Zanzibar

by Giles Foden

  All the way, as they had wound and slid along corridors of rock he seemed to know well, he had been talking – to himself or her she could hardly tell – in a garbled mixture of English and Swahili. One thing she had been able to pick out constantly was the phrase ‘jihad job’. He kept asking, in a sing-song voice, This jihad job? Or no jihad job? What this thing? This jihad job?

  But now, holding the point of the knife to her throat, he was definitely speaking to her.

  ‘You must help me escape from here,’ he said. ‘You must come with me as hostage and tell your friends to go away.’

  The knife was shaking in his hand. He seemed to be trying to master himself. Calming the pure fear inside her, Miranda locked her eyes on his in the shivering light.

  ‘They’re outside.’ She struggled to keep her voice calm. ‘My friends. You saw them coming. You must give yourself up. It will be better for you.’

  He stared back, tilting his head to one side. He looked crazy.

  ‘If you don’t help me, I will kill you. That is what voice says. Away from all. Kill all if necessary. Away from hunt. Execute all action. In the name of Allah, forgive!’

  * * *

  Queller walked over the island sand, checking whether they had surfaced anywhere. He went into the forest at another place, taking a different path. There seemed to be a hell of a lot of blind alleys that someone had cut through. Birds were whistling in the trees above him and light shone down on the forest floor. But the way the green pressed in gave an eerie atmosphere, a deadly stillness that seemed to suggest that the glades in which he paused and the defiles through which he passed had a presence beyond the merely human.

  He was relieved to come back out and walk down to the sea. Then he saw something strange. Out on the edge of the sandbar, the surf was tugging at some kind of object. He lifted the binoculars. Through the lens he saw a jet ski lying on its side, the light waves washing over it.

  * * *

  The man pressed the point of the knife a little harder against Miranda’s throat. Her mind jumped desperately from word to word, option to option, the damp cave wall against her spine. Then it came to her.

  She spoke softly and slowly. ‘Giving yourself up is what Allah would want. You have done enough harm. It must stop now. Let it stop now.’

  He moved away from her, and began shaking his head from side to side. She slid down the wall, raw-nerved, terrified.

  He lowered the knife, as if exhausted, and when he spoke it was if he just wanted to unburden himself.

  ‘They killed my parents. I realise it now. Al-Qaida killed my parents. Zayn killed my father and my mother. I wanted kill him, when I realise it. But when I saw him – I was too afraid.’

  He repeated himself, shouting. ‘Too afraid!’

  The phrase echoed round the cavern.

  ‘You did the bombing, right?’

  He nodded, his head bobbing in the green light.

  ‘But I was not the main. It was others – there is a man, Zayn … that man I said. And I shall be killing him.’

  ‘It is time to stop killing,’ Miranda said. ‘The time for killing is over.’

  He raised the knife again.

  Miranda tried to keep her voice as even as possible, to put into practice all she had learned, in books, in classrooms, about dealing with a hostage situation – bonding with the hostage-taker, trying to make him feel you were on his side, that you understood his concerns.

  ‘You haven’t told me your name. What is your name?’

  * * *

  Queller swung the binoculars round, scanning the horseshoe of the beach – until he saw the little stockade he had peered at earlier. Looming over it now was a large man, his torn shirt covered in blood. Queller recognised him as the Arab in the bullring. He thought about the gun he had given to Nick. But the man – who had just pulled one of the pieces of wood out of the palisade – was too far away to get a decent shot anyhow.

  He watched the Arab drag himself monstrously up the beach, leaning on the stick for support; then something strange happened. The huge man paused, lifted up the stick and began thrashing the sand. This went on for about a minute, before he continued on his way. He seemed to be heading for the lighthouse. Queller looked around the boat for some kind of weapon. His eye settled on a long steel spike, a fishing gaff, marlinspike. He picked it up and began walking in the direction the man had gone.

