by Henry Porter
‘Near where Sammi was wounded?’ she said quickly.
‘Exactly there. It was during that period.’
‘At the same time?’
‘No…’
Loz got up and said, ‘Karim, I think I need to change the position of your legs. The way you have them will do no good to your hip. I’ve told you about this before.’ His tone was gently admonishing.
Herrick sat back as though she hadn’t noticed the diversion. ‘So you came across The Poet before Sammi was wounded?’ she said.
‘I don’t remember now,’ he said. He winced as Loz moved him.
‘Maybe another painkiller,’ said Loz, reaching for the table.
Khan shook his head. ‘I’m okay.’
She waited.
‘Yes it was sometime about then… before or after, I’m not sure.’
‘But it is perfectly possible that Sammi met The Poet during that time.’ She paused and looked at Loz. ‘Did you?’
‘Yes,’ said Loz, looking unsettled. ‘I told you that we met him but I can’t remember exactly when.’ He got up again and started fussing over Khan’s feet.
‘I’m sorry, this is not going to work,’ said Herrick. ‘I think I’d prefer to talk to Karim alone.’ Foyzi moved from the top of the bed and steered Loz from the room.
She smiled at Khan reassuringly. ‘Sammi has told me about the brave way you saved him. I must say it’s an extraordinary story. Was The Poet there to witness that?’
He shrugged helplessly.
‘Let’s say he was,’ she said. ‘What date was that – roughly?’
‘It was winter – November 1993. I think.’
‘Not after Christmas?’
‘No, definitely not.’
‘I just wanted to make sure, because we’re looking for pictures taken by an English photographer at that time.’
Khan absorbed this.
‘In fact, it would be helpful if you could identify as many people as you can when I eventually get the picture.’
Khan grimaced.
‘I’m sorry. You’re in pain.’
‘Yes, my feet hurt a little.’ He stopped. ‘Maybe Sammi could help with the pictures?’
‘That’s a good idea.’
Gradually she returned to the subject of the winter of 1993-94. She made notes, taking particular care over places, dates, weather conditions and names. Khan’s memory was hazy, and it didn’t work in a linear fashion, so building a chronology was difficult. He relived the terror of that winter in epic flashes – the din of bombardment from all directions; the incursions of the Serbs into the streets of Sarajevo, the danger from snipers and the hunger and cold. It was in the account of this time that he made several mistakes. She made a note of them, but her smile did not fade as he stumbled between what actually happened and what Loz had prepared him to say.
The air was oppressively heavy and with each blink his eyes stayed closed for seconds at a time. She rose and left the room, at which Loz returned with a slightly exaggerated look of concern.
She returned at four, sat down and placed the recorder in its usual position. Loz had straightened Khan on the bed and was holding his legs just above the ankle bone with his thumbs and forefingers. The rest of his fingers were splayed out so that they didn’t touch the bruised flesh below the ankles. Then he lifted the legs, almost as if comparing their weight, and tugged each one gently. He moved to the knees and thighs with a gentle stroking motion, pulled up the shift and covered Khan’s groin with a cloth.
She made to leave.
‘Stay, I’ve already examined him there.’
His hands moved to the hips and he again seemed to weigh Khan’s body. Then he went round to the side and slipped both hands under his back, working his fingers into place while looking away to the corner of the room. Herrick was struck by the concentration in his face.
‘You see,’ he said after a little while, ‘by hanging him from the ceiling they stretched his body so everything went out of line. Apart from the damage this did to the muscles and ligaments, there are various skeletal problems. These will take longer to heal.’
‘Have you treated this kind of injury before?’
‘Yes, a young man – a New York cab driver from Cameroon. He had been tortured very badly three years before I saw him. The damage was hidden for most of the time, but came out at moments of stress. The man was mystified because the spasms seemed to be unconnected with the method of torture.’ He paused. ‘The body does not forget, you see.’
