Guy Fawkes Day
Page 23
They stayed that way for some minutes. Eventually the TV commentator’s voice started to fill the silent airwaves again, this time in a calm and dignified drawl. Sophie looked over Hasan’s shoulder at the screen. Hasan’s greater distress had given her unexpected reserves of strength. She was no longer afraid to watch.
The truncated body was still kneeling. A policeman approached and kicked it roughly onto the ground with the sole of his boot, while other figures were approaching with a sack to scoop the severed head.
The camera switched again. This time Sophie felt the fear return. She was looking again at Colonel Easterby’s face. It was still locked in the same direction, gaping dumbfounded at something in the crowd forty-five degrees to his right. The features were calm and blank, but the eyes and the intransigent immobility said it all. He had seen his nemesis. The colonel stood and stared. Stood and stared. Still staring. The lids weren’t blinking despite the noonday heat. The camera feasted on him like a vulture. It was the most grotesque sight Sophie had ever seen, and she now knew with utter certainty that the whole horror show was all Omar’s doing. The prisoner on the mat was not the only one he had brought there to suffer. Oh, if only he would dare show his face right here and now. I’d cut Omar’s head off with a blunt knife!
But he didn’t come. Hasan held on to Sophie for another couple of minutes, then left abruptly as if nothing had happened.
Sophie retreated to a chair on the terrace. For hours she simply stared into the distance, numb inside, neither sick nor frightened. Just empty. Dusk came. The Indian servant brought her a drink that she sipped at disinterestedly. He asked her to come inside for supper; she refused. The servant reappeared half an hour later with the same request; again, she refused.
Sometime after eight Hasan returned. Still no sign of Omar.
‘You must leave tomorrow morning, Miss Sophie. Please be ready for an early flight.’
‘Where to? Home, I hope?’
Hasan shrugged laconically,
‘Breakfast at six o’clock. Please to be ready.’
Sophie smiled back bitterly at the man who had held her for so long that afternoon in his vice-like terror. Obviously Omar wasn’t going to appear to explain his foul deed; he was going to let her anger fester. The question was, for how long?
Chapter 26: London Docklands: October 25: Afternoon.
The small brown parcel brought by the rain-sodden motorcycle courier was delivered straight to Chapman’s newsroom desk. The journalist stared suspiciously at the unfamiliar writing. Normally he treated any surprise deliveries like a newly purchased lottery ticket, kept them in a safe place and checked them carefully at the first available opportunity. But today he was anxious and distracted. Still no news from Sophie. He had called her any number of times over the last two days but her mobile was always switched off.
Increasingly anxious, he picked up the phone and dialled Magdalen College again. This time, the porter was more helpful. Miss Palmer had been granted a week’s exeat, reason and destination unknown.
‘Exeat? Christ, what’s happened? Is her mum ok?’
But the porter either couldn’t or wouldn’t confirm the reason why. Chapman thanked him and huffily replaced the receiver. As he did so, his eye caught the sinister-looking parcel lurking on the corner of his desk. He snatched at it angrily, and only then did he recognize the two crossed swords, a palm tree and a camel that formed the distinctive motif of the Royal Embassy of Ramliyya.
Curiosity aroused, Chapman tore at the awkward masking tape. Inside he found a memory stick and a sheaf of word-processed documentation and a hand-written note of neat cursive script in blank ink. He started with the note:
Sultanate of Ramliyya
October 24
Dear Mr Chapman,
As a reward for your investigative diligence, I am offering you the wherewithal for a sensational scoop surrounding the execution of a British citizen, Mr Philip Goss, that was carried out today in our capital, Madinat Al-Aasima. This recording has been rushed to you overnight via my personal courier to give you a head start on your competitors, though be careful: Al-Jazeera are not far behind!
You should listen first to the audio files and read the accompanying transcript. The video files are a recording of an unscheduled broadcast filmed today by Ramli TV. It will confirm the agreements which you will hear in the audio files. Act fast now before Al-Jazeera piece together all the details. I have contacts inside that organisation who can delay their story for a while, if you are quick.
