by Adam Brookes
16
She went first, but a figure blundered out, thrusting her to one side. Mangan could hear shouts coming from inside. They were in a corridor; other figures were walking unsteadily toward them.
“Which way?” said one man, his hands over his eyes, his face gray with dust.
“Just walk straight ahead,” said Mangan, “and you’ll get out.” The man trailed a hand along the wall as he walked. They made their way into the restaurant, where the television had been, and the crowd surrounding it. The smell: searing, meat, shit, chemical acrid burning. Cloying smoke, dust like flour in the air, the floor uneven beneath their feet.
Mangan took out his phone and activated it so the screen lit and cast a muted gray light. Through the dust, he saw undifferentiated shapes, dark mounds, splintered furniture. He ran the light along the floor. Liquid spatter.
He could hear Maja’s breathing.
“There,” she said, taking his hand and guiding the light. A face, smothered in dust. Mangan pulled a table and a slab of drywall to one side. Maja knelt. It was a woman. She was unresponsive. Her clothes were in shreds. Mangan saw puncture wounds in her arms and neck. Maja shook her head, stood.
“Look again,” she said.
He stepped forward gingerly, moving the light around. There, a movement. Maja went to it. A boy, teeth clenched, a hissing sound as he breathed through them. His hands were reaching in the air, as if he were falling. More puncture wounds. One leg was gone above the knee, the bone a sharp white nub in the light.
“This one,” said Maja. She looked around. “See there? That flag? Pass it to me.”
Mangan hauled on the yellow fabric, shook it. They began to tear it into strips.
“And a pen, Philip, or a stick… anything.” She wrapped the fabric around his thigh, round and round, as the boy watched, gripped her shoulder. The hiss of his breath. As she tied it off, Mangan grubbed around in filth on the floor. A metal fork, food still adhered to the tines. She took it, ran it under the fabric, and began to turn with both hands, ratcheting it tight, bearing down on the femoral artery. The boy said something unintelligible, then gave an urgent, rising moan. Maja turned to him, took him by the shoulders, spoke to him sharply in Amharic. He nodded and blinked. Then she stood.
“What did you say to him?” Mangan said.
“Told him he’ll live. Come on, Philip, another.”
They picked their way through the room by the phone’s light. Maja put on two more tourniquets, an arm, another leg, Mangan frantically searching for a windlass each time—a shard of wood, a spoon. Maja checked shapeless mounds for signs of life, tried to open airways. There was nothing they could do for the puncture wounds. Mangan became disoriented, wondered where the exit was, and where the emergency services were, when, finally, they heard movement and shouted orders, saw torches.
They walked out into the night air, holding each other, through the flashing lights and men in uniform. No one paid them any attention. They walked onto the street, where a crowd had gathered. Beneath a street lamp, Mangan saw that Maja was covered in blood, her face smeared, her hair matted. He went over to a man and asked for a cigarette. The man looked at him wide-eyed, gave him the pack and matches, shrank away.
They stood in the street and smoked. Mangan called the desk in London. Late afternoon there. He told the duty editor.
“Christ. Can you file?”
“Yes, just as soon as I—”
“No, now, please, Philip. Just go. I’m recording.”
So Mangan stood in the street, the stench in his nose, Maja leaning against him blowing blue smoke into the dark, the shifting, silent crowd around them, and filed copy. Terrorism, yes. The shrapnel. This was no generator explosion. Possibly fundamentalist payback for Ethiopian military operations in Somalia, yes. Number of dead, Philip?
I don’t know. Dozens. Go with dozens. For now. Yes, there’ll be foreigners.
When he’d finished, Maja looked at him. He saw the emergency vehicles’ flashing lights reflected in her eyes.
“That’s amazing,” she said. “How do you do that?”
He called Hallelujah, who was at Tikur Anbessa Hospital. Mangan and Maja walked a little, found a taxi and went to pick him up. Hallelujah was waiting for them on the pavement, both arms hastily bandaged. They went back to Mangan’s flat in Gotera, turned on the television and opened the vodka bottle. Maja stood in the shower for a long time, used up all the hot water, and emerged wearing one of Mangan’s shirts.
