The Abrupt Physics of Dying (40 page)

‘In that case, copy what you need. I’m going to need those documents back.’

‘Of course. I will have them sent over.’ The Consul stood a moment, hesitated.

‘Your resurrection could cause problems,’ he said. ‘I suggest you keep a very low profile. Stay away from the Press, be discreet. As far as the French government is concerned, Claymore Straker died in Yemen as reported. You are exactly who this passport says you are. I promise you, we will do everything we can to bring Todorov and Parnell to justice. But there are no certainties. We thank you for your courageous efforts. And please do not worry about the costs of your treatment and rehabilitation. That has all been covered. Stay as long as you need. Everything has been arranged with the government of Oman and the local police. You are free to go as soon as you are discharged. We wish you speedy recovery.’

The Consul reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a card, handed it to Clay. ‘Stay in touch,’ he said. ‘We may need you to testify. Goodbye, Monsieur Greene.’ The Consul smoothed his jacket, turned and walked to the door.

‘One more thing,’ said Clay.

The Consul turned, stood with his hand on the door handle.

‘Rania LaTour.’

‘The journalist.’
Journaliste
, with an e, feminine. ‘Yes. It is very sad.’

‘Was she …’

The Consul waited.

‘Did she work for the French government?’

The Consul smoothed the front of his suit. ‘As far as I know, she was a journalist, nothing more. Good night, Monsieur Greene.’

The Accused

The next day broke hot and clear. Clay stood by the window and looked out over the hospital gardens and the small domed mosque to the flat quiet silence of the Arabian Sea. Already, he found that he could manage for hours at a time without the morphine, biting down on the pain, letting it wash through him. He’d surprised the nurse by being able to change his own dressing the first time. The wound looked bad, the skin stretched and pinned, surprising in its asymmetry, its mute anger. But the doctor said he was healing. On the outside, at least.

Clay sat back on the bed, picked up DG’s passport. A scrap of paper fell from between its pages to the bed covers. It was the tear of Marlboro packet that Rania had given him at the airport in Al Mukhalla, all he had left of her. So many times he had come close to ripping it up. But each time he had relented, slipped it back into the passport. Even now the meaning of Rania’s cypher escaped him, not that it mattered, not that it would change a single thing whether he understood it or not.

Clay flipped open the passport to the back page, scanned the numbers scrawled there, ten strings of numbers stacked in a column down the centre of the page, the word dovetail at the bottom of the list. Not now, Hussein had said. Clay had committed the numbers to memory when he’d first seen them, and ever since they’d rolled around in his subconscious, pebbles in the surf, scattering and aggregating with the ebb and flow of his dreaming. The first four numbers each contained twenty digits, no common patterns except for a nine
in the penultimate position. Credit-card numbers perhaps – sixteen digits plus four expiry. The fifth and sixth strings had eleven digits. What had struck him almost immediately was that both began with 61, the international country code telephone prefix for Australia. The last four numbers had no common pattern. He pushed himself up and pressed the call button.

A few moments later Afia appeared in the doorway. ‘Yes, Mister Clay?’

‘May I use a telephone, please, Miss Afia?’

She tsked. ‘There is no public phone in the hospital. There was one, but the telephone company took it away a few months ago and has not replaced it.’

‘What about the hospital’s phones, Afia? I can pay.’

‘We are not supposed to…’ She stopped short, looked down at her hands.

‘Please, Afia. It’s important.’

Afia looked over her shoulder. ‘Come with me,’ she said.

She led him down the corridor to a small office, and closed the door behind them. There was a table with an in-tray, a phone, stacks of papers. A window letting out onto the garden. A glass medicine cabinet against one wall, with bandages, boxes of syringes, phials. A door led off to a medical storage room. ‘My office, Mister Clay.’

‘If there’s any trouble, I’ll say I snuck in here on my own.’

That smile again, big like Africa. ‘Dial nine,’ she said. ‘And please record your calls for me. The hospital will make me pay.’

Clay bent down, kissed her on the cheek. Her skin was as smooth and soft as it looked. ‘Thank you so much, Afia.’

She lowered her eyes. Her cheeks were flushed. She looked up at him a brief moment and then turned and closed the door after her.

Clay sat at the desk, tucked a hundred-dollar bill under the pencil holder, picked up the handset, and wedged it between his chin and shoulder. He punched in the international access code, tried the first number. A failure tone, a recorded message in Arabic. Second string. Same result. Of course. Not phone numbers. He tried the first 61
number, punched in the digits, waited as the phone system digested the information. A ring tone. Connection. A recorded voice: if you wish to leave a message for Declan Greene, please speak after the tone. Clay put down the receiver, heart rate accelerating.

