‘Geraldine,’ he called. ‘Can you come here, please, ma’am?’
The old woman appeared, stood in the kitchen doorway, one hand clutching the frame. ‘In the desk,’ she said, pointing. ‘There.’
‘Come here, please. I don’t want your money.’
She hesitated.
‘Don’t worry,’ Clay said. ‘I won’t hurt you. I’m a friend.’
‘Friends normally use the front door,’ she said.
Clay held out his hand. ‘Please. There is something I need you to see. Outside.’
The woman shuffled towards him, clearly wary. Clay stood back to let her pass. She walked out onto the balcony.
‘On the street to your left, outside the bakery.’
The woman stepped to the railing and peered down into the street. Grey cloud scuttled across a blue sky. Thunder rumbled in the distance.
‘Is there anything in particular I should be looking for, young man?’
‘Your granddaughter, ma’am.’
‘You must have mistaken me for someone else. I know how difficult it is for you white folk.’
Clay stepped out onto the balcony, looked down into the street.
Zuz was gone.
30th October 1997. Paris, France. 03:30 hrs
I met my friend from the Directorate tonight. He was waiting for me in a car in the parking area outside the Gare du Nord. As I got in out of the rain, he ran one hand through his hair and lit a cigarette with the other, and I thought that one of the men I love is not able to do such a simple thing.
My friend told me that the encryption on Hamid’s computer is very sophisticated, much more so than he would have expected. Almost military grade, he said. He had not managed to get into the main files, but he did get into the email account, at least for the last two weeks or so. He apologised for calling so late – he is like that, very polite and considerate – but he thought I would want to know right away. Tomorrow might be too late, he said. He looked very stressed, as if he had not slept any more than I have in the past few days.
I didn’t print them, he said. He reached into his pocket, unfolded a paper. I’ve written some of it down, he said, resting his smoking Gitane in the car’s ashtray. 14th October, he began: an email from an Egyptian IP address, someone calling himself simply J, warning Hamid that the authorities would take action if he didn’t abandon the case. That was all it said, just ‘the case’. No reply. Then, two days later, an email from a Yusuf Al-Gambal, saying that ‘the situation was worsening appreciably’ – that is a direct quote – and that he was being watched and he feared that he would soon be made to disappear. Hamid replies by giving him a contact name and an address. (He pointed to the paper.) Then again, two days later, another email from Al-Gambal; same thing, more urgency, desperation also. Hamid tells him there is nothing more he can do. Then, over the next twenty-four hours, a flurry of emails from Al-Gambal. It is as if he is up all night, sending out emails, pleading for help, for forgiveness. And then the tone becomes increasingly accusatory: You are abandoning me; you promised you would help me; I trusted you – that kind of thing. They all go unanswered. The next day there is an attachment from the same address – a spreadsheet full of numbers that I can’t make sense of. A few latitude-longitude coordinates, it looks like, a bunch of other stuff. That was it, no more communications between them.
My friend handed me a stack of papers as thick as my finger. He swallowed then lit another cigarette. He took his time doing it. And then this, he said, pointing to the page with a nicotine-stained finger. On the 19th of October, Hamid writes to this email address, indicating he thinks that someone is planning to murder him. Someone close to him. My friend fell silent, looked at me. His face was washed blue and fluid from the lights on the street and the rain on the windscreen. Have you checked your own email? he said.
Then he handed me the hard drive and the papers. I’ve done all I can, he said. I’m sorry, he said.
I told him that I understood – and I do, fully.
What are you going to do with it? he asked.
I don’t know, I said.
I got out of the car. Rain leapt from the pavement, angled across the yellow cones of light strung along the boulevard. It was cold. He drove away and I walked back to the station. As I turned to wave, I realised that I hadn’t thanked him.
