He hugged her, watched her shuffle laboriously back to the edge of the building. She looked back and gave a discreet wave, then turned the corner and was gone.
It seemed a terrible thing to abandon Sarah here. The encounter had affected James deeply – how much courage had it taken to defy her terror, acknowledge she was too weak to escape, release him, curl back into herself? He thought of her on the bench in the open space off Camden Road – how angry it had made him to see the lanky youth lock his arm round her neck and force her head down towards his groin. Then she’d sat opposite him in the pub, pride and embarrassment competing for supremacy in her fine-looking face. She’d played her part to perfection, but they hadn’t told her how the drama would end – how she’d find herself imprisoned in the desert, waiting for vicious little Etienne to decide her fate.
He must put Sarah from his mind, focus on getting away from the compound.
He ran on to the perimeter fence, paused to check his sightlines again, then started along towards the warehouse. After a hundred yards he came within range of the two guards on duty by the main doors. No cover now until he was past the north wall of the warehouse, but the glare from the arc lights mounted either side of the hanging doors faded quickly at the periphery and the moon was not bright enough to give him away. He strapped the prayer mats to his back, then wet some dirt and muddied his face and hands. He had seventy or eighty yards to cover, on his belly. Three minutes at most.
He went at it fast, enjoying the vigour and fluency of his motion, the rasp of sand on his arms. The bodies of the guards cast black silhouettes on the ribbed steel wall of the warehouse, and when one of them raised his arm to rub the back of his neck, it looked like the wing of a giant bird. He scrambled on until he reached the lee of the warehouse. He stood and walked to the far end. Just in from the far corner of the building was a safety exit, jammed open with a concrete block.
There was emergency lighting only inside the cavernous hangar, but you don’t need much light to recognise an arms cache when you see one. The assault vehicles with their flanks of toughened plate; the stacks of grey steel crates stamped with the coy hieroglyphs by which the arms trade described itself; the damp, grainy smell of oiled steel. If you’d used such weapons in anger yourself, you knew well what they could make of your enemies, of your fellow men, of you. In this box, two severed arteries and a shattered pelvis. That one, half a dozen flayed limbs and a burst aorta. A stockpile of human savagery, lying patiently in wait for young bodies to assault.
He stepped inside and was confronted by the battered flank of an antiquated Russian-made BTR-60P open-topped assault vehicle, and the raised bonnet of an equally venerable Renault flatbed truck, with bits of engine set out on a workbench alongside. There was a long wheelbase armoured Land Rover of the kind that protected you so steadfastly from popgun fire, and a Mitsubishi pickup. A freshly oiled 7.62mm calibre M240 machine gun had been set up by the doors at the far end. Incongruously, a black Citroën DS saloon was parked by the front entrance, so low on its hydraulic suspension that it looked as if its wheels had sunk into the floor. In a far corner of the warehouse there was something hidden under a plastic tarpaulin. James went over and looked underneath: a British-made Light Gun, hitched up to a stout-looking Unimog 404 truck. What was it doing here, this desert arsenal gleaming sulkily in the orange glow of the emergency lights? If it all belonged to al Bidayat, then never mind a few car bombs, Ibrahim al Haqim must be planning a full-scale invasion.
In among the cache of small arms was a low stack of crates stamped with the legend PH-PDW. Parker Hale Personal Defence Weapon – special forces issue, and then only when the budgeteers were feeling flush. He unlatched the top crate and pulled the sub-machine gun from its foam template, feeling how small and light it was for such a powerful and accurate weapon. He clipped on its strap and put it to one side, along with half a dozen spare clips from a compartment in the base of the crate.
A set of steel steps led to an office on a platform above the main doors and he ran up to take a look, keeping to the edge of the treads to stop the frame from vibrating. The first thing he saw was a two-litre bottle of water on the floor by a filing cabinet. He picked it up – almost full. There was a steel chair with a canvas holdall slung over the back – empty but for a folded square of black cotton. A computer stood on a desk next to a printer and a wire basket of papers. He was about to take a look when he was seized by a feeling of desolation, as if he’d fallen sick. A reaction to the killing he’d done, to Sarah’s distress, the endorphins running dry. . .
