INCARNATION (31 page)

Farrar looked at him and remembered the words of the oracle she had cast:

‘“Remorse disappears".'

And he put his head in his hands and wondered how long that would take.

Part IV

Kashgar

S
omething felt wrong. It had started with the silence that attended sunset. No call to prayer, no voice raised anywhere in the twilit city to summon men to God. Later, the silence had revealed the sound of engines somewhere in the distance, heavy engines whose rumbling continued late into the night.

‘Tanks,’ David had said. ‘T59s and T69s, and maybe some long-range artillery. They’re circling the city.’

He looked up and caught Nabila’s eyes. He could tell she was frightened. The atmosphere in the house was a mixture of fear and defiance. One group of firebrands was at that very moment planning how to rescue Sheikh Azad from captivity. An informant at the local garrison had told them the old man was being held just outside the city at a military barracks called Kizilkara. Now, they were thinking of ignoring all advice and disregarding the sheikh’s own instructions in order to prove their manhood or their religious commitment. Osman was doing his best to keep them under control.

‘Your father will be all right,' David said. ‘I know Chang Zhangyi. I’ve watched him for years. He can be brutal. But he uses brutality as a means to an end. It isn’t in his interest to hurt your father at the moment, or kill him.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘I told you: he plans to his own advantage. If Chang Zhangyi discovered that being kind to people achieved better results, he’d be the kindest man in the world.’

‘I disagree. Even if it damaged him, Chang Zhangyi would go on being cruel. It’s his nature. You don’t expect a cat to be kind to mice.’

'That’s not the point. Chang Zhangyi could kill your father in order to be rid of him, but he knows that would only turn the rage over Urumchi into something beyond all reason. I think he believes that, as long as he holds your father hostage, it gives him some sort of power over the population. And I personally think he’s right.’

They were sitting in a room on the second floor, next door to Nabila’s mother’s room. The old woman was resting at last, lulled to sleep by a concoction made by Nabila, who had brought a supply of herbs back to the house. Every now and then, Nabila would pop into her mother’s bedroom to check how she was. David, as an outsider, could not meet any of the female members of the family except Nabila.

In one corner of their room sat Asiyeh, a plump Hui Muslim from Gansu. Now in her mid-fifties, she had arrived in Kashgar during the Cultural Revolution and stayed on as a seamstress in Sheikh Azad’s household. She had never married, partly because she was as ugly as sin, and partly because men gave her a nasty feeling. ‘I get a horrible feeling if one comes close,’ she used to say. ‘Very nasty. God’s hand slipped when he made men.’ Osman had planted her in the room to act as a chaperone. While David and Nabila talked, she sewed elaborate embroideries on silk. She never missed a stitch. and she never missed a movement of the couple she’d been set to watch.

They were sitting facing one another across a long table on which Nabila’s map had been spread. She would read out results from her records, and watch as David marked them carefully on the landscape.

‘I’m afraid of Chang Zhangyi,’ she said. She looked down at the map, then up at David and across at Asiyeh. ‘I had a sister,’ she went on. ‘Her name was Rabbia, she was sixteen years old. I was very close to her. One day, when I was at university, Chang Zhangyi’s men came here. They took my father to prison, and they took my sister to a place they call Hei Juyuan. Do you know of it?’

He nodded. He knew it only too well.

‘I don’t know exactly what happened there,’ she said. ‘But I have been told that Chang Zhangyi raped my sister. She was very beautiful.’

She saw Asiyeh watching her closely, on the verge of speaking.

‘Some say he fell in love with her, some that it was simple lust. He had sex with her many times.’

‘Miss Nabila, you should not talk about such things.’ To Asiyeh, talking about sex in front of men was almost as bad as doing it.

‘Not now, Asiyeh. Dr Osmanop is a medical doctor. He understands such delicate matters.’

A surly look was her only reply.

