Dark Oil (5 page)

She smiled. “Nice to meet you, Ismael.”

“I'm the intermediary.”

“Oh, yes,” she acknowledged, nodding, as if that clarified things for her, but she had no idea what it really meant. She was out of her depth here, out of her comfort zone. She was going to sink or swim. Maybe Martin was right. Maybe she wouldn't last the distance. It was a sobering thought and she'd definitely hate for Martin to be right.

Taking a tissue out of her pocket she wiped the beads of sweat that were now forming on her brow.

“Let's go,” ordered Martin, gesturing to Ismael to get a move on.

“Shouldn't we wait for Jack?” asked Lara. “He won't be too far behind.” She looked for him in the crowd.

“He'll be fine,” snapped Martin. “He knows his way around.”

“Over here, Miss.” Ismael waved her through to the only decent building there was. It was small but it was made of concrete, not a makeshift shelter from left-over materials. Now that she was closer she could see the other airport constructions really were giant rusty sheds that seemed about to collapse.

“Actually, it's Mrs.”

Ismael looked mortified as he hit his heart with a thud. “Sorry, Madam, of course. I do not want to offend.”

Lara laughed. “It's OK, Ismael, no offence taken. So where are we going?”

“Global Oil Customs.” He pointed to the aggregation of old tin sheds, and then to the concrete building. “That's everybody else's airport. This is ours.”

Stunned, Lara walked ahead. She was relieved she didn't have to queue up in a boiling hot hangar, but there was something else mixed in with that feeling. Was it uneasiness?

It was much more than that. It was shame. There certainly were haves and have-nots here. And while she thanked God she was amongst the privileged she couldn't ignore the blatant injustice of it all. She thought of the woman struggling under the weight of her child and luggage. How long had she been standing in the crowded hangar in this sweltering heat? She dropped her eyes to the ground.

To Lara's relief the waiting room for Global Oil employees wasn't all marble and chandeliers. It was clean and comfortable though, with two couches, a coffee table, an unattended counter and, above all, air-conditioning. Lara sighed with pleasure as she walked into Customs and out of the heat.

“Please, Mrs Lara.” Ismael gestured to the couch. “Five minutes.”

Lara sat down obediently, unsure whether she could ignore Ismael without being impolite to him because all she really wanted to do was walk around and stretch her legs. Ismael leaned towards her. “Your passport?”

“And your landing card, too.” Martin was pacing the room.

“Sure.” Lara took the documents out of her bag and handed them to Ismael. She watched him disappear with them down a corridor. She heard voices talking in Negalese, but apart from the odd word they were too distant for her to make out what they were saying.

She turned to see Martin staring at her, as if he'd been trying to summon up the courage to talk to her. It surprised her. He didn't seem the type to hesitate about anything.

“I suppose you heard me raise my voice with Jack on the flight,” he said, after a few instants. “You must be wondering about it.”

“I'm sorry. I really didn't mean to cause a problem.” If she'd known Jack would get so annoyed over the fact she hadn't been briefed, she might not have told him. Then again, how dangerous would it have been for her to land without any idea of the perils of Negala?

Martin scrunched up his face. “It had nothing to do with you.”

“It didn't? I thought it started because—”

A gust of hot wind hit her as Jack swung open the glass door and walked in whistling cheerfully, his hands in his pockets. He looked as if neither the travelling nor the heat had touched him. Martin moved in the opposite direction and went to stand at the empty counter.

“Where have you been?” asked Lara. “We couldn't see you once we'd got off the plane.”

“Bumped into an old friend of mine on board. We had a little chat.”

He was awfully chirpy. No doubt an old conquest, thought Lara. “She was on the plane and you didn't know it until we disembarked? I'm surprised.”

Jack laughed. “That's right. Except the ‘she' was a ‘he'. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to find Ismael and give him my passport or we'll never get out of here.”

He headed down the corridor from which soon came exclamations and bouts of laughter.

