Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination (16 page)

_p. 174
Y
ou will take some more wine?” said Feramo. “I have an ’eighty-two Saint-Estèphe which I think will go well with the goat.”

“Perfect.” There was a large potted fig tree conveniently placed beside her. As he turned to select a bottle, she quickly shoved a spoonful of goat from her plate back into the serving dish and emptied her glass into the plant pot.

“. . . and a ’ninety-five Puligny-Montrachet for dessert.”

“My favorite,” she murmured smoothly.

“As I was saying,” he said, pouring the wine before he had even sat down, “it is the separation of the physical and the spiritual which is the source of the problem in the West.”

“Hmm,” said Olivia. “But the thing is, if you have a religious government taking its cues from a deity rather than the democratic process, what’s to stop any crackpot who takes power from saying it’s the will of God that he spend the entire country’s food money on eighteen palaces for himself?”

“Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party was not an example of a religious government.”

“I wasn’t saying it was. I was just plucking an example out of the air. I’m just saying who decides what the will of God is?”

“It is written in the Koran.”

“But the scriptures are open to interpretation. You know, one man’s ‘Thou shalt not kill’ is another man’s eye for an eye. You can’t really think it’s okay to kill in the name of religion.”

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“You are pedantic. The truth does not require sophistry. It is as clear as the rising sun above the desert plain. The failure of Western culture is evident at every moment—in its cities, in its media, in its messages to the world: the arrogance, the stupidity, the violence, the fear, the mindless pursuit of empty materialism, the worship of celebrity. Take the people you and I have witnessed in Los Angeles—lascivious, empty, vain, swarming to feed off promises of wealth and fame like the locust on the sorghum plant.”

“You seem to be enjoying their company.”

“I despise them.”

“Then why do you employ them?”

“Why do I employ them? Ah, Olivia, you are not of their type and so you would not understand.”

“Try me. Why would you want to surround yourself with waitresses and security guards and divers and surfers who all want to be actors if you despise them?”

He leaned forward and ran a finger very slowly down one side of her neck. Her hand tightened on the hatpin.

“You are not of their type. You are not the locust, but the falcon.” He rose to his feet, moving to stand behind her. He started to stroke her hair, which made goose bumps rise on the back of her neck. “You are not of their type, and therefore you must be captured and tamed until you will want only to return to one master. You are not of their type,” he whispered into her neck, “and therefore you are not lascivious.”

Suddenly he wrapped her hair around his fist and jerked back her head. “Are you? Are you open to the advances of another man, the kisses, hidden, in the darkness?”

“Ow, get off,” she said, pulling her head away from him. “What is the matter with the men on this island? You’re all as mad as buckets. We’re in the middle of dinner. Will you please stop being so weird, sit down and tell me what you’re talking about?”

He paused, his hand still on her hair.

“Oh, come on, Pierre, we’re not in a school playground. You
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don’t need to pull my hair to ask me a question. Now come along, sit back on your chair and let’s have our dessert.”

There was another moment’s hesitation. He was prowling around the table like a panther.

“Why did you not come to me as you promised, my little falcon, my
saqr
?”

“Because I’m not a little falcon, I’m a professional journalist. I’m writing about diving off the beaten track. I can’t cover the whole of the Bay Islands by heading straight for the most luxurious hotel.”

“Is it also necessary to check out the local dive instructors?”

“Of course.”

“Actually,” he said icily, “I think you are perfectly aware of whom I speak, Olivia. I am speaking of Morton.”

“Pierre, you do realize that what Western boys do at parties, especially when they’ve had a lot of rum and free cocaine, is try to kiss girls. It isn’t a stoning offense in our countries. And at least I fought him off,” she said, risking a white lie. “How many girls have you tried to kiss since I last saw you?”

Suddenly he smiled, like a small boy who has got his toys back after a tantrum. “You are right, Olivia. Of course. Other men will admire your beauty, but you will return to your master.”

God, he was nuts. “Listen, Pierre. First, I’m a modern girl and I don’t have masters.” She was thinking very fast, working out how to get the conversation back on track. “Second, if two people are going to be together they have to have shared values, and I believe very firmly that killing is wrong. So, if you don’t, we might as well sort it out now.”

