Rotten Gods (49 page)

Feeling herself close to tears, Marika reaches out and grips Sufia's arm. ‘You deserve the chance to be together.' She again has the feeling that there is something special about the Somali woman. The word noble springs to mind.

The door opens and a heavy, filthy smell wafts out. The smell of fear, captivity and, worse, the smell of putrescent human corpses. Marika almost gags, seeing the mujahedin on the other side, flanking the pathetic line of men and women, shouting, urging them through, some of the hostages stumbling, attempting to run.

Marika has a sudden and deep understanding of the bravery of those who remain inside, yet she can feel nothing but sorrow for these desperates who did what they had to do to survive. The line is long, now forty or more in total, and only after the last is through does Sufia walk towards the entrance. Marika can see her fear in the trembling of her legs, watches the Almohad stop her and pat her down, looking for weapons, still shouting and brandishing rifles and pistols.

Even after the main door closes Marika stares, knowing that she has done something momentous in finding that woman and bringing her here. Who else in the world would have the courage to walk into that room?

With a strange feeling of emptiness, she climbs the steps towards the control room. Faces look up at her as she enters and slumps into a seat, staring at the blank monitors, so physically tired, yet more awake than she has ever been, wishing she could see what is happening inside.

Abdullah comes out of his office and takes a seat opposite her. Content at first to simply share the space with her, searching for words perhaps. Someone is reading a news item from a screen out loud, in halting English — an Op-ed predicting an Asian food crisis after Cyclone Zahir has devastated up to one fifth of the world's rice production. This seems likely — Thai floods a few years earlier showed how vulnerable the sector was to natural disaster.

‘You have done well, Marika Hartmann,' Abdullah says. ‘For what it is worth, I thank you.'

His words mean more to her than she might have imagined. This man's approval is important to her.

‘Your part in this is over,' he continues. ‘Go to your room. Shower. Then you may leave. They will begin evacuating the centre at around three this afternoon in any case.'

Marika shakes her head. ‘I'm not going anywhere until this is over.'

Abdullah smiles back at her. ‘I knew you would say that. Let us face the end together. Whatever it may be.'

 

Ali's heart seems to pause, mid-beat, to look at Sufia, knowing now that it was a mistake to let her in here. Grasping her arm, he leads her to where they can find some privacy. He had not expected to see her again before death takes him, but it is a pleasure laced with despair.

Knowing there is a cubicle where a group of shorthand clerks once took details and messages, sent faxes, gossiped, and filed their nails, Ali leads her there, turning, placing a hand on each of her shoulders and staring into her eyes. He has not forgotten how beautiful she is, but her time in the desert seems to have heightened that beauty. Her skin glows with health and vitality. Maybe it is just the sallowness of those in the room that makes her seem that way.

First they embrace for what seems like minutes. Strange how he wants to weep for sheer joy, and at how memories pass before his eyes as if he is already dying.

‘You do not have to do this,' she says. ‘It is not too late.'

‘Nothing will change my mind now. Perhaps this day will be remembered when other men sit down to make what they call policies, when greed rules over sense.'

‘I have always admired you,' Sufia says, ‘most of all for your humanity. This is not the right way. It is not the way of the man I love.'

Ali breaks away, unable to meet her eyes. ‘For so long I agonised, and now I believe that this is the only way. If I save ten thousand lives, it is worth it.'

‘Saving by killing? Isn't that an argument that others have used before you? My dear Ali, they are using you. They do not want to save the world like you do, but to create it in their image — cold, savage and harsh. They do not care about floods and refugees, or a changing world. They just want power in the name of God. They want to repress the people of Africa. From there they will spread their ideology outwards. Ideology that is more than a thousand years old. They are wrong. They have no place in the kind of world we need to build. There is just one way to change the world — people of goodwill coming together and working for peace, equitability and justice.'

Ali reaches out to her, embracing her, eyes closed, one hand on the small of her back, wondering if he can press the switch with Sufia here, allow high explosives to wrench her limbs apart and blast shrapnel into her heart. ‘You cannot persuade me against the course I have chosen. Instead, I ask one thing of you.'

