To the Lions

by Holly Watt

  ‘There’s going to be a bit of a dust storm kicking up tomorrow,’ he said. ‘It’ll knacker the visibility. I was going to suggest that Oliver could go tomorrow and you the next day, but I think we’ll have to push it back a day. Shooting distances with any sort of wind is a nightmare.’

  ‘No worries.’ Ed sounded like he was discussing a minor inconvenience. ‘We can just hang out for the day.’

  Ed was good at this, thought Casey. You never really knew beforehand.

  ‘There’s lots to do. I can take you up there, anyway,’ Josh offered. ‘So you can get the lie of the land. When was the last time you shot, anyway? You could have a practice.’

  ‘Sounds ideal,’ said Ed.

  ‘And you wanted to see the cave art, didn’t you, darling?’ bubbled Casey.

  ‘I don’t know much about it,’ nodded Josh, ‘but we went up there once. I could draw you a map.’

  ‘That would be really helpful,’ Casey agreed.

  ‘Is there anything else I can get you?’

  ‘Think we just need to crash out,’ said Ed. ‘Been a long day.’

  The moment they were back in their room, Casey stopped the recording. Their phones were encrypted, of course, but there wasn’t enough signal for data out in the desert. Even though she couldn’t be sure about the sophistication of the surveillance installed at Euzma, there was an almost primitive urge to file. She needed to get the story back to London if it killed her, where it couldn’t be silenced.

  Casey had brought a BGAN – the Broadband Global Area Network, as they were known more grandly – to send back footage. The size of a laptop, the only thing they needed was a direct line of sight to the satellite. She opened the windows wide, pointed the little transmitter at the sky. Silently, invisibly, the recording winged away, and, just for a moment, she felt free.

  30

  Hessa was waiting back in London. As soon as the file dropped, she sent Casey a quick answer: I am here, I hear you. Be safe. She saved the file, and made a backup copy, then tapped out a quick note to Miranda, waiting nervously in Djanet, and set to transcribing.

  It was late now, and it wouldn’t matter if she waited until tomorrow to decipher this conversation, but Hessa wanted it to be perfect, wanted the memo to be waiting for Dash when he came in first thing.

  ‘Hessa,’ Miranda had said, that day in Dash’s office. ‘I’m going to take you through a few things.’

  They had paused then, for a few seconds, and Hessa had seen the quick glances between them.

  ‘Hessa,’ asked Dash too casually. ‘Do you have any friends or family in Libya? Or Algeria?’

  ‘No, boss. My family is from Bangladesh. Sylhet.’

  Just a few thousand miles apart, and a completely different continent. It didn’t annoy Hessa that sort of thing; not really. She had worked at the Post for just under a year, coming in on one of the diversity programmes that the paper ran, half-heartedly. A sticking plaster over the fact that the place was managed almost entirely by white men in their forties. But she’d seen the first step on the ladder, and didn’t care why it was there. She had known, just as soon as she walked in, that the Post was the place for her. Even if the Post hadn’t realised it yet.

  Her father didn’t like it, not at all. He didn’t see why she needed to work in this place that took up all her time and left her too tired to help her mother. Her mother nodded along, baffled by her eldest daughter. Why couldn’t she mind her auntie’s shop, just down Brick Lane? It was right near their flat. A nice job, if she wanted one.

  The family lived in a council flat, just off Chicksand Street, where the Bengalis were being edged out by people like Casey. Their flat – nice; too small for a family of six – was near the mosque that had been a synagogue that had been a church, once. At the weekend, Hessa looked out of the window, at the crowds on Brick Lane, and thought about stories, and dreamed.

  She was shy around Miranda and Casey though – lots of the junior reporters were. But one day she heard them talking by the chocolate machine. Twixes for both, she knew without asking. They were trying to work out how to get in somewhere. They didn’t say where out loud; they were always cautious, those two.

  ‘You could wear the veil,’ Hessa said quietly. ‘The full niqab. You’re invisible in that, you can go in anywhere. No one ever looks twice, not now. And they don’t want to talk to you, so they don’t stop you. I could pick you some up tomorrow morning, at the market on Whitechapel. If you wanted.’

  She watched them startle at her voice, and then sharpen in on the idea.