“You disappoint me. Like all Westerners you are arrogant enough to entertain only your own naïve and blinkered view. Consider the needs of the Bedouin in the harsh and unforgiving desert lands. The survival of the tribe must take precedence over the life of an individual.”

“Would you support a terrorist attack? I need to know.”

He poured himself another glass of wine. “Who in the world
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would prefer war to peace? But there are times when war becomes a necessity. And in the modern world the rules of engagement have changed.”

“Would you . . .” she began, but clearly he had had enough of this line of conversation.

“Olivia!” he said jovially. “You have hardly eaten at all! You did not like it?”

“I still feel a little ill from the boat ride.”

“But you must eat. You must. It is a great offense.”

“Actually, I would love a little more wine. Shall we open the Puligny-Montrachet?”

That did the trick. Feramo continued to drink and Olivia continued to tip her wine into the potted fig. He remained lucid, his movements impressively coordinated, but his passion and eloquence grew. And always she felt as though he was teetering on the precipice of some violent mood swing. It was all so bafflingly different from his controlled, dignified, public persona. She wondered if she was witnessing the effects of some psychological bruise, some wounded underbelly like her own: an early trauma, the death of a parent, perhaps?

A patchy map of his history emerged. He had studied in France. He made references which suggested the Sorbonne, but he was not specific. He was more expansive about his studies at Grasse on the Côte d’Azur where he had trained as a “nose” in the perfume industry. There had been a long period in Cairo. There was a father whom he seemed to both despise and fear. No further mention of a mother. She found it hard to draw him out on his work as a producer in French cinema. It was like trying to pin down one of the waiter slash producers in the Standard bar about his latest production. There was, clearly, a large amount of money sloshing around in his family and his life, and there had been major globe-trotting: Paris, Saint-Tropez, Monte Carlo, Anguilla, Gstaad.

“Have you ever been to India?” she said. “I’d love to go to the Himalayas, Tibet, Bhutan”—
don’t hesitate
—“Afghanistan. Those
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places seem so untouched and mysterious. Have you ever been up there?”

“Actually, Afghanistan, yes, of course. And it is wild and beautiful and raw and fierce. I should take you there, and we will ride, and you will see the life of a nomad, the life of my childhood and my ancestors.”

“What were you doing there?”

“As a young man I liked to travel, just as you did, Olivia.”

“I’m sure you weren’t traveling just as I did.” She laughed, thinking:
Come on, come on: dish. Were you training in the camps? Were you training for the
OceansApart,
for something else? Now? Soon? Are you trying to make me a part of it?

“Oh, but I was. We lived as poor men in tents. My homeland is the land of the nomad.”

“The Sudan?”

“Arabia. The land of the Bedouin: the gracious, the hospitable, the simple and the spiritual.” He took another large gulp of Montrachet. “The Western man with his lust for progress sees nothing but the future, destroying the world in his blind pursuit of novelty and wealth. My people see that the truth lies in the wisdom of the past, and that wealth lies in the strength of the tribe.” He poured more wine, leaning forward and grasping her hand. “And that is why I must take you there. And, of course, it will be perfect for your diving article.”

“Oh, I couldn’t,” she said. “No. I would have to get the magazine to send me.”

“But it is the finest diving in the world. There are cliffs and drop-offs plunging to seven hundred meters, coral pinnacle formations rising like ancient towers from the ocean floor, caves and tunnels. The visibility is unsurpassed. It is pristine! Pristine! You will not see another diver for the duration of your stay.”

Something in the latest bottle of wine appeared to release the travel writer in Feramo.

“The pinnacle formations arise from great depths, attracting ma
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rine life in unbelievable numbers, including large pelagic species. It is an extraordinary Technicolor experience: sharks, mantas, barracuda, dog-toothed tuna, dog lips, jewfish.”

“So, lots of fish then!” she said brightly.

“And tomorrow we will dive
à deux
.”

Not with your hangover, we won’t.
“And are there nice places to stay?”