‘Yes?'

‘Get out of here. Let me arrange for you to leave the way you came.'

‘I will not. Instead I ask you to stand up before the world, show compassion, and disarm the weapon you carry. To murder the people in this room you must murder me as well.'

Breath trickles from his lips. ‘I cannot change my mind.'

‘You must! You have made your point. Nothing can be achieved.' She points out towards the tiered rows. ‘Look at them, each one. Their lives have a validity and worth of their own. They may be wrong, much of the time, and they must change, but this is not the way to bring change about.'

Tears spill from his eyes. ‘No, I am sorry, but it is too late.'

Day 7, 12:30

Abdullah has just managed a cat nap — two or three minutes swaying on the chair with his eyes closed, dozing into a distant and fitful state so hypnotically sweet that the sound of the cell phone in his pocket scarcely cuts through at first.

Even when it does, his first instinct is to turn it off like some wayward alarm clock. With consciousness, however, comes memory, and the meaning of the excited chatter at the other end.

‘No,' he breathes, ‘that is not possible. We had an agreement for him to finish the tunnel.'

More from the other end. Excuses. A plea for orders. Léon Benardt wants to know how to save the situation. How to salvage the work of days. To stop the bastards from winning. To stop them sending the whole conference room as martyrs to a God who must already be shrieking with delight at blood so thick that it will run off His hands into a river.

‘I'll tell you what you must do. Get every pick and shovel you can find, and put one in the hands of every man and woman who can hold one, including you. Finish the tunnel.'

‘I don't know anything about such work.'

‘Find someone who does. Appeal to the public. Anything.'

‘What about the floor of the bunker? Picks and shovels don't work on concrete.'

‘As I said. Get some advice. It can be blown. Just start digging.'

Abdullah leans back on the chair, hands behind his head in a parody of relaxation, staring at the letter-sized photographs pinned to the board. Each depicts one of the Islamists inside the centre. Dr Abukar, the enigma. Jafar, the Iranian. He focuses on Zhyogal, however.

You don't give a shit about the demands, you son of a bitch. You don't care what concessions we make. You just want that room to blow, and now that the Americans are giving over Africa your comrades will move in. You want to dominate a continent. A new empire. You're using Dr Abukar, aren't you?

Abdullah wipes his eyes then lifts a pen from the wooden holder, tapping it on the desk. There is no time. In a few hours they will all have to leave. At sunset the room will explode, and no one knows if the building will collapse or not. No one can take that chance.

 

If Léon Benardt, in all his years of training, had imagined himself leading a dozen young men out of a truck, with a sledgehammer in his hand, about to attack the locked front door of a Dubai hardware store, he might have suspected that he was insane.

Already his eyes are red with strain and he feels more stressed than at any other time in his life. The failure of the planned attack on the centre hurt him personally, since it was he who found the electrician who precipitated the plan. Now this tunnel alternative seems, likewise, to be failing before his eyes.

Somehow, through a series of urgent television and radio announcements they located Alan Kruger, a South African mining consultant who cut his teeth on the Witwatersrand goldfields, holidaying with a new young wife at the Burj al-Arab hotel on Jumeirah Beach. He appears to be a real find: bullheaded and knowledgeable. Kruger's first act was to order five thousand empty sandbags. These they tracked down to an emergency supply organisation. Then he requested huge quantities of hardwood shoring timbers and reo bar. Now they need hand tools, the fastest way possible.

The ten-pound iron head of the sledgehammer, swung with all the strength of Léon's arms and shoulders, connects with the lock and shatters it. Another blow and the left side of the door sags in on its hinges, glass shards tinkling to the pavement. An alarm wails.

Kruger, whose nose looks like it has been broken with a pick handle, says, ‘Good shot, man.'

Illuminated by the store security lights they forge past shelves of homemaker items towards the hand tools hanging in neat rows, painted in businesslike green and black.

Léon turns to Kruger. ‘You're the expert. What do we need?'

‘Short-handled spades will be better in a confined space. Here.'

