Chaos Theory (25 page)

They talked very little, and they kept the television news on low. Noah sat on the step next to Leon and told him about the time he had worked on a Jackie Chan movie.

‘Hilarious. You want to try doing a powerslam when you’re laughing your goddamned head off. Almost broke both legs.’

At the same time, he was watching Silja as she walked around the yard, picking pink roses from amongst the weeds, and waving away the bees. For all of her strength, she looked so white and vulnerable. He couldn’t decide if he was protecting her, or taking advantage of her, or if she was the one who was taking advantage of him.

She saw him looking, and she waved. He wished he had a camera. Then he was glad that he didn’t. If anything happened to her, he didn’t want to be reminded of a moment like this.

The afternoon passed with dreamlike slowness, as if all the clocks in the house had been drowned in honey. Adeola stayed inside the house, but Rick sat outside in a dilapidated deckchair, with his eyes closed against the sun. At last the minute hand on Noah’s watch crept around to 3.00 p.m., Pacific Time, which meant that it was 6.00 p.m. in New York. Time for Abdel Al-Hadi to give his ultimatum.

 

‘Mr Al-Hadi, this is Special Agent George Windom again. How are you today?’

‘I am very angry! The Armed Front for Freedom of Palestine is very angry!’

‘Well, I’m sorry to hear that. We’ve been doing everything we can today to come up with some kind of a compromise for you.’

‘Compromise! Did I ask you for compromise? I made demands! Will you meet my demands?’

Special Agent Windom took a deep, audible breath. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Al-Hadi. The demands you made are simply not in our power to bestow. We’ve talked to the Israelis, but they’re not prepared to give in to either of them. They reserve the right to deploy their forces in Palestine, as and when their own security requires it, and the separation wall stays, at least for the foreseeable future.’

‘Then we have no more to talk about.’

‘Mr Al-Hadi . . . maybe we have. The Israelis are holding two freedom fighters from the United Jihad, and they’d be prepared to release them in exchange for Ms Davis, if that could be arranged. So you’d certainly achieve something positive out of this situation.’

‘What do I want with two freedom fighters from United Jihad? AFFP has all the freedom fighters it needs. I said, withdrawal of forces and demolition of wall. Nothing else will do.’

‘Mr Al-Hadi—’

‘You say yes to my demands?’

‘Mr Al-Hadi—’

‘You say yes? Tell me now! Yes or no?’

‘Mr Al-Hadi, I can’t. All I can do is appeal to your humanity.’

‘Do I sound human? Too late now. Finish! Adeola Davis will be executed. You will see for yourself.’

Noah switched off the cellphone and handed it to Rick.

‘That’s it,’ said Rick. ‘Adeola has to die.’

 

They took a sheet out of the linen closet, unfolded it, and draped it across the end wall of the living room, as a backdrop. Leon found some Arabic slogans on the Internet – ‘Death to All Betrayers’ and ‘Palestine Will be Free.’ He also devised a symbol for the AFFP, an AK47 in a clenched fist, with a crescent moon.

He painted these on to the sheet in thick tomato catsup, because they had forgotten to bring any paint.

Noah arranged two desk lamps so that they would shine directly on to the wall. He wanted the lighting to be bright, but amateurish. Steve had borrowed a JVC Everio video camera, which Noah set up on a tripod.

When they had finished, Adeola said, ‘It looks depressingly authentic, doesn’t it? Can you imagine the dread that hostages must feel, when they’re dragged in front of a set-up like that?’

‘Let’s have a drink,’ said Rick.

 

They passed another restless night. Silja slept with Noah again, but they didn’t make love, just held each other close. Noah heard Leon sobbing in the bedroom, but after a few minutes he fell silent.

The full moon shone on the sheet hanging on the wall. The catsup had dried as dark as blood.

 

Mitchell arrived at 7.45 the next morning, driven by Steve. He was wearing a yellow satin shirt and tight white sailcloth jeans, and carrying a large make-up case.

As soon as he came into the house and saw Adeola sitting at the kitchen counter, drinking coffee, he did an exaggerated double take and said, ‘
Whoah!
’

‘Mitch,’ said Noah, ‘this is Adeola Davis.’

‘Don’t I know it! I’ve seen you on the news! You were kidnapped by terrorists!’

