Olives (17 page)

W
e walked arm in arm
from the bar. I was still in shock as we headed downhill back to my
place, my mind whirling with possibilities and Aisha’s intimate
proximity. I breathed in the heavy richness of her perfume, her
hair brushing my cheek. Her skin was warm and soft in the cold air.
I stopped and she turned to me, her face raised. The first drops of
rain fell, plucking up little explosions of dust in the
gutter.

We
kissed.

We walked on,
giggling and clutching each other but the house was ten minutes
away and the falling rain strengthened. It was too far back to the
bar and get a cab, too far to get home dry. The rain battered down
and we split up to run. Aisha clattered to an unsteady halt,
tottering in her heels. The water rushed down the
street.

‘
Come on,
we’re going to get soaked,’ I shouted at her.

‘
We are
already soaked. How can you get wetter than this?’ she retorted,
pirouetting in the rain and laughing, her face held up to the sky
so the droplets glistened on her cheeks in the streetlight. She
span, dancing to her own rhythm, laughing and beckoning to me. I
grabbed her hand and tried to pull her towards the house. She held
back, her face radiant with laughter. I felt her in my arms and the
rain didn’t matter anymore as I bent to her warm lips and pressed
them against mine, feeling her yield and open to me.

The water
swept down the street in waves, the drumming of the rain was all
around us, pattering on the leaves, hissing on the tarmac, the
street lighting hazy in the downpour. We stood, our eyes locked,
Aisha’s flickering as she tried to read my expression.

Aisha
murmured to me, ‘Come on,
ya
Brit. I’m getting
wet. And I don’t mean in a good way. Take me home.’

She flicked
her hair back over her head. Her mascara was running and blackened
her hands as she brushed the rain from her face. She glared at them
and wiped them on her hips, leaving two black smudges on the denim.
She growled in irritation. ‘Ah, shit.’ She punched my arm. ‘It’s
not funny, you English bastard.’

We reached
home and wrenched our shoes and jackets off. I fetched a towel.
Aisha pulled a mirror out of her bag and gazed at herself in mock
horror. ‘Look at me. I’m like a clown.’

She grabbed
her long hair in a bunch and pulled her hand down it, letting a
little shower of droplets spatter on the kitchen floor. Her clothes
stuck to her, steaming in the heat from the secret Jordanian space
project stove.

‘
Here,’ I
said. ‘Take a shower and throw your clothes out, I’ll dry them
against the stove.’

She laughed
and wagged a finger at me. ‘Me Arab girl,
ya
Brit. Is not
zis easy.’

She put her
hand on my cheek, moved towards me and we were kissing again, long,
sweet warm kisses filling me with a wonderment reflected in Aisha’s
face as my hands slipped into her jacket and the rising beat of our
intimacy become deeper and more exciting, my hands on her hips,
moving up her sides and hers in my hair, drawing me to her as our
tongues danced together.

Aisha broke
away, her finger on my lips. ‘I meant it, Paul. I have to go. Thank
you, a million thank yous for tonight, but I have to go home
now.’

My
frustration must have been smeared across my face because she put
her hand on my cheek and reached up to kiss me again. ‘There’s all
the time in the world, Paul. But not tonight.’

Long after
she had left, her perfume lingering, I stood in the kitchen
reliving the feel of Aisha’s nipple, hard under my sweeping
thumb.

THIRTEEN

Abdullah
Zahlan had arranged my meeting with the Minister the next day, so I
found myself sitting on the leather sofa outside Harb Al Hashemi’s
office, drinking a little gold-rimmed glass of thyme
zaatar
tea as I waited for the big panelled doors to open.
When they did, a little grey-haired man in a blue-grey suit shot
out, a pile of papers clutched in his arm as he paddled a fussy
wave of effusive thanks and
effendi
’s to Al
Hashemi’s crisp, efficient secretary, who ignored him.

‘
You can go
in, now, MrStokes.’

I peered
through the half-open door and saw Harb Al Hashemi sat at his desk.
He looked up and beckoned me.

