Zanzibar Page 21

  Still shaken by how quickly it had all happened, Nick rowed on a little further. The dinghy slid up the waves – and then pitched down again. It seemed pointless, they were making so little progress. The boat might as well have been a beetle in a bathtub. Leggatt still hadn’t said anything.

  Nick himself spoke. ‘I’m sorry, Ralph.’

  Wild and bloody, Leggatt looked up and laughed out loud.

  ‘I’m less worried about the boat than those fellows with guns.’ Then he laughed again, manically.

  Had the knock on the head made him delirious? Unnerved by the mirthless laughter, Nick replied slowly. ‘Do you think we should head for the mainland instead?’

  The Englishman grunted, and looked down into the bottom of the rowing boat, where dirty water was slopping to and fro. Then, as if the sight of it had brought home to him their true plight, he suddenly returned to his customary solidity.

  ‘In an eight-foot dinghy? We’d never make it. I think we should carry on for Lyly, lie off it out of sight till nightfall, then steal one of their dhows under cover of darkness. Or the cruiser?’

  It sounded a far-fetched plan, but without saying anything, Nick began rowing again, arching his back against the pressure exerted on the wooden blades. The sea had fallen silent now. The only sound was the rattle of the oars and the quiet lap of water against the bow. The sky was like the inside of a red shell. Behind him, he knew, loomed the shape of the island. But in his imagination its familiar features were obscured by the silhouettes of men. Their figures moved across the blooded air. Their postures were determined. Also, as Leggatt said, they were armed.

  20

  Khaled stood barefoot on the white, wrack-strewn shore, stood on the gleaming, purring sand looking out to sea. Even though the waves came with some regularity, the foam broke into patterns that were slightly different each time. This seemed a very holy thing to him, as if each wave were craving admission to that perfection comprehended by Allah alone.

  Legs apart, feet deeply planted, it was strange to think that just two hours ago the sea had been black and raging. They were lucky that the dhows, protected by the lagoon, had not been overly damaged. The crew were fixing the sails now. The only remaining signs of the storm were the seaweed on the shore and the white tufts of foam that still rode the tops of the waves.

  He was wearing his favourite T-shirt, which had a picture of a monkey in a frame and the English words ‘Talking Heads’. He had picked it up on a second-hand market stall in Dar, years ago. He didn’t know what the words referred to, but he liked the picture.

  He remembered coming here as a boy, with his father or his friends, Ali and Juba. It was near to here that he had seen the great turtle that night. But that was long before, like a great many things. That was other water, and he knew if he thought of it he would surely drown. The Koran spoke of Allah letting free two bodies of flowing water, one sweet and palatable, the other salty and bitter. And He has made between them a barrier and a forbidding partition.

  His father had told him that various people had lived on this little island in times gone by. In history. In succession. Together. Apart. Swahili and Arab and Portuguese and British. All peketevu, he had said. All mixed up. Sometimes all shambuliana, he had said. All bombarding each other.

  After the revolution his father had taken possession of Lyly on behalf of the state. Except the state didn’t know and it effectively became his own place. In time, during the early nineties, he quietly sold it to the agent of a rich Arab who had started bringing alms to Jambangona, their village on Pemba. His father had put the money, which was surprisingly little – although sufficient considering he was poor and the island had not belonged to him in the first place – into a motorised fishing boat. Khaled remembered the day it had emerged from Turtle Mo’s dockyard, gleaming and new, and he and his father had journeyed in it to Jambangona.

  The agent who had come initially was, he would later realise, none other than Zayn. Over the next few years messages would arrive for Khaled’s father from the rich Arab via the same route, and extra money. Eventually another fishing boat was bought. Then disaster struck.

  It chilled him to remember the terrible mat, the scene coming back like a hollow shriek: the faces smeared crimson, the strange shape of the cuts, the dismal feeling – when he came round, surrounded by the horror – that all the love he had ever known had drained away with their blood.