Lara took her mobile phone out of her bag and turned it on, hoping Tim had left a message. She stared at the blank screen in surprise. There was no signal.

She walked over to Martin. “I don't know what's wrong. I didn't drop it or bang it. Is yours working?”

Martin shook his head. “It's not reliable coverage here. In fact, that's an understatement. We manage, though. We've got a satellite phone in the house. We'll give you a local mobile later, but they're a piece of rubbish. You just can't get a line out of the country. Half the time you can't connect to someone in Zakra, either, it's that bad.”

So no mobile, at least not for now. What else hadn't they told her? She was still lost for words when Jack and Ismael reappeared.

Ismael pointed to the door. “OK, Mrs Lara, we can go.”

Lara nodded. “Our suitcases?”

“They will be delivered to the room.” Ismael gave her a courteous bow.

“Wonderful.” It was a nice little surprise for her. No queues and no carrying luggage. There was something good about this place after all. “Could I have my passport now?”

Martin chuckled. “You'll get it back when you need it.”

She shook her head. “What do you mean?” She didn't understand. How hard was it to stamp a passport? How long could that possibly take?

“They keep it until we fly out.” Martin looked her in the eye, intently, studying her reaction. He was enjoying this, she could tell.

She gasped. No, it wasn't possible. Had she misheard? There was no country in the world where they confiscated the passport of visitors, was there? She had a visa, a valid reason to be there. What was this all about?

A joke? That had to be it. She laughed nervously. “All right, you got me going. Now where's the passport?”

Ismael intervened, smiling reassuringly. “It's OK, Mrs Lara. I will bring you the passport before you go home.”

As she walked back outside, and into the glaring sun, with these men she hardly knew but had to trust, she couldn't tell what oppressed her more: the 47 degree heat or the fear she wouldn't be able to leave.

What if something happened while they were there? What if they lost her passport or the President of the Republic had an argument with Global Oil? Would they be held prisoners? She took a deep breath. Why, oh why had she come here?

The men hurried over the tarmac to the closest of the rusty sheds. Ismael turned to check if she was keeping up and, seeing the distance between them was increasing, waited to let her go in front. “You first, Mrs Lara. I will stand behind so I can see you. This way you can't get lost.”

She smiled, grateful for his concern. She had no idea what she'd do if she got lost here. She hadn't changed any money, didn't have any zenias on her at all. Her mobile phone didn't work. And she didn't even know where they were going. There was just one saving grace—she could speak the language.

She followed Martin and Jack through the makeshift airport. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw the hangar was more crowded than the tarmac had been when their plane first arrived. The absence of women was noticeable. They were probably kept at home.

Every man in the building stared at her white skin, her blue eyes. Some of them even whispered to her in a dialect she didn't understand, as she walked by. She told herself she was safe in the company of her colleagues, but her heart hopelessly thumped in her chest.

Lara kept her eyes fixed to the ground, making sure she followed Jack as closely as she could without touching him. Every now and then she turned around to check Ismael was behind her, and each time he comforted her with his smile. He was watching over her.

By the time they had crossed the shed and reached the front exit, she felt she had run a marathon. They were finally out in the open, and although it was hotter than in the terminal, there was a little air movement. She could breathe.

Jack turned to her. “So? First impressions?”

“I've never been to a place like this before.”

She'd never had to for work, and she guessed tourism was virtually non-existent here. Still, she felt bad she'd spent thirty six years on earth, in a cocoon of consumerist comfort, without any real understanding of how most of the world lived. It was a feeling she hadn't expected: undeniable guilt.

He glanced at her casually from the corner of his eye. “We're all shocked by it at first. It's like war-torn countries. You see images in the papers and on TV. But only the people who've been there truly relate to it. Now you get to see it with your own eyes.”