Another of the 61 numbers was that of a property manager, Mr Wheaton, who had a slight lisp and a strong Aussie accent. Yes, Mr Wheaton had said over a line so clear he might have been standing in the same room, the Cottesloe apartment was being well looked after and would be ready when he returned from overseas. He could stop by and get the key when convenient. Clay put down the phone, breathless. He reached for the hospital directory, flipped to the international country code pages, ran his finger down the list, comparing the digits. The eighth string began with 1345: the Cayman Islands. He punched in the number, waited.

‘Standard Bank, how may I help you?’

A bank. It made sense. ‘Account information, please.’

‘For an existing account?’

‘Yes.’

‘Name?’

‘Declan W. Greene.’

‘The account number, please?’

Clay took a deep breath, read out the string immediately below the telephone number.

‘One moment, please.’ Muzak.

Clay scanned the figures.

The phone crackled. ‘This is Mister Prendeville, branch manager. We have been expecting to hear from you Mister Greene. May I ask you a few security questions?’

Clay shifted in his seat. ‘Of course.’

Date of birth, mother’s maiden name. Clay fumbled with the passport, provided the answers.

‘Can you provide me with the code word, please?’

There it was, at the bottom of the list, in the same slanted hand. ‘Dovetail,’ he said. Clay sat open-mouthed as the banker duly
informed him that the current balance in his account was 485,000 US dollars. There was also, Mr Prendeville continued, a term deposit of 200,000 sterling rolling over annually at five and a quarter percent, and another in Swiss francs, half a million, no less, at four and half percent. All tax free, all belonging to Declan Greene. Him. Hussein’s pension plan, accessible by signed and faxed wire transfer instruction, complete with codeword, sent to the personal attention of Mister Prendeville, anytime, anywhere.

Declan W. Greene, it turned out, was a pretty good person to be.

Later that afternoon, with Afia’s help, Clay prepared two handwritten international bank wire transfer instructions. The first was to the Rosedale Long-term Care Clinic in Johannesburg, covering all arrears for the account of Mister Eben Barstow, and providing sufficient funds to cover all costs for his care for the next three years. The second was in favour of Capricorn Consulting, Nicosia, Cyprus, in an amount that cleared all existing debt and provided a small capital float. He signed both documents with his new signature, the one on the photo page of DG’s passport, and faxed them to the Cayman Islands using Afia’s machine. For Abdulkader’s widow and children, for Mohamed’s mother, for whoever Rania had, he could do nothing. Not yet.

The late afternoon and evening were hard. The pain came in waves, knocking him over, sending him spinning. Clay lay in bed and looked out at the deep, fading blue of the Arabian Sea, the way it stretched away from the claws of a crazed twisting coastline all the way to the black dream of the horizon. Afia upped his morphine, murmured something to him, and checked the antibiotics. Later, the doctor came, removed the dressing, examined the wound, and stood whispering with Afia. There was still some infection, the doctor said. Rest. Afia gave him something to sleep, smiling as she did it. Smiling, as she pushed a syringe of etomidate into his IV.

Sometime later, Clay awoke with a start. It was dark, save for the dull-yellow wash of the little night light near the door. Silent, save for the crashing of the waves along the coast. He looked at the
bedside clock. Red numbers glowed: 12:47. He filled his lungs with dark air. His arm was throbbing. There was a knock at the door. Clay turned. The door opened slowly. A dark figure appeared, a man silhouetted against the dim light of the corridor. Clay jolted up in his bed. The man looked back over his shoulder, stepped inside and closed the door behind him, approached the bed.

It was the Deputy Consul from the French Embassy. He was dressed as before in a dark suit and tie. Under his arm was a bag of some sort. He strode to the bed, sat on the chair. Sweat shone at his temples, yellow in the pale light. He was breathing hard. He looked over his shoulder, ran a finger under his collar.

‘I don’t have long, Monsieur Straker.’

Clay said nothing, waited.

‘The documents, your documents …’ He paused, glanced over his shoulder again, as if he was expecting someone to appear in the doorway. ‘They have been taken from my office.’

Clay sat a moment, not quite believing what he’d just heard. ‘What do you mean,
taken
?’

The Consul ran his hand through his hair. ‘I left them locked in my desk drawer. At first I thought perhaps I had misplaced them. But I clearly remember putting them there. Someone came into my office last night and took them.’

‘A break-in?’

‘No.’

‘Then how?’

‘Your documents were …’ the consul hesitated, ran his fingers across his chin with a rasping sound, like paper tearing. ‘It appears they have been confiscated.’