At home, I went straight to my office and turned on my computer. I went through every incoming email for the last four months, and found nothing at all out of the ordinary. Then I looked through the papers my friend had given me. There were stacks of emails to and from Hamid’s Cairo office concerning details of the various cases they were working on – pdfs of Egyptian legal statutes, all in Arabic, of course; legal procedural advice from a local consultant; and various research documents, including saved web pages from news agencies – AFP, Reuters, Al-Jazeera – dating back almost two years. There were stories about Cairo’s worsening air pollution, a BBC article on Egypt’s burgeoning tourism industry and the rapid development on the Red Sea coast, and several pieces about the re-emergence of an Egyptian extremist organisation – Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya – and its new leader, the shadow who goes by the nom-de-guerre of The Lion, and his anti-regime agenda. There were even a couple of articles about the case itself, with Hamid mentioned by name.
Throughout, one name kept coming up: Yusuf Al-Gambal, one of the men Hamid was defending. The spreadsheet that Al-Gambal sent Hamid and the cryptic warnings in his emails clearly suggest that whatever trouble he was in was not over, and in fact may have deepened. Thinking back now to one of the few times that Hamid did discuss the case with me, I recall him mentioning that he’d made a deal to win a form of reprieve for Al-Gambal. He did not tell me what the deal involved. He then went into some detail about the Egyptian legal system, so I didn’t pay much attention.
I need to know more about the case. Tomorrow, I will go to the bureau and do some more research on this. Guilt grips me: I am already thinking about the story this could become. What does that say about me, about the person I am, the person I have become? One word burns in my mind: selfish.
‘Whenever misfortune touches him, he is filled with self-pity.
And whenever good fortune comes to him, he selfishly withholds it from others.’
It is the nature of man. We were put on this earth to rise above it.
09:50 hrs
Assistant Inspector Marchand called.
The police found a high-temperature industrial incinerator on the property where our Peugeot was abandoned. Inside they found residue of a mass and chemical composition consistent with what would be expected from the incineration of two human bodies. The temperature and duration of incineration meant that even the two sets of teeth were largely reduced to ash, but they did find five small, deformed lumps of metal that were clearly fillings, and an almost intact titanium plate about five centimetres long. There were also the molten remains of what appears to be a wedding ring. She asked if any of this sounded familiar.
I stood speechless for a long time. She repeated: Madame Al Farouk, are you there?
Hamid, I believe, has five fillings, although I never asked him or checked myself. Who, however close, knows the number of fillings her spouse carries in his head? Some details are entirely beyond intimacy. But I do know that Hamid broke his leg several years ago, before I met him, skiing in Lebanon, and had a titanium plate inserted in his right tibia. He wears a wedding ring. At least, he did.
Finally, I recovered, although I have no idea how long I stood there, mute, blank. It probably was not more than a few seconds, but I cannot be sure. I replied yes, I was still on the line. I told her about Hamid’s leg.
There is more, she said. The DNA testing on the clothing found at the site has come back, and I can confirm that the blood on the t-shirt is your son’s and the blood on the jacket is your husband’s. Your DNA, Madame Al Farouk, was on both. Do you do the laundry in your household, Madame Al Farouk? Assistant Inspector Marchand’s new f
ormality sent a shiver running against my growing despair, like the waves that reflect back off a winter beach and collide in an explosion of spray and foam with the incoming breakers.
Yes, I said, trying to think. Yes, I do the laundry.
That would explain it, then, she said. I thought she sounded disappointed.
Assistant Inspector Marchand wants me to come to the station this afternoon. There are a number of additional questions she and her colleagues would like to ask me.
So, they are dead.
Allah has taken them to his eternal grace and protection. Surely, if any souls have ever deserved paradise, it is my husband and my beautiful, innocent little son. And yet I weep. I scream. I grind the pencil deep into the paper, tear the pages, pull at my hair.