  * * *

  Nick hurried through the caves, sliding on the algae, switching the gun from side to side. He was glad he had brought it now, and had taken off the safety catch. He kept finding alcoves and openings, but they were empty. He carried on, breathing hard, cave moisture dripping down his face. He stopped, listened. Voices in the distance. A drop of algae fell from the ceiling onto his nose. He listened again for the voices. Sometimes they seemed far away, sometimes near. He called out her name.

  The shout echoed, reverberating amongst the hollows and angles of the cave, impossible to decipher or locate as it overlaid and repeated itself. Miranda! Miranda! Deeper in the cave, the echoes themselves seemed to twist over again, knitting and meshing knotting tighter and tighter together. Miraaanda…

  * * *

  Khaled stood up suddenly, dropping the knife. She saw it turn, tip-topping in the beam of the flashlight before disappearing into the dark. Khaled was spinning now, swivelling round in the cave, something silver glinting in his hand that he’d whipped from his waistband at the back – it was the tiny pistol he had taken from the compartment in the boat, she realised. He was all jangly again now, a bag of nerves. All her good work had been undone.

  She stretched a foot across the slimy floor trying to hook the knife and bring it closer. The man stopped spinning round. He gave a peculiar sigh and walked over to the flashlight. For a moment she saw his face in the phosphorescence, his eyes full of a wild light of their own, a strange, serene smile playing about his lips.

  She felt the knife under her foot.

  He picked up the flashlight and swung round, shining the beam full in her face. He took two quick steps then, and all was dark.

  * * *

  Next to the palisade Queller found the body of a large green snake. That was what the guy had been hitting on the ground, he realised. It must have tried to bite him. He followed the footsteps in the sand. There were drops of blood. The bull must have gored him pretty badly.

  He wished he still had his pistol. It was an Arcadia Machine & Tool.45 – no elephant stopper, since he preferred a light weapon these days, but a whole lot more use than a marlinspike. The tracks led to the lighthouse, then seemed to disappear.

  Holding the gaff in front of him, Queller was about to go inside when he heard a noise to his left. He turned to see the Arab lifting the thick length of wood he had taken from the beach. Queller jabbed the steel spike forward, but it was too late. The rough wood smacked him in the face, knocking him to the ground. The Arab bent to grab the spike, then lifted it over his head. Blinking away the pain, Queller saw two huge hands where they gripped the shaft, and he could see the steel point, too, as it plunged down.

  * * *

  Deep in the labyrinth, Nick entered a large cavern. The gun in one hand, he swept the beam of the flashlight around with the other. The light, bouncing off the green walls like a laser show, suddenly fell upon a figure crouched in a corner. As it did so the figure moved.

  ‘Please,’ said a voice. It was Miranda.

  ‘It’s me,’ he said, squelching across the floor. ‘It’s Nick, baby.’

  He knelt and shone the flashlight at her face. Her mouth was slightly open and her face was smeared with algae. But she looked OK otherwise. He put the flashlight down, reaching for her, drawing her head to his chest.

  She started to sob. He put his hands round her and lifted her. Her arms went round his neck. A shot rang out above them.

  * * *

  Queller stared at the sky. There was a terrible weight on his chest. He looked up at a few clouds crossing the blue in
the place where, some seconds ago, he had seen a shaven brown head, a face with a wolfish expression, and two hands pulled back above, holding the gaff. It had glinted in the hot sun as it came down.

  Then all that had gone. There was gunfire. A small report, not his AMT but something lighter still, maybe a Derringer.

  A red hole had opened in the Arab’s forehead, liquid spurting onto Queller’s face and, before he understood what had happened, the man’s heavy body had pitched forward onto him. The gaff was planted in the sand behind his head – so close it had grazed his skull and pressed in strands of his hair. The Arab’s head was across Queller’s shoulder.

  A shadow came over him and he felt the gaff being pulled out of the ground. He saw a young African face looking down: the face of the youth who had taken Miranda.

