The Abrupt Physics of Dying (43 page)

Entropy

Clay woke with a start. Moonlight reflected from the glaciers and threw long shadows across the bed and lit the walls of the bedroom. He pulled up the duvet against the cold, breathed the mountain air flowing in from the open window. It was getting warmer now, summer’s zenith in the air, the smells of ripening fruit, cedar, rain on the way. She murmured something and snuggled close, snaked her arm across his chest, the warmth of her plastered against his side, the smell of him all over her, of her on him. He could see the scar clearly now, an angry welt arcing down from just below her collarbone towards her side, the larger one on her back where the shoulder blade had been reconstructed.

Hussein’s aim had been good. Two inches lower and he would have ripped out her heart. As it was, she had almost died of secondary lung infection. He pulled her close, kissed the scar. She looked so vulnerable, lying there naked beside him. Desire coursed through him, a deep chemical swoon. He was morning hard, aching for her. But he breathed deep, found control. He didn’t want to wake her.

Clay slipped from under the covers. In the semi-dark he pulled on trousers, a shirt and a fleece-lined jacket, and crept to the kitchen. He got the stove fire going and soon had a pile of glowing coals. He filled the kettle, poured out tea leaves and made a quick breakfast.

It had been six days now since he’d found her. Still weak, Rania slept long daylight hours. When she could, she worked on the story, threading in the technical detail Clay provided. While she slept,
Clay walked alone in the mountains, high up to the alpine slopes, returning to the chalet after dark, always watching, alert for any sign of danger. He was healing. He watched Rania grow stronger. Soon she was able to accompany him, short distances at first, longer each day. They spoke of the future, the imminent and yet seemingly distant danger they faced, Medved’s people out there looking for them both, hunting them. And yet up here in the mountains they seemed immune, insulated somehow from all of it. On the radio he heard of the changes in South Africa, of reprisals and reconciliation. Petro-Tex’s growing success in Yemen was in the news, too. Despite the war and the controversy swirling around its operations, production was set to increase. If the reports could be believed, the new oil discoveries were world-class. Rex Medved announced the launch of a major new charity helping underprivileged children in the developing world. Yemen would be the operation’s flagship.

Clay was about to open the front door when he heard footsteps behind him. She was standing in her nightgown, arms wrapped around herself.

‘Where are you going, Claymore?’

‘I didn’t want to wake you.’

She stood looking at him.

‘I need to make some calls, get some cash.’

She frowned, that little negative smile he found so enchanting. ‘Someone might recognise you, Clay.’

He stroked his beard. ‘Looking like this? My own mother wouldn’t recognise me,
Allah
keep her soul.’

She bit her lip. ‘I am sorry,’ she said. ‘I did not know.’

Entropy. It was all about the inevitable disaggregation of things, of people. You couldn’t escape it. Clay grabbed the door handle.

‘Please do not leave, Clay. It is safe here.’

He turned, looked at her. ‘We can’t hide forever, Rania. Al Shams is still out there, still fighting. We have to help him.’ He reached up, stroked her cheek with his fingers. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t be long. Back tonight.’

Soon he was descending the ridge trail, the lights of the town flickering below in the valley, the first grey light touching the ice on the peaks, his breath clouding in the air.

Three hours later he was in Geneva. He went straight to the Standard Bank building on
Rue des Alpes
. Two weeks ago he’d set up an account there, arranged a sizeable transfer from the Cayman Islands branch. Now he walked through the dark granite foyer, aware of the closed circuit cameras following him. He filled out a withdrawal slip at the counter, presented it to a teller behind an old-style wood and glass wicket. The man looked down at the slip, over his spectacles at Clay, and then picked up the phone. He spoke into the handset, listened. After a moment he replaced the handset.

‘
Un moment, s’il vous plaît
,’ he said, and disappeared into a back room.

Clay kept his eyes lowered, away from the cameras, nerves jangling. A minute passed, two.

Finally, the clerk reappeared. He counted out Clay’s cash, and then slid a sealed envelope under the glass, along with a yellow chit. ‘
Signature
,’ said the clerk.

Clay picked up the envelope. It was unstamped, bore the logo and address of Standard Bank, Cayman Islands. He signed the chit, stashed the envelope and the cash in his jacket pocket and made for the street. Soon he was walking down the
Rue des Alpes
, heading towards the lake. He found a payphone outside the Swissair office, slotted in a card, punched in the Consul’s number, let it ring.

The Consul answered second ring.

‘Declan Greene here.’

Silence, and then: ‘It is good that you called.’

‘They have blamed Parnell,’ said Clay.

‘Yes.’

‘It wasn’t him.’

