The Abrupt Physics of Dying (18 page)

Bang, You're Dead

Later that afternoon, Clay hurried down the hall towards Karila's office, half-expecting the Finn to call him in, stab at the back pages of the report with a nicotine-stained finger, demand to know what the hell he had signed just that morning – what had now gone to the authorities. Clay had seen no sign of Zdravko since returning to Aden. His Land Rover wasn't in the office parking area.

Through the open door Clay could see Karila and Parnell sitting at the meeting table with two other men he didn't recognise. They were smiling, laughing. Parnell clapped one of the men on the back and shook his hand. They paid no attention as Clay passed on his way to the accounting department at the end of the corridor.

A dark-skinned Arab in a white shirt and tie looked up as Clay entered. He was seated behind a small desk in one corner of the room, surrounded by filing cabinets. He looked young, desk soft. There were dark circles under his eyes. Clay smiled at him, but he quickly went back to his ledger. Dunkley, the operation's chief accountant, sat behind a huge desk planted in the middle of the room. He let a pair of smudged spectacles fall onto its tether around his neck and looked up at Clay from across a cordillera of paperwork, stacks of hinged computer printouts, mountains of invoices. ‘Heard the news, Straker?'

Clay shrugged no.

‘The well test results for Kamar-4 have just come through. Forty metres of pay, reserves in the millions of barrels, the engineers figure.'

‘I guess you get to keep your job, then.'

The accountant frowned. ‘What do you want, Straker?'

‘Karila said you'd have a cheque for me.' If he had any hope of finding out what was going on at Al Urush, he needed money to pay for samples, lab work, equipment, and he needed it fast. He'd already burned four days since Al Shams' ultimatum, with little to show for it. Even if he paid for rush analysis at twice the normal price, the lab would still need at least a day to complete the work.

Dunkley ran a hand across his shiny pate, tapped at his keyboard, peered at the screen. ‘The invoice is with Parnell. Until he signs off, no payment. Sorry, Straker.'

Clay looked down at the floor, back up at the accountant. ‘It's been three months since I submitted the invoice to you, Dunkley.'

‘It's on his desk, Straker. I put it there myself. That's all I can do.'

‘When?'

The accountant looked up over the rim of his glasses. ‘When what?'

‘When did you put it on his desk?'

‘The day after you submitted it.'

‘Maybe it got lost.'

‘He knows it's there. We review all outstanding payables regularly. He was looking at it just last week.' Dunkley wiped his glasses on his shirt tail, perched them on his nose. ‘Ever think maybe he just doesn't like you, Straker?'

‘Almost every day.' Clay turned to leave. He was at the door when he looked back over his shoulder. ‘Say, Dunk. I'm trying to track some payments going back to November 1st last year. Any chance you could help me out?' He said it as casually as he could.

Dunkley narrowed his eyes. ‘What kind of payments?'

‘Lab work we did.'

‘What's it for, Straker?'

‘I'm using the data in my report,' he lied. ‘I want to tally the cost of the laboratory analysis.'

‘Tell me what you're after, specifically, and I can check when I get a moment.'

‘Just let me have a quick look at the accounts, can you? I only need a minute.'

Dunkley leaned forward, planted his elbow on a pile of papers. ‘You know I can't do that, Straker.'

Clay tore a sticky note off the pad on Dunkley's desk, jotted down the name of the Aden laboratory company. ‘OK then, for a start, can you have a look for any lab payments made on or around April 22nd of this year? I'd appreciate it.'

Dunkley looked down at the paper. ‘I'll get to it when I can,' he said.

Clay reached over and pasted the yellow tab to the top of the accountant's head. ‘Thanks, Dunk.'

The accountant snatched the note from his head. ‘Bloody smart arse.'

By the time Clay got back to the guesthouse he had already missed dinner, so he grabbed a sandwich and a beer from the kitchen and sat at one of the tables set out on the veranda. Just outside the throw of the floodlights, two armed guards squatted by the main gate, working on big wads of
qat
. The lights of Little Aden glowed in the distance. A breath of air flowed through the compound, the scent of iodine and salt, an undertone of sewage.

Atef appeared, a plate of cut fruit in his hand. ‘Something for after, Mister Clay?'

‘Thanks Atef.'

‘I should make your sandwich. Much better.'

‘Next time, brother.'

Atef wiped his hands across the white expanse of his apron. ‘I can help you.'

Clay put down his beer, looked both ways. Atef sat beside him, leaned in, lowered his voice. ‘My brother-in-law works in accounts. Also Zamalek supporter. I got him job here.'

The young man he'd seen today in Dunkley's office. ‘Go on.'

‘You need information from accounts, he told me.'

‘Yes.'

‘Tell me what you want.'

Clay told him. Printouts of all payments made two months either side of 30th November, delegations of authority, personnel records for the same period. Clay reached into his pocket and peeled a
fifty-dollar
note from his depleted roll and squeezed it into Atef's hand. ‘Can you do that?'

‘Yes, Mister Clay.'

‘Be careful, Atef. And do it quietly.'

‘Of course, Mister Clay. Do you want both sets?'

Clay looked up. ‘Both?'

‘My brother-in-law says they are keeping two sets of accounts.'

