‘Gosh, who does a girl have to sleep with to wind up with a gaff like this?’ one of the women chirped.
Hassan smiled. ‘The owner might be a good start.’
‘Ooh, you’re a cheeky sod, aren’t you,’ the girl replied.
‘Hold on, Jen, I saw him first,’ her friend said, clinging theatrically to Hassan’s right arm, nearly spilling his drink in the process.
Miranda caught Hassan’s eye and he gave her a little smile and shrugged his shoulders. His message was clear. He had tried to woo her, but she had pointedly resisted his advances, while, in his view, seeming to lead him on. He was too much of a gentleman to push the issue with her, but too much of a man to resist the attention of the tipsy flight attendants.
Miranda retired to her room early and the shrieking laughter of the aircrew as she climbed the stairs to bed only made her angrier. She knew then that she was falling for the handsome target she had been sent to spy on. So far she had learned nothing about him that pointed to his involvement in any terrorist organisation. He had openly volunteered information about his brother and confirmed that Iqbal had served in Chechnya. During the discussion they had had about September 11 he had seemed genuinely appalled at the direction Islamic fundamentalism had taken.
‘It’s one thing,’ he had reasoned, ‘to support Muslim people who are fighting for an independent homeland in Chechnya, but no one can justify the indiscriminate slaughter at the World Trade Center.
The people responsible make me sick.’
Despite her feelings about Hassan, and his apparent innocence, Miranda had felt duty-bound to find out all she could about Iqbal. Hassan had told her that he was currently studying at a university in Pakistan and teaching part-time in a
madrassa
, a school for Muslim boys. Hassan had said nothing about Iqbal being involved in the fighting in neighbouring Afghanistan, and Miranda sensed that he preferred not to know too many details about what his brother was doing.
Miranda had arrived early for a meeting with Hassan one day and, while she waited for him to return from the cheetah enclosures, she had taken his portable satellite phone from the battery charger on his office desk. She had scrolled through the numbers in the memory and found one with no name but with a country code prefix that she did not recognise. She had jotted down the number and had just stuffed the scrap of paper she had written on into the pocket of her khaki skirt when Hassan walked into the office.
‘Sorry I’m late. Trying to steal my phone?’ he had said with a laugh.
‘Sorry, just admiring it. I’ve been meaning to upgrade.’ She had felt her face redden, but he had said nothing more.
Miranda tossed and turned in her bed after the dinner party with the aircrew. That night she dreamed of Hassan making love to her. She awoke aroused and even more confused. The next morning, while the other guests took an early, hungover game drive, Miranda confronted Hassan on the deck.
‘I haven’t had a hangover like this since I was a teenager,’ he said, sipping a tomato juice.
‘You looked like you were enjoying yourself–you and your two friends.’
He laughed. ‘Surely you weren’t jealous?’
She shook her head. ‘Don’t be silly.’
‘Of course, silly me, thinking you might care what I did, or who I slept with.’ The smile had left his face.
‘You’re a grown man. You can do whatever you please, have whomever you want.’
‘Yes, I can, but who I get is not always who I want.’
Miranda felt the anger rise in her. ‘Well, which one did you sleep with last night?’
He smiled. ‘Would it shock you if I said both of them?’
‘No, Hassan, and neither would it surprise me.’
‘Don’t be a prude, Miranda. This is hard for me to say …’
She glared at him.
‘It’s you I care about, Miranda, but you don’t seem to be interested in me, not romantically anyway.
We have fun together, enjoy each other’s company, and then when I think we’re close to becoming intimate you turn your back on me. Is it because I am half Arab?’
‘Oh, God, no, Hassan! Of course not. It’s just that…’
‘What?’
She could see confusion and maybe pain in his dark, soulful eyes. She didn’t want to hurt him, but couldn’t possibly tell him the truth. What truth? she asked herself. She couldn’t tell him that she was spying on him, but there was another truth. ‘I care about you, too, Hassan.’
‘Maybe we need to get away from here, from the valley and your work. Maybe I need to get away from the lodge and the guests,’ he said, smiling at his own joke.
