by Ings, Simon
He chews and chews and chews.
There is light. Egaz sits up, stomach muscles straining. Much more of this and he will not have the strength to sit up any more. He listens, turning his head this way and that, trying to get his bearings. There is something wrong with the engine. There is something wrong with the ship. It is listing. Perhaps it is the wind, the direction of the waves – No. The ship is listing. They have not trimmed the ship correctly. If the weather deteriorates, it will handle badly.
A can is lifted to his mouth. Dirty water. He drinks, tries not to gag, gags anyway, hunts for more but there is no more, the can is gone.
Slap – slap – slap. He glimpses movement through the rag binding his eyes. A mote of red as the can is pulled away from his mouth.
Esso.
It is an Esso can.
Night falls.
He tries to sleep.
‘Egaz –’
‘Shut up!’
Feet slap across the room, from door to window. (He knows where the door is. The window. He knows who called out for him. Suniti. His wife.)
Suniti cries out as something – a foot, a hand – clips her, hard, knocking her over. He hears her fall. She sobs.
‘On the floor now. Heads down.’
Obediently, Nageen rolls on to his side.
‘Kiss the floor, all of you.’
A different voice, from a different part of the room. A Thai. There are two of them. A Thai and – a Malay? Two of them. Now he knows, and knowing this, his world expands. Two men and an Esso can – and Suniti. Suniti is here.
He sleeps, sure now of his world. His wife. His son.
In the morning the ship is listing still further. There is something wrong. He tenses against his bonds. His feet are dead. His hands tingle. He tries to sit upright, falls back, tries again, falls back.
There is something wrong. Have they turned him around in the night?Has he moved as he slept? The list is wrong. The list is to starboard now. Yesterday they were listing very slightly to port. It is light. He can very dimly make out the shape of the windows. He has not been turned around.
There is something wrong with the ship. He closes his eyes, squeezes them tight shut. He cannot hear a thing. Only breathing. There is no vibration. They are drifting. The breathing is very loud. Too loud. It is not only breathing; and the other sound, the not-breathing – it is not a sound he knows. What the hell is that sound?
It is coming from below.
He jackknifes, comes to a sitting position, feels a muscle tear. ‘Hey.’ Nothing.
‘Hey!’
No footfall. No acid. No threat.
‘Hey!’
A constant hiss, far away, below them, below the engine room, where the cooling pipes run.
The sea valves are open.
Egaz Nageen drags his head back and forth across the floor of the mess.
He gags, drooling vegetal spit. His broken lips burn. He shouts, barks: guttural noises, more animal than human. Shallow pimples in the rubber floor tiles scrape and snag at the rag bound round his eyes. Now there is no one to kick him or threaten him or burn him, getting rid of the blindfold is easy – just a matter of patience and time.
Slowly, slowly, he rolls the rag from his eyes. His vision flares. Ink blots spill across his eyes and resolve into images, pure black on pure white. The edge of a pool table. Lines and squares: windows. Slumped forms. His crew. His child. His wife.
Long white bars. The room’s fluorescent strips are lit up. The generators are still running and even were they to die, even were they to be shut down, there are emergency generators hard-wired to the ship’s grid. These days, when ships go down, they carry their light into the dark.
He strains, sits up, feels muscles in his stomach tear. He cries. Tears roll down his face as he bends long-crippled legs. His feet are useless knuckles. He thumps and scrapes, begins to move across the room. Around him men flex, blind grubs against the rubber floor. He recognizes them. Chief Engineer Sen, First Officer Kamal. His son.
Sabir’s face is scalded white, blistered, smeared with blood where he has scraped the pustules open, fighting against the rag still around his eyes. Nageen is level with him now. Nageen wants to say how proud he is. He wants the first words from his lips to be words of love. He want his son to hear, his wife, and all of them, how much he loves his boy. ‘Shut up,’ he says, and kicks Sabir with senseless feet. ‘Shut the fuck up.’
The boy keens, sobs, is overcome.
‘I’ll break your teeth, you don’t shut up.’