How much more trouble do you want?
He ran back down to the warehouse floor, shoved the bottle of water and ammunition in the holdall, slung the Parker Hale on his back, then took a last look round. Spike the vehicles? That would take another hour, and there might be others he hadn’t seen.
Salif’s the wiry type, what if he’s got free?
He left the warehouse by the fire exit and ran over to the perimeter. The looming structure hid him from the rest of the compound, with only one dark corner of the administration block in sight. As good a place as any. He took off Younes’s trainers and threw them over the high fence, unrolled the prayer mats and took them in his teeth, then wrapped his hands in canvas and took out his hooked spoons.
The fence was 358 prison grade with a welded 9mm mesh designed to resist cutting or climbing. He reached up with his right arm and felt wetness – fluids leaking from the hole in his side, blood and some kind of watery lymph. He ignored it, reached up with his other arm and hooked the spoons into the steel grid, then hauled himself slowly up the fence. When he could go no higher, he worked the corners of his toenails into the wires to take a little of his body weight, then detached one spoon and inched it upwards. He went at it carefully, deliberately, moving his weight around to keep the distribution even – conscious that the hooked handles of the cheap steel spoons would unbend if he slipped and yanked at them. The fence was topped with a triple line of razor tape strung between brackets, but the brackets were angled outwards, making the final hurdle easier. As soon as he could rest some weight on the topmost wire, he laid the mats across the razor tape, wrapping the last six inches around the outermost line of barbs, then eased himself over and swung down to the ground on the far side.
Western Sahara: desert to the east, ocean to the west. James put the trainers on, crept a hundred yards into the darkness, then turned and looked back at the four buildings of the compound that lay like mismatched pieces of Lego dropped from on high by some irritable infant god. He allowed himself to raise one fist in a gesture of triumph.
How disgusted Sam Hu Li would be to see that. The future is for children, the past is for old men. He was still a long way from getting clear of this place – and what was he going to do when he did? Re-group and come back. For Sarah. For Little Sister. Leaving his device in the hands of al Bidayat wasn’t an option, and if he didn’t take it off them, no one would. The beady eye of MI6 might be roving over their network, but watching from the shadows wasn’t what was needed now.
Chapter Twelve
Nat dialled the last number on her list of hospitals and medical centres in Marrakech. After explaining the reason for her call, she was put on hold and forced to listen to a loop of jaunty music. She’d been on the phone for over an hour now, and her reserves of stoicism were all but exhausted. She’d been woken during the night by a horrible dream in which, after climbing interminable flights of stairs, she’d come across Claude Zender sitting in a high-backed chair with a plate of cakes and a flask of oily yellow wine on the table beside him. My dear Natalya, look what happened to you! She’d reached up to her face and felt the flesh raw and slick with blood around the hole where her lips had been. When did this happen? she’d asked him. I just went to sleep and then. . . The nightmare still twitched at the fringes of her consciousness – along with an image of poor Aisha weeping in the casino loos.
The music stopped and a woman answered, put her on hol
d again, then came back on the line and told her in an insincerely solicitous voice that no, they had not taken in a Monsieur Kocharian. Was she perhaps the same woman who had called yesterday? Nat admitted that she was and gave a description of Nikolai. The woman became irritable: they did not photograph patients on arrival, of course. Nat hung up, called the Casino des Capricornes and asked for the floor manager. After holding for ten minutes, she crashed down the receiver in a fury and rang the Police Commissariat. The clerk recited the criteria for filing a missing person report, which Nikolai did not meet.
Her brother had been jumped at the casino on Tuesday night – it was now midday on Friday. In the long minutes waiting for lines to connect and receptionists to check their admissions lists, she’d imagined herself sitting by Nikolai’s hospital bed and ticking him off for getting himself into trouble while she was away. Now she felt guilty. She’d begged, yes, begged her brother to come to Marrakech and help her, then she’d swanned off to LA while he got beaten up and imprisoned somewhere.
