Candleburn

by Jack Hayes

  Sloppy. Very sloppy.

  As he drew nearer, Blake got a better look at the two men. They were both muscular. The one listening to the Journal office windows had sculpted blonde hair, fixed firm with industrial quantities of gel and spray. That explained why he had the headphones on at an angle. He was afraid of disturbing his expensive haircut. He wore a tight-fitting tee-shirt. The other, a square-jawed, dark-haired, sun-god with a beard, had on a black shirt and Versace jacket.

  Blake rapped his knuckles against the window.

  Both men jumped.

  They looked at one another.

  The bearded goon wound his window down. He said nothing.

  “Scusilo,” Blake motioned energetically with his hands. “Sono molto spiacente ma sono perso. Sto cercando la stazione di polizia più vicina?”

  “Sorry,” the bearded one said in a heavy Russian accent. “We don’t speak Italian.”

  Blake opened his arms out wide in shock and began gesticulating frantically.

  “Quella è una sorpresa!” he replied. “Entrambi sguardo avete vestito bene abbastanza per essere italiani. E certamente assomigliate voi avete visto la parte interna di una stazione di polizia!”

  The Russian jabbed a finger towards Blake.

  “Piss off. We’re busy.”

  “My apologies,” Blake said, maintaining the Italian flavour to his speech. “I just need directions. You’re Russian, eh? I thought you were Italian because you are so well dressed.”

  The Russian glanced at his friend. He jabbered a few sentences in his home language. It was hard to hear them fully. Blake heard the words ‘Italian’, ‘faggot’ and ‘beating’.

  The bearded thug lamented that ‘back home’ he’d simply beat Blake to a pulp.

  The blond said that would attract unwanted attention. He suggested that if Blake didn’t ‘fuck off’ quickly, they’d just start the car and drive around the block.

  The bearded Russian turned back to Blake.

  “We don’t speak Italian. You need to find someone else to talk to. Now fuck off.”

  Blake apologised again and left them.

  ***

  “It’s very slightly possible I’ve not been clear enough,” Asp said, pacing across the room. “I want to speak to Chaiwat.”

  “Mr Chaiwat is unfortunately not available, sir.”

  Asp clasped his hands behind his back as he walked. He’d never met the Vietnamese man in front of him before and he was finding him to be as adept at not answering questions as a White House press secretary in the depths of a particularly sticky scandal.

  “Then let’s try a different approach,” Asp murmured. “Where is Chaiwat?”

  “That I cannot answer, sir.”

  “Because you do not know where he is or because you have been told not to reveal his location?” Asp persisted.

  The man rolled his tongue around his mouth and looked at Mehr Zain, standing like a centurion, tip of the sword resting on the floor as his hands clasped its handle. The man gulped. His gaze dropped to the floor.

  “Both, sir.”

  Asp saw the man’s nervousness as he took in Zain.

  “Then we have a problem,” he said slowly. “My colleague here, the one with the sword, is – I think somewhat justifiably – still just a little pissed off at being attacked by your friends. Given that we pay Chaiwat a large sum of money to be available to talk to us when we want to have a little chat, my colleague regards the behaviour of your friends outside as, frankly: rude.”

  “I understand, sir. But we have had to raise security here since Mr Chaiwat was taken.”

  “Taken?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “By whom?”

  The man was hesitant to reply. Mehr lifted the sword a few centimetres from the ground and let it fall. The tip dug into the floor with a ‘thunk’. The Vietnamese man mumbled beneath his breath.

  “What?” Asp asked curtly.

  Silence.

  The man bit his lip. When he looked up there was a tear on his cheek.

  “Ash-Shumu’a.”

  Mehr tipped his head to the side, perplexed.

  “Who?” Asp asked.

  “It means ‘The Candle’,” Zain replied. “But he might as well have said he was taken by the Yeti.”

  “Why’ve I never heard of Ash-Shumu’a?”