“Actually, the majority of the divers stay on the live-aboards. I have several residential boats myself. But you, of course, shall have the full Bedouin experience.”

“That sounds wonderful. But I can only really write about what the readers can do themselves.”

“Let me tell you about Suakin,” he said. “Suakin, the Venice of the Red Sea. A crumbling coral city, the greatest Red Sea port of the sixteenth century.”

After listening to a further twenty minutes of unbroken eulogy, she began to think Feramo’s role in al-Qaeda might be boring his victims to death. She watched his drooping eyelids like a mother watches a child, trying to judge the moment when she could safely transport him to his cot.

“Let’s go back inside,” she whispered, helping him to a low sofa, where he slumped with his chin on his chest. Holding her breath, wondering if she really dared do this, she kicked off her shoes and tiptoed over to the desk and the laptop. She opened it up and pressed a key to see if it was merely sleeping like its owner. Dammit. It was shut down. If she started it up, would it make a sound: a chord or, God forbid, a quack?

Olivia froze as Feramo gave a shuddering sigh and shifted position, rubbing the tip of his tongue against his lips like a lizard. She waited until his breathing steadied again, then decided to go for it. She pressed the start-up button and prepared to cough. There was a slight whirring, then, before she got the cough out, a female voice from the computer said, “Uh-oh.”

Feramo opened his eyes and sat bolt upright. Olivia grabbed a
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bottle of water and hurried over. “Uh-oh,” she said, “uh-oh, you’re going to have a terrible hangover if you don’t drink some water.”

She held the bottle to his lips. He shook his head and pushed it away. “Well, don’t blame me if you have a horrible headache in the morning,” she said, making her way back to the computer. “You should drink a whole liter of water at least and have an aspirin.” She kept up a steady stream of mumsy chatter as she sat down at the computer and checked out the desktop, trying to keep her cool. There was nothing there except icons and applications. She glanced over her shoulder. Feramo was sleeping soundly. She clicked on AOL, then went immediately to “Favorites.”

She clocked the first two:

Hydroweld: for welding in the wet.

Cut-price nose-hair and nail clippers.

“Olivia!” She literally jumped an inch out of the seat. “What are you doing?”

Calm, calm. Remember, he’s had the best part of four bottles of wine.

“I’m trying to check my e-mail,” she said without looking up, still clicking away at the computer. “Is this on a wireless network, or are you meant to plug it into the phone socket?”

“Come away from there.”

“Well, not if you’re just going to be asleep,” she said, trying her best to sound sulky.

“Olivia!” He sounded scary again.

“Oh, okay, hang on. I’ll just shut it down,” she said hurriedly, quitting AOL as she heard him get to his feet. She put on an innocent expression and turned to face him, but he was heading for the bathroom. She darted across the room, opened a cabinet and saw a bunch of videotapes, some with handwritten labels:
Lawrence of Arabia, Academy Awards 2003, Miss Watson’s Academy of Passion, Scenic Glories of the Bay Area.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m looking for the mini-bar.”

“There is no mini-bar. This is not a hotel.”

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“I thought it
was
a hotel.”

“I think it is time for you to return to your room.” He looked like a man who is just starting to realize how drunk he is. His clothes were crumpled, his eyes bloodshot.

“You’re right. I’m very tired,” she said, smiling. “Thank you for a lovely dinner.”

But he was crashing around the room, looking for something, and merely waved her good-night.

He was a ruin of the dignified, mesmerizing man she had been so struck by at the hotel in Miami.
Drink is the urine of Satan,
she thought as she let herself back into her room.
I wonder how long before they start the al-Qaeda branch of AA?

_p. 182
S
he had a hideous, sleepless night. She hadn’t eaten anything since Miss Ruthie’s slice of cake twelve hours before and, despite the luxury of the room, there was no mini-bar: no Toblerone, no jar of cashews, no giant pack of M&M’s. She turned her head this way and that against the pillowcase, which felt like it was finest Egyptian three-thousand-thread count or something, but nothing helped.

