‘I mean in yourself. You, personally?’
‘Of course,’ said Norbert, defensively.
Alen looked at him over the top of his sunglasses. ‘You are stronger than Emir, you know that. If he has doubts closer to the time…’
‘I can handle Emir.’
Alen patted him on the back. ‘Of course you can. But you must watch him. As I must watch Anna.’
‘We’re all willing to do what we have to do,’ said Norbert.
Alen trusted Norbert. He had been trained by the best – by the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, by al-Qaeda in Pakistan. He was a late convert to Islam but he was physically and mentally prepared to die for Allah. As was Alen. Norbert would die first, with Emir. Their bomb would kill dozens and start a panic. Tourists would run away from the carnage, towards the sea, and that was when Alen and Anna would die, and with them hundreds of infidels.
A woman shouted somewhere behind them. Both men stopped. There were more shouts. Men and women. Thai, English and German voices. They turned.
A wave was heading towards the shore, a big one, bigger than any Alen had ever seen before. The shouts turned to screams. The Thais dropped their fish and ran across the wet sand. Most of the tourists stood where they were, frozen in terror, their video cameras still trained on the approaching wave.
‘Run!’ yelled Alen, but Norbert was already sprinting across the sand, arms pumping furiously.
Alen could hear the wave now, a low, rumbling roar. The screams behind him intensified, then the roar drowned them and the water slammed into him. His legs were swept from under him and he fell backwards, spluttering salty water. He flailed, felt sand beneath his feet and kicked himself upright. He saw Norbert, caught in the surf, gasping for breath. Then Alen disappeared under the water again. He slammed into the sand and the impact forced the air out of his lungs. He tried to claw his way to the surface but the strength had gone from his arms. He took an involuntary breath and his lungs filled with water. His eyes were stinging and there was a burning pain in his chest. He broke through into the air again, coughing and spitting. He spun round in the raging torrent and saw Norbert slam into the trunk of a palm tree, like a broken doll, then disappear under the water.
Alen fought to hold his breath, but then his head banged on a hard surface. It was the road. The Tarmac ripped the skin from his left cheek and his eye popped out of its socket. He screamed and water flooded into his mouth. He burst into the air and saw, first, through his good eye, the clear blue sky, then a car that had been turned on to its side by the force of the water. He tried to kick round the car, but he was moving too fast and his head banged into the rear axle. His neck snapped and he died instantly.
The water ripped through the resort. The bungalows had been built cheaply, with little in the way of foundations and the contractors had scrimped on the concrete. They caved in as if they were made of plasterboard.
Emir died as he reached for the security chain on the door. He’d heard the screams and the roar of the water and wanted to see what was happening. The wave demolished the front wall and the door smashed into him, crushing his nose. He fell backwards and crashed on to the coffee table as the water raced over him. The fall stunned him and the door pinned him to the floor. He drowned, trying to push the door off him.
Anna was in the shower in the main bathroom so she didn’t hear the wave. She felt the bungalow shudder as the water hit, but before she could scream the torrent tore through the walls and the ceiling fell in. A thick teak roof timber slammed against her shoulders and she fell to the tiled floor. The glass shower door shattered and a shard sliced through her neck. Blood swirled round her, diluted by seawater, and she lost consciousness before the water had filled her lungs.
The explosives and detonating circuits were washed away with everything else in the bungalow. Five seconds after the wave had hit, there was nothing left but concrete outlines of where the building had once stood.
It was only a few hundred metres from the car park where he had left the rented Toyota to the international terminal and the Saudi walked at a brisk pace. He was carrying only a thin leather briefcase. It was all he had brought from Phuket. He had burned everything else in a rubber plantation before the eleven-hour drive north to Bangkok. He had taken the Sim card from the mobile phone he had used, and twisted it out of shape, then thrown it on to the fire. He had wiped the mobile phone with a handkerchief, then smashed it to pieces between two rocks. He had thoroughly cleaned the rental car, using a handkerchief to wipe the steering-wheel and door handle after he had got out for the last time. The Saudi was adept at covering his tracks. He had to be: his existence depended on no one suspecting what he was up to. In a world run by Americans, the merest suspicion of terrorist activity meant a one-way trip to a prison cell in Guantanamo Bay.
