‘Let me get up, I’ve got work to do!’
Durant turned abruptly at the familiar voice and felt so instantly lifted he could have floated to where Masondo lay in the yellow-code section on a stretcher. The medic leaning over him, a woman, put the oxygen mask back on his face and told him to relax. ‘Chief, it’s me, Kevin,’ Durant said. ‘How did you get past me? I went right into the hangar.’
Masondo pulled the mask off and Durant noticed his face was blackened with oily soot and his eyes streamed tears. He coughed violently and the medic gave him a kidney dish into which he spat a black-and-yellow mass. ‘I wasn’t in the hangar any more . . . Kevin. If I’d stayed in the . . . hangar I would be dead.’
Durant couldn’t hide his elation. ‘How did you get out?’
Masondo was having trouble speaking. ‘I found a chute – for disposing of, I don’t know, rags, old parts, oil.’ Another cough and more slime in the kidney dish. ‘I slid . . . down and, by the grace of God, landed up in a store one deck down. That’s where they found . . . me.’ Relatively intact, Durant thought, although he could see Masondo’s legs had trauma. ‘Please, Kevin, call Nandi, tell her I’m okay.’
‘Are you okay?’
‘Tell her I’m okay.’
Durant nodded.
‘I need to see her. There’s a lot I need to apologise for.’
As the ambulance sped down the western freeway towards St Augustine’s hospital, Durant braced himself on the small seat on the head side of the stretcher where Masondo lay, a thousand thoughts swirling in his head. The scale of what had happened was almost incomprehensible. Could he have done more to stop it? Was this intelligence failure of epic proportions? Something this size could only have been organised by a big, well-funded network of professional terrorists. Was the sheikh a suicide bomber? Al Qaeda? They had so much work to do and he was struck by the paralysis of infinite possibilities. He wouldn’t know where to start. And his chief was down. He realised now how much he relied on the man for direction and support.
‘This is just the beginning, Kevin,’ Masondo wheezed through the oxygen mask.
‘I know, Chief.’ Durant checked his vital signs again and entered them into the patient log.
‘You’ll have to start again with this investigation. We’ve got it very wrong.’
‘Just focus on getting better, Chief. Leave it to us.’
Masondo shook his head and half-smiled. ‘I left it to you last time and look where it got us.’ There was no malice in his voice.
The ambulance lurched to a stop and the doors swung open. Durant unlatched the stretcher and helped the orderlies slide it out as three other ambulances waited to be unloaded in a frenzied but organised casualty area.
Nandi was suddenly right there, tears streaming down her cheeks. She fell with her head onto her father’s chest, the stethoscope around her neck clunking loudly on the oxygen cylinder that lay beside his left arm. No words were spoken for a long moment. The wounded man put his arm on his daughter’s back and patted her gently. ‘Thank you for coming,’ he said softly, the morphine making it hard for him to talk. Attendants gave her thirty seconds and then ushered her away as they wheeled him into a recovery room which was filled to capacity with coughing and moaning patients.
An hour later, Nandi and Shabalala entered the ward together and Masondo smiled. ‘I can see you’re misusing your status as a doctor to abuse the visiting hours. And you, Mr Shabalala, how did they let you in?’
‘He was with me, Dad. Maybe they were too scared to ask any questions. How are you doing?’
‘Been better. My leg hurts. My chest hurts. Everything hurts. If it doesn’t hurt, I think it’s missing completely.’ Masondo coughed violently, the oily smoke still irritating his lungs. ‘I need to get to the office. Please ask them if there’re any wheelchairs available.’
Nandi stretched the elastic on the oxygen mask and held it over her father’s nose and mouth. ‘Don’t be crazy, Dad. You’re staying right here. Forget about the office.’
‘How can I forget about the office? Our country’s been attacked. I’m here. My other two best men, Durant and Shabalala, are both here. Who’s going to work this thing?’
‘We will,’ Shabalala said. ‘Kevin’s just getting cleaned up, then he’s heading for the office. I’m going to meet him there.’
Masondo pulled the oxygen mask off and rested it around his neck. ‘I’ll see you boys down there later.’
‘No you won’t,’ Nandi said. ‘I’ll have them strap you to this bed.’
‘Cedric, please get hold of the hospital superintendent and say one of his doctors is abusing a patient. I’ve got work to do, my darling. My legs might not work so well, but my brain’s still functioning fine. A wheelchair. Please?’
