Dead Centre

I’d moved out of the bunker and far enough into the scrub so we wouldn’t be connected with the boat if it was found. Awaale and I were sixty or seventy metres away from the cache, but still close enough to the shore to see anybody coming up the beach towards us.

I took off my burqa and draped it between two spiky bushes to create some shade. I wasn’t talking. My throat was dry. My body needed food and sleep. But all that still had to wait.

Awaale followed my lead. He whipped his burqa off and made a shelter next to mine. I stretched out in the sand. Within seconds my clothes were riddled with thorns and bits of brush. Awaale joined me. His shirt was soon covered in shit as well. He panted for breath as he reached for his cigarettes. The packet was soaked through. He stared at it in disgust and tossed it to one side.

I dug the Solar Monkey out of my day sack, opened the clamlike device to expose the photovoltaic cells and pushed it out into the sunlight. Awaale watched. He was attempting to reconcile himself with having to go without nicotine as well as water. I wiped my eyes, trying to avoid filling them with sand. It was fucking miserable.

‘Check my adaptors. See if you can charge your phone up as well.’

I lobbed him the bag of jacks that had come with the thing. Mottled with sand, my hand looked like I had some kind of skin condition.

‘Awaale, why are so many kids here malformed? They’re everywhere — the lads near yesterday’s dust-up, and now the ones outside the madrasah today. What’s wrong with them?’

‘I will tell you what’s wrong with them, Mr Nick. They are diseased — they have a disease that comes from your world.’ His face clouded. ‘We have no government. Our coastline is unprotected. Most importantly for your people, it is unmonitored.’ He waved towards the beach, to where the surf came crashing onto the sand. ‘It looks like a holiday brochure. But the water is polluted. It has become the dumping ground for your toxic waste. Of course there will be no successful prosecutions of your big companies for this. So our children are born … the way you see them. You, the West, have done that.’

There was a deep sadness in his eyes. But also, for the first time since I’d met him, I saw the rage in his heart.

‘Your factory ships sucked all the fish out of our sea. Your toxic waste killed everything else. So our fishermen became pirates to feed their children. To feed their children who are born like sick goats and die before their time.’

He busied himself finding the jack he was after, allowing his anger to subside.

‘Mr Nick, my job is done now. I’ll wait here for you. I’ll get you back to the airport. But what can you do? You have so little time before your friends are killed …’

I sat up, like he’d just given me the good news with a cattle prod.

He pulled a shoe from his belt and extracted the folded sheet of paper. ‘Tonight, it says, the criminals will be punished. After Maghrib. The Wahhabis — the advocates of Sharia law — they’re very strict.’

He started reading. ‘The Islamic Sharia Court of Merca District confirms that one man will lose his hand for stealing from another man’s house. Two men and two women have committed zina.’

‘Adultery?’

‘Yes. But it’s not like you think. Having sex with someone and not being married to them, that’s adultery to the Wahhabis. All of them will get ramj.’ He hesitated. ‘Do you know what that means, Mr Nick?’

The sweat on my chest and back went cold. I suddenly knew what those spot-lit holes in the ground were all about.

‘I can give it a fucking good guess.’

‘They’ll be stoned to death. They’ll be buried up to the neck, and then stoned.’

‘Tracy and Justin too?’

‘The same. They too have committed zina.’

The film on the memory chip replayed itself on the screen inside my head. ‘They think they have committed adultery …?’

‘She has another man’s child, Mr Nick. The Wahhabis. They’re crazy people.’

‘What happens to the boy? There are only six holes …’

‘He will live at the madrasah. He will become al-Shabab.’

‘What does it say about the other two white guys?’

‘Nothing. Do you know them?’

‘They came to do what I came to do — get the three of them out. But you were right. There’s no negotiating with these fuckers.’

Ant and Dec must have been linked into the same int as Jules had.

‘It gives me no pleasure to be right about that, Mr Nick. What is to be done? The ramj is tonight, after prayers.’

I took a breath; gathered my thoughts. ‘OK. Here’s the deal. You call Erasto. Tell him I need help to free my friends. Tell him I need as many men as he can send.’

He shook his head. ‘No, Mr Nick, it won’t happen. These people, they are not just crazy. They are very bad people. Erasto pays to keep them away. He will not—’

I pointed a finger at him. ‘Tell him I’ll pay him to fight them.’

He still shook his head. ‘No amount of money will persuade him.’

‘Tell him he can have the yacht as well. Fuck it, he can have every yacht out there, if he wants.’

‘Mr Nick, it wouldn’t be worth it to him. It would be war.’

‘So what have you got now? Peace?’

Awaale turned onto his side. ‘I am truly sorry. You’re going to have to do this thing yourself. I will wait here. I will make sure the skiff is ready to take you back, to collect my money. But Erasto will not help. He wouldn’t even listen to me. I am not my father.’

I glanced at the little red light on the Solar Monkey. ‘Well, get him on the phone then. Call your dad.’

‘My father?’

‘He’s got the pull around here, hasn’t he? Get your phone out, for fuck’s sake. Call him.’

I left him to it as I scrambled out of the shade. I didn’t want Awaale to listen in on my next conversation.

26

Frank, as always, answered in two rings.

‘I’ve found them. They’re alive. But there’s no way I can negotiate. If we don’t act now, they’re going to be dead by this evening.’

If Frank’s heart missed a beat, he wasn’t giving any sign of it. Part of me was starting to admire this guy. ‘How much?’

‘Three million, one hundred thousand dollars. In hundreds. I want the one hundred thousand separate from the rest, so when the three million’s handed over, it won’t be spotted.’

‘OK.’

‘I want it at the airport, soon as. Keep that aircraft on standby. It needs to be fuelled up, ready to go.

‘I’m trying to get the clan to help us. If you don’t hear from me by first light tomorrow morning, then I’ve fucked up.’

‘OK.’ He said it like he was agreeing to a pizza delivery.

There was a silence. I’d said all I needed to.

Frank filled it. ‘You’ve seen Stefan, yes?’

‘Yes, Frank. I told you. He’s alive. Get the money to Mog so I can keep him that way.’

‘Is he hurt? Is he ill?’

‘As far as I can see, he’s all right. He was with his mother. She’s looking after him. She’s comforting him. She’s thinking only of him.’