by Greg Barron
Far, however, in the deserts of Africa, is a relative term. The landscape is an empty slate, yet to have the passage of man and animal imprinted upon it. The stillness is eerie, and Marika has to fight the numbing calmness that emanates from air and sand alike.
The landscape changes from sandy desert to vast clay steppe, where there seems to exist no life at all. Then, just as this emptiness promises to go on forever, they reach a surreal landscape that Madoowbe explains as petrified sand dunes. Once, as if to reassure her that animals do indeed live here, he points out the delicate tracks left behind by a tiny jerboa.
The seconds advance with dull momentum. One and a half days, Marika says to herself, just thirty-odd hours to go. Barely enough time to find Sufia, and what then? Tell her that the man she loves is holding the world to ransom, that only she might have the power to change his mind? Will she listen to me, or to Madoowbe? He hasn’t seen her since she was a baby. She probably doesn’t even know that he exists.
Marika’s reasoning leads her to conclude that this is a useless excursion at the far end of the world, removed from the real action. It occurs to her that the whole thing could be over, even now — that a negotiator has convinced Dr Abukar to disarm himself, or the Special Forces troops she knows are standing by have forced their way in and shot the terrorists dead.
Swaying from side to side at the camel’s progress, Marika continues this fantasy in her head, wishing she was at Rabi al-Salah still — that she could have been there at the end instead of riding a stolen camel into oblivion.
But then, what if … what if Sufia is the key? What if the lives of all those world leaders are truly in her hands? Why are they so important anyway? Why are they any more important than a woman of south India who has collected seeds for half a century and holds stores of pure species now forgotten in the world of monoculture? Why are presidents and prime ministers more important than a man who does nothing more than farm his land and feed his family?
The daydream ends with a feeling of hunger, not for Somali porridge and camel blood, but real food: roast lamb, baked potatoes, gravy; maybe a fresh snapper grilled on a barbecue, butter sizzling through the foil …
‘Oi,’ Madoowbe says, and while Marika drags herself back to reality, he slips to the ground before the camel has come to a halt, grabbing the halter and kneeling.
‘What is it?’ she asks.
‘Tracks. A dozen men and women, some children. Camels.’
‘Do you think it might be her?’
‘I can read the signs on the earth but I am not a soothsayer. All we can do is follow, and hope. There is one thing for certain. A group passed here this morning, and may not be far ahead.’
Marika’s eyes blaze. ‘Well, you’d better climb back up here and get this animal moving.’
The camel, when persuaded with boot heels, is able to manage a reluctant trot, snorting in protest through oversized nostrils.
‘Can’t it go any faster?’ Marika asks, voice shaking with the motion.
‘Yes, but then he will falter within a mile. At this pace he can swallow the ground for an hour or more.’
The trail passes through a ravine between two dramatic stony peaks, sheathed and shelved with stone so weathered it might have been polished by some long gone river. There, in the shadows, the air cools, and Marika wishes they could stop. Perhaps find water. As if sensing this, Madoowbe turns. ‘We can have a quick rest, if you like?’
‘No, keep going. We might be close.’
Back out on the plain, Marika finds herself dozing, waking when the camel slows almost to a standstill. Madoowbe is gazing out at the horizon; she feels the change through her knees and her hands at his waist. ‘What is it?’
‘Look ahead.’
Marika squints into the distance, sees the tiny shapes wheeling in the still air, hearing the odd raucous cry. ‘What are they?’
‘White-backed vultures. Carrion birds.’
‘Why are they here?’
Madoowbe shrugs, but she feels him kick back into the camel’s flanks. The animal responds by gathering pace.
The vultures are further than Marika expects, but finally the cries sound close, the fat bellies and long, drooping beaks visible. Some are clustered on small brown hillocks. Not hillocks. Something else. Closer now, she sees the dark stains on the earth and twisted necks and limbs.
‘Camels,’ she breathes, ‘dead camels. Why?’
Madoowbe says nothing, and then the first human bodies come into view. One is a child, who might have been running, robes billowed out under him. A bullet has torn a crater in his chest. One leg is twisted at an awkward angle beneath his body.
