But Richard had other ideas.
He had been following a six-lane motorway towards a roundabout with a slightly more antique-looking monument, two giant pincers supporting a clock that had, perhaps ominously, stopped at one minute to midnight. They drove past it, curving around some very ordinary blocks of flats, and there was the airport ahead of them – a great swathe of empty concrete almost the size of a small city itself, with a few low-rise buildings and a single control tower, vague and indistinct on the other side of the heat haze. Scarlett’s heart sank. She hadn’t expected any signs of activity here, not after what she had seen so far. There would be no passengers, no airport workers, no ground crew. But Rémy had told them there were planes here and as far as she could see, there wasn’t so much as a glider. If she and Richard were going to find their way out, then flying wasn’t going to be an option.
“Don’t worry. The airport’s huge,” Richard said, echoing her thoughts. “There might be a plane somewhere.”
They drove through the main entrance, past a security barrier that was raised and a control post that was empty. Both of them felt as if they were entering another desert … this one made of concrete. There was no point even looking for a car park. It wasn’t as if someone was going to leap out and give them a parking ticket. They left the car between a silver Aston Martin and a Rolls Royce – both of them could have been driven here direct from the sales room. They didn’t have to worry about the Land Cruiser being stolen either. If there was a thief in the area, he would have a hundred much more luxurious cars to choose from.
They walked into the main terminal, glad to be out of the car. Ahead of them, on the other side of a gleaming marble floor, dozens of check-in desks stretched in long lines, waiting for passengers who would never arrive. Escalators stood, frozen. All the TV screens that might once have announced the departures were blank. The atmosphere inside was warm and clammy – it had been a long time since the air-conditioning had been turned on – and the palm trees had wilted and died in their pots. The terminal was huge. Scarlett was reminded first of a factory, then of a cathedral. Everything here – the floors, the windows, the desks, the stairs – was hard and brittle. It was a place with no comfort at all.
“Do you want to go on?” Scarlett asked. Her voice sounded very small.
“Why not? Maybe we can pick up a drink in Duty Free.”
They passed through the departure gate (PASSENGERS ONLY) and through the security area with its silent conveyor belts, its metal detectors and X-ray screens. It was a reminder of how the world had once been, the endless fear and suspicion that went with people’s determination to keep on travelling. Then there were the passport controls, modern cubicles at the end of a long stretch of marble. You are now leaving Dubai and entering the no-man’s-land of an international airport. You have hours of shopping and hanging around ahead. Thank you for coming.
Only the Duty Free area was empty. All the shelves had been wiped clean. Richard and Scarlett found themselves in a long, subterranean arcade that ran the entire length of the terminal, with shops everywhere, a sports car parked at one end (WIN THIS CAR – US$25 A TICKET) and a bar decorated with a plastic palm tree. It was the same as the city. There had been people here, and then, quite suddenly, they had gone. It was as if they had bought everything that could be bought, right down to the last packet of cigarettes and the last king-sized tube of M&M’s and then leapt on the first plane and gone home.
Richard and Scarlett kept going. Neither of them spoke. They didn’t want to express their disappointment. There was nothing here for them. They weren’t going to get so much as a drink.
They reached a window looking out onto the runway. Richard pointed. “Look!”
It was there after all, right in front of them. A plane. Perhaps the only plane in the whole airport. An Emirates airline Airbus, sitting on its own in the middle of the tarmac. A flight of steps had been wheeled against the cabin door and there was a man sitting there, dressed in dark blue trousers, a white shirt and sunglasses. The pilot. It had to be. He seemed to be waiting for them.
Richard grabbed hold of Scarlett and the two of them set off, looking for a way out.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Despite its name, getting out of the departure building was much harder than it had been getting in. Richard and Scarlett became increasingly frustrated as they followed winding corridors past door after door, each one of them locked with security codes known only to ground staff who had left long ago. Even though the electricity inside the terminal had either failed or been switched off, the magnetic locks hadn’t released themselves and the doors refused to open. Huge windows gave them tantalizing views of the tarmac they were trying to reach. Richard would have been tempted to pick up a chair and smash the glass but the chairs were bolted down, and anyway, the glass was probably too thick.
Eventually they found what they were looking for. There was a boarding desk with a British Airways sign and, next to it, an open door with one of those long passageways that bent back on themselves and that used to lead directly onto an aircraft. This one jutted into open space. When Richard and Scarlett reached the end, they found themselves looking at a square of bright light with a drop to the ground that would break both their ankles if they weren’t careful. But there was no other way. They clambered over the edge, taking their full weight with their hands and their arms outstretched, then dropped. Even so, it was a hard landing. And the tarmac was burning hot.
“You OK?”
“Yeah.” Scarlett dusted herself down and looked around. The Airbus that they had spotted was now some distance away but the man was still there, smoking a cigarette.
