The Ghost Runner

by Parker Bilal

  Wad Nubawi sneered. ‘Why? You think I have anything to fear from you?’

  The sirens had arrived. The flashing blue and white strobes pulsed through the darkness at them.

  ‘Just stay where I can see you,’ said Sergeant Hamama, as he came in through the waiting room. He was holding a revolver at arm’s length with both hands as if afraid it might bite him. ‘Put your hands in the air or I’ll shoot.’

  Makana raised his hands as two officers ran forward to secure him.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Makana was vaguely aware of the commotion around him. His mind was elsewhere. He had the unshakeable feeling that a door had just closed on him. An opportunity he had barely caught a glimpse of had been snatched away along with Zahra’s life. Her body, covered by a bloodstained sheet on an ancient stretcher, was being ferried through the crowd of onlookers that had emerged out of the shadows and now thronged the gate to Doctor Medina’s house. Wad Nubawi, who was being patched up in the back of the ambulance, was asked to stand up and make way for her. Meanwhile, the police were searching the house under Sergeant Hamama’s orders while Makana was made to sit in the back of Hamama’s pickup with his hands cuffed.

  ‘You should have stayed on that bus,’ the sergeant was saying. ‘Though I have to say I really would not have expected this of you. Doctor Medina, I understand. You had some kind of relationship with him.’ His face screwed up in distaste at the thought. ‘I don’t want to speculate on such matters, but the man gave you his motorcycle and his home. In return you killed him. Who can understand the mind of a madman, eh?’

  Makana said nothing. None of it seemed to matter any more. Sergeant Hamama, warming to his task, carried on.

  ‘But why the girl? I mean, who was she? How did you know her? Let me tell you what I think.’ He rested one dusty and shapeless boot on the rear wheel of the pickup. ‘You were in this together. You and her. What was your motive? Maybe it was one of those strange sexual relationships we hear about.’ The sergeant shrugged and hitched up his trousers as he stepped back. ‘What do I know? I’m just a simple police officer trying to do my job, but that’s what I think.’

  ‘Maybe thinking just isn’t your strong point.’

  ‘You’re not winning yourself any friends, Makana. Maybe that’s why people like you end up in places like this, far away from home, far from anything that you know. You’re better off that way, always on the move, because that way nothing ever sticks.’

  Hamama waved Wad Nubawi over. He looked weak and unhappy, as well as about ten years older, as if age had sneaked up on him unannounced.

  ‘That bitch almost had me. And you were helping her.’ He made a clumsy grab for Makana, but Sergeant Hamama intervened, restraining him easily with a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Easy now, this is almost over,’ he said softly, glancing around him to see if anyone was standing within earshot. ‘Now we’re going to end this.’

  ‘What do you need me for?’ demanded Wad Nubawi.

  ‘You know why.’ Hamama nodded at Makana. ‘He’s a slippery one. I don’t want to take any risks and besides,’ he smiled, ‘I thought you might like to take care of this yourself.’

  Wad Nubawi looked at Makana and nodded. Sergeant Hamama produced Doctor Medina’s pistol out of his waistband and passed it discreetly over to him.

  ‘Go on,’ Hamama nodded for Makana to climb onto the back of the pickup. Makana did as he was told and Wad Nubawi followed. He climbed up and sat with his back to the driving cab. The relationship between these two men had been turned completely around. Up until now Makana had assumed it was Wad Nubawi who was running things, but now he saw that perhaps he had underestimated the bumbling, overweight sergeant.

  ‘By the way, you haven’t seen Sadig recently, have you?’

  ‘Why, the pressures of your rank getting to you already, Captain?’

  ‘Hah, you heard about that, eh? Well, it’s not official yet, so I’m still just a sergeant until confirmation comes through.’ Hamama tapped triumphantly on the roof of the cab. ‘Keep a close eye on him,’ he said to Wad Nubawi. ‘If he moves, shoot him.’ Raising his voice he yelled a few orders to his men before climbing in behind the wheel. Over the bouncing tailgate and the flurry of dust in their wake Makana watched as the scene behind the doctor’s house began to shrink. As the lights dwindled he thought about Zahra and what might have been, and then the darkness closed in until it all seemed as distant and unattainable as a dream.

  The back of the pickup was noisy and dusty and sitting on unlined metal was not the most comfortable of rides. In addition, Makana had both Wad Nubawi’s sullen stare to contend with and a loaded gun pointed at him.