‘This took place over a week or two. He would have her taken to a comfortable bed each evening. He would rape her, then he would have her sent back to her cell to lie on a heap of straw until it was time for him to make use of her again. One of the guards who came on duty in the second week was a secret Muslim. He kept his conversion to himself in order to infiltrate Chang Zhangyi’s headquarters. Chang Zhangyi’s treatment of Rabbia made him very angry. He smuggled in a knife with her food, a very beautiful knife from the country of the Baoan. It was his intention that she should use the knife on Chang Zhangyi when he next came for her. Instead, she used it on herself. She must have stabbed herself twenty or thirty times before she found the fatal spot.’

'I’m sorry, very sorry.’

‘Yes. She was a lovely sister. My father loved her more than me, I think. Everyone loved Rabbia.’

They sat in silence for a long time. The sound of tanks came across the darkness with such clarity that they thought at times they must have entered the city and started along its alleyways.

‘Let’s go on,’ said Nabila. ‘I want to finish this.’

It took only a few minutes more, and the calculations were finished.

‘It coincides with part of my original estimate,’ said David. ‘Look, this line meets mine at several points. The problem is, we’re still looking at a stretch some fifty miles long, probably longer. In the desert, that’s a long distance.’

‘What do you plan to do?’

He looked across at Asiyeh.

‘Can we go somewhere else?’ he asked. ‘I don’t want to talk about this in front of her.’

‘She has to stay with us, you know that.’

‘Let’s go down to the courtyard. There are guards out there, and Asiyeh can watch us from up here, over the rail.’

Asiyeh gave a grudging acceptance, as long as they kept within sight. It was hard not to. They strolled back and forth, breathing in the scented night air, listening to the small sounds of the household as it made ready for sleep.

‘I have to get out of Kashgar, Nabila. I have to get to a suitable point at which to enter the Taklamakan, find a guide, some food and equipment. If I can locate the centre, I can get word back to England to send in a raiding party to sort it out.’

‘How can you do that?’

‘I’ve got an Ultralite satellite communications set in one of my cases. If all else fails, I can get out of the desert again and use something more conventional.’

‘And if you can’t get out of the desert?’

He hesitated. High above their heads, an angry bird scolded its mate.

‘A lot of people will die,’ he said.

‘Have you ever been in the Taklamakan?’

He shook his head.

‘Ever ridden a camel?’

‘Once when I was twelve, at Whipsnade Zoo.’

‘Do you know how much water you will need, how much food, where to find water for the camels?’

‘I was hoping the guide would tell me that.’

She looked at him softly. There was moonlight in her eyes, and moonlight on her cheeks.

‘And if you lost your guide? What would you do then?’

‘Make my way as best I could.’

She shook her head.

‘You would die. The Taklamakan is the desert of death. Remember what its name means in Uighur: “You go in, but you don’t come out”. The old people didn’t call it that for nothing. There are dunes in there over one thousand feet in height. Whole ranges of them, mountains of sand. It is the worst desert in the world, and you will be going into the harshest part of it. If you lose your way, you will die. If you lose too much water, you will die. If your camels die, you will die. It is unforgiving. Hedin barely escaped with his life, and he went in no distance at all. Almost all his companions died.’

He wanted to hold her, reassure her that he knew what he was doing. But to touch her would be fatal to both of them.

‘I have to go,’ he said. ‘What’s there has to be found on the ground, not by a satellite or a plane. There’s no one else to do it, I have no choice.’

‘I realize that,’ she said. ‘But you must be fully aware of what you face. You’ll need a companion.’

‘A companion?’

‘I’m coming with you,’ she said. ‘I’ve been riding camels since the age of five. And they weren’t in a zoo.’

The Rose Clinic, London

I
t was early evening when she turned up, a little bedraggled, about half an hour after the last dinner trays had been cleared away. It had been raining hard outside, but the heat remained in the air, making the atmosphere humid and oppressive. She was angry, and he could see she’d been crying.

He took her into his office, wondering if he had the courage to suggest she might benefit from a short stay on the premises. An irrepressible thought grinned at him like a monkey behind bars, that he could offer her a package deal for mother and daughter.

He closed the door and smiled his thinnest smile.

‘Mrs Laing. Always a pleasure to see you. And what can I do for you?’

He thought he sounded too much like an unctuous shopkeeper showing his wares, or, God forbid, an undertaker.