The audio files will give you an inside into this story none of your competitors will ever have. But if you want to find out what lies beneath, you must continue your investigations into the ghosts of the past. Good luck!
I need scarcely remind you that the files are given to you as a present, on condition of the strictest confidentiality.
Prince Omar Adil ‘Al-Ajnabi’ Al-Janoubi
The audio files were easy. Chapman simply ran plugged in the memory stick and opened the audio files on his Apple, immediately recognizing the clipped, steady tones of Colonel Easterby.
You dirty bastard! Chapman mumbled out loud in delight when he heard the colonel calmly instruct Prince Omar and Dr AbdulAziz to sacrifice the British prisoner for his thirty pieces of silver.
He underlined Goss’s name as he found it in the printed transcript, then circled it with a halo of question marks and double lines. After a while he sat back in his chair and replayed the audio files, pausing at the first mention of Goss’s name, a name that had slipped Prince Omar’s memory on every occasion throughout the interview. Chapman chuckled. He felt he knew Prince Omar Al-Ajnabi well enough by now to realize that the Special Envoy’s repeated memory lapses were anything other than genuine.
He paused the playback again at the point where Prince Omar had obviously set Easterby up, dropping the original demand for BDS’s public support of the intended execution. But Easterby had walked straight into the trap, blinded by his greed.
If Goss is executed, will my company still be able to bid for the new contracts Dr Al-Badawi and I discussed? Easterby asked. Chapman replayed the fragment several times. At this point, the Ramlis must have given Easterby some tacit token of encouragement.
Then there is no decision to be made, Easterby’s voice continued.
You stupid git, you’ve walked right into it! Chapman snorted, again out loud, then played on to hear Easterby cover himself in shit by promising his help in toning down the British press. Think you can shut us up, eh? Chapman was fuming. Then paper the walls of your Surrey mansion with copies of tomorrow morning’s edition, you blind fool!
In a frenzy of purpose, Chapman pulled his swivel chair right up close to his Apple and opened up the video file. Straight away he saw the car park, the crowd and the prison van, felt his pulse race in the certainty of what was to happen next to the red-faced ginger ox of a man struggling furiously with the Ramli policemen.
The build-up was stomach-churning enough, but Chapman’s analytical mind overcame the revulsion to focus on the frames in which the prisoner was screaming defiantly across the car park. Every word was eerily succinct. Colonel Easterby, the rabid voice kept roaring. Always ‘Colonel’. It didn’t take Chapman long to guess that Goss and Easterby knew each other long before their ill-fated association with British Defence Systems. The connection went back a lot further, and Chapman reckoned he could trace it back to a more distant past, to the time of Aidan Hennessy, the Parachute Regiment and Northern Ireland.
By now he was in a mad rush to start writing the story that would splash the muck on Easterby all over tomorrow’s headlines. But instinct told him to be patient a little longer. First, he wanted to find out more about the unfortunate Phil Goss.
A couple of calls later and Chapman hit the jackpot. Yes, the Army Information Office could tell the journalist about Sergeant Philip Goss. Born Liverpool September 23rd. Joined D Company of the Parachute Regiment. Promoted to lance corporal and later full corporal.
Sergeant’s stripes followed two years later and Staff Sergeant three years after that. Court-martial and dishonourable discharge without benefits the year after the Falls Road Massacre for bullying and gross indecency.
‘Can you tell me who Goss’s Commanding Officer would have been at the time of discharge?’ Chapman asked, guessing he already knew the answer.
The confirmation took some time, but when it came Chapman could no longer sit at his desk. He had the buzz, and it took him spinning for leads all over the internet and a call down to archives. Prince Omar Al-Ajnabi had set up the showdown between Goss and Easterby in Ramliyya. That was obvious. And the reason why had to be no more than a couple of clicks away on the new CD-ROM of back issues the archives department had only just completed.
