Candleburn (7 page)

15

Asp and Mehr Zain walked through the landscaped gardens around the base of the Flamenco Towers in Dubai’s marina district. They sipped store-bought coffees as they mingled among the joggers and mums taking their children for a trip around the small lake. On the far side of the high-rise apartments, yachts of the Gulf’s super elite bobbed gently on the artificial harbour waters.

A
bird looped low, trilling as it flew between the jacaranda trees.

“Dubai
is amazing,” Zain commented as it began hopping along the branches.

“It’s
an Indian Warbler,” Asp said dismissively. “It’s a common and familiar bird in North Oman. You can tell from the long beak, grey back and bright turquoise plumage about the neck and belly.”

Asp’s
head was bowed. He hadn’t even looked up, identifying the bird simply from its song.

“Ten
years ago,” Mehr continued, “this was an arid desert wasteland in the middle of nowhere. When I arrived there was no wildlife. The place was sterile.”

Mehr
loved birds.

He
didn’t go bird spotting or read about them in books, there was hardly time in his life for that kind of frivolity. Yet, he had always thought them beautiful creatures. Often, in his most wistful moments, he imagined how his life might have been if he’d been born wealthy or been brought up somewhere other than the slums of Cairo’s downtown district, say in America, or Ireland – he’d visited that country on work with Asp: its green beauty, happy people and troubled history seemed different, yet somehow so complimentary to the Middle East’s.

An
ornithologist. Or a falconer. Perhaps he’d have owned an aviary. In another life, birds with their delicacy and freedom, their speed and strength, would have been a poignant symbol for him, he decided.

Asp
drank his Americano. Mehr watched his friend let the acidic taste of the thick, black liquid wash around his tongue before he swallowed.

“It’s
funny to think we’re witnessing life colonise a completely new place,” Zain said, waving his arms with enthusiasm. “Now the parks are slowly filling with nature to compliment what man has restored.”

Asp
stopped and stared out across the pond. He picked up a palm-sized pebble.

“You’re
right it’s amazing,” he said, throwing the stone out across the water and watching it skip across the surface. “You’d think they’d have all been eaten by the stray cats.”

The
stone ricocheted, bouncing as surely across the cobalt flatness of the lake as a well struck ping pong ball dances across a table.

“Boss,
with the greatest of respect, you’re a buzz kill,” Zain replied. “Dubai is in the neighbourhood from hell. If you were buying a house, you wouldn’t want one on this street. Living around you, you’ve got Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Palestine, Israel and Saudi Arabia. The fact that this place is so free – so easy-going – is a wonder of the modern age. Dubai is truly a blessed and special place.”

The
arches of the pebble lessened until, with a satisfying plop, it sank from view. Asp pointed along the shoreline to a car-sized piece of modern art, nestled by the lake edge near the topiary hedges. It was a series of twelve, sharp, upturned shimmering steel spikes, poking from a curved bronze base to chest height like a small section of a hedgehog’s back.

“You
see that sculpture?” he asked.

“Sure,
” Zain replied.

“What
does it look like to you?”

The
sun was bright in the polished metal of the spikes, reflected back and forth between the individual spines until it shot out like an undirected laser.

“It’s...
well,” Zain struggled. “It looks like the shell or casing of one of those trees you have in England.”

“A
conker?” Asp asked.

“That’s
it. A conker tree.”

“No,
the tree’s called a Horse Chestnut, Aesculus hippocastanum, it means…” Asp trailed off.

He
was quiet and took two sips of his coffee. He continued staring at the artwork.

“What
I mean is,” Asp started again, rubbing his forehead. “What does the sculpture say to you? Not ‘what does it look like’ – think more: ‘what does it mean’?”

Zain
was stumped.

It
didn’t say anything to him. It certainly didn’t seem to mean very much. He could infer from it, and the other sculptures around the park, that Dubai had too much money. It simply bought works to fill its public areas without much regard for quality. Usually, the artists were given only a single criterion for their production – that they must contain no sexual references.

By
the nature of their personalities, that obviously led the artists to push boundaries simply to see what the most ridiculous thing they could get erected was; and erected, in many cases, was truly the appropriate word for the many vaginal cusps, phallic obelisks and random columns with spherical balls at the base and top.

But
what did this piece mean?

Frankly,
Mehr thought it looked like an echidna’s arse.

“It
doesn’t really say anything,” he said after running through the possibilities. “It sort of looks pretty. It’s not deep. It doesn’t mean anything. You’re just meant to experience it, go ‘that’s nice’ and move on.”

“Exactly,
” Asp replied and began walking again.

***

It took forty minutes for Saleem to arrive at Qasid’s house. They exchanged the traditional greeting at the door and then after a brief discussion in Arabic of the problem, the beautiful artistry of the box and the morality of examining its contents, Saleem pulled out a small, black wallet.

Cautiously,
he worked the brass zip around the wallet’s edge. It opened to reveal a set of lock picks.

“You’re
sure this won’t break the phial?” Blake asked.

“Saleem
is a magician. He’s the best in the Middle East. One of his specialisms is escapology.”

Saleem
said nothing. He simply began tapping a small tool, like a dentist’s sickle probe, on each face of the box.

“You’ll
forgive me,” Blake said hesitantly, “but I thought magic was sorcery and therefore technically punishable by death in most of the Gulf?”

Saleem
raised an eyebrow.

“Are
you sure he’s not secretly a Saudi?” he asked Qasid. “He sounds like my uncle.”

He
took a scalpel from his set of tools and rapped the lid of the box twice.