Miranda took a deep breath. There was nothing more she could learn about Iqbal, and as far as she was concerned Chris’s suspicions about Hassan had been unfounded. He was no terrorist, just a rich, gorgeous, sensitive heterosexual man who cared about endangered animals and loved life. Miranda knew she would have to go a long way to find another like him.
‘Yes, maybe that would be a good idea.’
‘We can take the plane, perhaps fly to Mozambique or even Zanzibar for a few days. I’d love to show you the beach, the place where I grew up. I’ll sort some things out here later today. You go get squared away on your side of the river and I’ll call you with the details tomorrow.’
Miranda did not call or email Chris Wallis and tell her Hassan was taking her to Mozambique. Her decision to keep the journey a secret flouted everything Chris had told her about the need to keep her informed of her movements, and of Hassan’s.
They took off for Mozambique in Hassan’s Cessna the following day. Miranda was concerned that they had not filled out any customs or immigration clearances in either Zimbabwe, for her, or Zambia, for him. Also, when they landed at the coastal town of Inhambane in Mozambique there was no sign of border officials and Hassan made no attempt to find them. He seemed to treat Africa as his personal playground.
‘We’re doing nothing illegal, Miranda, not running guns or drugs! Who cares if we fly over a couple of border posts?’
Miranda’s worries about Hassan’s disregard for international law melted away over a holiday cocktail of cold beers, grilled lobsters and the warm azure waters of the Indian Ocean. Hassan had booked two rooms at the four-star coastal resort, but after dinner and dancing Miranda lingered outside his door.
The kiss was meant to be goodnight, but it was the first time their lips had met and neither of them wanted the moment to end. Miranda found herself hungry for Hassan and opened her mouth to him.
She let him lead her into his room, raised her arms as he lifted her top over her head, ran her fingers through his dark hair as he freed her breasts from her bra, and tumbled backwards onto his bed as he moved between her legs.
Afterwards, when she returned to Zimbabwe, she was too racked with guilt over her secret love and the pleasure he had given her to tell her CIA controller about the affair. When she met with Chris in person she let on nothing about her blossoming relationship with the man who was her target, or her illegal trip into a neighbouring country. Miranda became very good at concealing the truth.
After Miranda returned to Zimbabwe, she and Hassan made love every time she crossed the river to visit him. She had given up trying to find information to incriminate him and she was satisfied there was nothing more she could discover about Iqbal. Chris had seemed impressed and pleased with her discovery of the telephone number, however, which turned out to have the international dialling prefix for Pakistan.
‘We’ll track this number down. I’m betting that it’s brother Iqbal on the end of that line and, if it is, there will be a lot of people interested in following this up. You’ve done a good job, Miranda,’ Chris said.
Two weeks after her visit to South Africa Miranda was in Hassan’s lodge when he surprised her with an invitation to fly to Zanzibar, to see the island where he had grown up. They would leave the next morning. They crossed the river in a rush, gathered some travel clothes and left everything else locked. There was no time to email or call Chris – not that Miranda would have anyway. She felt guilty, but she also realised her double, double life excited her, maybe even aroused her.
On the boat, off the coast of Zanzibar, Hassan told her of the death of his brother in combat in Afghanistan.
‘It’s amazing what you can find on the net,’ he said to her. ‘A friend called me in Zambia and alerted me to a feature article in a magazine about the death of a wanted terrorist. The action happened on the day my brother was killed. The American Special Forces team that killed him took along a wire service reporter with them. The man who killed my brother, who saved the reporter, is identified only by his Christian name, Jed. That’s your father’s name, isn’t it, Miranda?’
She swallowed hard and felt the instant perspiration on her hands, the pounding of a vein in her neck. ‘It could have been anyone, Hassan.’ She realised now the stupidity of opening up to him as they shared their life stories in the way that new lovers do.
‘It said in the article that this brave American soldier was more scared for the safety of his daughter, who was researching lions in Africa, than he was for his own wellbeing.’
‘No!’