He looked around. ‘Well, obviously you weren’t. You were kidnapped by stunt persons instead! Which is probably worse. Noah – what the hell is going on here?’

‘I can’t tell you the whole story, Mitch, but we needed it to look like Adeola had been abducted, and now we need it look like she’s been executed.’

‘My God, Noah. What have you gotten yourself into?’

Noah put his arm around Mitch’s shoulders. ‘It’s really better if you don’t know.’

‘I’m not so sure I should do this. I mean, isn’t this conspiracy or something?’

‘Nobody’s going to get hurt, Mitch. But it’s very important that everybody believes that Adeola has been murdered.’

‘And this Middle Eastern person you want me to make you up as, he’s the murderer?’

‘You got it.’

Mitchell said, ‘You’re not doing this to shake anybody down for money, are you? This isn’t a scam?’

‘You’ve been living next door to the Mob for too long. It’s more like a political thing.’

‘Hmm, well, OK . . .’ He put down his make-up case and flicked the catches. ‘I guess I owe you for that
Mission Impossible
job.’

Rick said, ‘You can make it look like Noah’s shot her, right?’

‘Right between the eyes. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? But I’ll start with you first, Noah. You’re going to take a whole lot longer.’

 

It took Mitchell nearly three hours to turn Noah into Abdel Al-Hadi. He applied latex moldings to Noah’s neck, and a latex bump to the bridge of his nose. With a sponge and pale foundation cream, he subtly altered the colour and tone of his skin, so that he looked as if were Palestinian, but rarely went out in the sun. He glued on bushy eyebrows and a thick black beard, and darkened his iron-grey hair. He gave him dark brown contact lenses.

Finally he painted on a pattern of prominent moles, all across his forehead, like a star chart.

Noah came out of the bedroom and confronted Silja, Adeola and Rick. ‘What do you think?’

Silja shook her head in amazement. ‘I don’t believe it. Is it really you? It
sounds
like you. But – my God!’

Noah took a step towards her, but Silja jumped back and said, ‘No! Don’t come near me!’

Adeola couldn’t help laughing. ‘It’s incredible, it really is. I never would have recognized you, not in a thousand years.’

Rick simply pressed his hands together and bowed his head. ‘
Salaam
,’ he said. ‘A pleasure to meet you, Mr Al-Hadi.’

Noah looked at himself in the mirror on the opposite side of the room. There was Abdel Al-Hadi, with his beard and his moles and his umber-coloured circles under his eyes. He
was
Abdel Al-Hadi. As he approached the mirror to inspect Mitchell’s handiwork more closely, he walked with shorter, shuffling steps, and his shoulders were rounder, like somebody who had spent their whole life feeling resentful and oppressed.

Mitchell came out of the bedroom, wiping his hands on a towel. ‘OK, then. You happy with that?’

‘You’re a genius, Mitch. Now, all we need is a bullet hole for Adeola.’

Mitchell said, ‘Come on, then. I promise you this won’t hurt a bit.’

He led Adeola through to the bedroom and sat her down in front of the dressing-table mirror. From his case he produced a jar of embalmer’s wax, a box of greasepaints and a bottle of stage blood.

‘I always make my own blood,’ he told Adeola, as he rolled and warmed the wax between the palms of his hands. ‘Ninety-eight per cent sugar alcohol, two per cent red food colouring powder – Candyland brand is the best. Looks messy but doesn’t stain your clothes.’

He carefully fashioned a thin envelope of wax, and spooned a small quantity of blood into it. Then he tied a very fine nylon line to the middle of a shirt button, and placed the button in the blood. He sealed the wax envelope, smoothed it over, and stuck it to the centre of Adeola’s forehead, using greasepaint to match her skin colour.

By the time he had finished, it was almost impossible to tell what he had done to her, even close up.

‘Thanks, Mitch,’ said Noah. ‘You want to stick around and see us make this video?’

Mitchell was packing his bag. ‘The less I know about what you lunatics are up to, the better.’

‘See you again in a couple of days, then.’

 

Adeola knelt on the floor in front of the bed sheet and held her hands behind her back as if she were tied up. Noah adjusted the lights so that they shone on her face bright and flat.

