Over the coming months, they put it all together: the air quality data, the blood lead levels, the toxicity and dispersion modelling. Their work showed that children growing up in the worst areas, breathing this air for the first five to ten years of their lives, were not only far more likely to contract respiratory illnesses, but would suffer significant declines in cognitive skills, learning and language ability, and IQ. And the effects would be permanent.
‘It blew us away,’ Yusuf said, taking a long draw on his cigarette.
A preliminary report was prepared, and the Canadian project manager presented it to the EEAA – the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency – and the Ministry of Health. Al-Gambal was in attendance. Two days after the presentation, the project manager was removed from his position and sent back to Canada. The report and the slides used in the presentation were removed from the office and a new manager was installed. Over the coming weeks, the terms of reference of the project were rewritten, radically scaled back. Staff were ordered to hand in any and all copies of data they had on their hard drives, or backed up on disc, and any hard copies of information they may have had. Shocked by the speed and ferociousness of the coverup, Al-Gambal and Ali decided to save as much of the original data as they could.
‘We didn’t keep much,’ he said, speaking rapidly now. ‘But it was enough.’
Al-Gambal’s father had been a famous high-court judge, and Yusuf knew enough about the law to realise that he had a case. He went to one of his father’s old associates, and presented him with the information. The next day, the police came to his flat and arrested him. After two weeks of detention, he was charged with high treason. It was Mehmet who sought out Hamid Al-Farouk and asked him to take on Yusuf’s defence. Al-Farouk had successfully defended a number of other high-profile cases in Egypt over the previous few years and had a reputation for brilliance. They met, and he agreed to take on the case.
Al-Gambal paused long enough to light another cigarette using the burning end of his last, and continued. ‘Hamid was fantastic. It was beautiful to see him work.’
‘But something went wrong,’ said Clay.
Al-Gambal nodded, inhaled, let the smoke drift from his mouth as he spoke. ‘I offended him.’
‘That’s it?’
‘Over the course of the case, we watched him change.’
‘How?’
‘He became increasingly zealous and intolerant. His behaviour was more and more erratic. He started invoking God and fate, and quoting the Koran out of context.’ Al-Gambal stared up at the sky. ‘And yet I loved him.’
Clay waited for him continue.
‘I finally worked up the courage to tell him how I felt. Despite everything that was happening, it was all I could think about. I knew he was married, had a son. But I didn’t care. It was madness. I was completely and madly in love with him. I have never felt like this about anyone before.’ Al-Gambal grabbed the lip of the wall, leaned out so that his head and shoulders extended into the void. ‘I know I will never feel that way again, about anyone.’
‘But he rejected you.’
‘And I was jealous. That woman. She followed him around like a dark shadow.’
‘The woman in the photograph?’
Al-Gambal stared at the screen a moment and nodded. ‘Ali’s cousin, Fatimah. Her father died when she was young, and she was sent to live with her uncle, in Lebanon. She and Ali grew up together. Fatimah helped organise the children for the blood testing in Hadayek el-Koba.’
‘The lead smelter.’ The one Rania had told him she’d broken into that night.
Yusuf lit another smoke, closed his eyes. ‘It was the neighbourhood she grew up in, before she was sent away.’
‘Jesus.’
‘Exactly,’ said Yusuf. ‘These kids were her relatives, the children of her friends.’
‘And they were being poisoned. No wonder Hamid took the case.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Al-Gambal. ‘But by then, it didn’t matter.’
Not only did Hamid reject his advances, he viciously attacked him, accusing him of blasphemy and impiety, questioning his faith in Islam, deriding him and his kind as abominations, freaks, servants of Satan. After that, Hamid rapidly lost interest in the case. They knew that without Hamid, they were lost. They decided to take the deal.
But before they could inform the prosecutor of their decision, Ali was found dead in detention. ‘It was a warning,’ Yusuf said. ‘We all knew it.’