  “They’re a rumour – a legend. After the other terrorist groups in the region got progressively crushed, the story goes that a different faction sprang up operating on new lines, a new ideology,” Mehr said.

  “Radical Islamists?” Nate asked, surprise in his voice.

  “No. Nor some kind of retro-throwback to socialism; it’s difficult to describe and since they’re a figment, their real purpose is just pure conjecture.”

  “Why haven’t you told me about them before?”

  Mehr had a pained expression.

  “You want me to tell you about the Gruffalo and other fictional monsters too?”

  Asp turned to face the Vietnamese man, who seemed almost ashamed to have uttered the words Ash-Shumu’a.

  “Tell me what happened. If you don’t, what we did to the men outside, we do to you.”

  The man’s shoulders slumped.

  “Please, they will find me and kill me. They take Mr Chaiwat. He is important man. I am nobody. If they take him, they will take me. I cannot tell you more. He did not arrive at work this morning. A man called in and said they had him and he was now the property of Ash-Shumu’a. If we wanted him back we were to find and send one of our girls to the creek to be picked up at noon.”

  Success.

  The girl: Asp knew there had to be a connection between the dead prostitute and this affair. That meant there was a tie in to the murder of his friend Jim, too. It had to have been the same woman.

  “So why was this girl found dead?” he asked.

  “It was not us, sir. We wanted her alive to trade for Mr Chaiwat. I receive orders from the big bossman to get her and make the deal. No-one wants to anger Ash-Shumu’a – even bossman is scared of them.”

  “So who killed her?”

  “That I don’t know. Everyone was looking for her. I don’t know why.”

  “Everyone?”

  “The Wolves and Onyx. All of us seek her at the same time. I think the Wolves maybe found her first.”

  That made no sense.

  There was no reason for Dubai’s other two criminal gangs to stray from their turf and interfere in Euphoric’s business. This wasn’t like any other city. Each mafia group could only operate so long as it had a local family protecting it.

  Just as legitimate businesses run by foreigners had to have a local investor – not only for legal reasons but also to serve as both a protector and a guide to cultural sensitivities – so did the underworld.

  Of course, most of Dubai’s leading families were straight and honourable; which explained why, given that there were fourteen principle power-broking clans within the Emirate, there were only three criminal enterprises.

  Any unaffiliated organization would be crushed, not only by mafia rivalries, but also by the full force of the state. It also explained why it was worth the time of the existing three operations to get along smoothly with one another.

  In a perverse way it also had to be the way these organizations did business. After all, if you needed 150 visas for Romanian or Ukrainian or Bulgarian girls, no questions asked, only a local family had the clout to push them through the byzantine bureaucracy.

  Mehr broke the silence.

  “If the Russians killed that girl, for whatever reason, it means they’ve declared war on Euphoric,” he said. “That means a fight could break out between Dubai’s kingmaker families. The entire country could destabilize.”

  The full implications of the situation began to dawn on Asp.

  “What the hell have we become mixed up in?”

  12

  Blake climbed into his Audi and drummed his hands on the steering wheel. He wante
d to punch the living daylights out of something.

  “Swallow the anger,” he whispered to himself. “That path leads to a very dark place.”

  He switched on the car’s engine. He couldn’t go back in the office, not without losing his cool. He opened the glove compartment and pulled out the puzzle box.

  He turned it over in his palm. The side panels were clearly moveable. He clicked a few around to see what happened.

  Nothing.

  If anything the patterns of coloured wood on the outside appeared even less well arranged than before.

  “Perhaps you contain a clue to a story that’s actually worth covering?” he thought.

  The more he studied it, the more the box looked like an over-sized Rubik cube. He’d never been any good at rearranging the 1980’s craze. He thought through his contacts.

  Qasid Al Ghaf.

  “Sod it,” he said. “I may as well do something useful. Let’s see if a local expert can help me get into you.”

