The Abrupt Physics of Dying (38 page)

The doctor dropped the bandage into the wastepaper basket, rotated Clay’s arm, inspecting. ‘How did you do this, Mister Greene?’

Clay looked down at his hand. It was the first time he had summoned the courage to do so since bandaging himself in the cave. The thing was horribly swollen. The stump ends of the two fingers severed by Zdravko’s bullet looked black, slick. He turned away. ‘I was shot.’

The doctor looked him in the eyes. ‘The hotel security people are suspicious of you. They are making enquiries.’

‘Please, Doctor. Don’t tell them.’

‘Move your fingers for me, please.’

Clay tried to move the remaining fingers of his left hand. They felt like balloons.

‘I am a Zamalek supporter also,’ said the doctor.

‘I have become one. But it is difficult. No midfield.’ Clay could feel himself fading.

The doctor smiled for a moment, then crisped his lips. ‘Do you have pain?’

‘Only when I’m breathing.’

The doctor put his palm flat on Clay’s forehead, looked him in the eyes. ‘It is very serious, Mister Greene. Gangrene is taking hold, cellulitis. The infection is travelling up the tendon sheaths. You must get to a surgeon and on antibiotic IV as soon as possible.’

Clay dropped his head between his knees, fought for consciousness. ‘What can you do for me, Doctor, right now?’

‘I can clean the wound, but I cannot do the debridement you need. I can give you a fresh bandage, a shot of antibiotics, painkillers. But it will not be enough. You need a hospital, a surgeon.’

‘Do what you can, Doctor. Please. Do it now.’

All he needed was twenty-four hours.

Maybe That Was Good Enough

Then dreams, confused and cloaked, shattered by the light and impossible to retrieve.

Clay woke with a start, disoriented. The hotel room materialised around him, unfamiliar. Slowly the events of the last day coalesced and crystallised. He looked at the bedside clock. He had slept twelve hours. It was early morning, dark still, and the morphine had worn off.

Clay pulled the notebook from his pack, its cover battered and worn, warped by sweat, the pages edged with blood. He opened it and turned the pages slowly, scanning the sketches, the columns of numbers, running his fingertips over the ridges and valleys of the words, the paper soaked in the harsh chemistry of oil and brine and blood, the industrial smell of it strong even now, seeping from the fibres. He opened it to the last entry. The scribbles from the CPF were barely legible. The page was smudged with streaks of oil and dirt. He brushed the page with the back of his hand and at the top he wrote the date and the time, the location and the specifics of the event, and the strength of the odours and their likely composition. Then he traced over and made clear the numbers, so they could be read by others. Next he turned back to the water-well page and he added information about the use of the fresh groundwater for keeping the oil reservoir under pressure while the toxic formation brine, millions of barrels of it, was dumped into the wadi to find its way to the
ghayl
. And because of it little Mohamed’s short life had blinked out like a dying star, his existence worth not even a fraction of a day’s oil production, and he wrote that, too.

When he had recorded all of the technical details and sketched a conceptual model of the flow of the contaminated water down the wadi floor and into the subsurface, and the effect of the pumping on the aquifer, he turned to a fresh page and he wrote of the time by the roadside when he had first seen her, about how she looked and felt the first time they had made love, of her smile that seemed to burst like sunrise over the horizon on a cloudy day, shining for a brief moment through the rip between sea and cloud, leaving you feeling like you would give anything to see it again.

He wrote about the last time he had seen her, surrounded by the chaos of war, her thin pale arm raised in farewell as she was carried into the belly of the Hercules, and of how he missed her even now, even though he did not want to miss her and did not understand who she had been or what had driven her to do what she had done. And now she was gone. Perhaps it simply came down to this unknowable thing: the remote possibility of a connection between two beings separate and isolated, created by a brief pairing of chromosomes then flung like children’s toys into the tumult. Perhaps you could only ever come close; maybe that was good enough.

And as for those who kept the faith and worked for justice, for them are gardens with rivers running underground
.

When he awoke the notebook was resting open on his chest and the pencil lay on the floor next to the bed. Outside, the barren mountains of frayed shale ripped red from the sun’s spectrum. Clay stared out of the window at the pinked walls of the courtyard garden, the tall swaying palms, and beyond, the deep blue of the ocean.

