Butterfly on the Storm

by Walter Lucius

  The concrete construction she was driving towards at more than 100 kilometres per hour in less than ten seconds began to crumble and fall away on to the tanker.

  And as the Carrera sped across the middle of the flyover at 150 kilometres per hour, the road completely collapsed.

  43

  As Marouan watched the MICU pull away, Calvino stumbled into view. He didn’t seem able to grasp the full extent of this apocalypse. Marouan shouted into his police radio for emergency assistance. Meanwhile, he stared at Kovalev, the man who had facilitated his gambling addiction for years in return for ‘mutual’ services, lying there lifeless, no longer a threat to him. Marouan had never thought shooting somebody would give him so much pleasure. With that one shot he’d not only repaid his debt and purged his conscience, but it seemed like life had taken on an entirely new perspective in a single blink. It felt like new blood was rushing through his veins.

  The intensity of every minute sound, both near and far, penetrated his being. With crystal clarity, he took in each and every movement in the chaos around him. Like the sound of boots running on the tarmac and the image of a man with a bandaged head who was crawling into a taxi lying upside down on the other side of the road.

  Marouan shouted commands to Calvino and then as quickly as he could climbed over the double barrier to the other side of the motorway. In the wreck of the Touareg, he saw the badly mutilated driver. The metal was folded around him, infused with the smell of spilled petrol. There was no escape possible. The leaking fuel streamed in a thin trail towards the taxi. Marouan followed the trail, crouched and discovered the silhouette of a woman, trapped by her seatbelt, hanging upside down in the back, while the man with the bandaged head tried everything he could to free her. Marouan took out his pocket knife and holding the blade, offered it to him through the shattered window. It was pulled from his hand so hard that the knife cut into his palm. With a cry of pain, he pulled his bloodied hand back.

  Kneeling on the wet tarmac, he tried to keep track of what was happening inside the taxi. He saw the woman, finally freed from her seatbelt, fall on top of the man. He ran to the other side of the taxi to help her out. He stuck his arms inside, and badly cut his other hand as he tried to protect the woman’s head from the shards still stuck in the window groove. A vessel was severed, causing blood to spurt everywhere and mix with the rain.

  Marouan took the woman in his arms, lifted her up and looked around, searching for help. But all he saw were panicked people running all over the motorway.

  44

  The Carrera had flown across the gaping hole in the middle of the collapsing flyover. On the other side Farah raced down the ramp, zigzagging among the stranded cars to get to the taxi. Why? She couldn’t really say. All she knew is that she had to do it.

  When she got to the taxi, she was stunned to see Detective Diba with a seriously injured woman in his arms. She braked, jumped out, ran around the Carerra, yanked open the passenger door, flipped the seat forwards, threw the boxes out and helped Diba gently place the woman on the back seat.

  Then she followed Diba to the taxi which had large blue flames dancing around its frame.

  She and Diba each began tugging at one of the man’s feet, but failed to get him moving. Meanwhile the taxi caught fire, bringing with it the risk of imminent explosion. Farah caught a singeing smell and pulled at the foot again with all her might. And then he suddenly emerged from the distorted doorway like a lugubrious newborn, looking into his saviours’ faces, bewildered.

  For a moment everything was blurred, the only focus was that of his eyes on hers.

  ‘Farah?!’

  She stared back.

  ‘It’s me, Paul.’

  She was still speechless. He grabbed hold of her and demanded to know: ‘Where is she?’

  Diba helped him up and together they hobbled over to the Carrera. Impatiently, he directed Farah to the driver’s seat and slapped the roof. ‘Don’t wait for an ambulance. Head straight to the WMC!’

  Farah weaved her way around the stranded cars. The man beside her leaned over his backrest to the woman in the back of the Carrera and took her hand.

  Only then did she realize who was sitting next to her. She yelled above the din.

  ‘Paul Chapelle!’

  On his distorted face she saw a smile she hadn’t seen in thirty years, but would recognize anywhere.