Love, right now, would kill this kid as sure as a knife against his throat. Love will soften, will make a space for fear. Sabir will get no love from him. Not yet. If they go down, they’ll go down spewing hate and rage. His promise to himself and all of them. They’ll bloody fight. ‘Keep still, you bloody fool.’
Sabir buttons up, his scalded lips pressed white, his body slackening against its bonds. Egaz thinks his heart will burst. This much he allows: ‘I’m coming back for you.’
He thumps. He scrapes.
Why not an urn? Why not a samovar? Why not something bolted down? Whoever heard of a mess-room kettle? Stupid. Non-regulation. There’s the cord. It’s plugged in at midriff height, above the table, held by staples to the wall.
He leans against the table, takes hold of the leg with bound hands, and works himself backwards up the table leg, pushing and scraping. If he tips his head back he can feel the edge of the table. He uses his head, an extra pressure, kicks and heaves. He gets one shoulder on to the table edge. Don’t turn. You turn, you fall. His stomach burns and rumbles, torn to shit. If he falls now he’ll never have the strength to get up again. He shimmies, gets a shoulder blade against the table edge. Some more.
Don’t turn. Not yet. Now –
He turns.
He sprawls against the table, weak-kneed, held there by his weight against the table edge. It digs painfully into the bottom of his ribcage.
He’s not quite on, no, not quite stable, if he slips...
He moves his feet. He hops. The table edge knifes its way under his ribcage and his forehead bumps against the kettle.
His weight is mostly on the table. He squirms, nudging the kettle sideways. It stops. It sticks. The wire feeding the kettle base is stapled to the table.
The kettle is plastic. The switch is under the handle. He heaves, sticks out his tongue, and licks the switch. The kettle wobbles on its base.
He kicks, slips, recovers. He moves after the switch, tongue extended, hopeless, bestial, gets the switch under his tongue and lunges. The kettle rolls off the base and rocks away out of reach, against the wall.
Desperate, he lunges against the table. The kettle rocks. The table top is melamine. Nice, slippy melamine. He gets his feet under him and rocks against the table. The kettle skips and wobbles.
Six inches of this. Six inches to the side of the table. He breathes, he rocks, he hunts for rhythm. How long till it falls?
Behind him, blind grubs quest for light. ‘Mr Nageen!’
‘Shut up,’ he gasps, ‘shut up.’
‘Mr Nageen, the sea valves!’
‘Shut your face!’
The kettle falls.
Nageen tries rolling off the table, his feet slip out from under him and he falls, cracking his head on the rubber floor. His nose blooms, a dull flower of pain and tears spill from his eyes. Pain vices his forehead. He lies there, straining, clinging to consciousness. A minute goes by before he can think about anything but pain.
The kettle rolls by his head in a puddle of old water. Off its base.
Powerless. Useless.
He’s only half-done.
He shimmies back against the wall and jackknifes, inch by fractional inch, back to his feet. He edges round so his back is against the table, fingers weaving, feeling for the plug. He finds it, inches it out of the socket with his fingertips. It hangs off a staple. He gets hold of the plug and pulls, leaning against the flex. The first staple pops, his
weight comes on to the flex and the cable stutters free as he falls to the floor. The kettle’s plastic base flies off the table, lands, and snaps in two. Nageen stares from piece to shattered piece. The nearest is the biggest; the plastic nipple that powers the kettle is still intact. The wire is still attached.
There are power points under plastic housings all over the ship. He just has to find them.
‘Dad.’
Sabir has worked his blindfold off. One half of his face is ballooned, unrecognizable. The other half is trying to smile. He nods spastically.
There is a ribbon of metal by his hip. A wire handle. Nageen rolls towards his son. Sabir sits up, shimmies round, gets his thumb under the wire and pulls. The housing lifts free. There are four plugs.
Sitting with his back to the panel, Nageen fumbles the plug into a socket. Is there any power? There’s no way to know yet. How long before the power dies? Emergency generators feed lights and pumps and automatic doors. The ring main’s an unknown. He plugs the wire in.
