‘Monsieur Zender.’
Zender. . . The name scythed through James’s tangled thoughts. Claude Zender was said to be the kingpin behind every nefarious deal in north-west Africa, so it wasn’t exactly unexpected. An arms broker manages an arms depot held at a remote compound on behalf of the Polisario; he hires a suitably brutal sergeant-major type and a cohort of guards to protect it. Why not?
Another question: had al Bidayat hired Claude Zender to arrange his abduction? It was the most plausible explanation he’d thought of yet – which did not necessarily make it true.
‘Monsieur Zender is at the compound?’ he asked.
‘I see him there many times. Big man, fat. Fat like a king.’
‘So you are Polisario and report to Colonel Sulamani and the other guards work for Zender. What about Etienne and Mansour?’
‘Bad men.’ Salif turned and spat. ‘Not Polisario.’
‘No, al Bidayat men.’
‘I not know what is al Bidayat,’ said Salif suspiciously.
‘Come on, Salif. Mansour and Etienne took orders from Ibrahim al Haqim, and al Haqim runs al Bidayat.’
‘I not know al Bidayat,’ Salif repeated.
They walked on in silence. The words which had dogged him the previous day came back to stump through his head: al-bid-ay-at. . . An-em-o-ne. . . He should drink, but there wasn’t much water left. He looked around for shade, and the movement made his head wallow. Get off the road, then. Rest.
He led Salif a few hundred yards into the desert to the east and lay down behind a thicket of thorns that gave no shelter. Salif squatted down a few yards away and watched him thoughtfully. Balloons of heat billowed off the desert floor. The lowest branch of a thornbush lay across his field of view, a brown zigzag, gnarled and collared at the joints like an old man’s finger. He looked up. The sun dangled in a spinning sky. Salif was standing beside him. He slid upright. The desert tilted up and he leaned in towards it. A soft clout. Sand crunching against the thick length of his jaw.
‘Exactly where are we, Claude?’
The Cessna had plonked down on a carpet of warped concrete laid at what seemed to be a random location in several thousand square miles of sand. Then they’d been driven to a hideous military compound that seemed to wobble in the early evening haze, as if it didn’t really exist. A large black, red and green flag drooped over the entrance to the main building.
She followed Zender through a pair of double doors into an entrance hall with a tiled floor, a deliciously dim and cool place after the sapping heat outside. A huge chandelier hung from the ceiling, though the wiring was coiled up by a rough hole in the plasterwork above. To left and right, a pair of staircases rose up in three flights to an iron-railed gallery. Ahead of them was a set of doors bearing a lengthy inscription in Arabic, with two stone benches set on either side.
‘This building? It is, if you can believe it, the future seat of government for an independent state in the Western Sahara,’ Zender replied. ‘That is their flag above the door, and there’s a debating chamber behind those doors. The establishment was built by a wealthy Algerian, though I don’t believe the intended occupants like it much. It is ugly, certainly, and they are fond of their tents. For now, it serves as a base for their military wing, the Polisario.’
‘We’ve left Morocco, then?’ said Nat, suddenly feeling nervous.
Zender didn’t reply, but set off towards a passage under the right-hand staircase. ‘The United Nations, in their clever way, have designated this a Non-Self-Governing Territory,’ he said, ‘and this particular stretch of vacancy they call the Free Zone. Certainly it is free of any kind of regulation, which makes it an excellent place to do business.’
He ushered Nat into a large, square room with two windows facing west.
‘My office – which I have endeavoured to make at least passably inviting.’
The room was decorated in a sickly shade of bleached apricot, with glazed floor tiles to match. The focal point was a Chinese rug with a pattern of birds and butterflies in flight through a fantasia of coiled tendrils and extravagant blooms. A pair of plum-coloured sofas was arranged either side. Between the windows was an Art Deco desk with an olive green leather top, and a reclining chair, its black leather upholstery discoloured with use. Bottles of Badoit, red wine, whisky and vermouth stood on a sideboard next to the door.
