Secret Skin (22 page)

I was going the wrong way.

Damn. With the crash barrier between me and his side of the highway I would have to drive to the next roundabout, double back and try and catch up with him. I knew that would never happen. I’d lose him and be back on the side of the road watching the dust settle.

I weaved my way into the column of trucks and buses in the slow lane, took a deep breath, and span the wheel all the way to the right. The flatulent horns of the passing vehicles deafened me as I straightened up and headed the wrong way down the hard shoulder in pursuit of Akbar, the means to keep my promise to Yasmin.

The hard shoulder move was something I’d seen impatient mothers do when they missed the turning for the school run. This was Dubai after all, where only the weak indicated or gave way to other road users.

I pushed the car as fast as it would go, catching glimpses of the Mercedes through the gaps in the column of trucks on my right. I matched his speed and kept following. I was so intent on not losing him that I paid scant attention to the hard shoulder ahead, not until the warning horns of the trucks became a fan fare.

The steering wheel shuddered as I brought the car to a dead halt.

In front of me an articulated lorry was jacked up on three wheels, a lone Indian driver busy changing one massive blown out tire for a fresh one. It was an outlandish sight; the enormous tires were bigger than he was.

If I drove around him and through the desert my car would get stuck in the loose desert sand.

I looked helplessly at the trucks on my right. The long line tapered off into the distance, several hundred wide loads that by law couldn’t overtake one other within the city limits.

As they hurried between pick up and drop off point the slowest vehicle in the long line set the pace. I could wait all day for something slow.

I took another deep breath and lurched out into the oncoming traffic my tires squealing with what might have been fright.

The approaching bus slammed on the brakes. Smoke billowed from its wheels. I accelerated for a jacked up truck length and swung back in. The bus neatly clipped off my wing mirror as I pulled onto the desert shoulder.

The laborers yelled and slammed their fists on my roof as I passed under their open windows. I remembered to breathe.

My heart pounded and my hands shook, but I couldn’t stop and I couldn’t slow down. Not if I wanted to catch the man in the 4x4.

When I searched for him again I found a roundabout instead.

‘Oh hell,’ I said.

With no time to consider my options I drove onto the roundabout facing the wrong way and turned hard into five lanes of speeding metal. I accelerated into the anti-clockwise flow of traffic and scooted into the correct lane.

The other drivers weren’t even slightly fazed by my arrival. Despite my heightened sense of fear I was just one more homicidal lunatic on the road. By habit I’d even managed to indicate in the right direction, which made me better than most, the guy next to me indicated right and then swung left cutting across the lanes ahead.

I caught sight of the Arab’s distinctive high sided vehicle in the distance and followed him as he turned off towards the desert side of downtown Dubai.

Tracking him from three cars back I flipped on the radio and came down from my time on the hard shoulder. Maria B was in session but today there was none of her growl, just a funky retro ident between songs.

No more babble on and on – just the music – with Babylon FM.

Ultra Naté’s twisted lyrics worked their magic and I got back to myself with Depeche Mode telling me I should see how it feels with my feet on the ground and my mind on the job ahead.

So how could I get close to Akbar?

I tried to figure out an opening that would stop him from doing to me what he’d just done to Orsa. But as we drew nearer to Dubai proper I was distracted by an unexpected sight. An enormous wall of dense fog rose several stories into the air and straddled the highway. The cars ahead of me plunged into it and disappeared from view.

Akbar vanished into it and I accelerated into its broiling innards after him. On the inside the heavy air dampened the sound of the traffic and the city. Visibility was left to prayers and blind luck.

The tourists were easy to spot; you nearly crashed into them when they slowed down to a safe crawl. Everyone else just used the easy anonymity as an excuse to overtake. Now you really could get away with murder, nobody would see you until it was too late and nobody could read your number plate as you sped off.

To my relief Akbar had pulled into the slow lane and drove within the speed limit. Despite the congested gloom I saw his head bobbing towards the buildings of the Business Bay and Downtown developments. I slowed down and followed one car back at a sedentary 120kph.

