The Blasphemer (11 page)

Yusuf’s chest quivered. In the name of God, what had he gotten himself into? He could feel the van turning, rolling over a bump. He heard a metallic clang, and the van pitched forward. The sounds of traffic dimmed. They were on a ramp. Spiralling. Going down.

‘Where...? Where are we?’ Yusuf asked.

‘Where no one can pry into our business,’ Magellan said. ‘And where you will perform your favour for me.’

Favour.

Yusuf swallowed. He found himself wishing he was back at home. Back with his grandmother. Yes, the old woman grated on him. Always badgering him to study English and to get a job. But even her tedious ways had to be better than being in the company of this strange man.

Soon the van touched bottom, its tyres screeching on concrete. It coasted to a stop. Its side door swooshed open.

Yusuf could feel his seat belt being unclicked and unfastened. Then two pairs of hands seized him and heaved him out of the van. Everything was happening so fast. Too fast. Bile spiked at the back of his throat, and he fought the urge to vomit as they pulled him along, his feet swimming. Hollow echoes everywhere. Somewhere ahead, a door swung open, its hinges creaking.

Yusuf was hustled through before being released. Dazed, he just stood there, swaying awkwardly. He felt vulnerable. So terribly vulnerable. Right here, right now, they could pump a bullet in him, and he wouldn’t even see it coming. Or perhaps they would use a knife. Yusuf flexed his jaw. Painfully aware of the veins in his neck throbbing.

What does Magellan want with me? Why am I here? Why—?

His hood was ripped off, the action sudden and sharp. Yusuf gasped. The harsh glare of fluorescent light stabbed his eyes, and he threw up his arms to shield them, blinking hard. Whispers and footsteps trailed off behind him, and the door banged shut.

Slowly, surely, his vision adjusted, and everything came into focus. They had place him in a tiny, featureless room. Grey walls. Grey floor. Grey ceiling. One door behind him. One door ahead of him. And before him was a table. On it, a pistol, a box of ammunition and several magazines had been laid out. The pistol looked brand new, its nickel-plated shine beckoning him. Breathing shallowly, Yusuf reached out to touch it.

‘Load your weapon.’

Startled, Yusuf cowered and whipped around, searching the room. Magellan’s voice had come from his left, just over his shoulder. So close. So intimate. But how could this be? Magellan was not here. And there were no speakers. Not on the walls. Not on the ceiling.

Now Magellan’s voice came from Yusuf’s right. ‘Get on with it. Load your weapon. Perform your favour. Then you can have
khat
.’

Yusuf shivered, feeling faint.
What manner of sorcery is this?

‘My friend, get on with it. The sooner you do, the sooner you can have
khat
.’

This time, Magellan’s voice seemed to float directly in front of him. Breathing shakily, Yusuf turned back to the table. He couldn’t afford to offend Magellan. True, he had not used a gun since he left the old country, but it was one of those things you never forgot. Much like riding a bicycle.

Yusuf unboxed the ammunition. They were nine millimetres, he could see. He got down to work. The rounds felt slippery in his sweaty fingers as he inserted them into the magazines. More than once, he dropped a round and had to fumble for it. Choking back dizziness, nausea, he loaded all the magazines, then slapped one into the pistol, racking the slide, chambering a round.

‘Good,’ Magellan said. ‘Now take the gun and the spare magazines and go through the door in front of you.’

CHAPTER 26

Beyond the door lay a maze. Its walls stretched out, built from old tyres, huddled and stacked, and a red line had been painted across the floor. The smell of gunpowder clotted the air, and the lighting was dim and yellow and flickering. Yusuf felt as if he had stepped into a ghoulish haunted house.

Snot dribbled from his nose. He wiped it on his sleeve, but it wouldn’t stop flowing. Now, more than ever, he needed
khat
.

‘My friend,’ Magellan’s voice whispered into his ear. ‘Follow the red line. Use your gun. Shoot everything you see.’

Yusuf did as he was told. He had barely taken five steps into the maze when something cracked on his left. Like an overstretched rubber band being let loose. Turning, he saw a cardboard cut-out of a woman springing up from the floor. She was leering at him, and she had a shotgun. His heart skipped. His stomach went hot.

‘What are you waiting for?’ Magellan hissed. ‘Take her down.’

Trembling, Yusuf raised his gun and double-tapped. Two shots. Centre of mass. The woman’s chest splintered, and the target collapsed.