All information about the case was sequestered, and Yusuf was sworn to secrecy. It was made very clear that if he broke the agreement, he would be in prison for the rest of his life. ‘That was when I knew,’ he said. ‘We could never win. The project was closed down, the information buried. And nothing was going to change. Those smelters would go on polluting and children would continue growing up stunted and stupid. It was Hamid who convinced me, finally. He said to me: “The law isn’t enough. Not when it’s their law. You can’t fight this from the inside.” That’s what he said. I knew then it was over.’
‘He was wrong,’ said Clay. ‘Hamid kept some of the data. I’ve seen it. He must have been planning something, some kind of fightback. And Mehmet’s journal. A lot of it is in some kind of code. It’s your blood toxicity analysis, isn’t it?’
Al-Gambal nodded. ‘Mehmet was a very brave man, and a great friend. He cared very deeply about this country and what is happening to it. We all did.’
‘I know someone who can get this to the press in Europe.’
Al-Gambal pushed back from the wall, faced Clay.
‘Come with me,’ said Clay. ‘We can be out of Egypt in forty-eight hours.’ What he’d just heard would surely be enough for Rania. Hamid had simply gotten involved in the wrong case. Someone must have found out that he’d managed to keep some of the incriminating evidence. That would explain the encryption of his hard drive. All Clay had to do now was convince Rania that Eugène, too, was dead. The woman who’d last been seen with Rania’s husband and son was undoubtedly the assassin, sent by the Consortium. Framing Rania for the murders was the perfect coda.
Al-Gambal stared at him through his polarised lenses. Then he slumped his shoulders and lowered himself back into his chair. ‘Against people like these, you can never win,’ he said. ‘We don’t even know who they are. All we ever see are the functionaries – the crooked policemen, the paid-off judges, the cowed bureaucrats, the captured politicians. They make the laws, and they pass the sentences. But the people who really run the country – them we never see.’
Clay stood and looked out across the Gulf, the shifting currents of aquamarine and slate grey, the buff, heat-traced headlands on the far side of the canal. He thought about Crowbar, there in his desert tomb with the Galil across his chest. Where, he wondered, can people of conscience exist? How, in a world governed by the raw calculus of money and power, can individuals find justice? How can you fight something you cannot see? There were no targets, nothing physical to attack. Just an amorphous juggernaut of companies and ever-shifting capital. These were not enemies that he was trained to fight. If someone like Hamid, an expert in the law, in human rights, could be so easily undone, what hope was there for people like Yusuf Al-Gambal, like Rania, like him?
‘And this idiot, The Lion,’ Al-Gambal spat, ‘with his warped view of Islam, blowing things up, killing innocent people while claiming to fight for them. Doesn’t he realise that every time he commits an act of terrorism, the government can justify more repression? Brainless fool.’
‘Fuck’em,’ said Clay, finally. ‘You don’t have to live by their rules. Get out. Live on your own terms. Don’t participate. It’s the ultimate rebellion. If you don’t comply, they can’t own you.’ He meant it. Every word. ‘Come with me.’
But he could see the resignation in Al-Gambal’s slouch, in the calm way he lit yet another cigarette and filled his lungs. He was waiting for the end. He’d prepared himself, made his peace. Clay had seen it so many times before, in so many places
, that easy departure.
Clay put out his hand. Al-Gambal took it. They shook.
‘Peace be upon you,’ said Clay. Then he turned towards the stairs and the waiting taxi and Cairo.
14th November 1997. Cairo, Egypt. 11:50 hrs
Claymore, you still have not returned. The minutes coalesce, accreting seconds like slowly dripping water builds a stalactite in a mountain cave, a centimetre in a thousand years.
I remember visiting such a place in France, once, when I was a little girl. Coloured lights had been installed in the cave, and although it was beautiful, I remember very clearly being terrified, clutching my father’s hand as we went further and further into the mountain. The guide had told us that some of the stalactites were more than fifty thousand years old. I was doing calculations in my head. I knew my father was thirty-six at the time – I had just made him a birthday card. Suddenly, I realised that he was going to die and that these delicate constructions would remain, slowly growing, for long after. By the time we emerged back into the daylight, I was crying.