Dead air filled the line. After a moment: ‘I don’t want to know.’

Clay said nothing.

‘The young lady’s cover has been compromised.’

Rania. ‘Jesus. By whom?’

‘I don’t know. But she is in grave danger.’

‘Thank you for telling me. I know …’

The Consul cut him off. ‘I have done what I could. Please do not call me again.’ The line went dead.

Clay reattached the receiver, stared out into the street, fear welling up inside him like a cold ocean current, heavy, dense. He needed to move fast. The Gare Cornavin was two kilometres away. He made it there in eight minutes, checked the train timetable for Champéry. The next train wasn’t for another eighteen minutes. He walked over to the big bank of public telephones outside the station café.

The line clicked open. ‘
Ja
?’

‘Koevoet, is that you,
broer
?’ Crowbar.

‘Who the
fok
wants to know?’ The answer in Afrikaans.

‘It’s Straker,
broer
, from
Valk
5.’ Crowbar had been his platoon commander in Angola, had stayed in right until the end, spent the last four years in SA Military Intelligence, the DCC – Directorate of Covert Collection – stationed in Europe. They had kept in touch, spent some time together when Clay was studying engineering in London after fleeing South Africa.

‘
Ja
,
ja
, fucking
soutpiele
.’ Salt dick – English South African.

‘
Fokken
boere
,’ said Clay. Farmer. Their usual routine.

Crowbar laughed. It sounded like a rusty hinge. ‘
Howzit
, broet?
’

‘I’m coming to London,’ Clay said in Afrikaans. ‘I need a Glock. Clean.’

Pause. ‘No problem.’

‘And I may need a quiet place to stay for a while.’

‘Done. You know where to find me. Come by when you get here.’

Clay watched from the window as the little train ratcheted its way up the slope. The clouds had lifted and he could see up the valley, tried to spy the edge of the woods where he and Rania had walked
the day before, up past the Auberge des Cols with its big sloping roof and little patch of grass where you could sit on wooden benches and drink local beer and look down across the valley – over the stone footbridge and then up along the ridge and into the trees, cool and dark here, moving over the moss-quiet carpet, fingers laced, breathing hard as the pitch steepened through dappled sunlight up to where the trees thinned and stunted. After about an hour they had stopped at a steep rushing stream, taken off their boots, sat on a rock and let the water run glacier cold over their feet. They sat for a while watching the water foaming around their ankles, the turbulence writ on the surface in eddies and dips, the ever-changing liquid topography splattering a dance of sunlight over their faces, over everything. They had continued on, breaking out into a moraine and cloud-strewn high valley, the limestone and slate here like the sky, a monochrome of grey, so different from the explosion of Hadramawt colour. They had unpacked lunch and sat close, catching glimpses of the valley through the shifting clouds, saying little, like that time in Aden so long ago now, a different lifetime, looking out over the Indian Ocean. Back home, they’d lit a fire, shared a cup of tea. At night, they’d made love, alone in the little bedroom overlooking the valley and the towering peaks, and it was as if being someone else had unchained her somehow. His feet tingled, thinking of her ardour.

He reached Champéry by late afternoon. By the time he returned to the chalet it was dark. The windows glowed kerosene yellow. Smoke curled from the chimney. He climbed the steps and knocked on the door.

She stood in the foyer in her slippers and wool sweater, a cup of tea in her hands.

He pulled out the envelope. ‘It’s the rest of the story,’ he said. ‘The missing piece.’ He closed the door, took her in his arms, kissed her lips, her cheekbones, her neck. ‘We have to leave,’ he said. ‘Now.’

Saint Fucking Mandela

By early evening they were back in Geneva. They rented a car, a little white Peugeot 306, and drove through the night, catching the morning ferry from Calais. No sign of being followed. The ferry was busy. They sat in the cafeteria on the main deck and had breakfast. The Channel was calm, ridges of stratocumulus running in skirmish lines across an otherwise clear blue sky. He told her about Medved’s capital-raising, about his conversation with Perry.

Rania moved aside her plate, spread a copy of the
Independent
across the table, pointing to an article on page ten. ‘It says here that Aden is under siege. It’s almost over, Clay. The rebels have lost.’ She read on. After she had finished she looked up. There was fear in her eyes.

‘What is it, Rania?’

‘It says here that Vance Parnell was found dead last night in his cell in Amsterdam. The authorities have determined that it was suicide.’

‘Parnell, suicide?’ So filled with remorse over what he’d done that he killed himself? No chance of that. Parnell was a survivor. ‘Medved got to him.’

Rania frowned.

‘Now Petro-Tex will blame Parnell for everything.’