A dozen hands reach out to take them.

‘And these mattocks. We'll need barrows to take the material out. Get the ones with galvanised iron trays, they're stronger.'

By the time an impromptu chain of men is busy emptying the section of tools, Léon has made his way back out to the truck. The Dubai police are just arriving, lights flashing over the blue paintwork and yellow lion insignia of the cars.

Léon feels like a thief, but watches as a deputation of GDOIS division police sent by Abdullah bin al-Rhoumi arrives to take the heat off them. He climbs into the passenger seat and waits while the last of the booty clatters into the back.

‘Go,' he shouts to the driver. The big diesel rumbles to life.

 

The tunnel is eerie and strange, reeking of disturbed earth, roots, and underground creatures. Here and there are patches of damp, but mostly the floor is dry earth. The walls and ceiling are smooth, slurry dried hard, perfectly shaped by the passage of al-Moler. Léon is astounded afresh at how efficiently the machine has done its work.

Those who walk behind carry an assortment of lights — headlamps, flashlights, even fluorescent camping lights. Many have ‘borrowed' hard hats from the hardware store and others wear military steel helmets, surely uncomfortable in the heat and humidity of the tunnel.

Léon turns to Kruger. ‘What are the chances of a cave-in?'

‘Very slim: a TBM compacts as it goes. Having said that, it is always best to tread softly underground.'

Ahead they see the wall of earth where al-Moler stopped digging. This area is not so smooth. Heavy clumps of dirt and a few stones litter the floor area.

Léon feels a twinge of claustrophobia, along with confusion. A hand-built tunnel sounded simple back on the surface. Here, it is difficult to know where to start. The bunker complex is directly above. He knows from images on the computers at the control centre how it is laid out. Where to begin? Surely they cannot just start digging into the ceiling?

He watches Kruger circle the area, studying the walls, picking out samples of soil from here and there and squeezing them in his fingers. He stops, appearing to make a decision, then glances at Léon. ‘Can you bring everyone in?'

They come, faces shining in the artificial light, standing in an anxious circle. This is a foreign environment for all of them, Léon realises. They are a mixed bunch; all those who were available on site. Some are Dubai police, others security contractors or labourers. Many are Pakistani, others local, and there is little talk among them. All understand the gravity and difficulty of the task ahead.

Kruger points at the end wall of the tunnel. ‘We go in there, from the side, and zigzag our way up. Just five men will dig at a time, five on the barrows, five filling and stacking sandbags and five resting. Swap every ten minutes. Do you understand?'

The affirmative is a low mutter, punctuated by scuffing feet and silent nods.

‘I'll mark the beginning. Pace yourself, don't go crazy. Who wants to start at the face?'

Léon is full of pride at this underground command. ‘I'll begin,' he says, yet with some trepidation. He can run ten miles in fifty-three minutes, and bench press ninety kilograms, but swinging an agricultural implement? Hadn't he assisted his aunt Noelle to hoe the turnip patch? Last year? Maybe the year before.

Within ten minutes his shoulders ache, sweat pours down his face, and blisters form on the pads of his hands. The soil is
hard in places, and though his mattock bites deep, he sees with some chagrin that the other men in the tunnel are making better progress than he.

Only weaklings give in to blisters, to pain
, he says to himself, then tightens his grip and attacks the face with renewed vigour.

Day 7, 16:30

It is hard for PJ to shake off the schoolyard fear of unknown personalities as he comes off the chopper and into a canvas-covered Unimog with twenty-seven men he has never seen before. Little by little, however, they chat and introduce themselves, say things that sound mindless, but carry fears and terrors  — hidden undercurrents that only other men in this situation would recognise.

The man alongside PJ offers a few squares of army-issue chocolate. He accepts, grateful to break the ice. These are all men like him, he realises, from different countries and cultures and experiences. They are not in the Special Forces because they are violent types, but because they value peace and are ready to accept the burden of protecting it. Most would be scrupulous about physical fitness. Many have young families of their own. All have acknowledged that their community and culture are worth preserving, even at the cost of their own lives.