I could never have imagined how quickly his death did come, in the end, or its manner.
Mon Dieu, I should never have agreed to stay here and let you go alone. After everything that has happened, I could not bear to be separated from you again. I would rather die.
I have just reread this last paragraph. I blanch imagining that you might ever read this. I will never allow it, of course. Am I being hysterical? Would I, literally, rather be killed than live on without you? It is a cowardly thing to admit. In thinking such things, I blaspheme. I exist to worship God, not to indulge my own frivolities. I must be strong. Eugène is depending on me.
16:25 hrs
My friend from the Directorate just called me, here at Atef’s apartment. We used our usual code. I am his sister. He told me Mother was feeling ill, which meant we needed to speak urgently, and we arranged another line. Five minutes later I called him on the prearranged number. He is taking a big risk every time he speaks to me.
The woman, Jumoke Quarrah, I ran her photo through our database, he said.
And?
The name is an alias.
Who is she?
Her real name is Fatimah Salawi, a Lebanese national.
Mon Dieu.
She was originally from Egypt, a place called Hadayek el-Koba, a suburb of Cairo. Her father was killed when she was a child, under mysterious circumstances. Seems he may have been murdered, but the crime was never solved. He was a union leader in the factory he worked in. After his death, she was sent to live with her uncle in Lebanon.
A lead smelter, I said, feeling faint.
I do not know. But you must be very careful. Fatimah Salawi is a known member of Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya.
Are you sure? I gasped.
Egypt is not my area. I must be very careful. I cannot dig too far. But from what I am told, the source is rated as highly credible.
Thank you. Thank you.
One last thing.
Please.
The Directorate expects Al-Gama’a Islamiyya to launch a major attack, directed against Westerners, within the next forty-eight hours. And they believe that it will occur somewhere in the vicinity of Luxor.
Luxor. Are you sure?
The intelligence is rated as highly credible.
Luxor. We must hurry.
It Could Never Be Any Other Way
By the time Clay returned from Suez it was dark and the scheduled rendezvous with Mahmoud was less than an hour away. He made his way back to Atef’s apartment in Zamalek, ensuring as best he could that he was not being tracked.
When he arrived, Rania was jumpy, withdrawn. She looked as if she’d been crying and hadn’t slept in days. But she noticed his wound right away, insisting that Atef’s wife examine him. As the bandage he’d applied came off, she gasped, muttered some invocation in Arabic under her breath.
As Atef’s wife sewed, Clay told Rania about his encounter with Tall at the hotel – what he’d said about Samira and G.
Rania listened in silence, watching the needle moving across what remained of Clay’s ear. He knew it hurt her to hear of her friend’s betrayal, of Samira’s guilt and final attempt at redemption – all things he knew well. By the time he finished telling it, Atef’s wife was finishing up, and Rania’s eyes were spilling silent tears.
‘She defied them, in the end,’ said Clay. ‘That probably saved you, those extra few minutes she held out.’
Rania said nothing, just stood gazing out through her tears.
Then Clay told her about meeting Yusuf Al-Gambal in Suez, about the details of the case and her husband’s involvement, the unrequited love, and finally, Al-Gambal’s unwillingness to continue the fight, to run even, his seeming resignation in the face of imprisonment or death.
‘I don’t understand it,’ Clay said, shaking his head. ‘It’s as if he just wants it all to be over.’
Rania watched as Atef’s wife finished bandaging his ear, cleaned him up.
‘We have a decision to make,’ he said, once Atef’s wife had left them alone. ‘We can go to Luxor, as planned, or we can head straight for the Red Sea, now. Mahmoud knows someone who can get us passage on a freighter heading south. We can be out of Egypt and on our way in twelve hours.’ What they needed now was clarity. Certainty. Logic. They needed to think it through well, all of it. If they didn’t, they were not going to leave this place.
Rania stared at him as if he’d just proposed that they turn themselves in to the authorities. But instead of the rebuke he expected, she said: ‘I have managed to make some sense of the Kemetic’s journal.’ She handed him a card. ‘Yusuf Al-Gambal gave me this, the one time I met him.’
