by Nick Macfie
“What of it? I was with a sincere and kindly man.”
“The other part of the story, I am led to believe, was provided by Todd, your husband’s aide.”
“It would not surprise me. He is violent and depraved to infinity, as I believe I have already told you. I am going to tell you something that will make you feel more clearly about me.”
“Clearly. That would be good.”
“A long time ago, an American president came on to me in the Oval Office bathroom. And a French president.”
“On separate occasions, I assume.”
Marina leant back against the sofa and put her hands in the air, stretching her blouse over her breasts. “And several world famous entertainers and sportsmen – at least four cricketers from your country,” she said.
I thought briefly of Geoffrey Boycott, with an accent not unlike Yorkshire Todd, as Marina put her hand on her heart and puckered her lips in a kind of spoilt-baby “don’t be mean to me” expression. If I had seen this in a movie, I would have snarled “for fuck’s sake” under my breath and repositioned myself in my seat.
She went on: “The point I am trying to make…”
She was cut short. Headlights swept across the curtains and ceiling as a car came up the drive and Marina put her hands to her mouth.
“For fuck’s sake,” I said. “What is it now?”
“I am fearing it is time for you to go.”
She was fearing? I was fearing. I didn’t know who I was more afraid of, Yorkshire Todd or the colonel. I followed Marina to the window, three steps behind.
“He mustn’t see you.”
“Who is it?” I said. The car, a low-hung sports model, stopped in the drive and the lights went out. A man climbed out under the light of the porch, next to a brass model cannon used as a shoe scraper. He climbed quite slowly, holding on to the door frame. It was Mian Langhari.
“Has he hurt his back?” I asked.
“Shhh.”
“You were expecting him?”
“I wasn’t sure. He mustn’t see you. It would spoil everything. Come this way.”
“I don’t want to spoil everything. But he’ll probably need to stop for a wee on the way to the front door.”
“He is a lion of a man.”
She took me by the hand and led me to a door with steps going down to a cellar.
“You are going to lock me in the cellar?”
“Do not be outrageous.” She pulled me down in blackness and hit a light switch. A bare bulb lit up a room about twenty foot square with whitewashed brick walls propping up three Chinese Flying Pigeon bicycles with sprung saddles and rod brakes. “There’s so little time.”
“So little time for what? Marina, can’t we go back upstairs again?”
“You take the bicycle and you travel that way,” she said.
“Through the door?”
“Yes.”
“What’s through the door? I don’t want to travel that way, Marina. I want to stay with you. I don’t want to cycle around the cellar.”
“You have to go.”
“Please. You tell the old man he has to go.” That was close to a Jim Reeves line. It was also the Groucho Marx line in reverse. Rejection is a huge turn on.
“There are bicycle clips on the handlebars,” she said. “For your trousers.”
“Marina. Please.”
“I have no time to explain. I must go. Ride that way.”
“I don’t want to ride that way.”
“Cycle for five minutes. At the end you will see a TV screen. Watch until you hear me tell you what to do next. No, there is not enough time. When you see the screen, you will see a red button on your right. Press the button and you will get a new vision on your screen. A split-screen of two roads. If the roads are clear, press the red button once again and the door will open and you will be free.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.” I heard the doorbell upstairs. “Your instructions are so complicated.”
“Try to remember. Do not push the red button if you can see someone.”
“Just tell him to go. He must be seventy-five.”
“Fare thee well, Hadley.”
“Fare me well? Wait, Marina. Don’t go…” The door closed and she turned a key. Never trust an old man who reeks of charm, I thought.
And what was that about bicycle clips? I lifted up the bike nearest me and bounced it a couple of times. It was heavy and unwieldy and had just one gear. And this used to be a status symbol in China.
I opened the door and a light went on automatically. Then another and another, down a tunnel which curved to the right on a slight downward incline about a hundred yards ahead. It was the same height as a subway tunnel, but about half the width, and arched with red bricks which looked a century old. There was a single-bulb light behind a wire mesh every twenty paces or so. I struggled a bit getting the bike through the door which had a spring hinge. I put on the bicycle clips. I was wearing a brand new pair of cotton twill trousers and the bike, for some reason, was missing its chain guard. I had once done a story about Flying Pigeons, how they only came in black and were once the most popular form of transport on Earth, a symbol of Communist peace and harmony that would last a lifetime. I wasn’t feeling very harmonious right then. Anyway, I straddled the large, hard saddle and was off.
This was fun. The tunnel sloped gently, curving to the right all the way. I stuck my legs out horizontally and made a “woo” sound, Marina all but forgotten. What had the tunnel been built for? Smuggling? Some waxy old nineteenth century Brit taipan was probably having an affair with a village girl with bound feet and brought in the builders so that a night of nooky was downhill all the way.
“Why do you keep going down to the cellar with a bottle of gin under your arm, dear?” his powdered wife, dressed in layers of black robes over layers of corsets, would have asked him.
“Just getting my leg over, darling. With a simply splendid young lass in the village. I built this tunnel, you see…”
I reached the end and parked the bike next to three others propped up against the wall. I pressed the red button as instructed. Two TV screens showed dimly lit streets outside and there was no one in sight. I hit the red button again.
