The answer to that question, Hassan thought, was very much in the hands of Allah the all-merciful.
And hopefully he would be merciful. Still, he was not afraid, nor was he excited. This was business, in a way He was going to settle a debt, nothing more, nothing less. The risks were high, but he was not scared of death. The only thing he feared was failure.
At the homestead, ostriches ran up and down the fence line, craning their long necks for a view of the vehicle as it trundled along the dirt road. The driver stopped the van by the wooden doors of an aircraft hangar on the edge of the property’s airstrip. A wind-sock hung limp in the warm morning air.
It was muggy and Hassan had to wipe tiny beads of sweat from his top lip as the driver opened the hangar door.
‘The aeroplane has been checked and the tanks are full, as you ordered, boss,’ the man said.
‘Good,’ bin Zayid said. ‘Load the plane.’
The two Africans sweated freely as they carried the heavy coffins into the hangar and slid them awkwardly through the aircraft’s side cargo hatch. The roomy single-engine Cessna 208, also called the Caravan, had been designed to transport up to ten people or the equivalent amount of cargo.
Hassan had removed the passenger seats long ago, as the aircraft was usually used only to transport cargo around the various bin Zayid properties.
‘Well done,’ Hassan said when they had finished. ‘Close up the hangar when I’ve taken off.’
Hassan taxied to the far end of the strip, the aircraft trailing a plume of grass and dust as it went.
He applied the brakes, then squeezed his way between the pilot and copilot’s seats. From the briefcase, the only piece of luggage he had brought with him from the boat, he took a screwdriver and proceeded to unfasten the lid of one of the coffins. He wiped the sweat from his brow and opened the casket a little. He felt inside and disengaged the wire. He lifted the cover completely.
She looked so peaceful, and still so beautiful. It was a shame that her death was so necessary Hassan returned to his seat, strapped in, and released the brakes. He wanted to be able to keep an eye on her as he flew. He needed to remind himself of her deceit as he prepared to settle the debt owed to his family. During the long flight he would have time to recall every detail of how she had come to his bed, how they had made love, how she had lied to him. He increased the engine’s speed and the Cessna hurtled down the strip and into the grey sky.
*
The sun broke through the cloud as the aircraft cleared the horizon. The driver of the van that had transported Hassan and the coffins had to shield his eyes as he watched his employer disappear.
‘Funny,’ he said to the sweat-stained man who was hauling the doors of the hangar closed.
‘What is?’ the man asked. He saw nothing funny about rising at four in the morning to drive the cranky Arab boss-man and two disease-ridden stiffs out to the countryside.
‘He’s heading south.’
‘So?’
‘Arusha is north-west of here.’
Hassan flew due south in order to skirt Dar es Salaam, and then he banked south-west across the wilds of Tanzania. He kept the main road connecting Dar with Mbeya, the last big town before the Zambian border, in sight and on his left.
As well as Miranda he thought of Iqbal and the divergent paths their lives had taken during their years at university Hassan wondered if it was fear that had kept him on the safe path of pursuing the family business in idyllic, fragrant Zanzibar. He had opted for paradise on earth – money, women, alcohol. It was an easy life. He had told his peers that it was his duty to continue the family’s presence on the island, but in the last few days he had come to the conclusion that he had simply been afraid to let his brother lead him into his world, the world of the
mujahideen
.
Hassan had known fear, walking in the bush. There was the time he had stumbled upon a pride of lions on a kill in Tanzania’s Selous Game Reserve, but that was nothing compared with living through a rocket barrage or fleeing from the buzz of an approaching helicopter gunship’s chain gun, as Iqbal had in Chechnya. He wondered if his twin had been scared when he died, if he had run from Jed Banks or if he had looked him in the eye and died like a man. War had been declared a long time ago, but Hassan had sat quietly on the sidelines, lapping up his earthly delights while others fought for their beliefs. He was ashamed, but now he was taking a stand.
