Authors: Simon Conway
Totty rode the elevator to the top floor and entered the Somali’s suite. Another ten minutes passed. The elevator in the lobby pinged open. The fully covered woman strode out holding a briefcase and the doorman summoned her a pink taxi.
Noman hurried out after her and got in the waiting Mercedes.
‘Follow that car,’ Noman said, his hangover forgotten.
From the hotel they followed the pink taxi to a bank and watched and waited as the woman in the hijab went inside and emerged again ten minutes later without the briefcase. The taxi dropped the woman outside one of the entrances to the Dubai Mall. Noman abandoned the Mercedes and followed her inside. He was immediately confronted by a massive indoor waterfall four storeys high, like a plunging curtain of molten silver, with fibreglass castings of plummeting human divers suspended above it. It made his head reel. He almost lost the woman in the milling crowds. Suddenly, it seemed there were women in hijab all around him, but then he caught another glimpse of her red soles and set off again in pursuit, following the signs for Fashion Island.
He watched her enter the Versace shop.
Twenty minutes later he observed his wife, Mumayyaz Khan, emerge from the shop and saunter casually across the polished marble floor in a sumptuous black cat suit with pantaloon legs and a plunging neckline that was adorned with gold necklaces as thick as rope.
‘Howzat!’
42. Noman’s choice
Noman waited for the maid’s trolley to turn the corner at the end of the corridor and then rapped his knuckles on the door in front of him.
‘Room service.’
He stepped back a pace and waited. He was in the Palace Hotel, on the lake. He hadn’t realised that Mumayyaz had such expensive tastes.
The door cracked opened a couple of inches. An Arab with a towel clutched around his waist stared indignantly out at him through the gap. According to Noman’s contacts in the local police the man was a Kuwaiti property dealer, a conjuror of skyscrapers out of barren sand.
‘We didn’t order anything.’
Noman kicked the door open, sending the man sprawling. He stepped over him into the room. There were clothes scattered across the floor and his wife was tied to the bed, lying face down with her ample buttocks raised by a stack of crisp white pillows. He paused long enough to reflect that she really did have a magnificent ass before scooping up the man’s trousers and shoes and throwing them out into the corridor.
‘Get out,’ he snarled, helping him on his way with another well-aimed kick.
He slammed the door and stood for a moment with his back to it. This was no time to let his actions be ruled by emotions. He crossed the room and threw himself down into an armchair facing the bed. He lit a Flake.
‘How long has this been going on for?’
‘I should have known you’d come busting in,’ she said, her head turned to one side so it appeared as if she was speaking into her armpit. ‘This is a non-smoking room.’
‘How long?’
‘This one? He’s new. A couple of months.’
‘I mean the money.’ She’d been making the monthly visit to Dubai for as long as they had been married, and burning his salary on clothes she never wore. ‘How long have you been collecting the money?’
‘Six years. There is about three million dollars left in the account. I’ve spent some of it, obviously.’
‘Shit!’ He didn’t know what was more shocking, the act of betrayal or the fact that she’d been able to pull it off for so long without him realising it.
‘Are you going to untie me?’
Seeing no reason not to, Noman undid the straps and Mumayyaz rolled over onto her back and kicked the pillows away. She swept her hair out of her face.
‘You’re in a lot of trouble,’ he said, sitting down again. ’You’ll be lucky if they don’t hang you alongside your father.’
‘Is that what you want?’
‘Tell that to the Joint Chiefs.’
‘You really think this is going to see the light of day?’
‘Your testimony alongside that of an MI6 officer named Edward Malik will leave the Joint Chiefs with no alternative but to court-martial your father.’
‘Don’t be so bloody naïve. This will never go to court. No senior officer has been convicted of treason in the entire bloody history of Pakistan. You think
they’re going to shame themselves in public like that? You, of all people, should know them better than that.’
‘They’ll hold a closed session. They’ll do it in the cantonment.’
She rolled over onto her stomach and rose up on her elbows, cupping her face in her hands. As usual he found himself distracted by her cleavage, its dark inviting crevice. ‘Darling, they’ll hush it up. You know they will. I’m not saying there won’t be consequences. Most probably Papa would have to retire. Frankly speaking, it’s about time he did. But more than that? Really? I’m sorry to say this but you’re the one that’s most likely to suffer.’