There were periods of inactivity over the next half-hour during which Loz’s slender hands simply rested on Khan’s chest, under his neck or at the back of his cranium. At other moments they became animated, brushing and pressing the skin and then once or twice flicking it with a screwing motion of the finger knuckles. The way he moved around Khan’s bed was so precise and fluent that it had an almost hypnotic effect on her. When he had finished, it was clear Khan was having difficulty in keeping his eyes open.
Loz shook his head apologetically.
‘That’s okay,’ she said. ‘I want to talk to you anyway. We’ll go under the trees.’
They walked out into a second perfect sunset.
‘It’s been interesting to hear about Bosnia,’ she said conversationally. ‘I’d forgotten about the brutality of it all.’
‘People do,’ he said.
‘Of course, both sides did terrible things. People forget that too.’ She was on more certain ground now.
‘No, just one side.’
‘There were Muslim war criminals too.’
‘We were the defenders of Sarajevo,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘People were being killed every day by the snipers and artillery.’
‘Even so, atrocities were also committed by the Bosniaks. Raiding parties on the Serb lines. Men were butchered and tortured.’
He continued to shake his head. ‘You’re mistaken.’
‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘The War Crimes Tribunal has the names.’
‘Yes, but there were no indictments of Muslims. The only Muslims who appear at the tribunal are victims – women from the rape camps; men who saw their friends and family murdered.’
‘But it did happen,’ she said. ‘We should always remember that Muslims are as capable of crime as Christians.’
‘Not then,’ he rounded on her, a startled look growing in his face. ‘The market square bomb – what about that? What about those people?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t recall…’
‘These things are in the news for a few days and then forgotten, but for anyone who was there… One shell aimed into the central market place at midday. Seventy people killed. The carnage…’
‘Yes of course, I remember. You mean, you saw that?’
‘This is what I am saying.’ The veins in his neck and in his forehead were bulging.
‘That must have been terrible.’ She knew the exact details of the massacre. The round had killed sixty-nine people and injured two hundred when it impacted on a plastic canopy just above the heads of hundreds of shoppers in the central market. More important to her was the date – Saturday February 5, 1994 – at least two months after Sammi Loz said he had been injured in another mortar attack and airlifted out of Bosnia to Germany and then London. How could he have made such an elementary mistake?
She nodded as though it was all coming back to her. ‘There was some suggestion that mortar came from the Muslim side to gain sympathy from the world.’
‘No, no. I was there! I was standing just a few streets away. The Serbs fired it from the hills above.’
‘But you can’t tell where a mortar comes from,’ she said. ‘It’s lobbed up in the air with very little noise.’
‘Listen! What Muslim would do this to his own people? Tell me that.’ He was shaking. ‘I was there. I saw it. Men and women blown to pieces – decapitated. Arms, legs everywhere. ’
‘I’m sorry… but that was the rumour at the time. I think our
people in Sarajevo even investigated it.’ She wasn’t going to pursue the point because she’d got exactly the information she wanted: Loz was still in Sarajevo in 1994. And that meant his entire account of the last decade had to be called into question.
She wrote an email to Teckman at Vauxhall Cross with a series of terse requests, pretty certain it would end up with Andy Dolph. There was no need to outline her theory to him – he would get it straight away from the drift of her questions – she just prayed that he’d have the resources to follow up the idea. She stayed on line but nothing came, so she hung up and put the phone away, realising as she unplugged the leads that she had failed to send the latest recording of her interview with Khan. She’d left the damned recorder in with Khan and Loz.
She went again to the room and sat down beside Khan. Loz’s composure had returned, but he was evidently worried about Khan, whom he was attempting to feed with small pieces of bread and goat’s cheese. There were plates of tahini and sliced fruit on the bed, untouched. Khan’s head moved from side to side, avoiding the food as a child would do. He wasn’t hungry, he said, and there were pains in his chest and stomach. Loz explained this was indigestion and that he must eat if he was to build up his strength. The tussle went on until at length Loz set down the plate and turned to a bottle of vitamins. As he did so, Herrick’s hand slipped down to the leg of the chair where the recorder was. She glanced down and noticed the flashing light that indicated that the memory was full.
