The Abrupt Physics of Dying Read online

  Clay’s stomach contracted. Why hadn’t Al Shams protected his location? His flunkeys, the two gunmen who had stopped them by the side of the road, had screwed up. It was pretty clear. Al Shams had had two choices that day – let him go, or kill him.

  ‘I don’t have time to loiter around in Aden all day, Nils. Not if you want those permits quickly.’ He needed to get back out there, find Al Shams, and get Abdulkader back.

  The line was quiet as Karila mulled it over.

  ‘Today, Straker. PSO. Be at the Interior Ministry building in town, near the docks, at two o’clock, without fail. You can leave for the field tomorrow. Then get out there and get these people under control, Straker. Do what you have to do.’

  ‘Jesus,’ he breathed, palm clasped over the handset’s pickup. ‘OK, Nils. OK. By the way, still no cheque.’ He waited for a reply, but the line had gone dead. He put the phone back in its cradle, and poured himself another vodka.

  Two hours later he pulled into the palm-lined parking lot of the Mövenpick, the only half-decent modern hotel in Southern Arabia. He locked Abdulkader’s Land Cruiser and walked across sun-softened tarmac to the front entrance, a noon buzz on. The pool was small, but it was filled with water, clean, and surrounded by towering eucalypts – imports, like him.

  He spread his towel on one of a dozen or so vacant reclining chairs, pulled off his T-shirt, and ordered a large vodka and soda on the rocks from a uniformed attendant. A couple of hairy, burly, tattooed oilies were the only other poolside patrons. They wallowed on sunbeds in shorts and baseball caps, drinking imported beer.

  The sun was hot. He laid back, closed his eyes, felt the sweat bead in his pores, track across his skin. He had done what Al Shams had asked. And in a few hours he had to face the PSO, the Political Security Organisation, Saleh’s shadowy personal paramilitary security apparatus, partial, from what he had heard, to extrajudicial detention, harassment of political opponents, infiltration, beatings and torture. Surely Al Shams would have known that his message would have triggered Army and PSO interest. He was not stupid. Just the way he spoke suggested education and intelligence. And those flashes of violence, like a veil drawing back. Jesus Christ.

  His drink came. He cracked open his book and tried to read. He ordered another drink. The two oilies finished beers and had just called for more when they went quiet and turned their heads in unison towards the patio entrance.

  The bikini she was wearing would have turned heads on Bondi beach, but here, it was positively, wonderfully scandalous. She was petite, sculpted, a gymnast, thought Clay, or a runner, but for the considerable swell of chest that the string top struggled to contain as she walked. It was the woman in the Land Rover on the road to Al Urush.

  The oilies were sitting up now and they called out to her to join them, beaming from behind reflective Oakleys. She smiled and moved to the opposite side of the pool, his side, dropping her towel, bag, and a couple of newspapers onto the chair next to his. He looked up at her, but she turned away, twitched to the pool’s edge and dove in. The oilies glared at him. He shrugged his shoulders, grinned, raised his glass to them and went back to his novel: at night, when the other nurses were asleep, Catherine came to the wounded soldier and made love to him, straddling his shrapnelled legs. It was summer, the war raged, millions were dead, and the world was changing forever around them. They were in love.

  ‘I have never believed he was a misogynist.’

  Clay looked up from the pages. She was perched at the edge of the pool, looking up at him, elbows hooked on the tiled rim. Water dripped from her dark shoulder-length hair onto her bunched shoulders and beaded on her cheeks and nose.

  He flicked his wrist, looked at the book’s cover. A Farewell to Arms, an old Scribner’s edition, one of his father’s, one of the few of his things he’d kept. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Again.’

  She smiled. ‘It’s only people who have never read him who say that. They get it in their criticism courses and treat it as fact. Hemingway loved women. Achingly. He was awed by them, but he didn’t hate them. He married four times, after all.’ The accent was European, French, Italian perhaps.

  ‘I can relate.’ He tried a smile, was pretty sure it came out stupid-looking.

  ‘Marriages?’

  ‘Awe.’

  She smiled, pulled herself up and sat side-saddle at the pool’s edge, one knee up, foot on the tile, the other leg dangling in the water. It was quite a pretty pose.

  ‘Fancy a drink?’ he managed.