The camel stops to Madoowbe’s command. Marika dismounts and kneels beside the dead child, trying to hold back tears. After remaining like this for some minutes she looks up at Madoowbe, who stands, one hand on the halter.
‘Be careful,’ he tells her, ‘it is possible that whoever did this is still nearby.’
Marika comes back to her feet, walking around the dozen bodies that litter the area, most surrounding the still smouldering remnants of a camel dung fire, a small pot of spiced meat hanging from a cradle. All have been shot, some several times. Cartridge cases litter the earth.
Marika fights to control her emotions. She has been trained to deal with this kind of situation, yet still the anger and pain spills from her eyes. ‘Who did this? The shifta?’
‘No,’ Madoowbe says, ‘they would have taken the camels, not killed them.’ He walks forwards ten paces and points to tracks in the dust. ‘Four-wheel-drive vehicles. The killers were not shifta. And I have examined the female bodies — Sufia is not among them. Not unless she has changed a great deal from her photograph. They have taken her.’
‘Who would have done such a thing?’
His tone remains expressionless. No trace of anger. ‘The warlord Dalmar Asad, who else but he?’
Marika’s heart feels as if it carries a tonne of ballast. ‘Can we bury them?’
‘There is no time. We have to follow.’
Marika’s eyes blaze. ‘Don’t you feel this? Can’t you show one shred of emotion?’
He shrugs. ‘It is sad, but I did not know them.’
‘Aren’t you angry?’
Madoowbe’s eyes are as cold as steel. ‘I am not in the habit of displaying everything I feel. That is a peculiarity of Westerners.’
‘Well maybe,’ Marika says, ‘that is at least one damn good thing about us. We don’t feel the need to hide everything away.’ Her voice softens and she touches his shoulder. ‘It’s OK to feel pain. Crying is not a betrayal.’
For a moment she thinks he might reply, but instead he orders the camel down so they can mount. ‘There is no profit in standing around and talking. We need to find the people who did this, and we need to know if they have taken my sister Sufia.’
Marika nods. ‘You are right. We don’t have time for this now. But later, you cold bugger, I’m going to break through that shell of yours and see what’s underneath. I had a sample and I like it. Got it?’
The smile on his face is a mere shadow.
Half a mile along, following the tracks of three vehicles, Madoowbe once again stops the camel.
‘What are you doing?’ Marika asks. ‘You said yourself we need to hurry.’
Madoowbe points to a stand of umbrella thorn trees. Marika follows the direction of his pointing finger. Brown, stubbled legs and a patch of neck resolve into two camels, still with halter ropes attached. ‘It looks like at least two of their mounts got away from the guns.’
Marika watches as Madoowbe dismounts and approaches the stray animals, talking under his breath. The camels lift their heads and watch him come, suspiciously, munching on their cud, molars grinding audibly.
Madoowbe’s whispered words become a song: soft, melodic and sweet; distinctively Arabic with the extra quarter-tone notes. With each phrase he moves a step closer until he has the lead rope of first one camel and then the other i
n his hand.
‘Upgraded transportation.’ He grins, bringing them towards her.
‘Well done. I’m impressed.’
‘Perhaps there is something of the herdboy in me still. Which one do you want?’
Marika looks at the two camels — one is smaller than the other, and in camel terms, has a feminine, almost pretty face.
‘I’ll have her. She looks like she’ll treat me well.’
‘It’s a him, actually.’
‘Oh. I didn’t see his, er — oh yeah, there it is. Him then.’
Having transferred their few belongings across, Madoowbe lets the other camel go free. They mount up. Marika senses the change — these new animals are well rested and trained to a higher standard than the ones belonging to the shifta.
‘Still not as fast as a vehicle,’ she says, thinking aloud.
‘Not so much slower than you might think,’ Madoowbe says. ‘The men we follow are not careful drivers. They are more interested in bravado than safety. Does not your culture have a fable about a hare and a tortoise? There is an African version also.’