‘
Good
morning, Minister.’

‘
Paul. Good
to see you again. How’s the magazine going?’

We shook
hands and he gestured to me to sit. He was wearing a sharp grey
suit with a pale silk tie, his cufflinks expensive and his hands
manicured. He was precise in his movements, a man in control who
could afford to be friendly and informal.

We settled
into platitudes for a while before I started recording, taking the
opportunity to confirm everything Zahlan had told me about the
water privatisation by asking oblique questions, which Al Hashemi
answered in his usual frank and forthright manner. He confided in
me more than I had any right to expect, a privilege accorded to a
foreigner removed from the political battles he was fighting
against the reactionary forces resisting the push to
modernise.

We talked for
almost an hour. About the distribution crisis, the fact that only
the area of Amman I lived in actually had piped water, much of the
city fed by a constant stream of little bowsers driving in from
distribution points. We talked about the farms in the countryside
dying because of a lack of water fit for irrigation. About the
Israelis and the water assurances in the peace treaty the
Jordanians believed their neighbours had abrogated. Al Hashemi was
passionate as he described the crisis of rapidly depleting
resources, Jordan’s desperation for a solution and how the
privatisation was intended to revitalise the whole
network.

The interview
concluded, I switched off my recorder. He removed his steel-rimmed
glasses with a sigh and rubbed his eyes.

‘
Thank you,
Minister. I’ve talked to Clive Saunders at Anglo-Jordanian, so
we’ll write it up into a bigger piece looking at the whole water
issue and the solutions being proposed.’

Al Hashemi
sat back at his big, oak desk. ‘The privatisation has taken years
to get this far, Paul. I’ll be glad to have the whole award settled
at the Dead Sea conference. We can get on to other items on the
agenda then. And there are plenty of them.’

‘
Abdullah
Zahlan seemed to think it’s pretty much a done deal
anyway.’

Al Hashemi’s
face darkened, his eyebrows furrowed. He brought his hands
together. ‘That is not the case, Paul. This is an open, transparent
and fair process.’

I dropped my
eyes. I thought I’d gone too far. I looked up to apologise, but Al
Hashemi stared out of the window.

‘
Paul, we’re
going to be fair to the bidders, but the Jerusalem Consortium has
some big innovations to bring to the table, including ways of
recovering water that will benefit both Jordan and our friends in
the West Bank. It’s hard to compare the two bids as apples to
apples. One is visionary and brilliant and one is professional but
doesn’t address our longer term needs.’ He tapped the desk for
emphasis. ‘But these bids will be treated fairly and openly and
honestly by a committee tasked with evaluating them.’

He stood and
so did I, smiling.

‘
Yes,
Minister.’

I met Lynch
the next day. I had gone home after my meeting with the Minister
and written everything down while it was still fresh in my mind. I
recalled Lynch telling me to report verbally, but there was so much
information I felt it best to document all thirty shillings worth:
the confirmation of Al Hashemi’s post and therefore the
privatisation, details of the water bids from Zahlan, the strong
feeling in the Ministry that the Jordanian consortium was
technically so far ahead of the Brits and the fact whatever they
were proposing was about extracting additional water resources and
would not go down well with the Israelis. I had also added Zahlan’s
comment about getting the water back.

If
I thought Lynch would be delighted.
I couldn’t have been more wrong. We sat in his car together, his
hand on the manila envelope I had handed to him.

‘
What’s
this?’

‘
I wrote it
all down.’

He held the
stapled sheaf of paper, his knuckles white. I could see the edges
of the paper trembling. ‘Where is this document held?’

I could hear
the sulkiness in my voice. I couldn’t believe the Irish bastard’s
ingratitude. ‘On my laptop.’

‘
Where is
that?’

‘
At
home.’

‘
Did you
email this anywhere?’

‘
No. It’s
just on my hard disk.’

‘
Did you back
it up?’

‘
No.’

‘
Did you
connect to the Ministry network with this document on your hard
disk?’

‘
No.’

