The Abrupt Physics of Dying (26 page)

Such a Small Thing

They arrived at the farm an hour later. It sat in a lush depression a kilometre or so from the cliffs, one of many similar freeholds strung out along the plain, roughly parallel with the base of the escarpment. It was like entering a clumsy re-creation of Eden. Ordered rows of date palms shaded small plots of ground crops: alfalfa, tef, legumes. An orange grove, the trees heavy with fruit, spread up the slope towards the cliffs. And laced through it all, the
aflaj
spread like veins carrying the alkaline spring water to each plot and orchard.

Hussein stopped the vehicle under a clutch of palms outside a low brick farmhouse. The trees cast long evening shadows across the gravel courtyard. ‘We stay here tonight,’ he said without turning his head.

They unloaded the equipment and Hussein showed Clay and Rania through into a tiled kitchen area with a sink and counter along one wall and a large wooden table with a pair of rough timber benches. Windows on one side let on to a treed courtyard, and at the back were a pair of small bedrooms. Rania peeled off the dark shroud, sending a cloud of dust into the air. Her face was covered in sweat and her breathing was laboured.

‘Are you alright?’ Clay took her arm to steady her, reached out to help her with her case.

She twisted away from him, moving to place herself between him and the case so he could not reach the handle. ‘I am perfectly fine,’ she said:
sternly
, Clay thought. ‘Thank you.’ She smiled, as if to mollify him. ‘It is the heat.’

‘These are your rooms,’ said Hussein. ‘Rest. I have business to attend to. I’ll be back soon.’

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I think I will lie down for a moment.’

Hussein smiled at her, turned and strode out. Rania disappeared into her room and closed the door. Moments later Clay heard the Pajero roar to life and move away.

Clay busied himself with the samples. He laid everything out on the kitchen table, checked caps and labels, packed the bottles into one of the small coolers. He tore a page from the back of the fieldbook and wrote in block letters on the waterproof cotton-composite paper clear instructions for the laboratory – which compounds to test for, what methods to use. He slipped the page into the cooler, closed the lid and wrapped the box shut with winds of silver duct tape. In the fading light he cleaned and rinsed each piece of equipment, removing any traces of radioactive water or sediment that may have remained from Al Urush, then he washed out the sink with hot water and soap.

He was sitting at the kitchen table, notebook before him, a rough sketch of the geology at Al Urush taking shape, the likely movement of groundwater, when the bedroom door opened with a creak. He looked up. Rania appeared in the doorway, her hair a chaotic tangle, breasts straining against a tight olive-coloured singlet.

‘I can’t sleep,’ she said, hoarse. She sat down next to him, eyeing the notebook.

He didn’t answer, pretended to work on the sketch. The air was filled with her scent, wild grasses, sweat. After a while she reached over and put her hand on his forearm. He did not move away, just sat feeling the pulse in her wrist against his skin, this fleeting connection. Time slowed to breaths, beats, flutters. Darkness came. Clay lit the small kerosene lantern, adjusted the flame, watched it paint the inside of the farmhouse, Rania’s hand still on his arm, pressed there as if the scar were yet a wound, she his attendant. He looked down at her hand, up to her eyes.

‘What did this, Clay?’ she whispered.

‘A piece of metal about the size of your thumbnail. Cuban, actually.’ He could have told her that it was part of a 122-millimetre rocket that had also severed the leg of the man next to him, but to what purpose?

She looked down at his arm, traced the scar with the palp of her fingertip as she had before, near the sea in Aden that day. ‘Such a small thing to do such terrible damage.’

Never a truer sentence composed. It didn’t take much. He reached up with his left hand, touched her hair. ‘Be careful, Rania.’

She looked up at him, a question in her eyes.

‘I might start thinking that you care.’

She seemed about to speak, about to explain something important, when the drone of a diesel engine broke the silence. It came to them as if over a distance, high-pitched, plaintive. It was getting louder now, coming closer, travelling quickly. He could hear the engine surge as the vehicle powered over bumps in the road. He stood, palmed the Beretta, walked to the window, looked through a gap in the shutters as headlights split and banded across the walls and ceiling of the room. A vehicle ground to a halt outside the house. ‘Hussein,’ he said. ‘Someone’s with him.’

A few moments later Hussein appeared at the door. The other man stood behind him, a Yemeni with dark skin and a white moustache. The man was short, even by local standards. He carried an AK47 slung over his right shoulder. Hussein closed the door and the two men approached the table.