  ‘Interesting thought . . .’ Casey said.

  ‘Hessa,’ she filled in quickly.

  ‘Hessa,’ said Miranda.

  They smiled vaguely, collected their Twixes and wandered off, heads together.

  So Hessa was wobbling with excitement when they called her into Dash’s office. She could feel the laser jealousy from the other junior journalists. She was going into the room of secrets.

  The three of them had talked at her, rapidly, unemotionally, and then given her time to process, turning away to talk about flights and packing and dangers. It all sounded totally batshit, to Hessa. Then Miranda had turned back to her. ‘You’ll have to keep completely quiet about all this, Hessa. You understand that, don’t you? It’s absolutely critical.’

  She felt Dash’s eyes fix on her, fierce.

  ‘I understand,’ Hessa muttered. ‘I promise.’

  She listened now to the sound file that Casey had sent through from somewhere out in the desert, skin prickling. The other reporters moaned about transcribing, hating the tedium of going backwards and forwards over every word, but Hessa didn’t mind. She liked listening to the senior reporters leading up to a question. Sometimes, when she finally heard the key bit of information, she would listen back, tracking the meandering path to the question that cracked open the nut.

  And when it was a recording like this . . .

  The clock ticked round. Hessa had finished her memo now, checking it two, three, four times. It needed to be just right for Dash.

  The other reporters had gone to the pub, the one opposite that the Post emptied into most nights. The Plumbers; all the best anecdotes started in the Plumbers.

  ‘Two glasses of the white wine there and you wake up feeling like you’ve been hit round the head with a shovel,’ the transport correspondent had warned her. ‘It’s eye-bleedingly awful.’

  Hessa didn’t drink.

  The gaggle of reporters had lobbed her an invitation as they left, two hours ago, so casual and so precious.

  Now Hessa shut down her computer, and geared herself up. She’d go for one drink, try to make friends, blend in.

  They welcomed her as she walked over to their table, clutching a lemonade. They were four drinks in, and raucous.

  ‘Go on, Hess,’ said Eric. ‘What are you working on?’

  ‘Give us a clue,’ they chorused.

  Just for a second, she hesitated. She had known this was what they wanted, for that casual invitation. They’d seen her called in, a few days ago. They wanted to know. Journalists have to be the ones to know, and tell. The currency of knowledge is everything.

  ‘Tell them you’re superstitious about talking about stories,’ Miranda had said. ‘That’s what I say. That you’re worried it will fall apart if you say anything.

  ‘Not to sound melodramatic or anything,’ she’d added. ‘But it really is a matter of life and death. You could always say it’s a very boring data project. That it’ll take ages.’

  In the pub, Hessa looked round the table. She wanted so badly to fit in with them, and their pints and their piercings.

  ‘Tell us, Hess,’ Eric persisted.

  She opened her mouth, closed it again.

  ‘It’s a really boring data project,’ she said. ‘And it’s going to take for ever.’

  They grumbled, not quite sure if she was lying. But they were still friendly, and she felt herself breathe. The education correspondent pul
led up a stool, told her a joke that made her blush, caught her up on the gossip.

  There she sat, in the cosy circle of hacks, safe in the fustiness of the Plumbers, and thought about Casey, out in that wild desert darkness.

  In the palatial en suite, Casey was taking as long as possible. She had packed and unpacked pyjamas back in her flat, settling on blue stripey cotton, boyish and invisible.

  Ed was lying on the bed when she finally emerged. He had pushed a wedge under the door, the quickest way to change a flimsy door into a challenge.

  Casey lay down on the bed.

  ‘OK?’ He didn’t look up from his book. He was always reading. She remembered the Marines on the Apollo laughing about it, suspiciously.

  The linen rustled.

  ‘Night, Carrie.’

  ‘Night.’

  He switched off the light, and she felt him turn over, and away from her.

  He seemed to fall asleep in seconds, and Casey lay in the dark, sleep unimaginable. It was so quiet, deathly quiet. The moonlight glowed through the curtains. She could feel Ed warm beside her. Just a few inches between them, and an endless emptiness. She thought of the refugees, out in the camp. Packed in a tent, surrounded by nothing. A baby crying in the dark. The smell of smoke. Unanswered prayers, like a curse.