They hurried towards him. There was no breeze at all but it was drier and more pleasant than it had been inside the terminal. Scarlett was very aware of the silence. It was the last thing she would have associated with an airport and she felt lost in her surroundings, with the ground, completely flat, stretching out in front of her and a mile of glass and steel blinking in the sun behind. The pilot of the Airbus – if that was what he was – saw them coming and dropped his cigarette. He reached into his pocket and even before he had drawn his hand out, Scarlett knew that it would be holding a gun and wished that they hadn’t been quite so quick to make themselves visible. They could be anyone. So, for that matter, could he. He could shoot them both down before they even had time to tell him their names.
But it was too late to stop now. Richard had raised his hands, showing that he was unarmed. And with a fifteen-year-old girl beside him, he couldn’t have looked like too much of a threat. The pilot lowered his gun but remained wary.
He was young, fair-haired with a thin face and crumpled cheeks. As they approached, he had taken off his sunglasses to reveal watchful blue eyes. He was athletic-looking, quite wiry. Scarlett thought he had the body of a surfer and could easily imagine him on the beach in brightly coloured shorts. But he kept himself out of the sun. His skin was pale and he had placed himself in the shadow of the plane. Despite the heat, he hadn’t rolled up his sleeves.
“Who the hell are you?” he demanded, when Richard and Scarlett reached him. He gestured with the gun. “Don’t come any closer – all right?”
“It’s OK.” Once again, Richard lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender. “We’re friends.”
“Everyone’s friends,” the pilot responded. He spoke with an Australian accent. “The question is – who are you friends of?”
“We’ve only just got here,” Scarlett said. “We don’t know what’s going on.”
“Got here? From where?”
“We were in Cairo.”
The pilot whistled. “You came all that way? How did you get here?”
“We drove.” Richard gestured back at the terminal. “We have a Land Cruiser. It’s parked out there.” He lowered his hands. “You’re Australian,” he said.
“That’s right.” The pilot hadn’t lowered his gun. “And you sound English. What were you doing in Cairo? A
re they still fighting?”
“Yes. They’re still fighting. What we were doing there is a very long story. My name is Richard Cole. This is Scarlett Adams. You wouldn’t have any water, would you? We’ve been driving all day and it took us a while to find our way out here.”
The pilot examined them both carefully. He was clearly weighing them both up. Then he came to a decision and put the gun away. “OK. You can come on board if you like. But I’m warning you, if you try anything fancy, I’ll shoot you right between the eyes without giving it a thought. The name’s Martins, by the way. I’m from Sydney – or I would be if Sydney were still there.”
“Are you the pilot?”
“No. The co-pilot.”
They followed him up the steps and into the plane, and saw at once that the Airbus had been adapted. All the seats had been taken out apart from a few at the front, leaving a long, cigar-shaped space that was filled, floor to ceiling, with crates. Martins reached into one of them and took out two plastic bottles of water, which he passed to Richard and Scarlett. “Let’s go upstairs,” he said.
There was a spiral staircase leading up to what must have once been the business-class cabin. The upper area had also been adapted. It had been turned into a bedroom and a living room with two single beds, a couple of armchairs, and an area with a PlayStation and about a hundred games, scattered across the floor. There were also dozens of old food cartons, empty plastic bottles and overflowing ashtrays … the last thing Scarlett would have expected to see on a plane. The air smelled of cigarette smoke. A half-empty bottle of whisky and a glass stood beside the bed and there was a pile of paperback books with cracked spines and dog-eared pages. The cockpit door was open and, looking through, Scarlett could see the two seats with the joysticks and the banks of controls. Richard nudged her and she knew that he was thinking exactly the same as her. There was every chance that this plane could fly.
Martins had thrown himself down on one of the beds, but had arranged himself so that the pocket with the gun faced up and could be reached easily. His eyes were still wary. Richard and Scarlett took the chairs, opened their bottles and drank. The water was warm and tasted stale.
“So where have you come from? Martins asked. “I mean, how did you get to Cairo? What were you doing there?”
“We were prisoners,” Richard said. “There was a freedom fighter called Tarik.”
“I know Tarik. I’ve flown supplies in for him. How is he?”
“As a matter of fact, he wasn’t looking too good when we left.”
“I’m sorry to hear it. So you’re English. The girl looks Indonesian. What are you doing together? You meet on the road?”
This was always the difficult bit. Richard never knew how much to say. He’d never had to explain himself to Tarik because Rémy had been there and knew all about the Gatekeepers. Anyway, Tarik had seen shape-changers in Cairo and after that, any story about magical doorways, the Five and the war against the Old Ones would make some sort of sense. But this man might make nothing of it. In which case, it might simply be easier to lie.
“We’ve been travelling for a long time,” Richard said. “We met in Hong Kong and we’ve sort of been thrown together since then. We want to get to Antarctica.”
“Antarctica?” The co-pilot didn’t sound as surprised as Richard might have expected. “It’s funny you should mention that,” he went on. “I’ve been hearing a lot of chatter about that on the radio.”
“You have radio!” Scarlett said. Things were beginning to come together. The plane had power (the video games had hinted as much). And the world wasn’t quite as empty as she had thought.
“Not national radio,” the co-pilot replied. “But there are plenty of amateurs out there. Radio hams, they used to be called. I listen to them at night. Everyone who can has headed south. Whatever planes they could find … boats … they’ve gone overland to the tip of South Africa or South America. People say they’ve been having dreams about Antarctica. It’s like some crazy religion.”
