Our Memory Like Dust

by Gavin Chait

  Cigarettes were edgy, their allure at once archaic and dangerous, when he had started smoking as a university student. He had mimicked the siloviki he saw being driven around in their dark limousines, surrounded by blocky men in overly tight suits. Then he had become one, and now, with his body bent and soft, it was another bad habit he wished he could quit.

  A little boy – must be Galkin’s son – scampered up the stairs on to the wooden deck. ‘They’re like wolves,’ he laughed.

  ‘No, son, those are wolves,’ pointing with a glowing end at the bottom of the endless garden where a wolf pack – lean from the winter – were leaping the fence and, with grey shanks heaving, running for the darkening forest slopes. One of Galkin’s dogs clawed at the fence and howled mournfully at the dwindling shadows, impotent to follow.

  A call from inside and the child joined his siblings as they returned to the light and safety of the dacha.

  Pazanov sighed deeply, the dank musty smell of wood mulch settling on his shoulders and shrouding him in its scent. He was thinking of Dar es Salaam, the first time he saw the blue-eyed man, and about another little boy.

  The Tanzanian government had not been interested in giving Rosneft sole extraction rights to their newly discovered offshore gas fields. Their donors were going through one of their periodic demands for accountability, and the president had been nervous. At least the Chinese were planning to extract the gas, not lock it off the way the Russians intended.

  Pazanov had been given an ultimatum.

  ‘If this government will not work with us, get us another one.’ Farinata Uberti’s voice matter-of-fact, a chief executive making a minor administrative decision. Pazanov had tried to explain that the region might be too fragile and they could lose control entirely.

  ‘Will energy prices rise or fall?’ had been the simple response. ‘Who cares about these obezyany?’ The bigger man had slapped him hard on the shoulder, his eyes bloodshot and hooded. ‘Are you getting too squeamish for this work, Pazanov? All we want is for the oil and gas to stay in the ground. If we have to burn Africa to bedrock to do it, we will. If you will not, I will find someone else.’

  Pazanov had stared back. ‘Farinata, you asked my opinion, and you always ask me to think of the worst.’

  Uberti had raised his hands, his laughter acrid. ‘Of course, Rinier, that is so.’ He had walked to the side table and picked up a small box there. ‘Go back to Tanzania and do what I ask, yes? Here, a small gift for your wife. Tell her it’s from you.’ Inside was a deep-blue Tanzanite pendant on a delicate platinum chain. She was wearing it even now, somewhere inside the dacha.

  It had been easy to start the war. All it had taken was guns and money, and Ansar Dine’s jihad took hold in Dar es Salaam. Pazanov had stayed until the last moment. Until he had been certain the government could not regroup and that the Russian veto at the UN prevented any international help.

  The airport had been a long drive from the luxury hotels in the city centre. Even with his own guards to protect him and clear a route, it had taken three hours. Thousands of vehicles and people carrying everything they owned had fled from the city and headed out into the countryside.

  He had spotted the expatriate workers, stuck in their expensive cars by the side of the road, begging for safe passage out, being ignored and abandoned. Their opulent estates on the peninsula already in the hands of the jihadis.

  His guards had been scornful of the uprising. ‘These fighters are a joke,’ said one, sitting with him inside the limousine, his skin starkly white against his black fatigues and dark-grey armour. The men called him Belaya, although that was not his name. If he had one, he had not revealed it in all the years he had been with Pazanov.

  ‘They hardly know how to use the guns we gave them. They shoot without thinking. If I was half-asleep and unarmed, I could still fight them off,’ he had said.

  Even so, they had overwhelmed the Tanzanian soldiers in hours. Troops used to manning checkpoints and extracting bribes from civilians had proven unwilling to take on armed opposition, instead dropping their weapons and fleeing.

  Eventually Pazanov could go no further, and they had left the illusive protection of the vehicles. Pazanov had never felt unsafe, only a detached passivity to events he had unleashed.