She sipped her coffee, looked at him across its steaming rim. ‘LeClerc agreed to meet me in London. He doesn’t know it’s me, but I gave him enough to get him interested.’

Clay sent her a silent question.

‘My editor, before I died.’

Clay nodded. ‘Good. We don’t have long. The story has to come out as soon as Medved launches. That’s in three days.’

‘Then we are going to need all of the documentary evidence, as much as we can get, and quickly. LeClerc is a stickler that way. He is not going to agree to publish anything unless we can satisfy him that it is the truth. He will want to go through all the background information in detail.’

‘It’s coming, Rania. I’ve redone my field notes. We’ll meet Perry tomorrow or the day after. He has material from inside the joint venture. I’ll contact my Cypriot accountant when we get to London, get him to courier us the originals of the stuff from Yemen, including the photographs from Bawazir. We should have it all in the next couple of days.’

‘Do you trust your accountant, Clay?’

‘I called him from Oman. That was weeks ago. If he was going to tell someone, he would have done it by now.’

Rania frowned.

‘We don’t have a choice, Rania. Look what they did to Parnell. They’re desperate now, cornered. They know we’re out there. They know we have at least some of the information we need to sink them. If we don’t end this soon, we’re dead. Both of us. It’s only a matter of time.’

They reached London later that afternoon, checked in at the Churchill Hotel in Marble Arch as Mr and Mrs Greene, paid cash. Clay called Perry’s office in Calgary while Rania was in the shower. They were expecting his call. The Chairman of Hurricane Resources was already in London. He would be expecting Clay at the Excelsior Hotel, Mayfair, Room 2108, tonight at seven-thirty pm.

Clay put down the phone and watched Rania emerge from the bathroom, a white towel wrapped across her breasts, another flipped high on her head. She walked over to where he was sitting, leant
over and kissed him on the forehead. He reached up, pulled away the towel, let it fall to the floor, drew her to him. Her skin was still damp.

‘Well?’ she said.

‘We’re going to meet Perry in two hours.’

‘Then we do not have long, Clay,’ she whispered into his hair.

‘Exactly,’ he said, scooping her up and carrying her to the bed.

They arrived at the hotel an hour early, at Rania’s insistence. While Rania watched the lobby, Clay climbed the stairs to Perry’s floor and posted himself at the end of the corridor, 2108 in plain sight. Three-quarters of an hour ticked past at one-fifth speed, and Clay wondered how a lifetime without her would have felt. At 19:15, as agreed, Rania called up to Perry’s room, asked him to meet them in the lobby. A few minutes later Clay watched Perry leave his room, alone, and get into the lift. Clay waited ten minutes, and satisfied there was no one else in the room, took the stairs back down to the lobby.

Redmond Perry had aged since Clay had seen him last. His big, athlete’s frame had lost some of its bulk. His neck looked thinner, the shoulders less broad. Intelligent hazel eyes glared out from under the eaves of bushy grey brows. He looked long-haul tired.

‘Not here,’ he said, looking around the lobby. ‘Please.’ They agreed to go up to his suite. In the lift no one spoke. Clay stood behind Perry as he unlocked the door, then pushed him inside.

‘Stay here,’ he said to Rania and closed the door and left her in the hallway.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Perry, as Clay pushed him through the suite like a dozer blade, one hand on the back of Perry’s collar.

‘Just making sure. A lot of people want us dead.’

The place was empty.

Clay went and opened the door for Rania, showed her to the suite’s living room, where Perry was pouring himself a drink.

‘I could use one of those myself,’ he said.

Perry nodded and poured another whisky. Clay and Rania sat next to each other on the sofa. Perry sat in the armchair facing them; he smiled at Rania, a quick weary effort, then placed a thick A4 envelope on the table.

‘It’s all in there,’ he said. His voice was deep, experienced, a lifetime of authority there. Shaky, too. ‘Financials, memoranda and emails linking Medved directly with the events in Yemen. He had personal oversight of everything. Also, four invitations to Medved’s capital-raising launch tomorrow. You didn’t get any of it from me.’

Clay stashed the envelope in his pack.

‘Why not go to the Press and tell the story yourself, Mister Perry?’ said Rania. ‘Better yet, let me interview you.’

Perry looked at her a moment. ‘Invisibility, young lady. That’s what industry wants. That’s what company directors want. We just want to be left alone to go about our business. The lower our profile, the better. Profit prefers anonymity. That’s the condition, Straker. Do you understand, son?’

Clay nodded. ‘All in the background.’

‘Just how we like it.’ Perry drained his glass, placed it on the table, stood. ‘Now, if you will excuse me, I have a dinner engagement. Good luck.’

