by Tahir Shah
‘It was what they deserved,’ she said pointedly.
‘They? You think there was more than one?’
‘Who knows? Who cares?’
The American glanced over and looked at Ghita, whose face was locked forward on the road. He couldn’t believe she was so uncaring. But then it was he who had driven the Range Rover off the road.
‘We have to pull up when we see a single eucalyptus tree.’
‘Like that one?’
‘Yes! Stop here.’
‘Now what?’
‘We wait.’
‘I can’t believe there’s a prison anywhere out here,’ Blaine said, turning the engine off. ‘It’s the middle of nowhere.’
‘That’s the reason they chose it. Nowhere to escape to.’
‘I guess so, but in the movies it’s never like this.’
Ghita pushed her hands back through her hair, combing it with her fingers.
‘Your love of the movies,’ she said, ‘it’s...’
‘Stupid?’
She leaned over and kissed him.
‘It’s the sweetest thing,’ she said.
The winter sunlight playing softly on the landscape, Blaine and Ghita waited at the rendezvous point. They arrived at twelve forty-five. There was half an hour until the dhuhr afternoon prayer.
‘If my life in New York hadn’t fallen apart I wouldn’t be sitting here now in this raincoat,’ Blaine said, ‘in a Rolls-Royce, with a beautiful woman...’
‘...in a rocky field, in the mountains of a distant land?’
‘Maybe it is like out of a movie,’ said Blaine.
‘As for breaking into a jail?’
‘Well, that’s pure Hollywood. Worthy of Humphrey Bogart himself.’ Blaine swallowed. ‘I’m sure he would have approved,’ he said.
‘I can feel my heart pumping,’ Ghita replied. ‘I just have to keep my head.’ She blew into her hands. ‘I want to tell you something,’ she said.
‘What is it now?’
‘This is my problem. It’s too much to ask of you – to ask of anyone – to help me more than you have. When the goldsmith’s cousin gets here, I’m going with him. I have money now, so my father and I will make our own way back to Casa. In any case if we’re trying to be inconspicuous, a vintage Rolls-Royce is probably a little too much.’
Blaine smiled.
‘You’re going to have to do a lot better than that,’ he said.
‘For what?’
‘To get me to scoot off without you. I’m dug in deep and am rather looking forward to meeting the guy who filled your head with such nonsense.’
‘It’s not from him,’ Ghita replied. ‘He’s the most sensible man on earth. And he’s ashamed of me... of what I’ve become.’
‘Of what you became,’ Blaine corrected. ‘In the short time I’ve known you, you’ve changed. Don’t you see it?’
‘I’ve had to think for myself.’
‘And what a learning curve it’s been.’
Ghita touched a hand to Blaine’s forearm.
‘Please promise me you’ll go when the contact gets here,’ she said.
The American sighed. He was about to say something when the sound of an engine broke the silence. Firing up the Rolls, he got ready for a quick getaway.
‘Do you see them?’
‘No, not yet.’
‘They’ll come around the next bend.’
Thirty seconds passed. It seemed like an hour. Then a shabby pickup swung round the corner, the vehicle rattling to a halt a few yards away in a cloud of dust. The driver waved a hand out of the window.
Blaine returned the signal.
A man got out. He was wearing an officer’s uniform, a cracked leather belt tight around his unwieldy waist. He moved slowly, as if with dread, his dark eyes circled with fear.
Ghita got out and walked over to him.
‘Peace be upon you,’ he said. ‘My name is Murad. I am the cousin of Abdelkarim. We have very little time. Do you have the money for the baksheesh?’
Ghita took out two of the bricks of American dollar bills that Habiba had given her.
‘This should be more than enough,’ she said.
Murad took them, weighed them in his hand.
‘OK. Now, lie in the back of the truck, and hide under the blankets.’
Ghita went back to the Rolls-Royce. She kissed Blaine, hugged him hard, and made her way over to the vehicle. Then, climbing in, she began furling a filthy blanket over herself.
