The Golden Scales

by Parker Bilal

  ‘And I suppose you have no explanation of who tipped him off about the raid the other night? It wouldn’t have been you, would it?’

  ‘Why would I warn Bulatt?’

  ‘I have no idea. Last time you came here, you told me you were working for Hanafi.’

  ‘I still am, I think. Trying to find Adil Romario.’

  ‘Well, good luck to you. He is the least of my concerns.’

  ‘Is that what all the extra security is about? You’re expecting Bulatt to come after you?’

  ‘He will know where the information came from. He has ears everywhere. And when I catch him, I will make sure he tells me that and many other things.’ Vronsky drained his glass and smiled, going over to refill both glasses to the rim. ‘Now I’m asking myself why you returned. Was it to lead Bulatt to me? Is that why you came here today?’

  ‘I came because I heard a story about a girl. A girl who worked here.’

  Makana watched Vronsky’s face carefully for any sign that he knew what he was talking about. Perhaps he was good at disguising his feelings, but he looked more bemused than anything.

  ‘Dunya, her name was. She was fond of Adil as I understand it.’

  Vronsky shrugged. ‘A local girl, she came from that village you saw from my office.’ He frowned. ‘I would have thought that in your profession a lot must depend on asking the right question at the right moment. In this case, I am afraid you are off the mark.’

  The light had now almost left the sky. A dark blue light glowed from the console. By Makana’s feet was a coil of rope. Attached to one end was a large stone in a small net. He gave it a kick. Vronsky smiled.

  ‘It doesn’t take much to drown a man. Even quite a small weight is enough to tire most people sufficiently to get the job done.’

  ‘And the sharks get rid of the evidence?’

  ‘Not just sharks. Have you ever seen the teeth of a barracuda? They can take a man’s arm off with a single bite.’

  ‘You were using Farag to blackmail people in government, people like Mohsen Taha. You wanted the support of influential people. Farag made sure they wound up on film in compromising situations with your lady friends.’

  ‘I encountered a lot of resistance. In some quarters there is still loyalty to Hanafi. Money simply wasn’t enough. Perhaps it is some misguided sense of national pride. I thought Adil would become my Arab prince. He would step in and take over. He is a national hero and the country would accept him as a replacement for Hanafi. That was Farag’s mistake, bringing Adil to me.’

  ‘After that you didn’t need Farag.’

  ‘It was a messy, distasteful business.’

  ‘Even for you.’

  ‘Even for me.’ Vronsky conceded a smile.

  ‘What is there between you and Daud Bulatt?’

  As he leaned forward for the bottle, Vronsky’s head entered the halo of blue light. Night had fallen now and the Russian’s voice rumbled through it, low and thick. ‘I knew him, years ago, in Chechnya, in the hills outside Grozny. I was in command of an elite unit. Our job was to hunt down the Arabs and kill their leaders.’ The last rays of daylight picked out Vronsky’s eyes like lost islands in the darkness of the surrounding sea. ‘Bulatt was smart and ruthless. It was a bloody war, as bad as anything I have ever seen. Worse than Afghanistan.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘We had them pinned down in a small valley. We even had air support. Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunships. They couldn’t move, but still, it was like pulling fingernails. Every metre we advanced was drenched in blood. In the end a handful of them, including Bulatt, managed to escape higher up into the mountains. We thought they had gone. But they hadn’t. They waited two weeks. When our ground forces withdrew they came back down and cut the throats of every man, woman and child in the nearby village. They thought someone there had betrayed them.’ Vronsky drained another glass of vodka. ‘They had no business being there. It wasn’t their fight, but these were real fanatics. They didn’t care about the people. They were just looking for a cause to die for.’

  ‘He got away from you.’

  ‘Twice. The second time he wasn’t so lucky. That’s how he lost his arm.’ Vronsky read the expression on Makana’s face. ‘You didn’t know about that? Interesting. Anyway, we captured two of his men. We cut the tongue out of one of them in order to get the other one to talk. He did, of course. Led us right to them. We had Bulatt surrounded.’

  ‘This was what . . . three, four years ago?’

  ‘February 1995.’