There had been two blasts, said the BBC—the other across town at an outdoor screen. Many more dead there. The devices had been seeded with nails and ball bearings.
Mangan opened his laptop, started getting impressions and facts down, shaping it for an eyewitness piece, asking the others questions. Process it, he said. It’s good to do that. His mobile was ringing, radio stations wanting him live, but he soon turned it off.
“You went back in,” said Hallelujah, wonderingly.
Maja leaned against Mangan and the tears began to come and she wept and wept, silently.
By two in the morning, the desk frantic, Mangan had finished a two-thousand-word piece that captured some of it at least, caught the lethal black spindrift against the sky, the boy’s breathing. He sent it, and then they’d had enough, turned off the television and sat in the silence. Hallelujah stretched out on the couch and closed his eyes, and Mangan and Maja went to his bed, where she slipped the shirt off and lay naked against him and cried more, her whole body heaving.
Mangan did not cry. He took it all and placed it beyond the fissure, in the place where such things resided.
The next day was a blur. On three hours’ sleep and a strong coffee he was back to what remained of Burger House, blackened and stinking in the daylight. They were still digging people out. He peered over the tape, into the garden strewn with debris.
How did I survive that?
He took photos. A police officer offered to take him inside, but he said no.
The site of the other blast was open air, so less to see, blood trails on grass, scattered shoes. There were press briefings from police and the Prime Minister’s office, little more than holding statements.
He called Hoddinott at the embassy and told him he’d been at the restaurant.
“My God. Are you all right?”
“I think so.”
“Philip, I’m so sorry. That must have been terrible.”
“I’m filing. Look, what can you tell me?”
A pause.
“Attributable to Western officials,” said Hoddinott.
“Sure,” said Mangan.
“A credible claim of responsibility out of Somalia. Tawhid. Small but potent outfit, transnational players, links to South Asia.”
“What makes it credible?”
“Explicit. Timing. Knowledge of the locations. MO.”
“Spoken to anyone? NISS?”
“Not on the phone. Got to go. Try later.”
“I knew you were a gentleman,” said Mangan.
“You mistake me,” said Hoddinott, and hung up.
Mangan filed first on the claim of responsibility, beating the wire services, to jubilation at the paper. His mobile started ringing again with interview requests: Radio Australia, NPR, the BBC. He filed again at four with more detail and furious quotes from an official at the defense ministry promising Ethiopian vengeance. Mangan conducted the interview on a dreadful line as he knelt on a street corner balancing a pad on his knee making notes. He went to two hospitals, but could not get access to any of the injured. He spoke to a doctor who described the wounds. He filed again. Traumatic amputation. Penetrating trauma. Burns. Internal blast injuries that they couldn’t see.
He spoke to Hoddinott again, this time during a walk in the embassy gardens.
“The thing is,” said Hoddinott, “where the hell did it all come from? The operatives? The devices? Is there a cell here in Addis, or was it all run in from Somalia? We’re offering all the help we c
an. So are the Americans, the French. But NISS is saying nothing to us.”
“Any forensics?” said Mangan.
“That’s another thing. The crime scene’s a bloody mess. There were sweepers in there this morning, clearing stuff up, putting it all in bin bags. There’s an American forensics team at the Sheraton having litters of kittens.”
He filed again, timing it to beat the big evening TV news bulletins.
Stunned with exhaustion, Mangan caught a cab home, to find Hallelujah and Maja still there, and Abraha and his wife, Hilina, as well. Maja gave him a long hug. Abraha was in the kitchen making firfir—comfort food. Mangan stood in the doorway, watching him fry the onions, spoon in the tomatoes, the ocher berbere, spice-infused butter, a handful of green chillies. Abraha looked up at Mangan through his glasses, a long, pained look. Then he put down the spatula he was holding and embraced him.
