Authors: Parker Bilal
‘I’m doing this for old times’ sake.’ He paused. ‘Go,’ he said. ‘And don’t come back.’
Makana tumbled, fell, stood, fell again, got up and carried on. A solitary figure, already lost in the dusty road that lay ahead of him, limping down off the bridge, into the dark web of night that settled over him like a cloak. He never looked back.
A flashlight clicked on, the beam playing up and down, allowing Makana to see that he was actually in a fairly big room. The light was reflected back from walls still covered by white ceramic tiles. Here and there the broken shaft of a pipe stuck out at an odd angle. He was in an old bathroom, in an institution of some kind, he guessed.
‘They used to bring the madmen here, back in the days when anyone cared what happened to madmen. Now they just let them run riot in the streets.’
The man’s voice rumbled out of the cavernous gloom. In the glow of the flashlight’s beam Makana could make out a solitary figure moving around the room. The reflected light revealed a gaunt silhouette. He appeared to be wearing a combat jacket over loose-fitting clothes. A tracksuit. The left arm of the jacket was tucked into a pocket. The beam moved, settling on a corner of the room. Shadows lengthened and stretched about it.
‘You know who I am?’
‘Daud Bulatt.’
The man came closer now, squatting on his heels in front of Makana. After playing the light over himself, he set the big torch down on the ground so that the beam rose up to spread across the ceiling like a fan. Makana could just about make out the other man’s face.
‘Looks like you managed to find me after all.’
‘I was at the hotel when the bomb went off. I followed your men.’
‘To act so impulsively, a man must be either very brave or reckless. Which one are you?’
‘Does it matter?’
Bulatt tilted the beam to settle it on Makana’s face.
‘I feel as though I know you somehow.’
‘You’re the one who was following me?’
‘Not myself. My men watched you.’
‘One of them took a shot at me.’
‘And you broke the ribs of another. That would make us even, don’t you think?’
‘Why the interest in me?’
‘We weren’t sure how much you knew.’ Bulatt stood again and prowled around Makana in the dark. ‘We have some mutual acquaintances.’
‘What acquaintances?’ Makana strained his neck to follow his movements.
‘All in good time, my friend. Now tell me, what was your business with the Russian?’
‘I am trying to find someone,’ Makana croaked, his throat dry. ‘Your sister’s boy.’
‘You’re wasting your time, Adil is dead. Another good reason for the Russian to die.’
‘You think Vronsky killed him?’
‘What do you think? Adil went to see Vronsky. No one has seen him since.’
Bulatt moved away, leaving the lamp where it rested on the ground, the beam aimed up at the ceiling. Makana listened to him moving through the shadows, the sound of his feet stepping carefully over the uneven ground.
‘You’ve been asking a lot of questions about me.’ The voice receded into the darkness. Makana craned his head painfully, trying to follow it. ‘Did Hanafi hire you to find me?’
‘Hanafi thought you were dead. Everyone did.’
‘Except you.’
‘Adil found out the truth about who his father was. It didn’t come from Hanafi. It could only have come from someone else, someone who was there back in the old days.’
Bulatt was silent for a time. Makana listened but could hear nothing. When the other man spoke again, his voice was so close he appeared to be standing right behind Makana.
‘Years ago you tried to have Hanafi killed,’ said Makana quietly.
‘I was unlucky. The men I hired to do the job failed. Hanafi was too smart for me.’
‘Did Hanafi take Alice Markham hostage?’
‘She was his insurance policy. If I tried anything else, he would kill the girl. Not that I cared about her. I didn’t even know her.’
‘Liz never told you she was pregnant?’
‘After she left this country, I thought I would never see her again. Some men went after foreign women like her, hoping they would marry them and take them to live in Europe. But I didn’t care about that. I had a life of my own.’ It might have been his imagination, but Makana thought he detected a touch of sentiment in Bulatt’s voice nevertheless. Perhaps there had been more to his relationship with Liz Markham than simply a holiday romance.
‘What did you do when you heard Hanafi had survived?’
‘What could I do? I gave myself up, went to prison. Hanafi couldn’t touch me there.’ Bulatt’s voice hardened once again at the memory. ‘Inside, I realised the error of my ways. I made mistakes when I was young. I lived a bad life. I drank and chased women. I used to hang around the hotels for fun. The foreign girls were easy targets. They fell to us like doves.’
‘Just like Liz Markham.’
‘Yes,’ said Bulatt slowly, ‘just like her.’
‘Why did you kill her then?’
‘What makes you think it was me?’ Bulatt looked down at the automatic held loosely in his hand.
‘Who else?’
‘Who was interested in finding me? Ask yourself that.’
‘She was asking questions about you.’
‘She was harmless. All she cared about was her daughter. Our daughter. Actually, if there is anyone to blame for her death, it is you.’ Bulatt looked Makana in the eye as he went on: ‘They saw her talking to you.’
‘They?’ But Makana already knew the answer before he asked the question. ‘You mean Colonel Serrag?’
‘Serrag was on Hanafi’s payroll back in the old days when he was an inspector. He knows that I know that. He wants me more than anything in the world. He thought Liz would lead him to me, so he tortured and killed her.’
Makana closed his eyes. Suddenly the pain and the fatigue brought down a weariness on him that he couldn’t fight.
Bulatt’s voice loomed nearer.
‘This is not about revenge, Makana. It’s war. Our war to rid this country of the
kufar
, those infidels who have infected the Islamic world with their corruption.’
‘Sounds like a nice speech, but I thought that all ended in Luxor?’
‘Nothing ends. The war will not end until we are victorious,
inshallah
.’
The words sounded rehearsed, as if Bulatt had spoken them thousands of times before. He no longer needed to believe them. He stood up again and moved away.