  He spent a hellish year trying to persuade the police to investigate, to no avail. He sold the two boats and used the money to live, spending freely, taking trips to Dar and Nairobi with Ali. They visited prostitutes in the Kenyan capital. They drank alcohol. They piled up sins to the horizon of heaven.

  Then Zayn came, and all was changed. He began another life, one that took him from Zanzibar to Sudan all the way to Afghanistan – and, now, back here again. All in the name of jihad, a holy programme, a sacred work. Zayn, when he had shown him all those videotapes of what the US was doing to their Muslim brothers in Iraq – bombing children, he said, poisoning the water supply, he said – told him one day that he, Khaled, would get his revenge. You will join us on a jihad job.

  Now he was here, on that jihad job; although in fact, he had done very little. Apart from organising the rental of a Nissan truck in Dar – for which he had used the satellite phone – he had, if truth be told, done almost nothing. The grinding of the TNT, with a portable generator and a household food mixer set up on the cottage table – all that had been done by Yousef and Zayn. Looking out to sea and listening to the surf, he remembered the whining noise of the machine over the past day and a half, and the smell of chemicals in the air. Khaled was glad Zayn had put him on guard duty. It seemed like a dirty business. Once they had finished, Zayn, his shirt covered in granules of explosive, had come over and given him a great bear hug, lifting him off the ground, saying, ‘How lazy you have been while we are working, timid finch – when your wings are larger we will expect more of you!’ Then he had dropped him to the ground.

  Khaled wondered what his father would think of the work. How hard it was, these days, even to picture his face! While the thought of his death pained him, it was comforting to recall the happy times. His mother also. But they were gone now, it was all past joy. He needed a future, a life to come, but all he could see was more death. That was the programme. That was the work. And the only balm it offered was the balm of glorious doom. Mbuga za peponi. The gardens of paradise.

  Since his return, the words were coming back. The words and the phrases and the names. His beloved Swahili. But it wasn’t enough. He was confused. The world was confused also. Only the pain was the same. That was the fate of all human beings. Only those who were believers could escape it. And among believers, only those who undertook jihad were guaranteed a place in paradise. The thought of it frightened him.

  Sometimes, when he was scared like this, a voice came to him, quiet at first then louder between his temples. A rough kind of chattering, growing in volume and not always intelligible. He had heard it first years ago as a child, six or seven, by the sea, when he had fled down the strand after being scolded by his father. Then its grating roar had told him, go into the water, go into the water. And he had gone in, covering his shins – and then his father, who had followed, was behind in the water, lifting him up and carrying him back to their house, talking sweetly to him, telling him he was a good boy, a good boy, over and over again.

  He looked up at the declining sun, then was startled by a noise, like rustling paper. He glanced nervously behind him, into the mysterious perspectives of the forest. He almost laughed at himself when he realised it was only a large red coconut crab, moving across the beach. Its carapace was almost exactly the same colour as the sunset. The sound came from the frond of palm leaf that the crab had gripped in one claw and was dragging behind it. Calm again, Khaled observed its strange movement for a while.

  Then he raised his eyes to the curtain of trees, scanning it till he found the gap he had noti
ced the previous day. Someone had hacked through, quite recently, and while he was on guard duty he’d wandered down the path they had made. It led to something he knew about but, in all the intervening years, had quite forgotten: the opening to a series of caves that ran beneath the island. He used to play in them with Ali and Juba. His father had once said they were cursed, and it was true there were bones there, but he and his friends had never been frightened.

  Hearing voices, he turned back to look at the cottage. Zayn was standing by the door, his great bulk obscuring the entrance. At his feet knelt Yousef, fiddling with the catches of a briefcase made of hard black plastic. It was the satphone by means of which they communicated with the Sheikh, the one he had bought units for in Peshawar, the one he had used to rent the truck in Dar. That had been exciting, using the device. It still amazed Khaled that it was possible to communicate without wires, even though he had seen many astonishing things on his travels and during his military training. He watched as Yousef lifted the lid of the briefcase and put his hand inside. A few seconds later, a silver rod rose from a corner of the open case. The top of the rod began to open and a web of shiny metallic fabric extended – like a small umbrella, upside down.