Durant swore he could still smell burnt fuel in his hair and on his skin. When he finally got home at 3 a.m., he spent over an hour in the shower with the tap turned to the hottest setting he could bear. He slept for about two hours, a disturbed sleep which probably wasn’t sleep at all. Strangely there were no nightmares of Frost and the gunfire which had shoved him to the ground a year earlier. His trauma and experience seemed overshadowed by the scale of this event. Perhaps it helped him cope better. The pain and suffering of others acted as an opiate to his fears and hurts. He splashed his face with water and sprayed on deodorant. He reassured Stephanie he was all right and gave Alexis an extra long hug before Shabalala fetched him and took him to the scene of the explosion to recover his Land Rover. This had taken a further two hours, mainly of explaining how the vehicle came to be there in the first place – and a few phone calls to senior managers – and then to the hospital to check on Masondo. It was a short visit and Amina phoned him while he was there and said she was in the waiting room but didn’t want to come into the ward. He met her there and could see by her eyes that she had been crying.
‘Will he be okay?’ she asked.
‘Some nerve and muscle damage to his leg and smoke inhalation. I think it’s probably worse than it looks. You can see he’s eager to get out of here.’
‘This thing is making headlines everywhere. It’s terrible.’ She put a tissue to her eyes and blotted some tears.
Durant shook his head bitterly. ‘I know. We didn’t take the threat seriously enough.’
‘Was it definitely a bomb? I mean, it wasn’t accidental, was it?’ Amina fidgeted with the tissue. She could sense Durant’s pain.
Durant didn’t look at her. ‘No. We’re pretty sure it was a bomb.’
‘How did someone get a bomb that size aboard an American warship? The security must have been super tight.’
‘That’s what we can’t understand. An
FBI
team is en route from the
US
, as well as
ATF
agents and
NCIS
personnel. Every American federal acronym in the book is coming.’
‘I can only imagine. Just like Kenya and Tanzania. You guys are in for a new era of cooperation on matters of terrorism.’
‘Yip. Thing is, the explosion was on
US
territory so they have full jurisdiction. We can only help if they ask.’
Amina nodded. ‘Of course, the ship would be American soil. The newspaper says the Assistant Secretary wasn’t injured. Is that true?’
‘That’s what I read. The article said eighteen dead, thirty-one injured, eight of them serious.’ Durant paused, hardly believing how calmly he had said it. Eighteen souls, dead. ‘The sheikh didn’t make it.’
Amina lowered her voice. ‘Flip, it’s terrible. I just hope it wasn’t him.’
Durant frowned. ‘The sheikh?’
‘That’s what everyone’s going to be saying. A suicide bombing.’
‘Everyone boarding the ship went through a huge security net – there’s no way he was carrying explosives on him.’ Durant ran his hand through his hair as if to free his head of the jumble of thoughts that swirled inside. ‘Even if he’d swallowed it, they would’ve detected it.’ Yet, somebody had penetrated that ring of steel and blown a hole in the ship.
Amina looked down at the floor. ‘I was standing on my balcony at home, looking at the city and I asked God for a sign. I want to come back to the Agency.’ Her eyes met his gaze. ‘Then I heard the bang and saw the glow . . . this is it, this is the sign, Kevin.’
Durant didn’t believe in signs, but he knew that Amina was an asset to the Agency. ‘I said you should never have left. We needed you on this one.’
‘I don’t know how I’m going to leave my babies, but I’ll find a way. I’m sure I’ll still see Siraj.’
‘Well, let’s talk to Masondo when he’s back at the office. If anybody wants you back, he does.’
‘Excuse me,’ she said, and answered her cellphone. She listened for a moment, a furrow deepening on her forehead with every passing second, then reached for her handbag and fumbled for a pen and a piece of paper. She wrote down two names. She thanked the caller, put her phone on the table and bit her bottom lip.
‘What?’ Durant asked.
‘That was Mariam’s sister, Yasmin. I spoke to her the other day, but she said she couldn’t help me. Now she phones and tells me something terrible’s happened. She was contacted by the
FBI
– a guy called Fulham who was doing an investigation. He told her not to speak to anybody about it, and that’s why she didn’t tell me. Anyway, on Thursday she told this
FBI
guy that she’d introduced Mariam to an American diplomat that she knew at the consulate, a guy called Khalid. Mariam was apparently seeing this guy.’