  He had seen a man pulling a cart, a woman pushing behind, and their children sobbing on top. An old woman collapsed, weeping on the pavement, a suitcase torn open by her side. A claustrophobic scrum of people, all shoving and pushing to get out of the city.

  As they had neared the airport, they heard automatic gunfire, and the screaming and clamour had become more intense as people tried to get away.

  Pazanov’s men had grouped closely around him but were still otherwise untroubled. Their agreement had been that this area would not be claimed until their aeroplane had left. There would be a small number of jihadis here to cause panic.

  They had turned towards the airport and emerged in a clearing surrounded by shuttered shops, the ground uneven with broken glass and litter. He had spotted a blue-eyed white man within a group of locals a little ahead of them, probably also making his way to the airport.

  Jihadis had burst out from between the shops and immediately opened fire. Pazanov’s guards had ignored them.

  The other white man had not. He had moved with surprising speed, smashing a brick into one jihadi’s face and grabbing his AK-47. He had dropped into a half-crouch and deftly fired at each of the now fleeing fighters. He had cast the gun aside and run back to his group, where a woman was sobbing over the body of a young boy, other bodies lying tangled behind them.

  The boy had still been alive. Confused, disoriented. The hole in his side jarring against his white cotton T-shirt. His eyes, starting to cloud, had stared at Pazanov.

  The blue-eyed man had bent over him, forcing his hand into the wound to stop the bleeding, felt his heart fade and had immediately started resuscitation as the boy’s mother screamed.

  As Pazanov had been dragged away by his men, he had looked back, straight into the eyes of the other.

  The strange blue eyes had held his, judged him, and found him wanting.

  ‘Darling?’

  He jumped, his heart pounding, gasping.

  ‘Natalya.’ His wife touched his shoulder gently and leaned over him, her eyes filled with concern.

  ‘You were so quiet. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.’

  ‘No. Thank you. I was . . . It was a year and a half ago.’

  ‘You still have nightmares?’ her voice tender.

  ‘Not nightmares. Unpleasant memories.’ He smiled at her.

  She kissed him softly on the forehead. ‘Dinner will be ready soon, and Vyacheslav is telling stories in the living room. You should put in an appearance.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I’m waiting for a call.’

  ‘About Adaro?’

  Pazanov nodded, and rested his hand on his shoulder over his wife’s. ‘Yes. We may have found a way to help the jihadis so they will help us.’

  ‘So, why the nightmares?’

  Pazanov sighed.

  ‘You remember when I got back from Tanzania? I told you of that European we passed outside the airport and wondered if he had escaped?’

  She nodded. For some reason, it had made an impression on him.

  ‘I never told you, but I recognized him.’

  She started, then dragged a chair to sit next to him so she could look directly into his eyes. ‘You knew him then? Who was he?’

  ‘I didn’t know him then, but I do now. It was Simon Adaro.’

  ‘What? That’s—’

  ‘—too much of a coincidence,’ he said, completing her words.

  ‘Who else knows?’

  ‘Only me, and now you.’

  ‘Do you think he recognized you?’

  ‘I think this is his revenge. We’ve spent a year fighting him. We’ve bought jihadis, governments. It’s chaos out there. He cannot get his power to Europe, and the energ
y price is still down 5 per cent. It’s killing us. If we don’t close him off in the next twelve months, we will collapse, and Russia with us.’

  She shook her head. ‘Slow down. All you’ve told me is that a mad Englishman named Simon Adaro is building a solar plant in the Sahara and that this threatens Rosneft. This is the first time we’re here at the dacha in eight months because of this man.’

  Pazanov bit his bottom lip and looked around him, but this was Novoperedelkino. Only the elite lived there, alongside the ruling class in their dachas in Peredelkino. It was as private and secluded as he could hope for.

  ‘About a year ago, I learned that someone was building new electricity transmission systems in Bologna. They needed to connect to the main grid, and our office in Spain got notice.

  ‘At first I thought it was a joke. How was anyone going to convince any country in Europe to accept a new power plant?

