by Gavin Chait
‘I don’t think anyone is going to want to stop us, or you. A good harvest will give people a reason to stay,’ he says.
‘Maybe,’ she says. ‘You know,’ leaning back, a croissant in hand, her knees over the armrest, one foot absently twirling, ‘I’m still trying to figure you guys out.’
He laughs, pouring another cup of coffee. ‘How did you describe me to Hollis? “Just your average evil capitalist out to make a quick buck off the suffering of the multitudes.”’
‘Dude,’ she says, her eyes narrowing, ‘if you have to be captured by terrorists to do that, you’re doing it all wrong.’
Tuft leans up and tugs at Simon’s knee. He scratches her head and puts the bowl of beans down for her to eat.
‘Too simple anyway,’ Shakiso says, pushing her hair out of her eyes. ‘Tuft and I took a pirogue down from Ballou. I think I had to pay enough to buy the damn thing. We stopped over in Aroundu, Sori Malé and Rosso. They’re each near farms of yours, and each of them is growing like nothing I’ve ever seen. There are over a million people in Rosso. I’m told that last year there were only a few thousand.’
‘With so many seekers following the river west, looking for a way up, it’s hardly surprising. It’s the last line of towns before the desert,’ testing her, seeing where she takes this.
She gestures with half a croissant. ‘Sure, everything looks like an accident when you don’t look too closely. Except those payment cards they’re using. That’s yours.’
‘A successful evil capitalist then?’
‘I’ve seen your ass, my friend, and that is too gorgeous an ass to belong to an evil man.’
Surprised, he throws back his head and laughs.
‘Exactly. So, why not trust me?’ wiping the bowl of ndambé clean with her finger. ‘This is a surprisingly magnificent breakfast.’
‘Order your own,’ he says, snatching the last croissant before she can grab it. ‘And get some ditakh juice while you’re at it,’ grinning at her, his eyes dancing.
She pouts at him. ‘What’s your business with the grey men?’ waving at a hovering waiter.
‘The inimitable group known as the Chinese Ambassador? Yuanxing was here to express his gratitude to me for helping the Chinese economy while also pressing me to sell the solar printer designs.’
‘He looked miserable. I take it you weren’t helpful?’ she asks.
‘It could be fun if Rosneft lost their other big market when the Chinese cover the Gobi in panels.’ He shakes his head and refills his cup. ‘But it may cause more chaos than I think is strictly necessary. And I don’t do business with tyrants.’
Shakiso stares at him, gauging him. ‘What’s this all for?’
‘Because even doing the honourable thing can be immensely entertaining,’ and he smiles, his eyes the bright blue of an endless childhood.
‘That’s not an answer,’ she laughs. ‘Ansar Dine, Rosneft – you seem a bit cavalier about getting yourself killed.’
‘Not everything worked out the way it was supposed to,’ he says quietly.
‘What happened there? In the desert?’
He smiles, gathering himself. ‘Oktar called me evil because he didn’t understand the difference between creation and destruction. Us creatives can be chaotic, but only because we want stuff that doesn’t exist yet and you never know where that is likely to take us. Evil people always want things that already exist,’ he says. ‘Either to have for themselves or to destroy. That makes their movements very predictable.’
‘And Ag Ghaly wanted his cargo?’
He nods. ‘He also always broadcasts the torture of his European captives. He thinks it humiliates his enemies.’
‘Instead you knew it meant they had to take you above ground?’
‘Yes, so when Rosneft started spreading the rumour that only I knew where that cargo was, I realized I had an opportunity to tease Ag Ghaly out of hiding and open the Sahara up for my farms. We approached the Senegalese anti-terrorism unit here in Saint-Louis and worked out a plan. They kept track of me through a transponder, and once I was below ground, they surrounded my last known location and waited for me to pop up again and identify Ag Ghaly.’
‘How did you know he’d be there?’