  He picked up his phone and shot his Emirati friend Qasid a text to say that he was dropping by. He then drove out of the car park and began towards the old financial district.

  His phone began ringing.

  He put it in the dashboard cradle and inserted his hands free kit into his ear. He hated the device. It made him feel like the communications officer from an old Star Trek show.

  “Hello?” he said as he overtook two Range Rovers full of teenage kids out cruising the streets.

  “Hey baby, it’s me!”

  The joyful tones of his wife. Blake’s heart lifted. Eleven years married and it still seemed like the best decision he’d ever made.

  “Hello my angel – how’s everything with you?”

  “Fine, fine,” Cathy replied, “but you answered the phone gruffly. You only ever do that when that bitch has been riding your case again. What’s Malice done now?”

  Blake eased onto the motorway and increased speed to match the traffic.

  “Let’s not even go there,” he replied. “Same old, same old. I’m not even sure why I let it get to me when I know exactly what she’s planning to do.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Cathy said. “Another shitty meeting, hey? What’s she given you as a story this week?”

  Blake needed to change the subject. Even though he still seethed inside and relished the chance to unload his frustration, he wanted to move his wife away from the stress of such subjects – it was important for her health.

  “A trade conference,” Blake growled. “No pictures or images there – kills any video piece or good photos for a paper story. But let’s talk of happier things. I received a mystery parcel today – a puzzle box. It wasn’t an off-beat present from you, was it? It’s right up your street.”

  “Oh, a mystery present! That sounds exciting!” she replied. “Nope – it wasn’t me, but if you like, I’m sure I could find a surprise or two here to post you! If only they’d actually arrive. Your postal system is awful.”

  Blake smiled.

  “Baby, I’ve been thinking,” Blake said. “How would you feel if I got another job? I want to quit the Journal and work somewhere else.”

  “At last,” she replied. “I’ve been waiting for you to say that for a year. Do you think you’ll find something back here given the recession? Would you look for journalism or something else?”

  And that was the rub. Jobs in journalism were rare and getting rarer by the day.

  “I would change careers,” he said.

  Silence.

  “Blake Helliker if you start talking about consulting or a return to...” she said sternly.

  “No, no – not that,” he replied. “How about public relations?”

  Silence.

  “You are my husband,” she said. “If you’re unhappy, I’m unhappy. I only ever want you to do what you enjoy.”

  “So that’s okay?”

  “If you want to do it, I’m 100 per cent behind you,” she said. “You are a man of infinite talents. You know there’s only one set of them I don’t want to see returning to the surface.”

  13

  “I’d feel more comfortable if this was coming from Fedor,” Anatoly Anvarin said, placing his red wine glass back on the table. “He is, after all, my boss.”

  Aarez looked wistfully through the window at the panoramic view. He treasured the Skyview restaurant at the Burj Al Arab. He felt like the entirety of the world coalesced on this one spot, near the pinnacle of the sail-shaped, seven-star hotel.

  The azure beauty of the Gulf swept out, all the way to Iran, less than 150 miles away. Face in the other direction and the architectural splendour of the Emirates’ drew the eye towards the shimmering stalagmite of the Burj Khalifa: the world’s tallest building.

  It thrust upwards towards the sky – the striving destiny of man to enter the heavens.

  The restaurant was perfect.

  Exclusive, discreet and they even served excellent crab vol-au-vents.

  “Who made him the head of the Wolves?” Aarez said, picking up his own glass of wine and savouring its rusty bouquet before sipping from it. “Who gets you all your visas? Your access to this land of opportunity?”

  “Still,” Anatoly responded, “Fedor won’t like this. If you want me to do something, I’m sure he will comply – we’re a partnership. You talk to Fedor, Fedor talks to me. That is the way it works.”

  Aarez considered his reply carefully.

  “Do you see what I’m drinking?” he asked.

  “Red wine,” Anatoly replied cautiously.