  ‘That was when I first heard of this Simon Adaro. He was promising unlimited power from the desert. “Farms of light,” he called them. He told people they wouldn’t have to see them. Nobody would, stuck out there where no one lives. Only one transmission line rising from the sea off the Spanish coast into a transformer hub buried in the mountains, and then straight into the network.

  ‘Farinata asked me to investigate and find out how something this big could happen without us knowing.’

  ‘Why is this important? What is it to you?’

  He looked at her sadly. ‘This is what I do for Rosneft, Natalya. We do not outcompete our rivals. If they will not do as Farinata demands, then I am to stop them, even if that means turning a country to dust.’

  She took his hands. They spoke little of his work, about what paid for their lifestyle. She asked him now, ‘Do you enjoy this? Is it . . .’ her voice trailing.

  He smiled, but it did not reach his eyes. ‘It is what I know, but truly, it is good to talk. If you would listen?’

  ‘Wait,’ she said, ‘I think we both need a drink,’ and returned with a bottle of vodka and two glasses.

  ‘I’m ready,’ her eyes flint, her trust in him complete.

  He drank.

  ‘We’ve kept it very quiet, but we think he will eventually produce about five hundred gigawatts. That’s about a fifth what we produce, and will take seven years to complete, but he will start producing a significant part of that within the year. We have not had a rival in Europe in decades. Farinata is under pressure. Rosneft ensures Russian control over the region. If we lose our monopoly, the Europeans might even unite around this Federation. Our president would never forgive such a transgression. Farinata has demanded I put everything into stopping him.

  ‘I went looking for him. His plans were easy to find. I don’t think he had even tried to hide them. He must have started immediately after he escaped from Dar es Salaam. Within six months, he was already building the first farm in Senegal.’

  ‘How does he develop such technology inside six months?’

  ‘He has some connection on Mars.’

  ‘Mars? What has Mars to do with this?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Pazanov massaged his temples. ‘The colony there. They have developed machines to print entire fields of solar collectors. They melt the sand and make these vitreous machines. We think the colony sent him their designs.’

  She sat back, shocked, recognizing the implications. ‘So, what have you been doing?’ she asks.

  He refilled both their glasses.

  ‘I have few resources,’ his voice bitter. ‘The Chinese are still furious about Tanzania. They are threatening to research their own energy alternatives if we start another war, so I am left with a small team. All we have strength for is to sabotage his operations, but we can’t get near his main printer, and you’d have to carpet-bomb these farms to stop them. We sent submersibles to destroy his line printer coming out of the port at Saint-Louis. He tried printing his lines all across Senegal and Mali, looking for a way out. We bribed the jihadis, but he was trying to buy them too.’

  ‘Where does all his money come from? And you think he’s spending this much to avenge one small boy?’

  ‘It’s more than that. He was in Tanzania to take over their copper mines. He had over two billion dollars invested there. Our actions caused him to lose everything.’

  Natalya whistled. ‘That is plenty to fight over. But that should bankrupt him?’

  ‘No. He is . . .’ Pazanov breathed as if in reverence. ‘He is very wealthy.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘So many things. He started TheShitList.’

  She gasped, immediately furious. ‘That’s the bastard who stops me shopping in Paris? How does that . . .’ searching for an appropriate word ‘. . . govnyuk even make money?’

  ‘He started all these technology firms, AnoniCar, GeneWorx, EarBeds, about 2 per cent of the blockchain nodes. We think he’s worth maybe a quarter as much as Rosneft. But we carry the Russian state; he carries only himself.’

  ‘But it’s all technology. What was he doing in Tanzania? Copper mines don’t sound right.’

  ‘No, I know. But the place is a mess now. We can’t find any trace of what he was doing there.’

  The bottle was half empty, and she replaced the cap.

  ‘Why not just kill him?’ Her voice was stark, trembling at crossing some invisible threshold.

  Pazanov felt something tear. Even as his work had slowly numbed him to the consequences of his actions he had clung to her innocence of it. He would not have had her enter his world, stifled the thought before it could spread. She was all he had left.