  ‘Maybe you could aim it away from me. I don’t want to be killed by a bump in the road.’

  ‘What difference does it make which way it comes?’ smiled Wad Nubawi. There was a bruise on his forehead and blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, so Doctor Medina had managed to get a few blows in. Even in the fraction of light afforded by the backglow from the headlights, it was plain that Wad Nubawi was no longer the strong man he had once been. Musab had challenged his authority years ago and failed, but it looked as though Hamama had been more successful. Or maybe Wad Nubawi had been just that much older and more frail. All he wanted to do was stand in his shop all day. He was a useful front man, but that was about it.

  By now the last of the lights had all but faded behind them, the town dissolving into the vast bowl of the heavens like a pearl sinking into a fathomless ocean.

  ‘You’re not worried about Musab coming back after all these years?’

  ‘I told you, he’d never come back here.’

  ‘What if I told you he was already here, and that he’s working with State Security?’

  Wad Nubawi grinned. ‘I’d say you tell a good story but you can keep all that for the birds.’

  Makana had to assume that Hamama knew about Musab being in the area, which begged the question of why Wad Nubawi didn’t. Perhaps Musab planned to surprise them all.

  The sky was wide above them now and crammed so full of stars it was impossible to even imagine a number let alone count them.

  ‘Out here,’ mused Wad Nubawi almost in wonder, ‘you can lose an army.’

  ‘So I am told.’

  Through the bars and the windscreen of the cab Makana saw more nothingness rushing up to meet the headlight beams. An army was one thing, but a single man would vanish as easily as a speck of sand. Or maybe not. The pickup was slowing to a halt. Sergeant Hamama leaned out of his window. He was staring off the road at something in the distance.

  ‘Does that look like a fire out there?’

  Wad Nubawi squinted out into the darkness. ‘I can’t see. My eyes are no good any more.’

  ‘It’s faint, but it looks like something burning out there,’ said Sergeant Hamama slowly. ‘A fire burning down. Could be a car.’

  ‘There’s nothing out there,’ said Wad Nubawi dismissively. ‘You’d have to be a fool to drive off in that direction. That area is still mined.’

  Sergeant Hamama mused over this for a while and then engaged gear again. Slowly they rolled out into the open land. Wad Nubawi settled down with his head resting against the cab. From time to time his eyes would close and Makana was tempted to try and take the gun from him. As if reading his thoughts, Sergeant Hamama glanced back and thumped his fist against the rear of the cab from his side.

  ‘Don’t fall asleep on me, old man. I told you, he’s a tricky one. You keep your eye on him.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Wad Nubawi. ‘If he makes a move it’ll be the last thing he ever does.’

  They drove for over an hour. In that time the threat of being shot retreated, but so too did the idea of escape. Out here in the dark what chance did he have of getting away? Makana had respect for the desert. As he stared at the cloud of dust billowing out behind them and listened to the creak of the pickup he recalled crossing the border when he first came north to E
gypt. It seemed all the more ironic that it should all end here, in the same desert from which he had emerged.

  Ten years ago he had stumbled off the bridge in Khartoum into the dark, deserted streets. He carried nothing. No baggage, no clothes other than what he wore and no weapon. He also had no real idea of where he was going. All he had was the memory of his daughter Nasra’s face as the car holding her and her mother, Muna, went over the edge of the bridge and fell into the river below. Death at this point might even be fitting, considering that a part of him had died with them that night on the bridge.

  His journey across the desert had been arranged by one of the few old friends he could still call upon in those days, his old boss, Chief Inspector Haroun, the man who had guided his course ever since he joined the police force twelve years earlier. It was Haroun who had seen the promise in Makana as a young officer and had promoted him, offering him command of complex cases as a kind of test. At the time Makana had not been aware of it, but he later realised that Haroun had been grooming him, preparing him to one day take over his position as head of the CID. Events took their own course, however, and with regime change in Sudan in 1989, Haroun had reluctantly bowed to the new order of the day, taking early retirement and allowing his precious team of criminal investigators to be dismantled. The regular police were set aside, gradually ceding their authority to a series of new militia groups whose purpose was not so much to enforce the law as to introduce terror into the lives of innocent people. Loyalty was what counted and that was where Makana found himself overtaken by his former NCO, Mek Nimr.