Her thoughts began to run riot. At 5:00
A.M.
she sat bolt upright and hit herself on the forehead. Caves! Al-Qaeda lived in caves in Tora Bora! Feramo was probably hiding the top tier of al-Qaeda senior management in a cave under Suakin. There was probably a Donald Rumsfeld wet dream of weapons of mass destruction in a cave underneath her right now, all neatly marked
FORMER PROPERTY OF S. HUSSEIN
.

Eventually, as dawn was beginning to dilute the darkness over the sea, she drifted into confused dreams: headless bodies in wet-suits, Osama bin Laden’s head falling through the ocean in his turban while going on and on about fifteen-liter tanks, the virtues of neoprene drysuits, Danish BCDs and Australian drop-offs.

She woke to bright sunlight, the chirp of tropical birds and hunger pangs. There was the rich, humid smell that said “holiday.” She pulled on the cotton bathrobe and slippers and padded onto her
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balcony. It was a perfect, almost cloudless Sunday morning. She could smell brunch.

The signs promising
CLUBHOUSE
led her to a tiki bar, where a bunch of young lovelies were laughing and joking together. She hesitated, feeling like the new girl at school, then recognized a familiar, like, Valley-girl voice?

“I mean, I, like,
get myself
so much more these days than I ever have?”

It was Kimberley with a huge stash of pancakes on her plate, playing idly with them with her fork and showing no interest in eating them at all. Olivia had to hold herself back from making a run at them.

“Kimberley!” she said brightly, barging into the group. “Great to see you. How’s the movie going? Where did you get those pancakes?”

It was one of the major pig-outs of her life. She consumed scrambled eggs and bacon, three banana pancakes with maple syrup, one blueberry muffin, three small slices of banana bread, two orange juices, three cappuccinos and a Bloody Mary. As she ate, she felt the exhilaration of a hunch turned good: the first pieces of a puzzle starting to fall into place. One by one, familiar faces from Miami and LA began to show themselves at the bar or around the pool. As well as Kimberley, there was Winston, the beautiful black dive instructor—who, thankfully, had escaped the carnage of the
OceansApart
—Michael Monteroso, the facial technician, and Travis, the wolf-eyed actor slash writer slash lifestyle coach. All were displaying their fabulously oiled and worked-out bodies around the bar and pool. It was a recruiting camp, she was sure; it was the al-Qaeda version of Butlins. Winston was lying on a sun lounger holding a loud conversation with Travis and Michael Monteroso, who were sitting at the bar.

“Was that the vintage Valentino year, with the white stripe?” said Winston.

_p. 184
“That was the Oscars,” said Michael bossily. “The Globes she was in backless navy Armani. And she made that speech about honeys—‘Everyone needs a honey to say “How was your day, honey?” Benjamin Bratt does that for me.’ ”

“And six weeks later they split up.”

“I was on security for the
Oceans Eleven
premiere and I’m thinking,
I
so
can’t ask Julia Roberts to open her purse,
and she just goes right ahead and opens her purse for me.”

“You still doing that stuff?” said Travis the actor, schadenfreude glinting in the ice-blue wolf eyes.

“Not any more,” snapped Winston. “Are you still driving a van for that place in south LA?”

“No.”

“I thought you were,” said Michael.

“Well, only, like, part-time.”

“What place is that?” said Olivia.

“Oh, it’s, like, so not anything.” Travis sounded rather stoned. “It sucks, man, but you can make good bread. If you do, like, Chicago or Michigan and sleep in the van, you can clock up, like per diems and overhours, but, like, the best stuff always goes to the old guys.”

“What’s it called?” she said, then regretted it instantly. She sounded too much like a journalist or a policeman. Fortunately, Travis the actor seemed too out of it to notice anything.

“The security firm? Carrysure.” He yawned, got up from his perch and ambled over to a table by a palm tree, where several candles were burning in what appeared to be a giant sculpture made out of wax. He put a half-smoked joint into his mouth, lit it again and started to manipulate the wax, molding it into strange, fanciful shapes.

“What’s he doing?” said Olivia quietly.

Michael Monteroso rolled his eyes. “It’s his wax cake,” he said. “It releases his creativity.”