  ‘A fresh lime, please.’ She stood and walked to her sunbed, adjusted the parasol. The oilies gaped. She sat down and ran her hands through her hair. As she did, her bag fell to the tile between them. A few things spilled out: a book, Rimbaud, a hairbrush, a French driver’s licence. Clay reached to help but she scooped everything up before he got a chance.

  She smiled at him. ‘My name is Rania.’

  ‘Clay.’

  ‘Enchantée.’ They shook hands. She wore no rings.

  ‘You work for Petro-Tex,’ she said. It was a statement.

  ‘Around here that’s a pretty good guess.’

  ‘I suppose it is.’ She smiled, ran her hand through her hair.

  ‘And I suppose you aren’t a petroleum engineer’s bored expatriate wife.’

  She laughed and opened up one of her papers, the International Herald Tribune. ‘Here,’ she said, handing him the paper. She pointed to a short piece on page five: ‘Islamic Terrorism on Rise in Yemen’. ‘That’s me.’

  He scanned the article. Radical Islamist militants, planned attacks on American military personnel, the failed bombing at this very hotel two years ago, an emerging and as yet little-known group called Ansar Al-Sharia, an Al Qaeda off-shoot with links to Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan. Her name was Rania LaTour, Agence France Presse. He couldn’t help being impressed. He handed back the paper and took a long drink.

  ‘I am doing a story on unrest in the South, the emergence of a new rebellion.’ Her voice was oddly childlike, a boy’s.

  ‘War?’

  ‘It is a distinct possibility.’ She sipped her drink. ‘Have you not heard? Jets from the South knocked out Sana’a’s two power stations yesterday. It is a serious escalation.’

  ‘Jesus, no. I’ve been in the field.’

  ‘Yes, I saw you.’ She smiled.

  ‘And you didn’t even wave,’ he said, signalling the waiter for another round. He remembered seeing other articles by this same Rania LaTour, now that he thought about it. She seemed very young to be doing this job in such a harshly male part of the world. She was very pretty.

  ‘It’s this character Al Shams I’m interested in,’ she continued without a pause. ‘I understand you know him.’

  He sat back, suddenly feeling exposed. He could see how she had become a reporter. ‘You tell me.’ He was completely sober.

  ‘You met him two days ago in the Empty Quarter,’ she said, all business.

  Clay took a deep breath, alarms going. He looked at his watch, stood and pulled on his T-shirt. He slid his sunnies into position and dropped a ten-thousand-rial note onto the table. ‘I’m not allowed to talk to the press. Strict company policy. But I guess you know that already.’

  She frowned. Even that was pretty.

  ‘So,’ he paused, thought about it, ‘how about dinner tonight?’

  The frown vanished. Her eyes sparkled yes.

  ‘Befok,’ he said without thinking.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Sorry. Afrikaans. It means good. Really, really good.’

  She beamed. ‘I’m staying here at the hotel.’

  A shiver spliced his spine. ‘I have an appointment to get to now. How about I pick you up at five?’

  She smiled yes.

  He turned to go, smirked at the oilies. The fat one gave him the finger. He waved to them, grinned, took a couple of steps, stopped, turned around. ‘Oh, and Rania.’

  She looked up.

  ‘Wear walking shoes.’


  That Stuff Will Kill You

  An hour later he walked into the Interior Ministry building and identified himself. The morning vodka was wearing off and he felt like kak. His head ached. He was pretty sure that Al Shams’ men had fractured his skull. Sleep had become increasingly rare. The nightmares were back, worse than ever, a nightly forced march across the same bombed-out landscape that left him drained, exhausted. No amount of booze seemed to dull them. He had been too worried about Abdulkader and the PSO, too nervous about meeting Rania, to eat. Seeing Zdravko tailing him in his big black Land Rover on the way here hadn’t helped.

  He was shown to an airless, windowless concrete room, ushered inside, bid to sit in a chair facing a simple wooden table. The heavy steel door clanged shut behind him. He was alone. He sat, waited.

  Much later, the door opened and two men entered. One walked past him and sat in the empty chair facing him across the table. He was short, with a light wiry build. The other man stood by the door and lit up a cigarette. Its acrid pall filled the room.

