‘I am sorry.’
‘Well, yes, but her misfortune only made the both of us more determined. She shares my belief in the critical necessity for the human race to be in constant turmoil. In fact, she is probably even more fervent about it than I am. I met her when I was studying ancient history in Tel Aviv. She was young, strong, beautiful. What I possessed in intellect, she possessed in political conviction and total – total – fearlessness.
‘She took me to Jordan and together we joined the freedom fighters, Fatah, and they gave us guns and explosives. But we didn’t just attack Israelis, she and I. We had our own agenda. Ha! We were like Bonnie and Clyde! We shot at buses. We blew up civilians. We made a point of attacking any local politician who was trying to make peace between the Israelis and the Jordanians, no matter who they were. That was when we were contacted by Nakasu.’
‘Nakasu, they came looking for you?’
Professor Halflight nodded. ‘In the same way that I would have come looking for you. Hitmen, you see, are two a penny, but assassins are not so easy to find – true assassins, anyhow. Assassins have to be driven. They have to be obsessed. They have to have a special madness, yet a terrible single-mindedness, too.’
‘So you join Nakasu?’
‘Of course. Nakasu was everything that Fariah and I had been waiting for, without realizing it. We had heard about them, of course, because of our studies of ancient Babylon. But we hadn’t realized that after all these centuries they were still so active, and we had never guessed how widespread they were, in every country and every culture.’
Professor Halflight limped to the window, and angled the blind so that the sunlight shone into the living room in vertical bars.
‘Fariah and I, we felt as if the scales had fallen from our eyes, and that it had been revealed to us why we were born. We had been born to save mankind from itself, from its own paralyzing sloth. We had been born for no less a purpose than the saving of human civilization.
‘However, there was a personal price we had to pay. In August 1966, we blew up a house in Moshav Givat Yeshayahu, a few miles south of Beit Shemesh. The bomb went off prematurely. I lost my left kneecap, and most of my calf muscle. My dear partner lost both legs below the knee, and one arm, and also her face.’
As if Professor Halflight’s partner had been listening to this conversation, and waiting for her cue, there was a whining noise as an elevator came down, and a door at the far end of the living room juddered open. Abdel Al-Hadi turned around, and there she was, sitting in a wheelchair, in semi-darkness, although her face had an eerie shine to it.
There was a higher-pitched whinny, as she steered her wheelchair out of the elevator and made her way towards them. She was wrapped, what there was of her, in a dark brown shawl with beige flower patterns on it. Her single hand, resting on top of the wheelchair control knob, had only three fingers. Her face was covered by an expressionless mask made of glossy cream celluloid. Behind the mask, her eyes shifted restlessly, like two blowflies busily laying eggs in her eye sockets.
‘Fariah,’ said Professor Halflight, ‘this is Mr Abdel Al-Hadi.’
Abdel Al-Hadi bowed his head. ‘I am honoured to meet you, madam.’
‘Julius showed me your video,’ Fariah croaked. ‘You did well, to kill Adeola Davis. You should be proud.’
‘It was unfortunate that she had to die, madam. But nobody would listen to our demands.’
‘She was a peacemaker,’ said Fariah, as if that was the most disgusting imprecation she could think of. ‘Cursed are the peacemakers, for they shall condemn the human race to eternal compromise.’ She let out a guttural laugh, which almost immediately degenerated into a bout of coughing.
‘Berta!’ called Professor Halflight. ‘Berta! Bring water! Quick!’
Berta came flip-flapping into the living room carrying a plastic flask of water with a drinking straw attached. Professor Halflight poked the end of the straw into Fariah’s mouth slit, and she sucked, and coughed, and made cackling catarrhal noises, and sucked again.
Eventually, she said, ‘I’m all right now. Thank you, my love. Thank you.’
Abdel Al-Hadi hesitated for a moment, in case she started coughing again, but then he said, ‘Tell me about Nakasu, Professor. You say there are many of them, in many different countries?’
‘All over the world. In government agencies, in security forces, in universities, in business. You can hardly call them an organization, any more than you could call al-Qaeda an organization. But just like al-Qaeda they are utterly determined and they are prepared to sacrifice everything for what they believe in, and they will never be discovered and rooted out.