‘Evil man, very predictable,’ laughs Simon. ‘You could launch a sizeable rebellion with that cargo, and he wouldn’t have trusted anyone with the knowledge of its location. Evil men always fear being overthrown. I knew he’d come to me.’
‘And Oktar? How did he fit into that plan?’
He flinches, surprised despite knowing the question needed to be asked, seeing again the confused look on the faces of the seekers.
‘You don’t have to answer,’ she says gently, mistaking his anguish.
He stares rigidly at the table, hiding his turmoil. ‘I couldn’t pass any message to anyone until I was above ground, and the troops were only to move the moment I identified Ag Ghaly or, failing that, to save my life. The plan was perfect, except for Oktar. He shouldn’t have been there.’
‘So Oktar couldn’t be rescued because no one knew if Ag Ghaly was there yet?’
‘People died,’ he says, looking up. ‘I think capturing Ag Ghaly was more important, but those deaths –’ rubbing at his hands ‘– I am sorry.’
He studies her face before continuing, searching her eyes. ‘I was only with Oktar for a short time. I still don’t understand what he thought he would achieve. I know what he told me; I just don’t understand how he convinced himself it would work.’
‘Did he say anything? I mean, anything that would . . .’ asks Shakiso, thinking about that day at Orly Airport, his smug look of triumph, wondering what she hoped he might have said.
‘No,’ says Simon. ‘He was too frightened. I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. He didn’t deserve that, but he was a bastard anyway.’
‘What happened between you?’ he asks. ‘I was told you worked together.’
She closes her eyes and tries to breathe out her frustration.
‘He was my boss just over a year ago when I was based in Benghazi. I was the local Climate depot chief, same role that Moussa has here. I wanted to put some of my ideas into practice. Oktar wasn’t interested. He was a sufficiently unpleasant manager that I would have left anyway. One of Climate’s main funders sounded me out. They wanted to know if I would take over when Oktar’s term ended.
‘Then Ansar Dine took things out of my hands and invaded. The Egyptians raided from behind and the next thing our camp was in the middle of a rather nasty war.’
A basket of croissants arrives along with more coffee, a glass of deep-green ditakh juice and a bowl of ndambé. She tries the juice, smiling and raising it to him in thanks, tears open a croissant and chews thoughtfully.
‘I was on the last flight out. We were forced to abandon most of the people in the camp, but anyone who had even remote family connections to our staff, I got on those drones.’
‘I see I’m not the only one who takes unreasonable risks,’ he says.
‘It wasn’t meant to be,’ she says. ‘Originally it was a safe post, and then suddenly Ansar Dine was everywhere.’
‘What happened once you escaped?’ he asks, dragging a chair from next to them and straightening his legs, his feet bare and covered in sand sticking out from beneath his jeans, the hems torn at the heel.
‘The drone was packed, people so close we couldn’t raise our arms. It almost didn’t take off. Out of all those faces I keep remembering Michèle and her family. All of them worked in the camp as teachers. She was a French national, but her husband and father-in-law were both Libyan.’
She smiles, the flint in her eyes softening at the memory, ‘She was this tiny woman who somehow produced quadruplets. You’d see her and her husband dashing around the camp, ferrying these kids along with them in this huge pram.
‘Only thing is, what I did was illegal. She was supposed to apply and then wait for the French government to decide if they’d let
her husband and father-in-law in. We didn’t have time for that.
‘Oktar was keen to win some fame from the evacuation, so he brought a bunch of officials along to the airport when we arrived in Paris, and they brought gendarmes. They were waiting for us on the tarmac. They checked everyone’s visas and pushed anyone they were suspicious of back on the drone and sent it back to Libya. Oktar stood there with this smug look on his face while the rest of us begged and fought for the drones not to take off.’
‘That’s harsh.’ Simon breathes out sharply. ‘What happened to them?’
‘Ansar Dine,’ she says simply. ‘They were murdered in Benghazi a few weeks after.’
‘And Michèle?’
