When he had recorded all of the technical details and sketched a conceptual model of the flow of the contaminated water down the wadi floor and into the subsurface, and the effect of the pumping on the aquifer, he turned to a fresh page and he wrote of the time by the roadside when he had first seen her, about how she looked and felt the first time they had made love, of her smile that seemed to burst like sunrise over the horizon on a cloudy day, shining for a brief moment through the rip between sea and cloud, leaving you feeling like you would give anything to see it again.
He wrote about the last time he had seen her, surrounded by the chaos of war, her thin pale arm raised in farewell as she was carried into the belly of the Hercules, and of how he missed her even now, even though he did not want to miss her and did not understand who she had been or what had driven her to do what she had done. And now she was gone. Perhaps it simply came down to this unknowable thing: the remote possibility of a connection between two beings separate and isolated, created by a brief pairing of chromosomes then flung like children’s toys into the tumult. Perhaps you could only ever come close; maybe that was good enough.
And as for those who kept the faith and worked for justice, for them are gardens with rivers running underground.
When he awoke the notebook was resting open on his chest and the pencil lay on the floor next to the bed. Outside, the barren mountains of frayed shale ripped red from the sun’s spectrum. Clay stared out of the window at the pinked walls of the courtyard garden, the tall swaying palms, and beyond, the deep blue of the ocean.
He closed the notebook and put it on the bedside table. Then he reached for the water bottle on the bedside table, drank deeply and swallowed four more pills. He drank again. There was a knock on the door. He stood, but too quickly, almost blacking out. The pain was intensifying, the troughs of the fever deepening, lengthening. Soon he would be unable to function. He filled his lungs, exhaled, stumbled to the door. It was the bellman with the courier from Cyprus. He signed the chit and locked the door.
Everything was there: the stuff Atef had couriered for him the night he’d fled the guesthouse, lab reports, payment details, a copy of the report signed by Karila and Parnell, a set of colour prints of the Al Bawazir photographs. There were also copies of a hand-addressed envelope, postmarked Aden, a handwritten letter of a single page, dated 26th November. A yellow sticky note has been pasted to the letter. It read: ‘Thierry gave me this the night he left for Aden. He said he was going to give a copy to Parnell.’
It was signed simply: Jim. In the letter, Thierry Champard described the installation of the new discharge system that would send the produced formation water directly into the wadi. His conscience as a professional would not allow him to stand by while this clearly dangerous and harmful practice continued. If the company did not immediately install a proper down-hole disposal system for the waste, he would be forced to go to the authorities, the professional bodies, and the Press.
Clay put down the letter, took a deep breath, looked out the window. Bloody hell.
He leafed through the papers, found the business card he had asked Yianni to include in the package: Redmond Perry, Chairman, Hurricane Resources. Clay dialled the number, waited. The line clicked, buzzed. A receptionist answered, directed his call. A voice answered, deep, authoritative.
‘Mister Perry, this is Claymore Straker. We met a few months ago, at a reception in Cyprus. Capricorn Consulting.’
A pause. ‘Yes, of course. How are you, Clay?’
‘I am giving you a chance to get out, Mister Perry. In five minutes, your fax machine will be spitting out evidence that Petro-Tex is deliberately discharging millions of barrels of radioactive water into the environment, poisoning and killing dozens of people in Yemen. Furthermore, Petro-Tex management have resorted to murder to keep the practice secret.’
The line hissed.
‘Do you understand what I am telling you, Mister Perry?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, and Mister Perry.’
Silence.
‘You may want to look into how Petro-Tex is managing its money. Mansour for Import might be a place to start. Thanks for your time, Mister Perry.’ Clay hung up the phone, made his way to the business centre on the mezzanine floor. The attendant looked him up and down as he entered, scowled. Clay dangled his room key in front of the guy, asked to use a computer. The attendant nodded, pointed to a cubicle. Clay thanked him in Arabic, but the attendant had already picked up the phone, was punching in a number. Clay hurried to the cubicle, sat, opened the word processor. One-handed, he set to work, the screen blurry, the keyboard unfamiliar, set up for Arabic. He fought with the words, backspacing, erasing, starting over. Despite the air-conditioning, he was sweating, febrile; his fingers trembled over the keys.