Sure enough, Goss was only listed twice in the database. The first click took Chapman where he had expected to go—to the time of the Falls Road Massacre. But it wasn’t the story of the Falls Road Massacre that flashed up on screen initially. His mouse had landed at a later date, seven months after the Falls Road Massacre.
Chapman stared intently at the screen. He was looking at an article concerning the court-martial of an officer of the Parachute Regiment, Robert Bailey. He scrolled down further in search of Goss.
Christ, there it was! Forget Goss! He had found something much bigger: He was staring at a twenty-year old photo of Prince Omar Al-Ajnabi!
The face had hardly changed in twenty years. Only the eyes were different—the happy gaze of a young man with a bright future.
When he had finished with the photo, Chapman read the caption: Second Lieutenant Robert Bailey, D Company, Parachute Regiment. Accused of the manslaughter of 12 civilians in West Belfast in April of this year.
Chapter 27: Arusha, Tanzania: October 25, midday.
Looking through the starboard window of Prince Omar’s private jet, Sophie finally realized where she was being taken. Kilimanjaro stood splendid and alone, an ancient Olympian aloof in its silver-haired wisdom. The plane banked to the left, keeping the lesser peak, Mawenzi, at a respectful distance to the right, before beginning its descent into Kilimanjaro International Airport.
Zahra, the beautiful Eritrean stewardess, gave Sophie another wistful smile. At first, before take-off from Madinat Al-Aasima, Sophie had demanded to know where she was being taken, adamant that her next destination should be London. But Zahra’s almost total lack of English, combined with a beguiling, sad-eyed charm had stifled Sophie’s resistance and an unspoken bond had developed between the two women.
Sophie was slumped back submissively in her regal seat. The anger, outrage, fear and shock that had washed over her in turn since watching the execution had all subsided, leaving only an overwhelming tiredness in their wake. She was tired of Omar’s mysteries and dark games. Tired and wistfully sad. She longed to revert back to the cash-strapped, anonymous frog she had been before the prince had found her.
But visions from the car park in Madinat Al Aasima and the questions that arose from what she had seen kept Sophie from the sleep she so craved. And of all the nightmare images, one bothered her more than all the rest. It was that demented look on Colonel Easterby’s face. God, the horror she had read in his eyes! What had he been staring at? Why had he been there at all?
For hours after the execution, her one overriding desire had been to phone Marcus, to hear his voice, to reassure and to get some reassurance. It could have been an accident that she could not find any telephones, computers or any sign of internet connection in the mountain lair outside Madinat Al Aasima, but knowing Omar better than that, she thought it more likely that he had purposefully arranged for their removal.
The aircraft wheels folded downwards with the customary electrical whining noises. Sophie sat up in her seat and tried to focus on her immediate surroundings. Africa. Before only a few glossy pages in the more-expensive travel brochures she would never even have dared to browse through in the high street travel agents. Now, like the rest of her dream-like life, whose strings Omar pulled at whim and without explanation, it seemed too fantastic to warrant much attention.
At Zahra’s insistence, Sophie fastened her seatbelt and prepared herself for landing, returning the flight attendant’s curious smile. Even if Zahra’s English could not give her the reasons for this latest confusing jaunt, Sophie guessed that Omar would be waiting there at Kilimanjaro Airport with some cryptic explanation, revelling in all the pain he had inflicted on her in Ramliyya.
But it was the ubiquitous Hasan, not Omar, who was waiting on the tarmac, watching dispassionately while she stepped down from the Airbus. He was cool and reserved again; the intensity with which he had gripped her wrist during the execution might never have happened, would certainly not be mentioned again. He took Sophie’s passport and passed it on to a Tanzanian official, who scurried inside the terminal building as if he were attending to a VIP.
Sitting by the outside of the terminal building was a green Land Rover Discovery. Hasan ushered her inside while the porter stowed her case in the rear. The immigration officer returned with her stamped passport.
‘Karibu Tanzania,’ he smiled, glancing at Hasan for a show of approval. As they drove off, Sophie caught a last glimpse of Zahra, waving wistfully from the tarmac, her loose robes furling in a stiff breeze.