“Very
clever,” he muttered.

“What
is?” Blake asked.

“Did
you not wonder why there are only five keyholes on a six-sided cube?” Saleem said. “Each of these holes is a fake.”

He
twisted the lid slightly and altered the pattern once again. He dug the scalpel under a newly rearranged tile and delicately lifted it out. Underneath, a sixth keyhole was revealed.

Saleem
placed the device back on the table so they might all see closely the intricacy of its design. His face was genuinely proud of the magnificence of the puzzle box, as though he personally knew its manufacturer or could somehow take credit for its splendour.

“It’s
a marvel of engineering.” Saleem said. “I can’t tell you how unusual it is. The idea is Omani. That means the talents of many cultures went into this little device. It’s ingenious.”

He
returned the scalpel to its place in the wallet and set to work on the freshly revealed lock. A minute later, the lid clacked and rose by a millimetre.

“I
believe the honour is yours,” Qasid said, passing the puzzle box across.

Blake
breathed deeply and lifted the lid.

16

“Are you sure I don’t need to be armed for this?” Zain asked nervously.

“What
do you want, a gun?” Asp replied as they watched the front of Flamenco Towers 7 from a wharf-side bench.

“Don’t
be ridiculous,” Mehr said, snorting derisively. “Jesus, you’d have to be an idiot to try and use a gun in Dubai. No, I meant a cricket bat or something.”

“Yes
officer,” Asp used his comic voice, “I was just out playing a spot of cricket along the docks with my friend and accidentally happened to whack the most powerful Russian in the city repeatedly about the noggin. Mistook him for a croquet ball. It won’t happen again.”

“Don’t
be an arse,” Zain growled.

“You
started it,” Asp replied. “We’re not here to kidnap him. We’re just going fishing to see if we can bring anything to the surface.”

“He’s
killed several of our colleagues and you’re on a fishing expedition?”

“You
have a better idea?” Asp asked.

Zain
slapped his friend on the shoulder.

“There
he is.”

***

Blake
stared down into the open puzzle box.

An
intact phial of fluorescent yellow liquid was firmly attached to the underside of the lid. The two-centimetre wide walls were lined on the inside with metal, clearly to prevent the device being drilled open without the acid being released.

It
was filled with white basmati rice.

“Rice?”
Blake exclaimed.

“Check
beneath it carefully,” Qasid said. “The rice is probably a desiccant added to protect the integrity, cushion from impact and disguise what’s truly inside.”

Blake
cautiously ran a single finger through the fine grains, bringing to the surface three stubby cylinders that reeked of stale tobacco ash.

“Three
used cigarette butts?” Blake said. “That’s it?”

“Well,” Qasid chortled, “I promised you that I’d be able to find a way into the box – I didn’t say I’d be able to explain what you’d find.”

“Indeed,
” Saleem muttered. “What do you think it means?”

Silence.

Qasid rose and poured himself a glass of water from the pitcher on the dining room table. Blake shifted his weight into the back of the seat and stared at the brilliant white ceiling for a few seconds.

“It
has to be DNA,” Blake said. “If it were about tobacco or the cigarettes themselves – I don’t know, say a major brand was adulterated with a poison or something – then you’d send the whole cigarette so the tobacco could be analysed. You wouldn’t send three fully smoked, stubbed out butts.”

“Agreed,”
Qasid replied, placing his glass loudly on the table. “So the questions become whose DNA and why does it need testing?”

“Is
there a brand evident?” Saleem asked.

“I’m
not a smoker,” Qasid said. “How would you tell?”

Blake,
with the most tender of touches, examined the butts.

“Saleem’s
right,” Blake said. “Different brands have different patterns on the filters – these ones are orange with yellow flecks and a single gold stripe. Compare that with mine, which are white with green stripes.”

Blake
pulled from his own pocket his packet of mentholated cigarettes and lifted one out to show Qasid. His Arabic friend took the thin stick of tobacco and rolled it around between his fingers.

“How
does that help?” he asked as he compared Blake’s filter with the ones in the box.

“Some
brands are sold only in certain regions – so it’ll tell me if the pack comes from the UK or the US or if they’re local,” Blake said. “Others are multinational – like Marlboro, which you can buy anywhere. Now, that’s less immediately helpful, but even with those ones, there are differences in the tobacco because cigarettes have different tastes depending on the place, to appeal to local sensibilities. A packet of Marlboro Lights in the UK doesn’t taste or smell the same as one from Singapore.”

Saleem
whistled loudly.

“I
don’t envy you trying to figure that one out,” he said.

“Actually,”
Blake replied. “I think I already have. There’s a logo half burned off but still legible on this butt here. It’s a British brand. More importantly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen this one sold locally – so it’s specific to the United Kingdom, Ireland and the like.”

“Maybe
it comes from a British pub here in Dubai?” Qasid suggested. “They might import home brands specially to make people feel welcome.”

“That’s
a good idea,” Blake said.

“Yeah,
in many ways it’s a shame it’s not an American only brand like Kent,” Saleem said.

“Why?”
Blake asked.

“You’d
narrow your search to US military bases or people who’d recently flown in from the country that doesn’t exist,” Saleem replied.

Blake
was puzzled. He looked at Qasid who was leaning against the banisters of the stairs.

“Country
that doesn’t exist?”

“The
one that most definitely isn’t there on the Middle East’s Mediterranean coast?” Qasid added helpfully. “The one none of us in Dubai really has a problem with but for appearances must ignore.”

“Oh!”
Blake said after a few seconds thought. “Israel!”