Rotten Gods (8 page)

‘I don't know.'

‘You have a degree in economics.'

‘Yes.'

‘Would you like to work in that field?'

Abdullah moved his eyes from Mulham to his companion, then lowered them. ‘No, I don't think so.' In truth, a life of ledgers and profit statements left him cold. That career path had been his father's idea, a way of making him useful to the family business.

Ahmed went on, ‘There are many foreigners here now, and you are a man of action, not of numbers and account books. Sheikh Mohammed is struggling to put together a police force able to cope. You have spent time overseas. You understand the challenges. I could suggest you to him?'

Abdullah shrugged, scarcely listening. ‘Thank you, I would like that.'

 

A strange and unexpected thing happened. Abdullah found that he cared about police work. He discovered a belief in the importance of the values he had grown up with. That people should feel safe to enjoy the burgeoning night life of the city. That within a few minutes of a crime being committed, a patrol car cruised out to investigate.

When Abdullah was twenty-six, still living at home, his father divorced his mother with the traditional,
I divorce thee, I divorce thee, I divorce thee
. Being past the age of ten, Abdullah had entered the male realm of his father, but their relationship had soured since he refused the career path chosen for him, and entered the police force. He accepted his mother's pleas for him to go with her. Life for a divorcee is difficult without a male relative close at
hand for escort duties and dealing with the outside world. Even calling a tradesman for a lone Muslim woman is difficult.

Mother and son went to live in one of the new apartments above the sands of Jumeirah Beach, just a short walk from the mosque. They had always been close, but now they became closer still. In the evenings after work he would buy her a flower, or some Swiss chocolate. Perhaps a small gift of jewellery.

Still, the grief of being spurned by the man she had supported all her life weighed upon her. She smiled only rarely, and spent hours staring out through the window at the world of men that she could not join.

Abdullah, meanwhile, rose through the ranks of a force that expanded almost daily, until from a ragtag band of just forty men he commanded a division of five hundred. The keys to his leadership were high expectations, supreme personal standards and a willingness to try new techniques, often gleaned from overseas forces: London, New York, and Paris.

Into his thirties he remained at home with his mother, refusing social invitations. Apart from riding weekly, he had few engagements outside work and home. With no father to plan his marriage, he made no efforts in that direction, and he lavished attention on his mother, even as she became devout — mindful of a thousand tiny superstitions, many of which revolved around the Holy Qur'an itself. The book, for example, could never touch the ground. Abdullah's mother insisted on using stands purchased to hold the book at eye level. It must never be left open or the Devil would come and read it, assimilating the wisdom inside. When not in use it must be wrapped and placed on the highest shelf in the house.

Like much of the population of the Arab world, she burned bakhoor  — incense  — in the belief that it discouraged devils, or jinn, from inhabiting the house. After cutting her own or
Abdullah's hair, she collected every fallen strand, wrapped it in newspaper and hid it in a closet. It was well known that Jews and other potential enemies might use discarded hairs or nails to cause sickness and death to good Muslims.

Each morning mother and son would together recite the thirty-sixth Surah, the Ya Sin, with its powers of healing, protection of property, defence against the jinn and an eventual easy passage to Paradise.

Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, and the resulting First Gulf War, when half-a-million American servicemen flooded the region, rattled Dubai's economy, but still it rebounded. Further concessions brought more foreign companies into the trade zones, and money flowed into an economy boosted by ambitious local infrastructure projects.

Abdullah's mother sank into a depression no doctor could comprehend or cure. One morning he woke to silence. No sound
of activity in the kitchen where she had prepared his morning meal for fifteen years.

They found her in Dubai Creek, between the pylons of al-Maktoum Bridge, yellow nightshirt wound tight around her body. She had, according to the coroner, been dead for three hours. Abdullah used his position to have the details suppressed, and a short press release issued, explaining that his mother had drowned while swimming. He sold the apartment and took a smaller one.

He remained friends with Ahmed, who went on to head Dubai World, a government-backed corporation worth a hundred billion dollars in assets at its peak. He watched the building of the Palms, towering hotel after towering hotel, then some of the most extravagant shopping malls in existence. Countless thousands of Pakistanis crossed the Arabian Sea to slave for this empire of money.

Finally, he watched the economic ravages of the first and second Global Financial Crises, then the slow rising of the sea so that the Palms and the unfinished World were threatened by water, ravaged by supertides. Billions of dollars worth of man-made real estate, threatened by the changing planet. Itinerant workers were trapped without employment, housed in their slum estates, unable to afford the fares home. Crime rates soared. The world of Abdullah's childhood cracked and crumbled.

Now past any likelihood of marriage, Abdullah is experienced in sexual intercourse only with Russian and Chinese prostitutes, who solicit in certain streets and nightclubs of Dubai. Technically no virgin, spiritually he has never been touched. Modern Dubai courtship, much of which centres on passing business cards to members of the opposite sex you find attractive, is repugnant to him.

His home is visited only by Lualhati, the Filipino maid who has, for twenty years, parked her Corolla in his underground parking
space at 11:00am, cleaned the unit, and prepared an evening meal. Rarely laying eyes on her, Abdullah mails her a cheque every second Thursday, with a small bonus on the holiday of Eid, at the conclusion of Ramadan.

A long-standing member of the Equestrian Club, he competes in three or four races a year, and maintains four hardy Arabs, agisted through the club and stabled by professionals. On weekends he still rides, finding pleasure in companionship with the finest horses money can buy.

The job of coordinating security at Rabi al-Salah is the culmination of a lifetime's work, a task at which he has already failed. The overall plan was simple: a core of GDOIS and British DRFS, supplemented by representatives from other nations, backed up by the elite Dubai Fifth Air Battalion.