“I’m all right,” said Mangan.
“Thanks and praise to God,” said Abraha.
Turning back to the stove, he picked up chopped beef in both hands, watery blood dripping through his fingers. Mangan had to turn away.
When the news from Addis broke, Patterson had been clearing her desk at VX for the afternoon, locking her safe. The alerts came up blinking at the top of her screen. She sat down again, started scrolling through the reporting, such as it was. Over in Africa Controllerate and Global Issues/Counter-terrorism, they’d be settling in for a long night. Cheltenham would be humming, mining the databases, looking for traffic spikes, patterns.
The monitors had put up the first media reports—some flashes from the wires. She turned on a television feed, saw early pictures of the restaurant, stills snapped by eyewitnesses. She felt the claws in her chest that came from knowing that scene, that smell.
And then, there was his byline.
He’d been there? In the restaurant? She leaned into the screen. It was an eyewitness account and an early stab at some analysis. Competent, measured, but tinged with detail that shocked, drew you in. Some lines on a boy, his leg shattered, laboring to breathe in the sour, clogged darkness, how his hands reached out. Pure Mangan.
But that was always his strength, wasn’t it? The gaze, the understanding.
For the next three days Mangan worked incessantly, filing several times each day. Maja went back to the hostel where she was staying, despairing of seeing him, and volunteered at the hospital. Hallelujah went to his parents, so Mangan was alone, rushing around Addis as the story went cold. No leads. Or none anyone was talking about. The city shuffled about its business, its people wide-eyed, ashamed somehow.
On the Friday afternoon, he downed tools, turned off his mobile and went to the bar at the Jupiter Hotel. He sat in a brown armchair beneath the towering wooden pillars, drinking in the calm, the faux afro vibe. He ordered a macchiato, and fell fast asleep.
When he woke, the Clown was sitting opposite him, watching him.
17
Mangan sat up in his chair abruptly, rubbed his eyes. His mouth was thick and he was hot.
“What… do you want something?” he said
The Clown just sat, the black eyes unmoving, expressionless.
Mangan held his hands open, a questioning gesture.
“A terrible week,” said the Clown, in English.
“Why have you been watching me?” said Mangan. The business with the photographs, the man’s appearance at the jazz bar, seemed to lie in the distant past.
“Your reporting has been excellent, we think,” the Clown said. “And we have something to contribute.”
“Who is we?”
“Please take this,” and he drew an envelope from his jacket, laid it on the table. His manner was businesslike.
“Please tell me what it is,” said Mangan.
The Clown leaned forward in his chair. Mangan noticed that he wore a jade pendant around his neck.
“It is a very good story. Of interest to many different readers. Or many different kinds of reader. Perhaps you have some guanxi to whom it would be of particular relevance.”
Mangan was shaking his head.
“You’re going to have to explain.”
“Take a look at it after I leave. It will explain itself.” The Clown placed both hands on the arms of his chair, as if preparing to stand and leave. “But perhaps you might consider through which channels you decide to report it.”
He smiled and then stood.
“How do I contact you?” said Mangan quickly.
The Clown nodded approvingly.
“Don’t worry. I’ll find you,” he said. And he turned and walked from the bar.
Mangan got out of the taxi half a mile short of his apartment block in Gotera. The street was alive this warm Friday evening, the girls out, made up, their hair shining, walking arm-in-arm, the rising, questioning tone of their chatter on the air, the way of it in Amharic. He stopped at First Choice café and ordered takeout, a styrofoam box of tibs. While he waited, he drank a beer, back to the wall, watching the street.
Anyone waiting with him? Apparently not.
When his order was ready he left the café, walked straight past the entrance to his block, turned a corner, kept walking, stopped and doubled back.
Nothing. Or nothing he could see.
Except? A car, parked at the opposite corner, sedan, battered, white, two unmoving figures in the front seats, windows shut.
Who might that be?