Two cracks came from Yusuf’s right. He spun to face them. A boy on a bicycle. A man on a bicycle. They were smiling. Yusuf hesitated, his breath caught in his throat. They didn’t seem to be armed.

‘Don’t take the risk. Eliminate everything.’

Yusuf shot the man first, vaporising his face, then he shot the boy, taking off the top of his head. Fragments flecked the air like confetti.

There was another crack. Yusuf jerked as a target popped up right in front of him. This time, it was a woman pushing a baby in a carriage. Yusuf hesitated once again before blinking. No, it wasn’t a baby in the carriage. It was a bundle of grenades.

‘She’s reaching for a grenade. Stop her.’

Gasping, Yusuf shot the woman in the arm, then double-tapped her in the chest.

‘Now move.
Move
.’

Stepping over the fallen target, Yusuf kept moving, panting, sweating, whipping around corners, twisting this way, twisting that way, shooting, reloading, shooting, reloading, spent shells clinking on the floor, the stench of gunpowder thickening, everything a blur as he destroyed men, women, children, infants, and more than once, he nearly tripped over himself, nearly fell, and his lungs burned, and he gagged, snot streaming down his nose, the adrenalin almost too much for him to take, and Magellan urged him on, and he picked up the pace, eager to please, eager to show how good he was, shooting, reloading, shooting, reloading, what a rush, what a rush.

Eventually, Yusuf emerged from the maze, eyes watering, ears ringing, teeth chattering. A table stood at the end of the red line. And on it, a box of
khat
. Snivelling, he fell upon the table like a drowning man, breaking the box open. He stuffed his mouth with the leaves, chewing them long and hard. Euphoria washed over him, and he sighed, his mind soaring.

Oh,
khat
had never tasted so good.

‘Well done
. Very well done,’
Magellan said. ‘Now go into the next room. This time, you will have others joining you.’

CHAPTER 27

When Maya was a child, Papa introduced her to a game. Kim’s Game. It started out being real simple. She’d be given a minute to study and memorise several items spread out on a desk. A coin. A bottle cap. A matchbox. A pen. A map. Et cetera. Then she had to turn around and tell Papa what she had seen. Was an item round or square? New or old? Black or white? Metal or plastic? One inch or two? Were there any words? Numbers? Symbols?

Each session got progressively harder. There would be more items. Less time. And the gap between memorising and reciting stretched. It wouldn’t be strange, for example, for Papa to show her twenty items early in the morning and then ask her to describe them late at night.

Soon Papa did away with the desk and brought disorder into the equation. He would scatter items all across a room before ushering her inside. Maya wouldn’t be allowed to touch or rearrange anything. No, she had to stand in a fixed spot and strain her eyes to observe and dissect the chaos.

Later on, Papa would add or subtract items, and Maya had to be able to pinpoint the changes on a second viewing. There would be substitutions as well—Papa would swap out one item for another that was subtly different just to tease her brain. It was all about transforming the subconscious into the conscious. Refining her ability to pick up, absorb and process the fine minutiae of life.

‘It could save your life one day, kiddo,’ Papa once told her in that gravelly voice of his. ‘Or even someone else’s.’

Right now, Maya was putting those lessons into play. Casing out the entire Pacifica Hotel. Every floor. Every corridor. Every stairwell. Back to front. Top to bottom. Rooftop to lobby. And every step of the way, she brainstormed with her team, sussing out all the scenarios, no matter how remote, no matter how absurd.

‘Here’s a curveball,’ Maya said as they moved down the stairs towards the lobby, her voice bouncing off the walls. ‘Someone real skinny shimmies up through a sewerage pipe. Sneaks into the hotel. Tries to plant a bomb directly beneath the principal’s suite. What’s our failsafe?’

Gabrielle pouted and twisted her glossy lips. ‘You have quite the imagination, Maya. But there’s no way your skinny man will be able to slip past the CCTV cameras.’

‘Let’s assume he hacks the cameras. Bypasses them.’

Dashiell shrugged. ‘That’s no biggie. I’ve installed motion sensors on the floors below the suite. They run on an encrypted transmitter, and they’re completely separate from the CCTV system. Skinny or not, an intruder won’t go unnoticed.’

‘Good thinking.’ Maya nodded. ‘Here’s another curveball. What if someone tries to take a shot at Khan through the windows of his suite?’