He was spot on. There was no doubt about it, Jack was perceptive. She barely had to speak and he seemed to know what was going on in her mind. She wasn't used to that in a man. Tim wasn't like that. She had to explain things to him, sometimes over and over. It wasn't because he was stupid—far from it—but he had his own set views of the world. And, she suspected, he was capable of switching off when she spoke. Jack, on the other hand, kept his ears open and his eyes on her. As a matter of fact, she'd never known anyone else like Jack. Not that she'd been close to many men. She'd had only one boyfriend before Tim.

Ismael directed them to a brand new four-wheel drive. He climbed in the front with the driver and Lara found herself squeezed between Martin and Jack in the back, the dividing wall between their testosterone-fuelled, competing egos.

While Martin was at pains not to touch her, crossing his arms and legs to try to avoid it, Jack seemed to sprawl out comfortably. In all fairness, he was bigger than Martin, and if he'd squashed himself against the car door it probably wouldn't have made much difference. Still, he seemed awfully relaxed about it.

She smelled his cologne again, mixed with the muskiness of his skin, and this time didn't turn away. In fact, to be truthful to herself, she liked it, certainly much more than all the other smells she'd been subjected to that morning.

“Sorry, Lara,” Jack said finally, “it's a bit squashed in here. At least we haven't far to go. It's just up the street.”

“It's OK,” she answered, not wanting to make a fuss. The poor man wasn't intentionally pressing his thighs against hers. “Maybe we should have walked,” she said, quickly adding before he could object, “then again, probably not in this heat.”

As the car navigated its way around the huge pot-holes in the dirt road, Lara peered through the dusty windows at the roaming skeletal goats, the piles of rubbish and the general desolation of the place. There were hardly any people in the street, just a young, tall, thin man moving across the sand with ease, his blue dwana swaying with his rhythmic steps. She found it hard to believe this was Zakra, the capital of the country. She wondered if it came to life in the evenings, when it was cooler.

“So is this a taxi?” she asked, since Ismael wasn't driving.

Jack shook his head. “Company car. Taxis aren't safe.” He pointed to a battered old car that seemed to be composed of the parts of several models of old bombs. “That's a taxi.”

Lara's eyes widened with surprise. “I see what you mean.” She wouldn't have got into that eclectic mix of metal if they'd begged her.

Martin turned to her. “We only travel in Global Oil's cars with a local driver we've trained. It's a liability issue. People would throw themselves in front of a car if we were driving, so they could sue us and make as much money as they could out of it. If the driver's one of their own, they don't.”

“Sounds a bit extreme. But then again. . .” As they drove through another intersection she glanced down the street to the shantytown that stretched from the back of the airport to the centre of the city. Perhaps she, too, would throw herself under a vehicle if she lived there, on the off-chance she'd make a successful claim against the company. Anything to make enough to leave this place.

The car pulled up in front of a large, walled property. The second storey of the house was clearly visible from outside, a square concrete home of the kind she'd seen when they were landing.

This one was prettier than most. Unlike the others, it was painted, a soft terracotta shade that appealed to Lara, and the oriental carved shutters gave it a more exotic air. The heavy door to the garden was of ancient wood, mysteriously protective and reassuringly strong. It took Lara back to the tales of Ali Baba she'd read as a child. She smiled. This was more like the Negala she'd imagined.

Ismael pushed the door open and its large hand-made hinges creaked, just as Lara expected. She stepped into the courtyard with the anticipation of a child about to discover a magic garden.

It was a total disappointment, though. Two pink begonias thrived without competition from any other plants, but they were the only living things in the front yard, except for a tiny patch of grass that was struggling to survive in the hot, dry conditions.

A plastic table and chairs, completely covered in sand, sat in the shade of the balcony, looking harshly uninviting. Lara sighed. Reality hardly ever lived up to the delights of the mind.

They were greeted at the door by a small, thin man in a blue dwana. He carried a bucket of water. “Hello, Bengali,” Jack said, cheerfully. “How've you been? This is Lara.”

“Good, Mr Jack, thank you. Pleased to meet you, Miss Lara. Mr Martin.” Bengali nodded at Martin who, ignoring him, pushed his way inside. Bengali's eyes narrowed.