  ‘Who were they, the two men?’

  ‘Arab mujahideen. The Islamic Regiment.’

  ‘You killed them, I suppose.’

  ‘We let them go. Bulatt killed them when he learned they had betrayed him, but by then the trap was sprung.’ Vronsky leaned his head back to gaze up at the stars. ‘A mortar shell landed up above in a gully as they were trying to make their escape. There was a landslide, lots of rocks falling. A large boulder spun down and crushed his arm. By then it was late. We couldn’t risk moving up in the dark, so we dug ourselves in to wait for first light. We didn’t know he was trapped. He knew that at first light we would come for him. You know what he did?’ Vronsky’s voice was so low it was almost lost in the lull of the sea. ‘He did what a wolf does when it is caught in a trap. It gnaws off its own limb. Bulatt cut his arm off with a bayonet. He cut through the flesh and sinew and amputated his left arm at the elbow.’

  ‘That must take some courage.’

  Vronsky’s glass of vodka rested forgotten in his hand. ‘He didn’t cry out, not once. We would have heard. You know, in a valley like that, all sound is amplified.’ His eyes sought out Makana’s in the gloom. ‘You can’t fight that kind of madness. You can’t reason with it. You have to exterminate it.’

  The boat rocked lightly from side to side in the water. The lights along the coast were a sparse necklace of tarnished diamonds draped across the dark expanse of inland shadow. Vronsky got to his feet, somewhat unsteadily, and leaned over to attach the end of the towrope to Makana’s bound wrists. The boat gave an unexpected lurch. Makana seized the opportunity and kicked out to scissor Vronsky’s legs from under him. The Russian came down heavily, the bottle smashing with a metallic tinkle. Makana rolled to his feet. Vronsky was on one knee by then. He was breathing heavily and there was a thick trail of blood running down his right arm. Makana hoped this might disable the man somewhat, since he was clearly the stronger and fitter of them. If this was the case, the Russian certainly didn’t betray it. His eyes showed the steady calm of a man who is in complete control, of one who has killed with his bare hands before and is preparing to kill again.

  Casting round him for some kind of weapon, Makana lifted the lifebelt off its hook against the side of the boat. It was the only thing within reach. There wasn’t much room to manoeuvre. Vronsky reached down and seized the neck of the broken bottle, its jagged edge glinting in the console’s blue light. As he lunged, Makana ducked away and then swung the lifebelt to hit him full in the face. The bottle clattered from Vronsky’s hand as he staggered back towards the console. Makana stepped sideways to reach for it. As he bent down, Vronsky reached for the throttle and thrust both levers forward. The engine, which had been idling, surged into action and Makana was sent reeling backwards against the aft railing. Vronsky didn’t give him a chance to recover. He stepped forward and Makana felt a heavy weight hit him full on. Then he was toppling over the railing and into the water.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  The sea hit him hard and cold. Then he was sinking into nothing. The stone hanging from his wrists pulled him down. He struggled, the lifebelt wrenched from his hands in the fall. He kicked and pawed at the water. Then the rope attached to his wrists began to tauten. He seized hold of it with his hands as he was dragged along in the wake of the launch. The weight at his wrists kept him beneath the surface. As the boat gathered speed, Makana knew that he would drown soon unless he could get his head out of the water. H
e managed to tighten his grip and drag himself upwards until he could roll over and fill his lungs with air. He caught a brief glimpse of the running lights on the boat through the fluorescent glow of its wake. Almost immediately, he felt a change in its momentum. The boat was turning and he was being propelled sideways, out of the wake, swinging in a wide arc. What was Vronsky up to?

  Makana found out soon enough. He felt himself strike something hard in the water. He would have broken his ribs except that the speed he was travelling at lifted him up and sent him skimming over the shallow reef. He felt the sharp pricks against his skin as his clothes were ripped by the coral. It was like being flayed by a thousand tiny razor blades. The sting of the salt water told him he was bleeding. The stone thumped against his chest, knocking the breath out of his lungs, then he was out in the deep water again and his weighted wrists were pulling him down into the darkness below. He felt his head spin and knew he was about to pass out. The rope slackened somewhat and he tugged at it to lift his head above water again. The boat was turning. It began to gather speed again, and soon they were once more running headlong towards the reef.

