Candleburn

by Jack Hayes

  Blake put his nose down close to the tight-looped, boot-worn carpet.

  Although comparatively small by international standards, Blake had quickly noticed that the UAE’s seven emirates weren’t simply a historic facet of tribal differences and allegiances, or merely linked to nomadic movements over the seasons.

  There was a deeper connection between who owned which land. In short: the seven different emirates had seven different shades of sand.

  Panning the torch back and forth, there were at least three distinct colours hidden deep in the weave of the floor rug. But to his eye, under the distorting factor of electric light, it wasn’t as easy to identify the origins as he’d hoped.

  One had to be Dubai – by definition, since that’s where they were. One was the fairest shade of yellow, which meant Abu Dhabi.

  But the third... where was the third from?

  He pulled at the carpet. It was a petrol station bought protective rug that came away easily in his grasp. He couldn’t be sure he’d have time to examine the sand closely in a lab, still, better to take it and not need it.

  A swift examination of the door pockets and glove compartment revealed nothing.

  He popped the boot.

  Here, there was something more interesting: an airline bag. He opened it, expecting to find little more than some gym kit. He was surprised. A gag, a hood, a length of rope, a reel of duct tape and an FN P90 with three spare ammunition clips.

  “Okay...” Blake said slowly to himself.

  The P90 was more than simply a hell of a weapon, it was a ridiculous amount of firepower to be carrying around the streets of Dubai – even for professional thugs.

  Sure, P90s were standard issue to the armies who’d been in Afghanistan and Iraq – but just because you could get one easily, didn’t mean you should, and even less so said that you would be stupid enough not only to get it but also to bring it into Dubai.

  Forearm-length, the Belgian-made half-rifle was designed to NATO’s requirement for a powerful, light, short and easy to hold weapon that could be wielded as quickly as a pistol, but packed the punch of a machine gun. It could be used for marksmanship, in a pinch.

  Because it was so powerful, and stood alone from almost anything else that had come before, that there were still arguments about what to call the gun. Some experts labelled it a sub-machine rifle, others put it in the class of assault weapons or machine pistols or any one of about five different categories. Eventually, it more-or-less defined a new class: PDW – Personal Defence Weapon.

  Blake took the bag and stuffed everything into it.

  He walked back to his own Audi, started the engine and drove away from his home for the last time.

  26

  Asp sat in the leather chair of his office, and typed quickly into his computer. He pulled up the most recently accessed files from the central server by his two dead colleagues, Jim and Dan.

  Asp’s holiday seemed like an age ago now. Two weeks in Sri Lanka, at the insistence of Alexandria. Asp was no fool. His marriage was on the rocks. He didn’t know if his wife cared anymore, though he suspected that somewhere beneath her demands for him to move into the spare room and the incessant threats to return to England, there was still a flicker of hope.

  A month ago, she’d demanded he take a fortnight away from Dubai. No phone. No email. No internet. He knew it was a risk – but then, if he couldn’t trust Jim to hold down the fort in the office, what kind of a manager had he been?

  Clearly, not a good enough one.

  While Asp was on vacation, Jim had taken a job.

  That was good and proper.

  Asp clicked through email after email belonging to both Jim and Dan. He’d already been through them twice before but there was no harm in giving them a third check before he tested out his new idea.

  Information on the job’s value should have been in the appropriate electronic legers on the main server. Asp moved through the financial invoices. He scanned the section that usually contained details on who had commissioned Chrome’s services and the task requested. The boxes were blank.

  That, in itself, was not a problem.

  The company often engaged in work that was in murkier legal territory and keeping the information trail light was to be expected.

  Jim, in charge for the two weeks, assigned Dan to the project. When Dan died, he’d picked up the mantle. As soon as Asp arrived back in Dubai, he found Mehr Zain waiting for him at his home.

  Jim had been missing for twenty-four hours.

  Asp and Zain immediately began backtracking through the few notes that were kept of the investigation. Through the use of their contacts they’d pieced together an idea of events.

  That led to Jim’s body in a bathtub in a hooker’s hotel room.

  When they found it, Zain wanted to throw the full force of Chrome at chasing down leads and bringing in the police. That might have been the smart play, but it was also one that placed Asp in a dangerous situation. Not only did it put his job on the line – there was no way he would escape being fired by Chrome’s ultimate bosses in the States – it would also drag the spotlight of the authorities onto their offices.

  Every file, every computer, every email communication would likely be seized.

  It would be the end of Chrome’s Middle East division.

  It might also lead to the vast majority of his employees going to jail for any one of a dozen different offences.

  There was a reason crime in Dubai was so low. The laws were, to put it mildly, elastically interpreted. Rock the boat and you would be found guilty of something, even if it was barely relevant to any actual problem. The threshold for punishment hinged on whether the police were called or not.

  Once the police were involved, someone – anyone – was going to pay for something.

  “Better to keep it all on the QT,” he mumbled as he continued to flick through the scant documentation available. “Damn it, Jim. Where the hell did this case really begin?”

  The sources for the funds, the phone numbers, the details, even those stored in encrypted documents that were supposed to be totally accurate to prevent the kind of situation they now found themselves in: all of it was bogus.