Rick hunkered down beside her. ‘Are you sure you’re OK with this? You don’t have to go through with it if you don’t want to. I’m pretty confident that I can keep you safe, even if we don’t go after these bastards.’

‘I’m not doing this just for me,’ said Adeola. ‘Of course I don’t want to spend the rest of my life not knowing from one second to another when somebody’s going to shoot me, or blow me to bits, but this is for Nesta and for Reuben and for Charlie.’

‘OK. So long as you’re sure.’

Leon crouched down behind the video camera and adjusted the focus.

‘I want it slightly blurry,’ Noah told him. ‘Just enough so you won’t be able to see the fine detail.’

Silja carefully picked up the end of the thin nylon line that protruded from Adeola’s forehead, and stood close beside Leon, holding the line taut.

‘Everybody ready?’ asked Noah.

‘Ready as we’ll ever be.’

‘Then . . .
action!
’

Noah walked in front of the camera, holding up a sheet of paper in one hand and Rick’s SIG-Sauer automatic in the other.

‘This is Armed Front for Freedom of Palestine!’ he declared, waving the paper. ‘We have made just and fair demands! But now it is clear that the international community is not prepared to listen to us, nor to make any concession to our just and fair demands!

‘Because of this, we are making a gesture of revenge against the international community. This woman, Ms Adeola Davis, represents the tyrannical interests of Western capitalism, and now you will see the consequences of such political alignment.’

He pointed the automatic at Adeola’s forehead, and said, ‘What do you say to those who have used you as a pawn? What do you say to US government and their running dogs?’

Adeola looked directly at the camera. ‘Please . . .’ she said. ‘Whoever is watching this, please contact the AFFP and try to meet them at least halfway. Talk to them. Please don’t let them kill me.’

‘You think your masters will listen to you?’ Noah sneered at her. ‘They murder thousands of women and children without any qualm. Do you think they are concerned about
you
?’

‘Please,’ said Adeola. ‘Killing me, that won’t do you any good. They’ll come after you. They’ll hunt you down, and they’ll punish you, and they’ll probably punish scores of other Palestinians, too – innocent Palestinians – out of revenge.’

‘Do you think we care?’ said Noah. ‘We are overjoyed to die for what we believe in. Are you?’

‘I believe in peace,’ said Adeola. ‘But I believe in life, too.’

Without any more hesitation, Noah shot her. There was a deafening bang from the blank round in Rick’s automatic, and at the same time Silja yanked the nylon thread that protruded from Adeola’s forehead. The shirt button flew out, leaving a perfect bullet hole, spurting with blood.

Adeola dropped sideways, and Noah defiantly held up the gun.

‘The people of Palestine will be avenged! Our land will be ours again! God is great!’

 

They watched the recording three times over, to make sure that it would stand up to expert scrutiny. Even though they had set it up themselves, they were still shocked by its impact, and afterwards they sat in silence.

‘I wasn’t too nonchalant, was I?’ asked Adeola at last. ‘Maybe I should have cried or gone hysterical or something.’

‘Not at all. Have you ever seen any of those beheading videos? There’s no screaming or shouting. Just a few minutes of struggling, like kids in a schoolyard. They all look so matter-of-fact, and that’s what makes them so horrible.’

‘OK, Leon,’ said Noah. ‘You’re the computer expert. Let’s send this out to the news networks.’

While Leon contacted CNN, Silja poured them all a glass of wine. Noah tugged off his beard and peeled the latex bump from the bridge of his nose, while Adeola scraped the embalmer’s wax from her forehead.

Noah had expected to feel excited, after making the video, but he was unexpectedly depressed. He took his wine out on to the veranda and lit a cigarette.

‘Are you all right?’ Adeola asked him, from the doorway.

‘Yeah, I guess so. But I keep thinking of all those hostages who get killed for real, by people who don’t even know them, for causes they don’t know nothing about.’

She came out and leaned against the railing beside him. ‘Why do you think I do what I do? It’s horrifying, talking to fanatics. I gave up trying to appeal to their sense of humanity long ago: they simply don’t have one. They see their cause and nothing else. All I can do to stop them from murdering innocent people is to make it more profitable for them not to.’

Rick came out, too, and took hold of Adeola’s hand – rather possessively, Noah thought.

‘Hey,’ said Rick. ‘You sure don’t
feel
dead.’