Marika does not ask him to explain further, but not far ahead they reach a plain of sharp stones where it becomes difficult to make out any trail at all. There are, however, occasional patches of sand where the wheels have left a bossed imprint. On the far side — a journey of almost an hour — they discover that the small convoy stopped to change a tyre on one of the vehicles.
‘Fifteen minutes wasted, at least,’ Madoowbe says, ‘and it would have taken them almost as long as us to negotiate the stones. They are not far ahead now.’
Marika tries to smile, but her belly is as tight as a drum. ‘I just wish I wasn’t so damn hungry.’
‘Both of us are hungry, but there will be time to eat later.’ His face hardens. ‘When we find Sufia and take her to safety.’
Marika lets her hands tighten around his middle. ‘I’m sorry, I forget sometimes that she is your sister. You must be so worried.’
‘We cannot even be sure that they have her — that she was with that particular group. All we can do is hope that we will be in time, whoever they have taken.’
Marika says nothing. They both know that Sufia is there, and that Dalmar Asad has proved to be swifter and more ruthless than they imagined. Despite the heat, she shivers.
The man is a killer. A manipulator. Isn’t this all my fault?
If she had never confessed her mission to him, the family might not have been slaughtered back there in the desert. But then, if that were the case, might she have been tortured and shot?
There is no right answer, she decides. No way to go back and find the right path — only the present, and the future.
For almost an hour, Isabella watches for an opportunity to check the phone for messages, but always the fat mujahedin, Jafar, stays close. Leering at her, lips parted, sometimes even adjusting his crotch when he knows she is watching. Ever since the death of the French President she has been edgy, the atmosphere in the room electric.
The constancy of death in this room is a reminder that these men operate outside the normal moral sphere. That the cell phone is a terrible risk. Still she waits. Zhyogal comes across to talk to the fat one and she is safe, for a moment, slipping the phone out from her underwear and turning it on. Two new messages.
Reading the first, unable to believe the words, stifling an exclamation of simultaneous joy and despair.
Frances injured but stable and with me. Kelly safe and well. All worried for you. Simon.
Each word is a tingling electric shock through her limbs, followed by a wave of relief and horror that flows like a tide in her bloodstream.
Where the hell is Hannah? Oh God. Hannah is still missing. But Frances is injured. Where? How badly? But she is alive …
Isabella is frozen. Stunned. For a moment she almost forgets to hide the handset, and it is only the approaching form of Jafar that has her dropping her hand into her skirt and slipping the phone back into its hiding place before he reaches her. As always his eyes seek her out, staring, lustful, and she knows that getting her emotions under control is not just desirable, but essential — to be caught is to die.
At last he passes on, and she leans towards the ground, hiding her face from view. Reading the second, unsigned message.
At three am do your best to distract the guard in your quadrant. It is important that he is not alert.
Isabella steels herself. Oh God, but how can I breathe?
This is a matter of importance. She, in a position of trust and responsibility, has betrayed her country. It is up to her to do her best to right the wrong, and work to her utmost ability to set the men and women in this room free.
The fat terrorist comes back into view. The plan is not hard to formulate. The difficulty will be to gather her self-control sufficiently not to spit in his face when she is close enough to do so.
Hannah, where are you? My darling. What happened to you?
Day 6, 12:00
The three SAR inflatables have searched since before dawn, starting from the island harbour and working their way out in planned sweeps, two hundred metre intervals between each one.
Simon huddles in the bow of one of the boats, alternately fighting tears and feeling thankful for the life of Frances, who now occupies an infirmary bed. Neither of her wounds is life threatening, but she is groggy and distressed.
The best present she could have, the most important boost to her health, Simon knows, is the return of Hannah, yet time is slipping away. His face is already sunburned, lips cracked, and he does not think to eat or drink unless one of the crew reminds him. They are all volunteers on this search; all conscientious and careful.
Now and then, he stops scanning the horizon, holds his head in his hands. He feels bruised, as if he has suffered the emotional equivalent of a beating with a baseball bat. He wonders if any further hurt can penetrate, any punishment break through the numbness.
