Authors: Parker Bilal
Makana reached into his pocket for a cigarette. He recalled, briefly, that last time he had tried that she had stopped him. This time Soraya Hanafi seemed to have other things on her mind. There were no objections as the thin blue smoke filled the room.
‘To Beirut, to start a new life? How I envy her. Isn’t that strange? I know it makes no sense.’ She turned her back to the window, leaning the side of her head on the glass while she surveyed him. ‘You gave her some money, of course.’
‘Some,’ conceded Makana.
‘You’re good at that, aren’t you? Helping people in need, I mean.’
‘I don’t make a habit of it, if I can help it.’
‘I envy her for being able to leave it all behind and start again.’ Soraya Hanafi held his gaze for a long time before she spoke again. ‘I’m pregnant,’ she said quietly.
Makana spilled ash on the polished window sill. The fine sediment curled like scattered petals on a sheet of grey ice.
‘It doesn’t show yet, but it will soon.’ She attempted a smile. ‘I thought you would understand, as a father.’
‘It’s Adil’s child?’
Unable to trust her voice, Soraya gave a quick nod.
‘Who else knows?’
‘Nobody. I couldn’t tell anyone. I knew what it would mean.’
‘What would it mean?’
‘My father would kill him.’ She spoke matter-of-factly, as if there could be no doubt. ‘Especially now that we know . . . about Adil, I mean.’
‘But you told Adil himself?’
A brief nod.
‘So when he disappeared, you naturally thought that he was running away from it?’
‘I thought that maybe he needed a little time to get used to the idea.’
‘When did all this begin? I mean, between the two of you.’
There was a long pause, and when she spoke again Soraya’s eyes were closed. Her face was averted, almost as if she was addressing the window or the darkness beyond.
‘It started when I was very young. He would make me do things. He made it sound like a game, like something children do together, but I knew it was wrong.’ She stopped, sighing deeply before going on. ‘I lived like a princess in a palace, completely isolated from the world. I suppose that in time it felt natural. In any case, it continued.’
‘Isis and Osiris were brother and sister,’ Makana said, stubbing his cigarette out in a large crystal bowl, presumably meant for flowers or fruit. There was nowhere else. He watched the blue wraiths of smoke circling within the glass halo.
‘That doesn’t make it right.’ Soraya sniffed, rubbing the back of her hand across her nose like a child. ‘When I found out . . . the other night, that he was my . . . half-brother, I . . .’ She broke off. More than fear or terror there was self-loathing in her voice. ‘What am I going to do?’
‘Was that the last time you spoke to him?’
‘When I told him? Yes.’
‘What happened then?’
‘He took a phone call. Something urgent, he said. Then he got into his car and drove off. I haven’t seen him since.’ Her voice cracked and subsided into gentle sobs. Makana watched her bowed head resting against the glass. He had the sense she was leading him around by the nose. What she said explained certain things. She had paid off Mimi because she thought she wasn’t good enough for Adil, because no one could ever be good enough for Adil, except Soraya herself. Still, there was something about her story that didn’t sit right with Makana. He couldn’t say what it was, but something was wrong.
‘How does all this relate to the stories you have been spreading about Hanafi Heavens?’
‘Hanafi Heavens?’ she said, wiping her nose.
‘Yes, all this elaborate hoax about the new development that will bring in a fortune. Was that just to keep the company afloat?’
‘We are on the verge of collapse.’ Soraya straightened up.‘It would kill my father if he ever found out.’
‘Don’t worry, he won’t hear of it from me.’
She dabbed at the corners of her eyes. ‘What has this to do with Adil’s disappearance?’
‘I’m not sure.’ Makana’s gaze returned to the stadium below. It was a fascinating sight, man’s ego let loose with no limits. All it took was cash. What was it that history taught us about the downfall of kings? ‘All I know is that Adil was working with a Russian named Vronsky.’
‘He’s been causing all kinds of problems for us, for months now.’
‘I think he planned to use Adil to help him take control of Hanafi Enterprises.’