  Finally, hours later, she fell asleep.

  *

  The screaming seemed to fill the room, desperation flooding everywhere like lava. Terror blazed through Casey as she struggled awake.

  Ed was rigid, shuddering, fear ripping through his body.

  ‘Ed!’ She edged towards him, trying to push away the horror. ‘Ed!’

  He half woke, rose, threw her away from him and pounced, hands to her neck, choking, suffocating, killing.

  ‘Ed.’ She fought for breath. ‘It’s me . . . It’s Casey.’

  It seemed endless. Hands scrabbling and the darkness coming. He was so strong . . . Too strong . . .

  ‘Ed,’ the last gasp. ‘It’s me. Stop . . . Please . . .’

  And she saw awareness flood his eyes, as he woke to a new nightmare. His hands fell and he flung himself away.

  ‘Ed . . .’ She was gasping, breathless.

  He was sitting at the edge of the bed, head in his hands.

  ‘It’s OK, Ed.’

  He flinched as she put her hand on his shoulder. He was hot to the touch, still shaking.

  ‘It’s going to be all right.’ Her voice echoed round the marble room.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ He turned to her, eyes desperate in the moonlight. ‘Did I hurt you? I am so sorry.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ Casey hoped that her neck would not bruise overnight. ‘It was just a dream. It doesn’t matter. It’s OK.’

  ‘No.’ He was distraught. ‘I hurt you . . . Sorry . . . I am so sorry . . .’

  His voice trailed into silence.

  ‘Lie down again.’ Casey tried to pull him back to the bed.

  ‘No. No.’ He stood up, switched on a light. ‘I can sleep on that sofa.’

  She couldn’t stop him, as he found a sheet and pillows in a cupboard.

  ‘Not very comfortable there.’ She looked at the thin velvet cushions of the mermaid sofa.

  ‘It’ll be fine.’

  He lay down, feet curled up to fit.

  ‘Ed . . . It might help . . . if you told me about it.’

  But the light clicked off and the room sank into darkness, the distance unbridgeable.

  The wind outside was beginning to keen, raising the dust that would block out the light. Casey almost smiled, just for a second, that she, the girl who could get any secret from anyone, had fallen for someone locked away, and so impossibly distant.

  She was inspecting her throat the next morning when he followed her into the bathroom.

  ‘I am so very sorry. It was unforgivable.’

  ‘Please stop apologising.’

  Her neck was bruised. She covered it with foundation, avoiding his eyes.

  He came closer, framed behind her in the huge gold mirror.

  ‘You said your real name last night,’ he whispered.

  ‘I know. I didn’t have a whole lot of choice.’ Their eyes met in the mirror. A smile. Better.

  The dust was blowing wild djinns outside, reducing visibility to just a few hundred yards. The roiling dust confused the eyes and choked the throat.

  They had let themselves sleep in, both exhausted. Oliver was already at breakfast, three places set at a table for twenty-four.

  ‘Morning, you two,’ he winked at them. ‘Sleep well?’

  ‘Blissful, thanks.’ Casey took her place at the table.

  They were crunching toast when Josh appeared.

  ‘The visibility is buggered.’ He poured a coffee. ‘Hopefully, it should have blown through by this afternoon though. In the meantime, Ed, you and Carrie could head up to the caves? I drew you a map.’ He pushed it along the table to them.

  ‘Thanks, mate.’ Ed took the map, studied it. It could help if these men were used to them heading off on random little expeditions.

  ‘And I’ll drive you up to Salama,’ Josh went on, ‘when you’re back. It’s only about twenty minutes up there. No harm in doing a recce.’

  ‘I’d like to practise with the rifle.’ Oliver spooned up yogurt. ‘Even though the weather is a mess. Haven’t shot for a few weeks. Don’t want to get rusty.’

  ‘Where did you learn?’ Casey asked.

  ‘There’s a place out to the west in Wales,’ said Oliver. ‘Never stops bloody raining, but there’s not a lot else out there, so you can practise shooting those long distances. There’s another place up in the Highlands, and I went for a sort of crash course in Dubai, out in the desert there.’

  ‘Sounds cool,’ Casey nodded. She wondered if Dubai or Wales had pointed Oliver towards Libya.