  That night on the bridge, Makana realised that his life as he knew it was over. His wife and child were gone. His home was gone. If he tried to go back he would almost certainly be killed. The only way forward was ahead, into the unknown. First to Haroun’s house, where the old, white-haired man stared him in the eye as if seeing a long dead friend before him. Then he drew him in from the street and set about making the arrangements for his onward journey. There was no chance of him staying. Mek Nimr would hunt him down, no matter how long it took. As to where he would go, Egypt was the only real option. It was true he could disappear south into central Africa and beyond, losing himself in the interior of the continent just as he had once read the mad Englishman General Gordon had once dreamed of doing. But in Cairo he could join the ranks of the exiled and could keep in touch with news from home. Makana was not in a clear state of mind and Haroun made the decisions for him. A cousin of his had business in Port Sudan and would arrange for him to travel up to the Red Sea coast in one of his lorries. An old Bedford with a metal-sided flatbed loaded with bales of cotton and a driver who was missing an ear. The doors of the driving cab were simple latched squares of beaten iron decorated with painted motifs, the eye of fate and words of faith. The windscreen was cluttered with lucky charms, leather hijabs stuffed like pockets with scraps of holy scripture, bird feathers, the toenails of a saintly man and heaven knows what else. The whole cab rattled and shook like an orchestra of tin drums and amber beads, chains, polished bones, along with the obligatory acrylic zebra-skin fur on the dashboard. The lorry was a rolling tableau of inscriptions, a moving graffiti wall pleading for mercy, compassion and speed.

  When they reached the Red Sea, the driver turned north and they drove with increasing difficulty towards the Egyptian frontier, along roads that seemed at times more like goat tracks than anything a manufacturer of four-wheeled vehicles might have taken into consideration in their design. Somehow they made it, without major mechanical problems or run-ins with the law, and Makana climbed down from the cab and contemplated the emptiness that would lead him to safety. When he turned around the lorry was already almost out of sight.

  Sergeant Hamama’s pickup had begun to slow. Wad Nubawi yawned and stretched, careful not to take his eye off Makana. Ahead of them the headlights raked over the striations of a rock formation and beyond that a deep gully appeared to beckon. Makana imagined he saw lights in the distance, the warm flicker of fire against rock. The pickup rolled to a halt and Sergeant Hamama climbed from the cab and stretched. It seemed rehearsed somehow. The nonchalance, the casual, informal nature of the stop being emphasised.

  ‘If you want to stretch your legs, now is the time,’ said Sergeant Hamama.

  ‘Are you sure about this?’ Wad Nubawi seemed uncertain of his role. Makana needed no prompting. On your feet was better than being trapped in a vehicle. He swung his legs over the side and dropped to the ground.

  ‘Of course I’m sure. Where is he going to go?’ Sergeant Hamama gestured at the blackness beyond the furrow made by the vehicle’s headlights. Where indeed? Makana contemplated the odds of running straight into the blackness. How far would he get before they shot him?

  ‘I need to take a leak,’ said Wad Nubawi. As he walked past, Hamama held out his hand.

  ‘Leave the gun with me,’ he said helpfully.

  While Wad Nubawi walked back a few paces into the shadows behind the pickup to find a quiet spot, the sergeant gestured for Makana to move further forward until he was in the full glare of the headlights. Makana backed away from him, never taking his eyes off Hamama who in turn watched him closely as they waited in silence. When Wad Nubawi had finished he walked back up along the side of the vehicle until he was standing next to the sergeant.

  ‘Why not let me do it?’

  ‘You think you’re up to it?’ Sergeant Hamama asked, his gaze still fixed on Makana.

  ‘Sure,’ nodded Wad Nubawi. ‘I never liked this one since I first set eyes on him.’

  ‘Okay, if you think so.’ Without further preamble, Sergeant Hamama turned and lifted the gun. He shot Wad Nubawi through the temple at point-blank range. The shot sounded strangely muted out there in the open. Wad Nubawi dropped without a sound. His head and torso beyond the edge of the road, leaving only his legs and scuffed shoes in the cone of light. They twitched once and then went still.

  ‘Help me roll him off the side,’ said Sergeant Hamama, tucking the pistol into his belt. When Makana hesitated the sergeant looked up. ‘If I’d have wanted to kill you, you’d be dead by now.’