‘How do you figure that?’
‘No one is going to believe you weren’t in on it. They’ve been waiting all their lives for a reason to discredit you. In their eyes you’re a filthy outcast and you always will be. They’d seize on it as a means of discrediting you. No I really don’t think it’s in your best interests to make a fuss. I have a much better plan.’
‘You do?’
‘We keep the money. I’m tired of sharing it with Papa.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘The British have agreed. All you have to do is release some smelly old Taliban for talks and cancel next year’s fighting season in Afghanistan. Let them get out without any fuss. They’ll be so grateful, and the Americans too. They’ve offered to double the money.’
‘They have?’
‘They’re furious with Papa right now because of not telling them about bin Laden, and lying about this and that, and not giving them any proper secrets, but they’re prepared to put that to one side. They’re realists. You give them the promise of a smooth exit from Afghanistan and I guarantee they’ll make it worth our while. We only need another year or so and then we could retire. We could settle here.’ She wagged a finger at him and her eyes lit up. ‘You love it here. You know you do. And you could have it all – girls, boys, drugs – anything your heart desires.’
He shook his head. ‘You really are a piece of work.’
‘Everything has been arranged. I’ve spoken to Samantha Burns.’
‘And what about your father?’
‘That’s the beauty of the plan. You confront him with the evidence you’ve gathered. Tell him he’s a traitor to his face. Be as angry as you like. But then, and this is the genius, you relent. In recognition of his years of service you tell him you’ve decided not to blow the whistle. In return for which he must do the honourable thing. It’s time for him to retire. Not pseudo-retirement: the real thing. You tell him that in return for your silence he is to nominate you to take his position in the shadow government. You step into his shoes.’
‘And you’ve cooked this up with the British?’
‘They’re reasonable people. They very much like the idea of you. They love a boy with a chip on his shoulder.’
‘What about Edward Malik?’
‘It was a journey of discovery,’ she explained. ‘I couldn’t just present you with the facts. You’d have freaked out. You know how obstinate you can be. We had to reel you in.’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t believe this.’
‘Come on, darling. You’re a realist, above all that’s what you are.’
‘You’re asking me to betray my country. I love my country.’
‘It does
not
love you.’
‘Get dressed,’ he told her, grim-faced.
‘What are you thinking?’
‘You father is a traitor and so are you.’
‘Darling, you’re not thinking straight.’
‘We’re going to the airport.’
‘We’ll lose the money!’
‘I don’t care.’
He’d never seen her so angry. ‘You really are a loathsome little Hindu!’
43. Ed kills
In Lahore it had been raining all night, a roaring downpour pounding the roof and rattling the windows in their frames, and then a couple of hours before dawn it stopped. The sudden silence brought Ed abruptly awake. He was still awake an hour later, in the creeping damp of tangled sheets, when the crack of a rifle shot echoed amongst the high walls of the cul-de-sac. He instinctively rolled out of the bed and dropped on all fours. He grabbed his watch and stared at the luminescent dial.
Four a.m. An extended staccato of automatic fire: the window shattered, the curtains billowed and glass spilled halfway across the floor. He pulled Leyla down beside him.
She was shaking her head. ‘What?’
‘We’re being attacked,’ he said, ‘stay low.’ He scrambled across the floor to the wardrobe, pulling her along behind. There was shouting from outside and the rattle of answering fire from the direction of the gate. Reaching up he pulled their coveralls off the hangers. Apart from the strobe of muzzle flashes it was almost pitch black.
‘Get dressed.’
Lying on their backs, they pulled on the coveralls. Under different circumstances it might have been funny, the two them fishtailing on the floor. Their flip-flops were by the door, he thrust hers into her hands and then reached beyond her and grabbed one of the fallen hangers. He crouched by the door with his back pressed to the wall, bending the hanger, pulling it out into a diamond shape and pushing it back together, folding it into a hand-grip. He straightened the curved end and started sharpening it against the concrete floor.
It went silent for a moment, and in his heightened sense of awareness it felt like someone had hit pause. Then there was the startling roar of a diesel engine starting up, followed by the distinctive clatter of caterpillar tracks in the cul-de-sac.