Nothing happened. I tried again. Still nothing.
“You have to press it assiduously.”
The voice made me jump. It was Marina, on both TV screens, a drink in her hand.
“Sorry?”
“You have to increase the pressure,” she said.
“Can I come back and see you now? Has he gone?”
“He is in the lavatory.”
“Of course he is. Marina…”
“Safe travels.”
The screens both switched back to the two views of the streets. There was a man walking slowly, his head lowered. I waited until he had gone.
I pressed the button long and hard this time and a spring sprung and part of the wall retracted. I jumped out and the wall quickly moved back into place.
I was at the corner house where Marina had disappeared that night. There was no sign anywhere, in this light anyway, that there was a door. There was even a “keep out” warning sign stuck on the plaster over the where the door met the wall. I looked closer. It was impossible to tell where the join was.
“It says keep out.”
Again I jumped. The man had reappeared, the same nutter who had told me about his dog being covered in ticks.
“Did you ever find the young Pakistani woman you were looking for?” he asked.
“You have a good memory,” I said. “I did, as a matter of fact. Thanks.”
“You appear to have appeared out of nowhere.”
“An old party trick.”
“Oh how jolly,” the man said. “I love a good party. A good sing-a-long.”
“Do you? That’s nice. How’s your dog, by the way? Baxter.”
“My dog?”
“You said he was covered in ticks.”
&
nbsp; “Oh, yes. I had him shot.”
No more tick problem then. “I’m very sorry to hear that,” I said.
“Yes, well, it’s after midnight. I have to do the laundry.”
“Indeed.”
I walked round the corner to the Thai restaurant, sat down and ordered a beer. Four tables in front of me sat a man smoking a cigarette, his back towards me. There was something about the posture and the army haircut. By the time I had reached Palakorn’s table, my thoughts were spinning in crop circles. I was sitting down, noticing at turns that the handsome snappers’ snapper was both sheepish and smug.
I hated the term “snapper” for two reasons. One, it was too close to “sniper”, with all its military connotations that so many in the business loved; and two, it applied to Palakorn. I had a vision of him in bed with Marina. It was an image I managed to erase by conjuring up an image of him drowning at sea, Goblin Teasmaids tied to each limb.
He shrugged his shoulders as if he could read my mind.
“There’s obviously no point in trying to lie about it,” he said.
“Lie about what?”
“My being here when I should be in Pakistan.”
“Why are you here? You’ve gone AWOL. You could lose your job.”
“Yes, Hadley. I don’t care. Sorry.”
There was another cigarette burning in the ashtray.
“You have company,” I said.
Palakorn smiled. “Gary,” he said. “You just missed him. He saw you talking to the old geezer and scarpered.”
“Why? I have never met Gary. What’s he doing away from Islamabad? And how did he know it was me?”
“I told him.”
“So…” I was so confused. “You saw me and told Gary, ‘that’s him’ and he said ‘oh shit, I’ve got to run’. Is that how it went?”
“More or less. He’s going through difficult times.”
“Is he? I’m sorry.” I sat down on a round Formica stool. “Why isn’t he in Pakistan?”
Palakorn shrugged again.
“I’ve just come from her house,” I said.
“On that cool underground golf cart, I know.”
“Golf cart? I came by bicycle.”
“Oh.”
“I didn’t see any golf cart.”
“Maybe it’s in use.”
“But why you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why did she drive me here at the same time she is seeing you? And fucking Mian Langhari. And Gary? Is she seeing Gary?”
Palakorn’s fine features were smug again. “I can’t answer for him, Hadley.”
“I don’t know why I asked. Are you off to see her now?”
“I am. But it seems that Langhers got there before me.”
“Langhers?”
“Mian.”
“You call him Langhers?”
“All his mates do.”
“You’re his mate?”
“We got to know each other in Islamabad. He’s a terrific guy.”
“But Palakorn, it’s all so unfair. I came down to Shek O, in her car, because she wanted to be with me.”
“She’s very accommodative.”
“Accommodative? Is that all you can say?”
“Fickle, then. It’s not my fault, Hadley. She came on to me.”
I stared out over the roundabout, at the ads for Coke and the “Chinese and Thai Seafood Restaurant”, with a man holding a giant pair of chopsticks. “She took me to this crazy bar in Islamabad where there was a back room,” Palakorn said.
“A back room?”
“What’s the matter?”
“I never saw any back room.”
Palakorn was squeezing the cigarette between his fingers. His legs were shaking like that prat of a lawyer in Islamabad.
“Look, Hadley. I’m in love.”
“Oh lord, here we go.”
“I don’t mind telling you so. I am not going to go into tawdry details. I know there are others. But this feeling, when you’re in love with a beautiful woman…”
“Oh don’t start.”
“It’s like a madness. Nothing else matters. My job, my friendships. I can’t think of anything else.”
“Well, you had better start thinking of your mate Langhers and what he’s up to.”
“He’s very old. He won’t be long.”
“What?”
“They’ve had a thing for years. She realises there’s no future in it.”
“What are you saying? They’ve had a thing for years. She’s crazy about him.”