It wasn’t even passably inviting, Nat thought. It was unutterably dingy, like a hotel lounge in a no-longer-fashionable spa town. She realised that until now she had only ever seen Claude in hotels and restaurants, and had assumed that his private space would prove fascinating to anyone privileged with an invitation to enter it. This room revealed nothing – or that there was nothing to reveal. Again she felt a sense of foreboding. You’re being ridiculous, she told herself. What were you expecting, a Labrador dog and a collection of DVDs?
‘The decor lacks a woman’s touch,’ said Zender, as if reading her thoughts. ‘The furniture is from Damascus – quite fine, if that sort of thing appeals.’
‘It doesn’t. And don’t blame the absence of women for your poor taste. Where is Nikolai?’
‘You’ll have to give me the benefit of your advice, Natalya, I’m sure I am lost without it.’ He was looking for something in the drawer of his desk. ‘I apologise. I am somewhat distracted. The business of running this place would draw blasphemy from a saint. You would like to wash, I expect.’
‘What I would like is to see my brother.’
‘And you shall, if you would just allow me to. . . ’
He didn’t finish. It was exasperating but, now that she’d had time to think through what Zender had said to her on the plane, her righteous fury had lost some of its force. He’d discovered that Nikolai was following him and taken steps to defend himself. . . Unnecessarily violent steps, but then Zender would have violent enemies. At least Nikolai was safe. Besides, she was entirely at the arms dealer’s mercy now; and she felt too worn out to scream at him again. So when a boy in a white shirt came to escort her to her bedroom, she satisfied herself by saying as she left: ‘Five minutes, Claude. Or else I’ll go and find Nikolai myself.’
Her room had a large but meagrely upholstered bed and a rank of fitted cupboards with no rails or shelves. The wall of mirrored tiles in the bathroom had been unevenly laid and made her look as if she had been dismantled and put back together again in a hurry. But even the most flattering mirror could not have disguised the fact that she was exhausted, absolutely shredded by the events of this horrible day.
She stared out of the window. Ahead of her was an ugly, two-storey edifice that reminded her of an office block in Kiev’s decaying industrial belt. To the left was a low building surrounded by razor wire, and up the slope to the right, a big warehouse. And now that she was too weary to suppress it, the thought which had been festering away in a dark corner of her mind finally erupted: the shooter in the souk had been waiting for her, not Claude. Grey Tony wasn’t pinned beneath her heel at all: he was sitting in his office in Washington, arranging for her to be killed.
She replayed her phone call with Pete Alakhine to see if she could wring some cause for optimism from their desultory conversation, but all she could manage was that he hadn’t actually refused to speak to her. Then she remembered Magda. She must call her, warn her that Grey Tony was fighting back. She found her cellphone: no network. She switched it off and on again, but it hunted in vain. I misjudged Grey Tony. She shuddered. Fucking with the NSA procurement chief was the worst mistake she’d ever made. She’d assumed that if you’d spent the last ten years accumulating the demeanour of a superannuated B-lister, you must have gone soft. But Grey Tony was a control freak, everyone knew that – even the waiters at Holworthy’s knew that. She thought of him orchestrating their dinner at the awful, stuffy restaurant, like a superstitious old woman arranging bones and beads to ward off evil. Remember the panicked reaction when she’d run her naked foot over his calf? The horror on his face when she’d told
him he had to buy the IPD400 or face ruin and disgrace? She’d goaded him beyond endurance.
Misjudged Schliemann, is that what she’d done? Or had the rush to make herself a few million dollars richer made it essential that she blind herself to the obvious risk that Grey Tony would not behave how she wanted him to? She hadn’t made an error of judgement, she’d made no judgement at all – and not because she was stupid, but because she was greedy. In the space of a single day, her entire plan – and she now saw with horrible clarity what a naïve and impetuous plan it was – had disintegrated. Why had she thought she could blackmail Grey Tony and play Zender for a fool? She wasn’t a criminal mastermind but a sales director who traded on her looks. And they were powerful, ruthless men, in a different league from her.