  ‘I guess I owe you a debt of thanks,’ Queller said.

  The youth was still holding the gaff in one hand. In the other was a small pistol of exactly the type Queller had envisaged.

  ‘Do not thank me. Thank Allah. His voice spoke me. It spoke me and told me to give up this trick. To do some things I should have done long time before. Now I go to do more work. Not against America. True work for Muslim people.’

  Queller tried to wipe away the Arab’s blood from his eyes, but he couldn’t get his hand up.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be better,’ he said, trapped under the dead man, ‘if you came with me back to Dar and we talked all this through?’

  The youth touched Queller’s forehead with the point of the lance.

  ‘Because I no longer trust al-Qaida – you think that means I must trust America?’

  With that he lifted the gaff, turned and was gone.

  Queller tried to lift the dead Arab off him. But it was impossible with only one arm. He was too exhausted, too old. A few minutes later he heard gunshots. Then the noise of a boat starting up. Not long after that, Nick and Miranda were lifting off the dead man.

  *

  He leaned on them as they walked down to the shore. Khaled, as Miranda told them he was called, had taken the Cythère. He’d also removed the spare fuel jerry from the cabin cruiser and taken it with him. It wouldn’t have been any use to them anyway. The shooting Queller had heard was explained by a ragged line of holes beneath the waterline of the cruiser. Far across the water, the Cythère was nearly out of sight, its motor only faintly audible.

  ‘Olivier won’t be very happy,’ said Nick, as they watched. ‘That boat’s worth about a million. It had sonar and everything.’

  ‘Oh, the agency will see to that,’ Queller said, sitting down on a rock, rubbing and holding his chest.

  ‘Where do you think he’s gone?’

  Queller looked out to sea. There was no sign of the boat now.

  ‘Who knows?’ he said. ‘How the hell are we going to get off this island? Any ideas?’

  He looked round at Nick and Miranda standing hand in hand on the beach, the forest at their back and the lighthouse stretching up behind them.

  ‘Do you know you’re both covered in some kind of green stuff?’

  Nick grinned, and gave Miranda a sidelong look. ‘Maybe we should go into the sea and wash it off?’

  Queller smiled. ‘I shall avert my eyes and go up to that little house over there.’

  An hour later, clean and glowing, Nick and Miranda joined him in the cottage. They slept there that night. The following morning they were woken early by the sound of helicopters.

  32

  The story was out. CNN and several other networks had got wind of it, well before the rescue helicopters reached the mainland. Accordingly, when Queller, Nick and Miranda arrived in the drab, echoing halls of Dar airport, a phalanx of flashbulbs and bulbous TV microphones was there to greet them. They disembarked like a trio of pop stars. The impression of celebrity was strengthened by the presence of Altenburg’s men who, together with the brown-uniformed Tanzanian police, made a kind of gangway for them between the bawling reporters.

  There was also someone else there to greet them, a miraculous oddity, someone out of place who perhaps because of that, because of the flowing surprise of her bright orange, Hare Krishna robes, was able to burst through the cordon and press something into Queller’s only hand.

  A red carnation. He looked at her pale, blank face – white as peeled almonds, framed by long brown hair – and found himself saying, ‘Why thank you very much!’ It struck him, making an odd connection with the big Arab, that they were usually shaven-headed.

  As quickly as she had appeared, the Krishna was swept away by security. Queller, Miranda and Nick were rushed out into the car park, bundled into a Landcruiser, and driven to the FEST control at the Kili. Altenburg sat in the front passenger’s seat. Several vehicles followed behind, carrying FBI agents and Tanzanian government employees. In one of these lay Zayn’s massive corpse. It had been brought in a helicopter from Lyly. Lacking a coffin, they had had to use a fish crate. The Tanzanians who had organised this mainly comprised members of the General Service Unit, as their intelligence service was called. There were also a couple of policeman, including Ernest Chikambwa, who had gone in one of the helicopters to guide the Americans over the islands as they searched for Queller and company. The convoy got under way, travelling along the road from the airport towards the city, past maize plantations and shouting children.