  Yousef drew out a telephone handset on a curly cord of black plastic. He handed the telephone to Zayn, who presently began to speak. It struck Khaled that Zayn was quite prepared to use Western technology when it suited him. He’d often had the same thought during his training, when they were handling weaponry: rifles from America, explosives from Italy, grenades from Britain. Yet the Palestinian also had a kind of rage against it. Earlier that day, Zayn had first played one of the records on the wind-up record player they had found in the cottage. Then he had smashed the machine against the wall, saying, ‘Come and see how it sounds now, Shaitan’s noise!’

  Khaled wondered what their orders would be. They still didn’t know the exact timings of their mission. Soon enough, he suspected, they would know. The work was nearly done. The loads had been carefully packed into the cans, then into crates. Tomorrow they would float them over to the dhows on pontoons and pull them aboard.

  The four crewmen of the dhows, plain Swahili sailors who knew nothing of the great task they were undertaking, were now dozing on the beach, wrapped in their kikois. They were wise to get up their strength for the journey ahead. For those bound for Mombasa port, from where the crates would be offloaded to continue by road to Nairobi after being met by other members of al-Qaida, it was a long and arduous journey. Khaled wondered whether he would be assigned to Nairobi or Dar. There were a lot more crates for Nairobi, which Zayn had described as ‘the big number’. Ahmed the German was the leader of those taking care of things in the Kenyan capital.

  He looked out to sea again. As his eye drifted to the edge of the island, he saw something unusual. A black patch. Was it? Yes, a small boat, rounding the headland of green forest where it stuck out into the ocean. He turned and ran back towards the cottage.

  ‘A boat! There is a boat!’

  Zayn, who was speaking into the phone, looked up and waved him away angrily. He clearly did not wish the Sheikh to hear of any trouble.

  ‘Come!’ Khaled said, urgently, tugging at Yousef’s sleeve.

  The two of them ran down to the beach where Khaled had been standing. They looked out over the low, humming waves, Khaled pointing in the direction of the headland. That was there, a long green arm – pointing out, just as Khaled’s own arm was. But there was nothing else. Even the flecks of foam had gone now. All that could be seen was the forbidding totality of the ocean.

  ‘There was a boat!’ Khaled said, panting. ‘I saw it!’

  Yousef looked at him and smiled, the charcoal moustache creasing on his upper lip.

  ‘You are dreaming. We would have heard the engine.’

  ‘It was a rowing boat, I think.’

  Yousef looked at him again, and then shook his head. At that moment, hearing Zayn’s heavy tread behind them, the two younger men turned round.

  ‘Well?’ asked the cell leader, folding his thick arms and thrusting his head forward impatiently.

  ‘He says he saw a boat.’

  ‘I did see a boat!’ said Khaled. ‘There.’

  He pointed again, and Zayn’s iron gaze followed.

  ‘I see nothing.’

  ‘But I am certain,’ urged Khaled. ‘I think –’

  Zayn contracted his heavy black eyebrows.

  ‘I think you are a fool. But fools can be wise, even ones like you, from this godforsaken place. You think you saw something? Fine, you search the island.’

  He unslung the machine pistol from his shoulder.

  ‘Take this. If you see anyone, anyone at all, kill them at once. Now get out of my sight.’

  With that, laughing, the two others turned and left Khaled standing on the beach, the heavy gun in his hands. He looked at the great red dome of sky above the two figures, its immensity pierced only by the shadowy spear of the lighthouse. Mnara. Al Manar. The lighthouse – in Swahili, in Arabic. Sometimes he didn’t know which language to use. In all the tongues of man, oblivious to their divisions, night began to fall.

  21

  ‘Put up the sunshine, Nick.’

  The oars’ narrow blades spread wide either side of the boat.

  ‘What’s that?’

