Butterfly on the Storm

by Walter Lucius

  ‘After Kovalev told me how he’d tried to save the boy’s life at the villa, how he thought he was dead at first, but because of all the publicity knew he was still alive – that’s when I knew. The media hype woke the sleeping dogs. Kovalev was the one who tried to protect the boy from those dogs. He tipped Diba off about the attack.’

  All of Tomasoa’s anxiety seemed to disappear, replaced by a fatalism that now weighed him down. He sunk deep into his chair.

  ‘Once I connected the dots,’ Joshua said, ‘I suddenly had the answer to how the hell Kovalev knew about the secret MICU transport.’

  ‘Fine,’ Tomasoa muttered. ‘If you’re right, we have a mole in our corps. It seems sensible for you to go back to the interrogation room and question Kovalev further about this. And tell Diba I want to see him.’

  Joshua hesitated.

  ‘Could you leave me out of this for now, chief?’

  Tomasoa nodded.

  With the weight of the world on his shoulders, Joshua walked back through the canteen where, momentarily abandoning his routine, he pushed the espresso button on the coffee machine. He took a sip, then immediately dropped the cup into the rubbish bin.

  As he approached the interrogation room, he heard an agitated man talking into a police radio. A policeman came out of the room. His face was drained of all colour. Joshua went inside. Diba’s white-bandaged hands were covered with the blood seeping from Kovalev’s bandaged head into a big red puddle on the table.

  ‘I tried to stop him,’ stammered Diba. ‘He started banging his head, just like that. I tried to stop him …’

  Joshua put two fingers against Kovalev’s carotid artery and thought he felt a faint pulse.

  When he looked up, Diba was gone.

  4

  Farah was standing on the deserted promenade deck of a hideous construction on posts that stretched far out into the sea. She was aware of ominous dark seawater calmly splashing against the stone pillars metres below her.

  With every move she’d made since the pile-up on the ring road, it felt as if gravity had begun to tug harder at her. Even her thoughts were more sluggish than usual. But it wasn’t just the accident and its aftermath that were to blame. It was everything that had happened in the past few days.

  Only an hour ago, she’d been in the Emergency Department, sitting at the head of Paul’s bed while a nurse removed the glass shards from his back, disinfected the wounds and stitched them up again. Paul, who was lying on his stomach, was putting a brave face on it while he asked Farah non-stop questions about her meeting with Lavrov and told her with something akin to pride how he’d come by his other injuries in Ponte City. Boys will be boys. Then she’d accompanied him to the ward where Edward was being treated for airway complications and an irregular heartbeat. Lung X-rays and an ECG had been made, but he’d have to spend the night in hospital for observation.

  Farah had gone to the ICU as soon as she could, totally unprepared for what she was about to hear. Mariska filled her in. The fire, the assault, the shot policeman, the MICU transport. Apparently the boy had arrived safely at the children’s ICU at the Maaspoort Hospital in Rotterdam.

  That’s when she received the phone call.

  ‘Ms Hafez, the doctor said I should phone you.’

  ‘What doctor?’

  ‘Dr Bernson. It’s about the boy from the hit-and-run.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘I know what’s going on … what happened.’

  ‘I’m all ears.’

  ‘Not over the phone. That’s impossible.’ The man sounded worn out, angst-ridden.

  ‘When can I speak to you then?’ she asked.

  So here she was. Late at night, gazing at the lights of the seaside resort Scheveningen from a deserted pier.

  ‘Ms Hafez?’

  Farah turned around and saw a man whose thin face she would have forgotten tomorrow. That’s how nondescript he looked. In fact, everything about the man – his posture, appearance and clothes – exuded detachment, but not the kind people from well-to-do circles sometimes projected. This detachment was one of servility. The man now standing before her appeared to be made to linger on a rainy dyke in grey October weather without being noticed.

  ‘I saw you on television,’ he said with a voice that betrayed two packs of cigarettes a day. ‘That was you, wasn’t it, at the martial arts gala?’

  ‘If you’re referring to Carré, then yes, that was me.’

  ‘Did you tell anyone you were meeting me?’

  ‘My boss knows about it.’