The doors to the business centre swung open. It was the man from the lobby, the military-looking one. He glanced at Clay, leant over and whispered something to the attendant, then left. Shit. He was running out of time. He needed to leave.
Finally the single page letter was complete. He hit print, grabbed it from the printer, and approached the desk. ‘Do you have a photocopier?’
‘Of course.’ The attendant pointed.
Clay pulled out the notebook, lay it open on the glass, closed the cover and hit copy. The light sliced across the screen, recording images, words, thoughts. Again. Clay grabbed the copies, stood at the desk, pulled the lab reports and Thierry’s letter from the courier envelope, and stacked them on the counter. Paper. That was what mattered in this world.
At the top of the front page he scribbled Hurricane’s number, FAO The Chairman.
‘Fax machine?’
‘I can send it for you.’
Clay watched as the attendant sent it through. The shrill cacophony of the send signal matched the turbulence of his fever, inchoate, grating. His head was spinning now, whipping him around the room. He clutched the side of the counter.
‘Are you alright, sir?’ The attendant placed the confirmation page on the counter.
The door burst open behind him. He turned to see the doctor standing in the doorway. His face was covered in sweat and he was breathing hard. He took Clay by the arm, moved him towards the door. ‘The police are here,’ he whispered in his ear. ‘They want to question me. About you.’
‘Jesus.’ Clay ploughed through another wave.
‘I will keep them as long as I can. Leave quickly. Take the back exit.’
Clay nodded. ‘Thank you.’
‘You must go to hospital. Every moment you delay, the infection is moving. I am amazed you are still able to stand.’
Clay shook the doctor’s hand, collected the faxed documents, made for the lifts. The samples from the CPF and the photographs were in his room. He couldn’t leave without them. He pressed the call button and waited. Lift cars hissed in the shafts, stopped, restarted. He glanced along the corridor, thought of taking the stairs but a wave of nausea doubled him over. Finally the bell rang, the doors opened. He stepped inside, catching a glimpse of himself in the mirrored walls, a stranger, bearded, eyes burning, unfamiliar. An Arab in traditional dress stood in the corner of the elevator scowling at Clay’s dirt- and blood-stained rags. He was short with a taut round belly. He looked pregnant. A little girl stood beside him, clutching his hand. She wore a frilly pink princess dress and little white high heels, a tiara in her hair. In a few short years she would vanish behind the veil, become invisible, learn self-effacement. But now she was staring right at him, her eyes accusatory under lashes thick with mascara, lids heavy with paint and daubed with sparkles. The fingertips of her gaze tracked a bead of sweat across his cheek. He wiped it away with his good hand and tried a smile. For a moment she looked back, impassive, but then her face crumpled into a frown. It looked as if she was going to cry, but instead she shuddered and stepped back behind her father’s legs and hid her face in the folds of his robe. Clay thrust his bandaged hand deep into his pocket, tried to move to the far corne
r of the car but stumbled and thudded into the mirror. He steadied himself against the wall, looked away.
The lift seemed to stop at every floor. He stood, heart jack-knifing as the doors opened and more people got on. The doors closed, the car lurched upward. Another stop, more people crowded in. The lift car was packed now – he was hemmed in. He should have taken the fire escape. Time slowed, stalled. The floors ticked by. Panic rose in his chest. He could imagine the doctor trying to delay the cops, the smug desk clerk volunteering his room number with an obsequious smile. Again the lift stopped, ninth floor, only three to go. Two people got off, the doors closed but opened again one floor later to reveal phantom guests, empty corridors. Jesus Christ. To be undone by something so mundane.
