‘You’re a Muslim, a brother. Why, why me?’
‘You were chosen. You were being watched, profiled as you moved around the world, city to city, slowly compromising yourself, moving closer and closer to your final moment in history. Yesterday you finally did something worthy for Islam. You killed the sheikh and you dealt a hammer blow against American pride. At least you can die with dignity.’
‘You’re
AQ
?’
Tanveer smiled. ‘Al Qaeda gets the credit for everything. They’ll probably take credit for this one too. Maybe it’s the Base, maybe it’s not. I don’t know. I don’t even really care.’
‘You don’t care? You don’t care who you kill people for?’
‘I used them. They approached me when I first came into the country. I was also chosen, just like you. I also had a destiny to fulfil. Mine was to revenge my brother’s death in Kashmir at the hands of the filthy Indians and their American sponsors. This suited me perfectly. I could never have done it alone.’
‘You dishonour your brother by doing this, you dishonour him.’
‘No. My brother was a fighter. He was a hothead, he was brave, but he fought the wrong way. He was sent by Zawahiri. I was told everything.’
Khalid’s eyes widened. ‘Qaeda’s number two sent your brother to Kashmir?’ What had he got himself into?
‘Enough talking now. Let’s finish this.’ Tanveer sniffed and motioned with the gun.
Khalid knew he was going to die. He at least wanted to know why. ‘But Mariam. She was your wife. You even used her.’
‘I don’t claim to be perfect yet. Allah uses all things to fulfil his will. Some things are distasteful. Mariam will have her reward. She was a tool, also chosen, a tool to do Allah’s will. We can’t question the Almighty.’
‘Then there are others.’ Khalid felt as long as he talked, he would live. Perhaps a miracle could still happen. Perhaps Fulham would come. Or an arrest team. ‘You also answer to somebody.’
Tanveer smiled and looked up. ‘I answer to Allah. Others answer to Allah. We’re all just tools.’
‘But these plans have taken months, years to work out. The plans of the ship were only made a few days ago.’
‘We’ve been ready for months. We were just waiting for the right opportunity.’
Khalid nodded resignedly. ‘The right opportunity.’
‘The ship was an unexpected bonus for us. Yes, a miracle, even. The chance to get the parcel into the heart of the beast.’
‘So the sheikh was innocent all this time.’
‘The sheikh is a fool. He’s a disgrace. He’s a puppet in the hands of Western intelligence. But he’ll be blamed for the explosion.’
Khalid frowned and looked at his hands. They were moist and cold. ‘You said I would be.’
‘I said you were responsible. I didn’t say you’d be blamed.’
‘But . . . how . . .?’
Tanveer allowed himself a smile. It wasn’t his operation, but he admired the brilliant minds which had planned it. ‘The sheikh made a call to the cellphone in the parcel that detonated the explosive.’
Khalid felt dizzy, the sort of light-headedness one feels just before you pass out. He wanted to stand up, but couldn’t. ‘What happens now?’ he asked.
Tanveer shrugged indifferently. ‘Only one more thing for you to do. The question is, can you do it by yourself, or do you need my help?’
Khalid smiled. ‘I never imagined my life ending like this. My allegiance has always been to my God and my country. What have you done to me?’
‘I also have allegiances. We make them, we break them. No allegiance is definitive.’
Khalid steadied himself on the couch armrest and stood up. ‘Don’t expect Allah’s mercy,’ he said and shuffled slowly towards the balcony, holding on to the wall as he went.
‘Hamdulillah. Praise be to the Almighty; in you he found someone useful. Thank him for that.’
Khalid touched the balcony railing with his hands and stared at the horizon. Everything looked serene and peaceful; just another day. He leaned forward. Countless fears exist in the subsystems of the human brain, and one which is usually only briefly encountered during nightmares is the sure knowledge that you will die when you fall from a great height and hit the ground. That subsystem normally causes neural firing which releases adrenalin into the bloodstream which wakes you from the nightmare and brings escape and relief. In Khalid’s case, by the time the air roaring past his ears stopped and the parking lot crashed against his body, he had already given himself to death. There was a period of twelve seconds that he lay face up, feeling no pain. There were just too many pain impulses coming from all over his broken body for his brain to process so it simply ignored them. He tried to take one more breath, but his rib cage and diaphragm were shattered and there was no possibility of taking that breath, nor any purpose because there were no functioning lungs to transfer the life-giving oxygen into the blood stream. The blood stream was compromised anyway. Mercifully, the brain could process the incoming stimuli and reason that the damage to the body was not survivable and gave in to the inevitability of death.
Masondo clenched his teeth as the nurse raised his bed into the sitting position. He motioned for her to leave as Berkeley entered the private ward with a bouquet of proteas and shook his hand. ‘I’ve been told amazing things about you, Mr Masondo.’
