Fourth Horseman (15 page)

He was always working in the inner lab those days, and when I arrived each afternoon I would check in with him on the intercom. When I was finished, if he hadn’t already come out, I would call him again and let him know. If he was ready he’d give me a lift home, and if he wasn’t I would wait around until he was finished. I often got all my homework done in the little kitchen there. But over those days in December I had far more time than I needed, and I often found myself at a loose end. Two or three times I had to plead with Dad to come out and take me home, and after that he embarked upon a new routine, which was to drop me home when I was ready to go, and then return to the lab after dinner.

And even dinner times were shortened. More often than not we would take a detour through town and pick up a takeaway. To begin with it was a treat, but I soon lost my appetite for those stodgy, lukewarm meals. I spent too many evenings on my own, watching rubbish on TV and waiting for Dad to come home. A few times I waited up until after midnight, and eventually went to bed in an empty house. Sometimes I woke when he came in during the early hours of the morning. Other nights I didn’t hear him come in at all.

More squirrels vanished from their cages. Despite Dad’s promise to tell me when he was taking them, he invariably forgot. I noted down the tag numbers of the missing ones and tried, unsuccessfully, not to remember their names. Some of them broke my heart. I ought to have been consulted about which ones were used first but I didn’t press the point. Bad as it was to discover that my favourites were missing, it would have been ten times worse if I’d had to choose which one was next for the chop.

It was clear that Dad was hugely excited about the progress he was making on the project. He was in a state of constant nervous agitation, speedy and jumpy. He smoked non-stop wherever he found himself, and he never sat still for a moment. But whenever I tried to question him about what he was doing he was evasive and refused to give me any details. Looking back on it now, I think I know what was happening with him. He was engaged in a terrible battle between his conscience and his pioneering spirit. I think that, whatever he had said to Mum, he now really believed that the experiment was going to work. And I suspect he knew something else as well, something he would never have admitted to anyone, perhaps not even to himself. I think he knew what the appearance of the horsemen had presaged, and what the connection was between them and the project. He can’t have guessed, though, exactly how the final part of the story would involve him. If he had, I have no doubt at all that he would have stopped what he was doing then, before it got too late.

I hated the way he was behaving: his driven, single-minded selfishness frightened me. It pervaded everything; the atmosphere at home and the atmosphere in the lab. Even the squirrels seemed to sense that something dreadful was happening, and were uncharacteristically quiet and tense, as though they were watching something that I couldn’t see. Every time I came and went from the lab I examined the shadows beneath the trees. I was certain, though I never saw them, that the horsemen too were waiting.

It was a lonely time for me. I missed Alex and wished I’d gone with him. Mum kept in regular contact, which was something, but although I told her Dad was working a lot, I didn’t burden her with my loneliness. It wouldn’t be long before they were back, after all. And then everything would be all right. That’s the thought I hung on to, anyway.

The last two one-day international matches were to be played on the nineteenth and the twenty-first, in Sunderabad. Mum was due to fly back the following day, which was a Thursday, but Alex and the Maliks were staying until the Friday; just two days before Christmas. Mum sent me an enormous list of all the stuff we had to get in to be ready for Christmas. She wasn’t going to have time for everything when she returned, so Dad and I would have to get ahead with the organization. The perishable food would have to wait until the last minute, but we would make life a lot easier on ourselves if we got the presents and most of the other stuff out of the way earlier. So on the Saturday before the Christmas weekend, I tried to persuade Dad to come with me into town to make a start on the list. Knowing the mood he was in, I’d been careful to give him plenty of warning, and I’d reminded him several times that week. But when it came to it he ducked out. He said the work was at a critical stage and he just wanted a few more days. I had come to the end of my tether and we had a big row about it, but he wouldn’t back down. The best he would do was to drop me in town with a promise to collect me again in the afternoon. I arrived in the centre in a foul mood, but for a few hours I managed to forget everything and drowned my sorrows in pure, unadulterated consumerism.