He looked back over his shoulder at the still body of Miranda Banks-Lewis. Her face looked serene. He recalled the feel of her skin, her scent, the exquisite softness of her lips on virtually every inch of his body. The memory of the joy of entering her, and her surprise when he had despatched her prior to lifting her into the coffin. The thought of their final confrontation made him smile and he noted he was becoming physically aroused – not a comfortable sensation on a long flight.
The reporter’s intrusion into his affairs on the island had worried him, but he believed he had dealt with the man in good time. The fact that he was dead did not worry Hassan. In the past he had disapproved of violence towards westerners on Zanzibar. It was bad for business and drew unnecessary outside attention to the Arab community on the island. But things were different now. He had, as he reminded himself once again, joined the war. There were no rules in war.
He looked at the other coffin and mentally checked over the contents – the casket certainly did not contain a dead African worker. The success of his mission depended on everything in there working properly – and on the plans he had made with Juma.
Hassan was confident Miranda had not learned anything that would incriminate him, but he had taken her with him to Zanzibar to make doubly sure. Making her death appear to be the result of a man-eating lion had been a nice touch. Had she simply vanished, there would have been too many questions asked. Her disappearance had to look like an accident. Juma had told him that the staff at Mana Pools believed there was a man-eater in their park. While he was aware her death had been reported as sensational news around the world, it had not unduly aroused the suspicions of the authorities on the ground in Zimbabwe. Keeping the news of Miranda’s own ‘death’ from her had not been hard. He had instructed his people in Zanzibar to remove the television and radio receiver from his motor cruiser prior to her arrival.
‘When I’m on my boat I like to be a million miles from the world’s cares,’ he had lied smoothly.
‘We’ve no need for satellite news channels or the BBC World Service here. I’ve got some music CDs and a few DVDs if you get bored.’
She’d smiled back at him and given him a mischievous wink. ‘I’ve got a feeling we’ll be able to make our own fun, Hassan.’
After they had flown to the ranch near Dar es Salaam they’d taken a waiting car to the port and had boarded his boat. They’d cruised for the rest of the day and made love that night, as though nothing were the matter. The next morning he had taken the Zodiac inflatable back to Dar on the pretext of a business meeting, and to pick up spares for one of the game reserve’s Land Rovers.
His meeting with the travel agent a few days earlier, in the beach bar of the resort he had very nearly bought, had signalled his crossover from civilian to warrior.
‘I wondered if you would come, Hassan,’ the man had said. He was overweight, sweating in the sun in his western business suit.
‘I am ready to help, in whatever way I can.’
‘Why the change of heart? Your brother, I suppose.’
‘My reasons are my own.’
‘If you had come to me a week, a month or half a year ago, Hassan, I would have told you to go away. I would have said I knew nothing about what you are offering, that we never had our previous conversation.’
‘I understand the need for secrecy,’ Hassan assured him.
‘You understand nothing of our world, your brother’s world. You talk of secrecy in the way a cheating husband lies to his wife. I talk of secrecy in terms of life and death. You are here because two of our number are dead.’
‘How –’
‘There, you see? You want details about things that do not concern you. But I will tell you, because you met these men. The two who came to your lodge two months ago, the ones I booked. You remember them?’
‘I do.’ He remembered the two young Arabs well. He had wondered about the real purpose of their visit. They had rented a boat from him and cruised up and down the Zambezi. They had carried binoculars and field guides, but had known nothing of African birds or mammals when Hassan had tried to strike up a conversation with them. He remembered, too, how Miranda, who had been visiting the lodge at the time, had seemed curious about the men.
‘They knew the value of secrecy. They travelled with false passports, but forgeries of the highest quality. They were not identified through their documents, I am sure of it, nor from careless talk on mobile telephones. Someone saw them, perhaps photographed them, and from these images, or this chance sighting, they were recognised as men wanted in other parts of the world. I had thought they would be anonymous here in Africa. I sent them to your lodge on a reconnaissance mission. Did someone there see them, photograph them?’
Hassan felt his pulse start to quicken. ‘No, of course not. Who would have seen them at my lodge? You know that I had no other bookings when these men arrived. You made sure of that by paying a premium price for their accommodation.’