  Dummy corporations, fake names, made up leads.

  As he reviewed what was available, Asp realised it had been a miracle he’d been able to find Jim’s body in less than half a day.

  Now for the new idea.

  Asp turned around and grabbed a red folder from a locked cabinet behind his desk. The contents would appear incomprehensible to anyone but a medieval scholar. He’d written the entire set of documents in Anglo Saxon, then applied modern ciphers to distort it further.

  “Jim wouldn’t be stupid enough to take a contract from a mobster,” Asp said as he poured over his reams of contacts – the folders contained everyone he’d ever met in Dubai and his thoughts on them.

  He often found that talking aloud helped him see his way through problems, even when they seemed totally unsolvable.

  “That means it had to be a bunch of spies he got mixed up with.”

  The United Arab Emirates was not an easy place for foreign agents to operate. The country’s Central Bureau of Intelligence – often referred to as the Ceebies – were widely regarded as the second best in the region, after Israel’s Mossad.

  The Ceebies ran a tight ship.

  “Only six groups who mess around on the global stage and play the Great Game are likely to have the skills necessary to keep one step ahead of the CBI.”

  Asp ran his fingers through the pages and marked out six sections in his contacts.

  “Let’s rule out Israel. This doesn’t seem their style; they wouldn’t use Chrome, they’d use their own men. Same for China. That leaves Russia, Britain, France and America.”

  Asp removed two sections of his notes from his search.

  “The Russians are involved in this – but not on our side so it would be warped if they’d hired Jim to balls up their own plans
.”

  He looked at the remaining three groups: Britain, France and the United States.

  “It’s not the French,” he said. “They don’t mess around in Dubai – they’re too focused on Syria, Lebanon and Algeria. The UAE isn’t their sphere of interest or influence.”

  Britain and the United States.

  “So which of you hires an American corporate spying agency to do a job for you?”

  He tapped the pages lightly. The answer seemed clear.

  “It would be the British,” he said. “The Americans would either do it themselves or deal with me, not Jim. The only reason to wait until I’m out of the country and go to him is because you knew I’d never take the job from you in a million years.”

  One name leapt out of the page: an MI6 operative called Chandler Stevens.

  27

  Blake was already driving down the back roads of the Umm Sequim shopping district, towards the highway, when his phone started ringing again. Jeffrey was scratching away at the walls of his carry case, trying to tunnel for freedom with the fury of an inmate at Colditz Castle.

  “Shhh, little Boxcat,” Blake said in hushed tones, “we’re just going on a short trip.”

  Blake switched on his phone’s hands-free mode.

  “I presume this is Cavallo?” a thick Appalachian voice said.

  “Confirmed,” Blake said, swerving between traffic lanes and turning onto the Sheikh Zayed road.

  “You’re in Abu Dhabi?”

  “Dubai.”

  A sharp intake of breath.

  “Our nearest debrief is called Ron Casabian, he’ll be...”

  “In the Cassiopeia hotel bar from 19:00,” Blake cut the man off mid-sentence. “I know Ron well, it’s his nightly hang out.”

  Blake accelerated his car up to the speed limit. He zipped in and out of the rush-hour traffic as he picked up pace.

  “Excellent,” the voice said. “Is there anything else I need to know?”

  “Over an open, unsecured line?” Blake said. “No.”

  “Excellent. Ron will liaise and provide all available support. And may I say, it’s a pleasure to talk to you. No doubt we’ll meet soon.”

  Blake hit the ‘end call’ button. He punched in a second number and waited as the receiver began ringing once more.

  Eleanor was a fiery Australian lawyer, married to one of the British judges who presided over Dubai’s financial district, Lord Justice MacHaranger. He also happened to be a Baron with more money than the Rolling Stones.

  Mac and Eleanor lived in an exclusive neck of Dubai called Al Barari: one million square metres of land set across artificial islands containing five landscaped gardens – each following a different theme from Renaissance to Forest to Mediterranean. There were just 300 homes hidden amongst the arboretums, artificial canyons and wilderness.

  “Hello?” Eleanor asked.

  “Hey Bunny, it’s Blake. I’m tight on time so forgive me if this conversation is a little one way,” he said, swerving around a Humvee as he avoided a speed trap and pushed his accelerator past the legal limit. “I need someone to look after my cat and mention it to no-one. It’ll be twenty-four hours, two days max. I’m ten minutes away. I’ll drop him off at the front door, ring the bell and run.”

  As he spoke, Blake looked in his rear view mirror. Aggressive driving is ubiquitous in the UAE, elements of dealing with it are taught in the state’s driving lessons.

  Nonetheless, even by local standards, Blake was acting more robustly than other road users. This was by design. His home had been invaded. Clearly, the Russians were after him. He didn’t know this Ash-Shumu’a group but it was not an unreasonable assumption that they were watching him too.

  A rough rule of espionage that had kept him alive from 21 until he quit at the age of 30 was that if two groups were after you, you’d better expect to arouse the interest of others too.

  “Okay,” Eleanor said hesitantly. “Am I also not to ask questions regarding this impromptu cat-sitting?”