The Thai girl at the Qantas check-in desk greeted him with a cold smile and a mechanical ‘ Sawasdee ka.’ The Saudi knew that most Thais didn’t like Arabs. It was nothing to do with the problems in the Middle East: it was racism, pure and simple. He enjoyed the confusion on her face as he handed her his British passport. She looked at the photograph, then at his face as if unable to believe that an Arab might be British. Then she examined his Australian visa. The Saudi smiled coldly. The Thais guarded their citizenship jealously and barely a handful of foreigners were granted a Thai passport each year, and only then after meeting strict criteria. The British had no such reservations. It was no longer a person’s race or background that stipulated British citizenship: it was whether or not they had the correct paperwork. And the paperwork was for sale to anyone with enough money or the right connections. Russian asset-strippers, American conmen, Nigerian drug-dealers, Indian fraudsters, Muslim terrorists, the British had issued passports to them all. And they were making no move to stem the tide. It was politically incorrect even to mention that the proportion of foreigners holding British passports was growing, that the country’s cultural identity was becoming so watered down that no one had any idea now of what it meant to be British.
It wasn’t just the British who were committing cultural suicide, the Saudi mused. Most of Europe was following suit. Virtually all of his friends held European passports, and made good use of them. The Saudi had been British since he was a teenager: his father had invested heavily in high-profile companies and institutions, and made significant donations to the major political parties. There had been other payments, too, in cash and in secret, to politicians and bureaucrats who had smoothed the way for the family’s citizenship application. Now the Saudi was British, and always would be. Once granted, British citizenship was almost impossible to lose. And with it came the freedom to travel the world.
The girl handed him his passport and boarding pass, and gave him a wai, her fingertips pressed together beneath her chin. ‘The flight will be boarding soon, sir,’ she said.
The Saudi headed for the gate. The metal detector bleeped as he walked through the security check. A girl in a dark blue suit motioned for him to stand on a small wooden plinth and he waited patiently as she ran a portable detector over his body. It buzzed as it went over his watch and he showed her his twenty-five-thousand-dollar diamond-encrusted watch, enjoying the jealousy that flashed across her face. The detector buzzed again as it passed over his wallet and he handed it to her. There was a thick wad of hundred-dollar bills inside, probably more than a year’s salary for the girl, and all the credit cards were gold or platinum.
The Saudi stepped off the plinth, collected his briefcase and headed for the gate.
He walked by several television screens, all showing CNN. Groups of travellers were huddled in front of them. The Saudi frowned. A headline ran across the bottom of the nearest: HUNDREDS DEAD IN PHUKET . His mind whirled. Had the bomb gone off early? Had his people detonated the device by accident? Or had the police stormed the building, guns blazing? He frowned. There was a map of South East Asia on the screen now.
Another headline appeared: TSUNAMI KILLS THOUSANDS IN INDONESIA.
The frown deepened. A tsunami? His English was fluent but ‘tsunami’ looked like a Japanese word. Then he remembered. A tidal wave caused by an earthquake.
The map disappeared, replaced by two earnest newsreaders: a middle-aged man with blow-dried hair, and a woman ten years younger showing just enough cleavage to suggest that it wasn’t solely her ability with the autocue that had got her the on-camera job. The man explained that a massive earthquake in the Andaman Sea had caused a tidal wave, which had hit beaches in Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia. Thousands had been killed.
The Saudi went to a bank of payphones. He slotted in some coins and called the mobile number of his people in Phuket. A female Thai voice spoke for ten seconds, then repeated the information in accented English. The number was unobtainable.
The Saudi went to another television set and joined the throng of travellers watching the news. Another headline flashed up next to the CNN logo: DEATH TOLL ESTIMATED AT FIFTEEN THOUSAND.
Fifteen thousand? thought the Saudi. He had hoped to kill a few hundred at most, but nature had beaten him to the punch and killed thousands instead, including, probably, his four operatives. But nature would take credit for