I lost sight of him and almost overshot the sharp turn he’d taken onto a concealed exit marked ‘Military Vehicles Only’. At the last moment I swung onto the dusty path and followed from a distance.

There were no check points on the road. The military vehicle sign seemed more than enough to deter the badly behaved citizenry of Dubai.

The road wound its way ever deeper into the first ring of towers in Business Bay and then the tarmac ran out. Akbar’s 4x4 kicked dust up into the fog as he beat a path into the haze. I could make out signs for malls and hotels that hadn’t broken ground yet, he picked up speed and the dust clouds grew.

When I could see him I held back but when I couldn’t I accelerated to catch up. It took all my concentration not to drive off the almost non-existent road.

Over a series of small humps his brake lights flashed on and off, then disappeared from view. A truck charged out of the fog like an enraged bull elephant. My small car shimmied as the behemoth thundered past. I only realized Akbar had stopped when I slammed on the brakes and turned the wheel to avoid crashing into the back of him.

My wheels span uselessly in the loose sand over the edge of what was a simple desert track beaten compact by the treads of heavy vehicles.

It could have been anywhere; there was nothing to be seen. No landmarks at all. Dubai’s boastful skyline was hidden by the grey green fog, backlit by the tungsten lamps of temporary structures on the building sites around us.

Akbar’s car idled ahead. The driver’s door opened and he strutted through the unnatural gloom towards me. His knuckles rapped out three beats on the window. I lowered it a fraction.

‘You’d better come with me,’ he said. He pointed to my camera and my bag which now lay in the foot well of the passenger seat. ‘You can leave those behind.’

***

He drove us to the foot of a fledgling skyscraper in total silence. The building’s colossal skeleton disappeared into the fog overhead, its unseen presence enhancing the wordless void between us.

We got out and headed towards it. He led the way between the long lines of queuing workmen at its base. Their chatter echoed against the cave wall of moist air, a polluted rain that refused to fall.

He motioned towards a temporary lift in the distance and we trudged on through the sand, ignoring the shaded stares of the workmen, the legions of Indian men awaiting redemption but destined to continue slaving in purgatory instead.

We jumped the queue and stepped aboard the flimsy elevator.

Did I have a choice? He hadn’t said a word since he’d ordered me out of the car. His movements were efficient, verging on the impatient. But I didn’t want to upset him, not yet. I was compelled to see where this would lead.

The lift operator didn’t ask questions, he seemed to know the man and where he wanted to go.

Unexpected bursts of color filled each floor as we passed. The all in one hues of the laborers' uniforms demarcated their job or the sub-contractors they worked for. The first ten floors flared with yellow, the twenties mainly blue and then in the thirties scattered bursts of red and green until there were only occasional glimpses of color as their numbers thinned out on the higher levels.

The heat of the desert thermals fell away and we rose through the colder air returning to ground. A flash of light and we broke through the thick fog. The muffled noises of Dubai softened and gave way to a crisp stillness that few people ever experienced.

As the machine climbed the outside of the tower I had plenty of time to think. I knew something was about to happen but I had none of the normal backups on me, no pens, no pads, no recorder, no cameras.

I rummaged in my pocket for the hands free connectors on my phone, found the headphone’s jack and pushed it into the mic socket’s jill until there was a satisfying click. The same setup up I’d rigged for the club.

The lift stopped on one of the higher floors. A big whitewashed 52 told me which one. The Arab opened the lift gate, summoned the foreman with a flick of his wrist and hollered something in Arabic. He waved for me to follow. As he strode ahead I pulled out my phone, found the shortcut menu, pressed record and slipped it back into my pocket.

The foreman ordered the small crew of cowed workmen to down tools. They shuffled towards the elevator and shot sullen looks in our direction as they walked by.

My host called out and pointed to one of the men leaving the floor. The foreman avoided Akbar’s eye. He said something quietly to the laborer who lowered his head and waited off to one side a polite distance away from us.

The cage door of the elevator closed with a bang and then we were alone. He had brought me there for a reason but I had no idea what. I could only wait for things to take their course. I held the headphone mic in my hand and practiced my directional skills.