All that remains is a kind of emotional flinching away; an attempt to fend off some final, massive blow that will end it all. The general opinion is that Hannah must have still been on board the launch at the time of the explosion, yet there is no evidence for this assumption. No human remains at all.
They eat lunch on the move — sandwiches and fruit — before resuming the search pattern. Occasionally the drone of two fixed-wing aircraft that have joined the search from their Saudi base, pass to the east or west.
By noon the day has become an ordeal, one that sees Marika’s thighs, already irritated, chafed almost raw from the camel. Thirst and hunger combine into a cavernous emptiness that extends from spine to stomach. Tired of sand, sun and the endless desert, she begins to hate Somalia as if it were human.
She feels the first flutter of despair. There is no sign that they have gained on the vehicles, and they cannot continue at this pace. She has named the camel that bears her Sarah and offers encouragement as they ride.
‘Sarah is a girl’s name,’ Madoowbe protests.
‘I know, but he’s a girly kind of camel. Look at those eyelashes.’
The animal is, however, beginning to falter, exhausted from the ceaseless trot across the landscape. Likewise, Marika’s body screams for rest, and often she looks across at Madoowbe, pleading with her eyes, hoping he might stop and say, Let’s rest, just for an hour — I have some food and cold water I have been saving …
Just as the daydream develops into a fairy tale complete with banquets, swimming pools and handsome young barmen serving cold beer, Marika hears a gunshot ahead. She pulls the camel up with firm pressure on the reins. Madoowbe does the same. A second shot echoes across the desert.
‘Less than a mile away,’ Madoowbe says.
‘What do you think is happening?’
‘I don’t know. But I think we should find out. There is a rise ahead — we’ll leave the trail and see what we can see.’
Leading the camels now, Marika follows Madoowbe up the slope, the surface varying
from soft, deep sand to rubble. Everywhere is thorn bush and umbrella trees. Finally, near the summit, they leave the camels tied to an acacia branch and creep forwards on foot.
At the very lip, Madoowbe drops and crawls on all fours. Marika does the same, coming up beside him and looking out into a dry and desolate valley. Four technicals are drawn up in a circle, machine guns limp on their mountings, barrels facing skyward. Men stand near a fire in the centre of the camp. Others are in the process of finalising the pitching of a canvas tent the size of a small house, hammering in the last few pegs, guy ropes stretched tight.
‘The patrol that brought you returned to Dalmar Asad,’ Madoowbe whispers, ‘and came back here with reinforcements.’
Marika knows it must be true. There are many of them now: more vehicles, more men.
Two of the militia drag the limp body of a man across the ground, moving him some distance away, dropping him, then walking back towards the camp. One man harangues the others in loud and strident tones.
‘What’s he saying?’ Marika asks.
‘It is Dalmar Asad himself. He is saying to let that man’s death be an example to them — that men who are disobedient to him die.’
Marika studies the distant figure. Yes, of course it is him — the height and athletic stance are unmistakeable. ‘What a bastard! I hate him. What did the dead guy do?’
Madoowbe’s mouth takes on the stitched tightness of someone who has just tasted something too bitter to eat. ‘I did not hear. It could have been anything — a slight disobedience perhaps.’
‘Where is Sufia?’
‘If she is there she must be inside the tent.’
‘They might have killed her.’
‘Yes, but we have seen no more bodies.’
Behind them, one of the camels wheezes. Marika looks back in that direction, staring for some moments before returning her attention to the camp in the valley. ‘So what do we do? How do we get to her?’
‘I am not yet sure.’
Even as her body relaxes, lying prone for the first time that day, Marika hears something that chills her blood. Weapons manufacturers take pains to ensure that safety catches and fire selectors operate silently. Even civilian users dislike spending ten minutes sneaking up on game then spooking the target with a click. Over time, however, metal parts wear and corrode. To Marika, the sound of this mechanism is instantly familiar, even though it comes from some twenty or more paces behind. Her reaction is instinctive — faster than anything she might have been able to prepare or analyse. The assault weapon in her arm becomes an extension of her body as she rolls, turning as she does so, the movement minimising the chance of being hit by enemy fire and allowing herself the chance to shoot back.