  ‘I don’t want to draw attention to myself, you see. I just want to put things right. Nobody’s ever had an inkling. Not even my wife.’

  ‘What kind of inkling?’

  ‘Of the double life I’ve led. For years.’

  The man seemed neurotic. A miserable wretch who had nowhere to go to unburden his troubled mind.

  ‘What kind of double life are you talking about?’

  He didn’t seem to hear her, too caught up in the story he needed to get off his chest.

  ‘In both lives I’ve been loyal, you know. But there comes a point when you have to choose. If you don’t choose, choices are made for you. I wish I’d made mine sooner. Now it’s too late. Obedience is your greatest virtue. That’s what my father used to say. That’s how I was raised. With immense respect for authority. I always believed that people got their just desserts if they’d been obedient.’

  ‘Not any more?’

  ‘Faith keeps a man going, Ms Hafez. Start doubting and you’re done for. I no longer believe in anything. Not after what happened to the boy.’

  The man looked away from Farah, ashamed it seemed, and stared at the irregular pattern of the waves for a while without a word.

  ‘I was always curious to know what lay beneath. Beneath the water, I mean. But I’m not a diver. I’m even too scared to go snorkelling. At home I’ve got a couple of aquariums. When my wife’s in front of the telly, I look at what’s happening underwater.’

  His doleful, somewhat bloodshot eyes turned back to Farah. He pulled out a packet of Marlboro. ‘Do you mind?’ he asked. Farah shook her head. He coughed and flashed her an apologetic grin. ‘The doctor told me to stop ages ago. But yeah, those choices again.’ He blew out the smoke in a straight line.

  ‘We all hide things, Ms Hafez. Because we’re ashamed of them, or because they make us smaller. Or else we run away from them. Until they catch up with us.’

  Farah scrutinized him. She wasn’t scared; the man didn’t seem to pose a threat. In fact, she felt a growing irritation at his grovelling banality. But she also knew that the greatest psychopaths were often the most unobtrusive types. Trapped in their parochial lives, they could only escape through heinous deeds that momentarily restored part of their lost identity. This man fit that description.

  ‘You should know, Ms Hafez, that I acted under coercion. I didn’t do it out of free will. But I don’t want my wife to suffer as a result. I don’t want anything to happen to her. I’ve got savings. There’s money for her. I hope she’ll forgive me for never telling her about my other life. But I fear she won’t. That’s not who she is.’

  He fell silent again. Farah couldn’t tell whether he was relishing his moment or stalling because he was too scared to say what he had to say.

  ‘Are you religious?’ he asked.

  ‘I try to be,’ Farah replied.

  ‘You know there’s nothing and that’s why you want to believe in something,’ the man said.

  ‘You contacted me,’ Farah said coldly. ‘You wanted to tell me something. What is it you wanted to share with me?’

  Some ten metres below, the waves were starting to beat harder against the pillars. The man was clutching the railing so tightly, it looked like he was afraid of falling.

  ‘I’ve been driving him for three years now, my boss. When I first laid eyes on him, I thought he was that chancellor from Germany, what’s his name again? Helmut Kohl. Tall, fat and us
ed to ordering people around. The kind of man you think knows what’s what, otherwise he wouldn’t have such a high position. The kind of man you obey. I was sworn to secrecy. I know the rules of the game. Loyalty and confidentiality. It wasn’t hard for me. Lombard was the kind of person who inspired it.’

  ‘Are you talking about Finance Minister Lombard?’

  ‘I was keen to be of service to him. To be more than just a driver who ferried him from A to B. Someone he could rely on. We were a good team, Lombard and I. But always with the necessary distance. Although you develop a personal bond, we never became friends. I didn’t want to either. It would’ve only muddied the water.’

  He lit a second cigarette and inhaled, perhaps trying to muster the courage to continue his story.

  ‘The first time he called me late at night, he told me not to forget my promise. “Promise is debt,” he said. I wondered why he was so emphatic about that. After all, I’d been driving him around for months. He wanted me to take him to a park. I remember the place, it had those trees with the enormous trailing branches, what do you call ’em?’