Olivia glanced behind him and drew a sharp breath. Morton C.
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was walking past the bar, wetsuit peeled down to the waist, muscles bulging. He was carrying a dive tank on each shoulder and was followed by two dark, Arabic-looking youths carrying jackets and regulators.

“I was at the Oscars that year,” said Kimberley. “I was a seat-filler. I sat behind Jack Nicholson.”

Olivia saw Morton C. spot her and looked away, furious. Two-faced git. He needn’t think he was going to worm his way back into her affections now. She slipped the miniature camera from her wrap and surreptitiously snapped a few pictures.

“No kidding?” Winston was saying. “Those guys who, like, sit in the seat when Halle Berry goes to the bathroom?”

Olivia nudged Michael, nodding at Morton’s retreating back. “Who’s that?” she whispered.

“The blond guy? He’s some kind of, like, diving-instructor-type thing?”

“My dad gets me the gig because he does the follow spot,” Kimberley was saying proudly. “The second time it was for Shakira Caine, but she only, like, went to the bathroom during one break. But last year I sat in the front row for the whole of the first half.”

“Anyone seen Pierre?”

“Alfonso said he was coming down for, like, for lunch, brunch, whatever. Hey! There’s Alfonso. Hey, man. Come and have a drink.”

The troll-like figure of Alfonso, shirtless, was heading towards them. Olivia found herself unable to stomach the sight of his very hairy back.

“I think I’m going to have a swim,” she said, beginning to fear, as she slid off the stool, that she’d be drowned by the weight of the pancakes.

She plunged into the clear water, swimming strongly, holding her breath for as long as she could and surfacing a hundred yards farther on. She had won a race at school for swimming underwater in Worksop Baths before it was banned because someone got dizzy.
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She surfaced, slicking back her hair so it didn’t look mad, plunged down again and powered ahead for as long as she could, rounding the headland so that she could see the concrete pier. The sea was darker and choppier here; she was approaching the windward side of the island. She started to swim at a fast crawl until she was opposite the pier. It didn’t seem to be in use. A tall fence with barbed wire along the top blocked entry from the hotel side. There were tanks and a storage shed close to the shore, and a surfboard which appeared to have been cut in half.

Beyond the pier was a long, windswept beach lashed by white-tipped waves. There was a small boat at anchor a couple of hundred yards out, tossing up and down. A diver stood up on the ledge at the back and stepped into the water, followed by three more. She dived down again and swam towards them. When she surfaced, the last of the four divers was beginning his descent. Thinking they’d be gone for a while, she started to swim towards the pier and was surprised, when she glanced back, to see all four of them had surfaced closer to the shore. Their pose was familiar as they waited in the water, like seals. Then one of them started paddling fast towards a wave and climbed onto a board. Surfers! She watched in fascination as they followed the wave in formation, zigzagging on the inner curve. She was getting close to the heart of the story. She could sense it. They landed, laughing together, and set off towards the pier. Suddenly one of them shouted and pointed towards her.

Olivia plunged down about five feet and headed for the concrete pier. Her lungs were bursting, but she kept going until she rounded the pier and then surfaced, gasping for breath. The surfers were nowhere in sight. She plunged down again and swam back towards the resort until the water grew calmer, warm and blue, and she was above a sandy bottom back in the shelter of the bay.

She surfaced with relief, floating on her back, trying to get her breath back. There was a raft a little way ahead. She swam slowly towards it, pulled herself up and flopped down on the Astroturf.

_p. 187
It was a cool raft. The Astroturf was blue—the same type as they had around the Standard Hotel pool in LA. She stretched out, getting her breath back, looking up at the sky where the moon was already visible. She relaxed, feeling the sun on her skin, the raft rising and falling softly with the waves, the water slapping gently against the side.

She was woken abruptly from her daydream. A hand was clapped firmly over her mouth. Instinctively, she pulled the hatpin from her bikini and sank it deep into the arm, which jerked in shock and loosened just long enough for her to wriggle free.

“Don’t move.” She recognized the voice.