‘A little sherry, Doctor? Shall we?’

Elizabeth had barely touched alcohol all day. She’d woken with a blinding hangover, spent the rest of the morning drinking prairie oysters and waiting for Anthony, downed a couple of Prozac, which she got from her dear friend Frances, taken delivery of the Merc from some dreadful adolescent who’d scowled when she handed him five pounds and then hared off to the nearest Tube station on God knows what unspeakable enterprise.

Laurence had telephoned soon after that to remind her about lunch, which had been with a ghastly little couple called Price-Enright, newly returned from Seattle, and awfully wrapped up in Feng Shui and "psychic harmonies", neither of which they had the slightest clue about. Their dog, a monstrous pug with bandy legs and an impossibly large penis, was sick under the table just when the caviare and blinis were being served.

Then there’d been a "chat" with Laurence in the round library, during which she’d agreed to turn up at the office in two days’ time - at nine in the morning, for heaven’s sake!

She’d expected Anthony to be there when she got home, but the moment she slipped her key in the lock, she knew the house was still empty. It had been a great temptation to run back to the bottle, but she had other thoughts to occupy her. She went to bed for a couple of hours, cried herself silly at first, and then slept till six.

She’d been woken by the sound of the front door closing. She felt rather groggy, something she put down to the Prozac. It took her a few minutes to orientate herself, then she called out.

‘Anthony? Is that you? I’m in the bedroom. Where the hell have you been?’

He didn’t come in straight away. She waited, straightening herself in the dressing-table mirror.

‘Anthony, what the fuck are you doing? I’m in here.’

She didn’t yet know whether to be angry with him, or understanding. She couldn’t throw him out, it was his flat, and she daren’t antagonize him too much, or he might sling her out instead. He still didn’t come.

So she went to him.

He was sitting at the kitchen table with his head in his hands, mumbling to himself. She’d never seen him like this before.

‘It’s not like you to knock them back so hard, Anthony. She must have been something, eh? Must have been a knockout. Or was there more than one? You’ve been gone long enough to shag every tart from here to King’s Cross silly as a drunk rat. Just amazed you’ve got the stamina, that’s all.’

She sat down opposite him, and he raised his head, and she wished she hadn’t said a word. She’d never seen a look on a man’s face like that before, composed of so much grief and despair. He’d been crying. Something was very wrong.

‘Darling, I didn’t realize,’ she started. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing’s wrong. There’s no use asking questions. I’ll be all right in a while if you leave me.’

‘Is it something to do with work?’

‘Work? Yes, in a way. I brought a present back for you, Lizzie. It’s in the hall.’

It was not like him to bring home presents. Did that indicate a guilty conscience? Or growing fondness? David had always brought her little presents back after work.

‘I don’t need presents, Anthony. I just want to know you’re all right.’

‘How I am is my business. Now, please, leave me alone. I’m going to bed early anyway.’

Stung, she got to her feet.

‘I may be going out myself,’ she said. ‘On personal business. Don’t wait up.’

She went to the bedroom and dressed. The rain had already started, but she planned to take the car. The keys were in the bowl again. She went out without even saying goodbye to Anthony.

On the way, she paused in the hall. There was a box on the Chinese table. No Harvey Nick’s or Harrods bag in sight. Just a plain red box. She lifted the top. Inside was a doll on a wooden stand, a Chinese doll dressed in a coral dress and holding a fan. When Elizabeth stood it up, she noticed that a small plastic lever jutted out from the base. She pushed the lever to ‘on’, and the doll began to dance, moving the fan from side to side, raising and lowering her other arm, and twisting her slim body. It was a gimcrack thing, the sort of souvenir knick-knack you might find in the cheap shops in Hong Kong, or in some of the supermarkets near Soho.

She left it on the table. As she opened the door, the doll halted and bowed. As it straightened, a squeaky voice came from a speaker in the base. ‘My name is Meihua. Nin hao.’

And then it began to move again in its odd, laboured dance.

He poured her a sherry and made to put the bottle away.

‘You too, Doc. Don’t want to drink alone. Only the truly sozzled do that, eh?’

He sighed wearily and poured half a glass for himself.