  Before long, the contours of the WMC appeared above the landscape. Fire engines and ambulances sped past them in the oncoming lane.

  Farah struggled to breathe. Concentrate. Focus on your breathing. Calm down now.

  Less than three minutes later she pulled up outside the Emergency Department and helped Paul lift the woman out of the car. Then she ran inside, where she found doctors and nurses getting ready for the imminent deluge of injured people. They looked up as a limping and bleeding Paul carried in the unconscious woman.

  45

  Diba had shouted at him to stay with the body of the man who’d been downed. Before Joshua was fully aware of what was going on, he saw his overweight partner jump the barrier as light as a deer and run to the overturned taxi on the other side of the road.

  A shattered Joshua looked around. There was nothing that could’ve prepared him for such a disaster. Compared to this inferno, the panic during the fire in the hospital was a calm prelude. And it was not even the soaring flames, the wounded crawling from their cars, the desperate yelling for help, the collapsing flyover and the raging panic that upset him. It was the complete absence of what gives life meaning, what makes you get up every morning and face another day.

  In the midst of this futility, his staggeringly spry partner had ordered him to keep watch over a corpse? As if there weren’t any living beings who could better use his help right now. He looked at the man who’d been shot and was surprised by the absence of blood from the gunshot wound. Only his face was injured by splintered glass. When he leaned over him, he got the shock of a lifetime.

  The dead man had opened his eyes and was now staring right at him.

  Part Four

  * * *

  FALLEN

  The mist around him was beginning to dissolve. He was surprised to find that he could walk again and felt curiously happy and relieved. As if nothing had happened. He was back in the orphanage courtyard, with boys excitedly running away to hide from him. Two men entered the courtyard. They weren’t an uncommon sight here. Whenever they came they’d talk to some of the boys and occasionally take one with them. That boy would be going to new parents, it was said, making everybody envious.

  Now the men were back. They were looking around and talking. Then they pointed to him. The orphanage director approached him. ‘Go and collect your things, Sekandar, you’re leaving.’ He wanted to know where he was going, but the director didn’t answer his question. He only repeated what he’d just said. ‘Collect your things, Sekandar.’

  When he said goodbye, the director had tears in his eyes. He didn’t like it. He couldn’t stand men who cried. He was only a boy, yet he wasn’t crying, was he?

  The two men took him in a car with a back seat made of smooth black leather and cold air blowing about constantly. When the car started moving he felt as if he was taking off. He heard a woman singing, her voice coming from all possible corners of the car, while the men talked softly over it and patted him on the head. One of them kept looking and smiling at him, telling him he was a handsome boy.

  He’d been too afraid to ask where they were going. It would have been impolite and at the orphanage they’d taught him never to be impolite to grown-ups if somebody came for him.

  The car journey took a very long time and when they finally arrived at the big house, the sun was already setting. They drove through a gate that was guarded by two men who immediately closed it again. Then he was given food. And since he’d gone without meat for the longest time, he ate till his tummy ached.

  It struck him that there was no woman in the house and he didn’t hav
e the nerve to ask if he’d be living here from now on. He hoped not, because as beautiful as the house was, it felt like a prison. He wasn’t allowed out.

  Then one of the men told him to come along. He had to take off his clothes and stand under the water, which he refused to do. That was the first time he was hit. The blow hurt a lot, because the big ring on the man’s fat finger struck his forehead. When he finally stood under the shower, the man who’d hit him started removing his clothes too. He came and stood beside him and rubbed him with soap. As he felt the man’s hands move over his body, his mind separated from his body and flew away from where he was standing. Away from the shame and fear.

  The city looked so dark from above. He was afraid to land anywhere, preferring instead to hover high in the sky. But a gust of wind blew him off-balance, his wings stopped working and he was pulled down, back into that tiled prison cell.

  Something strange had happened to the man who’d joined him under the water. His eyes were gleaming as he towelled him dry, and when he rubbed him with oil that smelled of coconut he told him, in a voice that was gentler than before, that he was a sweet boy, a good boy.

