Evolution of Fear Page 38
Clay’s trial had been swift. He’d been acquitted of the murders of Todorov and Medved’s men due to lack of evidence. The curator’s murder had been firmly attributed to Uzi. Clay’s lawyer had performed admirably. Responsibility for the death of Madame Debret was rightly placed with Todorov. For the assaults on Chrisostomedes and Dimitriou, Clay had received a two-year sentence, reduced to six months by Presidential decree, thanks in part to an anonymous donation of half a million euros to the President’s re-election campaign.
They reached the roundabout at Paphos gate, continued past the old sandbagged bunkers and derelict guardhouses, through the warren of narrow streets in the old city.
‘Did you distribute the money like I asked?’ said Clay.
‘Two hundred thousand to Katia, a million to Hope’s foundation, a million to Hope, two million in a trust fund for the establishment of a National Park in Agamas. Goddamn overgenerous in my book. The rest I split between us, gave your half to Rania. Oh, and I gave her back her Koran, like you asked.’
Clay nodded. ‘And the second icon?’
‘A gift to the grateful people of Cyprus.’
‘Good, Koevoet. Dankie.’
They passed a boarded-up mosque, the minaret covered in vines. Beyond was an old Ottoman house, the ground floor of which had been converted into a bar.
‘Drink?’ asked Crowbar.
Clay shook his head. ‘Can you take me to where she’s buried?’
They drove west in Crowbar’s rented car, across the broad, flat inland plain and up into the Troodos mountains, cooler here now, the Mediterranean summer approaching its full fury, and then down along the dirt tracks that threaded through the pine and cedar country towards the deep blue of the west coast, the bleached shingle beaches just visible now through the trees, the white surf seemingly static, held in place by some faithful attractor.
Crowbar geared down as the track steepened and they started downhill towards the abandoned Turkish village of Gialia, unchanged for two decades, the stonework crumbling, the road through town still a narrow single track, the trees rampant, the fields overgrown. And then they were at the sea, the long coast road south to the Agamas. A hot breeze buffeted the car as they drove, bent the scrub trees and the wheat in the fields.
Crowbar guided the car to a stop in a gravel pullout at the edge of a limestone bluff and turned off the engine. Below them, the arc of Toxeflora Beach spread from rocky point to narrow windswept peninsula.
Crowbar started down a narrow chalk footpath towards the beach. Clay followed. Soon they reached a small terraced meadow, once a farmer’s field, the grass close-cropped, the stone walls frayed. Crowbar stopped next to a stone marker. Beside it, an evergreen seedling swayed in the sea breeze. Beyond, the blue Med stretched away to a cloud-strewn horizon.
‘As good a place as any,’ said Clay.
‘Rania chose it.’
He could see the line along the beach where they’d excavated and removed the poison dosing lines and, further out, the place where he and Hope had first discovered the cable, the rocks where they’d made love, warm in the late-afternoon sun.
‘I thought she might have been here today,’ said Clay.
Crowbar stood looking down at the tiny plot.
‘Did she try to contact you?’
‘I haven’t seen her since the day she was discharged from the UN hospital,’ said Crowbar. ‘She left the next day.’
A deep pang flowed through him, heavy and thick, loss and guilt and bewilderment in unequal parts and a thousand other things he could neither name nor understand. Clay looked down at the grass under his feet, the pitifully small grave. ‘Did she give her a name?’
Crowbar just shook his head, looked away.
‘She never even got a chance…’
‘No.’
They both stood looking out to sea. After a long time, Crowbar said: ‘What will you do?’
Clay reached into his pocket, ran his fingers over the envelope, the letter she’d written him while he was in prison. He’d answered, twice, to a post office box in Switzerland, but she’d never replied. He had no idea if she’d even received his letters. ‘Go south, I guess. Sail to Africa.’ Like she’d said in the letter, he had to work it out, alone. So did she.
Crowbar nodded.
‘Then, maybe…’
‘Miskein,’ said Crowbar. Perhaps.
‘You?’
‘I’m going to marry Hope, seun. I asked her and she said yes.’
Clay turned, smiled for the first time in six months. ‘I’m happy for you, oom. Happy for you both.’ He was.
‘She’s going to have a baby.’
‘That’s great news, oom. Lekker.’
Crowbar turned, faced him and put his hand on Clay’s shoulder. ‘I want you to know something, seun.’
‘Shoot.’
‘Hope told me about what happened, about you and her and Rania. Everything.’
Clay said nothing, just looked into those diamond-blue eyes.
‘And I want you to know that I’ll look after him as if he was my own.’
Clay stood a moment, searched within the depths of Crowbar’s eyes, within himself, then looked out to sea. And then he understood what Rania had meant, all that time ago in the hotel room in Istanbul overlooking the Bosphorus. This was the true measure of things: what you had to forsake. And what you might, one day, regain.
Acknowledgements
Deep thank-yous to everyone who has helped to bring this book to publication. My fantastic, gutsy publisher Karen, James West for his great editing, and everyone at Orenda Books (including the other fabulous Orenda authors). None of this of course happens without the support of my family, Heidi, Zac, Dec, Mum and Dad, Matt and Mark. Thanks also to my agent, Broo, and to Eve Seymour and Gary Pulsifer, and to all of the great passionate booksellers around the world who are willing to take a chance on new authors. And many thanks to you, the reader, above all.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Canadian by birth, Paul Hardisty has spent 25 years working all over the world as an engineer, hydrologist and environmental scientist. He has roughnecked on oil rigs in Texas, explored for gold in the Arctic, mapped geology in Eastern Turkey (where he was befriended by PKK rebels), and rehabilitated water wells in the wilds of Africa. He was in Ethiopia in 1991 as the Mengistu regime fell, and was bumped from one of the last flights out of Addis Ababa by bureaucrats and their families fleeing the rebels. In 1993 he survived a bomb blast in a café in Sana’a, and was one of the last Westerners out of Yemen before the outbreak of the 1994 civil war. Paul is a university professor and Director of Australia’s national land, water, ecosystems and climate adaptation research programmes. His debut novel, The Abrupt Physics of Dying, received great critical acclaim and was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger. Paul is a sailor, a private pilot, keen outdoorsman, conservation volunteer, and lives in Western Australia with his family.
Copyright
Orenda Books
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First published in the United Kingdom by Orenda Books 2016
This ebook edition published by Orenda Books 2016
Copyright © Paul E. Hardisty 2016
Paul E. Hardisty has asserted his moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publishers.
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ISBN 978–1–910633–25–0
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coinc
idental.