He closed the notebook and put it on the bedside table. Then he reached for the water bottle on the bedside table, drank deeply and swallowed four more pills. He drank again. There was a knock on the door. He stood, but too quickly, almost blacking out. The pain was intensifying, the troughs of the fever deepening, lengthening. Soon he would be unable to function. He filled his lungs, exhaled, stumbled to the door. It was the bellman with the courier from Cyprus. He signed the chit and locked the door.

Everything was there: the stuff Atef had couriered for him the night he’d fled the guesthouse, lab reports, payment details, a copy of the report signed by Karila and Parnell, a set of colour prints of the Al Bawazir photographs. There were also copies of a hand-addressed envelope, postmarked Aden, a handwritten letter of a single page, dated 26th November. A yellow sticky note has been pasted to the letter. It read: ‘
Thierry gave me this the night he left for Aden. He said he was going to give a copy to Parnell
.’

It was signed simply: Jim. In the letter, Thierry Champard described the installation of the new discharge system that would send the produced formation water directly into the wadi. His conscience as a professional would not allow him to stand by while this clearly dangerous and harmful practice continued. If the company did not immediately install a proper down-hole disposal system for the waste, he would be forced to go to the authorities, the professional bodies, and the Press.

Clay put down the letter, took a deep breath, looked out the window. Bloody hell.

He leafed through the papers, found the business card he had asked Yianni to include in the package: Redmond Perry, Chairman, Hurricane Resources. Clay dialled the number, waited. The line clicked, buzzed. A receptionist answered, directed his call. A voice answered, deep, authoritative.

‘Mister Perry, this is Claymore Straker. We met a few months ago, at a reception in Cyprus. Capricorn Consulting.’

A pause. ‘Yes, of course. How are you, Clay?’

‘I am giving you a chance to get out, Mister Perry. In five minutes, your fax machine will be spitting out evidence that Petro-Tex is deliberately discharging millions of barrels of radioactive water into the environment, poisoning and killing dozens of people in Yemen. Furthermore, Petro-Tex management have resorted to murder to keep the practice secret.’

The line hissed.

‘Do you understand what I am telling you, Mister Perry?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, and Mister Perry.’

Silence.

‘You may want to look into how Petro-Tex is managing its money. Mansour for Import might be a place to start. Thanks for your time, Mister Perry.’ Clay hung up the phone, made his way to the business centre on the mezzanine floor. The attendant looked him up and down as he entered, scowled. Clay dangled his room key in front of the guy, asked to use a computer. The attendant nodded, pointed to a cubicle. Clay thanked him in Arabic, but the attendant had already picked up the phone, was punching in a number. Clay hurried to the cubicle, sat, opened the word processor. One-handed, he set to work, the screen blurry, the keyboard unfamiliar, set up for Arabic. He fought with the words, backspacing, erasing, starting over. Despite the air-conditioning, he was sweating, febrile; his fingers trembled over the keys.

The doors to the business centre swung open. It was the man from the lobby, the military-looking one. He glanced at Clay, leant over and whispered something to the attendant, then left. Shit. He was running out of time. He needed to leave.

Finally the single page letter was complete. He hit print, grabbed it from the printer, and approached the desk. ‘Do you have a photocopier?’

‘Of course.’ The attendant pointed.

Clay pulled out the notebook, lay it open on the glass, closed the cover and hit copy. The light sliced across the screen, recording images, words, thoughts. Again. Clay grabbed the copies, stood at the desk, pulled the lab reports and Thierry’s letter from the courier envelope, and stacked them on the counter. Paper. That was what mattered in this world.

At the top of the front page he scribbled Hurricane’s number, FAO The Chairman.

‘Fax machine?’

‘I can send it for you.’

Clay watched as the attendant sent it through. The shrill cacophony of the send signal matched the turbulence of his fever, inchoate, grating. His head was spinning now, whipping him around the room. He clutched the side of the counter.

‘Are you alright, sir?’ The attendant placed the confirmation page on the counter.

The door burst open behind him. He turned to see the doctor standing in the doorway. His face was covered in sweat and he was breathing hard. He took Clay by the arm, moved him towards the door. ‘The police are here,’ he whispered in his ear. ‘They want to question me. About you.’

‘Jesus.’ Clay ploughed through another wave.

‘I will keep them as long as I can. Leave quickly. Take the back exit.’

Clay nodded. ‘Thank you.’

‘You must go to hospital. Every moment you delay, the infection is moving. I am amazed you are still able to stand.’

