Absolution

by Paul E. Hardisty

  ‘Looks clear.’

  ‘Check again.’

  The sky was lightening quickly now. Clay swung the glasses back over the same ground, looking for any indication of concealment, of linear geometry among the fractal chaos of the bush, but could see none. He set the binoculars on the ground, gazed out across the airstrip to the low, dark hills beyond and the red edge of the world as dawn came.

  ‘Will he show?’ Clay said.

  ‘Ja, definitely. G wouldn’t miss a chance to make this kind of money.’

  Clay picked up the binoculars, scanned the tree line again.

  He was halfway through when Crowbar nudged him. ‘Here they come.’

  A solitary vehicle was speeding toward the airfield, trailing a cloud of red dust. An old Land Rover stopped next to the shack and three men got out: G, another white man dressed in coveralls and a blue cap, and a black man. The man in coveralls and the black man started wheeling the hand-pump bowser towards the larger of the two Cessnas while G unlocked the shed.

  ‘The kaffir is carrying,’ whispered Crowbar.

  Clay could see the bulge under the black man’s shirt front, hear the men’s voices across the fifty metres or so of open ground. A giraffe wandered out from the bush, strode past the aircraft and disappeared into the trees at the far side of the airstrip. The men paid it no attention.

  G had re-emerged from the shed and was opening the plane’s engine cowling. The other white man was up onto the underwing strut and was holding the fuel nozzle in the overhead tank opening as the black man pumped.

  ‘Your friend’s carrying too,’ said Clay.

  ‘If it all goes to kak, you take the kaffir,’ said Crowbar.

  Clay nodded, checked his G21. ‘Is the other one the pilot?’

  ‘Hell no,’ said Crowbar.

  ‘Who then? G?’

  Crowbar grinned.

  Clay shook his head. ‘Didn’t know you could fly.’

  ‘I learned in the service. Flew Bosboks for a while, coordinating with the parabats. After about a year I realised I wanted to be on the ground where the fighting was. I’m better at it. Haven’t flown for years.’

  ‘How’s your navigation?’ said Clay, searching the tree line again. ‘It’s a hell of a long way.’

  ‘Was counting on you for that, seun.’

  Clay handed Crowbar the binoculars. ‘Should have brought my sextant,’ he said. ‘All clear.’

  Crowbar stood, pushed the Jericho into his waistband. ‘Here we go, seun. Follow my lead.’

  So many times had he followed this man into danger, that this – here, now – seemed nothing more than a continuation, as if he had never done anything else, as if all of the rest of his life had been nothing but preparation for these moments. And as he followed Crowbar across the coarse stubble towards the aircraft, the lower terminus of the sun’s disc separating from the surface of earth, the Glock’s barrel pushed up against his spine, he realised that this was what he was meant to do. Rania was right. His fate, and those of the people he cared for, and of all those he did not, was governed by forces completely beyond his control. He could just as easily stop the sun from rising before him as change what he had become. And the future, as much of it as he might have left, was being hungrily gobbled up by the present and shit out as the past.

  As they approached G turned to face them, raised his hand. ‘Lekker, eh?’ he called out, indicating the plane as if it were a television game show prize.

  ‘Depends,’ said Crowbar.

  ‘You got the kite?’ said G, wiping his hands on his trousers.

  ‘Start it up,’ said Crowbar.

  G frowned, climbed up into the cockpit. The four-cyclinder Lycoming coughed, turned over, roared to life. Crowbar stood there a moment, let the motor run then signalled G to shut it down.

  Crowbar handed G an envelope. ‘Count it.’

  G peered inside and started flicking through the notes. Satisfied, he stashed the envelope in his jacket then produced a plastic file folder and handed it to Crowbar. ‘Manifest, ownership deeds, Kenyan pilot’s licence, registration, charts. Everything’s there.’

  Crowbar took the documents and stashed them in his pack ‘Longrange tanks?’

  ‘Forty-eight US gallons useable,’ said the man in the coveralls. ‘Should get you about eight hundred miles. More in the jerry cans.’

  Crowbar nodded. ‘I owe you.’

  ‘You sure as hell do, china. Manheim came to see me yesterday.’

  Clay’s pulse quickened.

  ‘How’s he feeling?’ said Crowbar.