‘Adil would never do that.’
‘Wouldn’t he? Why not?’
Soraya cast around her desperately, looking for an answer. She came up with the nearest thing she could find. ‘He didn’t need to do that, he didn’t need to do anything. He had me.’
‘Look, Soraya, this company appears to be in serious financial trouble. There are at least two interested parties trying to take it over. You have been telling banks, investors, sponsors, advertisers and anyone else who will listen that it will all be redeemed by the completion of the Hanafi Heavens complex, only that’s far from being ready. I was out there. I saw it. No work has been done for months. It won’t be ready for years.’
‘Your job is to find Adil.’ Her tone was suddenly much more controlled. This was the Soraya he knew, in complete command once more. ‘Right now, nothing else matters. That is why my father hired you. You don’t need to concern yourself with the state of the company.’
Makana mulled that one over for a while.
‘What are you going to do about the child?’
‘I suppose that depends.’
‘On Adil?’
‘On everything.’
Makana opened his eyes the next morning to find Umm Ali’s cross-eyed little girl crouched beside him on the upper deck, tearing strips from a pile of fresh newspapers. She rolled the strips into balls and tossed them into the river to watch them float away. When he wasn’t working, Makana was in the habit of reading the front pages of the copies spread out on the pavement by street vendors, without troubling actually to buy a paper. But these days, now that he had a little money, he had asked for the papers to be fetched every morning. Seeing he was awake she got to her feet and came over, placing the heap of newspapers carefully down beside him. Makana struggled upright in the wicker chair where he had slept, and stretched, Strangeways’s report falling from his lap as he moved. His back hurt from where the Beretta had been digging into it. He had overslept. The sun was already up and rising fast. He counted out a couple of notes to pay for the papers and then added an extra one, which the girl deftly tucked away into a secret fold in her dress before vanishing down the stairs. She was cross-eyed, not stupid.
Adil Romario’s disappearance had now become an affair of state, to judge by the level of commentary. The story was gaining momentum. The press scented blood. The Hanafi DreemTeem had lost another match the previous night and one columnist suggested that perhaps Romario had been kidnapped by a rival team. ‘Where is their hero in their hour of need?’ ran one caption, beneath a photograph of Clemenza looking despondent after this latest humiliation. If they carried on like this, said the paper, their closest rivals would win the season without difficulty. An inside page was devoted to the honourable Mohsen Taha. His death was already being buried underneath a shroud of honourable tributes and venerable tears. A state funeral was being planned, with full honours.
Downstairs while the coffee was boiling he connected the decrepit television set and the VCR and pushed in the tape that Farag had given him, praying it would work. With a bit of aggressive nudging it did. He ran through the now familiar scene with Adil and Mimi. He recognised the view of the sea from Vronsky’s villa, the palm trees in the distance. He rewound the tape as the camera panned around the room, waiting for the moment he’d remembered. He heard the coffee pot boiling over just as he froze the image on a woman standing in the background. She was dressed in what looked like a black uniform and Makana wondered if this could be Dunya, the girl Mimi had mentioned. Makana went to the kitchen to salvage his coffee and came back. The camera had picked her up by accident, but there was no mistaking the look of desperation on her face. It was the look of someone who was utterly lost.
An hour later Makana was behind the wheel of the Mercedes. If Farag’s death had not come as a shock, it was because Makana had known deep down that something bad was going to happen to the man he had abandoned there. He was annoyed with himself for not having reacted sooner, though. Once on the road he felt relief that he was at least going to face Vronsky again. But how do you put things right for a man who has been fed to the sharks? It didn’t make much sense. Seeing Vronsky would probably mean the end of his own understanding with Okasha, but there seemed to be no way of avoiding that now.