‘Khalid? A Muslim guy?’
‘Must be. Anyway, so today she tries to get hold of Fulham and his phone’s off and she fears he was a victim of the explosion. She’s very worried.’
‘So am I now. Mariam was having an affair with an American diplomat? You think she was killed by Khalid?’
‘Maybe that’s what the
FBI
was investigating. What if Arshad found out and he killed her? Poor Siraj . . . My goodness, this is terrible.’
‘What was Mariam thinking? You knew her better than me, is this possible?’
Amina shook her head. ‘We’ll have to try to confirm it; see if there really is a Fulham and a Khalid.’
‘There’s definitely a Fulham. Masondo met him.’
‘Then it must be true, how would she know otherwise? You must get hold of Arshad Tanveer.’
‘And tell him what? His wife was having an affair with an American diplomat? No thanks, I’ll pass on that one. Can you meet up with – what’s her name – Yasmin? Get whatever you can from her as quickly as you can and let’s meet again later this afternoon. I know I’m going to have a heck of a day. And Stephanie’s mother’s not well. I know it sounds insignificant in the scale of things, but she’s really stressed about it.’
‘Let me know if there’s anything else I can do.’
‘We need to know everything there is to know about Tanveer, Mariam and Khalid, and Yasmin’s obviously in the best position to deliver on that.’
‘It feels like I’m already back in the Agency.’ The elation was hard to conceal.
‘It feels like you never left.’
Khalid still felt the explosion in his head, as vividly as he’d experienced it a day earlier. The pain and dizziness had subsided, but the images that flashed through his mind were hard to bear and impossible to thrust aside. He’d left the hospital an hour earlier. They weren’t sure what was wrong with him and had kept him the night for observation. The doctor said he was in shock. The doctor had no idea. There was no clinical diagnosis for what Khalid was suffering. There was no cure for guilt or remorse. Berkeley came to visit and he feigned sleep. What would he say to her? The guilt would just rise. He left the hospital by taxi and asked the driver to make a detour to the post box. It was empty. Once Fulham was debriefed, they’d come for him. Arrest him, call him a dirty traitor. Blame his treasonous deeds on his allegiance to Islam. Probably even say he was on
AQ
’s payroll.
By the time he got home, his body was numb. He knew he wasn’t physically injured, but it felt as though the explosion had torn up his insides and shredded every muscle in his body. He was so weak he could hardly walk and by the time he’d pushed open his apartment door all he wanted to do was lie on his bed and sleep and sleep until he awoke from this nightmare. If he didn’t wake up, that would also be okay. The doctor had given him a sedative at the hospital and he hoped it wouldn’t wear off soon. He locked his front door and pushed open the sliding door of his balcony to let fresh air into the apartment. It was only when he turned around that he saw he wasn’t alone in the room.
‘What do you want?’ he asked, his voice calm. The sedative was really working.
‘I want you to sit down, right there where you are,’ Tanveer said, motioning with the pistol.
Khalid sat down resignedly. ‘Take whatever you want. You can kill me too, I don’t care any more,’ he said bitterly.
‘I’ve taken all I want already, Khalid.’
Khalid’s eyes widened. ‘How did you get in? Do I even know you?’
Tanveer held up something in his hand Khalid couldn’t see clearly. ‘The set of keys you gave Mariam. My wife.’
Khalid leaned forward, his hands on his knees. The living hell that had become his life over the past few weeks was finally personified in this man. ‘You? You’re the one?’
‘The one who killed her? No, that’s still you. Didn’t you see the video?’
‘Why are you doing this to me?’ In the maelstrom of thoughts that washed through his mind, Khalid just wanted to know one thing: why him? ‘You made me put that parcel on the ship?’
‘I didn’t make you do anything, Khalid. Everything you did, you chose to do. You could have said no. But you said yes.’
Khalid felt nauseous. Perhaps it was a side effect of the sedative. Perhaps it was just his body failing to cope with multiple stress inputs. He wanted to stand up, launch himself at this terrorist, this man who had destroyed his life, but he couldn’t muster the energy. ‘I don’t even know you. You’ve killed me.’
‘I haven’t killed you, Khalid. You’ve killed yourself. You killed Mariam. You blew up the ship – face it, you were the only one who could have put that bomb on board – and then you killed yourself. It’s a tragedy.’ Tanveer shook his head. ‘The real tragedy is that you didn’t even die a martyr.’