‘Confiscated? By whom?’

‘I don’t know.’

Clay processed this for a moment, stared into the Consul’s pale eyes. ‘Without those documents there is no case against Parnell, against Todorov, any of them.’

The Consul swallowed, paused.

‘Yes, I know. Once I found they were missing, I made enquiries. I have spoken to the Ambassador himself.’

‘And?’

‘He told me not to pursue the matter.’ The Consul frowned. ‘Apparently your case has been taken over by a special department. It is beyond my security level. I have received instructions from the Ambassador to keep you here. A team is on the way here from France to interrogate you.’

‘Interrogate?’

‘It is most irregular. I can only assume …’

‘That I am the accused.’

The Consul nodded. ‘You are a wanted terrorist.’

Clay paused, gave himself four seconds, breathed. ‘I came to you. You’ve seen the evidence. You know I’m not a terrorist.’

The Consul raised his hands to his head, exhaled. His lip twitched. ‘I telephoned Paris this morning. I spoke to a senior colleague, someone I trust. He called me back a few moments ago.’ The Consul paused, glanced over his shoulder again.

Clay waited, watched another bead of sweat track down the Consul’s neck. The Consul held out the duffel bag, placed it in Clay’s lap. ‘You are in danger, Monsieur Straker.’

Clay opened the bag. Inside, a pair of shoes, a navy-blue suit, white-collared shirt, an airline ticket, an unmarked envelope. He looked up at the Consul.

‘You were gone before I got here,’ said the Consul in a whisper. ‘The hospital staff didn’t see you leave.’

Clay opened the ticket docket. Air France, first class to Paris.

‘They don’t know about Declan Greene. I didn’t tell them.’

Clay nodded, looked into the Consul’s eyes. ‘How long have I got?’

‘About an hour.’

Very Soon Dead

As soon as the Consul was gone, Clay got out of bed and disconnected the IV. He stripped off his hospital gown, pulled on the boxer shorts and the navy-blue trousers, hopping barefoot on the concrete floor. He sat in the chair, pulled a pair of socks from the duffel bag, slipped them on his feet. Boots next. Clay fumbled one-handed with the laces, a seemingly simple task rendered impossibly slow. Finally he stood, half-dressed. He figured at least ten minutes had gone since the Consul’s departure. He grabbed the white shirt from the bag. It was freshly ironed – hotel laundry folded and pinned. He pulled out the baubled pins with his lips, spat them to the floor, ripped the cardboard support from the collar with his teeth, shook out the shirt, started to thread his damaged arm into a sleeve. His arm jammed painfully into the constriction. The bandage was too wide. The harder he pushed the more it hurt. He grabbed one side of the cuff in his teeth, the other in his right hand and ripped the sleeve lengthways. In the hospital quiet the tear sounded like a scream, a dry rupture in the fabric of the night. But his arm was through. Clay buttoned the shirt, slipped on the jacket – a little tight around the shoulders but otherwise not bad – and slid the airline ticket, the unmarked envelope and the money into his inside breast pocket. Outside, the lights of Oman strobed in the swaying palms, flashed across the wind-swept sea.

The Consul’s surprise late-night visit played itself out again in his mind. There were clearly some pretty important people who had no intention of letting the truth about what had happened in
Yemen come out. People with influence inside the French government. People with enough power to co-opt an Ambassador, dispatch a ‘special team’ from Paris. And, if they wanted the evidence gone, it was pretty likely they wanted the witnesses gone, too. The Consul had taken a career-ending gamble in warning him, had given him a way out and just enough time. The guy was smart, gutsy. With the money Clay had now, Hussein’s money, with his new identity apparently still safe, he could disappear for good, leave it all behind.

Clay looked down at his bandaged arm. The possibilities flashed through his mind, options cascading, scenarios playing out. Why would the French government, so publically committed to justice in the case of Thierry Champard, choose to sequester the very evidence needed to achieve that goal? And why had the Consul felt compelled to disobey his own ambassador and provide Clay with means of escape? Something was terribly, fundamentally wrong. He knew this viscerally, as a truth, as you know right and wrong from the earliest age, and keep knowing it, even when it is blasted down into the deepest recesses of your being.

There was only one course he could take. As Rania had said all that time ago outside the hotel in Aden, he was locked in now, committed.

Clay stood, grabbed the empty duffel bag, walked quickly to the doorway. He was going to find out who was coming for him, and why. And he was going to do it on his terms.