Warm, pungent air wafted in through the open windows, and Sophie’s spirits began to rise as she studied the unfamiliar sights of Africa.
This was fertile country. Banana trees, coffee plantations and maize fields thronged both sides of the road. Mud-and-wattle houses with corrugated iron roofs loitered in thick foliage. Dark faces in multi-coloured shirts revelled in the sun-kissed simplicity of their poverty.
Sophie banished all the obvious questions and worries from her mind, all the why-am-I-heres? and what-happens-nexts? It was the same feeling of grim relief that had washed over her after watching the execution: life and nothing but. She was alive while others were not, feeling the equatorial sun on the side of her face, breathing in lungfuls of rich, dusty air that carried in them all the invigorating potency of ancient Africa.
They passed through the city of Arusha. Crumbling brick buildings in alluring states of disrepair were the city’s best attempt at modern urban architecture. On the fringes of the city, more traditional ‘developing world’ shanty hovels teemed like thick creepers on a rotting trunk. Hasan stared ahead, quietly efficient with the driving.
Outside Arusha, they were suddenly in wide-open savannah country that Sophie had only seen before in Out of Africa or the occasional BBC wildlife documentary. But despite her unfamiliarity with the safari setting, she could recognize the herders straddling the roadside: Masai, driving long lines of bony cattle across the yellow grass.
It was beautiful and uplifting country. A sense of freedom and escape welled over her. Hasan drove on for serene mile after mile over the potted tarmac, and as herds of wildebeest, zebra and impala started to equal in number the droves of Masai cattle on the horizon, Sophie could feel that he was close by, lurking somewhere in the long bush grass like a fat, angry puff adder waiting to be stepped on. And she did not know how it would be between them now. The anger that she had wanted to scratch into his eyeballs only last night had softened during the course of the long journey. Again, she knew he would have calculated for that.
Combi vans of European tourists hovered around curio stalls at a road junction where signposts pointed towards Lake Manyara, the Ngorogoro Crater, and the Serengeti. Sophie stared in wonder at the majestic escarpment that rose sheer behind Lake Manyara. It was the perfect antidote to the horror she had witnessed the day before, a world away in Ramliyya.
Past the road junction the road surface deteriorated further. The same warm breeze ruffled the yellow savannah grass and increasing numbers of baobabs uplifted spiky fingers into a clear sky. Ten miles further on, Hasan took a left turn towards Tarangire National Park. A billboard at the road junction advertised the luxurious Tarangire Tented Safari Camp.
‘Don’t we have to pay to come in here?’ Sophie asked, burdening Hasan with conversation for the first time in their two-and-a-half hour journey.
‘Not us,’ he answered tritely. ‘Only other people.’
It was classic game country, but Sophie saw few of the animals that passed in front of her eyes. She could only see him. Omar had to be very close now.
Sure enough, Hasan soon turned off the main track and pulled up at the lip of a natural bowl that stretched out in a semicircular arc a hundred feet above the surrounding land, its acacia-studded glades shimmering in the perfection of a late-afternoon sun.
A green tent stood at the highest point, next to it a large black trail bike. Omar was in front of the tent, sitting on a gnarled tree stump, and studying a small herd of elephants in the dip below.
Hasan pulled the Land Rover up at a respectful distance from his master, cut the engine, and busied himself with Sophie’s bag and some other boxes in the rear of the car, which he hauled into the khaki green tent one by one, never once talking to or acknowledging his master throughout the entire operation.
Sophie jumped down from the passenger side and stretched her legs, walking away from Omar and the car to the rim of the dip, where she paused to survey the pristine view below, tense in the anticipation of what might come next.
But there was to be no more time for brooding, for she could feel him walking slowly towards her. She looked round. He was staring at her intently. The ironic smile had returned just below the sunglasses. With bare torso tanned and toned, wearing only khaki slacks and brown boots, any last pretence of Arabism had entirely vanished.