  The man opposite looked a lot like Heinrich Himmler. Maybe it was just the little round glasses and rodent-like features, or the way he hunched over the table, scribbling notes in his dossier as if he had modelled himself after the man in the war documentaries. They had kept him waiting for over an hour, and now Himmler sat there flicking through the pages of Clay’s passport, studying each stamp and visa with exaggerated interest. The other man pulled the door closed and leaned against the wall, cigarette burning between thumb and forefinger. He was fairer skinned than Himmler, handsome almost, with a black moustache and thick bristles of greying hair. In jeans and a black leather jacket over a Yale T-shirt, he looked very un-Yemeni.

  Finally Himmler looked up and blinked. ‘Claymore Straker from Great Britain,’ he said in a thick Arab accent, crushing his vowels.

  Clay sat and said nothing.

  ‘Why do you not answer?’

  ‘It was not a question.’

  The man’s lips stretched over his teeth in what might have been a smile. He looked down at the passport again, and back up at Clay. ‘Are you Claymore Straker, British subject?’

  ‘My friends call me Clay.’

  ‘Then I will call you Straker.’

  ‘And I’ll call you Heinrich,’ said Clay.

  ‘Pardon me?’

  Clay held his hand out palm up, tried a grin. He was pretty sure it came out like the scowl it was.

  ‘You were born in South Africa.’

  ‘My father was British.’

  ‘You are South African.’

  ‘Was.’ He hadn’t been back since the war, since they stripped him of his passport, sent him into exile.

  Himmler narrowed his eyes. ‘You have seen Al Shams, in Hadramawt, two days ago.’ ‘No.’

  Himmler placed the passport down on the desk and made a steeple with his fingers – or was it a minaret? ‘We have been told that you have seen Al Shams.’

  ‘You were told wrong.’

  ‘We have interviewed your colleagues, Mister Straker.’

  ‘Then you know what happened.’ He was being a hard arse. It was a dangerous line, he knew. But everything about the place, the man facing him, the situation, the totalitarian attitude, rankled him. He breathed deep, tried to settle himself.

  Himmler’s mouth distorted and his eyes narrowed. ‘This man is an enemy of the state, Mister Straker. Do you understand?’

  ‘And how, exactly, am I supposed to know that?’

  ‘I have just told you.’

  ‘A trusted source.’

  Himmler slammed his fist down onto Clay’s passport. ‘Enough, Straker. Stop this now. If you do not cooperate, the consequences will be severe.’

  Clay leaned forward and gave Himmler his best fuck-you stare. ‘Don’t threaten me, jou bliksem. I have rights.’

  Himmler gave him that same incipient, stillborn half-smile. He seemed genuinely amused. Obviously he had no knowledge of Afrikaans. Clay smiled back.

  ‘Rights, Mister Straker? You with your Apartheid? A white South African speaking of rights?’

  ‘Haven’t you heard? It’s over.’ Growing up, he hadn’t given it a thought. It was only after he’d been wounded, been shipped home, that he’d started to see, started to fight against it. And now everyone just wanted to forget the whole disgraceful mess.

  Himmler fixed him with a flat gaze. Malice flowed from his eyes. ‘This is a matter of national security, Mister Straker. You have no rights here.’ Himmler placed a pair of needle nose pliers on the desk. ‘Tell me what happened.’

  Clay glanced down at the pliers. ‘Planning some DIY?’

  Himmler smiled and placed what looked like a small white pebble on the desk, spinning it with his thumb. Clay watched the pebble spin to a stop. It was jagged, with a long twinned end and a flat crown. A tooth.

  The other man, the one by the door, lit the second cigarette in his chain, inhaled deeply, and exhaled slowly through his nostrils. His eyes were dark, alive. For a moment their eyes met. Clay looked away, took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair, beating back the urge to jump across the table and choke the bastard facing him. There was no point pushing any further. He recited the speech he had been practising over the last day: they were stopped by the side of the road, forced from the vehicle at gunpoint, blindfolded and driven away. He spoke briefly with a man who called himself Al Shams. The message was simple: give the people of Hadramawt a fair share of the oil wealth, or the trouble would intensify. He had remained blindfolded the whole time. That was all he could say. ‘He didn’t seem much like a jihadist to me.’

  Himmler took off his spectacles and cleaned them with a tissue. ‘Is that so, Mister Straker? And you have had experience of these people before?’