The travel agent regarded him through heavily lidded, suspicious eyes. ‘I don’t know, Hassan. I will be honest. I would not ordinarily trust a man who has undergone such a sudden conversion as you, who approaches me and asks to join me. This, I think, is dangerous. However, with the martyrdom of my other two men I have no choice. If you are a spy, Hassan, if you are working for the crusaders, then I will know soon enough and I will go to God knowing I have done my duty and that I was betrayed by you.’
‘I am not a spy I swear on the graves of my father and my martyred brother.’
‘Your oaths don’t concern me, Hassan. Your actions do. I will give you a task so that you might prove yourself worthy of more.’
Hassan had taken delivery of the bomb in the backpack there and then, and been sent to the centre of town. The travel agent knew of the departure time of a coachload of a American tourists. Even Hassan, who knew nothing of military operations, thought it madness to undertake such a mission with no planning or surveillance of the area.
The bus was where the travel agent said it would be, outside the four-star hotel that was part of an American chain. The guests were filing out of the hotel. Elderly, mostly, corpulent in the main, loud, laughing. Bellboys were piling suitcases and packs on trolleys in the foyer and wheeling them out to the coach. Hassan walked into the hotel and no one gave him a second glance. He’d pulled his cap down low, in order to shade his eyes, in case cameras were watching him.
He walked into the hotel’s men’s room. In a cubicle he unzipped the pack and set the timer on the digital alarm clock as the travel agent had instructed him. He flushed the toilet, part of the charade, walked out, set down the pack and gripped the washbasin. His heart pounded in his chest. He splashed water on his face to wash away the sweat, to calm his nerves, then walked out. A man and a woman in matching polo shirts and baggy shorts were piling their bags onto a trolley Hassan waited a few paces behind them and, when they left, added his pack to the pile. The bellboy took no notice of him. He walked out into the sunshine, hailed a taxi and left. It had been as simple as that. The first radio reports of the carnage had reached him in a room at the beachside resort. The travel agent had shaken his hand.
Next the travel agent had briefed him on the two missions that were to have been undertaken by the martyred Arabs. The first was a bomb to be planted in a nightclub at Nungwi. That would be Hassan’s next task. The second would be closer to Hassan’s home, on his doorstep, in fact, in the Zambezi Valley.
After Hassan overflew the grubby scar on the open landscape that was Mbeya he deviated west of the main road to avoid being seen by anyone at the border post at Tunduma. He doubted the sight of a light plane would arouse suspicions, but his registration letters were clearly visible under the wings and he didn’t want anyone remembering them if questions were asked later.
Hassan’s plan was to remain alive at the completion of his mission, but he knew his chances were slim. He wondered what paradise was really like. If it was sumptuous feasts on the shores of azure waters, surrounded by beautiful houris, then it would be just like Zanzibar. He was sure Iqbal was enjoying himself, but Hassan could have all that without dying.
Below him the empty plains and bushland of Zambia stretched forever. The English even had a phrase for it – MMBA, miles and miles of bloody Africa. Development, such as it was, was concentrated along the main road. People walked, cycled and drove in an endless parade below him.
The sight reminded him of a line of tireless, unstoppable Safari ants. Soon those people down there would be talking about his deeds. The war was about to come to this struggling African nation. And why should it not? The one advantage he and his newfound colleagues still possessed, despite the array of technology and weaponry the Americans had brought to bear against them, had always been the most crucial of all – surprise. The crusaders, as Iqbal and the travel agent called them, would always be on the back foot. What he was about to do was primarily for Iqbal. He had taken up his brother’s fight. Glancing back again at Miranda in her coffin he recalled the time they discussed the day Osama bin Laden had become a household name. It had been in the lodge, in Zambia, sitting in the deep-cushioned wicker armchairs after dinner, listening to the Zambezi’s nocturnal chorus.
‘What did you think about nine-eleven?’ she had asked him without preamble.
They had been discussing the politics of Zimbabwe. It was before they first slept together and he wondered, later, if it was part of a quiz he had to complete correctly before she awarded him first prize – herself. However, at the time, he had answered immediately, and from the heart.