I stare out across the city, every window a life, a story, dreams and fears and hopes and sorrows contained in each. Suddenly I am strangled by panic. Fear chokes me, bewilderment at the chaos in which we spin, powerless, deluded into a sense of control and order by all that we have built to give our lives solidity and meaning – the buildings and institutions and conventions; the streaming red-and-white highways and these clothes I wear to cover my nakedness, to hide my true self from the world and from my own introspection.
‘And God has created you, and in time will cause you to die.’
And so, they are dead.
10:15 hrs
My friend from the Directorate has just called me. My cover has been blown. Someone in the Directorate has informed the police that I – the person they know as Lise Al Farouk, née Moulinbecq, journaliste for Agence France Presse – am actually Rania LaTour, one-time operative for the DGSE Groupe Action. He does not know who did it, or why. But the timing is clear. I am capable of murder; indeed, I have been trained in its art, and the other subtler techniques of concealment and misdirection, surveillance and coercion.
The police are about to charge me with murder. And somewhere out there are the devils who took the lives of my husband and my son. This is not the work of amateurs, of some jealous woman. Professionals did this. Every detail was planned, slowly, meticulously. I am being framed.
I have not heard back from Hope. Wherever Crowbar is, clearly she has not been able to contact him. And Claymore, wherever you are, I know that you have your quarin to deal with – your own personal Satan. So, I am on my own. And I am running out of time.
* 7 *
Courses of Action, Various and Consequential
Clay scanned the street both ways. There was no sign of Zuz. He took the stairs four at a time, burst out onto the street. He ran to the bakery, walked inside, through into the back-room darkness and the heat of the wood-fired ovens.
A heavy-set man in an apron glanced at his stump, brushed flour from his arms. His skin shone red with sweat. ‘You look for a girl?’ he said.
Clay nodded, relief pouring through him.
‘A man take her. White man.’ The baker raised a floured hand to his face and twisted his nose to one side. ‘He say you meet him at the boat.’
Relief congealed into dread. He shouldn’t have left her. The Boer must have been following them, watching them, just like Zuz had said.
‘Did he say anything else?’
‘Just this. Meet him at the boat.’
A kilometre and a half into town. Four and a half down the road, another kilometre and a half through the scrubland to the beach. Full-out run: twenty-six minutes. Too long. Winded after.
‘Do you have a car?’
The baker looked him up and down.
‘I can pay.’
‘A motorcycle.’
Soon they were flying along the coast road, south towards Stone Town, Clay riding pillion, clouds darkening the sky. The temperature had dropped. Rain was coming. Flour streamed from the baker’s arms and hair. At the giant baobab garage, Clay tapped the baker on the shoulder. He slowed and pulled to the side of the road. Clay pushed a fifty-dollar note into his hand.
‘Geraldine’s daughter’s little one?’ he said.
Clay nodded.
‘I thought.’ He pushed back the note. ‘I should have…’
Clay fended away the baker’s hand and started towards the coast at a run. As he reached the trees the first raindrops touched his face, pattered against the leaves. He kept going. Moments later, the clouds opened. Rain lashed his eyes, soaked his clothes, poured from the tips of his fingers. He’d been stupid. He was stupid. He’d always been stupid. At every point in his life, when choices had been offered, where courses of action, various and consequential, had been available, somehow he’d managed to pick the wrong one. Zuz had been right. They’d been waiting. And he’d obliged, come right to them. And he knew, as he ran through the scrub towards the beach, the wind and rain coming harder now, ripping through the palm fronds, shredding a hail of husk and leaf and branch from the canopy, that Zuz was of little importance to these people, and that if she wasn’t already dead, she would be soon. And even before he’d completed the thought he had already started to reproach himself for it; in its very nascence he could see the proof of his callousness and he hated himself for it.
As the sea appeared through the trees, he slowed. Flame was there, beyond the reef, where he’d left her, just visible through the downpour. She’d swung around to landward, head to the storm coming in from the ocean, across the island. As he neared the beach, he could see the dinghy, still where he’d left it, tied to the same tree. He crouched behind the trunk of a palm and pulled the binoculars from his pack, focused out across the rain-swept water.