‘Then you’ve only been speaking to my friends. Try talk to my enemies if you want a balanced perspective.’ He motioned to the proteas. ‘For me? Thank you for the kind thought.’
The consul-general smiled although she didn’t feel like smiling. ‘I’ve lost some good folks and I just want to assure you that we’ll do everything in our power to find the monsters that did this to us.’
Masondo nodded. ‘Monsters.’ The word didn’t sound right to him, but he couldn’t think of a better one. ‘We failed. All of us.’
Berkeley fumbled with the flowers before awkwardly placing them on the bedside table. ‘Well, we can’t blame ourselves. A determined enough terrorist will always succeed. The best we can hope for is to limit the damage and then try to stop it happening the same way again.’
‘So many lives, ma’am. It was a terrible, terrible experience. Please sit down.’
Berkeley pulled the chair from beneath the bed and sat uneasily. She felt somehow responsible for this man’s pain. It wasn’t so much that he was wounded on an American warship, but that the burden of the terrorist act now rested on his shoulders. His countrymen would see his failure, his shortcomings and the critics would be brutal. Where was the intelligence? Had they not foreseen this? There was a warning it was coming. They had given the sheikh the all-clear. It had all added up to an epic failure. And here he lay, leg in tatters, helpless on his back while his country blamed him for not stopping something which was inevitable. It was so unfair. ‘The official death toll is eight marines, fourteen sailors, seven dignitaries including the sheikh, and, sadly, also Special Agent Fulham. I’m making a point of visiting every single injured person. Some are still critical. I promised the Assistant Secretary that.’
Masondo lifted his eyes to the diplomat. The shimmering in her eyes couldn’t be mistaken. ‘Is she unharmed?’
‘Shaken, but unharmed. She was fortunately at the furthest point from the explosion and right next to an exit. The Secret Service took her to the ship’s ops room and then evacuated her from there. They did well. It could have been much worse, devastating as it was.’ She put a handkerchief to her eyes, unashamed at the tears.
‘I’ll have my best people working on this, ma’am. I guarantee we’ll get to the bottom of it.’ He tried to sit up and grimaced. The leg was useless for now.
Berkeley raised her voice above the emotion. ‘There are specialist teams en route from the States. Fortunately, the
Endeavour
is still seaworthy so she’ll be underway
ASAP
once temporary repairs have been carried out. We want her back in Norfolk where they can really do a thorough investigation.’ She put the handkerchief away.
Masondo sipped some water with a slurp. ‘Do you have any theories?’
Berkeley nodded. ‘A few. Video footage shows two explosions in quick succession. A small one, followed by a huge one, a split second apart. The ship’s damage-control officer told me the second, bigger explosion was in a store area where bombs are kept.’ She bit her lip solemnly. ´That’s why we lost so many sailors. It seems a small bomb triggered a much larger explosion, either purposefully or accidentally. Maybe the terrorists themselves were surprised.’
‘Just like they were when the twin towers fell.’ Masondo reflected for a second. ‘Was it a suicide bomb? How did someone manage to get it on board? The security was impenetrable, I thought.’ Masondo shuddered inside at the thought. If they can get into a ship with hundreds of marines and metal detectors and explosives sniffers – was anywhere safe?
‘That’s the focus of our investigation at present. It definitely didn’t come on board with one of the guests – everyone passed through X-ray and explosives screens and physical checks. The bomb may have been put on board earlier, I don’t know how. Excuse me.’
Berkeley answered her cellphone and the blood drained from her face as she listened. ‘Thank you,’ she said and put the phone back in her handbag.
‘More bad news?’ Masondo asked.
‘My Regional Security Officer just killed himself.’
Durant ran downstairs and met Amina in the parking lot outside the office. This morning he didn’t have the time to drive too far to meet her. He leaned on the door of Amina’s car and both of them spoke at once.
‘Yasmin is suddenly very cooperative,’ she said.
‘Masondo told me Fulham was killed on the ship.’
‘Really? I think she guessed that. She’s told me everything, right from the beginning.’ Amina switched off the engine. This could take a while. ‘She met Arshad Tanveer first when he was trying to get temporary residence papers. He said he was referred to her because she knew someone with an immigration agency who could speed things up.’
‘And that was Mariam, her sister?’
‘Exactly. So she introduced Arshad to Mariam. Obviously he charmed her and next minute, she’s pregnant with Siraj. At first, neither of them are particularly happy about it, quite scandalous actually. When the baby’s born, she loves him and really tries to be a good mother, as we know. So anyway, Yasmin is working closely with a guy called Imraan Khalid at the consulate and cooperating with him in terms of database info and the like.’
Durant nodded knowingly.
‘So there’s the connection. Brilliant.’
‘All official cooperation, well, sort of. Yasmin is told that Khalid is a bit of a player and she sees the desperate situation her sister is in with Arshad, so she hooks them up. Yasmin feels it’s like revenge against Arshad; her sister’s on the arm of an American diplomat and she’s finally treated like a lady.’