Murad laid half a dozen cartons of beef bones onto his passenger. He got into the driver’s seat and revved the tired old engine.
A moment before the pickup pulled off into the dust, Blaine cursed. Leaping from the Rolls-Royce, he sprinted over, and jumped in with Ghita.
‘Don’t say a word!’ he said.
Ninety-nine
Thirty minutes passed before the pickup reached the first security gate.
Set in the middle of a smooth rectangular plain, the entrance was overlooked by a pair of symmetrical watchtowers, armed guards manning each of them behind bulletproof glass.
After a considerable pause, the vehicle was waved through, and began to run the gauntlet between barricades, each of them electrified and fortified with great spirals of concertina razor wire.
A full twenty minutes was spent crossing the plateau, such was its size. Beneath the blankets, Blaine and Ghita clung together, as the vehicle jolted from side to side.
Then Murad braked hard.
He got out of the vehicle and called to the crew manning the second security gate.
‘What’s going on?’ Blaine whispered.
‘I think we’re entering the prison now.’
A siren sounded up on the watchtower. Then a pair of officers climbed down a rusted iron ladder and made a rudimentary inspection. Murad held up his identity badge, and waved a hand at the back. One of the guards peered in, grimaced, and beckoned him back to his seat.
Another set of gates followed, and eventually the outline of the prison materialized against the dim mountain sky.
There were watchtowers galore, security lights, and miles and miles of razor wire in concertina, covering almost every surface.
The pickup rolled dead slow down a ramp, its bald tyres pressing against the diagonal grooves in the concrete. The steel gates clanged open, then closed fast, and a guard’s whistle echoed loud and shrill.
Too fearful to sit upright, Ghita and Blaine waited for Murad’s signal. The beef bones pressed heavily against them, but they lay rigid, not daring to move.
In the distance a siren sounded, three short bursts, the noise lost to the outside world. Murad steered his vehicle down through a subterranean corridor. It was walled in sheets of steel plate, with a concrete ceiling and floor.
At the end he stopped, checked the coast was clear, and only then made his way hastily to the back of the truck. Lifting away the boxes of bones, he was surprised to see the foreigner there as well.
‘I can only take one of you,’ he said.
‘Me,’ Ghita replied.
‘Then put these on.’
He threw down prison overalls.
‘You wait here,’ Ghita whispered to Blaine. ‘I’ll hurry back with my father.’
Murad looked at his watch.
Squinting for a moment, he said:
‘We must wait for the change in shifts. It happens on the hour. Your father is kept in the solitary isolation block. It’s got the highest security. I will take you directly there, and you will have three minutes to get into the block and to leave. Do exactly as I say.’
Ghita slipped on the overalls and touched Blaine’s hand tenderly. The goldsmith’s cousin picked up one of the cartons and motioned for her to follow him.
Down a slope.
Through three doors with push-button locks.
Another slope, this time uphill.
Then a corridor, and an electrified gate.
Once through it, Murad opened a steel armour-plated door using a key
that hung from the ring on his belt.
He put the box down.
‘Quickly, come with me,’ he said.
They hurried along yet another corridor, and then another, and through three more steel gates. Once again, Murad looked at his wristwatch.
‘We’re two minutes early,’ he said.
They waited in a doorway, both of them concentrating on the seconds. Ghita caught a flash of childhood memory – the days when her mother was still alive. She was sitting on the edge of a stream in Switzerland with her parents.
A picnic in the mountains. Warm summer air, butterflies, and strawberry flan.
All of a sudden, a shrill whistle sounded.
It was followed by the metallic crunch of gates slamming shut, and the voice of authority bellowing an order.
‘That’s it,’ Murad said. ‘We have to move now!’
He led the way, sprinting down the last corridor, Ghita less than a pace behind. Quickly, he jammed a flat-edged key in the lock of the sheet-steel door, ‘3’ written in chipped white paint at the top.
The cell was suddenly blasted with light.