In the dim lamplight, Clay could see the deep creases around Hussein’s eyes, the tightly drawn mouth sucking on a cigarette. Clay offered him the hip flask. He took it without asking what it contained, drank deeply once, and then again, and handed it back. Hussein sat on one of the wooden benches, glanced at Rania, and adjusted the lantern until the room was bathed in a warm kerosene glow. The other man set his rifle on the table, sat next to Hussein. Then he reached into his pocket and produced two banana-shaped magazines and a box of 7.62-millimetre ammunition, unfolded the
stock of the Bulgarian-made AK-47s and started to disassemble the weapon. Clay watched, mesmerised, as the man stripped, cleaned and oiled each component before placing it on the table. Eben had started carrying a ’47 after killing that
terr
during Operation Vasbyt. Clay watched the man’s deeply veined hands move over the instrument with absent-minded familiarity, and suddenly he was back in the bush, and these were Eben’s hands, obsessively breaking down and reassembling the weapon, smiling up at him from his hole, talking, always talking, his face young, eyes bright, full of life’s diamond adventure.

Rania’s touch brought him back. He glanced over at her. Her look was a question. He nodded, raised the hip flask to his mouth, drained it.

Hussein burned through another Marlboro and erupted in a fit of coughing that seemed to rip from deep within his lungs. He spat, crushed the empty pack and threw it to the floor. Finally he spoke. His voice was strained, harsh from the chain-smoking. The Army had split in two, he said. Northern regiments stationed in the South were engaging Southern units stationed nearby, and Southern units barracked north of the border were attempting to fight their way south.

Northern jets had bombed Aden. Confusion reigned. Sana’a, the Northern capital, appeared secure. The new Southern republic had been immediately recognised by Saudi Arabia, but so far no other country had followed. There was talk of a major tank battle in the mountain passes along the new border.

‘When the rich wage war, it is the poor who die,’ murmured Rania.

Clay looked at her.

‘Rimbaud,’ she said.

‘The war will change nothing,’ said Hussein.

‘Al Shams seemed to think it would,’ said Clay.

Hussein was silent for a moment, as if considering these words carefully. ‘Al Shams is an idealist. If the rebels succeed, they will
simply divert the oil revenue to their own Swiss bank accounts.’ He turned and spat on the ground.

‘And Petro-Tex will be free to continue with business as usual,’ said Rania. ‘This story needs to be told. I can tell it. It can bring international pressure to bear on Petro-Tex and its partners. The war will heighten attention on Yemen. People will listen. I need to interview Al Shams.’

‘You must go to him and tell him the science of Al Urush,’ said the stranger in Arabic.

‘And who are you?’ asked Clay.

‘This man can take us to Al Shams,’ said Hussein.

The stranger laid the partially disassembled weapon on the table, looked across the table at Clay. ‘You are the
nazrani
whose driver is called Abdulkader?’ he said in Arabic.

Clay glanced over at Rania, nodded.

‘He told me something for you.’

Rania gasped, reached for Clay’s hand, squeezed hard.

Clay looked at her, unsure of what he’d just heard, the Arabic grammar twisting in his head. Past tense, present, subjunctive? ‘Told?’

Rania nodded. ‘Tells.’

Jesus Christ. Clay looked at the stranger.

‘He says you should pray.’

Truth

Clay caught his breath. Rania’s story in the
Yemen Times
, watered down, three days late, must have been enough. Al Shams’ had given Clay the benefit of the doubt, had trusted him, and he’d kept Abdulkader alive.
Al hamdillulah
.

‘I take you to Al Shams tomorrow,’ said the stranger.

Rania leant forward, forearms crossed on the table, listening intently.

‘No,’ Clay said. ‘Not yet.’ He watched Rania deflate. ‘We are missing too many pieces of the puzzle.’ If Abdulkader was still alive, then he was going to make damn sure that next time he saw Al Shams, he had the information he needed. All of it.

The stranger pointed to the cooler of samples. ‘You have already found the poison,’ he said in Arabic.

‘I need to get to the CPF. If that’s the source, it’s the only way to put it all together. That’s what Al Shams wants. That’s what we all need. The truth.’

The stranger picked up his weapon, slid the gas tube into the rifle, pushed the bolt carrier into the gas tube, fed in the coiled return spring, and pushed down the receiver cover. Then he opened a carton of shells and started feeding the rounds into one of the magazines, pressing each tapered brass missile in with his thumb, pushing against the loading spring. Clay counted thirty rounds. The stranger clipped the magazine into place.

‘
Inshallah
,’ said the stranger. ‘But the CPF is heavily guarded. There are many soldiers, helicopters coming every day.’

‘Helicopters?’ said Rania.

‘Many. We have seen them unloading large boxes. Many boxes.’

Rania glanced over at Clay. ‘The weapons?’

‘Is there a way in?’ asked Clay

The stranger wiped his hands on the long front of his
thaub
. ‘There is a small wadi that joins Wadi Urush below the facility. It is deep and narrow. There is an old Bedou well there. The fence there has been damaged in the rains.’

The Chief of Bawazir had said the same thing. Clay remembered seeing the tributary wadi on the air photos. It cut down through the plateau ten or more kilometres to the east of the CPF. If he could get to the head of the wadi without being detected, it might work. Rania turned to face him. ‘It will take too long, Clay. I need that interview, now.’

‘I thought you needed proof, Rania. That’s what you keep telling me. Well, we don’t have it.’