Sabir’s already wiggling over to the kettle.
‘Mr Nageen?’ The voice is controlled. Quiet. Manageable. It is Sen. ‘Hold on, Mr Sen.‘
Sabir nudges the kettle across the room with his forehead. This is going to take a while. Nageen allows himself a moment’s rest. The crew are sobbing. Everyone but his wife.
Softly: ‘Suniti.’
‘I’m here.’
‘Suniti.’
‘Shut up.’ It is Sen. ‘Shut up.’
There are footsteps. Voices. They do not come closer. They do not retreat. There are men still aboard. There are men inside the iron house.
They wait.
Sabir whispers: ‘Father –?’
Nageen shakes his head: shut up.
Minutes go by.
The ship lists to starboard. A swell runs under the ship. The kettle rolls over and comes to rest against its handle.
Footfalls, at a run.
They are gone.
Nageen lies back, raises his feet and drops his heels hard against the kettle housing. The plastic body pops from its base. This thing really is a piece of shit. Together, back to back, Sabir and his father manoeuvre the kettle base into the plastic nipple hanging from the power cord. Sabir has hold of the heating element. He drops it.
‘It’s hot.’
Nageen twists round as far as he can. ‘Get it off the wire!’ Sabir tugs the wire out from under the coil. As it heats, it turns from bluish grey to grey.
‘Okay.’
‘Dad.’
‘Okay.’
He can do this. His son’s taken worse than this. He studies the coil, its position and angle, then shimmies round. The flooring is already responding to the heat. He can smell it. He can hear it. A faint hiss.
‘To the left, dad.’ Sabir’s voice is iron-clad. ‘Again. You’re there.’ Nageen brings his wrists down on the coiled metal and running, running round the coil, back and forth, back and forth, adepts of AC, the divine twins, Abhik and Kaneer, eager actors now in the drama they have set in motion, hiss self-laudatory prayers. They flare and flame, releasing him.
TWENTY-TWO
Havard’s flight from Doha to Muscat leaves on schedule at 3.15 p.m. Everyone else on the flight is watching a film; Havard has his very own horror-movie on his iPhone.
Almost everyone in Ester’s Facebook album is wearing surfing gear and grinning like an idiot. Every photograph is tagged, date-stamped and geo-tagged. Almost everyone tagged in her photographs has their own Facebook page. There’s one exception. He’s older than the rest and appears in just one shot, alone, standing with his back to the camera. Ester took this photograph when he wasn’t looking. It’s in Dubai. There’s the saillike Burj Al Arab hotel on the skyline and he’s looking towards it, hand raised to shield his eyes, in a suit, for Christ’s sake. Havard knows only one man dandyish enough to wear his suit to the beach. It’s so obvious a clue it’s almost an insult.
Lyndon’s over the moon, of course. ‘I always said David Brooks was a cunt.’
Havard, waiting at the gate for his flight to board, winced and lowered the volume of his phone. ‘You weren’t the first, Lyndon. Tell me something.’
‘Sure.’
‘Your investigating Ester. It was pure spite, wasn’t it?’
‘You send David to Rawai to examine the can and a few weeks later his daughter shows up in your bed? Well done with that, by the way.’
Havard said nothing.
‘Come on, Havard, I have a job to do. No one here was particularly gunning for her. All this stuff is just a key-press away. We put about a hundred employees through the same checks.’
‘I can’t afford to know about that.’
‘I’m just telling you.’
The trouble with Lyndon Ferry is he is an enthusiast. He wants to share with people the pleasures of his work.
The plane lands on time. A Land Cruiser is waiting to drive Havard through Muscat’s hilly tangle to his house in Ruwi. Tall hills and crenellated houses. Corner supermarkets. Car dealerships. He unlocks the door and finds Ester slumped on his sofa, surrounded by bags and cases. She has been waiting a long time for someone to knock on this door.
‘Ester.’
Her face is swollen. She’s a mess. She will not look at him. What the hell is she doing here? ‘I’m sorry,’ she says.