Seconds later there was the scream of tearing metal. He guessed they’d rammed the gate. Whoever they were, they were now in the compound.
The door was flung open. A large man with a torch rushed into the room and stopped at the foot of the bed. Before he had time to react, Ed had risen up behind him, taken two steps, reached around and put his hand over the man’s face and stabbed him in his neck. The sharpened point of the hanger went in smoothly, without resistance. The man gave a gasping exhalation and dropped the torch. He tried to raise his hands to his neck as if to pull out the hanger then fell forward onto the bed. Ed picked up the torch and pointed it at him. The man was lying face down with the hanger sticking out of his carotid artery, blood pumping out and soaking the sheet. Ed lifted his head. It was Raja Mahfouz. Ed reached into the holster at Mahfouz’s belt and took out his pistol. It was a Heckler and Koch 9mm. He made ready, pumping a shell into the chamber. He would have preferred a larger weapon but it was better than a coat hanger.
‘Get ready to move,’ he told Leyla.
When she didn’t reply, Ed flicked the torch in her direction. Her face was so pale and wild looking that he wondered for a moment if she’d been hit by a stray round.
‘You killed him,’ she whispered.
‘He might have killed us,’ he replied, gently. ‘Wait here until I call for you.’
With the gun in both hands he risked a glance out into the corridor. There was no movement. The shooting was coming from the lower levels of the house now and he got a whiff of tear gas rising in the stairwell at the closest end. Taking another glance he looked back the other way. There were three other doors, two rooms either side of his, and at the far end a narrow stairway that he assumed led up to the roof.
He quickly crossed the corridor to the first of the doors. He went in fast, with the torch pointing from his shoulder and the gun out at arm’s length in front of him. The smell of rotten flesh made his head reel. A woman was screaming. As he pointed the torch at her he realised it was the mad old woman who had spoken to him when he first arrived. She was on the floor in the corner grabbing fistfuls of her hair with her hands. On the other side of the room a bandaged man was lying on a bed with one mangled hand raised.
Ed ran to the window and looked out through the bars at the back of the house and the silhouette of a large tree beside the boundary wall. It was dark and there were no signs of movement or muzzle flashes. If they could get out there he might find a means of escape. He would have to move fast though: the tempo and proximity of gunfire was increasing all the time.
He darted back out into the corridor.
‘Leyla!’
She rushed into his arms, burying her face in his chest. He swung round, bringing up the pistol, pushing her against the wall, and fired at the shape at the top of the stairs: a commando in a gasmask. The bullet went into the mask’s filter, the man’s face sucked inwards by the gauge of the bullet. He toppled, falling back on to his colleagues.
Ed turned and ran in the opposite direction, tugging Leyla along with him. They climbed up the narrow staircase and emerged onto the roof.
‘Stay low,’ he told her.
They dashed through the cement columns, splashing through pools of rainwater. The body of one of the guards was lying in a dark puddle. The other was firing over the parapet. Ed ran up to him and put three bullets in him at close range. He took a quick look over the parapet. Three stories below a bulldozer had come to a halt at the foot of the steps with the crumpled gate beneath it. There were several bodies on the steps and across the compound, some in black commando uniforms. Tear gas was drifting out into the street.
As he ducked back down, bullets hit the concrete beside him. He stuck the pistol in his waistband and picked up the dead guard’s
Kalashnikov
.
They ran to the farthest side of the roof that overlooked the tree, the wall and beyond it the playing fields. Looking down, Ed saw that it was too far to jump. The only hope was the main spoil pipe. It looked like cast iron, rusty but substantial. Maybe it was strong enough to carry them. He glanced back and saw the first dark shape flitting between the columns. There was no alternative.
‘Over you go,’ he said, ‘Climb down the pipe. I’ll follow.’
He raised the
Kalashnikov
and fired two bursts. The bolt clicked empty. He flung it away and jumped up onto the parapet. He grabbed hold of the pipe vent and swung his legs out over the drop. The pipe shifted and groaned. His feet
scrambled at the brickwork. He looked down. Leyla was descending in a barely controlled slide. He set off after her. Twice he was able to slow his descent at the junction with smaller feed pipes. He barely felt the pain in his hands.