The corridor was empty, the lights dimmed for night. He paced down the hall, found Afia’s office. The door was unlocked, the office dark, empty. Clay closed the door behind him, switched on the light, walked into the storeroom, scanned the shelves. Almost immediately he found what he was looking for. A box of sterilised green hospital scrubs. He found the biggest coveralls he could find, and threaded them over his suit. A bit short in the arms and the legs, but it would do. He grabbed a second pair of coveralls from the box and draped them over his shoulder. Nearby he found another box containing surgical masks and elasticized caps, selected one of
each, stuffed them into the oversized coverall pocket. In the corner, a pail, a mop with a sturdy wooden handle. He found a full bottle of commercial strength bleach, placed it in the pail, put the mop under his arm, carried the pail into the office, set them on the floor beside the door. From the glass cabinet he took two large syringes in their sterile packaging, four big compresses, bandages, a tube of the antiseptic that Afia was using on his wound, a couple of rolls of medical tape, a box of painkillers, and dumped them into the duffel bag. It took him longer to find the anaesthetic, two big phials of fentanyl, a hundred times more potent than morphine, fast-acting. Those, too, went into the bag.

Clay closed the cabinet, grabbed the chair from Afia’s desk and placed it at the office door. He cracked open the door, checked the corridor. Deserted, still. Then he wedged the door open with the mop end, turned out the light, sat in the chair. He had a clear line of sight to his room.

Clay estimated that about fifteen minutes had passed since the Consul’s departure. Whoever was coming for him could be here at any moment. He opened the bleach, poured the contents into the bucket, gagged on the chlorine vapours as the heavy liquid glugged in the darkness. Quickly he covered the pail with the extra scrubs to keep the vapours down. Soon the air cleared. He took a few deep breaths, grabbed one of the syringes, tore open the packet with his teeth. He placed a phial of fentanyl between his knees, pushed the needle into the cap, pinched the plunger casing between his fingers and pulled up the plunger with his teeth, drawing in the liquid. In a few minutes he had two charged syringes ready to go. Big doses. With the plastic caps covering the needles, he gently lowered the syringes into the outside pocket of his coveralls. Then he pulled the cap over his head and strapped on the surgical mask. He was ready.

Time passed. An orderly pushed a trolley down the corridor past Afia’s office, his back to Clay. The trolley wheels squeaked as he turned and disappeared into the north wing. Clay shifted in the chair, the pain in his arm awakening now, stirring. And with the
pain came doubts, battalions of them, regiments. The Consul had given him a head start. Now that was gone. An hour, the Consul had said, but how could he have been sure? It could be a lot more. The flight for Paris left at 5:00. Afia would be back on shift at four. He didn’t want to mix her up in this. That gave him another two and a half hours at most. He’d have to leave for the airport by 3:30 at the latest, and hope he could find a taxi.

The hospital was quiet, as if all the patients had died in their sleep and now lay cold and open-mouthed in their beds, the staff yet to find them, yet to realise. Whoever was coming for him, this would be the time.

Clay reached into the breast pocket of his suit, withdrew the envelope the Consul had given him. Inside were two folded newspaper clippings. He slipped one from the envelope, and unfolded it. There it was, in the dim wedge of corridor light, in an article dated 14th June, yesterday: Finnish engineer Nils Karila, 39, shot dead in Yemen by South African national Claymore Straker, a member of an Ansar Al-Sharia terrorist cell. Straker, a suspect in the murders of at least twelve other soldiers and oil workers, was killed by government forces as he was trying to flee across the Omani border, along with several other terrorists.

Clay looked up, scanned the corridor. Jesus Christ. They must have shot Nils for helping him escape. He remembered the photograph in Karila’s office, the kids in the snow, their smiling faces, and swallowed down a gasp. He thought of Abdulkader, of the body of the dead soldier lying in the back of the Land Cruiser as they fled to the border, its head thudding on the floor with each bump in the road, miles and miles of it, him unable to stop it, to help the boy rest, until the sound of it had coalesced with his own dreams, the beating of his heart. It was with him now still, that ragged whunk of soft bone and hair on car-rug and particle board, the bloody headless torso lying in the sand, Clay’s passport in the torn chest pocket. Jesus, he breathed.

He replaced the clipping in the envelope and waited.

The same orderly squeaked past with his trolley, coming back towards Clay this time, past his room. Clay pushed the door to with his foot, the mop head compressing until the gap was less than an inch. The orderly passed by without a glance. Clay released the pressure and the door cracked open a bit more. Fifty minutes now, maybe a bit more since the Consul’s visit. The pain in his arm was back, insistent, demanding. He was about to reach down and grab a box of painkillers from the duffel bag when a lone figure appeared at the end of the corridor.