‘Look,’ she said with a certain amount of irritation. ‘I think we’re probably done for the day. We need to have a good session tomorrow though. I’m going to eat now.’
‘Thank you for being so understanding,’ said Loz softly, without looking up.
Khan nodded goodnight.
She found Foyzi by the oven with the old man. A pile of flat breads was fast accumulating in a palm-leaf basket balanced on top of the oven.
‘I’ll be eating with my men,’ said Foyzi, gesturing into the dark. ‘There’s food for you on the table. I won’t be far away.’ He adjusted the strap of a machine pistol over his shoulder, picked up a box of provisions, put the bread on top, then padded off into the dark, followed by the old man who was wheeling a container of water on a little carriage.
Isis set a lamp on the table and remembered the whisky, still lodged behind a stone on the ground. There were also some cigarettes there. She bent down, took one from the pack, lit up and tipped the chair so that she could rest her head against the wall and look at the necklace of stars strung across the tops of the trees.
A few moments later Loz appeared. ‘Can I join you? Karim’s asleep.’ His tone was ingratiating.
‘Yes, do. He didn’t seem too good to me.’
‘It’s to be expected. He has got a slight intestinal reaction to the antibiotics. We have to remember what he’s been through. It’s not just the torture, but months of not eating or sleeping properly. But he will recover.’
‘Thanks to you.’
‘No,’ he said, sitting down opposite her and placing his hands on the table. ‘This is all due to you, Isis. You saved him and we are indebted to you.’
‘Where will you go after this?’
‘I’ve been thinking about it,’ he said, surveying the food on the table. ‘I have contacts and some money in Switzerland. I shall probably take Karim there, and after that… well, we will have to see.’
Did he really believe they would let him slip away like that? ‘I thought you would be tempted to disappear into South America for a year or two,’ she said.
‘I’ve never been, but I’m certain it wouldn’t suit Khan.’ He paused. ‘And you?’
She pushed herself from the wall and stubbed out the cigarette on the ground. ‘I’ll go back to work in London.’
He massaged his neck and looked up at the sky. ‘You know, in an odd way the time spent here has done me good. I may change my life after this.’
‘You may be forced to,’ she said sharply. ‘The FBI want you in New York and they expect you to explain about the money you sent to Lebanon.’
‘I don’t think so,’ he said simply.
‘Will you continue with your practice?’
‘Who knows what happens. Did you have any idea a week ago that you would be on an island in the middle of the Nile with us?’ He paused for an answer but got none. ‘I read an article in the newspaper a few weeks back about a man who was driving along a road near his home in Connecticut. He had been to the local stores; the weather was fine; there was no traffic on the roads. As he reached the driveway of his home, a tree that had stood for hundreds of years suddenly fell down on his car and set it alight. His family and neighbours were unable to rescue him, and watched as he burned to death. In the newspaper, there were expressions of puzzlement from his family. Why should this good man – a loved and loving man – be taken in the prime of his life? Why? Who was behind it?’
‘Do you believe in God, Dr Loz?’
‘Yes, naturally.’
‘How do you explain the wisdom of dropping a tree on an innocent man?’
‘I don’t need to. That’s not for me to understand.’
‘But you must try to fit it into your system of belief?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t. And you, Isis, do you believe?’
‘Maybe, but I don’t think God intervenes in human affairs.’
‘Why?’
‘Compare the intricacy and scale of the universe,’ she looked up at the sky, ‘with the mess and pain of human life. There’s no one running this thing except us, and we should take responsibility for it. When we do, things will improve.’
‘That’s an atheist speaking.’
‘No, a rationalist.’