He motioned me nearer the edge of the half built floor. I hesitated. There were no walls, no safety measures, just the wind and a very long drop.

‘Trust me,’ he said.

I moved forward a step and waited for him to get to the point.

‘Look at it,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘Out there. A whole new city that stretches so far we can’t even see where it ends. And when this building is finished it will be so tall we will barely see the city below. We will live in the skies. Isn’t it wonderful?’

I followed the line of his hand to a view looking out over all but the tallest towers. Their extremities thrust through the billowing fog below, scraping sky so thick it looked as if you could step out onto it and walk to the next building. It was a truly beautiful sight. You could say that so rarely about anything in that dry manufactured land.

He smiled benignly, a few grey wisps in his hair; he had the bearing of a distant uncle, not an arms dealer or a trainer of terrorists.

‘We are building a new future here,’ he said. ‘The world is changing quicker than people realize. The old friendships are insecure, those who were once the leaders will soon be the followers.’

He waited for my acknowledgement to see if I was keeping up.

‘We cannot rely on tradition to answer all our needs,’ he went on, ‘we must reinvent ourselves.’

I had no idea what he was talking about. ‘So,’ I said, ‘what has that got to do with Sunset Heights? These buildings will be finished one day, yours won’t.’

‘I know,’ he said, a sad look on his face. He sighed.

‘Really?’

‘Sunset Heights will never be finished. I have made a terrible mistake,’ he said, looking back over the skyline. I tried to follow him with my mic. Always the job.

‘You know,’ he said, ‘a man does many things in his life to feed his family, to gain respect, to generate enough power so that they never have to worry again. Sometimes he does things he regrets. A great many things. But it is never enough.’ He stood close to the edge and peered along his nose towards the ground below.

‘What sort of things?’

‘Oh you know,’ he waved a hand and smiled. ‘The usual.’

‘You mean kill, smuggle, trade arms, traffic people, train terrorists, that sort of normal?’

‘Whatever you like Mr. Bryson,’ he said, amused.

‘So you do know who I am.’

‘Of course I do, in that silly little car of yours the whole city knows who you are. Even my teenage niece wouldn’t drive such a thing.’

‘Why? What’s wrong with her?’

He glared at me.

‘So what were you and Orsa fighting about this morning?’ I said. ‘Who had the biggest car? Or was it just more of this old man bullshit?’

‘Hah! Yes you could say it was old man bullshit. Or you could say I saved your life. If Orsa had his way you would be dead already. The only reason you’re still here is that according to my nephew you could be more trouble dead than alive.’

‘Your nephew?’

‘You told him you had recordings of his officers and the traffickers they were connected with. Is this true?’

The cogs turned. ‘Ah, Khadim,’ I said. ‘Well, there’s the rub, if you throw me off this tower you’ll never know.’

‘Hmm,’ he smiled. ‘As you probably saw I had some trouble persuading Orsa that he should leave you to me. He suggested torture to get the answers we needed and then a violent and painful death. In fact, you should already be dead.’

‘I see.’

‘No. No you don’t. I am getting old. You are right in that. I have tortured and killed too many in my life, and I am tired of it. I have won so many times now, I want to stop competing. Can you understand that?’

‘Not really, I’ve never tortured anyone.’

‘I want beautiful things to happen,’ he explained. ‘This building isn’t mine, though I wish it was. I want to build a legacy for my family like the one we’re standing in, instead I have to deal with unimaginative thugs like the Russian and nobodies like you who cannot even hold down a job.’

‘Hey no fair, writing is my business. It’s not a job, it’s my vocation.’

‘So that is why you make so little that if we charged you tax on your income you would be destitute. That silly little car and the silly little life that you lead are worthless, your actions are that of a blackmailer Mr. Bryson, nothing more. You have something on me, on my family, at least the respectable part of it,’ he said gritting his teeth. ‘And when you threaten my family, you threaten me.’

‘Khadim?’ I said. ‘Is he that important to you, don’t you have a son of your own?’