‘Ester.’
‘I’m sorry!’
He sits down beside her on the sofa, among his whale bones and his fashion books, his pottery shards, industry awards and photographs. One way or another, he is going to have to explain to her that ‘sorry’ is not going to cut it. He gets out his mobile and calls up the picture Lyndon sent him while he was in the air. ‘We have satellite imagery of the KaBham.’ He taps her shoulder with the phone. She averts her head. ‘As you can see, the ship is lying on its side. Chances are it’s already at the bottom of the Indian Ocean by now.’ She will not look. On top of everything else, she is a coward. ‘The Ka-Bham had a crew of twelve. The captain’s family was aboard. His wife. His twelve-year-old son.’
Ester puts her hands over her face.
‘Ester. We don’t know yet if there are survivors. Even if there are survivors, we don’t know if there’s a boat can reach them in time. It’s a big ocean.’
Ester slides off the sofa, away from him. Her silly, feathery topknot is quivering. He resists the impulse to touch it. To stroke it. Such a stupid girl. He goes to the kitchen and puts the kettle on. There’s instant coffee in the cupboard. He makes two cupfuls and carries them back into the living room. ‘Here.’ He sets a cup down beside her.
On his mobile he calls up her Facebook page. The photograph is as blurry as hell. He shows it to her. Ester wraps her arms around herself. She is shivering. ‘Ester, if you can tell me where your dad is, I can do something for you. I can help you. We all can. Christ.’ He tries to laugh but it comes out very badly. ‘I mean, we don’t want you in any trouble.’ Havard wants to tell her how much she matters to him now. He wants to tell her how lonely his life has been. It is all too late.
He has his office. He has his colleagues, and many of them are friends. They will have to be enough for him. He will manage. Old fool. ‘We want to keep you out of the papers,’ he says, as brutally as he knows how. She will believe this of him. It is the sort of thing a shipping magnate, a man in business, a moneyed man, would say.
Nothing.
‘Where is David Brooks?’
‘I can’t.’
‘He called you. Warned you. What? He told you to run?’
She nods.
‘What did he tell you?’
‘Oh.’ She tries to smile. ‘He spun me a line. The way he does.’
‘He said you were in danger.’
‘Yes.’
‘So why didn’t you run?’
‘From you?’ She hunts for the words. ‘You’re kind.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You’ve been kind to me.’
‘Christ.’
‘What?’
‘What did he tell you about the boat?’
‘That his people were trying to bring it into safe harbour. For the UN. He said when you found out what they were doing, you ordered it sunk.’
Havard runs his hands over his face. ‘Oh, for crying out loud. Sunk? With what? My secret fleet of submarines?’
‘There’s no point going over it,’ she says. ‘You know how he hazes people.’ Now, there’s the truth. David’s talents – counter-piracy, counterespionage, government liaison – have never been easy to corral. ‘Where is he?’
She is looking at him, measuring him. She is feeling a little better. ‘How did you get this, anyway?’ she asks, peering at his phone. She is utterly mystified. ‘Only Friends and Family can see this.’ Poor child. She has no idea what privacy is, never mind secrecy. None of her generation have a clue. Theirs is the open-source intelligence upon which men like Lyndon Ferry feed.
‘Ester?’
‘I can’t do this.’
‘But you can let fourteen people drown.’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘You didn’t know pirates kill people?’
‘I didn’t know that was what – I didn’t know.’
‘You thought your father worked for the United Nations?’
‘Don’t.’
‘That every VDU op in Dubai carries confidential papers around in her cellphone.’
She looks at him.
‘You think that’s what espionage looks like? A man in a vanilla suit and a stick, secretly bettering the world? Ester, espionage is an office in central London that does nothing all day but break into the Facebook pages of people as stupid as you are. How long do you think it took my friend Lyndon to crack your Dropbox account? Your Evernote account? Posterous, iTunes, all the rest of your shit? He’s pulled enough sensitive information out of your cloud to put you in an Emirates prison for life. Tell me about David Brooks. Now.’
‘He said –’