In the corner, where the wretched walls met the floor, a man was hunched over in terror. His eyes were covered by a trembling hand, his face bruised and unshaven.
Ghita was shaking so much herself she couldn’t speak at first. She felt as though she was about to pass out.
‘Baba?’ she whispered, her voice hoarse with emotion. ‘Is that you?’
The figure seemed paralysed at first. But, very slowly, he lolled forwards quizzically.
‘Baba, it’s me... it’s Ghita!’
They hugged, so tight that they could never be parted, both of them in a flood of tears.
Murad called from behind.
‘Hurry! You must hurry!’
‘We have to go, Baba! There’s no time.’
‘Go? Where?’
‘To safety. I have arranged it. Don’t ask me how.’
A look of total disbelief fell like a death shroud over Omary’s face.
He began to choke.
‘Darling, Baba, I have arranged it all.’
‘But how?’
‘Through taking favours and by paying bribes – it was the only choice to save you.’
Hicham Omary let go of his daughter, his fingers gnarled and stiff.
‘No!’ he spat through gritted teeth. ‘I shall not run like a dog and be hunted, if corruption was the key that freed me!’
‘But, Baba... please!’
Hicham Omary turned his back.
‘Leave me!’ he growled. ‘Leave me now! Go!’
Ghita stretched forwards to touch his shoulder.
‘Please, Baba, please!’
But Omary turned, and pushed his daughter away.
An instant later, the door was slammed shut, and the cell was plunged into darkness once again.
Back at the pickup, Blaine peered out from under the blanket.
‘Where is he?’
Sobbing uncontrollably, Ghita climbed into the back. She thrust her arms around Blaine’s neck.
‘He wouldn’t come,’ she said, still in shock.
‘What? Why not?’
‘Because he’s far too proud to run.’
They hid under the blankets and the car rolled out from the belly of the prison, and ran the gauntlet of security checks once again. Ghita cried all the way, with Blaine unable to calm her.
Once the prison was far behind, they poked their heads out from the blankets.
The sun was lowering, the soft winter light illuminating the crags and the mountain scrub.
‘I think we’re nearly there,’ said Blaine. He pivoted round and scanned the road ahead. ‘Wow, d’you see that?’
‘What?’
‘The smoke up there?’
Ghita sat up.
‘I wonder what it is.’
‘Looks like one hell of a fire.’
The pickup rounded a corner and moved through the plume of dense oily smoke, drawing to a halt fifty feet from it.
‘Oh my God,’ said Blaine.
‘It’s... it’s...’
‘The Silver Ghost.’
‘What could have happened?’
‘Must have been the electrics.’
They got out of the pickup.
As soon as they were on the ground, Murad raced away. He didn’t stop to say a word.
In silence, Blaine led the way up to the wreckage. The side had been strafed with high-calibre machine gun fire.
‘That’s no electrical fire,’ he said.
‘What are we going to do?’
‘Walk, I guess.’
There was the sound of a vehicle in the distance, navigating the mountain passes.
They both turned at once.
‘Let’s flag it down,’ said Ghita.
‘D’you think they’ll stop?’
‘Hope so.’
The car’s engine grew louder, straining as it climbed and took the last bend. Blaine put his hands up and waved. Then Ghita jumped into the road and did the same.
A shot rang out, and another, and a third, fourth and fifth.
Lurching forwards, Blaine shoved Ghita out the way.
They crouched down behind the burning wreckage of the Rolls-Royce. A slate-grey four-by-four changed down as it sped into view. The driver hit the brakes hard. As he did so, the passenger aimed his weapon, a 9 mm Glock.
He fired off two rounds in the direction of the Silver Ghost.
Blaine swivelled round, scouring the crags.
‘What are you looking for?’ Ghita said urgently. ‘Can’t you see, the shots are coming from over there.’
‘There’s another weapon somewhere – much heavier calibre – the one that hit the Ghost.’ He pointed to a blurred figure on a vantage point above the road. ‘Looks like he’s reloading.’