  ‘Sore.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘He was asking about you,’ said G. ‘You and Straker.’

  Crowbar nodded.

  ‘He’s offering a lot of money.’

  ‘How much?’ said Crowbar.

  ‘Fifty grand US. Each.’

  Crowbar stood hand on hips. ‘How about I just kill you now?’

  G shrank back. ‘Shit, Crowbar, no need to get like that, man. I didn’t tell him anything. I’m just saying, he’s offering a lot of money.’

  ‘What did your ma always tell you, G? Money isn’t everything.’

  The black man laughed.

  Crowbar hefted his pack and pushed it into the back seat of the 172.

  G kicked the dirt. His boot sent a puff of laterite dust spiralling into the air. ‘He had a message for you. Both of you. In case I saw you.’

  ‘And I’ve got one for him,’ said Crowbar. ‘In case you see him. Tell him he still has a choice. He owes me, and I’m not going to forget it.’

  ‘What was his message?’ said Clay.

  G switched his gaze to Clay. ‘Have fun. That’s what he said. Have fun in Cairo.’ G smiled his gap-toothed grin. ‘You okes have a lekker glide.’

  5th November 1997. Cairo, Egypt. 23:10 hrs

  When you called yesterday, it was the first time since Maputo that I had heard your voice. That was almost a year ago. Mon amour, you sounded so far away! Not the miles, but the reticence. You do not trust me. Should that surprise me? So many times I have allowed you to come close, and each time I have crushed you. My behaviour towards you has been unforgiveable. I look inside myself and see again the hateful poles at work.

  In Istanbul you opened yourself to me. I know it is very difficult for you to do this. You have seen and done terrible things. You are not a talkative man. And yet you tried. You told me things you have not told anyone else. I know you were trying to be as honest with me and with yourself as you could. And for a few days we were close, so close. I felt closer to you then than I have to anyone before or since.

  Why did I turn you away? Was it losing the child – our baby? You wrote to me twice from prison in Cyprus, and not once did I answer. Your letters sat on my bureau for months, calling out to me, but I steadfastly, stubbornly ignored them, with all the discipline and self-abnegation a good Muslim woman could summon. Was it guilt? An illicit affair with a kafir is a mortal sin. God punished me by destroying the fruit of my transgression.

  And now I am calling you back again. Can you forgive me? Will you come?

  Yesterday, when we were speaking on the phone, I saw a car pull up across the street. Two men jumped out and started towards my flat. It was the two policemen who questioned me the day before – Moonface and the tall one. I could tell right away that this time, they had not come to talk. I knew that I needed to run.

  The Directorate trained me well, Claymore, as you have seen. I had already worked out alternative escape routes. My bag was packed and ready to go. I was out on the rear balcony and over the railing and down into the back garden before the policemen were halfway up the front stairs. By the time I heard the crash of my door being broken down, I was already in the back alley and making my way to the metro station.

  Where are you now, chéri? Are you thinking of me, I wonder? Hurry to me, please.

  * 13 *

  Eons in Minutes

  Crowbar leaned off the fuel mixture co
ntrol and trimmed up the little four-seater for level flight.

  The take-off had been rough, Crowbar yawing the Cessna left and right across the airstrip as she gained speed and rotated into a light crosswind. Once airborne, he put the plane into a gentle climb and started a broad right-hand turn to the south. Clay looked back down at the airstrip; G and his men were already speeding away, their Land Rover just a toy throwing up a thin tendril of iron-oxide dust.

  Not long later, Crowbar banked the Cessna sharply and ticked her through 180 degrees. Clay had already plotted a course that took them north towards the border with Ethiopia. Cruising at eight thousand feet, the Cessna’s manual estimated a range of well over eight hundred miles. The charts showed an airstrip with fuelling facilities in Marsabit, about ninety nautical miles south of the border. There they would refuel, and push north to Addis Ababa, then the Sudan border another four hundred miles north, and Khartoum as far again. From there, Cairo would be less than a day’s flying away.

  Kilimanjaro’s dark, glacier-capped bulk loomed on their starboard wing, sixty kilometres away. And yet, in the rarefied troposphere, it seemed to tower over them. Clay could see the extinct volcano’s wide caldera and the broad horseshoe ridge, the filaments of ice dripping down its dolerite flanks. He thought of the book his father had given him one Christmas, Hemingway’s short stories.