She shot Clay a fierce glare and twisted on the bench so that she was facing the stranger, riding side-saddle. ‘Can you take us to him?’ she said in Arabic.

‘Yes,’ said the stranger.

Hussein searched his pockets and produced a fresh packet of cigarettes. ‘I agree,’ he said. ‘This is the time.’

Clay stood and walked to the front window and peered through the shutters. The Pajero sat in the courtyard, moonlight glinting on its windscreen. He scanned the trees along the edge of the courtyard. A dog barked somewhere in the distance. He flipped down the louvers and walked back to the table.

‘Don’t worry, we’re safe here,’ said Hussein.

Clay stood at the end of the table, locked his gaze on Hussein. ‘After everything I’ve been through, do you really think I’m going to lead you right to Al Shams?’

‘What are you talking about?’ said Rania.

‘He’s PSO for Christ’s sake, Rania. They want Al Shams dead.’

The stranger was staring at him, hands out of sight below the table, the Kalashnikov there on the table, loaded and ready.

‘That is ridiculous,’ she said. ‘If he was PSO, why would he be helping us to tell the truth about Al Shams?’ It was the first time he had heard her acknowledge that Al Shams might have a legitimate cause.

Hussein exhaled a stream of smoke that swirled in the lamplight. ‘Listen to her, Clay. Think. I’ve helped you every step of the way. Without me, you wouldn’t even be here, any of you.’

And then it all became clear. All the questions that had been swirling around in his head for these days and weeks were answered in one remarkably simple equation.

‘Exactly,’ he began, addressing Rania, looking into her eyes. ‘It’s because of him we’re here. He tracks me down after I escaped from that hell hole, after somehow rescuing my notebook and passport. He miraculously produces an entire lab so I can come here and test the water, then casually informs me that I’m a wanted terrorist. He knows you and I have been talking, knows what we’ve been talking about. We’ve been under surveillance, Rania. He followed me that day, all the way to Sana’a. Then he finds you and brings you here, saying that I asked you to come, promising you an interview. It was an outright lie. Don’t you see, Rania? It’s exactly what Al Shams needs: the science explained, data to back it up, a ground-breaking interview with a famous journalist. How could he resist? It’s the perfect set-up. Al Shams has eluded them for years. This way, we lead them right to him. We’ve been played, both of us.

Rania stared at Hussein.

Hussein ran his hand through his hair, fingers as tines, and took a deep breath. ‘Your logic is flawed, Straker. Western, Euclidian logic. It doesn’t apply here. There is more going on than you realise.’

‘Tell us, then. Why are you doing this, Hussein? Why are you helping us?’

‘I told you, back at the hotel.’

‘Yes, the truth. How noble. How about the truth, then? What were you doing in the interrogation room that day, when I was being questioned?’

‘Protecting you.’

‘Protecting me?’

‘Making sure that they didn’t …’ Hussein stumbled, looked at Rania. ‘That they didn’t get carried away.’

‘More bullshit,’ barked Clay. He was getting angry now, frustrated that Rania hadn’t immediately seen what was now palpably obvious to him. ‘That’s all he’s ever given me, Rania. Riddles, obfuscation. Never a straight answer about anything.’ He made eye contact with the stranger and then turned back on Hussein. ‘You say you’re interested in the truth. How about starting right now,
broer
. Tell us the truth.’

Hussein pushed back the bench and stood, a cigarette burning down between his fingers. He looked tired. For a moment, Clay thought he was going to turn and walk back to the Pajero, but he wavered, looking at each of them in turn.

‘What you need to understand,’ he said, stubbing the cigarette out on the saucer he had deployed as an ashtray, now a cleared forest of filter stumps, ‘is that if you’re going to have any hope of leaving this country alive, Straker, you are going to have to do exactly as I tell you. And perhaps you should reflect that just two weeks ago you were not far from here bribing these very people you now claim to support, trying to keep them quiet.’ He looked over at Rania. ‘What you wrote in that story is substantially correct.’

Rania gasped. ‘Clay, is this true?’

Clay shuffled his feet, looked down at his hands. Damn him.

‘Claymore?’ she was staring at him, arms crossed over her chest.

He swallowed. ‘That was before.’

‘Before what?’

‘Before you.’

‘Ask him, Rania,’ said Hussein, pressing his advantage. ‘Ask him how long he has been doing this.’

Rania was glaring at him now. He could feel her reproach crushing him like a dark sea. He took a deep breath. No. He was not going to allow himself to be side-tracked. ‘Look, right now there’s only one question. Are we going to let this guy dupe us into giving Al Shams away? What if I’m right? Can we take that chance? Can we destroy the only hope these people have of fighting this?’

Hussein was backing away from the table now, reaching behind his back. Before the stranger could react, Clay grabbed the AK from the table, whipped it around and trained it on Hussein. The barrel gleamed with fresh oil. He chambered a round and flicked off the safety. ‘OK, Rania. You’ll get your interview,’ he said. ‘And Al Shams will get a deal he can’t refuse: a PSO operative for Abdulkader.’