‘
Go back home
now and erase it. Empty the recycle bin. Write files over it.
Defragment the hard disk. This document never existed. You
understand me? You report verbally, you commit nothing in writing.’
He was red-faced. ‘I fucking told you that.’

He turned to
me, holding the wheel to support himself as he did, his bloodshot
eyes unwavering. ‘Do you understand me, Paul? If you get caught
you’re looking at life in an Arab jail and we won’t lift a finger
to help you. We’ll drop you faster than a lead fucking
Zeppelin.’

I was caught
in his glare, dropping my own eyes under the onslaught. ‘Yes, I
understand you.’

He waited
until I looked up, holding my eyes for a long time, his face
impassive, before giving a tight smile. ‘Okay, okay. I’ll read this
and call you if I’ve got any questions.’

Lynch dropped
my report into its envelope and slid it into the door pocket. He
put the car into drive and pulled out of the car park outside the
Abdoun Mall, the place he had chosen for our meeting.

‘
I’ll drop
you at the Intercon, you can get a cab from there.’

Whether that
was field craft or convenience was something I never knew with
Lynch. ‘Fine.’

‘
Your case
comes up for trial this week, doesn’t it?’

I hated
Lynch’s habit of asking questions when he knew the answers. ‘Yes,
you know it does. Tuesday.’

He drove in
silence for a while, stopping at a traffic light and looking out at
the oncoming cars. ‘You and the Dajani girl are an
item.’

For a second
my mind went into freefall as I wondered how the hell he’d known.
Aisha and I had been careful not to let our closeness show in
public – she was worried about Daoud’s possible reaction, a worry I
shared.

I kept my
voice light. ‘No, not really. We just get along.’

‘
Funny, you
should be. She’s a peach.’

‘
I told you,
I’ve got a girlfriend already.’

‘
She left
you.’

I struggled
to conceal my irritation at his casual invasion. ‘Is that
commercial information too?’

He chuckled.
‘Sure, it is. You seen anything of Daoud Dajani?’

‘
No, not
much.’

We’d reached
the Intercontinental Hotel. Lynch stopped the car and looked across
at me, his expression earnest and intense.

‘
I want you
to get me a copy of the Jerusalem Consortium bid for the
privatisation, Paul. Dajani’s bid.’

I froze,
searching Lynch’s face for clues he was joking. He looked straight
back at me.

‘
I thought
you didn’t want James Bond stuff.’

‘
You’ve done
well. You obviously have a talent for this.’

‘
You just
spent twenty minutes slagging me off for it.’

‘
Paper
thinking is a liability in the information age, Paul. You don’t
store sensitive information on unprotected computers. Just remember
that.’

‘
Stealing bid
documents is a really big ask.’

‘
Have a try.
It’s valuable information. There’s a lot riding on it in the long
term.’

‘
Valuable?
You’re bribing me to do it? Is that it, Gerald? Stokes will steal
for money?’

‘
It’s on the
table anyway, Paul. So I’d take it if I were you.’

‘
No. No, I
don’t think so. I don’t mind giving you chickenfeed, but I’m not
going to start stealing documents for you. I’m in enough trouble
already. Thanks all the same.’

I got out of
the car. Lynch called across the roof at me and I turned. His face
was screwed up in fury as he stabbed his finger at me.

‘
You are
being fucking stupid, Paul. You have no choices anymore. Do you
understand me?’ He emphasised his words with stabs. ‘You have no
choices.’

Monday.
Another day at work, another long and pointless phone call with
Robin, who considered email Satan’s spawn and preferred to lock me
up in pointless team building-style pep talks before dumping me
with some new mad scheme his ad sales team had dreamed up. It was
like red sky at morning, a call from Robin. He was being
particularly solicitous so I wasn’t surprised when he told me he
had some nice extra work for me to do. The British Business Group
had contacted TMG and asked about producing a yearbook for British
companies in the Middle East, apparently. A three-year contract.
Robin was, of course, delighted. They had asked specifically that I
edit it and TMG had agreed. Of course, as Robin was so fast to
assure me, because I was their very bestest, cleverest
boy.