‘Surely you believe in fate – destiny?’
She picked up some bread. ‘They’re words used to explain chance, luck, accident and coincidence. I don’t believe in a pre-ordained life. No.’
He began eating also, smiling as though in possession of superior knowledge. ‘With your name, Isis, you could have guessed that you would eventually end up here. That’s fate.’
‘Actually, I wasn’t named after the Egyptian goddess,’ she said. ‘My name comes from the end and beginning of my mother’s first two names – Alazais Isobel.’
‘From two beautiful names comes one beautiful name – like a child.’
‘Right,’ said Herrick.
‘But seriously, here you are on an island in the Nile. Did you know that Isis’s greatest temple is on the Nile, somewhere south of Luxor, and that she is associated with the river and the growing of corn?’
‘Yes, I did,’ she said without interest. ‘How come you know so much about this?’
‘I find Isis the most appealing of all the ancient deities because to begin with she used her magic to heal the sick. She brought her husband Osiris back to life, and nursed her son Horus. Also, she is made of contradictory passions: on the one hand she was ruthless and cunning; on the other, a loyal and devoted wife who went to the ends of the earth to find her husband’s dead body. She is like all interesting people – a paradox. In her case, both deadly and caring.’ With this he broke a piece of bread and scooped up some tahini.
‘If anything, Dr Loz, the paradox is nearer to your character. I mean here you are healing your friend but in other lives you are, or have been, a soldier and fundraiser for a terrorist organisation. So perhaps the lesson is that we should never judge someone by one observation, but wait until the whole picture emerges from many observations, then decide which is the dominant trait.’ She stopped. ‘Would you like a drink?’ she asked.
‘I don’t drink,’ he said.
‘Well, I’m going to have one.’
Loz wrinkled his nose.
‘When I was at school,’ she continued, ‘I did read something about Isis, in particular about her relations with Ra, the sun god. Do you know about Ra, Sammi?’
He shook his head.
‘Ra’s might depended on his sec
ret name, a name that only he knew. You see, the ancient Egyptians believed that if someone learned your secret name they gained power over you. Isis made a cobra from Ra’s spittle, which had fallen to the ground on his journey across the sky. The cobra bit Ra and injected poison. Only when Ra told Isis his secret name did she agree to relieve his pain.’
‘In other words, she tortured him. I told you she was ruthless. ’
She smiled. ‘I was wondering whether you had a secret name. Something that would give another person power over you if they knew it.’
‘Why do you do this job? This spying.’
‘It’s very simple. I believe in the freedoms that we have in the West, and I am happy to work against those who want to destroy them.’ She paused to sip the whisky she had mixed with a little mineral water. ‘Also, I’m good at it,’ she said, putting the glass down. ‘Very good at it.’
His forehead puckered with disbelief. ‘You want nothing else in your life?’
‘You’re making the assumption that I don’t have anything else in my life.’
‘You lack something,’ he said, ‘possibly love.’
‘Oh, give me a break. Let me tell you I’m happy and utterly fulfilled in what I do.’
‘No, I think not.’
‘On what evidence?’
‘Your body. The tension in your shoulders, the way you stand and move, the set of your mouth, the expression in your eyes. There are a hundred signs. You’re a very attractive woman, but neither happy nor satisfied.’
‘I guess that’s the line you use on all the girls in New York,’ she said.
‘I’m serious,’ he said. ‘You should take more care of yourself, maybe visit an osteopath when you return to London.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with me.’
‘Except your hip, which hurts when you get up in the morning, and your shoulders, which rise up during the day and cause you headaches, and perhaps a difficulty at night when you try to find a comfortable position for your neck on the pillow.’ He sat back, satisfied. ‘You could certainly use some help.’
She reached for a carrot and sliced it lengthways into strips.
‘I would guess you’ve been very seriously ill at one time in your life. There seems to be some residue in your body of that sickness. When was that?’