  ‘I always wanted to climb it,’ said Clay. ‘Never got the chance.’

  ‘Take your son, when he’s older.’

  ‘How is he?’ Clay had never seen him.

  Crowbar smiled, adjusted the headphones, pulled the mike closer to his mouth. ‘Poor little bastard looks like you. Thank God he seems to have got his mother’s brains.’

  Clay smiled, couldn’t help himself. ‘Kypros,’ he said. ‘I like it.’ Clay thought it would be good if he could walk among these places with his son, one day. But he quickly pushed it away.

  ‘I don’t. Hope insisted.’

  ‘She’s the boss.’

  Crowbar smiled again. His mouth opened very wide and his lips stretched back to reveal strong teeth as white as the mountain’s far-off spire. His eyes flashed high-altitude blue. ‘Ja, ja. And the boss is pregnant.’

  Clay slapped Crowbar on the thick hump of ox muscle that was the man’s trapezoid. ‘That’s great, oom. Fantastic.’

  ‘Ja, ja.’ Crowbar beamed. ‘And this time, I get to name him.’

  Clay smiled too, shot it out across the Serengeti.

  Hours passed. Africa slipped away beneath them. Rift volcanoes, dormant and active, marked out deep scars in the earth’s crust. Herds of wildebeest and buffalo wandered the plains, congregated at drying waterholes, flowing pinpoints of cantor dust held to the slowly diverging plates.

  But the worry was always there. Someone had come to her door. What had happened? Why had she given him a different number? And how in hell did Manheim know they were headed for Cairo?

  By mid-afternoon they were approaching the airstrip at Marsabit. Crowbar throttled back into a slow descent. The airstrip was quiet, no other aircraft in the circuit. He lined the Cessna up for final approach.

  ‘Been a while since I’ve done this,’ said Crowbar, fighting to keep the aircraft on course in a strong crosswind.

  Clay grabbed the edge of his seat, held tight as the dirt strip loomed in the windscreen. As they crossed the threshold, Crowbar cut power and flared, but instead of settling, the Cessna floated above the runway, ballooning in ground effect. They were chewing up runway fast, the scrub and trees at the far end racing towards them.

  ‘Hold on,’ said Crowbar, pushing down hard on the steering column.

  The Cessna bounced once, hard, and then twice before sticking. Crowbar applied the brakes in a spray of gravel. They slid to a stop only a few feet from the end of the runway.

  Crowbar took a deep breath, threw open his side window and taxied the aircraft over the red dirt towards a cluster of small buildings set at the midpoint of the runway. Heat poured from the hard-baked ground in shimmering updrafts.

  ‘Good landing,’ said Clay.

  ‘Like riding an elephant.’ Crowbar grinned. ‘I’ll check the landing gear once we stop.’

  As they neared the small red-dirt apron they could see a couple of other aircraft set under a makeshift hangar – a turbo Pilates and what looked like a very old Piper Cub. Crowbar shut down the engine, ripped off his headphones, flung the door open, jumped to the ground and started pissing on the undercarriage.

  Clay stepped to the ground, felt the solidity through his bones. He scanned the length of the runway, the apron, the low scrub beyond. The place appeared to be deserted. He couldn’t see any fuelling facilities.

  Crowbar zipped up, checked his .45, pushed it into his belt, flipped his shirt over to cover the weapon. ‘I’m going to see if I can find any fuel in this shithole. Stay here. Keep alert.’

  ‘Yes, my Liutenant,’ Clay said before he could catch himself. It was an old habit, yet unbroken.

  He stood in the dust and watched Crowbar trudge off across the apron and disappear behind the hangar. The plane’s engine ticked in the heat. A kite turned in the sky above. Clay could see its raptor head moving as it scanned the ground for prey. The biogeochemistry of the rift lands came to him, thick on the breeze: the burning grasses, the freshly extruded basalts, the fossilised, powdered bones of the oldest hominids. Nightfall was still four hours away. Enough time to cross over into Ethiopia. More than enough for a drowning, a murder, the slaughter of innocents. For things such as these, he knew, there was always time, eons even in minutes.

  Crowbar returned about an hour later carrying two cold tins of Tusker lager and a plastic shopping bag. ‘No avgas,’ he said, tossing Clay a beer, ‘but at least they had something to drink in town.’ He pushed a wisp of titanium hair from his forehead and drank down half the tin.