She shakes her head. ‘I don’t know. I tried to find her. To find some way to say sorry. I went to see her brother in Paris before I came here,’ her eyes distant. ‘He hasn’t seen her in months. She spent almost a year near catatonic. She gradually came out of it but was suicidal. She kept taking the children and vanishing for days. They didn’t know where she went. Her brother said she had become obsessively paranoid before she disappeared. Their family is frantic. I can only hope they find her before she hurts herself or the children.’
‘And you?’ asks Simon.
‘Climate decided I would be disciplined. I was told to be patient. The donors would work things out with the board, but I quit instead.
‘I spent the last year running in the Wet and putting all this behind me. I never expected to be back in it.’ Shrugging and shaking her head, ‘It was Oktar’s fault. All he had to do was stay quiet and they would have been through the border. We got them out. They were safe, and he betrayed them.’
‘This was just over a year ago?’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Why?’
‘I had my own run-in with Ansar Dine in Tanzania about then.’
‘What were you doing there?’
‘That was where we originally intended testing out the identity systems you like so much.’
‘Wait, wait,’ says Shakiso, interrupting. ‘Those are payment cards.’
‘You’re very impatient,’ says Simon, laughing. ‘Anyone can issue a payment card. What’s the value of an identity?’
‘It’s mighty early for you to be asking me to think.’ She savours her coffee for a while before replying.
‘It’s about trust, isn’t it? I can work anywhere because I can prove who I am. I can open a bank account anywhere, move money anywhere, because I have proof of myself. Here, anyone who is forced from their homes loses more than their stuff. They lose the community who vouch for their ownership of their stuff. If they’re ever able to return, they have no way to prove that their homes or farms are theirs.
‘My identity is guaranteed by a government that, whatever its merits, is trusted enough to make that guarantee. Around here, even in the best of times, most governments aren’t and can’t be bothered to provide meaningful identities anyway. People exist only in their own communities.
‘These seekers haven’t only lost their homes; they’ve lost the communities who can prove they own their homes. They’ve lost the people who can vouch for them.’
‘Precisely,’ says Simon. ‘We wanted to see if we could find a way round the problem, but without needing any government to support us.’
‘So you invented an identity system?’
He nods. ‘Our problem was that people won’t use such a thing unless they’re already in trouble, or if they’re compelled in some way, and we were trying to do this without a government.’
‘Right, and without threatening those same erratic governments while doing it,’ says Shakiso, ‘but this isn’t a system you’re testing. It turned up fully developed.’
‘Which is why you’re impatient,’ he says. ‘I went to Kigoma. Thirty years ago, that area had really productive copper mines, but those industries are dying, and the towns around the mines are a bit like your camps: people don’t really have anywhere else to go. Entire economies, thousands of people, depending on the salaries of the miners.
‘I hoped that, if I bought the mines, I could introduce our identity systems to pay those salaries and see what happens.
‘We had this fantastic mine foreman. Joshua Ossai. Engineering degree from Dar es Salaam, trusted by the miners. I was on my own, and he was first in the community to have me round for dinner. I knew he was vetting me, but we became close friends. He bought into it, convinced the miners that it meant they’d get paid faster and – at worst – was no different from any of the other money systems they use.’
‘And? Did it work?’ she asks, slipping her feet, equally bare and covered in sand, alongside his on the edge of the spare chair.
‘I never found out. Rosneft lost the Zafarani gas fields to Shell. Within about twelve months, they financed a civil war, and I escaped with only the clothes I was wearing.’
‘Rosneft did that?’
‘Rosneft’s executives do what Russian politics demands. I think the war spread further than they expected, and Ansar Dine used the mayhem to expand. Which is probably when they attacked your camp.’
Simon’s face darkens. ‘I headed for Dar, trying to get my helicopter, but was attacked just outside the airport. One of the Rosneft fixers was there, and a child was killed. I realized too late that the airport would only be safe until he left. By the time I got there, the place was overrun.’
‘How did you get out?’
He smiles, his strange eyes glowing. ‘I waited till dark, then – how shall I put this – repossessed one of the helicopters the terrorists were using and got the hell out.’