  There was no arguing with that. Makana stepped forward.

  ‘Take the legs,’ said Hamama. Together they rolled the body over the side of the road and watched it slide down the gentle incline to come to rest on the sand some three metres away.

  ‘Aren’t you going to bury him?’

  ‘It goes faster like this,’ said the sergeant. ‘In a couple of days there’ll be nothing left.’

  ‘Why now? Why here?’

  ‘I don’t know. Sometimes things just feel right. Don’t you ever get that?’ Hamama squinted at Makana. Hands on his hips, Hamama craned his neck back to look at the stars. ‘It’s not a bad place to die, though, you have to admit.’ With that the sergeant walked around and climbed in behind the wheel. He waited a minute, staring ahead through the windscreen, before leaning over. ‘Are you coming?’

  Makana, still handcuffed, got in on the passenger side as Hamama started up. They rolled along, small stones crunching under the wheels. Ahead of them to the south the desert rose up in two high walls separated by a cleft. As they drew closer the glow of the headlights revealed recesses in the rock, old burial chambers, pockmarking the left-hand wall.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ Makana asked.

  ‘Don’t start getting any ideas. If it was up to me you would have stayed behind with our friend back there. It seems that you are of value to somebody. Any idea who that might be?’

  ‘Only one person. Someone who used to work for me, my old NCO, Mek Nimr.’ Even as he spoke, Makana was reminded of Zahra and how long she had waited for her revenge. Eleven years didn’t seem all that long to end what had begun that night on the bridge.

  ‘Your NCO?’ Sergeant Hamama tipped his head. ‘How the world turns. Well, I have responsibilities. It’s the same everywhere. Show me someone who has complete independence and I’ll show you a liar, or a fool. Take your p
ick. Even the president of the most powerful country on earth can’t do anything without the support of congress, and that’s how it is.’

  ‘That’s the deal. You hand me to Musab and Musab hands me to Mek Nimr?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘In return for what?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, and frankly, I don’t care. All of that stuff goes on above my head. All I do is take care of my little plot of land. They ask me a favour and at some stage I get one in return. That’s a lesson that might have benefitted you, if I may say so.’

  ‘What lesson is that?’

  ‘Knowing your limitations. Everyone has a station in life. You go beyond that and you are just asking for trouble.’

  Up ahead a strange glow appeared to emerge from the desert floor. Makana peered into the darkness, trying to make sense of the way light seemed to be coming up from below the ground.

  ‘What is that?’ he asked.

  ‘That is Kalonsha.’

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Kalonsha emerged from the darkness like a scene from a phantasmagorical dream. A nightmare inhabited by spirits left behind in this desert over the centuries. The men walking could conceivably have been modern-day counterparts to the warriors of the army of Cambyses that was swallowed up by the sand. They wore a mixture of traditional cotton robes and headdresses, military fatigues, camouflage trousers, army boots, sandals. Some had shaved heads while others sported the woolly afro of Hadendowa tribesmen. There was a range of racial typologies, reflecting the span of countries around the Sahara, north and south, east and west; from the green hills of Rwanda to the arid coastline of Mauritania, from Igbo to Bambara and back again. All of Africa was here and a handful of white faces testified to links further afield. A Toureg in a cowboy hat of fletted nylon strode by, his face masked by huge retro sunglasses with metal rims that looked like something from the 1970s. Other faces looked Cuban, or Latin American perhaps. Most of the men were armed. AK47s of various types were slung from shoulders as casually as waterbags along with other weapons from a range of sources. Around the sheltered bays were arrayed a startling display of vehicles along with military hardware including an old jeep with Wermacht markings on the side. It was being admired by a group of youths chewing qat in a scene that could have taken place in a museum painting. The man who leapt out from underneath was clearly white. A modern-day Robinson Crusoe, his skin so harshly burned by the sun it looked like leather. He mistook the curious onlookers for interested buyers. ‘Type 82 Kubelwagen, one of the most reliable cars ever made. I’ll take any offers.’ Clearly a labour of love, although it would never be of more than passing interest to these kids, for whom the history of cars was as dead as the pharaohs. Further over was a converted Nissan pickup with an anti-aircraft gun mounted in the back. The chassis was probably shot to pieces from the recoil but it drew the kind of admiring looks a decent camel used to get, or a beautiful woman. Even thinking in those terms was redundant.