  Then the man showed him his new clothes.

  They were women’s clothes. He’d seen them in films on television in which dancing women with big smiles and really high voices sang about love, and made eyes at men who’d brushed their pearly whites so they could smile back nicely. Now he was being transformed into one of those women, and not just because of the clothing. The man also blackened his eyes, put red lipstick on his mouth and draped him in jewellery with bells.

  ‘You’re a girl now, a beautiful little dancer. Look how beautiful you are,’ the man said, holding up a mirror.

  1

  Sasha Kovalev was lying on the wet tarmac. Diva’s shot had hit his bullet-proof vest with such an unexpected force that this was his second knockout in one night. He opened his eyes. An unfamiliar man was hanging over him with his gun drawn. A jumble of sounds entered his head. While the sharp pain of splintered glass seared his face, in his mind he saw the black Touareg shooting by again and the jackknifing tanker ramming the flyover pillar. The explosion blew him against the partition of the ambulance. That had been his first knockout in years.

  His breath caught in his throat. The man with the gun was yelling at him in Dutch. A siren blared in his ears, brakes were screeching. Two policemen pulled him to his feet, slapped on handcuffs and frisked him. Suddenly Diva was standing in front of him again. With bleeding hands this time. And with far too big a mouth, given the pathetic figure he was.

  ‘Who do you think you are, goddammit? Fucking Rasputin or what?’

  Although it had stopped raining, the sky above was still pitch black. An army of firefighters was spraying foam at the jackknifed tanker. The air was teeming with trauma helicopters.

  Diva gave Sasha a hard shove into the police van, deliberately knocking his head against the doorframe. Sasha clenched his teeth to cope with the searing pain in his face, while fighting the tightness in his chest and the growing anger at his own recklessness. An ashen-faced Diva, with a worryingly blank look on his face, sat down beside him clutching a cocked Walther P5 in his bloody hands. The barrel was aimed at Sasha’s right temple. A tiny bump in the road and a bullet would ‘accidentally’ burrow itself in Sasha’s cortex. The policemen objected to the weapon, leading to a sharp exchange of words between them and Diva. Thankfully the gun disappeared back in its holster.

  Sasha looked out across the poorly lit, soaking wet roads. The cogs in his head were whirring feverishly. He should have left the boy to his own devices. Bikram had been right. He should never have allowed himself to be guided by something as woolly as emotion. They’d landed him in this mess, in the back seat of an erratically accelerating police car next to a detective who’d been his lapdog for years but was now throwing his weight about like a Doberman.

  At the Emergency Department, a doctor injected him with a painkiller. His face now felt like a tightly stretched pig’s bladder, fingers sliding across, scalpels making delicate incisions and pincers removing minuscule glass shards. When he exited, Sasha caught his reflection in a glass door and winced in pain.

  The interrogation room at the police station was as bare and solid as the interior of a bunker. He’d been handcuffed to his seat. It took ages for his interrogators to arrive and in the meantime the painkillers were wearing off.

  The Indian medics hired by Bikram wouldn’t wait for the MICU forever. By now the ambulance flight from Goa must have left the hangar and taken off from Schiphol empty. If everything had gone to plan, he’d be soaring somewhere over Europe now, brushing his hand over the boy’s forehead and saying a few reassuring words.

  ‘It’s all over now. You’re safe.’

  At that thought, his body shuddered with anger again. The handcuffs rattled, the table shook. Goa was further away than ever.

  After some time, the man who’d been watching him when he’d come around on the tarmac walked in. Besides a substantial dose of fatigue, his young face also betrayed a strong sense of purpose. He was followed by Diva, with a face like a death mask and both hands bandaged. It looked like he was wearing mittens at the height of summer. Despite everything that had happened, Sasha couldn’t help but smile at this observation.

  The young detective switched the recording device on, spoke a few words of Dutch into the microphone, sat opposite Sasha and introduced himself in English.