‘Should we surrender?’
Blaine balked at the question.
‘Are you crazy? I’ve seen enough gangster movies to know they’d cut us to pieces.’
‘Then what do we do?’
‘Pray.’
‘For what?’
‘A miracle.’
The machine gunner raised his weapon and took approximate aim. As he did so, the driver of the four-by-four steered his vehicle to the far side of the Rolls-Royce, screeching to a stop.
‘We’re going to die,’ said Ghita in a cold plain voice.
Blaine narrowed his eyes.
‘D’you hear that?’
‘What?’
‘Another vehicle.’
With time elasticated around them, the pair focused on their hearing. The sound was loud and deep, almost like a racing car.
‘Must be their back-up.’
The man with the Glock got out of the car and walked towards them slowly, the Rolls-Royce in between. Blaine picked up a sharp-edged stone and hurled it towards him.
He missed.
The Glock pistol was aimed. But before it could be fired, the machine gun rang out, spraying the ground behind them.
And then, the miracle arrived.
Swinging fast around the last bend came a blur of scarlet.
A 1966 Ferrari Daytona convertible.
Its engine revving as if about to leave pole position, the horn sounded long and hard.
‘Get in!’ screamed a voice – a young voice.
Blaine and Ghita looked at each other.
‘It’s Saed!’ Blaine yelled.
Without thinking how or why, they leapt into the Ferrari, as it spun round and disappeared in a blinding screen of dust.
‘They’re sure to chase us!’ Blaine shouted.
‘Don’t worry,’ Saed replied fast. ‘I know a short cut.’
‘Back to Casablanca?’
The shoeshine boy jerked his head up and down.
‘We’ll be there in no time!’
‘So where did you get your hands on a Ferrari?’ Blaine asked, as the road levelled out.
Saed st
rained to look meek.
‘Well, you know how it is.’
‘No, I’m not sure that I do... tell me.’
‘More interesting is how you knew we were there, waiting to be cut down,’ said Ghita.
‘Or how your feet reach the pedals,’ said Blaine.
The shoeshine boy smiled, a raw mischievous smile.
‘I tied bricks to my feet!’ he said.
One hundred
Eight men and three women were seated around the oval table in the Globalcom conference room. At the head, Hicham Omary’s chair was conspicuously empty. The firm’s board of directors were anxious at having been called to convene without their leader.
Glancing at his wristwatch, Hamza Harass motioned to the security guard to leave.
Overweight, and with a horseshoe of thin grey clinging to the back of his head, Harass was sweating – a signal that he needed something for his heart. Slipping a tiny silver box from his pocket, he gulped down one of the red pills inside and, in his own time, addressed the room:
‘Ladies and gentlemen, thank God at last we’ve been permitted to re-enter our offices,’ he began. ‘Despite this fact, the authorities have confiscated computers, files and everything else they could haul away with them. I want to thank you for making yourselves available, and to start by saying how saddened we have all been by the sudden fall from grace of our chairman.’
‘Who would have thought he would have had such an interest in Class A drugs?’ mumbled the man on Harass’s right.
‘C’mon,’ said François Lassalle, the only Frenchman on the board, ‘what planet are you from? This is clearly a set-up!’
Patricia Ross held out her hands. She was seated at the side of the conference table, in a special place reserved for her.
‘The timing was certainly convenient,’ she said quietly. ‘Discovered moments after the start of his anti-corruption crusade.’
‘Of course he was framed,’ affirmed Nadim Lahlou, sitting at the far end of the table. ‘We all know Omary’s no drug dealer.’
‘Is anyone aware of where exactly he’s been taken?’ asked Driss Senbel.
‘To the desert, or the mountains. One of those hell-holes they keep ready for terrorists. Does it really matter?’ Lahlou replied.
‘What matters is what we’re going to do to save him,’ said Patricia Ross.
The directors allowed their gaze to slip onto the notepads and pencils before them.
None said a word. None, that is, until Hamza Harass stood up.