Finally the gong sounded for the twelfth floor. The doors opened. The corridor was clear. He ran to his room, collected his things, and made for the fire escape.
He emerged into daylight at the back of the hotel, walked through the pool area as if in a dream, past oiled and bikinied Western women in loungers, toddlers splashing in the wading pool, the water tile-blue. He was vaguely aware of heads turning, fingers pointing. The pool attendant reached for a phone, spoke quickly, called out. Clay kept moving, to the garden now, along the footpath, the attendant shouting behind him, following. He found the rear exit and emerged onto the street. A siren blared somewhere, off beyond the hotel. The street was busy, a swirl of motion, cars flying by in both directions. It made him dizzy. He ran along the pavement, away from the hotel, with the flow of traffic. He looked back over his shoulder, caught sight of a yellow taxi. He threw up his arm, let out a whistle. The taxi flashed past, a patron in the back seat. Back beyond the hotel, more sirens. He raised his hand again. Another taxi creaked by, occupied. A policeman appeared at the hotel’s rear exit, stopped, looked up and down the street. Clay turned away, hunched over, tried to make himself small. Another taxi was coming towards him, flowing with the traffic. Driver only. The policeman was shouting now, moving towards him, still a hundred metres off, less, floating above the pavement.
Clay darted into the street, stumbled, dodged a truck. The taxi was there, coming towards him, a blur. He raised his arms, waved. Drivers were shouting at him from open windows, voices pitched above the sound of engines, the Doppler of horns. The policeman was looking right at him now, puffing as he ran to close the gap, still fifty metres away. The taxi screeched to a halt. Horns blared as cars swerved. Clay jumped into the back seat, reached forward and dropped a hundred-dollar note into the driver’s lap.
‘The French Embassy,’ Clay croaked, sinking down in the seat. ‘Yallah.’ Fast.
Ten minutes later he walked into the office of the Deputy Consul and stood shaking and unsteady before the man’s desk. The diplomat was a small man, trim and compact, dressed in a well-made navy blue suit and tie. He looked like an athlete, a sailor perhaps, a cyclist. He looked up from his papers.
‘I was told it is urgent. How may I help you, Mister …?’ His English was perfect.
Clay closed his eyes, felt himself falling, opened them again with a start, jammed out one leg, stabilised. The man’s face twinned then blurred. Outside, sirens approaching.
The Consul stood. ‘You are unwell.’ He pointed to a chair. ‘Please, sit.’
Clay glanced over to the chair. It was too far. He dropped his pack to the floor. ‘My name is Claymore Straker.’
The Consul’s eyes widened. He fumbled through a pile of papers. ‘Did you say Straker?’
‘Yes.’
The Consul looked up at him. ‘It says here that a man of that name was killed in Yemen three days ago.’
Clay forced the words out, even as he felt himself go. ‘I have information concerning the murder of Thierry Champard, a French citizen.’ Then he collapsed to the floor.
Part V
A Problematic Resurrection
8th June. Muscat, Oman
Clay opened his eyes. Sunlight streamed through the shuttered windows, thick beams of it, dense bundles of photons, blinding. Palm shadows swayed across his eyes. A cool salt breeze caressed his face. And everywhere, resonating in the walls, tumbling through the open windows, the sounds of the sea. Muscat, Oman. He remembered standing in the French Embassy, then an ambulance, hospital corridors spinning above him, the blurred image of a masked surgeon, operating theatre lights, then the drugs taking him away.
Slowly his vision cleared. The tropical Arabian light was hard and white against the plaster walls, the polished ceramic floor. He narrowed his eyes. Clay looked down at his hand. It was bandaged, heavy with gauze, brilliantly white, wrapped up to his elbow. Umbilical tubes and wires connected him to a mechanical world of phials and pumps. A dull ache left his fingertips and swam to his forehead. He moved his fingers inside the bandages.