‘Fariah and I have been associated with Nakasu for over forty years now. We have become connected with men and women of a hundred different nationalities and a thousand different political persuasions. But they all have shared our belief in chaos. Now, we are Nakasu’s spiritual and cultural leaders, she and I. If somebody has to die, it is our decision.’
Abdel Al-Hadi said, ‘Then the two of you – you rule the world – more than if you are king or queen or president?’
‘I don’t think it’s entirely an exaggeration, to say that. In a way, we do rule the world. Nakasu has ruled the world for two-and-a-half thousand years. It’s all a question of eliminating the right people at the right time.’
Fariah began to cough again, and Professor Halflight reinserted the drinking straw into her mask. More sucking noises, almost enough to turn Abdel Al-Hadi’s stomach. He wished he hadn’t chewed on that garlic clove after breakfast, but Mitchell had recommended it to give him ‘authentic Palestinian breath’.
‘A disguise is so much more than a stick-on beard and a false nose,’ Mitchell had told him. ‘You have to smell like the person you’re pretending to be, too. Or, in your case, stink.’
Professor Halflight kept on feeding Fariah with noisy sips of water. Without taking his eyes off her, he said to Abdel Al-Hadi, ‘You asked me earlier to give you some names.’
Abdel Al-Hadi shrugged, as if to say, Well, you can if you like, but if you don’t want to—
‘When I tell you,’ said Professor Halflight, ‘you will understand how influential Nakasu has been in changing the course of human history. In 2003, for example, there was the Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh, who was stabbed in a department store in Stockholm, and died later of her wounds.’
‘Yes. I remember this.’
‘Ms Lindh, you see, was a tireless campaigner for international peace. Almost single-handedly she prevented a civil war between Kosovo and Macedonia, and she was still working on a new understanding between the Palestinians and the Israelis when Fariah and I decided that it was time for her to stop interfering in the natural order of things.
‘A very successful operation, that one. We used a poor mad fellow called Mikailoviç, who didn’t know what day of the week it was.
‘Then there was Zoran Djindjiç, the prime minister of Serbia, also in 2003. And Yitzhak Rabin, the prime minister of Israel, in 1995, I think it was. And Olof Palme, the prime minister of Sweden, in 1986, and Indira Gandhi, in 1984.
‘I won’t pretend that Nakasu can take the credit for every single assassination over the past two-and-a-half thousand years. For instance, we had nothing to do with the killing of Earl Mountbatten, when his boat was blown up off the coast of Ireland. That was the IRA. But John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, yes. And King Faisal of Iraq in 1958 . . . what wonderfully chaotic consequences that assassination has eventually brought us!
‘And perhaps the jewel of all assassinations . . . the shooting of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, in 1914, which directly led to World War One, and the loss of thirty-seven million lives. But think how the world has advanced since then!’
Abdel Al-Hadi was silent for a very long time – so long that Professor Halflight leaned forward on his cane, cocked his head sideways and said, ‘You want more names? There are dozens more. King Umberto I of Italy, in 1900. Presiden
t James A. Garfield, in 1881.’
‘You are right,’ said Abdel Al-Hadi. ‘You have changed history.’
‘Yes, Mr Al-Hadi. But we have done something much more important than that. We have made sure that mankind moves forward. Emu ki ilani, as you rightly translated what it says on the medallion: to rise up, to move forward; to develop, to mature; to become like the gods.’
‘So? I could join you? I could become a member of Nakasu? I could change history, too? I could become like the gods?’
‘Let me show you something,’ said Professor Halflight. He opened the top drawer of his desk and produced another medallion, exactly similar to the one that Abdel Al-Hadi was holding. He passed it over so that Abdel Al-Hadi could examine it.
On the reverse, the letters P A U L were engraved.
Abdel Al-Hadi handed the medallion back. ‘Who is Paul?’