  ‘We tried, but he is like smoke. His people are in London, and we can’t operate there, and they never leave. This is the man who started AnoniCar. We can’t track his movements.’

  ‘You said you’re waiting for a call?’

  ‘Yes, he’s getting desperate too. We know he needs to go north, but the Sahara is controlled by these Ansar Dine fanatics. They put out word that they’re looking for something in the desert, something they lost.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We don’t know. I’m assuming it’s a weapons shipment. Those terrorists are crazy scary. That’s fine with us, as long as they don’t work with him. We figure that Adaro must have surveyed the desert when he was looking to run transmission across it. If anyone knows where whatever they’re looking for is, it’ll be him.’

  ‘And you let them know?’

  He grinned. ‘Yes, and we also know that he was going to meet them. Farinata told me he’d call the moment he hears anything.’

  Natalya stood and walked to the top of the stairs, looking out towards the forest. He joined her, held her to his chest and rested his arms across her belly.

  ‘I think the greatest deception we ever pulled on the Europeans was to offer to provide them only with electricity and none of our oil or gas. When hundreds of millions of people can be made to forget how their energy is produced, you know they are completely in your power,’ he said.

  ‘And millions more buy eggs and don’t even know they come from chickens,’ she replied.

  ‘Yes, and now we have to hope that their ignorance will protect us.’

  There was a hesitant tap on the door frame behind them. It was one of the servants.

  ‘Sir,’ she said. ‘I am sorry to intrude. There is a call for you. It is gospodin Uberti, he says it is good news.’

  7

  ‘You were friends once,’ said the grey man in the grey suit. His grey rims deliberately flattened his words and removed any nuance as they translated. The collective known as Ambassador Gong Yuanxing picked at a splinter of wood on the pitted and cracked table between them.

  He had not eaten and grimaced with distaste at the rapidly vanishing crepe on the plate of his companion.

  ‘You should have some,’ said Tiémoko Diagne, carefully wiping his mouth and fingers with a napkin and then folding it into a point to clean under each nail. ‘You would enjoy it.’

  The grey man ignored him, hi
s eyes hidden behind the grey lenses of his rims.

  They were meeting in a tiny café in the crowded centre of Dakar’s business district; the looming buildings produced some shade on the shops below, smothered in the heat. Six misshapen tables squeezed together. The screen door, fly-netting instead of glass, clapped back and forth behind a departing customer. Outside, traffic passed, rattling over the potholes and stones of the battered street.

  ‘I have often wondered what it must be like to be one of you?’ asked Tiémoko rhetorically. ‘Do you put aside this costume when you go home? Do you have a different name to your wife and children? Do you even have children? Or is it something you must exist within completely?’

  The grey man’s expression did not change.

  ‘No?’ said Tiémoko, having completed his ablutions and dropped the remains of the napkin on to his plate. ‘You have no interest in the relationship between myself and Simon. If the Martian colony would license their technology, you would have no need of me at all. If your researchers thought they could recreate it in less than ten years, my price would be lower. This is strictly business. Do not pretend otherwise.’

  The grey man raised an eyebrow. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We are not interested in you or the reasons for your –’ he paused, savoured the word to come, ‘– betrayal. We ask so that we may assess whether you can be trusted.’ He scratched again at the splinter. ‘You have demanded a great deal of money based only on the strength of your position. How are we to believe you?’

  Tiémoko pushed his plate into the centre of the table and waved for another cup of coffee. ‘With milk,’ he said.

  The waiter disappeared into the kitchen behind the counter, and an agitated conversation ended as the cook walked briskly through the seating area and out the swing doors.

  ‘It is you who approached me. You would seem to know too well how little a university professor in Dakar is paid.’ Tiémoko’s face was stern, his eyes unblinking. ‘Yes, we were friends. I helped build Achenia. My software, my ideas. I should have been a partner. When I was deported, Simon and Hollis took my share of the company. All this is true. It is you who said that I owe them nothing, and that I owe myself a good retirement.’