For the first time since she’d dreamed up the IPD400 deal, she found herself wondering whether it might be possible to back out. She thought of Sir Peter Beddoes and Clive Silk, wagging the corporate finger at Grosvenor HQ. . . Thought of Grey Tony Schliemann, back in Washington by now, sitting in his beautifully appointed office and trying not to choke on his own venom. . . She’d made an enemy for life there, and fuck all she could do about it.
You’re being a wimp, she scolded herself. Killing off the deal isn’t going to bring Nikolai back.
Was that the voice of greed or the voice of pragmatism she was hearing? She might as well touch base with Grey Tony’s man in Rabat, anyway. She fished out the piece of Marriott notepaper on which she’d written the name Grey Tony had given her. Pete Alakhine. He answered on the first ring.
‘When can you get to Casablanca?’ she asked.
‘When I need to.’ There was the hint of a sneer in his voice.
‘You don’t want any notice, then.’
‘Notice would be useful. But my instructions are simply to transfer the funds on receipt of the hardware and then to arrange transit to Washington. This is not going to take up a whole lot of my time.’
‘You mean transfer the funds, that is, thirty million dollars, before receipt.’
‘Yeah, that’s right,’ he said, as if confirming something Nat had failed to grasp. ‘So, we have a date?’
‘You need to be ready to move quickly when I give the green light,’ said Nat, struggling to hold on to the initiative. ‘I’ll be in touch.’
‘Look forward to it.’
Alakhine hung up a fraction before Nat could. His tone had been studiously indifferent, as if Little Sister were no more important than a box of biros. The conversation left her with a renewed sense that her grand deal, which she’d convinced herself was almost foolproof, had unlimited potential for coming unstuck.
After three hours the pre-dawn light began to bleach the cool darkness from the sky at James’s back. It was hard to keep up a steady jog without tripping on the lumps of grey rock strewn across the desert floor, and his feet were bruised, his toes swollen tight against the tatty nylon mesh of Younes’s trainers. He stopped and listened for the sound of a diesel engine grumbling in the distance, then scanned the gloom about him. He saw no shape or feature that would offer shelter from the heat or cover from pursuers, nor the slightest indication of what lay in this direction, or that, or any other. It was as if the earth had been vandalised: scraped flat, blasted with sand and rock, then abandoned in disgust. You could measure time here in tens or hundreds or even thousands of years, nothing would change. A thornbush would wither, another would take its place. A colony of ants would mine an oval of baked dirt until it collapsed, leaving a tiny depression behind. A rock would split.
He’d covered fifteen miles – no more, perhaps less. In an hour the sun would be up. In three, the surface of the desert would start to warp in the heat.
It is far too early to lose heart.
He swung the holdall over his shoulder and ran on. The sun pushed up behind him, a slice of dirty ochre in a blank sky. At first it was good to feel the warmth on his back. Then the warmth turned into heat. He remembered the black cotton square in the holdall, and tied it over his head so that it covered his neck. Some time in mid-morning he came across a path. It tracked the contours of the desert and the landscape had folded in around it, vegetation drawing sustenance from the droppings of passing beasts, stones accumulating in little ridges by the wayside. He wondered if he’d crossed others during the night. Paths are for following. . . But this one didn’t look well used. And it ran north–south.
He carried on west. An hour later he saw a vehicle: the Land Rover from the warehouse, a swathe of dust curling up from its tyres, feathering off into the haze. He dropped to the ground and snatched the black bandana from his head, but as soon as he saw it he knew they wouldn’t find him. Younes’s fatigues were the perfect camouflage; and if you wanted to catch a man on foot, you followed him on foot – lumping around the desert in a 4x4 would get them nothing but sore backs and gritty eyes. He watched the vehicle toil north, leaving an oily stain on the sun-scraped sky.
The guards weren’t the danger now. The danger was the sun, exploding slowly in the vastness above his head. The pulsing, swirling heat, contorting the air so you couldn’t see what you were looking at. He slackened his pace and drank from the plastic bottle he’d found in the warehouse office. Immediately he felt sweat start to trickle from the pores of his back. This is nothing, he told himself. You can’t stop yet.