  ‘How about you, Ed?’

  Casey felt herself tense. They had rehearsed this question, back in the car. She needed to be able to ask questions, and find out patterns. But that meant Ed needed to reciprocate, smoothly.

  ‘Same sort of thing,’ Ed said. ‘But mainly up in Scotland, at my uncle’s estate. They do a lot of stalking up there. Deer, of course. And I gradually upgraded to sniper rifles.’

  ‘Rains even more up in bloody Scotland,’ Oliver nodded. ‘Do you shoot, Carrie?’

  He had got into the habit of smirking at her, almost conspiratorial. She forced herself to grin back.

  ‘No,’ she said carelessly.

  For a second, she caught Ed’s eye, with a tiny smile. He had taught her to shoot, a little Sig Sauer off the back of the Apollo. The Marines had been having a training session, and Casey had been bored.

  There was nothing for miles around, out in the Indian Ocean, so they shot off the flight deck, at paper humans, bullets splashing into the sea.

  It had been more fun than Casey cared to admit.

  ‘The great outdoors isn’t Carrie’s thing, exactly,’ Ed chimed in, to cover her smile.

  They finished breakfast and escaped, back along the Marie Celeste corridors. Then, clutching their leaflets, they headed out to the Hilux.

  Halfway down the cypress avenue, a little road ran off to the left, winding its way up into the red hills. Josh had told them where to park.

  ‘At the big rock that looks like a goat,’ he’d said, pouring honey over some yogurt. ‘I put a splash of blue paint on it, but keep an eye out, because that little road runs for miles out there. Comes out on the main road most of the way back to Ghat.’

  They parked the car and started the climb, the path twisting up the hill. As they walked, Ed told Casey about Tadrart Acacus, the Acacus mountains.

  Tiny drawings, dancing brave. Giraffe, camels, elephants decorated the cave walls in the mountains above Ghat. Casey liked listening to him speak.

  At Tadrart Acacus, Ed went on, the art survived ten thousand years. And then met a very modern destruction. The Salafists arrived, armed here only with white spirit, and hammers. As determ
ined, in their own way, as the Taliban at Bamiyan, or ISIS at Palmyra.

  ‘Why does it shock us so much?’ Casey asked. ‘That urge to destroy?’

  She was out of breath, and stopped to glory in the sun. They had reached the mouth of the cave, high up in the hills above Euzma. The desert plain stretched out before them, nothing but cobras and scorpions and a million ways to die.

  She yawned, and turned to look back to the car. The path wound down, twisting through the rocks. Her eye followed it lazily.

  And she saw it.

  A flicker. A glint. A tiny movement, that shouldn’t have been there. Only for a slice of a second. A gleam in her eye, and then gone.

  It was enough. A shudder ran down her spine.

  Rory. She knew, at once. Rory, who would take nothing on trust. Who would never tire, and never give up. And never believe his own eyes. Prowling in their wake, waiting and watching, and baiting and catching.

  Breathe, she thought. Breathe.

  The death zone. It kills you, just being up there.

  And no one would ever know.

  Her mind flurried. How would they look, to Rory . . . The young pretty couple, locked in their world, smiling into the desert. Was this how it ended?

  She turned to Ed, hugged him close. ‘Careful.’

  He understood at once. Took her hand, and led her towards the cave.

  ‘Look at this’ – and the calm of his voice steadied her, for a moment.

  Beyond its mouth, the cave opened up to a huge cavity. The scale was surprising, like the backstage of a theatre. Fragments of light tumbled in. Casey tilted her head back, looking for bats. Here and there, tunnels ran away, disappearing into the dark.

  Ed took a step, and wrapped her in his arms. As they wandered round the cave, she felt her heartbeat slow to his pace.

  Breathe, Casey, breathe.

  Ed made her concentrate. This cave had been ignored by the special madness of the twenty-first century, only scraps of graffiti here, a name chiselled in the rock there. Hands intertwined, they peered at the paintings, Ed pointing out one, then the next.

  They glanced into the tunnels that narrowed away from the main cave.

  All the time, Casey could feel Rory, hidden from sight. Watching her, hunting her, wanting her. She watched for shadows on the wall of the cave.