The room faced east – so much for enjoying the Saharan sunset. The scrub bushes scattered across the surface of the desert looked like dead flies. She remembered the conversation she’d had with Sir Peter and slimy Silk, two weeks that seemed like two years ago. She should have told them what they could do with their job and walked away. But she hadn’t and now she was here.
Something sharp was pressing against his Adam’s apple.
‘You not know desert.’
The point of Salif’s knife at his throat.
‘You hit me, take dirhams. Maybe I kill you.’
James didn’t move. The Parker Hale was slung over Salif’s back.
‘I could have killed you, and Younes. But I didn’t. I killed Mansour.’
‘Mansour killed?’ Salif looked pleased. ‘Take water,’ he ordered.
James reached for the bottle and drank deep, felt his muscular function and mental acuity restoring itself. He was suffering from early-stage heat exhaustion, he realised, and had momentarily lost consciousness.
‘Why they take you at compound?’
‘I was your prisoner, Salif. And you’re Polisario. So you tell me?’
‘No. Not Polisario prisoner. Colonel Sulamani is good man. Not let them do this thing.’ He gestured at James’s ribs, where the shears had cut. ‘Not Polisario prisoner,’ he confirmed with a vigorous shake of the head.
‘Move the knife and I’ll tell you what I know.’
Salif took the knife from James’s throat and held it between them, lightly poised. He’s an experienced knife-fighter, James realised, who knows that a tight grip only slows you down. But in any case, his manner was not so much threatening as triumphant: he’d turned the tables, but James didn’t think he had any intention of killing him. He explained what had happened. It was hard to know how much Salif understood, but James was careful to lay the blame squarely at the feet of Claude Zender – mention of whom provoked much spitting and tongue-clicking on Salif’s part.
‘You said I was not a prisoner of the Polisario, Salif. So you do not have to take me back to the compound.’
Salif frowned and rasped the blade of his knife across the pad of his thumb.
‘If you take me back there, Etienne will kill me.’
‘Bad man,’ said Salif again. ‘Not Polisario.’
‘Commander Djouhroub’s guards insulted you. They flapped their arms and made noises like a chicken. They do not respect the Polisario. They are mercenaries who are interested only in money.’
Salif gazed off into the desert and muttered to himself. Move on him, now, James thought. But something in Salif’s demeanour held James back, told him it wasn’t necessary. After a further moment of contemplation, the Polisario soldier stood up, unhitched the Parker Hale and dropped it in the sand. Sahrawi honour had been served by James’s re-capture, and it seemed that was enough.
‘You make fool of me,’ said Salif. ‘I think: this man afraid like old woman.’
‘You never really thought that,’ said James, taking the gun and dusting sand from the breech. ‘Remember when I was naked on the bed with my dick out – you looked like this!’
James pulled an expression of exaggerated disgust and Salif’s face broke into a smile like a battered old treasure unwrapped from a dirty cloth. He laughed, an unruly cackle that made his eyes water.
‘Younes want go back and fuck you. He say you like it.’
‘It’s a good thing you stopped him.’
‘Wah wah wah! Ow! Don’t hurt me,’ he mimicked, twirling the knife in his fingers and sheathing it. James felt a surge of warmth towards this man who had once been his guard and now seemed set to be his saviour.
‘What now?’ he asked.
‘Walk two, three hours,’ said Salif. ‘Moroccan army post. Wait for night. Six soldiers there – they take money. Cross Wall of Shame.’
‘Wall of Shame?’
Salif seemed disappointed by the question, as if James had revealed a depth of ignorance that was nothing short of disgraceful.
‘Moroccans build wall,’ he said.
It was coming back to him now – a berm, in military terminology, studded with forts and command posts like something set out on a wargames table by a pair of elderly generals whose marbles had long since rolled under the skirting board. A military folly on a spectacular scale, probably visible from space. This was the blurred line he’d seen on the western horizon and taken for a trick of the light.
Salif pointed north, then swung his arm south. ‘Mauritanie, Algérie, Maroc – twenty-five hundred kilometres. Maroc army hide behind wall. Hide like rats.’
‘The Moroccan soldiers will let us through, if we pay them?’
‘They don’t care. Ten years, no fighting, nothing for them.’