“She’s going to end it. That’s why I’m here. She’s going to end it tonight.”
“And start a thing with you?” I slapped the table and rose from my seat. “Well good luck with that.”
“Where are you going?”
“Wanchai.”
“So you’re done here, then?”
“I am done here, yes. I am going to go to a bar and fall in love with a beautiful woman. And then I will be done there.”
CHAPTER TEN
I TOLD BAXTER everything there was to tell. About Makhdoom and Yorkshire Todd. I told him precise details of the dental treatment and the manhole and the snooker game and the percussion band and apologised profusely for not briefing him earlier. I told him about the creepy high commissioner and, lastly, about Marina. I said it was fine with me that I was off the case. I said I didn’t want to write anything about Marina or Pakistan and that, if I still had a job, I was serious about wanting to write about tea.
“You’ve had a narrow escape there, I reckon,” he said. I had been forgiven, it seemed.
“Well, you may want to haul Palakorn in and have a word in his ear. He’s falling in love with the daft woman. And Gar-eh.”
“Gar-eh?”
“Gary. I think he’s been led on too. I’ve never even met the fucker.”
“I wasn’t really thinking about Marina,” Baxter said. “I was thinking about her husband, his aide and the British high commissioner. We must have a conversation about where we go from here.”
“I suppose.”
“You have made some very serious allegations.”
“You sound like you don’t believe me.”
“Not at all. It’s just that at this stage, I do not know whether it’s a police matter, or something much higher. It is beyond my experience. The bosses in London are similarly confused.”
“The bosses in London are always confused.”
“They have your best interests at heart, Hadley. You mustn’t hate everyone and everything. It goes without saying that we are all on your side. You can be very strange. Grumpy and diffident. You go off at tangents and mix with dark and often unpleasant people. But I have not known you to be a liar.”
MARINA WENT BACK to Islamabad, apparently totally cleaning up her act, according to a piece in the Daily Mail which talked about her rising from the ashes like a Phoenix and not even mentioning the Rick Astley episode. And this was the Daily Mail! There was a picture of the reporter, a handsome devil. Just Marina’s cup of tea. I saw her on TV at campaign rallies, talking about relations with China, relations with India and Pakistan’s resolve in fighting terrorism. Again, Rick Astley did not get a mention. I saw Marina embrace her husband affectionately. At one rally, I saw Todd standing behind her, scowling and playing with the floor with his foot. Watch out there, darling. At another, as I sat at the editing desk one evening, I saw Langhers standing behind Marina, wearing a beige cardigan across his shoulders and suffering a prolonged coughing fit as she explained, in English, how turning from Christianity to Islam had saved her life. Langhers was switching his weight back and forth from one foot to the other as though in desperate need of a pee. Or maybe he had put away one too many Sparkhayes beers.
Now I was watching Makhdoom’s campaign live, from Hong Kong, enjoying being away from it all, putting some distance between us. Literally sitting back and seeing the big picture.
The TV screens went blank.
&nbs
p; “We must apologise,” the CNN anchor said. “We seem to have… um, we seem to have lost our live feed from Pakistan state television. We have been watching both Colonel Imran Makhdoom and his wife, Marina, making their last campaign pushes in separate rallies, the colonel in Lahore and his wife in the capital, Islamabad, before Saturday’s election. Sorry, this is just coming in. We are hearing there has been an explosion…”
I saw her sprawling on the floor of Rick’s Cafe. I saw her sitting on the beach at Shek O, patting the sand, asking me – telling me – to sit down. “Are you going to write all this down and put it in a story?” she asked. I saw her wet eyes.
“Here we go,” Baxter said. “Hadley, you want to snap it? Hadley?”
“It’s too vague, right? Let’s wait until we have more. We don’t even know if there are any casualties.”
“But it’s their last rally. Rallies, I mean.” Baxter turned to his secretary. “I want all visuals to pull back and confirmation all safe.”
“We don’t even know where the explosion was,” I said. “We can’t snap yet. It could be a taxi running into a wall.” Let it be that. A silly rabbit hutch of a taxi with a lime-green roof whose gas canister had exploded in the May sun.
“I am on to the bureau now,” Fagin said, putting his hand in the air, a sign he was getting the goods. “Okay,” he said into the receiver. “There’s been an explosion at one of the rally sites, police say. Casualties unknown. We’re snapping.”
“Can we say bomb?” I asked.
“Can we say bomb?” Fagan asked. “Yes. Bomb. Lots of damage.”
Show time.
I put Marina aside.
Bomb explodes at pakistan election rally site, police say, casualties unknown.
The snap was on the wire within a second of my finishing it.
“Which rally, do we know?” Fagin asked into the phone. “The colonel’s. Same source? Not police. TV. Is he okay?”
Yes! You fucking beauty! Kill the fucker, I thought as I typed with renewed vigour.
Bomb explodes at usman makhdoom election rally in pakistani city of lahore, casualties unknown – police and tv.
“Hadley’s snapped. You’ve got the TV back on?” Fagin asked the bureau. “Pictures show dozens of casualties. Dead? Definitely. Cannot say how many. State TV, right?”