Clay filled the deepest part of his lungs, exhaled slowly. The man was powerfully built, medium height. He wore a dark leather jacket, jeans, black military-style boots. Everything about the guy – the number-two cut, the gaunt over-trained face – said military. French intelligence? SF? Whoever he was, he was striding down the corridor now, his gait long, confident. He stopped outside Clay’s room, reached to the small of his back, tugged down the hem of his jacket, glanced both ways, turned the handle and disappeared inside.

Clay jumped to his feet, jammed the mop handle under his left arm, flicked the scrubs off the top of the bucket and picked the bucket up by the handle. He stepped out into the corridor. Afia’s office door clicked shut behind him. In a moment he was at his door. His heart was racing. The pain in his arm was gone, obliterated by adrenaline. He breathed deep and opened the door.

The man was standing beside the bed, looking down at the twisted empty bed sheets, the disconnected IV line hanging from his hand. He turned and faced Clay. His expression betrayed nothing. He just stood there looking at Clay.

‘What are you doing here?’ Clay muttered in Arabic, deepening his voice.

The man let the IV line drop, took a step away from the bed. His hands were by his sides. He said nothing.

Clay lowered his head, shuffled forward a few paces. Three metres separated them, less. ‘No visitors now,’ Clay said, in Arabic again.

The man looked over to the window, the door to the balcony, back at Clay. He pointed at the bed. ‘Where he is?’ the man said in English. His voice was cigarette rough, heavily accented.

Clay hunched his shoulders. ‘No visitors now,’ he said in English, shuffled a few steps closer. ‘You go.’

The man raised his forearm, glanced at his watch. ‘Where this man?’ he said, pointing at the bed again.
Vhere zees man?
Not French. The accent was Slavic, Russian perhaps.

Clay paused, looked back at the door, faced the man. ‘Toilet,’ he said in Arabic.

The man seemed to understand. He started towards Clay, towards the door. Clay bent as if to put the bucket on the floor, reached his bandaged arm under it, cradled it close to his body, watched the man’s boots step closer. A pace away now.

Clay burst from his crouch, flinging the contents of the bucket into the man’s face. The man threw up his arms, too late to prevent the concentrated bleach from reaching his face and eyes. He screamed in pain, stumbled back, tearing at his eyes. Clay grabbed the mop handle in his right hand and drove its butt-end hard into the man’s throat. The man gasped and collapsed to his knees, fumbling behind his back. Clay lined him up and let go a withering kick to the head, toppling him to the ground. Still conscious, blinded, gasping for breath, the man squirmed on the floor, pulled out a silenced handgun.

Clay jumped left just before the man fired. The bullet smashed into the concrete wall behind him. The man adjusted left on sound, fired again, missing Clay by an inch, no more. Clay moved right as the man fired again, further left this time, missing completely. The round clattered into the metal frame of the bed. Clay circled right, getting closer. The man heard him, swivelled on his back, tracking the sound. He fired blind again, four quick shots that smashed into the wall at close range. Shattered masonry filled the air. Clay whipped out another kick that caught the man’s arm, sent the handgun flying from his hand and spinning across the bleach-slick
floor. The man dove after the gun, arms sweeping desperately across the floor, searching. But he’d misjudged the direction. The handgun lay two metres away to his left.

Clay stepped past him, picked up the gun, pointed it at the man. A Russian Makarov PMM nine millimetre. Eight round magazine. One round left.

Outside in the hall, commotion. A door opening and closing, voices, footsteps.

Clay pulled off his mask, the cap, threw them to the ground. ‘On your knees,’ said Clay in English.

The man was in pain. Tears streamed from his eyes. The skin of his face was seared bright pink. The man pushed himself up, sat on the floor.

‘Who sent you?’ hissed Clay.

The man said nothing. His face was twitching.

‘Tell me what I want to know and I’ll get you help. Save your eyes.’

The man struggled to his knees.

‘Who are you?’

No answer.

‘Who are you?’

The man pushed his knuckles into his eye sockets. ‘Not important,’ he breathed.

Shouting now from the corridor, lights coming up.

Clay pushed the silencer into the man’s head, made him feel it. ‘Important to me. Tell me or I’ll give you something they can’t fix.’

‘Fuck you. You dead man. You and your bitch.’

Clay started. ‘What did you say?’

‘We know you here, asshole. We find her very soon. Both. Dead.’

Clay staggered back, stared down at the blinded stranger swaying on his knees. He stood a moment, not quite comprehending what he’d heard. He dropped the Makarov into his pocket, reached into the other, grabbed one of the syringes, pulled off the cap, and plunged the needle into the man’s neck.