  This time he was more scared, anticipating the blow but not knowing when it would come, trying to protect his head. Once again he felt the boat swing away and once again he felt himself begin to slip sideways, his body hurtling over the wake of the boat, bouncing hard against the water. This time when he struck the reef he felt coral breaking off against his bones, felt his skin tearing as he struggled to try to gain purchase. If he could wrap the rope around something, he thought, lock it into a crevice . . . anything. He pressed his wrists downwards, hoping the friction would wear through the rope, then he was off the reef and back into deep water. His whole body felt mangled and broken. Already he had swallowed a lot of sea water and Makana knew he was tiring and that he would not last much longer.

  The third time around he felt something give in the rope that bound his wrists. Something had cut through it, or the water had loosened the knots. He pulled on the line, using the last of his strength to try and yank himself enough slack to work his hands free. Again he began to sink as the boat slowed. He clawed at the line with his fingers, aware of the darkness rising around him. But this time something was different. The line kept coming, even as the sound of the engine receded. Vronsky had cut him free.

  Makana wrestled frantically with the loop of rope that immobilised his hands, bound him to the stone that was pulling him down. As he sank deeper and deeper into the water, he used his teeth, tearing at the knot until finally he felt it loosen. Kicking his legs, he felt the weight fall away and his body rising. His head broke the surface. He gasped for air and felt the pain in his lungs ease.

  As he looked around to find his bearings, Makana saw that his only point of reference was the line of twinkling lights which marked the shoreline. He was out in the middle of the sea. The only sign of Vronsky’s launch was a dwindling fluorescence in the distance, then nothing but dark water. He wondered how much he was actually bleeding. He tried to remember how little blood sharks could detect. Was it a drop of blood in a million parts of sea water? That sounded ridiculous and he hoped he was wrong. How far away did they have to be? he wondered. The temperature of the water was beginning to make him shiver. Either he could start swimming towards the shore, or he could wait until his legs cramped up and he drowned that way.

  Makana had never really been a strong swimmer. As a child he had splashed about in the river with his friends like all the other boys, but no one had ever taught him to swim properly. But he had no choice now. He began to kick with his feet and stroke the water aside, telling himself he needed to conserve his energy. The shore didn’t seem to be getting any closer. As he swam his mind was turning back to the case. He was fairly sure now that Vronsky had killed Adil, probably the same way he’d killed Farag. Why, he couldn’t say. Did Adil turn against Vronsky, refuse to do his bidding?

  Rolling on to his back to give his muscles a rest, Makana stared up at the stars and marvelled at how clear they were out here, so far away from human habitation. It was remarkable, just how many there were. They felt comforting, despite his situation. They took him back to his life with Muna, the happiest time he could remember, when the world had been simple. Sitting out in the yard in the evenings, watching the sky revolve slowly around them. It seemed like another world.

  He had been swimming for what felt like hours when he suddenly had the sense that he was no longer alone. Within the darkness around him a deeper, darker shadow was moving in the water. Reducing his movements to a minimum Makana stayed afloat, kicking as lightly as he could. The sea seemed to be alive around him, rising and falling like the breathing of a great animal. He consoled himself with the thought that it would be over in a minute. That was all it would take. A wave struck him in the face with the force of a hard slap, shaking him from his reverie. He began to kick harder again, cautiously at first, expecting the darkness to reach out and swallow him every time he extended an arm, then more firmly, determined to get to shore. His heart stopped when his hand finally struck something hard. He realised it was the reef. Dragging himself over it, he felt the temperature of the water rise and knew he was in the shallows. A few minutes later he collapsed on the beach, gasping for breath. The world looked different. The palm trees towering over him were still. He got to his feet and looked about him.

  In the stark glare of a battery of floodlights, the high walls of The Big Blue stood out against the night sky as vividly as the whitewashed cinema screens Makana recalled from his childhood. He could see Vronsky’s villa. Makana glanced back at the sea and heaved a sigh of relief. It was good to feel the earth beneath his feet. His body felt bruised and swollen, and he knew that if he stopped moving his muscles would seize up. He forced himself to move quickly, breaking into an awkward jog. Approaching the complex along the beach, he was surprised that none of the guards appeared to be in sight, that he was able to get so close without being challenged.