Clay shook the doctor’s hand, collected the faxed documents, made for the lifts. The samples from the CPF and the photographs were in his room. He couldn’t leave without them. He pressed the call button and waited. Lift cars hissed in the shafts, stopped, restarted. He glanced along the corridor, thought of taking the stairs but a wave of nausea doubled him over. Finally the bell rang, the doors opened. He stepped inside, catching a glimpse of himself in the mirrored walls, a stranger, bearded, eyes burning, unfamiliar. An Arab in traditional dress stood in the corner of the elevator scowling at Clay’s dirt- and blood-stained rags. He was short with a taut round belly. He looked pregnant. A little girl stood beside him, clutching his hand. She wore a frilly pink princess dress and little white high heels, a tiara in her hair. In a few short years she would vanish behind the veil, become invisible, learn self-effacement. But now she was staring right at him, her eyes accusatory under lashes thick with mascara, lids heavy with paint and daubed with sparkles. The fingertips of her gaze tracked a bead of sweat across his cheek. He wiped it away with
his good hand and tried a smile. For a moment she looked back, impassive, but then her face crumpled into a frown. It looked as if she was going to cry, but instead she shuddered and stepped back behind her father’s legs and hid her face in the folds of his robe. Clay thrust his bandaged hand deep into his pocket, tried to move to the far corner of the car but stumbled and thudded into the mirror. He steadied himself against the wall, looked away.

The lift seemed to stop at every floor. He stood, heart jack-knifing as the doors opened and more people got on. The doors closed, the car lurched upward. Another stop, more people crowded in. The lift car was packed now – he was hemmed in. He should have taken the fire escape. Time slowed, stalled. The floors ticked by. Panic rose in his chest. He could imagine the doctor trying to delay the cops, the smug desk clerk volunteering his room number with an obsequious smile. Again the lift stopped, ninth floor, only three to go. Two people got off, the doors closed but opened again one floor later to reveal phantom guests, empty corridors. Jesus Christ. To be undone by something so mundane.

Finally the gong sounded for the twelfth floor. The doors opened. The corridor was clear. He ran to his room, collected his things, and made for the fire escape.

He emerged into daylight at the back of the hotel, walked through the pool area as if in a dream, past oiled and bikinied Western women in loungers, toddlers splashing in the wading pool, the water tile-blue. He was vaguely aware of heads turning, fingers pointing. The pool attendant reached for a phone, spoke quickly, called out. Clay kept moving, to the garden now, along the footpath, the attendant shouting behind him, following. He found the rear exit and emerged onto the street. A siren blared somewhere, off beyond the hotel. The street was busy, a swirl of motion, cars flying by in both directions. It made him dizzy. He ran along the pavement, away from the hotel, with the flow of traffic. He looked back over his shoulder, caught sight of a yellow taxi. He threw up his arm, let out a whistle. The taxi flashed past, a patron in the back seat. Back
beyond the hotel, more sirens. He raised his hand again. Another taxi creaked by, occupied. A policeman appeared at the hotel’s rear exit, stopped, looked up and down the street. Clay turned away, hunched over, tried to make himself small. Another taxi was coming towards him, flowing with the traffic. Driver only. The policeman was shouting now, moving towards him, still a hundred metres off, less, floating above the pavement.

Clay darted into the street, stumbled, dodged a truck. The taxi was there, coming towards him, a blur. He raised his arms, waved. Drivers were shouting at him from open windows, voices pitched above the sound of engines, the Doppler of horns. The policeman was looking right at him now, puffing as he ran to close the gap, still fifty metres away. The taxi screeched to a halt. Horns blared as cars swerved. Clay jumped into the back seat, reached forward and dropped a hundred-dollar note into the driver’s lap.

‘The French Embassy,’ Clay croaked, sinking down in the seat. ‘
Yallah
.’ Fast.

Ten minutes later he walked into the office of the Deputy Consul and stood shaking and unsteady before the man’s desk. The diplomat was a small man, trim and compact, dressed in a well-made navy blue suit and tie. He looked like an athlete, a sailor perhaps, a cyclist. He looked up from his papers.

‘I was told it is urgent. How may I help you, Mister …?’ His English was perfect.

Clay closed his eyes, felt himself falling, opened them again with a start, jammed out one leg, stabilised. The man’s face twinned then blurred. Outside, sirens approaching.

The Consul stood. ‘You are unwell.’ He pointed to a chair. ‘Please, sit.’