I can find. But I need Abdulkader. He knows the country, the people, the roads. We’re a team. I can’t do it without him.’

  ‘Do not be disingenuous, Mister Claymore. You can, and you will. And if you do not, your friend will die.’

  ‘Please, Mister Clay,’ rumbled Abdulkader’s voice from behind. ‘Do as he says.’

  ‘I’m not leaving without him.’

  ‘Then neither of you will leave.’

  Clay was silent, stood his ground.

  Al Shams spread his arms slightly, opened out his palms. ‘Please, Mister Claymore. Be reasonable. Go now. Do this great service for my people. If you do, your friend will be freed. You have my word.’

  Clay took a step forward, tightened the angles. ‘He’s no good to you as a hostage. Petro-Tex is not going to bargain for a driver, a local. If you want leverage, you need me.’

  ‘No, Mister Claymore. The leverage I want is not with the company. It is with you.’

  A cold tumour of realisation lumped in Clay’s chest. He had always hated irony.

  The older gunman chambered a round.

  ‘Please believe me,’ said Al Shams. ‘I do not wish to kill you, or your friend. But I will if I must.’

  Clay hesitated. ‘You think I’m lying. You think that if you let us go, I won’t help you.’

  The edge of a smile formed at the corner of Al Shams’ mouth and was gone. ‘I know you will not help us, Mister Claymore. You do not want to be involved. I can see this in you very plainly. Well, now you are involved.’

  Clay looked back at Abdulkader, but his friend stood mute, expressionless. And in that fragment of time compressed between his last utterance and the attack he was about to initiate, Clay wondered again at the power of events to obliterate the dim recollection of ‘who you might have been’, at how completely he’d been bludgeoned into the man he now was.

  Clay bowed his head, opened his arms as if resigning himself to his fate. He could sense the men facing him relax as they anticipated his capitulation. He took a slow step towards Al Shams, paused a moment.

  Half a second, no more.

  Enough to hear the morning breeze hush across the lip of the canyon.

  Enough to feel the new sun on his neck, watch it cast shadows across the ruins of Al Shams’ tortured face.

  Clay burst to his right, pivoting towards the old man and putting Al Shams between himself and the kid. Before the old man could react, Clay brought his left knee up hard, smashing the old guy’s pelvis. The Arab’s mouth opened, the first note of a groan hanging in space, truncated an instant later as Clay’s right fist smashed into his face. Clay felt the key go in, the give as a membrane flexed, heard the slight pop as it broke, then the sucking sound as he pulled back his fist, the key with it. The old man fell back screaming, reaching instinctively for his face. Clay grabbed the AK as the old man let go, jerking the stock back hard. There was a crack as the rifle’s butt plate caught the old man in the jaw. He crashed to the ground, blood pouring from his mouth and left eye. As before, out on the road, the kid was slow to react. He stood blinking in the morning sun, a look of puzzlement spreading across his young-old face. But Al Shams was quick. He’d already shifted left, clearing the kid for a shot, and was moving towards the cave entrance. Clay found the AK’s pistol grip with his right hand, flicked the safety, already down and off, bringing the rifle up for a shot. The kid had recovered now, was swinging his weapon around. As he did, he fumbled momentarily, looked down. He’d forgotten to disengage the safety. The AK’s safety switch was on the weapon’s right side, forward of the trigger guard. Left-handed, the kid had to reach over the top of the gas block with his right hand to get at the lever. It was a clumsy manoeuvre and it took time. By the time the kid looked up, Clay had closed the distance. Side on, he let go a kick that caught the kid in the chest, just below the neck. The kid grunted with the impact, toppled backwards, and disappeared over the ledge, the AK clattering down over the rock after him.

  Clay swung around and took aim at Al Shams. The kid’s body thudded into the wadi floor. The sound echoed from the canyon wall.

  ‘Stop,’ Clay said.

  Al Shams froze.

  ‘Turn around.’

  Al Shams turned, reached out his hands, palms upraised, a preacher appealing to his congregation. He looked disappointed. ‘This changes nothing, Mister Claymore.’

  ‘Like I said before, this can still be retrieved.’

  Al Shams glanced at the old man.

  ‘I think not.’

  The old guy was on his knees now, his hand covering his left eye. Blood flowed out between his fingers, dripped to the ground.

  ‘I can get him to a doctor, if you help me.’

  ‘Inshallah,’ said Al Shams.

  Clay called back over his shoulder. ‘Let’s go, my friend. Help the old guy. Our host is going to walk the three of us out of here.’

  ‘You do not understand, Mister Claymore. This is not for me to decide.’

  Anger, at bay until now, rose inside him. ‘Just like Aden? Was that Allah’s will, too? Thierry Champard blown to pieces?’

  ‘As I told you, this was not our doing.’

  ‘You claimed responsibility.’

  ‘We did not.’

  ‘It was in the papers.’

  ‘And you believe this propaganda? Do not be so naïve.’

  Clay took a breath, pulled back the AK’s bolt, checked the 7.62 millimetre round in the breech. This was death, this projectile nestled in its chamber, the
firing pin millimetres away, ready. At 715 metres per second, the 7.9 gram bullet would cover the four metres and reach Al Shams in 0.0056 seconds, entering and exiting his body before he had a chance to blink. And it was men who decided this, not God. ‘Here we go,’ said Clay, wiping the unwanted calculation from his head. ‘You are going to lead us down to the rock slide. Go slow.’

  Al Shams stood unmoving. His expression was serene, beatific, his one good eye piercing, alive, the other a black stone plucked from the sun-baked plateau. He looked up for a moment and then smoothed his robe with his hands. ‘No, Mister Claymore. You will do as I have asked. It is God’s will. This you cannot deny. You cannot see it now, but you will. I pity you your emptiness, Mister Claymore.’

  Clay heard a rush of air, like the sound of a bird swooping close, and then the crack as the back of his skull ruptured in a blinding flash. He was unconscious before he hit the ground.

  Not Yet a Commodity

  He awoke face down in the sand where they had left him. A river of heat shimmered on an empty vertical horizon, land and sky indistinguishable. It was as if he were looking through one of those thick, almost-liquid Cairo smogs that would descend in the hottest days of summer, locking the city in a coffin of car exhaust and smoke from the burning landfills and airborne lead from the smelters along the Nile. Sand crusted the corners of his mouth, frosted his eyelashes. He spat and turned his head. A dark shape loomed close. He raised his head and propped himself on one elbow. His skull felt as if it were about to implode. He lifted his hand to the back of his head, ran his fingers along the swollen matting of hair and blood. A thick warm liquid trickled over his top lip and into his mouth and out over his chin and neck. The taste was vaguely metallic, aluminium or stainless steel, like licking a knife.

  He struggled to his knees, rubbed his eyes, looked around. Abdulkader’s Land Cruiser was there, a few metres away, ticking in the heat. Clay pushed himself to his feet, swayed on unsteady legs, took a few steps, slumped against the car’s side, and looked inside. He knew that it was empty, that his friend was back there, a prisoner, a hostage. He shuffled around to the driver’s side door, opened it, climbed out of the sun. The key was in the ignition, dried blood set into its grooves. The dashboard’s digital thermometer read fifty-one degrees. Clay looked out across the sameness of the plateau, the limitless empty blue of the sky. There were no landmarks, no roads. Overhead, the sun was near its zenith. He had no idea where he was.