Rotten Gods (2 page)

Isabella Thompson prattles on. ‘It affected me a great deal, and now I look forward to your address this morning.'

Ali inclines his head. ‘Thank you. I'd best hurry, or I will be late.'

This is no longer a dream, but reality.
He forces himself to breathe, conscious of a growing feeling of vertigo. He has the briefcase, the power to change history, and even the guard who walks beside him does not suspect.

Continuing down the corridor, the entrance to the conference room comes into view, resembling an oversized bank vault. Guards stand on either side. A backlit screen, shiny as a mirror, blinks up the day's agenda in letters two hundred millimetres high. Ali tries not to focus on his own name. It looks too solid, too respectable. At odds with what he is about to do.

At a distance of some twenty metres, he stops walking, standing with his breath burning hot in his throat. The protesters' cries sift through the glass. He stares myopically at the animal that has just caught his eye. A German shepherd — russet brown and gold, handsome and massive. The handler half kneels with one arm around the animal's neck.

Watch for kufr police dogs
, Zhyogal warned him.
Despite the masking agents we have used, they may take the scent. Watch for them. Avoid them. Insha' Allah, you will get through.

The guard walks on for a few steps before noticing that he has stopped. She turns, eyes narrowed. ‘Doctor? Is something the matter? We need to hurry.'

He removes his glasses, working at a lens with his handkerchief. ‘I am sorry, Miss Hartmann, but I do not like dogs. They frighten me  … a great deal.' He watches the handler pat the animal around the ruff, muttering endearments, slipping something from his pocket and into the palm of his hand.

Again the security guard urges him on, brown eyes earnest, pleading. She has a nicely formed face, he notices, with cheerful lips, an upswept nose and high cheekbones. Unconsciously, he is pleased that she will not be inside the auditorium at the final moment.

‘I'll walk between you and the dog,' she says. ‘Please. We can't keep them waiting.'

Ali moves to her far side, takes the first step towards the entrance. The animal sits up, ears cocked, then whines and starts forwards. The handler takes a double turn of the leash around his hand and walks after them, calling out in accented English, ‘Excuse me?'

Ali walks on twenty or more steps before he stops. Amplified voices from the chamber echo through the walls. He looks ahead, sees the Englishwoman again.

Thank God she is still here.

The dog handler follows, trying to control the animal. ‘Excuse me. Surely the dog is mistaken, but …'

Isabella Thompson is on the spot in a moment, hands on hips. ‘How dare you be so impertinent? This man is due to address the conference in a moment. Your dog is as poorly trained as you are ill-mannered.'

The animal seems to lose interest at that point, turning to look back down the walkway. The handler lowers his eyes. ‘Of course, madam, please accept my apologies.' With a jerk on the leash he steers the dog away.

 

Marika watches Isabella Thompson escort Dr Abukar into the conference room. Disquiet narrows her eyes. Why did she react so strongly to the dog handler? Why was an FCO diplomat outside the conference room at all?

Thumbs in her pockets, Marika hovers near the entrance. Even now she is not worried. The room is secure. Hydraulically operated steel doors are hidden in the jambs, capable of isolating the room from any threat, to be opened again only with cooperation from both inside and outside. Marika has studied the specifications — manufactured by the German engineering firm Schroeder, weighing three-point-four tonnes, sealed by a chemically resistant polymer. The double-skinned 316 stainless steel face, thirty-five millimetres thick, will defeat any but the most determined, industrial strength attack.

An amplified voice echoes out through the walls. ‘Please welcome Dr Ali Khalid Abukar, one of a number of silent achievers who has worked at the coal face of international aid. He holds a PhD in Human Rights and Democratisation from Debub
University in Ethiopia. Dr Abukar sits on dozens of committees including the Economic and Social Council and the Committee for Climate Change in Africa. He is widely published, and speaks eight languages …'

Swallowing her unease, telling herself that she is foolish to have misgivings about this gentle man, Marika climbs a discreet set of stairs up to the control room. This area is longer than it is wide, crammed with 3D monitor screens, and young men and women tapping at keyboards.