Durant straightened up momentarily. His back hurt. ‘Which of course wasn’t how it turned out at all. Khalid seemed worse than Tanveer.’
‘Well, as bad, if not worse. So poor Mariam is caught up in this terrible situation of a loveless marriage and an abusive affair.’
‘So where did Fulham come into the picture?’
‘Somebody who worked with Khalid tipped him off and said he was seeing someone. Fulham obviously looked at Khalid’s contacts and came across Yasmin. Perhaps Fulham told her what a bad man Khalid was and so she just cooperated.’
Durant sighed. ‘We’ve always been just a few steps behind.’
‘Somebody needs to talk to Khalid, and fast.’
‘Well, that’s the other thing I wanted to tell you. Khalid’s dead. He fell, jumped, or was pushed from his apartment balcony.’
‘What?’ Amina looked shocked. ‘When?’
‘Masondo called me just before I met you. He was with the consul-general when she was told.’
Durant stepped back as Amina opened her car door. ‘Sherbet, what next? He jumped? Felt guilty about Mariam?’
‘Or guilty about the ship blowing up. He was the Regional Security Officer – responsible for securing the thing.’
‘Whew, Kevin. That’s hectic. I’m starting to get worried.’
‘You’re only starting to get worried now?’
Shabalala met Ruslan at the safe house late in the afternoon. The latest developments had negated the use of clandestine communication. Information had to come in quickly and efficiently, and only personal contact would facilitate that.
‘The police are all over the centre. They’re questioning everyone. It’s a witch-hunt,’ he said and Shabalala noticed he was rolling prayer beads between his fingers. ‘I don’t know what will happen to me. With the sheikh gone . . .’
‘It must have been horrific. I’m happy you’re okay. Some people said you were a hero, running aboard the ship and helping people off.’
Ruslan sat behind the desk. He looked shaken. ‘I did what I could. It probably wasn’t enough.’
‘And the sheikh – what’s everybody saying?’
‘They’re saying the Americans will want to blame Islamic extremists. They’ll keep looking until they find someone they can label “überterrorist”. Then he’ll become the next Bin Laden.’
‘That Mohammed guy. Do you think he was part of it?’
‘Probably just a small part. Maybe they didn’t mind sacrificing him. This thing was big. Professional, international. Not just one player.’
‘What will happen to the centre?’
‘Without the sheikh, there is no centre. No guidance, no funding, no support. And now, with all this labelling, within a few months it will just become an overgrown garden.’
‘And you, Ruslan, what are you going to do?’ Shabalala said the words gently.
‘I will probably return to Chechnya, my home. There is nothing left for me here. My experiences here have all been bad. I hope they allow me to go.’
‘Of course, they’ll have to. Why shouldn’t they?’
Ruslan put his head in his hands. ‘If they suspect the sheikh was involved, then surely the sheikh’s driver is also a suspect?’
‘Come on, Ruslan, we’ll look after you. It’s an obligation. You’re our asset. Don’t worry. Any problems, you call me.’
It was a changed Durban. What used to be a predictable, safe suburban Paradise had become an uncertain, uncomfortable, decidedly nervous and distressed city. The real world had been palm-lined promenades, sandy beaches, Christmas lights and colourful gardens. This world had changed and Durant felt its pain. The streets were all but deserted. It was a city reeling from shock and it reminded Durant of news footage following natural disasters – people wandering around aimlessly, eyes downcast, trying to make sense of what had happened. Suburbia had been shaken. A quiet, eerie calm rested over the beachfront area and the usually jubilant crowds which swept through the markets and bounced their way along the Golden Mile in rickshaws were noticeably absent. Every police car or metro traffic car that drove past had its blue lights flashing; almost to signal that they were in an undeclared state of emergency and that they were ready to find and destroy this menace that had come to Durban. It gave Durant little comfort. It actually made him feel uneasy because he knew no amount of visible policing or even a show of force was going to help now. The deed had been done. The terrorists had planned their attack, executed it with precision, and were probably long gone. They weren’t going to go into the streets randomly and start blowing up carts that were selling flags or vuvuzelas. No, the threat had passed; all that remained was the ultimate terrorist weapon – fear. That was harder to erase than charred bodies or burnt buildings. It wasn’t so much weapons of mass destruction, but the weapon of mass fear that was sometimes more destructive than the actual explosives. It wasn’t so much the bang, but the fear of the bang. When would the next one be? Where? How big would it be? How many more people would die? And the blue lights didn’t help. Durant felt like taking a vuvuzela and doing with it what it was made for – making a noise. Wake everybody up, let them realise that life must go on. He, Durant, and others would pursue the terror targets, use the information they had, figure it all out. And they could work much better in a society that wasn’t so afraid.