“Could you fly this plane to Antarctica?” Richard asked.
The co-pilot shook his head. “Not on my own.”
“So where’s the pilot?”
“That’s a long story. Do you have any idea what’s happening here in Dubai?”
“I already told you,” Richard said. “We only just got here.”
“And came straight to the airport. Well, I guess I’d have done the same. As you’ve probably seen, there aren’t many people around.”
“Where is everyone?” Scarlett asked.
“They’ve all gone.”
Martins reached out. He poured himself a glass of whisky and lit another Marlboro Lite. Scarlett noticed that he had hundreds of cigarettes, still in their duty-free cartons. Maybe he had looted them from Dubai Airport or from somewhere else on his travels. She suddenly saw that this plane was more than his way out. It was his home, his depot, his survival pod. He turned on his back and blew grey smoke in the air.
“Don’t ask me to explain the history of the world,” he said. “I never paid much attention to it when I was in school. All I ever wanted to do was fly. And when I got a job with Emirates, I was as happy as Larry.” He smiled to himself. “Since I mention it, Larry is the name of my pilot. Larry Carter. He’s a nice guy, except that he doesn’t completely trust me. For example, he’s never given me the codes that allow me to get into the on-board computers, which is one of the reasons why I’m sitting here instead of being on my way to somewhere a little more pleasant.”
“What has happened in Dubai?” Richard asked.
“I was just getting to that, Richard. Would you like a Scotch?”
“No thanks.” It had been a long time since Richard had drunk alcohol, and if it had been a cold beer he might have been tempted. But the idea of a whisky without ice in this confined space in the middle of the day slightly disgusted him.
“What happened to Dubai actually happened a very long time ago,” the co-pilot explained. “It went bust. In the beginning there was oil, but that ran out soon enough. Well, it didn’t matter because Dubai had set itself up as a playground for the super-rich, a sort of never-never land based on business, shopping and property. They built these islands that were shaped like palm trees, with multi-million-dollar houses that were bought by Hollywood actors and footballers. You saw the Burj Dubai in the centre of town? Well, you couldn’t miss it, could you! That was what it was like here. Everything had to be the biggest, the tallest, the most expensive, the best. They say that at one stage, ten per cent of the world’s cranes were operating here in Dubai. That’s one hell of a lot of cranes. But they were all needed, to help build the miracle in the desert.
“Only the miracle wasn’t as miraculous as everyone thought. Once the recession hit, the pop stars and the footballers stopped coming. Half the properties here were suddenly empty and the palm-tree islands never worked properly anyway because they fouled up the tide and suddenly people started noticing they were surrounded by sewage. Then the business dried up too. Nobody was doing any shopping. And here’s the funny thing. It was actually illegal to go bankrupt in Dubai. You weren’t allowed to do it. And finally, one day they woke up and found that Dubai itself was bankrupt.
“That was when everyone left. They drove out of here. They took planes. Some people even rode out on camels. They took everything they could carry with them – you may have noticed that most of the shops are pretty empty. But that still left enough for people like me. You want a nice Rolex watch for yourself, Richard, or maybe a diamond necklace for your young friend, I can show you where to find one. There’s plenty of food and water too. This city’s got everything! Except people.”
“So where is the pilot?” Richard asked. “It looks to me as if you’re stuck here without him.”
“I am stuck here,” Martins agreed. “I suppose I could put this hunk of metal up in the air. I have thought about it. But the fact is, I’m better off where I am … at least until the booze runs out. A
fter that, we’ll see.” He reached for his glass. “Larry was an idiot but until he turns up, there’s not very much I can do about it.”
He threw back his whisky and swallowed, screwing up his eyes. It was hard to tell if the liquid gave him pleasure or pain.
“I say that everyone got out of here,” he went on. “But actually, that isn’t true. Dubai always had a royal family … you know, a sheikh. And the man in charge when everything went down the pan was Sheikh Rasheed Al Tamim. He has a palace overlooking Dubai Creek, although I don’t suppose the views will have been quite so pretty since the water dried up.”
He poured himself another whisky.
“He’s still there. He’s got a wife … and several kids. He’s surrounded by ministers and advisers. Sheikh Rasheed is an important man. As well as being king, he’s president of the United Arab Emirates and vice-president of the Supreme Council of the Union. He has an extensive military bodyguard. And then there are the diplomats, the civil servants, the advisers … everyone you’d expect to find in a busy court. And there’s something that everybody knows but that nobody ever says. Here are the two things you need to know about Sheikh Rasheed. One – he’s an evil bastard. And two – he’s completely, utterly and certifiably mad.
“Maybe he always was. These people, locked up in their palaces with billions of dollars in their pockets and everything they could possibly want … it’s probably all too easy to lose touch with reality. Or maybe it was the shock of waking up one morning and realizing that he was the absolute ruler of absolutely nothing! The city was empty. Everyone had gone and his beloved Dubai had about as much relevance as—” he searched vaguely for the comparison— “as a check-in desk in an airport with no planes.
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