Candleburn (3 page)

6

Aarez watched the three Somalis at the bottom of the pit shovelling sand up into a small heap. Fine grains were being lifted by the breeze like the softest of early morning English mists.

England.

Of all the countries he’d lived in, he both respected and marvelled at it. Everything about her was fascinating: her depth of history, her culture, her green, water-filled valleys and her bustling urban streets. Modernity straddled next to thousand-year-old cathedrals. How had such a tiny island become so powerful?

And
he loved her people!

They
were driven, yet lazy. Cynical, yet optimistic. Patriotic and yet despising of nationalism.

Seven
years, he’d spent there: first Sandhurst, then the London School of Economics and finally an MBA from the London Business School.

All
the time, he’d kept Oassan at his side.

Let
others tailor their dreams for the Middle East from the fabric of the United States. He and Oassan both agreed that was folly. England was the model for their vision. Not the modern nation ashamed of her past; the England of old – the visionary who used private enterprise to control world trade.

The
rumble of the pickup truck’s engine roused him from his thoughts as it briefly overpowered the noise of digging and shuddered to a halt. He heard the grating as its tailgate opened, followed by the huffs of Oassan as he lifted and dragged the charcoaled corpse across the ground.

The
pit was now nearly eight feet deep and wide enough to accommodate two people lying side by side.

“Stop!”
Aarez called abruptly.

His
workers ceased digging and leaned on their spades.

“Throw
the tools up here!”

The
Somalis tossed their shovels beside Aarez’s feet.

Oassan
dragged the body to the grave’s edge. Black cinders flaked away on his clothes. The wind caught them and they fluttered about, butterflies, as they rose higher.

“Did
he crack after I left?” Aarez asked.

“Don’t
they always?” Oassan replied.

Aarez’s
lips widened with satisfaction.

“The
package was mailed to a reporter at the Journal in two parts: a puzzle box and a key,” Oassan continued.

“Clever,”
Aarez replied. “A puzzle box? I haven’t seen one of those since I was a child. Without the key, it’ll be near impossible to open – so we’ll need both packages.”

“You
want me to take care of it?”

Aarez
stared at the sky for a few seconds. It was possible the parcels hadn’t yet arrived at their destination, Dubai’s postal service being as it was.

“No,”
he said eventually. “After capturing Chaiwat, we may start to raise the interest of the local security services. Before everything’s in place, that would be premature.”

Aarez
licked his finger and held it out, feeling the direction of the wind. The air was pleasantly cooling on his palm.

“Have
the Russians do it,” he said.

Oassan
kicked Chaiwat’s body into the hole. The Somalis moved to the edge of the pit as the charred corpse tumbled between them.

Aarez
removed his Gucci sunglasses and began reciting a prayer.

Oassan
reached down to his ankle and lifted the hem of his thawb. He extracted a pistol from a holster attached to his ankle. The three Somalis looked at one another and started jabbering. One leapt at the sides of the pit and tried to scrabble his way clear. The sand crumbled away beneath his fingers and he fell backwards on top of the body, desiccated bones cracking beneath his weight.

Oassan
shot him twice in the chest.

Aarez
continued his recital. He bent down to the ground and picked up one of the spades. He began to shovel dirt back into the pit.

A
second Somali tried to use the corpse of the first to jump higher and escape. Oassan placed two bullets into the worker, who slumped back to the base of the trench.

Finally,
he took aim at the last Somali in the pit. As the golden sand was flung over him, the man, barely in his twenties, bowed his head and spread his arms wide – repeating the same mizmor sung by Aarez.

Oassan,
pistol still raised, looked at his friend. Aarez continued his recitation as he filled the grave.

Oassan
lowered his pistol and offered a free outstretched hand to the Somali. The Somali stopped chanting and reached up his own open palm.

Oassan
smiled.

“Only
joking!” he said.

He
shot the man in the cheek, then emptied his magazine into the boy.

“I
can't believe they still think this is about religion,” Oassan chuckled.

“We shall have to disabuse them of that notion,” Aarez shook his head with disappointment as he paused his prayer. “When we’re done, have my father send across three more from the factory.”

Oassan
picked up a spade and began to help his friend put sand into the grave.

7

Mehr Zain adjusted the car’s rear view mirror so he could get a better view of the shop fronts. Away from the radiant architecture and bustle of Dubai’s new centre, International City was a rat-infested hive of crime and sedition.

On
the back seat, Asp snored lightly.

Mehr
had seen him work the last 30-hours straight. He didn’t know how his boss did it. They’d driven to find the prostitute’s body and found the area crawling with police.

Mehr
and Asp worked for a company called Chrome, which had a good relationship with both the authorities and the top brass of the Gulf’s gangster underbelly. Still, they tried to avoid showing their faces to the police unless they had to as it usually generated too many questions.

Chrome
specialised in completing tasks that simply couldn’t – or wouldn’t – be done by anyone else. Their business cards said it all – Chrome: Corporate Facilitators. Mehr’s wife described them flippantly, but no less accurately, as “business spooks for hire.”

Mehr
always smiled when she said that disapprovingly. He’d worked in many jobs in his 36 years but his time at Chrome was easily the most absorbing.

Mehr
Zain was Egyptian, with an Italian mother and a father from Cairo. He drank. As a youth, he’d dabbled with drugs. But no pork – that was one step too far. The day he’d met Asp, he’d been standing outside Chrome’s Dubai headquarters smoking a cigarette, waiting for a job interview with a supermarket as a delivery driver.

He
almost ignored the balding, goateed man who waddled past him like Charlie Chaplin, stopped, and then took four paces backwards without turning around.