Noah smirked. ‘Shooter would just be giving himself away. The plate glass is bullet-resistant.’

‘It’s bullet-resistant, yes, but not bulletproof. Assuming the shooter brings along a fifty-calibre Barrett, it’s going to be like punching through paper.’

‘Maya, if the shooter’s smart enough to acquire hardware like that, he’s not going to be dumb enough to spray-and-pray. Remember, the curtains are drawn. There is no line of sight.’

‘If the guy’s got a thermal scope, he won’t need a traditional line of sight. He’ll just pick up on the body heat of his targets.’

Arthur shook his head. ‘That’s why I lathered the glass with thermal compound first thing this morning. It’ll mess up his optics. All he’ll see is just a bright wash of heat.’

Maya nodded. ‘Nice.’

And on and on they went—examining every contingency from every angle. What if this happened? What if that happened? What if multiple events happened? Eventually, they hit the lobby and retraced their steps. They ended up back where they had started—in the hallway outside Abraham Khan’s suite.

Maya leaned against a wall, the soles of her feet aching, her mouth dry. They had gone through every conceivable threat and had come out with solutions to counter them. Still, something was nagging at her, and it wouldn’t go away.

She flicked a glance at the two cops posted at Abraham’s door. A reassuring sight. But, no, she wasn’t going to kid herself. She knew that the best and brightest in Auckland had been reassigned to the economic summit in Wellington. Which left only the newbies and the half-baked at her disposal. Not ideal. Not ideal in the least.

Maya took a breath and regarded the faces of her team one at a time. ‘I’m not comfortable. I’m still not comfortable. I don’t want to sound like a broken tape recorder, but the principal is our principal concern. There can’t be any compromise on safety.’

Noah wagged his finger. ‘We’ve checked, checked and rechecked. There’s nothing more we can do.’

Maya shook her hand. ‘There is. We can move him to a safe house. Effective immediately.’

Gabrielle blinked and chuckled. ‘I don’t mean to second-guess you, Maya. But are you sure that’s the best thing to do? I mean, he’s safe right here in the Pacifica. It’s practically a stronghold. We’ve got enough officers and enough security staff.’

Maya could feel the heat rising in her throat, smouldering. But she couldn’t allow Gabrielle to upstage her again. Not this time. So she swallowed and forced her irritation down. ‘The Pacifica’s too public. Too exposed. Everyone’s watching. Reporters. Paparazzi. Rubberneckers. Would-be assassins. This needs to be resolved, and this needs to be resolved right now.’

Maya looked to Noah, expecting him to act like a good 2IC and back her up. But he just twitched his shoulders and cranked up an eyebrow.

Instead, it was Dashiell who spoke up. ‘I’m with Maya on this. The inside of the hotel is fine. It’s the outside that’s prickly. The choke points and the sight lines are a nightmare to deal with.’

‘I concur,’ Arthur said. ‘We’ve got to cut down on the variables. The more control we have over the environment, the more secure the principal will be.’

Maya nodded. ‘In other words, less opportunity for things to go bonkers. Appreciate the input, guys.’ She allowed her eyes to bore into Gabrielle’s. ‘So, yeah, we will do this by the numbers. I’m not settling for anything else.’

Gabrielle inhaled, a moody shadow passing across her pretty face. She broke eye contact and looked at Noah. She knew that she was being outgunned here. But Noah, thankfully, kept up the silent act—he seemed to be sitting on the fence on this one.

Eventually, Gabrielle shifted her weight from one foot to the other and sighed, turning back to Maya. ‘Okay. All right. But I’ll have to make a few calls. This is going to take time to arrange.’

‘No worries,’ Maya said. ‘We will only be moving once it gets dark and late enough.’

Noah cleared his throat, finding his voice. ‘How do we deal with the press? Those bozos have got all the exits covered. We’re not going to be able to pop out unnoticed.’

‘Correct. So let’s go with a bait-and-switch routine. We’ll assemble a fake motorcade and allow them to move out first. That’ll clear the way for us to slip out without too much fuss.’

Gabrielle frowned. ‘I will have to reassign the officers.’

‘Well, do it.’

‘I’ll need to make some calls.’

‘Sure. Do it. And while you’re at it, leak something spicy to the press. Get them all hyped up about Mr Khan’s imminent departure. But don’t say exactly when it’s going to happen.’