He walked on for twenty minutes, then knew it was suicide. He needed to shut himself down, conserve water and energy while the sun boomed on through the midday hours. He found a place where the desert dipped into a shallow bowl, and there was a fallen magaria tree, holding out a pair of twisted limbs. He rolled the black cotton square in the dirt and arranged it over the two branches. So forensic were the sun’s rays, you could make out the weave of the cotton in the patch of shade it cast. James crawled into it, drew his knees up to his chin, settled down to bake.
Nat arrived in the Djemaa el Fna for her dinner at Adela’s with Claude Zender. She was ten minutes early, so she climbed a set of stone steps to an upstairs dining room to wait for him. She wore a long black evening dress, gold leather pumps and a gold silk shawl. The outfit was too waspy, she’d decided, inspecting herself in the mirror in her room at the Riad; but the black and gold set off the pale rose of her skin, and anyway, it was the only one she had.
The market below was in full swing, the pleasant hubbub of human commerce rolling lazily through the warm night air. A many-coloured ribbon of heads meandered between the many-coloured stalls. Arms ushered them towards leather barbers’ chairs or pans of lentils bubbling on coronets of blue flame. Hands were held out to repel them. A gang of boys tore through the crowd, leaving a litter of shrieks in its wake.
Why had Zender told her that Nikolai had been seized by casino security for starting a fight? He’d seemed so certain about it, too. But her brother had been set up, and that was just the sort of thing Zender would make it his business to know about. She was determined to make Zender explain, but she hadn’t worked out how to counter his likely evasions without putting the girl from the casino in danger. Nat hadn’t decided how she should treat him, either. . . Nor whether to tell him about her conversation with Mehmet al Hamra. . . In fact the whole prospect of the dinner had put her in so many different minds that she had drunk three gin and tonics before setting off from the Riad, and now she felt a little tipsy and not at all ready to get tough with him.
Her attention was caught by a Mercedes drawing up in an area set aside for police vehicles. Two black-suited bodyguards got out from the front seats, and opened the rear doors. An elderly man extracted himself from one, and from the other emerged the ample figure of Claude Zender. The arms dealer shook hands with the elderly man and pointed out a tourist restaurant nearby, the
n turned and set off alone towards the souk. He seemed to walk without moving his legs, as if he were floating and need only flap his feet a little to propel himself forward. As he reached the arched entrance, Nat called for a boy to escort her across the square and set off down the steps to meet him.
Needles of sunlight herded James round the magaria tree, nudging his square of shade aside, reaching in to burn his skin. His hand throbbed where the dog’s teeth had scraped, but at least the hole in his side had stopped leaking. Twice he heard a diesel engine, fractious and puny on the shimmering air. He didn’t bother to hide the black bandana. If chance brings them here to my sleepy hollow, he thought, I’ll kill them and drive away in the Land Rover.
The air cooled a little and he roused himself out of his stupor. It was about six o’clock, he guessed. He ate some dates and a flatbread, drank the remaining water in the bottle from the warehouse, then shielded his eyes and looked west. He thought he’d covered twenty-five miles so far, but there was still nothing remotely encouraging to see in the landscape stretched out before him, now striped with shadow as the earth turned its face away from the battering sun. He had to find something, get somewhere. The night ahead was critical. Tomorrow, he’d slow down. Then he’d run out of water. He’d last through the following night, but the following day? Probably not.
He picked his way through the scars and striations in the desert floor, counting his steps to keep the sense of futility at bay. Names lay in wait behind the chain of numbers. Etienne. Mansour. Al Bidayat. Anemone. Mansour Anzarane was a terrorist, a member of al Bidayat, Etienne his sidekick. But the compound wasn’t a terror camp, it was an arsenal, a warehouse full of military assets, a business enterprise. Anemone. What was Anemone? The name lodged itself in his thoughts, irritating and inaccessible as a splinter beneath a fingernail.
Darkness lowered itself around him, and a tide of cold air rose up from the grey sand to meet it. His burnt body shivered and the joints of his legs and arms stiffened so he walked like an old man. Thornbushes hovered like ghosts among the swags of shadow. The dead silence was broken by whistles and croaks and scratching sounds, and he became aware that creatures were moving about him, scuttling unseen from their dens to feed.
Little Sister (A James Palatine Novel) Page 18