Our Memory Like Dust

by Gavin Chait

  Inside, the office has been torn to shreds.

  An axe is buried in the only section of desk still upright. The rest is splintered shrapnel across the floor. Curtains have been torn from their railings and smoulder in the fireplace. Paintings have been slashed or ripped off the walls. Glass, broken ceramics and potting soil from trampled office plants cover the ruined carpets.

  A portrait of Putin remains untouched.

  Uberti is sitting calmly in one of the heavy ornamental chairs watching a news broadcast projected into clear space in the far corner. A bottle of vodka, almost empty, rests against the chair leg at his left hand.

  He gestures at one of the overturned mahogany chairs without looking up.

  Pazanov selects one of the lighter-looking ones and heaves it upright, dragging it alongside Uberti.

  A pink fleshy hand motions at the chair and then at the news.

  Pazanov sits and watches. Uberti hands him the bottle.

  ‘– for the almost five hundred colonists expecting to travel back with the Mars colony transporter, Dribble 7. We can see freight being unloaded –’

  Vast indistinct shipping containers being pushed out of the transporter. A wide pan of the ship against the sunburned rim of the Earth with the newly completed space elevator disappearing to a point below.

  Uberti shrugs and changes the news stream.

  ‘– has released footage taken by their special forces troops during last night’s surprise raids –’

  The grey-haired newsreader is replaced by confusing and disjointed flashes, interspersed with dark figures running, narrow tunnels, and the withering sound of gunfire and explosions. Long lines of turbaned and hooded figures, their hands raised, climbing out of holes in the desert and being herded behind high spools of razor wire. Tents and walls, laughing blue-helmeted UN soldiers standing in garishly furnished rooms. Cowering women and children, naked and coated in grime and bruises, being given blankets to cover themselves. Aerial footage of helicopters flying above the barely distinguishable entrance to one of the cities. A map showing where the eleven cave systems were simultaneously attacked. The UN Security Council meeting, with the stern-faced Russian foreign minister surprising everyone by voting with the majority to selectively suspend the no-fly zone and launch the surprise attacks.

  Not that it helped, thinks Pazanov. The Chinese would not let our troops anywhere near the caves. The raids had begun before the Security Council even met.

  ‘– captured the entire senior Ansar Dine leadership. We are waiting to cross to the UN in Beijing, but we expect that a special court will be set up in The Hague to try many of these captives. The Senegalese government has insisted that Abdallah Ag Ghaly will remain in their custody and be tried at the African Court of Justice in Dakar –’

  There follow images of journalists running towards a man in a white djellaba walking down the stairs outside an austere brown building. A man in an embroidered ochre-brown boubou and matching kufi skull-cap is briefly seen in the background. It cuts to blurred and censored footage of Oktar Samboa being murdered, jumps to a high three-quarter view of Simon Adaro naked, Ag Ghaly pointing his gun at him as his men flee, pushing their way out through the filming crowd.

  ‘– but the defining image of the last five days has to be this one. English-born businessman, Simon Adaro –’

  Uberti, quietly, ends the transmission.

  Pazanov waits patiently. He will not end the silence.

  A grunt. ‘He outmanoeuvred us.’

  Taking the bottle, drinking from the neck.

  ‘We thought we were trapping him; instead we were helping him catch Ag Ghaly. We underestimated him,’ he shrugs. He turns to Pazanov, looks at him for the first time. ‘Are you going to tell me I should have listened?’

  Pazanov shakes his head.

  ‘No?’ He leans forward, towards Pazanov, his fleshy face close, smelling of sour damp.

  ‘What has changed? For him? For us?’ he asks.

  Pazanov shifts his arms from the chair and braces his fingers in his lap.

  ‘It is mixed,’ he says. ‘Ansar Dine is damaged. Their control of the desert crossing, the drugs trade. That may not recover. But they still control Bamako, most of the cities of Niger, Sudan, Chad, the southern parts of Algeria. They’re in no danger of going anywhere.’

  He thinks of the image of Adaro, the meanness of the cave cities.

  ‘I think their mystery is destroyed. There are uprisings in Khartoum, N’Djamena. For us, it means areas we haven’t had to worry about in decades could produce gas and oil. And Adaro now has a clear line through Niger and Libya into the Mediterranean.’