It was a business card. Clay turned it to the light.
‘It’s a big industrial plant. A lead smelter. The one I told you about. The same place, the same name, is mentioned here.’ She pointed to a symbol on the open page of the Kemetic’s journal. ‘You see, it is the company logo.’
‘The place in the photograph.’
Rania nodded.
‘One of the Consortium’s companies?’
‘According to the journal, yes. Majority-owned.’ Rania traced her finger along the string of Arabic shorthand. ‘And you see here? SRD Holdings. The minority partner. I did some checking, while you were away. SRD is registered in South Africa.’
‘The AB.’
‘It must be.’
Clay told Rania about the blood data the Kemetic had encoded in his journal, that Ali had a cousin who organised the testing of the neighbourhood children. ‘They were starting to trace the link back to the actual sources of pollution.’
‘And when they got too close, the Consortium hit back.’
‘That’s why those cops were so interested in the file you got from your husband’s computer. Can you imagine if this got out?’
‘That is why they killed my husband,’ said Rania. ‘It is logical. Yusuf Al-Gambal, the Kemetic, and my husband. Together, taking on the Consortium in the courts. About this.’ She stabbed the document with her finger. ‘Pollution from their factories. Samira mentioned the same thing.’
‘And now, Yusuf and Ali’s cousin are the only ones left.’
‘Ali’s cousin?
‘Fatimah. She was the one who organised the blood testing.’
Rania gasped, held her breath a moment then grabbed Clay’s arm. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘The one in the photograph, standing next to Hamid. She knew him, worked with him on the case. It all fits. Fatimah Salawi is Ali’s cousin.’
‘Hold on. Who is Fatimah Salawi?’
Rania told Clay about her conversation with her friend, about the warning of an imminent attack by GI. ‘That’s why we have to go to Luxor. Because Fatimah Salawi is the woman who killed my husband and who kidnapped my son. She is a member of Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, and she’s on her way to Luxor right now to do something terrible.’
An hour and a half later the southern outskirts of Giza
were fading into the distance. The Western Desert Road unspooled before them in the yellow myopia of the headlights. Mahmoud had brought the big twenty-two-wheeler and had arranged to carry a container of electronic goods bound for Aswan. He’d greeted Clay as he might an old friend, with a bear hug and scratchy kisses on each cheek. To Rania he offered a bow of the head and a smile, bid her welcome.
‘Your very good friend,’ he said to Clay, pushing out a big smile. ‘You found her.’
‘Thanks to you.’
‘And now? Luxor or the coast?’
‘Luxor. We must find her son.’
‘God willing.’
‘Yes. Inshallah.’
‘And then?’
‘To the coast, as planned. Out of Egypt.’
Mahmoud ran his fingers through his beard, considering this. ‘I will arrange it.’
Clay and Rania sat up front, ready to disappear into the cab’s rear sleeping compartment if they encountered roadblocks.
As the kilometres wound by, Rania leafed through the pages of the Kemetic’s diary. Clay could feel her there next to him, her hip warm against his, her right elbow moving against his side every time she turned a page. Her smell filled his senses, that same elixir he’d first breathed in Yemen three years ago now – the smell of wildflowers and honey that would always remind him of their time together at her aunt’s chalet in the Alps, after he’d been reported killed and somehow found her again. He counted the times they’d been together. Once in Yemen, desperate and frightened, before she’d vanished into the night. Then Switzerland, three weeks that in his memory occupied a space equivalent to all of his life before meeting her. London, on the run from Medved and his thugs. And then, much later, those few days in Istanbul when they’d come as close as any time before or since, after which he’d lost her in the maelstrom of time and distance and events, chaotic and uncertain. Twenty-seven nights, or parts of them. That was it.
And yet, in everything she’d told him, everything he’d learned from Yusuf Al-Gambal, there was something that didn’t fit. ‘Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya,’ he said. ‘Who are they fighting against?’
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