Professor Halflight didn’t answer, but took a glossy colour photograph out of his drawer. It showed a catastrophic auto-mobile wreck, someplace at night, in a tunnel. Firemen had cut the entire roof off a smashed-up black sedan, so that paramedics could attend to a woman who was sitting on the rear seat.
Her face was covered with an oxygen mask, but there was no mistaking the bright blonde hair.
Abdel Al-Hadi looked up in disbelief. ‘This, also, was Nakasu?’
Professor Halflight took the drinking straw out of Fariah’s mask slit, and it was still attached to a long spider’s web of saliva.
‘It was the landmines, that’s why she had to go.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘My dear Mr Al-Hadi, the wonderful thing about landmines is that wherever you plant them they create a constant atmosphere of fear and uncertainty. In spite of that, they require absolutely no maintenance and they’re outstandingly good value for money. Every month, all around the world, two thousand people are killed or injured by landmines. Yet your average landmine will cost you not much more than a Happy Meal – maybe three to ten dollars.’
He paused, before he added, ‘We couldn’t allow anybody to interfere in such a highly cost-effective way of causing chaos as that, now could we? Especially somebody with such a high public profile as her.’
Twenty-Seven
Early the following afternoon, Hong Gildong pushed open the door that led to the subterranean parking garage and walked towards his SUV, jingling his keys in his hand.
The far end of the garage was open to the backyard of his apartment block, and Hong Gildong could see several of the residents sitting around the small rectangular pool, sunning themselves. As he approached his SUV, however, he could also make out the silhouettes of two men standing on either side of it, one of them leaning back against the hood as if he owned it.
‘Help you?’ he said, cautiously, as he came nearer.
One of the men came towards him, holding up an unlit cigarette. He was short and spidery-looking, with an unusually small head. He was wearing a light grey suit with wide lapels, and his left arm was supported by a triangular cream-colored sling.
The other man was blond, with a bulky torso, although he had narrow hips and shapely calf muscles, like a professional dancer. There were yellow and purple bruises around his eyes, as if somebody had hit him very hard on the bridge of the nose.
‘Got a light?’ asked the spidery man, with a phlegmy-sounding catch in his throat.
‘Sorry. Don’t smoke.’
‘Well, that’s no problem at all, because I have one.’ The spidery man tucked the cigarette between his lips, took out a cheap pink butane lighter, and lit it. ‘You and us, we have some business to discuss.’
‘What business? I don’t even know you.’
‘That’s no problem, either, because we know you. You are Mr Hong Gildong, who works as a security officer for DOVE. We need to talk to you about the kidnapping of Ms Adeola Davis. Or at least our employer feels the need to talk to you about it.’
‘Who are you? I talked to the police already, and the FBI.’
‘Let’s say we’re very interested parties.’
‘I have nothing to say to you. Sorry. You want to get off my vehicle?’
The blond man eased himself away from the hood of Hong Gildong’s SUV and came towards him. He walked with an eerie shimmy, as if he were stepping out on to a dance floor. He stood over Hong Gildong and said, ‘You will have something to say to us. But not here. You and us, we’re all going for a ride.’
Hong Gildong hesitated for only a fraction of a second, but it was a fraction of a second too long. His hand plunged into his nylon windbreaker, but the spidery man had already yanked a nickel-plated Beretta out of his pocket, cocked it, and pointed it directly at his head. ‘Whoa,’ he said, grinning.
The blond man lifted Hong Gildong’s automatic out of its holster. Then he knelt down on one knee in front of him and patted his ankles, to make sure he wasn’t wearing a back-up.
‘This way,’ said the spidery man. ‘The grey sedan, by the pillar.’
‘So where are we going?’ asked Hong Gildong.
‘What do you want to know that for? We’re going there whatever.’
The blond man handcuffed him and tugged a soft black cotton hood over his head. Then the two men manhandled him into the back of their sedan and forced him down on the floor.
‘You try to get up, I have a blackjack here, and I’ll fucking brain you.’
Hong Gildong said nothing. The inside of the hood reeked of dried sweat and he could hardly breathe.
The car doors slammed and they squealed out of the garage. Hong Gildong felt them climb up the ramp and on to the street. They turned right on to Fountain Avenue, but then they turned left, and right, and left again, and he quickly began to lose any sense of direction.