Traffic was slow, and it took him an hour to get out of town, but then the long open road was soothing and the wind felt cool. Grey clouds peeled off the khaki earth and drifted across the blue sky, veiling the burning eye of the sun, rendering the world a pallid, dusty monochrome. He had set off late, but still forced himself to stop at a roadside shack and eat a couple of
shwarma
sandwiches, standing up. By the time he reached El Gouna, the sun was already past the meridian and the afternoon heat was gently waning. This time there was no sign of the SSI men in their shiny suits. They were probably in their room, sleeping off a large lunch. The lobby was deserted. He walked through it, and round the outside of the complex to the arch at the far end where the high green gate marked the entrance to Vronsky’s inner sanctum. When he leaned on the doorbell the release clicked and the door swung in. Just inside were the two heavies Makana remembered from his last visit, wearing sports pants and T-shirts to show off their muscles. They were also wearing neat little automatic rifles that hung on straps over their shoulders, and holsters round their waists with pistols in them. It seemed like a lot of weaponry for a sleepy resort. As they moved towards him, Makana stepped back and lifted his jacket to show that he was unarmed. He had considered bringing the Beretta with him, then decided it would serve no purpose against this kind of firepower.
‘Tell Mr Vronsky he has nothing to fear from me.’
One of them kept an eye on him while the other stepped away and talked into a walkie-talkie. After a moment he motioned his hand to let Makana through.
They walked, one ahead of him and one behind, along the path that curved across the neatly trimmed lawn towards the patch of palm trees and the wooden jetty jutting out into the sea. The water was turning purple as the light settled. Vronsky was waiting at the far end, standing on the upper bridge of a big powerful motor launch. He was wearing a flowery Hawaiian shirt and white slacks. He waved a cigar in the air.
‘Ah, Mr Makana, what a surprise. Come aboard and let’s talk.’
Makana hesitated. The idea of stepping aboard a boat with Vronsky struck him as being not a particularly wise course of action, but he hadn’t come all this way for nothing and didn’t see that he had much choice. The diminutive Filipino valet smiled and held out a hand to help him down. As he took it Makana felt his own hand being seized in an astonishingly muscular grip and twisted behind his back. Something hit him hard on the back of the head and he blacked out.
When he came to, Makana was lying on the aft deck of the boat, up against the side. They were moving fast through the water and he could see Vronsky up on the bridge, his clothes buffeted by the wind. When he tried to sit up, Makana found that his hands were bound together with a well-knotted length of rope. Another loop had been slipped down over his shoulders, pinning his arms to his sides. As the boat veered in its course, he was thrown off balance, slamming against the deck. One side of him was in pain where he guessed he had landed when they had knocked him out. As far as he could see there was no one else in the boat with them. There was no sign of the diminutive valet, or the strong men.
Makana eventually managed to sit up again and made himself as comfortable as possible. He could feel the powerful engines reverberating through the wooden planks beneath him. There was nothing to do for the time being but reflect on the foolishness of his own approach. So he looked at the sky and wondered how this was going to end.
After a time he felt the noise of the engines slacken off and the vessel began to slow until it came to a halt, bobbing rather animatedly at first in the open water. Vronsky came down the ladder to the rear deck and looked Makana’s bindings over before moving to the console. He pulled open a teak panel to reveal a refrigerator from which he extracted a couple of small glasses and a bottle of vodka.
‘A lot of people like to complain. You know how it is.’ He poured the clear liquid into the two glasses with practised ease, not spilling a drop despite the bobbing deck. ‘A foreigner living like a king. People say, why him and not us? They are right, of course. But if life teaches us anything it is that life is not fair.’ He smiled and drained one glass before coming over with the other. He kneeled down in front of Makana and held it out. ‘I never trust a man who doesn’t drink.’
‘That can’t leave many people around here.’ Makana ached from the fall, and he was having trouble feeling his fingers. He flexed his shoulders.
Vronsky smiled and leaned forwards to remove the rope pinning Makana’s arms to his sides. Then he tilted the glass to Makana’s mouth so that he was forced to drink. His lips and throat burned as the alcohol made its way down. Makana rolled his cramped shoulders to get the blood moving again. He wondered if this was some kind of Russian tradition, a final act of mercy to the condemned man.