‘Hardcore,’ she says. ‘What happened to Joshua?’ She feels she recognizes that name but cannot place it. Another name from another story.
‘He was going to take his family and head for the border. Ismael met me at Heathrow to let me know they escaped. I was hoping to see him again but,’ pausing, his voice soft, ‘Ismael says they’re in the hands of the genii now.’
‘Who’s Ismael?’
‘He’s a sort of wondering griot. If you’re lucky, you might get to meet him.’
‘And the genii? There was this storyteller at one of the river camps I stopped at, Gaogong, I think—’
‘Gaw Goŋ?’ surprise on Simon’s face.
‘Yes,’ says Shakiso, her eyes wide. ‘You’ve heard of him?’
‘Yes, although he’s supposed to be a baboon.’
‘Definitely a man,’ she says, looking curious. ‘He told a story about a baboon. At least, I think it was . . .’ uncertain about her memory again.
Simon smiles. ‘If it’s the same Gaw Goŋ, then I’m not surprised you’re not sure. I’m told each person who hears one of his stories hears something different.’
‘And the genii?’
‘I’ve not seen any, but it helps to be pragmatic. Ismael says it doesn’t matter if I believe or not, as long as I’m entertaining,’ he laughs.
Shakiso stares at the sand on her toes. She rubs them against his feet, chafing them clean.
‘Are you flirting with me?’ he asks, smiling.
‘Yes. You have sexy feet. Shift, I want some room.’
He laughs again, moving his legs over.
‘Do you always get what you want?’
‘No, but I always ask,’ she says, pushing her legs further on to the chair.
‘So, you got back to London and looked for a way to hurt Rosneft?’
‘Not immediately, no, but – do you know Heathrow Terminal 6?’
‘The Tyrants’ Terminal? Sure,’ she says. All the private planes belonging to the world’s least desirable travellers take advantage of the discretion afforded by Terminal 6 when passing through London.
‘I like to arrive there and take their rides into the city. I have a ShitList feed in my implant so I can figure out which of the chauffeurs is waiting on one of them.’
His eyes darken. ‘When I got back from Tanzania, Rosneft’s boss, Farinata Uberti, was due at the same time, so
I pretended to be him.’
‘What?’ she asks, laughing. ‘How do you get away with that?’
‘That’s their weak spot. They’re trade in so many lies, they have no idea how to tell what’s true any more,’ smiling.
‘On the way in, while I was enjoying Uberti’s very fine taste in vodka, I came up with a plan. My brother is an engineer at the Mars colony. He figured out a scalable way to generate electricity using the one thing they have plenty of—’
‘Sand.’
‘—sand. For a surprisingly small investment, I could start one of the world’s largest energy companies and, along the way, cause Rosneft some pain. The only problem being that the solar farms would be situated in the middle of a major war zone.’
‘And when you couldn’t get the electricity through, and all these seekers are sitting right there . . .’
‘Lots of people with no identity in land that sits outside of any country and who nobody wants. I dusted off our system and gave away a free electricity allowance with each identity. It’s a fairly perfect place to try, and our market has been growing exponentially ever since.’
‘I like it. It’s simple, and I’m not surprised Yuanxing is so grateful to you. Every printing shop seems to be run by a different Chinese family.’
She continues staring at him, enjoying his calmness and strength. ‘What’s your endgame? Destroy the Russian economy?’
‘That won’t happen,’ he laughs. ‘Like here, they will simply adapt. You understand they’ve imprisoned themselves as well? Making an entire nation so dependent on one replaceable commodity was never going to be a good idea. No, I learned the hard way not to force myself on the world. You always pay a higher price than you can afford.’
‘So, what then?’ she asks, rubbing her toes against his jeans, dislodging sand on to the chair.
‘I’m hoping to live my life with as much fun and excitement as I am able in the time left to me. To create something worth remembering, and give not even a grain of sand to evil men.
‘And you?’ he asks. ‘Why are you here?’