On the way home Dad asked me what he should get Mum and Alex for Christmas. I told him he was going to have to free up a small part of his busy mind and work that out for himself.

In the event, he didn’t get them anything. He can be forgiven for that, though, in view of what happened next.

A
TTIYA MALIK ALWAYS SAID
she did her best work in the early mornings, before the family was awake. That was how she came to be in her studio on the morning of the twenty-second, when the news first came through on the radio. She rang us straight away.

I was woken by the call, and heard Dad galumphing down the stairs. I thought it was probably mad Mr Davenport, who often phoned at unsociable hours, and turned over to go back to sleep. But I could hear the alarmed tone of Dad’s voice even though I couldn’t hear the words he was saying. It had me on my feet and down in the hall before I could even think about it.

He was just hanging up as I got there.

‘What’s happened?’ I said.

I could hear the fear in my voice. Dad looked bewildered. He shook his head as though he might shake the nightmare out of it. ‘That was Attiya. She says there’s been a coup in Shasakstan.’

‘What does that mean?’

Dad still looked bewildered. For a long moment he stood there, staring at the phone. Then, with a suddenness that made me jump, he turned and raced upstairs. ‘Get dressed,’ he called back to me. ‘We’re going out!’

In the Maliks’ sitting room Attiya was sitting in front of the TV, watching the 24-hour news channel.

‘I knew it would happen,’ she said, turning the volume down. ‘I just didn’t think it would happen so soon, or so dramatically.’

‘What’s going to happen to the children?’ said Dad.

‘That’s the problem,’ said Attiya. ‘They have closed down all communications, according to the news report.’ She turned to me. ‘Your mother will be all right because they have allowed the cricket team to leave. But it was the last plane out. The airports are all closed.’

‘Good God,’ said Dad. ‘What are we going to do?’

‘I think we should go and meet your wife at the airport and then we can all work out what to do next. In the meantime there isn’t much we can do.’

We sat in silence for a few moments as Dad and I absorbed the gravity of the situation. One of Javed’s sisters phoned, and Attiya chatted to her for a long time. When she came back she turned up the sound on the TV. Everything she had told us was confirmed.

‘It’s clearly an inside job,’ said Attiya.

‘How can a coup be an inside job?’ said Dad.

‘The Islamist faction in the army got too big to be contained any longer,’ said Attiya. ‘The best way for power to change hands was for them to stage-manage a coup. It’s the Shasakstani version of a cabinet reshuffle.’

I listened to her with one ear and the TV with the other. Expert after expert was trundled out to explain who was behind the coup and what it might mean for the state of world politics. But none of them gave us any clue as to what might happen to people who were stranded in Shasakstan, and none of them yet knew the extent of the drama that the new leaders were about to unleash on the world. We didn’t hear about that until we were well on our way to Heathrow.

Dad decided to drive because there was no knowing where we might have to go later to try and find out about the boys. On the car radio we heard more about the coup. The new government had made an announcement. They demanded the release of several key Islamist leaders who were in American prison bases throughout the world and called for all foreign troops to be removed from the Middle East. They had banned all but their own military planes from Shasakstani airspace. The US forces based in Shasakstan were to be considered hostages until their demands were met.

Dad laughed when he heard that. ‘Why should the Americans take any notice of them?’ he said.

‘Because they’re scared of them,’ said Attiya.

‘How could they be scared of them? Look what they did to Afghanistan and Iraq. There wouldn’t be much left of Shasakstan if they sent in the bombers!’

‘But they can’t do that,’ said Attiya. ‘Shasakstan is not the same as Afghanistan or Iraq. This new president, whoever he is, has his finger on a very dangerous button. Don’t forget that Shasakstan has nuclear weapons.’

My blood ran cold. Now I understood. The horsemen, white and red, sent their vicious wind blowing through my soul. Was this the reason they had appeared? To warn of this? To prevent me going, so that I wasn’t trapped there now, like Alex and Javed and Manir? Whatever the meaning, it was coming to pass. This, without a shadow of a doubt, was connected with them.