  “I am an Emirati man, dressed in a dishdasha drinking alcohol in the middle of the day in one of this Islamic country’s most fashionable restaurants,” Aarez said. “No-one is batting an eye lid.”

  Aarez took another sip from his glass.

  “We are not a partnership,” he continued, “and your place is not to tell me what the limits of my power are. Your place is to follow my instructions as they are laid out.”

  Anatoly jumped in his seat as two hands, from nowhere, firmly gripped his shoulders. Thick and powerful. The Russian turned his head uneasily. The hands lifted and grabbed him on either side of his temples, forcibly redirecting his gaze back to Aarez.

  “And now, my lieutenant Oassan is manhandling you,” Aarez hissed. “Pointedly, you will notice that still no-one is interceding.”

  There was a flicker of concern in Anatoly’s eyes.

  “So,” Aarez said, “do we now understand one another?”

  Anatoly said nothing for a moment. Aarez could see him running through his options.

  Fight? Flight? Or submission?

  “Yes,” Anatoly replied, “Fedor is busy working on another project, overseeing it personally. As such, I am to assume control of the Wolves until his return. I will carry out your instructions.”

  Oassan, towering menace, slapped the Russian gently on the cheek.

  “Good man,” Aarez said. “You may go.”

  Anatoly stood with a measure of uncertainty, unaccustomed to being dealt with in this manner. Aarez enjoyed watching the man tread hesitantly away. He knew the Russian’s story well, as he did for all those he’d brought into the Emirates to run their local mafia.

  Anatoly was an excellent sniper, and an able second-in-command.

  Unfortunately, he was still too military, and not yet mercenary. That made dealing with him directly tricky, which was why Aarez had installed Fedor Milanovich as the head of the group.

  With Fedor busy, it left Aarez short on manpower to reclaim the puzzle box and contents.

  Oassan sat opposite his friend and clicked his fingers at the Spanish waiter. He ordered some food and pulled out a napkin, which he stuffed into the gap between his neck and kandura.

  “You think he’ll be trouble?” Oassan asked.

  Aarez narrowed his eyes.

  A large luxury yacht was sailing into the nearby marina. Soon, this project would pay off, perhaps as much as $100 million. A small amount, to be sure, bu
t it was just the beginning. It would allow Aarez the lifestyle he wanted and the seed capital for his grand plan.

  “He’ll do what we want,” he said, still staring out of the windows. “He’s ex-Spetnaz and accustomed to taking orders, he just needed reminding of the true chain of command.”

  The waiter placed a plate of oysters on the table and Oassan began hungrily slurping them down.

  “It probably doesn’t hurt,” Oassan said, “that he knows we have his wife and children under guard in Vladivostok until this game is over.”

  “Or that displeasing us would result in him being buried in a Dubai jail for the next thirty years,” Aarez agreed. “Cooperating earns him more a month than he’d see in a year back home.”

  “Carrot and stick.” Oassan said.

  “Yes,” Aarez replied, “I do get the feeling, though that we’re not using enough stick.”

  “You’re not happy with our progress?”

  “Losing the puzzle box to that hooker was an unforgivable, sloppy mistake,” Aarez said. “We’re too deep into the race to change horses now. When this is over, we may need some fresh blood.”

  Oassan nodded.

  “Agreed,” he said.

  “Also,” Aarez continued, “given the Russians’ laxity in recovering the package, I think it might be worthwhile putting in place some back up.”

  “What did you have in mind?” Oassan asked.

  Aarez ran his finger around the rim of the wine glass until it resonated with the high pitched ring.

  “Are you still screwing that contact I set you up with at the Journal?”

  “Absolutely,” Oassan replied. “I knew that little bitch would prove useful eventually.”

  “Given our Russian friends’ tardiness...” Aarez said.

  “It would be my pleasure,” Oassan smiled. “They’ll know who has the box and key.”

  “Good. I want that package before the evening is over,” Aarez said. “And I want anyone who has come into contact with either to bare the calling card of Ash-Shumu’a.”