  ‘What about your idea of bombing his farms?’ asks Uberti.

  ‘It won’t work any more,’ says Pazanov. ‘The drones might have crossed undetected before, but now there is so much military activity. And his farms are well established. He has twenty of them. They’re fifty square kilometres each. How do we bomb that without attracting attention?’

  ‘Kill him?’

  ‘Sure, we’ll keep trying. But the plants are running. I’m not sure it would have any effect.’

  Uberti throws the empty vodka bottle half-heartedly into the fire grate. It thumps on to the smouldering curtains.

  He drags himself upright, limps over to a heavy cupboard in the corner, still in one piece. It lights up as he opens it, packed with hand-labelled bottles of vodka. He opens another and flings the cap on to the floor.

  ‘I still don’t understand how they could attack all these places and the obezyany didn’t see them coming?’

  Pazanov laughs. ‘A lesson for all of us. Hiding underground is wonderful if you want to prevent drones from finding you. Not so good if you want to get a warning once you have been found.’

  Uberti giggles, a curiously childlike high-pitched chortle. Infectious but peculiar.

  ‘And now we know what had their pants in knots.’ He whistles. ‘$75 billion. That would get me out of bed too. Do we know where it is?’

  ‘No,’ says Pazanov. ‘Or, if anyone does, no one is saying. I set some trusted people to investigate. Quietly. I’m not sure if the Cheka want it for themselves.’

  ‘You still think there was a shipment of weapons on those planes?’

  ‘Yes. We know there were more than one of them. That’s too much cargo space only for drugs. We’re trying to trace a man called Filippo Argenti. He’s been dealing with Ag Ghaly for a decade.’

  ‘That shyster?’ more of Uberti’s high-pitched giggling. ‘Are you sure? Ag Ghaly must be even more gullible than we thought. No wonder they couldn’t fight back. Nothing he sells works,’ wiping tears from his eyes.

  Pazanov shrugs. ‘I don’t know him, but our people tell me he may have arranged that last shipment.’

  ‘I knew him years ago. Always looking for one big deal so he could retire. If he got in the middle of $75 billion? Look in Crimea. He probably retired.’

  ‘We’ll do that.’

  ‘Good,’ says Uberti, resting one heavy hand on Pazanov’s shoulder and passing him the bottle.

  ‘Shall we walk?’ he asks.

  Pazanov, bottle in hand, nods and stands. ‘Sure. It’ll give them time to refurnish.’

  Uberti blinks, looking around the room as if seeing the devastation for the first time. A ripple stirs across his reddened cheeks as he grunts. He gestures vaguely, stomps past the door, bending it further out from the tortured bottom hinge as he passes.

  His guards form silently around them as they step outside, cross the gravel and into the darkness of the trees. Behind them, workmen rush indoors to begin clearing.

  They walk towards the river, through a gap in the old wall that used to enclose the estate, and then along the bank of the Moskva.

  A faint grey blur and Pazanov thinks he sees an ape-like creature walking in parallel to them through the woods, a two-headed stave in one hand. He stares, but the illusion fades when he realizes it is merely a dull gathering of leaves against a
pile of brush-wood.

  ‘How do you think he did it?’ asks Uberti, opening a thin platinum case and lighting hand-rolled cigarettes for each of them.

  ‘Which part?’ laughs Pazanov.

  ‘They missed an implant, that much is obvious,’ says Uberti. ‘So they knew where he was up till he went underground.’

  ‘And they could have rescued him anytime,’ continues Pazanov. ‘Except they wanted to make a big display of catching Ag Ghaly. That image of Adaro taking him on by himself is triggering uprisings all across Ansar Dine’s territory.’

  ‘That’s what I want to understand. Why did Ag Ghaly allow himself to be caught like that? And how did Adaro know the names of all those people? Without that, his plan isn’t so dramatic,’ says Uberti.

  They walk on, soggy leaves sticking to their shoes. Their guards walking far ahead and behind, watching and listening to reports from the drones overhead.

  ‘Liao Zhi,’ says Pazanov, flinging the remnants of his cigarette into the river.

