‘The goods are needed earlier than expected. We have a new route and expect the transfer to take place tomorrow,’ Abdul said.
‘What? Tomorrow? We don’t have enough time!’ complained Dirty Harry.
‘Show me,’ said Abdul.
Dirty Harry pointed to the driver and told him to wait by the table as usual. He took Abdul inside. The darkness assaulted their wits, and it took time to acclimatise, not only to the dark, but to the air-conditioning and lack of desert dust. The room was one of two, the other one being upstairs, and it housed various stations, comprising machinery, computer screens and laboratory-style equipment.
‘What more needs doing? We can’t wait,’ Abdul said.
‘There are many delicate procedures that need finalising. The propellers, the landing gear, the motor, the transmitter – they’re all standard and easy to install once the software is downloaded, but that’s the thing, my friend. It takes time to perfect each individual profile.’
‘I know,’ said Abdul, ‘And you have until tomorrow at three o’clock. We need to drive them to Algiers.’
‘Algiers?’
‘Ah, here is the tea. Let’s drink it outside and you can show me your new toys, Dirty Harry.’
Chapter 7
Hakim tossed and turned fitfully, drifting between the conscious and dreaming world. His journey so far had been logged deep inside his brain as a result of his father paying a lot of money to have him instructed in certain skills that he thought he’d never need. At the time, he’d thought his father overprotective, foolish even, but that had all changed as they landed at Paris-Le Bourget Airport yesterday.
The flight had gone without a hitch until they were somewhere over the Mediterranean and Jean-Luc looked jumpy. Hakim only noticed because he usually held the demeanour of a Hollywood bodyguard: slick and in control. He couldn’t pinpoint exactly why now, but he’d sent a message to Amélie by text, as if to assuage his confusion over Jean-Luc’s body language and the palpable shift in atmosphere inside the cabin. The fact that he was even aware of the bodyguard was unsettling to him, because usually he wasn’t. He’d tried to call his girlfriend, but Amélie hadn’t answered. He didn’t know what made him ask her to come to the airport, until it was too late. A hunch, a suspicion, a gut feeling, a flight of fancy? Father always told him never to ignore them.
But, by the time two men had boarded the plane at Paris-Le Bourget – a favourite destination for those who could afford private air travel, all thoughts of Jean-Luc’s odd behaviour had been forgotten once more. It was the busiest private jet terminal in the world, but Hakim had seen it a hundred times and didn’t bother to check the view outside as he got up to leave his leather seat. He’d been working on a thesis due in the following week. His thoughts were of dining at Le Jules Verne, in the Eiffel Tower, with Amélie. He never tired of the view. It was a little kitsch, because of its sentimentality, as the English students said, but everyone knew the English to be snobs of the worst order. The cliché of dining overlooking the city from the monument, in his opinion, was never out of taste, and his father agreed. In fact, that’s probably why he’d chosen it for last night: to remind him of the man who he knew he’d miss so much, as well as to celebrate being with Amélie again. Hakim loved summers in Algiers: the smell of the heat, the cicadas going crazy, the late sun disappearing into the sea, the freedom of his brothers jumping on him in the pool, his mother’s cooking and his labradors. But he also loved Paris.
Until he’d had a gun pointed at him.
He tried to concentrate on those images now as he lapsed between dozing and sentience. He’d been brought to an apartment, up some stairs, and he’d been in this room, on the small sparse bed, ever since, trying to replay everything in his head, just as he’d been taught during capture-and-interrogation training, never thinking that it might ever be useful and cursing his paranoid and overprotective father.
It was the only thing that kept the fear at bay: the what-ifs, the doomsday scenarios and the possibility of his father never finding him. His father, the great Khalil Said al-Rashid ibn Dalmani. A man who, to Hakim, was forever in his study but still found time to fool around with his boys in the pool. Hakim’s younger brothers, Farid and Samir, jumped into his semi-conscious in vivid colour: throwing a ball, bothering the dogs to tumble and catch, whining to their mother about bath time and laying across Hakim’s outstretched body on a vast sofa watching movies in the basement cinema.
Yesterday morning, on their way to drop off his younger brothers at school, his father’s demeanour was odd. After delivering his sons, his father remained silent and Hakim knew this meant that he was troubled. Usually, they would have talked about Paris, art or cars. But yesterday, Khalil was distracted. The journey to the airport had been tense, and Hakim reminded himself of his father’s pinched cheeks, the slight scowl above his brow, and the way he kept peering around. At the time, it had seemed merely the actions of a rich man who was vigilant in an unpredictable city, but now, in his half-dream, his father had looked pained.
Earlier that morning, his father had called him to his study and presented to him information about Amélie: photographs, background checks, family history and notes about her occasional recreational drug use. He’d hung his head in shame, having disappointed his father, but he’d still fought his girlfriend’s corner. But, as it turned out, his father wasn’t angry, just saddened that his son hadn’t shared the