They left the hotel, returned to Marble Arch on foot, lost in the lamp-lit crowds. Clay left Rania at the Churchill, and took the tube to Kilburn. He didn’t say where he was going, and she didn’t ask.

Crowbar’s flat was on the top floor of a run-down, nondescript building off the high street. Clay climbed the stairs and rapped on the door. Crowbar let him in. The flat was as Clay remembered it: a couple of rooms, a shabby couch, cramped kitchen with a sink overflowing with unwashed dishes, empty tinnies lining the countertops like soldiers on parade.

He pushed away some newspapers and sat on the couch. ‘Place is looking good,
broer
.’

‘Beer?’ asked Crowbar, holding out a tin.

Clay waved it away. ‘I don’t have long.’

Crowbar cracked the beer, tipped it to his mouth. He had put on weight. His platinum hair was thinning. He looked more like a middle-aged accountant in a shit job than the fiercest bush fighter Clay had ever known. When the beer was gone, Crowbar tossed the tin towards the kitchen sink. It bounced off the counter and rattled to the floor. ‘
God verdoem
, Straker. You were a pussy back then, and you’re still a
fokken
pussy.’ He grabbed another beer and thrust it into Clay’s hands. ‘Now have a beer with me.’

Clay took the beer and opened it. Crowbar opened another.

‘
Valk
5,’ said Crowbar, raising the tin. ‘We killed a
fok
of a lot more of them than they killed of us.’

‘
Valk
5.’

They finished their beers in silence.

Crowbar opened another beer and took three big gulps and filled his refrigerator ribcage with air. ‘Seen what’s happening at home?’

It hadn’t been home for a long time. Clay nodded.

‘Fucking ANC,’ said Crowbar. ‘Can you
fokken
believe it,
broet
? Saint fucking Mandela,
ja
?’

‘
Ja, broer
.’ That’s what you did with Koevoet. You agreed.

‘Fifteen years I fought for my country. And now,
vrek
, fucking gone. Flushed away like
kak
.’

Three years or fifteen, it didn’t change anything. They had been duped, all of them, lied to, sacrificed for a bankrupt ideal. At least he had seen it, eventually, rebelled, got out. He held the air in his lungs, closed his eyes, breathed out long and steady the way he’d practised so many times. ‘Did we really do those things, Koevoet?’

‘I don’t know what you are talking about, Straker.’

‘You know exactly.’

Crowbar ran his hand over his scalp. ‘
Goddamn
, Straker,’ he whispered. ‘We all agreed a long time ago. Leave it. Forget it.’

Clay stood, fought back a wave of nausea. ‘When this is over, I’m going back.’

‘You think they’ll let you go home now? Saint Mandela give your poor white
rooineck
arse a pardon?’

‘I’m serious, Koevoet. The government has set up a truth and reconciliation commission. They want people to come forward.’

‘The government,
ja
. Bunch of
fokken
terrorists. That is not a government.’

‘I’m going back, and I’m going to tell the truth.’

Koevoet stood and stared at Clay for a long time, said nothing. When he finally spoke, it was in a hoarse whisper. ‘You swore, Straker, we all did, that it would stay out there, in the bush. You think anyone cares? Something that happened ten years ago? A little
fokken
village in the middle of
fokken
nowhere? No one gives a shit, Straker. No one. It’s done. Gone. Nothing you can do is going to change that. The only thing you’ll do is fuck yourself. Yourself and me and the rest of us.’

Koevoet was close to him now. He jabbed his meaty forefinger into Clay’s chest. ‘You made an
oath
, Straker. An oath to your brothers. That’s something you can’t break. Ever.’

Clay stood, stared back hard into his commander’s sky-blue eyes. A flicker of the old battle light was there now, strobing through.

Crowbar put his hand on Clay’s shoulder. ‘Look,
broet
. I know what you’re looking for. You want some kind of absolution. I can understand that. We all do. But that’s not where you’re going to find it, believe me.’

‘I’ve made up my mind. Sorry, Koevoet.’

Crowbar reached behind his back and produced a matt black handgun. ‘G21,’ he said. ‘Forty-five. Stop a rhino with this,
broet
.’ It looked new.

Crowbar jammed a magazine into the grip, worked the mechanism. Like silk. It was a beautiful weapon.

Clay stood. Said nothing.

‘If you open it up again, Straker, I promise you it won’t end well.’

‘The truth has to be told. You can’t just make fifty people go away.’

‘It
fokken
has been told, Straker. What we all told them, what went into the official records,
that
was the truth. Fifty,’ he spat. ‘You think we were the only ones?
Fok
, it could’ve been a
thousand
.’