  ‘Zhi? He’s that kitayoza who runs Sina?’

  ‘Those jihadis love taking pictures of themselves. Adaro took a risk that whoever took him up would be on the connect. I’m guessing they booked time on one of the Chinese supercomputers to track them down and fed the names back to him as he was looking at them. Putting the feed on everyone’s channel was straightforward after that. It made good viewing. Everyone wanted to see it.’

  Uberti whistles.

  ‘And those Senegalese Special Forces?’

  ‘They have a unit dedicated to high-value Ansar Dine targets. Present them with such an opportunity?’ says Pazanov.

  ‘That still leaves the problem of getting Ag Ghaly to break cover?’

  Pazanov shrugs.

  ‘I don’t know. Make him angry enough to want to torture Adaro personally?’

  Uberti shoves his hands into his pockets and stares across the river.

  ‘I want that mudak dead, but I do admire his balls,’ he says. ‘So, what can we do?’

  ‘Our problem is that the chaos works for him. Ansar Dine is going to spend the next year fighting itself and anyone else who thinks they can take advantage. Adaro can expand his farms without worrying about them.’

  ‘He must need something? Somewhere he has a base. We can’t get any submersibles into the Med. There are already so many drones and boats watching for refugees, I don’t think there’s a fish that goes unseen. Once he gets his line there, we’re finished.’

  ‘Abdallah Ag Ghaly,’ says Pazanov.

  Uberti sticks out his bottom lip and shakes his head, what?

  ‘If Ag Ghaly escapes, he’ll get back to his people and seek revenge.’

  Uberti looks sceptical. ‘So what? Their base in the Sahara is broken. His remaining people are far to the east.’

  ‘Not if we give him Senegal.’

  ‘How do you plan to do that?’

  ‘The opposition are expected to do well in the local elections in a few months, and it looks as if they’re going to win the presidency next year, and they don’t have the support of the army.’

  Pazanov is speaking quickly, trying to get his plan out before Uberti loses interest or cuts him off again.

  ‘We can smuggle in some of Ag Ghaly’s men, support them with some of ours. After the election, but before the new president is inaugurated, we free Ag Ghaly and stage a coup. That will attract every last supporter of his to attack Senegal. The army won’t know what to do: defend the borders or try to reinstate an opposition government we decapitated.

  ‘And we win,’ he says with sudden intensity.

  Uberti shakes his head. ‘You’re forgetting the Chinese. They won’t stand by while we turn another of their markets into a wasteland. We cannot risk it.’

  ‘Whether they take Adaro’s technology now or develop their own in ten years, we lose their business anyway, but we can still keep Europe. If we let Adaro win, we will lose both. We have to take this risk, China or not.’

  Uberti slaps him on the back, laughing his high-pitched giggle.

  ‘That arkhipizdrit sure pissed you off,’ he says. ‘Good, make it happen.’ Serious again. ‘But, Pazanov, if this goes wrong, or we are seen to have been involved . . .’

  Pazanov is used to the threats that go with fixing problems for Uberti, but he can see that his boss is sweating uncomfortably.

  ‘Germany, France, Spain and Poland are refusing to sign renewals with us unless we cut our fees. I asked why, and they sent us Adaro’s pricing. We cannot match him. Over the next two years, all the renewals will be due.’

  Uberti’s eyes are bloodshot and his face clammy.

  ‘Shkrebnev called. I don’t need to tell you what he said. Enough to say that Russia’s economy will implode if our pricing drops that far.’

  Pazanov feels his stomach clenching again.

  ‘Threats don’t really matter. If we don’t solve this, Shkrebnev will be unforgiving. None of us will have anywhere to hide.’

  20

  Mud splashes over Shakiso’s legs and feet as the passing taxi jolts into one of Saint-Louis’ interminable potholes. Tuft, following at her heels, scrambles for shelter behind an old cannon buried improbably upright by the side of the road.

  ‘Mademoiselle,’ shouts the driver, hoping to elicit a fare, sullenly continuing when she smiles and waves him away.

  She is in no hurry and enjoying walking amongst the crumbling colonial architecture of the old city with its houses and shops built up against and over each other, shuttered against the heat. Time and weather have turned many buildings into surreal rubble sculptures and walls into red-brick filigree.