  ‘So what the hell has been going on?’ Altenburg demanded, turning round and gripping the faux-leather headrest. ‘I want a full debrief you know, Jack.’

  ‘There’ll be plenty of time to give you all the information later. We’ve been through quite a lot.’

  ‘You are one stubborn guy!’ Altenburg exclaimed. ‘I want to know exactly what happened out there.’

  ‘We had a chase, one guy dead, the other got away. Isn’t that clear enough for now? You can debrief me back at the hotel. First I want a bath and a drink.’

  Interrupted by a radio call reporting the progess, or rather lack of progress, in the search for Khaled, Altenburg let it drop. Fingering the stem of the carnation, Queller looked at Nick and Miranda. Not exactly lovers in pretty springtime, he thought. They both looked wrecked. Miranda was staring dumbly at the shanties and shop signs running by the window; Nick had fallen asleep, his head on her shoulder.

  Queller needed to think straight. In half an hour they would be in the centre of Dar, approaching the keyboards and microphones of the FEST comms centre where the whole thing would have to be chopped up and reported in such a way that Washington could understand it. A smooth narrative, appropriately processed, free of the amorphous raggedness that was reality itself. After that would come the real report, the analysis that could take months, that put back in all the disruptions in the pattern of recollected events and tried to understand them.

  He held the carnation up to his nose and smelt it. Only the faintest scent. The bud was still half closed. On an impulse he reached across his thighs and placed it on the empty seat beside him – under the dangling sleeve that hid his stump. It was hurting from his fall on the boat, and so was his face where the Arab had slashed him with the stick. It gave Queller some satisfaction to think that his would-be murderer was lying in a fish crate in one of the vehicles behind. At least something good had come out of this mess, even though it was scant compensation for those who had been injured in the bombings, or the relatives of those who had died.

  But then, what would be? Assassinating bin Laden? Hunting down every member of al-Qaida and executing them? It wasn’t possible to work out a calculus of loss in this way. Revenge might be a kind of equation – an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, even an arm for an arm – but not justice. Especially when there was always the danger of creating martyrs and inflaming the situation further. Organisations like al-Qaida had the monstrous typology of the hydra, growing eleven heads for every two you cut off. In any case, their effective strength was not measured merely by counting heads.

  *

  Outside, thickening from fields and vill
ages to shanty town and warehousing, the rural landscape shaded into urban. Altenburg was issuing orders over the radio. Queller listened: Queller the all-hearing, Queller the veteran Arabist who had coined the phrase ‘The Age of Acronyms’ to describe the post-Cold War security situation, who had devised in his seminars what he believed to be the first application of organisation theory to the new world order.

  The truth of it was that those ‘thousands of hell hounds called terrorists’ (Edmund Burke), those ‘cocksucker terrorists’ (Oliver North), had over time a tendency to move towards a mirror image of the intelligence communities to which they were opposed, imitating their methods and behaviour. The acronyms of one side – ARM, PLO, PFLP, IRA – found their opposite numbers on the other – FBI, CIA, DST, SIS. This underpinned a wider thesis: that a terror organisation’s increasingly rigid structure would, eventually, over time, lead it to the negotiating table.

  Now, however, sitting in the rear of the FEST Landcruiser – exhausted, a throbbing scarlet stripe across his cheek and a carnation by his side – he was not so sure about this line he used to spin. The argument just seemed like a set of vague axioms now. It didn’t really apply to al-Qaida anyway. The structure of bin Laden’s organisation was based on the idea that structure itself should be resisted – that one cell of the organism should not know what the other is doing. He could never see Uncle Sam sitting down to peace talks with Mr Sam. Or the Taliban allowing bin Laden to be extradited and tried – not unless the sanctions the US had already imposed on Afghanistan really began to bite.