Heathrow was heaving with excited people. There were battalions of journalists and photographers waiting to interview the England team when they got off the plane, though the focus of their interest was not the team’s victory in the one-day international series but the new situation in Shasakstan. There were dozens of policemen as well, some of them heavily armed. We were there early and had a long wait, with nowhere to sit or even lean. We got coffee after coffee, but all of us were too anxious to eat.

Eventually the flight arrived. We waited again, more anxiously than ever. It seemed to take for ever before the first passengers emerged. The police formed a cordon to help the cricket team get through the crowd. Cameras flashed and journalists called out, but no one on the team had any comment to make. They looked shocked and disheartened, hardly the mood for homecoming heroes. But, as I learned later, they had only just heard what had happened in Shasakstan. The army tanks had rolled on to the runway as soon as their plane had left the ground, but even though they had been so close to the drama, they were the last to know. If news had reached the pilots on the plane, they hadn’t relayed it to the passengers.

There was no sign of Mum, and it was noticeable that no Shasakstani people were emerging into the arrivals area. A few more bewildered-looking travellers wandered out, and then I saw him.

‘Alex!’

I dug Dad in the ribs with my elbow, then barged my way through the press of people to meet him at the barrier.

‘How did you get here?’ I said, hugging him hard. But he just shook his head, and when I pulled back I saw that his eyes were red with tears.

W
HILE WE WAITED FOR
Mum, Alex told us what had happened.

The previous evening Manir had thrown a post-series party for some of his cricketing friends. One of his cousins worked at the local TV station and he had brought three videos containing the highlights of the entire one-day international series. There were vast quantities of food and drink which everyone enjoyed, but the real business of the evening didn’t begin until the videos were put on.

Altogether there was six hours of footage on the videos, so the party looked like going on all night. But at about two thirty in the morning there was a phone call for Manir. It was very brief and when he came back he said it had been a wrong number. But Alex knew him well enough by then to see that he was badly shaken. He did his best to hide it, but the ambiance of the party had changed significantly. Everyone watched the TV for a few more minutes, until someone suggested that it was very late and maybe they should all go home. In dribs and drabs the company filed out into the avenue, woke their sleeping drivers and started for their homes.

When the last of them was gone Manir told Alex and Javed that he had to go out for a while, and while he was gone they should pack. They had to be ready by the time he got back. He didn’t tell them what was going on, and both of them were bewildered and frightened.

When he returned, they set out for the airport. He told the boys he had been out to arrange for some cash, but he wouldn’t tell them what was behind the sudden change of plan. ‘I thought it would be great fun if we could all travel back on the same flight as the team,’ he said, but Alex and Javed didn’t buy it. It was clear that something very bad was going on and that there was nothing they could do except trust in Manir’s resourcefulness to get them all out of the country.

The airport was almost deserted and the ticket desks were closed. Manir left the boys with the bags and set off through the airport to find someone with a greasable palm and the authority to sell him tickets.

They waited. The London flight was scheduled to leave at ten forty-five and the departures board declared it to be on time. Check-in time was three hours before that, because of the rigorous security routine at the airport. By then it was about six, and it was another hour before Manir came back. He gave Alex a ticket and his passport.

‘Javed and I are the first on the waiting list,’ he said. ‘There are bound to be some free seats. I’m sure we’ll get on.’

‘I’m not leaving Shasakstan without Javed,’ said Alex.

‘Of course not,’ said Manir. ‘I’m sure you won’t have to.’

He went off again, and a while later Alex saw him talking to people who were lining up at the check-in desk for their flight. Javed told him that he was trying to get people to sell him their tickets, but no one would. Soon after that the team showed up, and Manir persuaded Alex to go and join Mum. It was time to check in. He didn’t want to leave Javed, but Manir made it clear he had no option. He was still optimistic that they would all get on the flight.