The evidence of Parnell’s crime, of Petro-Tex’s poisoning of the villagers, was with the French government now: Champard’s letter, the report, photos, lab reports, his field measurements and observations, the copies of Petro-Tex accounts, all of it. His testimony, too, if they wanted it. More than enough to shut Parnell away in a tomb of regret for a long time. Perhaps enough to convince the French to initiate international action against Petro-Tex. He would keep his promise to Al Shams, to Abdulkader, to himself. To Rania. And then he would be free. Free to start digging in that big graveyard where one day, maybe, he would bury her.
He looked around the room. Life without her seemed impossible, disloyal. None of this should exist: the polished metal table hinged to his bed, the freshly painted walls, these windows looking out onto the gardens and the barren mountains beyond, that blue, aching sky, him still here, still breathing, his retina registering these images, all of it incomprehensible in its treachery, an affront.
Clay ripped the tube from the catheter in his arm, jammed down the bed’s side railing, swung his feet to the floor. He stood, head spinning, clinging to the bed frame. Fighting back the red edge of unconsciousness, he started towards the door, only one thought in his mind: get to the Embassy, push the French to action. Only then would any of it have been worth the price.
He was almost to the doorway when a big African woman dressed in a white uniform appeared in the doorway. ‘Good morning,’ she said, blocking his way. Her gaze searched down his bandaged arm to the disconnected catheter. She arched her brow. ‘Going for a little walk?’ Her skin was luminous, liked polished wood. Two parallel beauty scars, wide and straight, cut from her left cheekbone to the line of her jaw. ‘Feeling better then?’ she said. Her voice was soft, melodic like an Ashanti ballad.
‘Like a new man,’ said Clay.
She smiled, metres of big pale teeth. She stood beside him, took his arm. Half his height, probably double his weight.
‘I have to leave,’ he said. ‘There is something important I have to do.’ Clay took a step forward, unsteady, swaying on shaking legs.
She stood her ground, her bulk blocking the doorway.
‘Please,’ Clay whispered. ‘People’s lives are at stake.’ The pain in his arm was strong now, a continuous rage.
The woman crossed her arms over the vast bulk of her chest. ‘It is your life I am worried about right now, Mister Keating. You have had a very serious operation. Your condition is still fragile. The doctor says you must rest.’ She stepped towards him and took his arm.
Clay’s vision blurred, the peripheries collapsing inwards. He slumped momentarily, recovered. She propped him up with her shoulder, guided him back to the bed, settled him, reattached his IV, and pumped in some morphine. The effect was almost instantaneous. Slowly, Clay’s vision cleared. The pain started to recede, skulked away until after a while it was almost completely hidden, lurking there beneath its opium camouflage.
The nurse plumped his pillows, wrote something on his chart. ‘If you are well enough, you can start therapy and exercise in a couple of days. Until then, you must rest.’
‘Keating?’ he said.
She looked at his chart. ‘Your name. Paul K
eating.’
Clay smiled to himself. ‘My friends call me Clay,’ he said.
She glanced down at his chart, back up, looked into his eyes. ‘I am Afia.’
‘Born on Friday.’
She stood looking at him, a smile starting to bloom. ‘You know my country.’
‘I have worked in Ghana. In the Ashanti mostly, on the coast a bit.’
‘I am from Takoradi,’ she said, smiling wide.
‘I got very drunk once in Uncle Kwesi’s tavern on Port Road.’
She laughed behind a big raised hand. Her eyes sparkled like the African sun refracting off the Gulf of Guinea. She leaned over him, inspected his bandage. ‘The doctor says you have done well, Mister Clay.’
‘Just Clay, Afia. Meh paa chow.’ Please.
At the sound of her own language, Afia’s smile broadened further, if that was possible. ‘Clay,’ she said through a polished keyboard of teeth. ‘You speak Twi.’
The Abrupt Physics of Dying Page 34