  ‘Italian?’ Sasha asked.

  Calvino ignored the question and nodded at Diva who’d taken a seat in a corner with his death mask and mittens.

  Sasha looked over at Diva, saw the fury in his eyes and grinned. Diva must bitterly regret not aiming at his head.

  ‘You were read your rights during your arrest,’ Calvino said.

  ‘Could be,’ Sasha replied. ‘But I don’t understand Dutch.’

  ‘We appointed you a lawyer.’

  ‘Who I refused.’

  ‘I’ve informed the Public Prosecutor.’

  ‘Excellent.’

  ‘He’s given me permission to question you.’

  ‘Then, by all means, begin,’ Sasha said, still with a smirk.

  ‘Mr Kovalev, you are accused of violent abduction and attempted murder. As a suspect, you’re under no obligation to answer. Is that clear?’

  Sasha nodded. He liked this goombah. The guy had flair.

  ‘Excellent, Mr Kovalev,’ Calvino said, to signal he was kicking off properly now. ‘Sorry for the delay. We were waiting for the initial forensic results from the assault on a policeman at the Waterland Medical Centre. It turns out the bullet isn’t from the weapon you were carrying.’

  Sasha looked from Calvino to Diva, who avoided his gaze. That’s when he realized something must have gone wrong. That pimply debutant from Moscow must have been at the hospital, but apparently the trap hadn’t snapped shut in time and he got away. Diva had messed up. What else was new?

  ‘I don’t know about any policeman. I never set foot in that hospital.’

  ‘You deny any involvement in the assault or the arson in the ICU?’

  ‘Arson? Detective, I’m not a pyromaniac and certainly not a cop killer. I deny any direct involvement.’

  ‘Any direct involvement?’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘What about indirect?’

  Sasha glanced at Diva again, who was shifting nervously in his seat.

  ‘Several parties are interested in the boy, Mr Calvino.’

  ‘You mean besides you and me?’

  ‘That’s right. And they don’t all have the best intentions.’

  ‘But you do?’

  ‘I’ll happily explain it to you, Detective Calvino, provided you get me a glass of water and some painkillers. It’s a long story.’

  Calvino looked at Diva, who got up agonizingly slowly and shuffled out of the room like a pensioner. When he returned a little later, it was without water of course. The sheep-fucker li
ked a practical joke. Meanwhile, Detective Calvino was pacing the room. He wasn’t a brilliant interrogator, or at least he was playing the part. In that case he was a fine actor.

  ‘To be honest, I don’t mind a bit of silence, Mr Kovalev,’ Calvino stated. ‘When others are silent, it gives me space to think. And then, I think: It’s the boy. You’re only interested in the boy. In the boy and nothing else. And then I think, isn’t that great? Isn’t that a remarkable coincidence?’ Calvino stood still and leaned towards Sasha. ‘Because we’re interested in him too.’

  ‘So we have mutual interests,’ Sasha said, grinning.

  A policeman walked in with a bottle of water and a blister pack of tablets, which he handed to Calvino. Calvino poured the water into a plastic cup, pressed an effervescent tablet from the strip, tossed it in and pushed it all over to Sasha, who had just enough slack in his handcuffs to pick up the cup and pour its contents down his throat.

  ‘Tell me, Mr Kovalev, when did you first see him, the boy?’

  Heaving a sigh of relief, Sasha put the cup back on the table. Water trickled down his chin. He could smell the forest air when he thought back to the moment, three days ago now. It had been a clear night, the moon bright, with the heat of the day lingering among the trees. A young, Middle-Eastern-looking girl got out of the station wagon. She looked Sasha straight in the eyes and at that moment he felt something deep within break, something that could never be repaired again. Never before had a child’s eyes had such an impact on him. It was like he’d looked deep inside his own soul.

  ‘I first saw him a few days ago.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the Amsterdamse Bos, near the old villa.’

  ‘What were you doing there?’

  ‘Arranging a meeting.’