  ‘Weeping willows,’ Farah said, thinking to herself: how appropriate.

  ‘He asked me to wait. A moment later he returned, with a boy, an Asian kid, young.’

  ‘How young?’

  ‘Very young. Definitely underage. “Just drive around,” Lombard said, which I did, watching in my rear-view mirror what was happening, what they were doing.’

  He took a couple of deep puffs and began to cough his lungs out. ‘Sorry,’ he said, after he’d caught his breath again. ‘There are things I can tell you, Ms Hafez, things that happened in the back seat of that car you wouldn’t think possible. It didn’t always happen in the car, sometimes in hotels too, but never the expensive ones he usually stayed in, as you can imagine. It’s as if he liked to slum it when he was messing with those boys.’

  ‘Were you there the night the Afghan boy was hit?’

  The man seemed to flinch at that. ‘In the past year I’ve often had to drive Lombard to certain locations in the middle of nowhere. Usually a wooded area somewhere. Sometimes on an industrial estate, or the Port of Antwerp. Always in isolated places and always in the dead of night. I was told to wait somewhere, somewhere inconspicuous. On his return he always looked agitated. Once he had blood on his hands and clothes. He was crying. I didn’t ask anything. I didn’t want to know. I cleaned the car later that night.’

  ‘What happened in the Amsterdamse Bos?’

  ‘Just before we got to the villa, I saw a man running. I knew something was wrong. I heard shots. Lombard started panicking. With considerable difficulty, I managed to turn the car. Then, when we got back to the road …’ He faltered.

  Farah saw he was crying. But he didn’t make a sound and looked like he was about to choke. She didn’t intervene, but waited until he’d calmed down again.

  ‘I keep seeing her fly across the bonnet.’

  ‘It was a boy.’

  ‘I didn’t know that then. She appeared out of nowhere. Completely out of the blue. Like she had wings. I keep seeing her face before me. Her eyes as she hit the windscreen.’

  He looked away, staring out across the sea like he was somewhere else entirely. Back in the woods, Farah suspected.

  ‘It all happened in a flash. I slammed on the brakes, but it was too late. She bounced off the car like she was made of rubber. But the blow, the blow was so hard. It’s stuck in my head. It won’t budge. I can’t sleep any more. Whenever I close my eyes, I see those eyes. Hear that thud again.’

  His voice trembled. He clutched the railing even tighter, as if they were standing on a rolling ship about to sail into a storm. Farah felt no pity whatsoever.

  ‘I wanted to stop, but Lombard yelled at me to carry on driving. He kept yelling. I stepped on the gas. It must have all happened in seconds.’ He looked at her like a fearful child who’d run out of excuses.

  ‘Strange to think how many thoughts you can have in the space of a few seconds, Ms Hafez. The thoughts I had, I can’t remember them all …’

  ‘You didn’t stop,’ Farah said icily.

  ‘The whole time he was yelling at me from the back seat. “Faster, faster,” he kept yelling.’

  ‘You should take your story to the police.’

  ‘I know,’ the man said. ‘I know. After seeing that doctor on television, I tried to get her phone number. I wanted to tell her. She cared so much.’

  ‘Then why are you telling me?’

  ‘For years I’ve kept quiet about the filthy goings-on right before my eyes. I colluded. I’m guilty. But I’m not the only one who’s guilty, you know what I mean?’

  ‘I think I do,’ Farah said. ‘That’s why you should come with me.’

  She saw him leaning forward, his hands folded over the railing. Like a believer who’s just been to confession and is now saying the Lord’s Prayer in penance.

  5

  He no longer cared if they found him. Marouan needed this shower to wash everything away. The temperature of the water as hot as possible, the jet as hard as could be: measures to remove every last bit of Kovalev. But there wasn’t much time – the man’s evil had permeated every pore of Marouan’s body like nuclear particulates.

  After rubbing himself dry, he sprinkled so much cologne on his body that he got dizzy. He pulled on clean underwear and a crisply ironed shirt. He chose his best suit, bought less than a month ago for a wedding celebration.

  Remorse and regret are no more than the torment of the non-believer. The time that is given to us always comes to an end. And we are powerless to save ourselves from death. As it is God who creates all life and death.