Marika has met more than a few of them; drunk Stella Artois at the bar with the non-Muslims, most of them delegates from various security forces from around the world. Nikulina, the Russian, lifts his eyes from the screen to give her a wave, black body hair crawling out of his cuffs and halfway down the backs of his hands.

The gaunt frame of Abdullah bin al-Rhoumi, Head of Security for Rabi al-Salah, Director of GDOIS, Dubai's General Department of Organisation, Protective Security and Emergency, dominates the room. He turns to look at her as she enters. Eyes like cameras. In just two weeks they have developed a close rapport.

‘Is something wrong?' he asks.

Marika shakes her head. ‘No, I don't think so.'

Various camera angles from inside the conference room are projected onto a series of screens mounted along one wall, as well as smaller monitors scattered around the room. Marika reverses a chair and sits with folded arms leaning on the back, watching the feed from a ceiling-mounted camera as it pans around the conference room  — a vast space, eighty metres by one hundred and ten, an amphitheatre with eighteen concentric rings of benches, all made from the latest mycobond organic plastics.

Representatives of nations sit in rows flanked by aides and advisors, equipped with wafer-thin touch screens that allow them
to call up the databases — the proportion of women dying in childbirth in Africa and Asia; AIDS deaths per capita; seismic patterns and predictions; melt rates of the polar ice caps; global temperatures; national debt for every nation — the maddening, depressing, endless statistics churned out by the committees and agencies of the United Nations.

The camera settles on Dr Abukar, reaching the dais, using a shaking forefinger to push the rim of his glasses up off the bridge of his nose, rubbing the area. So nervous.
Too nervous?

Marika rationalises that he is about to address a television and online audience that might number in the billions.
It's OK. There's nothing wrong. Just another speech. A gabfest; a talkathon.

The general cynicism in the control room about the conference surprises her. No one Marika has talked to believes that this latest summit will achieve anything at all. Yet surely it must — here are the leaders of every nation. The President of the United States, surrounded by a dozen aides and assistants. Britain's Prime Minister. The leaders of France, Australia, Canada, Germany, and a hundred other nations, veterans of Copenhagen, Cancún, Durban, and Rio+20. All have agreed that they must act now to prevent what has been described as the end of Western civilisation.

The camera zooms in on Dr Abukar taking a folded paper from his top pocket. Something moves in Marika's gut.
Why would he carry his speech in his pocket? Why not in the briefcase? Why did he bring the case at all?

Turning her head, Marika sees Abdullah still hovering, eyes haunted with the same fear they all know. That something will happen.

‘Sir,' she calls. Sharp and clipped.

For a man of his years, Abdullah reacts fast. She knows already that his hearing is near perfect, and that he is fit enough to run a
regular ten kilometres with the rest of them, albeit at the rear of the pack.

‘Yes?'

‘There's something wrong.'

Dr Abukar, on the screen, clears his throat and begins to speak.
‘Good day to you. My name is Ali Khalid Abukar. I have worked for the United Nations for twenty-six years.'

The control room freezes. All eyes are on her. Marika wonders if she is about to make a fool of herself.

Abdullah's mouth sets in a single hard line. ‘What do you mean?'

‘The briefcase, maybe. Oh, hell … I don't know.'

‘
The West
,' Dr Abukar continues, his voice taking on a new gravitas unmistakeable even over the speakers,
‘is a gluttonous pig, wallowing in unrepayable debt and consumerism, stripping the world of resources faster than they can be replenished. Policies of intervention in order to secure these natural resources are dividing the world.'

Marika feels her breath catch and has to force herself to resume breathing.