‘The story speculates that the
terrorist
targeted in this raid was located by scanners that tracked his satellite phone signal. You liked my satellite phone so much, didn’t you, Miranda? The day I caught you looking at it you said you wanted to upgrade. But when I checked your tent – yes, I crossed the river while you were playing with my cheetahs – I found that you had an American military tactical satellite system in your tent, along with various other sophisticated surveillance toys. I don’t know any wildlife researchers in the world who would use their funding to buy a communications system that is designed for soldiers and spies to send encrypted messages.’
‘Hassan, it’s not what you think. I can explain everything.’
‘You don’t need to explain, Miranda. It’s very simple. You hurt me, and now I want to hurt you. I tried the other day, when I fucked you like a whore.’
‘Hassan, please, don’t do this,’ she begged.
‘But you enjoyed it, didn’t you? Moaned like a bitch in heat when I used you. It must have been as easy for you to play the virtuous little academic as it was the slut. Did the CIA teach you how to fuck as well as how to spy, Miranda?’
She backed away from him, tried not to think about her shame and to come up with a way to escape.
‘Forget it, Miranda. There’s nowhere to go on this boat. No one knows you’re here. You and your father were doing your duty. Now, at long last, I must do my duty, to my brother. I would say that your father has every reason to be more concerned for your safety than his.’ Hassan drew the dart gun, pointed it at her and pulled the trigger.
In the all-consuming darkness of the coffin, Miranda started to cry.
The adrenaline surged through Hassan bin Zayid’s veins as he piloted the open-top Land Rover at high speed over a bump that caused all four wheels to leave the ground.
Iqbal would have been so proud of his work, he thought. ‘You will be avenged,’ he said aloud to himself. The rear of the vehicle skidded and Hassan wrestled with the steering to keep the four-byfour on the corrugated track. He ducked to avoid a low-hanging branch, taking heart from the fact that the bough indicated he was once more close to the bush camp. He turned off the engine as he crested a low rise and coasted down the opposite slope towards the Zambezi. He stopped the vehicle a hundred metres from the camp.
There was a light breeze from the river and he smelled the lingering remains of acrid smoke. He had heard the low crump of the exploding grenade as he waited with the surface-to-air missile for the rescue helicopter he knew would come. He smiled at his own cleverness. Nonetheless, he moved slowly and cautiously as he approached the camp. The American would probably come back here looking for him but, while Hassan had taken the longer route back to the camp by land, he doubted his enemies would have organised themselves in time to return just yet. Hassan heard a softly whistled bird call and froze in his tracks. Juma dropped from the branch of the tree above him, landing with the grace and surefootedness of a leopard.
‘Two of them came, boss. One black, one white. The African opened the door of the hut and the grenade caught him.’ Juma smiled as he relayed the story.
‘Killed?’
‘Wounded, but bad I think. Either way, he is one less to worry about.’
‘But they came quickly. That means they are onto us. I see they haven’t disturbed the coffins.’
When Juma had collected Hassan from the airstrip they had driven to the bush camp, with Miranda sealed in her coffin, alive but still drugged and on oxygen. They had buried her in the pit prepared by the African. It was a time-consuming but necessary part of Hassan’s plot. He realised that with only him and Juma to execute the mission on the ground they would need a totally secure area in which to hold their captives during the operation. The coffins had seemed appropriate, not only for transporting Miranda and the surface-to-air missiles into mainland Tanzania, but also for hiding the hostages. If he and Juma had been killed during the inevitable rescue mission, which had arrived on cue after the general’s plane was shot down, Calvert and Miranda would have slowly died in their wooden cells as their oxygen ran out. Whatever happened, the world would be rid of a military enemy of Islam and the bitch who had betrayed Hassan.
After capturing Calvert they had returned to the camp by boat and buried the general in the other box on top of Miranda’s coffin and then covered him up before heading back down the river, by vehicle, to ambush the helicopter. Hassan’s head told him that the reason for keeping Miranda alive, and not killing her outright, was so the organisation could use her as a second bargaining chip, in addition to Calvert. But in his heart, he knew he wanted to prolong her suffering, and exact his revenge on her, mentally and physically, over time.
‘No, boss, they didn’t find where the hostages were buried. But they found the shovel. I should not have left it out.’