‘When Adil first came to me, I was prepared to kill him. I hated Hanafi so much.’
‘But Adil was your sister’s child.’
‘I came up with a sweeter way of taking my revenge.’
‘So when Adil came to seek you out in Khartoum, you decided not to kill him?’
‘Adil was a lost soul. An illegitimate child who never knew his real father. He spent his whole life trying to please people. He played football for them, like a trained monkey. Then he convinced himself he could become a film star. All he wanted was to belong.’
‘And you offered him a way?’
‘I told him the truth about who his father was. I showed him how we could take our revenge and take over the company. We would destroy Hanafi.’
‘You set up the Green Nakhala Reserve Fund to start buying back Hanafi’s debt. In return Adil told you about Vronsky.’
‘Things became complicated, mostly because Adil changed his mind. He was sentimental, couldn’t bring himself to get even with the old man. He tried to persuade Hanafi to run away with him, on a safari or something, then he just disappeared.’
‘That’s why you came back here, for revenge?’
There was a slight shifting of weight as Bulatt moved round to squat in front of Makana again, his face looming out of the dark into the cone of light, thin and dark, bisected by hard planes.
‘This is about more than personal revenge. Hanafi is a symbol of everything that is wrong with this country. If Hanafi Enterprises collapsed it would bring down the national bank. There would be an economic crisis.’
And crisis would lead people back to the mosques for assistance. Makana considered the possibility that Daud Bulatt was a very disturbed man. He was certainly very dangerous. It didn’t matter to him that the majority of people in Egypt cared little for the Islamist militants. They only wanted to work, to feed their families.
‘You want to make the whole country pay.’
‘“Let evil be rewarded with like evil.”’
‘“But he that forgives and seeks reconciliation shall be rewarded by God,”’ said Makana, completing the quotation. Bulatt smiled, his face still illuminated.
‘The old man said you were smart.’
‘Old Yunis?’
‘In the old days he was a poet and a painter. A strange figure. But like the rest of us, he needed money to support his cause. So he turned his hand to forgery. He’s good. One of the best in the business. Did he show you his work?’
‘He showed me a scar you gave him.’
Bulatt chuckled. ‘He was a lot tougher in the old days, and he used to drink. Did he tell you that? No, I didn’t think so. Now, he says he’s not part of our fight, but old ties are difficult to break.’
Bulatt leaned closer and lowered his voice to a whisper.
‘In Tora they placed me in a hole in the ground. A shallow grave. I lay on my back and could not move. My arms touched the sides. My nose pressed against the cover. When they closed me in it was like being buried alive. I told myself that I was already dead, that I was in the ground awaiting Judgement Day, the end of time, and that on that day I would rise up with the dead and watch those who had condemned me burn in eternal hellfire.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’ asked Makana.
‘You are a man who has known prison. Some men are broken by the experience. I grew stronger. I think you did too.’
‘How do you know that? The old man didn’t know I was in prison.’
‘No, that came from an old friend of yours.’ Bulatt was silent for a moment. The metal in his hand flashed dully in the light. ‘You haven’t forgotten Mek Nimr, have you?’
Makana was silent for a long time. ‘No,’ he said finally. ‘I haven’t forgotten.’
‘Your country gave me a home these last three years. We were scorned here, treated like outcasts, after all the sacrifices we had made.’ Daud Bulatt grunted and rocked back on his heels. ‘When I came out of prison I was a changed man. I wanted to put my former life behind me. I wanted to cleanse myself, to do what was right. I wanted to defend Muslims everywhere in the world. First in Bosnia. After that Chechnya. I was prepared to die, to sacrifice my life in the cause of Islam, fighting the infidels.’
‘Of course you were,’ said Makana drily.
Bulatt’s head jerked angrily at his ironic tone. ‘You don’t understand that kind of devotion. You are not a religious man.’
‘I had a bad experience.’
‘Mek Nimr took care of me. I was almost dead when I arrived there. I owe him a debt. He protected me, gave me a home when I had nowhere to go.’ Bulatt paused, then added, ‘I promised him I would kill you.’ Makana stayed silent. ‘But you are a lucky man,’ Bulatt continued. ‘The other day you saved my life.’ Makana waited for him to go on. ‘I was inside the old man’s shop when you came by. One of my men followed you after you left and saw you getting into a police car.’ Makana remembered the time, how Old Yunis had brushed him off. The day he talked to Okasha. ‘It made me nervous. I changed my habits and that night I did not go back to the place where I was meant to sleep.’
‘You weren’t there when Serrag’s men hit it.’
‘Allah is generous to those who have faith.’ Bulatt smiled. ‘You should think about saying your prayers more often.’ He stood up and stretched as if his legs were stiff.
‘What will you do now?’
‘Vronsky’s death has served its purpose. By now tourists all over the Red Sea will be packing their bags and running for the airport to catch the next plane home.’
‘They’ll come after you.’
‘They have been after me for years. We shall not rest until these
kufara
are removed from government and true Islam is restored to our country.’
‘What about democratic means?’
‘Democracy is like love, a lie invented to keep us content and in our places.’
‘Some might say the same about religion.’
Bitter laughter trickled out of the darkness. ‘You have a dangerous tongue, Makana. You should be careful. It might get cut off.’ The empty sleeve of Bulatt’s jacket had come loose. It dangled in front of Makana’s nose, a reminder that things did not always go according to plan. Far above the sound of a helicopter ground its way urgently across the sky.
‘Where will you go?’
‘Back across the border, for a time. Do you have any message for Mek Nimr?’
‘Only the kind you can deliver from that gun.’
‘Go in peace, Makana.’ Bulatt withdrew, taking the light with him. The shadows closed in over Makana.