  “That would be appreciated,” Blake replied.

  His attention was five cars back.

  It was difficult to tell through the haze of bad driving by everybody on the street but there seemed a definite synchronicity between the headlamps of a Nissan 4x4 and Blake’s Audi.

  “Shit.”

  “What?” Eleanor asked.

  Blake indicated late, incurring honks and flashes from other drivers as he whipped off the exit ramp.

  The Nissan began to follow him.

  “My apologies, Eleanor – better make it twenty minutes.”

  28

  Asp approached the front of Chandler’s small maisonette and put his hands to the windows.

  Darkness.

  Chandler’s car was parked in the drive, so he was most probably home. Asp tried the door bell. After a few minutes of waiting he tried the handle and found it locked.

  Asp circled around to the back and tried the patio doors. Although they too were technically locked, the shoddy workmanship on the frame indicated that if he yanked hard enough, he might pull them open.

  “Thank god for shoddy building standards,” he thought.

  He gave the handle a mighty heave. It gave slightly but not enough to open. Damn. If only he had Zain with him. Asp took a few deep breaths, he wasn’t the most physical man in the world...

  “Come on, you can do this.”

  With the full force of his body he jerked at the handle. The double glazing shuddered. There was a scratching creak and the door shook ajar.

  “Outstanding,” he whispered.

  He pulled it wider.

  The first thing to hit him was the stench.

  Like the worst refuse tip in the height of summer, Asp immediately clasped a hand to his face and suppressed the urge to throw up.

  He pulled his penlight torch out and moved inside.

  Downstairs, everything seemed normal and in place – if a little over fussy. Without the smell of rotting flesh, it would be easy to assume by simply looking through the windows that Chandler was on holiday.

  Asp wasted no time, heading straight upstairs for the bathroom.

  With each step that he climbed, the stink increased in intensity. When he reached the top flight and landing, a new sound met his ears.

  Buzzing.

  “Shit,” he said, lowering his torch to show a black morass of flies squeezing in and out through the gap at the bottom of the washroom door.

  Knowing already what he would find, he nervously opened it wide.

  A cloud of flies immediately enveloped him. Asp batted them away with his hands. As they cleared, zipping off through the house, he brought his light to bear on the bathtub.

  In it was a rotting corpse.

  The skin of the fingers and toes had been burned away.

  ***

  Blake doubled back on himself, leaving and then returning to the main motorway but now heading in the opposite direction. He hoped it would confuse whoever was following as to his intended destination. If they were trained, they’d assume his initial route was simply a feint.

  The traffic was lighter on this side of the highway, allowing him to release the throttle. He pushed the Audi past the speed limit, keeping cars between himself and the mile-spaced police cameras. A double flash. His pursuer was being markedly less careful about remaining hidden.

  “Well, you clearly want to keep up with me,” he growled.

  A second set of double flashes.

  “So let’s make it cost you. At this pace, that’ll be $200 a time. Do not pass Go; get five in a row and travel directly to jail.”

  His pursuers clearly realised he had seen them and were closing the gap.

  He veered onto another service road.

  Technically his Audi had a higher top speed than the Nissan, but the 30 mph difference wasn’t going to make much impact unless he really let it all go – and tearing along Dubai’s main highway at 190 mph with a Russian Special Forces pistol tucked in his
belt, a P90 in the boot and two dead bodies in his lounge at home, seemed like it was asking a little too much of Dubai’s liberality towards foreigners.

  “In point of fact,” Blake hissed, “it’s pretty much asking to be taken out to one of the nation’s many desert prisons and get dropped in a deep, dark hole until the end of time.”

  Guns in Dubai.

  He still couldn’t believe that the gangsters had broken such a major taboo.

  He twisted the Audi through a few more turns. The Nissan was barely two car lengths behind. Blake accelerated into the grounds of the Montgomerie Dubai hotel. It was a golfing resort, its name part of a branding exercise as the courses were designed by Colin Montgomerie and Desmond Muirhead.

  For Blake, barely a mile from his home, the hotel bar was his regular watering hole. The route meant he’d nearly doubled back on himself but he hoped familiarity with the landscape gave him an advantage.

  Blake grimaced.

  “So let’s see how good you guys really are.”

  He jerked the steering wheel hard. He bounced up the curb. The Audi flew through the air. If he couldn’t pace out a lead on the streets, he’d stretch one out off-road.

  “Okay arseholes, I wonder if you can guess why I picked this car when I arrived in Dubai.”

  The Quattro wasn’t just four-wheel drive; it had individual, computer-assisted control of each wheel. The Nissan would be taken by surprise and struggle to match his velocity across the grass – and a lack of cameras would mean he might get fifteen minutes to lose his tail before hotel staff, stunned by a car chase happening across the greens, managed to get the police on the scene.

  The Audi hit the lawn.

  Wheels span against turf, spitting thousand dollar clumps soil out in a stream. The engine gunned. Then, like a rocket, it was off.

  The Nissan screeched to a halt.

  The two occupants argued with one another.

  It reversed, turned and tore after him.

  29

  Mehr Zain yawned as he put his feet on the floor and staggered out onto the upstairs landing.