  There was a figure up ahead of him in the shadows, walking briskly along the path, away from the villa, heading for the same gap in the fence, the arched green door. The man paused, hearing something. He stopped and glanced back. Makana recognised him. It was the man who had been haunting his dreams, the man he had once glimpsed on a street in Cairo. The man in the beige chequered shirt. He looked at Makana and then turned away and increased his pace. Something was wrong. Makana called out and raised a hand. In the instant he did so there was a bright flash over to his right, coming from the direction of Vronsky’s villa. A hand thumped into his shoulder, lifting him off his feet and into the air. Then everything went black.

  The explosion was like a light going on and off in quick succession, a bulb exploding in the back of his head. The blast threw him a good ten metres. Then he was gasping for air, engulfed in a thick cloud that swirled about him, filling his lungs and choking him. After a time he became aware of the intense heat on his right side. He managed to open his eyes and turned to look in the direction of what remained of Vronsky’s villa. It had been almost completely destroyed. The side facing the sea and the upper floor had been ripped right off, as though a giant claw had reached down from the sky and gouged them away. There were shouts and screams of horror coming from the hotel behind him. People were running, calling frantically to one another. Thick smoke billowed out from a fire that licked angrily from the black, cavernous mouth.

  Makana rolled over and found himself lying beside the headless torso of the Filipino valet, still in his white jacket. A wave of nausea swept over him as he pushed himself away and fell back on to the grass. His head was ringing and he felt dazed. Everything around him was fuzzy and indistinct. His legs felt as if they were made of rubber, but somehow he managed to stand. He staggered towards the gate leading to the main resort area. A crowd was milling about on the other side of the fence. There were screams of panic and cries in a variety of languages asking what was going on. They parted pretty quickly when they saw the sta
te he was in. Some of the staff appeared, and he fought off their efforts to help him, pointing back the way he had come. ‘Help them,’ he shouted, ‘help them.’ But he couldn’t hear his own words. His mouth was filled with acid bile and he gulped down mouthfuls of air and then bent over and threw up.

  He cleared the reception area in time to see a waiting car pulling away in a hurry, exhaust fluttering in the red glow of the tail lights. It looked like there were two men inside. Makana was sure one of them was the man in the beige shirt. Farag’s Mercedes was where he had left it and the keys were miraculously still in his pocket.

  His hands were sore and bleeding. They kept sticking to the wheel. His clothes were soaked through and his entire body ached from the salt and lacerations. Makana shivered as he drove with his lights off, humming through the dark, eyes pinned to the twin red darts of the tail lights up ahead. They went south, further down the coast. His head throbbed and his eyesight was blurred. The night air that blew through the open window was cool and dry. There was nothing else he needed to think about apart from those lights ahead. After about fifteen minutes they began to slow. They were approaching a junction. No houses or buildings of any kind in sight. They turned inland and headed west.

  Away from the coast it was easier to see without lights. The open landscape seemed to absorb the glow from the distant stars. Makana’s eyes could make out the edges of the road he had to follow. He let the other car get a good distance away, memorising the curves it made to help him see the road. There was nothing out here, nothing but blackness. No signs of human habitation of any kind, just the dim silhouette of hills rising in the distance. The road curved on, rising gently towards the looming shadow of a jagged ridge. A large boulder blocked his view of the road ahead as he went around a long curve. When he came out on the other side the car ahead appeared to have vanished. The road was deserted. No lights in sight.

  Makana slowed, allowing the Mercedes to glide to a halt. He cut the engine and climbed out. He stood in the middle of the deserted road listening to the silence. Beyond those hills was the Nile and the Valley of the Kings. Then he caught sight of something. A brief glint. Headlights brushing against stone, like white paint being splashed across a canvas in the dark. It was off to the right. He started the engine again and nosed along the road until he found the rough track leading up to the right. Makana swung the wheel and eased the big car off the road.