  Leggatt shook his bleeding head. ‘It’s no use disguising the fact. If we don’t get through the door before nightfall, we’re crucified. We might as well drown ourselves right now.’

  Nick, whose habit it was to dwell in possibility, was more optimistic. Even in adversity he remained full of hope. He continued rowing as hard as he could. The skin began peeling off his palms.

  This time, at least, his efforts were vindicated. At dusk itself, immeasurable moment, the low outline of the island neared from darkening haze to actuality, resuming the image they knew. Speaking in a hoarse whisper, Leggatt guided Nick between two heraldic rocks in the crook of the headland, where the reef joined Lyly proper.

  The rocks marked deep water and a break in the reef. Without Leggatt it would have been impossible to proceed. But they did find the place, and it was through this mlango, or ‘door’, as the gap in the reef was called in Swahili, that the dinghy of the stricken Churchill finally landed.

  They stood listening to the waves sucking softly at the sand. It was good to be on solid ground. Nick’s body was still full of the pulsing of the oars.

  He looked at the old man. ‘So now we try for one of the dhows?’

  ‘I suppose so. The cruiser’s engine would make too much noise.’

  ‘It would probably have a key, anyhow, rather than an ignition button.’

  ‘Some do, some don’t. Anyway, that’s all a bit previous. Whatever we take, it will be no picnic getting through that lot.’

  Leggatt gestured up at the dark blur of the forest. There was no other way through to the lagoon. Looking at the trees, Nick’s resolution weakened a little too.

  He steeled himself. ‘We’d have no chance with the dhow in daylight. It’s got to be now. Delaying would be dangerous.’

  ‘Right. Let’s do it then.’

  They set off. Nick went in front and Leggatt followed close behind, limping from his injuries. The moon was rising high, stars beginning to shine brightly in the cloudless sky. As soon as they entered the forest, however, this clarity was obscured. They could see hardly more than two or three paces in front of them. After only ten minutes or so of pushing their way through ferns and branches, a bough struck Nick a stunning blow on the forehead.

  He sat down heavily, blood streaming from a deep cut. It was then he realised the true craziness of their mission.

  ‘Up you get, soldier,’ said Leggatt, grabbing his arm and hauling him to his feet. And so he moved on, and Nick moved on behind.

  They pressed forward, guided only by a faint, tree-filtered glow of moon and stars and the occasional application of Leggatt’s lighter. It was astonishing that it worked after t
he soaking they had taken. But it did, and its brief glare lit their way through whenever they reached an impasse.

  All the while, Nick wondered whether it was worth continuing. They were making a hell of a noise, crashing into branches and stumbling over logs. The dense forest gave good cover, but it was difficult to move through it with anything like speed or safety. It was sinister at night, the coral rag; there was something unearthly about it, especially when the leaves rustled or a fern touched your face. Nick, whose forehead was still bleeding, found himself remembering Leggatt’s stories about the slave caves, and the Zanzibar vampire.

  Eventually, after an hour’s hard bushwhacking, they broke through to a ridge of dunes above the cottage. It looked peaceful in the moonlight.

  ‘Good God,’ whispered Leggatt. ‘We could be in Cornwall if it wasn’t for those monkeys down there.’

  A firelight glowed orange from the interior of the cottage. They must have cleared out the old fireplace. In the lagoon, perhaps forty feet out, Nick could see the shapes of the dhows. He felt Leggatt grip his arm again.

  ‘We can do this you know. We just have to get past the outlook of the cottage. If we get down –’

  He walked towards the edge of the dune and lay on his belly. Nick followed suit. The two men proceeded to crawl on their stomachs, worming their way out of the shelving dunes down across the beach. It was tense work. Every now and then a figure moved across the orange light in the cottage, and they froze, the taste of fear rising in their throats.

  It was their concentration on the cottage that was their undoing. Once they were out of direct sight of it they stood up and started walking across the beach, looking over their shoulders every now and then to check they had not been spotted. Leggatt – Nick could see his faint outline – was doing this when suddenly he tripped, over a rock as Nick thought, and fell heavily.