  He’d turned on hardly any lights and walked through the empty house in the darkness, touching everything: the sofa, the table, the chairs, even the lifeless fake marble kitchen counter, which still smelled of Dettol.

  Everything he touched reminded him of another time, another life in which everything had made sense, where things had a purpose, where everything was connected, seemed to complement each other.

  He looked out over the dark garden, withered bushes, the patio stones plagued by weeds. Every year he promised himself he’d tidy it up, and every year nothing came of his plans.

  With barely a glance, he pulled a CD by Oum Kalthoum from a rickety shelving unit.

  The Corolla stank of food, sweat and frustration. He started the car, gave the dark house one last look glance and pulled away. A few streets further, two police cars going in the opposite direction passed at high speed.

  In the historic city centre, he found a cramped parking space along a canal and walked to the familiar cobblestone square.

  To his own amazement, it merely took a smile to gain Marouan access behind the glass door. The girl looked at him as if she was seeing him for the first time. He took out his wallet, and as he put three one-hundred-euro notes on the table told her that she need not let anybody else in for the next hour.

  ‘I can’t,’ she said, startled. ‘It’s too long.’

  ‘Then tell me how long we have together,’ Marouan said.

  ‘Fifteen minutes, tops.’

  He left the money and said, ‘Then this is for fifteen minutes.’

  She looked at him suspiciously. ‘What do I have to do?’

  Softly, from deep down in his throat, came Marouan’s answer.

  ‘Dance for me.’

  She looked at the bills on the table.

  ‘That’s what you’ll give me if I dance for you?’

  He saw her hesitate.

  ‘Here? Now?’

  ‘Here. Now. For me.’ He gave her the CD. ‘To the most beautiful music I could find for you.’

  With her back to him, she put the CD into the player and when she heard the first drawn-out note of the orchestra introducing the song Alf Leila wa Leila, a change came over her. She looked at him as if he’d just given her a gift.

  She pulled her hair loose and tied a shawl around her hips
to cover her legs. She stood before him. Her body moved to the rhythm of the guembri, the Arabic lute. And when Oum Kalthoum started to sing ‘Let us live in the eyes of the night,’ Marouan saw that she wasn’t dancing for him alone. The other man in the room was the music.

  He abandoned himself to her movements, as if he were being swept away by the sea, and he knew that this moment would never return, that it would pass and he would hardly be able to believe it had happened. It filled him with indescribable gratitude and deep sorrow at the same time.

  She stretched out her arm in a wave that seemed to flow down to her hips, the undulating movements taking possession of her body, all of it coming together in her belly, where it rippled further.

  The regal movement of her arm as she turned her head was followed by a veil of hair – like the echo of a gong being struck.

  Oum Kalthoum’s last words hung in the silent room.

  ‘Let us live in the eyes of the night and tell the sun come over, come after one year, not before.’

  She still had her eyes closed. Marouan couldn’t find the right words to break the silence; he didn’t want to see her open her eyes again and take the money off the table; it was perfect as it was. He slipped away without a sound.

  6

  Joshua Calvino didn’t know what he was thinking or feeling, he just knew he had to put one foot in front of the other, keep on going. And so he dragged himself to his desk, where he collapsed on his chair like a boxer who’d taken a succession of punches in a much too long match.

  Kovalev was whisked away in an ambulance. Diba had vanished in the chaos, and there were police cars en route to his home. The bell for the next round sounded. It was the phone on his desk.

  ‘Joshua?’ He recognized the voice of Ellen Mulder, the pathologist. ‘I understand that you guys are working on the Afghan boy’s case?’

  ‘Right. Why?’

  ‘A woman was brought in tonight. The doctor who was on television.’

  Less than fifteen minutes later, Joshua was in the chilly tiled room staring down at the naked and violated body of Danielle Bernson. The hum of the air conditioning was drowned out by a pulsing throb. It took a while before he realized it was the pounding of his own heart reverberating against his eardrums. He’d entered the room without putting up his professional guard. Defenceless. Just as defenceless as Danielle must have felt when she stared into the barrel of the gun.