It should have been enough. Would normally have been enough. But there is always the imponderable — the gentle man who has gone to the other side. Something that defies even the most rigorous security checks.

Abdullah prays, inviting his God to prepare for Dr Ali Khalid Abukar the hottest fires at His disposal.

 

Despite his job, Simon hasn't been to Aden for years, a city that remains impoverished and relatively lawless. It did, however, escape the mass killings seen in Taiz and Sana'a, during the vigorous protest movement that resulted in such severe wounds to the dictator Saleh that he was forced to leave the country to seek treatment. The violence worsened on his return, and thousands died in the pursuit of freedom. Even now, Yemen teeters on the edge of civil war.

Reputedly the site where Noah built his ark and invited the animals aboard two by two, the peninsula is shaped like a
dragon's head, divided by the crater of a long dead volcano, the industrial city of Sheikh Othman on the opposite shore to the sprawling port complex. Ripples of rock make up the ridges of the mountain — the backbone of the dragon.

The airport was once a RAF base, and those hangars of 1950s corrugated iron remain. It boasts long and serviceable runways; the only hazard on take-off and landing being the volcano itself.

As the plane comes to rest, Simon is already moving, lifting down his bag and leading a line of passengers to the door, waiting while the stairway is clipped into place. Inside the terminal, he switches on his phone and reads Isabella's text message.

Simon. Forgive me. Girls taken from Aden airport. My heart is with you, along with all my hopes and trust.

For a moment he cannot move, instead running her words through his mind.

Forgive you for what? What did you do, Isabella? Is it true that you had sex with him? That you screwed an Algerian terrorist? That while our girls slept you rutted with a killer, a planter of bombs? That you let the bastards take the one beautiful thing in our lives. The daughters we both love, whatever our own failings …

Entering a grimy bathroom of pale linoleum and ceramic, rust-stained sinks, Simon wrinkles his nose at the smell of urine and worse. He washes and shaves, changing his shirt for a lightly soiled one from his bag, losing some travel sweat in the process. Finally he combs his hair, pins his BA identification card to his top pocket and walks towards the security gate where other visitors have queued up to display their documentation.

Simon feels the first trepidation at what he is about to do, opening his passport with its flight crew stamp. A pair of dark eyes fix on his, and he wonders if he is about to be questioned, but then he is through and there is no shout behind him. He
passes on, pleased that bluff is still possible in a world of suspicion, body scans and iris readers.

At first he is content to wander the concourse, aware of the obvious differences between this airport and the showpiece at Dubai  — this is older, more workmanlike than ostentatious. Aden, he decides, is a perfect place to abduct the children of a high-ranking official — one not so important as to attract her own security detail, but senior enough to serve their purposes.

Workers and travellers pass by in twos and threes, talking loudly as is common in the local culture. The bulk of the speech is in Gulf Arabic or, occasionally, Farsi. Simon has a working knowledge of both, gleaned over years of travel, and dealing often with staff from Middle Eastern airports. He deciphers what he can. Snippets, statements, questions, the clutter of everyday life.

‘No, that is not the way to lift a box, let me show you …'

A man in a long, white thoub says to the man beside him, ‘When I am finished this evening I will go to al-Rayyan restaurant in Crater, with my brothers, if it pleases God …'

‘I and my sons will go to the cinema …'

Simon remembers his and Isabella's visit to the open air cinema here, years earlier on their long honeymoon, travelling virtually free by nature of his profession. Back then he was the established wage earner and she fresh out of university, starting with the FCO as an administrative assistant.

The women he sees, almost without exception, wear the niqab face covering, along with an abaya robe to the ankles, sometimes studded with beads or tiny faux diamonds, or worn with sunglasses and discreet jewellery.

These women live in one of the most gender divided societies on earth — where even in a court of law the testimony of two
women is required to equal that of one man  — yet Simon has discovered, over the years, that these women are not as timid or powerless as Westerners might believe. Now and then one will turn her eyes brazenly on him as he passes, while he is simultaneously trying to avoid looking at them. Just for an instant, dark eyes swing towards him, promise unimaginable delights, then turn away demurely as if it had never happened, and by then they are gone down the concourse.

As he passes through the main corridor, Simon continues to scan. Workers on breaks chew qat — the narcotic leaf popular in the region  — noticeable via one bulging cheek. Though Simon should be tired, he feels distraught but energised  — every sense wide and receptive, soaking up each nuance, not ceasing to explore until he reaches the main doors, walking outside to look at the taxis: dusty Toyotas, Fiats, Renaults and Nissans competing for space with elongated white buses with Arabic lettering on the sides. He inhales the night air, stares out towards the lights of a city as foreign as any on earth, with jagged hills as a backdrop.

Simon has to fight a sense of despair. Once the children and their abductors left this airport they could have gone anywhere in the Middle East or Africa without trace. The Western mania for record keeping, Simon knows, is not de rigueur here. There will be few, if any, clues to their whereabouts. He has just one lead and this is it. With that thought he turns and walks back inside the building.

Day 1, 21:30

Marika's eyelids are rimmed with red, and if she allows herself the luxury of closing her eyes, even at the computer, she finds herself
drifting away from the world of shrill telephones and chattering keyboards into something more appealing.

With Abdullah bin al-Rhoumi's name opening doors, she has an FBI team from the Tactical Support Branch of the CIRG on their way into a New York apartment, managed by radio waves beamed halfway across the world. The sense of power is dizzying, and dangerous. Marika frowns with concentration so intense it gives her a headache. There can be no mistakes. Lives hang on her decisions, her instincts, and reactions.