“Are
you here for a job?”

“I
have an interview in half an hour with Ankora Food Express.”

“I
have a vacancy. I need a very particular set of skills,” Asp had said, eyeing Mehr from head to feet. “I need someone fluent in Arabic but not too religious, who would have serious qualms about breaking the law – but not so much about bending it.”

“I
think you’ve got the wrong idea,” Mehr shuffled uncomfortably. “I’m married. I’m not that desperate for money.”

“Good!”
Asp laughed loudly. “Quick to make logical connections, too. Excellent. My employees need to have a brain. But careful – I don’t want people who are fast to jump to wrong conclusions.”

Mehr
took a deep drag of his cigarette, the hot bitumen choking in the back of his throat in the high humidity.

“What’s the job title?”

“Fluent, local muscle with a brain.”

“And
the pay?”

“Come
inside – third floor. I’ll show you your signing bonus.”

Mehr
went inside. He left an hour later with a signed contract and a cheque for six months’ salary in his pocket.

Mehr
had never regretted the decision to join Chrome.

Asp
rolled over on the back seat, still snoring. Mehr wound his window lower to leave a one-inch gap and lit another cigarette. Two hours. Still nothing was happening here at the “shop front”, the informal name of the base Chaiwat Singuptra, number two for the East Asian mafia: known colloquially as ‘Euphoric’.

A
Filipino prostitute? It would be one of his girls.

They
might not be able to show their faces to the police but Asp had fewer qualms about tapping their less savoury contacts. Chaiwat received a stipend from Asp to be available when he needed information or a meeting. Three calls, Asp placed. None were answered.

That
was unheard of.

And
that’s what brought them to International City, on the outskirts of the great Sheikh’s glorious vision. The district was only half complete when the financial crisis hit. Consequently, it was euphemistically referred to as ‘unestablished’.

Although
less than five years-old, the jerry-built stores already had cracks running through the walls. Some still had the unclipped, twisted reinforcing steel bars poking through the concrete roofs, giving them the look of rusting, unkempt hair. Sand from the desert storms drifted and swamped parts of the car park near the undeveloped lots. Gradually, the desert was trying to reclaim this unestablished city.

Worst
was the stench.

International
City smelled like a latrine. Sewer mains that carried the filth of the upscale developments three miles away frequently broke, gushing human waste out onto the roads. Ponds of excrement, filled with everything anyone flushed into a toilet, were a regular occurrence.

Mehr
exhaled a long breath of smoke through the small gap in the window. It plumed in the outside air, almost clinging to the metal of the car like a musty, greying fog.

At
least his cigarette disguised the stink.

Police
presence here was light to non-existent. Rents were low. All these factors made the area one of the few in the emirate perfect as a home for a group like Euphoric.

Zain
lifted his sunglasses slightly to get a better look at the four men who’d emerged from a hostel doorway and were now patrolling the shop fronts. Sudanese or Eritrean by the looks of them. Interesting. Much of the Euphoric syndicate’s membership were made up of Thais, Indonesians and Filipinos. Curious that they should have expanded their foot-soldiers to include those from Arabic-speaking Africa.

The
nature of crime in Dubai fascinated Zain. It was a fantastic place in so many ways. For the average inhabitant it was one of the safest cities in the world.

In
the summer a car with the engine switched off quickly heats up like a furnace. It actually cost more money to turn your engine off while you go inside a supermarket than to leave your engine on with the air conditioning running.

So,
drive to any Choiterhams or Spinney’s superstore and the front row of the car park was full of empty vehicles left with the keys in the ignition and the motors idling.

It
made sense.

Fuel
was cheap. $30 filled even the largest tank to the brim. With the engine on, the car stayed cool and it was more economical. The fascinating thing was that no-one ever stole them. What fool would risk being caught and subjected to Dubai’s notoriously harsh penal system?

Similarly,
you could take out your wallet in any shopping mall, drop it in the middle of the floor and walk off. Come back thirty minutes later and it would still be there, exactly as you’d left it, untouched. In fact, it was strange how quickly your brain adapted to the raw safety of Dubai. If you came back and found your wallet gone – you’d feel aggrieved.

There
was no doubt in Zain’s mind that Dubai was the safest city in the world. Of course, there was crime. Much of it was organised by three well-established syndicates.

The
biggest component was prostitution. Dubai was an international business hub, and what lubricates transactions more efficiently than sex? Most of that was split out by nationality.

The
Russian syndicate, Belyy Volk, the White Wolves, controlled the market’s high-end – mostly East European girls. Beneath them, Euphoric had a firm grip on the mid-tier market – professionals brought in to service Dubai’s indigenous bankers and Western expat men who played away whenever their wives were on holiday.

Beneath these, t
he Indian gang, a group called Onyx, had a ruthless grasp of the low end stuff – servicing the needs of Dubai’s forgotten caste: the labourers. That meant girls brought in on the expectation they’d be maids or au pairs, and women kidnapped from sub-Saharan Africa.

All
the organizations indulged in other criminal activities – from drugs to gambling to bootlegging and counterfeit goods – but they were careful to treat Dubai only as a trading hub.

It
was strictly import-export; a base from which to operate.

Sure,
the authorities looked the other way when it came to prostitution because that cemented the city’s reputation as a regional capital, but bringing other business ashore was a risk few were stupid enough to take.

There
was a flash behind the car, Mehr realised he’d drifted off into daydreaming.

He
heard the screaming battle cry and glanced in the rear view mirror once more.

“Shit,
shit, shit,” he yelled switching on the car’s engine.

A
tall Algerian was sprinting towards them with a full-drawn samurai sword.