The two men spoke sporadically, but their conversation was made up almost entirely of swearing and non-sequiturs, and it gave Hong Gildong no clue as to who they might be, or where they were taking him.
‘That Hamulack. Guy can’t pitch for shit.’
‘And Tomoro can?’
‘Tomoro? Tomoro’s a goddamned cripple.’
Silence for nearly ten minutes. Then, ‘Tomoro’s grandmother can pitch better than Tomoro.’
They drove for well over two hours. The run was comparatively straight and smooth, and Hong Gildong could hear traffic on either side of them, so they must have been driving along a freeway. Eventually, they turned off the main highway and began to negotiate a winding road that felt as if it was taking them into the hills – although which hills, and in what direction, Hong Gildong couldn’t even begin to guess.
After another forty minutes, they slowed down, turned sharply left, and stopped. Hong Gildong heard a metal gate open, and they drove through it. They turned left, and left again, and stopped again.
The car door was opened, and the spidery man said, ‘OK, Mr Hong Gildong. We’ve arrived.’
He was so stiff that he could hardly move, but the blond man reached into the car and roughly heaved him out. He managed to stand up, coughing. It was past 3 p.m. now, but still very hot. He could hear the clanking of machinery and hoists, and the whining of forklift trucks. Some kind of factory, or maybe a warehouse.
‘OK, let’s go.’
The blond man half-pushed and half-steered him across a concrete yard. They went through a door into a chilly, fiercely air-conditioned interior. Hong Gildong could hear phones ringing and the soft rattling of computer keyboards. He was pushed along a corridor with a squeaky vinyl floor, and then down two flights of metal stairs.
Another door was pulled open, and from the squelching noise it made, it was well sealed. Inside, there was a musty, cement-like smell, and another smell, too, sweet and pungent, like stale urine. Hong Gildong was guided a few paces into the room and then his hood was pulled off.
He blinked. He was standing in a brightly-lit basement. One side of the basement was stacked with plywood packing cases and wooden pallets. The opposite side was lined with six wire-mesh cages, and al
though all of them were empty, Hong Gildong could immediately understand where the smell of urine came from. Each cage contained a dog bowl, a water basin, and a black padded dog bed.
The blond man dragged an orange metal chair in to the centre of the room, and unfolded it.
‘Sit,’ said the spidery man.
‘I prefer to stand.’
‘I said sit, asshole.’
Hong Gildong sat down. There was no point in inviting them to hit him.
‘You’re still not going to tell me who you are?’ he asked them.
‘You don’t need to know. Besides, it wouldn’t do you any good, even if you did.’
‘So what happens now?’
‘We’re waiting.’
‘Waiting for what?’
The spidery man didn’t answer him. Nearly fifteen minutes went past, and none of them spoke. Now and again the spidery man checked his wristwatch, and cleared his throat, but the blond man simply stood still, with his arms folded.
Hong Gildong heard footsteps on the metal staircase outside, and then the sealed door squelched open. Two men appeared, a dark handsome man in an off-white designer suit and two-tone brown-and-white loafers; and another man in a light grey suit with a shaven head and a grey walrus moustache.
The man in the designer suit nodded to the spidery man and said, ‘Well done. Nobody saw you?’
The spidery man shook his head. The man in the off-white designer suit came up to Hong Gildong and smiled at him. He smelled strongly of D&G aftershave. ‘Well, now. If it isn’t the ingenious Mr Hong Gildong. Do you know who I am?’
A long pause. ‘I’m supposed to recognize you?’
‘You don’t read Newsweek? My name is Hubert Tocsin and I am the owner of Tocsin Weapons and Rocketry Systems, which happens to be the third most profitable arms manufacturer on the planet.’
Hong Gildong shrugged, as if to say, So?
Hubert Tocsin kept on smiling. ‘I’m sorry if you’ve been inconvenienced, Mr Hong Gildong, but it really is very important that I discuss something with you. I need to talk to you about the kidnapping of Adeola Davis.’
Chaos Theory Page 21