“Morton, what is it with you? Have you been watching too many action movies?”

She turned and for the first time in her life found herself looking into the barrel of a gun. It was odd, really. She had wondered what it would be like, and, in the event, it was a strange, reverse-reality sensation. It made her think:
This is exactly like a film,
rather as when you see a beautiful view and you think it looks just like a postcard.

“What was on that needle?”

The gray eyes were icy, vicious. He was holding himself up on the raft with one elbow, still pointing the gun.

“That thing will never fire,” she said. “It’s been in the water.”

“Lie down on your stomach. That’s right. Now”—he leaned forward—“what was in that fucking syringe?”

He was scared. She could see it in his eyes.

“Morton,” she said firmly, “it is a hatpin. I’m traveling alone. You frightened me. You’re frightening me even more now. Put the gun away.”

“Give me the pin.”

“No. Give me the gun.”

He shoved the barrel of the gun roughly into her neck and grabbed the pin with his other hand.

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“This is very rude. I could easily just stand up and scream, you know.”

“You’d be too late and they’d never find you. What the fuck is this?” He was staring at the pin.

“It’s a hatpin. It’s an old trick of my mother’s to ward off sexual assailants.”

He blinked at it, then let out his short laugh. “A hatpin. Well, that’s just great.”

“Bet you wish you hadn’t pulled the gun, now, don’t you?”

The gray eyes told her she was right.
Ha ha,
she thought.

“Shut up and talk,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“I wish I knew. I was kidnapped by Alfonso.”

“I know that. But what are you doing on Popayan? Who are you working for?”

“I told you. I’m just a freelance journalist.”

“Come on. A freelance fashion journalist who—”

“I am
not
a fashion journalist.”

“Perfume journalist, whatever. A perfume journalist who’s a linguist?”

“In
our
country,” she said, drawing herself up indignantly, “we realize the necessity of speaking other languages. We are aware of the existence of other nationalities. We like to be able to converse with them, not just to talk in a loud voice.”

“What are the languages? Gibberish? Bollocks? Gobbledegook? The language of love?”

She laughed in spite of herself. “Come on, Morton, stop brandishing that gun. I don’t think your boss is going to be very pleased if he finds out you’ve been shoving a gun down my throat.”

“That’s the least of your worries.”

“I’m not talking about me. What were you doing in that tunnel?”

“What tunnel?”

“Oh, don’t give me that. Why did you kill Drew? An innocent hippie like that—how could you?”

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He looked at her dangerously. “Why are you following Feramo?”

“Why are
you
following
me
? You’re not very good at covering your tracks, are you? That fake beard and mustache you were sporting at the Standard were the worst I’ve ever seen in my life. And if you were going to stash a bag of coke in my hotel room in Tegucigalpa, it wasn’t the brightest thing to sit making eyes at me five minutes before, then disappear and come back again.”

“Do you ever stop talking? I said, why are you following Feramo?”

“Are you jealous?”

He let out a short, incredulous laugh. “Jealous? Over you?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I was forgetting. I thought you might have kissed me because you fancied me. I’d forgotten you were a cynical, double-crossing, two-faced git.”

“You need to leave. I’m here to warn you. You’re getting yourself into deep water.”

She looked down at him in the sea. “If you don’t mind me saying so, that’s like the kettle calling the frying pan ‘dirty bottom.’ ”

He shook his head. “As I said, fluent in gibberish. Listen. You’re a nice English girl. Go home. Don’t meddle in stuff you don’t understand. Get your ass out of here.”

“How?”

“Oliviaaaaaaaaa!”

She turned to look behind her. Feramo was calling from the shallows, wading towards her, the water waist high. “Wait there,” he shouted. “I will come.”

She turned back to Morton C. but all that was left of him was bubbles.

Feramo approached the raft with sharklike precision in a powerful freestyle and pulled himself onto it athletically. He was toned and perfectly triangular: clear olive skin and fine features devastating against the blue water.
It’s raining men,
she thought. She wished
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Morton hadn’t disappeared so she could have one on each side of the raft—one dark, one fair, both stunning against the blue water—and pick the prettier.