  ‘You think you could make that jump?’ she queries Tuft while estimating the gap between two buildings, imagining running the length of the island and considering the dangers waiting in the rotten masonry. The military base at the northern end creates a no-go area, and there are odd sections – like the fallen abstract water towers in the middle of the city, the cathedral, or the old fort – that offer potential entertainment.

  The horizon across the river to the mainland part of the city is crowded with cranes and scaffolding, and the rumble and roar of trucks and the hammering and shouts of construction from across the river are an almost-present static under the sound of rain.

  Shakiso passes the hospital on her left, a few patients sitting on the arched balcony outside their rooms watching the ocean, and reaches the southern tip of the island. She climbs up on to the levee holding back the water, revelling in the coolness of the Atlantic breeze and the damson call of birds flying overhead.

  Tuft inspects a litter of upturned crates, finding nothing of interest, and joins her on the wall. They watch an Achenian freight drone, a pallet stacked with the last delivery of genetically modified propstock pellets hanging beneath, heading over the city to the Climate distribution centres in the east.

  She is just wondering about coffee when a whispered ‘Breakfast’ from her implant interrupts.

  ‘Come on, youngster,’ she says. ‘Time for our appointment,’ dropping down from the wall and walking up Rue Blaise Dumont until she finds the side street for the hotel and knocks on its carved wooden door.

  ‘Madame,’ says the concierge, welcoming her inside and directing her up the stairs towards their restaurant. ‘Please, a towel for you,’ smiling away her thanks.

  She stands at the base of the stairs drying her face and hair. As she finishes, a grey man in a grey suit brushes past her, looking sullen. ‘What’s he doing here?’ she wonders, crouching to rub a resisting Tuft with her towel, observing as the grey man steps into the limousine meeting him outside.

  She continues up the stairs, emerging on to a rooftop terrace sheltered from the rain by a stretched canvas awning, looking vaguely for the man she has come to join, and meeting his curious gaze amongst the early-morning diners.

  ‘Mr Adaro, I presume,’ warmth in her eyes as he stands to greet her.

  ‘Ms Collard,’ he says, tak
ing her hand and smiling. ‘I regret nothing but that we haven’t met sooner.’

  ‘That might even work on me,’ she laughs, the sound of wild places and the easy joy of young children, flopping loosely into the remaining chair. ‘What’s that?’ pouring herself a cup of coffee from his jug and prodding at the bowl of beans amongst his newly arrived breakfast.

  ‘I admit,’ he says, ‘its looks are against it. But here,’ tearing open a croissant and spooning a healthy portion into it, ‘taste this.’

  She looks sceptical, holding his hand over the croissant as she takes a bite.

  ‘Oh!’ she says, her mouth full. ‘That’s fantastic. What is it?’ taking the rest, licking a few errant beans that escaped into her palm.

  ‘Ndambé. Slow-cooked beans in tomato. It makes a wonderful breakfast.’

  Tuft ambles up the stairs and joins them, winding herself between Shakiso’s legs.

  ‘I wanted to thank you and Hollis for the propstock,’ she says.

  He shrugs. ‘I should be thanking you for the contract. GeneWorx has the capacity, and we’re happy to help.’

  ‘Sure,’ she says, ‘but you guys are risking serious legal hassles.’

  He looks north, towards the desert. Troop transport helicopters are flying back and forth from the military base at the edge of the city and UN-flagged Chinese naval vessels anchored along the shore, ferrying relief troops to the ongoing operations in the karst cities.

  ‘Did you see the news this morning?’

  She nods.

  During the military clean-up, following last week’s raids on Ansar Dine’s cave fortresses, four mass graves were uncovered. Tens of thousands of bodies, dried to hardened leather, emerging from the erg. Forensic experts are being flown in, but early analysis is that the terrorists sometimes chose – for whatever reason – to lead groups of seekers across the desert to these sites and there massacre them.

  There is an over-abundance of male bodies, and many think that the women and children were taken to serve as slaves. The scale of the abuse, and the desperate bravery of those challenging the journey to escape war and famine, is causing consternation and embarrassment in Europe.