  They finished their beers then refuelled the Cessna using the jerry cans. Crowbar checked the engine oil, cleaned the windshield with a rag and some of the water.

  ‘Manheim knows we’re going to Cairo,’ said Clay, opening a second beer. He’d been turning it over in his head ever since leaving the airstrip.

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘How the hell could he have known, oom? Until yesterday, I didn’t even know we were going to Cairo.’

  ‘He knows. The question is, what do we do about it?’

  Clay crushed one of the empty beer tins under his boot. ‘If you were Manheim, what would you do?’

  ‘I’d go to the best surgeon I could find and get a nose job,’ said Crowbar. That big smile again.

  Clay let it go. ‘Does he go straight to Cairo, intercept us there?’

  ‘I know the poes,’ said Crowbar. ‘He’s not going to wait to see if we might show up three thousand clicks away.’

  ‘Then it’s got to be Addis,’ said Clay, kicking a furrow into the crushed and powdered stone of the apron’s surface. ‘G probably told him what kind of aircraft we have, so he’ll know the range. It’s one of the only places in the whole country where we can be guaranteed of finding fuel.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Crowbar, retrieving another beer from the plastic bag. ‘We’re not going to wait to find out. We’re going to intercept him.’

  ‘How the hell are we going to do that?’

  Crowbar tipped back his beer, drained it. ‘I made some calls from town,’ he said.

  ‘And?’

  ‘It’s all set up.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Sudan.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  Crowbar opened the cockpit door. ‘Let’s go.’

  Clay reached out, held the door closed. ‘Tell me, Koevoet. How did Manheim know that we were going to Cairo?’

  Crowbar grabbed Clay’s arm, tried to push it away from the door. Clay held firm.

  ‘Let it go, Straker.’

  ‘Tell me, God damn it.’

  ‘You’re not going to like it, soutpiele.’

  Something welled up i
nside him, fear and impatience and longing and a hundred things, bilious and forlorn beyond his ability to describe. ‘We’re not going anywhere until you tell me.’

  ‘I need you functioning, Straker. I can’t have you distracted. We have a job to do. Now fokken get out of the way.’

  ‘You think I can’t handle myself? Fok jou, Koevoet.’

  ‘I know you can’t handle yourself, soutpiele. I’ve always known it.’

  Clay took a half-step back, let go the door and drove his forearm up under Crowbar’s neck, slamming him into the side of the aircraft’s fuselage. Crowbar’s beer fell to the ground, spilling foam.

  ‘I don’t need you to look after me,’ Clay shouted. ‘You hear me, old man? We get to Cairo, you fok off and leave me alone. For good. I never want to see—’

  But before he could finish, Crowbar cut his legs out with a vicious ankle reap, sending him toppling to the ground in a cloud of dust.

  Crowbar kicked the near-empty beer can, sent it spinning across the dirt. ‘What the fok, Straker. Think I’m the fokken enemy?’

  Clay spat the silt from his mouth. ‘I don’t know, old man. You tell me.’

  Crowbar straightened, looked down at Clay. ‘Manheim knows we’re going to Cairo,’ he said, ‘because the AB knows Rania is there. And they know we know.’

  The words knocked the breath from Clay’s lungs. He slumped back to the ground.

  ‘That’s why we have to get Manheim,’ said Crowbar. ‘Before he gets to Rania. The AB doesn’t like her any more than they do you.’ He smoothed his hair back. ‘After that, you can fok the hell off, Straker. But until then, you’re mine.’ Crowbar opened the door and climbed into the cockpit.

  Suddenly, Egypt seemed a lot farther away.

  5th November 1997, Cairo, Egypt. 20:15 hrs

  Dearest Claymore:

  Chéri, I write to you now, in the event that I never see you again.

  I have decided to disappear. And how better to disappear than in plain sight? I have become one of the thousands of faceless, ignored, homeless wretches who wander Cairo’s slums and alleys, who pick over the piles of rubbish that choke every empty plot of ground and work the corniche and the other thoroughfares, holding out withered underfed hands to passing motorists, hoping for a few worthless coins. I have never felt so completely invisible, so alone. We are the actively ignored. People literally will us away.