He took the stairs two at a time, let himself into his flat, and looked from the window. One of the figures appeared to be speaking on a phone. Then the car started up and pulled a short distance down the street before stopping again.
He dropped his bag and walked into the bedroom, let the blinds down, sat on the edge of the bed.
He took the envelope from his jacket pocket.
The line is so fine, he thought. You slit open an envelope and everything changes.
18
It was two sheets. One a printout of a scanned document, all in Chinese, with the header clumsily cut off. No indication of classification to be seen. The other a printed list of phone numbers, with a variety of country codes.
He turned his attention to the scanned document. Even though the header information was gone, someone had handwritten a date and underlined it twice. The date was the previous Tuesday, four days ago, the day after the bombing. Mangan began to feel his way through the characters. Disposition and movements of Ma Te Na Yi Mu: source reports.
Who is Ma Te Na Yi Mu? A sinicized name, so a foreigner, not a Chinese. But impossible to tell what the original name was, or where it was from.
And why do we care?
Ma Te Na Yi Mu, whoever he might be, had moved residences. He had traveled by road in a convoy of three vehicles, at night. He was now residing at a farmhouse. A grid reference. Mangan went to the living room, brought back his laptop, went online. The grid reference placed the farmhouse just outside the coastal town of Baraawe, in southern Somalia. A satellite image showed a cluster of walled compounds, two or three low buildings to each, some distance from the road, the terrain flat, scrub-covered, rising to a bluff just off to the east.
Ma Te Na Yi Mu resides here. And are these his phone numbers? Mangan looked up the country codes. Somalia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Kenya, Yemen. Two of them appeared to be satellite phones.
Well, then. A name, a place and, perhaps, a network.
Source reports.
And a spy.
Mangan put the two sheets of paper down. He looked from the window. The white sedan hadn’t moved. But now there was a boy leaning over it talking to the driver through the window.
He lit a cigarette.
Christ, you’re dumb sometimes, he thought.
He went back to the laptop, set the input language to Chinese and entered Ma Te Na Yi Mu, copying the way it was written in the document, the characters meaningless on their own but used to represent foreign names phonetically. He searched the combination.
A blizzard of hits. Ma
Te Na Yi Mu denounces Indonesian government’s counter-terror tactics. Ma Te Na Yi Mu suspect in resort bombing. Ma Te Na Yi Mu calls on Malaysian men to join jihad. Ma Te Na Yi Mu placed on FBI’s most wanted list.
And there, his name romanised.
Mat Naim. Malaysian citizen, fugitive, whereabouts unknown, wanted by the United States and who knew how many other governments. Explosives expert. Bomb maker. A picture in black and white showed a young man of studious appearance, spectacled, earnest. In another he had grown a beard and wore a kopiah. He had studied at agricultural college and married a woman on a remote Indonesian island who bore him a son. His published statements revealed a preoccupation with the Christian and Buddhist Chinese of Southeast Asia, as sinister and as repugnant as Jews, he wrote, as degenerate as Europeans.
Mat Naim is in Somalia. Source reports.
Mangan opened a blank document on his laptop, began to feel it out, just to see.
“Exclusive from our East Africa Correspondent. Addis Ababa—The notorious Malaysian bomb maker known as Mat Naim may be in southern Somalia, according to sensitive sources. The revelation comes just days after dozens of people died and hundreds were injured by twin blasts in Ethiopia’s capital.”
He changed “may be in” to “has recently been spotted in.”
He could have it on the website in minutes. Great story, Philip. He lit another cigarette.
He walked about the room in darkness, listening to the music drifting up from the street. He thought of Beijing, its winter streets, the smell of grilled lamb in cumin on the cold air. He thought of a slender, smiling figure doing her fake sashay across a room lit with afternoon sun.
He thought of a death, and a night highway streaked with headlights, terror pulsing in his blood.
File the story, he thought. Be who you are. Be a reporter.
But it is not who you are. Not since the world broke open and you saw deep into its maw and you became somebody different.