‘The Western economic system, after many warning shocks, is on the brink of collapse. Bankers and company CEOs, whose greed has fed this unsustainable cycle, collect obscene salaries while others starve. European nations who have stripped the world to sustain lavish lifestyles, first with colonialism and now with debt, face bankruptcy and ruin. Soaring temperatures caused by industrialised countries threaten the Third World. Rising sea levels, hurricanes, floods, drought. Unprecedented seismic activity. Famine. Today, I act for my people. The dispossessed, the starving, the millions in refugee camps and on the road. I act for every child screaming out his hunger in the night, and each baby born into a
family who cannot feed, clothe or educate him. I act for the thirty million souls now fleeing famine and disaster in Africa and Asia …'

Marika locks eyes with Abdullah. There is agreement in that gaze. Better to act now and look like fools than to … He barks two names into the lapel transmitter. ‘Shadi, Badr, get him out of there. Him and the briefcase. Now. Go.'

Marika watches the two men at extreme sides of the conference room converge on the dais, feeling herself tingling from head to toe, floating off in space, cheeks flushing — about to disrupt a speaker at the most important international conference in a decade. Rabi al-Salah. The breeze of righteousness. Eyes flick back to the screen and Dr Abukar's words continue to sear into her head.

‘I come here today as the instrument of the true God. The God of Mohammed. The God of Mercy. Having realised that there is no other way but for men and women everywhere to submit to His wisdom.'

Marika's eyes lock onto the screen. She whispers, ‘God no. Please, don't let it happen …'

The two security guards approach the dais, clearly visible, but Dr Abukar opens his hand, revealing a black plastic switch, holding it high so there can be no doubt.

‘Go back,'
he shrieks,
‘No one must come close. This briefcase contains eleven kilograms of high explosive …'

Pandemonium. Voices crash out through the room. Marika's lungs stop dead, as if captured by a barbed hook.

‘ … the device will explode by remote control. I can close the circuit by pressing this switch. If I am attacked, or physically threatened, I will trigger the explosion. My initial instructions are for all security staff to leave the conference room, and the doors and windows sealed.

‘My next requirement is for your security forces to allow a group of my comrades to enter this room. They will arrive at the Ja-noob car park by motor vehicle. Please let them through without delay.'
His voice becomes hollow and empty.
‘If these instructions are not followed I will kill most of the men and women in this room. For those who doubt the authenticity of this threat, I have left samples of these explosives in my room on level three at the residential complex …'

 

At sixteen years of age, the East Sydney Bushwalking Club, with its close affiliation to the Wilderness Society, drew Marika in like a slow-moving vortex. Journeys into the forests and woodlands of eastern Australia became her passion. Weekend treks deep into the Blue Mountains, the Warrumbungles, the Budawangs; the trusty green Karrimor pack sweaty against her back while she negotiated steep ridges with that dry grass crunching beneath her boots.

Campfires in deep riven stone gorges, songs echoing from the cliffs. As she moved overseas for work, more opportunities presented themselves. South Africa's Drakensberg; Canada's Rockies above Banff in summer with air like cold crystal through which she could see a hundred miles of dark, snow-capped stone peaks. Once or twice it had all gone sour. A fall here and there, a twisted ankle, and once, in the rugged Gledíc mountains of Serbia, a flash flood punching through the valley floor at three in the morning. A wall of water pouring through the tent, picking it up and tossing her around as if in a washing machine, leaving her bruised and battered, recuperating in a Trstenik guesthouse for days before she was able to continue the holiday.

This memory flashes across her consciousness as the speaker stands back from the lectern. The same disorientation. Images.
Visions. Passing into the cortex but not responded to. The sound of hydraulic motors and moving machinery.

Dreamlike and surreal. The control room goes from order to chaos. Chairs crash sideways. Nikulina's coffee falls, droplets of brown liquid spilling up like high tide. Sunflowers in a vase on the sill. Shouts and running. The screen going blank as the man inside cuts off communications, leaving them blind.

Marika is unable to move, deep in a shocked spell she cannot break. A click as the giant door seals slide into place. A helpless cry from inside the room.

Silence from below as the protesters stop the shouting. Time passing. A cheer, stifled and high pitched from somewhere, then a crash. A burning vehicle on its side. Security forces trying to cordon off the complex, pushing the crowd away violently now. The sound of a gunshot, then another. A flush begins in her cheek and burns all the way across her neck and face.