  ‘He seemed pretty apolitical. Just concerned for his people.’ It hadn’t come out right.

  ‘This man is a terrorist, a murderer.’

  ‘You killed his father,’ Clay blurted out, not thinking. The man near the door coughed, lit another cigarette with the dying tip of the last.

  ‘So you sympathise with this man, do you?’ Himmler scribbled furiously on his notepad.

  ‘He had me at gunpoint. What do you think?’

  Himmler sat stone-faced.

  Clay pushed back his chair and stood gripping the edge of the desk. ‘Now can I go?’

  ‘Sit down, Mister Straker.’

  For the next forty-five minutes, Himmler questioned Clay about every detail: the exact point at which they were stopped, descriptions of the two hijackers, estimated time and distance of travel (an hour, maybe two, no idea), elevation gains or losses, smells (desert, diesel), sounds (did you hear running water? no), Al Shams’ exact words (war is coming).

  ‘You seem not to remember well,’ said Himmler.

  ‘Look,’ Clay said after a long pause. ‘I had a gun to my head. I wasn’t playing detective. I’ve told you all I know.’

  Himmler closed his folder, took off his glasses and stood up. ‘You may go, Mister Straker. But please remember that you are a guest here in Yemen.’

  Clay stood. ‘Never leaves my mind.’

  Himmler frowned, stacked and levelled out his papers, tapping them on end. ‘Be sure to contact us immediately, Mister Straker, should you see him or hear from him again.’

  Clay tapped his front teeth with his index finger, winked at Himmler, turned away and walked to the door, his insides tumbling.

  The other man, the smoker, rose and held open the door. He was tall for a Yemeni, almost as tall as Clay.

  ‘And Mister Straker,’ Himmler called. ‘I am sure you already know. We will be watching you.’

  As Clay walked past the other man at the doorway he said: ‘You’d better lay off those smokes, broer. That stuff’ll kill you.’ From the corner of his eye he swore he saw the man crack a smile.

  Out in the street, Clay breathed deep, steadied himself, and looked back over his shoulder. How long would it be until Al Shams learned of his tr
ip to the Interior Ministry building, of this little interview with PSO? He knew he had just pushed Abdulkader closer to the edge. He walked to the Land Cruiser, unlocked the door, and sat holding the key in the ignition, looking out over the harbour, replaying the interrogation in his head. He was being pulled in, he could feel it – a malicious gravity. He had promised himself long ago – no more. No more war, no more killing. This wasn’t his fight. He’d already almost certainly blinded one man. It had already gone too far. The airport wasn’t far away, twenty minutes. He had just enough cash left for a one-way ticket to Cairo. There were daily flights. In less than twelve hours he could be waving goodbye to the whole mess from the jet’s window: goodbye Abdulkader, any possibility of getting to know Rania gone, a farewell to the forty-two grand they owed him. Safe. Clear.

  He sat looking out over the murky green water of the harbour, once the busiest in the world after New York and London, now a forgotten backwater, foul and stinking. Heat rose from the pavement, pulsed from the tin roofs clustered around the wharf. Workers trudged past him on their way to the docks, Somalis with coffee-coloured skin and piled turbans, barefoot Sudanese in rags carrying plastic bags, rope-thin Filipinos shading themselves with rubbish-tip umbrellas. Had he really fallen so low? That he could contemplate abandoning a friend, running from a fight? He shivered, shocked, disgusted with himself. The doctor had told him that it would be like this. That it would take time, a long time probably. That he should understand that he might never feel right, like himself again, that in all probability he would simply have to learn to accept who he had become.

  No.

  He started the engine and jammed the Cruiser in gear. In a few minutes he was speeding along the Corniche towards the industrial district, the saltpans shimmering like a patchwork mirage across the bay, the refinery and the buildings of Little Aden bathed in an uncertain afternoon light. He needed answers.

  The laboratory was housed in one of five identical Soviet-built barracks, part of a military base now converted into an industrial estate at the edge of town. He clambered up the crumbling concrete steps to the second-floor veranda. An afternoon sea breeze had come up; the palms lining the parade ground swayed like drunken soldiers, trunks groaning. The beach, brilliant white in the late afternoon sunshine, shimmered against the deep-blue, white-capped ocean and a pure sky. Perhaps the lab results would tell him something about what was going on in Al Urush.