He should have guessed. Clay stood, put his hand on Atef's shoulder. ‘If you can, Atef, great.
Mumtaz
. But please, only if your brother can do it safely. I don't want him to put himself in danger.'

‘No danger, Mister Clay. He is very clever.'

Atef returned to the kitchen, left Clay alone again on the veranda. He sipped his beer, warm now. Rania had been right. Ali had refused to help, slammed the door in his face. Neither he nor his team were equipped to carry out the testing required, and Ali was savvy enough to know that you didn't mess with the Ministry of Oil. Clay was pretty sure that Ali didn't even read the reports he submitted, just filed them away and ticked the box – complete. Of course the executive summary and the early chapters of the report Clay had just submitted had mentioned nothing of the problems, just glowing accounts of the benefits of the project to the community and the country, with any and all harmful impacts designed out.

But deep inside the report, in a section entitled ‘Discussion', Clay had buried a detailed description of the health impacts he had seen at Al Urush, along with what little data he had collected, an analysis of various possible causes, and a statement to the effect that the company had decided not to investigate the issue further, or to put risk mitigation measures in place. He had taken a chance, bet on the
fact that Karila and Parnell wouldn't read the detail. Now there was a formal record, a written indictment, signed by Karila and Parnell. It was only a matter of time until someone in the company actually read it, and then the blade would fall. That afternoon he'd faxed the relevant pages to Rania in Sana'a.

He drained the beer and searched his conscience for the relief that he had only half-expected, but had not come.

Fourteen hours, maybe a bit more. That's all he'd had with Rania, the walk on the crater, the sojourn in Sana'a. Daughter of a French father and Algerian mother, she had grown up a devout Muslim in Algiers, speaking French at home, Arabic at school and on the streets, a
pied noir
. Her father had died when she was young, but she wouldn't say any more about it. She had studied modern literature and language at the Sorbonne in Paris, and joined AFP after graduation to become a journalist. Camus and Sartre, not surprisingly, were her favourites, Rimbaud, too. After a year in Morocco, she had applied for and been posted to Sana'a. That's all he knew about her. That and the fact that he had never met anyone like her. He had never felt skin so soft. He searched the memory of his movie crushes, drunken bar pursuits, all the hopeless distant admirations destroyed by proximity, but could find no equal. Four times that night they'd made love. At first she had been timid and tense, he clumsy and over-eager. After, he'd fallen into a deep dreamless sleep, only to be woken by her insistent mouth, and she was everywhere, surrounding him, enveloping him, and each time it was better, closer, gentler. And lying there with the ceiling fan turning above them, the shutters bathing their naked bodies in laths of pale city night, he knew that it was more than the desperation, more than the loneliness and the fear and the heartache that was making him burn.

It had been her first time. She hadn't said it, but he knew. And when he woke that morning to go back to Aden, he'd tried to kiss her and it was as if something inside her had snapped. She turned away and got out of bed and locked herself in the bathroom and he knew everything had changed. He dressed and waited for her, bewildered,
his arousal choking on ash. After a time, she emerged, and she walked downstairs with him, silent, robed, a black headscarf pulled down tight and severe about her face, stood in the hotel entranceway and watched him go without a word. Twice since returning to Aden he'd called her hotel and left messages. There had been no reply.

A metallic rap at the main gate broke his reverie. One of the guards rose and opened the side door. There was a brief discussion in Arabic and a man appeared in the courtyard. He was dressed in a leather jacket and jeans, a black-and-white
keffiyeh
wrapped around his head. A burning cigarette hung from his lips. The guard pointed up towards the veranda. The man walked across the courtyard and up the stairs onto the veranda and stood before him.

‘Jesus,' said Clay. ‘You.'

The man offered his hand. ‘My name is Hussein.' It was the man from the PSO interrogation, Himmler's sidekick, the chain-smoker. ‘May I speak with you?'

Clay gestured towards the empty chair.

‘Not here. I have a vehicle waiting. Do you feel like a drink?'

‘I guess I don't have much of a choice.'

Clay followed the man out to the street, across the rutted dirt to a white Pajero sitting in the moon shadow of a razor-wire-topped wall. Clay recognised the vehicle registration number immediately. The car that had tailed to him to Sana'a.

Fifteen minutes later they were sitting in a dark corner of the bar at the Mövenpick Hotel. The place was packed. On stage a tiny Filippina singer in a short green dress and massive platform shoes was destroying ‘Imagine' in broken English. She was the only woman in the place.

Hussein waved to the waiter and leaned across the table. ‘Are you aware of the current political situation here in Yemen?'

‘I always remember I am a guest here,' he said. ‘I don't get involved in politics.'

Hussein smiled. ‘My colleague can be a bit, well,
nerdy
, at times.'

‘I've got nothing to tell you.'

‘Indeed. Well then let me tell you. Relations between North and South have between deteriorating for some time now. A group of powerful Southern politicians and military men are agitating for more autonomy and a greater share of oil revenues.' He spoke fluently with a refined American accent – Ivy League, Yale perhaps, based on the T-shirt he had been wearing at the interrogation. ‘They are orchestrating public protests, violence. Day by day the government is losing control. People are taking sides, declaring loyalties. It is a dangerous time.'

Clay nodded, said nothing.

‘You have seen how dangerous,' said Hussein.

Clay looked the man in the eyes, tried to keep his expression neutral.