‘Isn’t it dangerous for you in Morocco?’
‘Not Maroc.’ Salif spat. ‘Is my country, my people.’
They walked on in equable silence. The sun began to withdraw from the edges of the sky. The desert was changing, the leached, ashen white giving way to a warm gold. Shadows appeared alongside them, leaning into the east. ‘Wah, wah, wah, don’t hurt me!’ Salif said occasionally, the invariable prelude to a burst of merriment. After an hour, Salif stopped suddenly and turned, raising his hand to shield his eyes.
‘Djouhroub guards. They come now.’
James followed his gaze and saw a cone of dust drifting up from a point on the dirt road several miles to the south. They ran east a few hundred yards until they found a hollow, then scraped together a ridge of rock and stone along its rim. If it wasn’t enough to hide them, they’d have to fight – and the Land Rover was a tempting prize. But Djouhroub’s men weren’t mugs and it wasn’t worth the risk, if they could avoid it. Fortunately, the sand-coloured uniforms he and Salif wore – Polisario uniforms as he knew now – were perfectly suited to hiding in the desert. He couldn’t see the vehicle, only the dust in its wake. After a few minutes it bounced into view, sunlight flashing off its windscreen, field glasses blinking from the passenger window. The quivering fan of dust rolled level, then past, the particles thinning out in the motionless air, merging with the ribbon of muddy sky at the horizon.
They waited until it was some miles past, then moved on, watching the horizon for any sign that the vehicle was turning back. But James didn’t think the guards would find them now – their noisy, dust-trailing vehicles were too conspicuous, and Salif’s eyes and ears seemed perfectly attuned to the desert. In an hour or so it would be dark, and they’d be forced to drive back to the compound empty-handed.
A few miles further on, the Polisario soldier stopped and looked towards the Wall of Shame to the west, then paced up and down the road, studying the terrain from different angles.
‘Track here, no mines. Wait for night. Walk to fort.’
‘I blew myself up once already,’ said James, looking in vain for the safe channel through the minefield. ‘Reckon I’ll use the jetpack this time.’
Chapter Fifteen
The five minutes she’d given Zender to reunite her with her brother was up. Nat opened the door to her bedroom and beckoned to the boy in the black trousers and white shirt who was waiting in the passage.
‘What is your name?’<
br />
‘Adel.’ He placed the palm of his hand over his heart and bowed.
‘Adel, could you bring me a bin or a plastic bag? I need to dispose of something – you know, a ladies’ something.’
Adel went scarlet and shot away. Nat made her way along the passage and down the staircase. As she approached Zender’s room, she heard voices. She stood close to the door and listened.
‘Your scruples do you credit, Colonel Sulamani,’ Claude Zender was saying, ‘but you are like a man covered in mud who frets over the state of his fingernails. I do urge that you leave me to my business, as I leave you to yours.’
‘The staging of executions is no part of your business here,’ replied a deep voice, resonant with suppressed anger. ‘I am required to explain to my superiors why a man was brought here to be killed, and to provide the identity of the executioner, whom you call Mansour el Shaafi.’
‘This man Hamed was a danger to all of us.’
‘A danger to you, Zender. He is no concern of the Polisario.’
‘He had to be disposed of – I assure you I did not specify that it be done in such flamboyant style.’
‘You employ those brutes el Shaafi and Etienne to do your dirty work and yet you expect them to behave with decency? They take no part in guarding the compound, and I told you a week ago that they must leave.’
‘Etienne has gone and Mansour is dead, so really, the matter need not detain us.’
‘Yes, killed by the Englishman you held prisoner here. After a week examining your computers, this man has disappeared and is probably now discussing what he knows with Mehmet al Hamra.’
‘We are taking all necessary steps to find him, and I doubt he will get twenty miles without stepping on a mine. Nor was he abducted, but was found poking around inside one of our offices in Oran.’
‘You found a spy in your office, so you brought him here?’
‘There’s nothing to suggest he is a spy,’ said Zender testily.
‘It is a characteristic of intelligence agents that they hide what they do.’
Little Sister (A James Palatine Novel) Page 22