The first thing he noticed was the boom, swung abeam as if in a following wind so that the leach end hung out over the water. Suspended from it, hanging from a rope, was a dark bundle. Clay wiped the lenses, refocused through the slanting rain. The bundle was tied and appeared to be weighted with chain and anchor. As the rain relented a little, details appeared. Arms. A face. A swinging ponytail. Clay’s heart valves tripped. It was Zuz.
Clay lowered the binoculars, scanned the beach left and right, tried to breathe. The coast appeared deserted. Flame swung at anchor as the storm passed over, Zuz hanging there over the water. Then, slowly, as Flame’s bow came around, the nose of another craft appeared. Clay raised the binoculars. The other boat had been tied alongside, and the two craft spun across the rain-pelted surface together, thunder exploding in the distance. As more of the boat came into view, he could see the stripe along its hull, the v-shaped windscreen. It was the jet boat Big J and Dreadlock had used before. Two black men huddled under a tarpaulin in the open cockpit. Clay shook the rain from his hair, tried again to wipe the lenses, scanned Flame bow to stern. The Boer was nowhere to be seen.
Suddenly, the wind veered hard, gusted. Flame jerked on her rode, swung hard so that Zuz dipped momentarily and the anchor touched the water, dragging her feet down into the water in a white wake. Then Flame righted and she was jerked clear of the surface. The jet boat was now in full view, tied amidships. The rain was coming hard again, pelting across Flame’s deck, ripping through the palms all around him. He had to go.
He replaced the binoculars in his pack, checked the G21, thrust it into his waistband and started towards the dinghy. They wanted him. That was the message. If he gave himself up, she might yet live.
He was a few steps from the beach when, above the screaming barrage of the storm, he heard a shout. He crouched, reached for the Glock, spun towards the sound, narrowed his eyes in the rain.
Again, a voice raised above the storm. ‘Straker. Stay where you are.’
Clay raised his weapon. ‘Let her go,’ he shouted into the rain.
‘Lower you weapon, Straker.’
‘Tell them to let her go. Then we talk.’
A figure emerged from the scrub. ‘It’s me, Straker. For Christ’s sake, put that thing away.’
Clay peered through the rain.
The figure moved closer. A big man, the shoulders broad and powerful, arms like hawsepipe.
It was Crowbar.
30th October 1997. Somewhere over the Mediterranean. 22:30 hrs
Chéri, you of all people know that the training never leaves you.
After Yemen, when the Directorate faked my death and provided me with a new identity, I took my own precautions. They trained us to think this way.
It was therefore not difficult for me to get out of France. It is amazing how a woman can alter her appearance completely, simply by changing her hair and clothes and demeanour. Some makeup and a pair of spectacles help, too. I drove to Switzerland, left the car, walked over the border – just another hiker out for the day – and then took a train to the airport in Geneva. I know the country well, as you know. I grew up there.
Leaving your life behind is not so hard, if those who define and give purpose to that life are gone.
The Egypt Air first-class cabin is cold. I pull the blanket up around my shoulders, and stare at my passport. The photograph is of me. But the name, the history is someone else’s: Veronique Deschamps, thirty-two, Swiss, born in Geneva. In fact, she died at the age of three, along with her parents, in a car crash. In the bag at my feet are enough cash to last me a year, my father’s Koran, and every bit of information I have been able to gather about Hamid and Eugène’s murder. Just writing their names sends sorrow and anger shooting through me.
I put away the passport and open my laptop. I start searching through my email. I go through every email I have sent, starting with the most recent and going back in time. In my main account, six and a half months of replies and requests and routine administrative rubbish – nothing unusual. So much irrelevance, pages and pages of it. My eyes start to close. I am tired.
And then, on the edge of sleep, I see it – in the outbox of my secondary account. An email sent on 18th October to an address I do not recognise. The subject line: Call Me.
Absolution Page 6