A Single Source Page 8

  ‘You do not want to chain your bicycle?’

  ‘No point. Not anymore.’

  Gabriel nodded gravely; the coffee machine made a strange growling sound and the smell of roasted coffee filled the room. ‘The cycling team did not select you.’

  ‘You heard already?’

  ‘No, not heard … feared.’ Gabriel pushed his glass of beer over towards Solomon who took a long swig.

  This seemed to calm him a little; he slumped back into the chair and sighed. ‘It is unfair, my times are the best in every kind of riding condition. I work harder than anyone; I arrive early for training and leave last. I am polite to the coach, respectful – even though the man is a complete idiot.’

  His grandfather gave a gentle smile.

  ‘What else could I have done?’

  ‘Nothing. I suspect that there was nothing you could have done. What is your coach’s name again?’

  ‘Medhanie.’

  Gabriel nodded. ‘I know him – by reputation. He is not a brave man; I think he will have picked his team not for their talent but for trust. He has chosen the boys he thinks he can rely on not to put him in any trouble. He has a nice house and an easy job and he doesn’t want to lose them. That is more important to him than winning cycling races.’

  Solomon glanced at his grandfather. ‘I thought maybe you could talk to him?’

  ‘Of course. Maybe he will be persuaded, but I don’t want you to get your hopes up. He is, as you say, an idiot.’ Gabriel called the waiter over and asked for two more beers and an extra plate for Solomon. He piled it high with the spongy pancakes, chickpeas, lentils, cabbage and chicken and watched his grandson eat. ‘Have you told your mother yet?’

  ‘No, I can give her the good news later. I’ve only told you and Gebre.’

  Right on cue, Gebre tapped at the café window. He had Solomon’s bike by his side. Sol took the bike lock from his pocket, walked to the door and handed it to his brother. Gebre returned moments later.

  ‘How is having your bike stolen going to help?’

  Solomon shrugged. ‘I have spoken to Grandfather about it. He’ll try talking to coach Medhanie but he doesn’t think he’ll change his mind.’

  Gebre nodded and put the key for the lock down on the table. ‘I know that he won’t.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I just went to see Medhanie, I thought I could try and persuade him. I went as soon as I got your text message.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And he spoke to me. He said that you had been too angry to talk to, that you had walked away before he could explain.’

  The boy’s grandfather watched the pair with interest and a slight sense of foreboding. Solomon said nothing.

  ‘He said that it was not your fault, Sol, that you could not have done any more than you did.’

  ‘I know this already, the man is a cheat.’

  ‘I don’t know about that. He said that it was not his decision. That it was taken from his hands. He told me that you were suffering because of our father’s sins.’

  Gabriel dropped his half-empty beer glass on the table and grabbed at his grandson’s wrist. ‘What did you say?’ The old man’s arthritic hand gripped Gebre’s arm surprisingly hard; the boy could have broken free if he had wanted to but he would not dare. ‘I asked you a question. What did you say?’

  Gebre blushed before stammering a reply. ‘It … it was not me, Grandfather. Sol’s cycling coach said this, he said that Solomon was being punished for our father’s sins.’

  ‘Damned lies. Your father committed no sin.’

  Gebre nodded but his grandfather’s grip remained firm.

  ‘Let me hear you say it.’

  His grandson sighed. ‘Our father committed no sin.’

  Gabriel let go of Gebre’s arm but his face was still set; he stared at his hands. ‘Shame enough that they kill my son, but then to sully his name as well. They want to kill him twice.’ The old man’s eyes were suddenly wet.

  Gebre and Solomon sat in silence; it was the first time anyone in the family had admitted the possibility that their father might be dead.

  Solomon hesitated and then covered his grandfather’s papery hand with his own. ‘How do you know that he is dead, Grandfather? Who did you speak to?’

  Gabriel looked up at the boy. ‘I spoke to no one. I know because I know …’ He sniffed back the tears. Solomon handed him his napkin and he wiped his face. ‘I know because he was my son. The last time the army took him; they told me they needed him to confess to something, a minor matter. All he had to do was confess and give them some other names – any names. He refused.’ Gabriel gathered himself. ‘I broke half a dozen sticks on that boy’s backside. I never met a man with half the will that he had. Your father is dead, but know this: it will have taken ten men to do it and whatever lies it was they wanted him to tell – he would not.’

  Gebre’s mind turned to his mother but he waited a while before giving voice to his thoughts. ‘If this is true, Grandfather, then you should tell our mother as well. She needs to know this.’

  Gabriel shook his head. ‘Your mother knows. She has known for a long time. But knowing something and choosing to believe it are not always the same thing.’ Their grandfather started patting at his jacket pockets, looking for something. ‘Old people like your mother and I are allowed to look backwards, if backwards is what we prefer. Young people like you do not have that choice. You have to look forwards, no matter what forwards might mean.’ He reached into his trouser pocket and brought out a white business card, embossed with thick black lettering. ‘There is a man I want you to meet.’

  10 A Breath of Fresh Air

  DATELINE: The Seti Hotel, Cairo, Egypt, January 27 2011

  The loud ring of the hotel room phone hauled Carver from a deep sleep. He struggled to free himself from a tangle of sheets and blankets and reaching over knocked his glasses, watch and a half-full bottle of spring water to the floor before his hand found the phone.

  ‘Patrick?’

  ‘No, it’s me.’

  ‘Oh, Zahra, sure. What’s up?’

  ‘The Muslim Brotherhood meeting you asked about.’ Her voice was little louder than a whisper. ‘It will happen today, after midday prayers.’ Carver pushed the heel of his free hand against his forehead and tried to focus.

  ‘Oh yeah, yeah, I remember. Am I still the only hack here who knows ’bout this?’

  ‘I have told no one else.’

  ‘Good, great, so after prayers, right, at the Mosque of the something …’

  Zahra made a tutting sound. ‘The Mosque of the Servants of the Compassionate. I wrote it down for you. Mr Akar is here, I have to go.’

  Carver hauled himself up into a sitting position; the dark mahogany headboard was cool against his back. He squinted at the bedside table, looking for his watch but not seeing it. ‘Wait, is breakfast still—’

  But Zahra had gone. He swung his feet from the bed and retrieved his glasses and watch. He pressed his feet into the thick hotel carpet and made a short audit of his various aches and pains. He was sure there’d been a time when a good night’s sleep was a reliable restorative, but he was damned if he could remember when. These days it seemed like he woke up each morning in a slightly worse state than when he went to bed. Carver hobbled to the bathroom, filled the tooth glass brim-full with cold water and swallowed a couple of painkillers. He washed his hands, his face, armpits and crotch with a few squirts of the complimentary shower gel then brushed his teeth and flattened and combed his hair using his fingers.

  Carver needed to look presentable for the Muslim Brotherhood meeting and selected his blue blazer and a reasonably clean white shirt. He gave his shoes a quick polish with a pair of balled-up socks, grabbed his plastic bag and headed for the door. The remains of the room service burgers he and Patrick had eaten the night before were still sitting in the hall. Carver took a handful of cold French fries, dipped them in the crusted-over ketchup and ate them while waiting for
the lift – something to line the stomach in case they’d stopped serving breakfast.

  The hotel dining room was empty apart from two of the Russian women who had finished eating and were sitting, staring blindly into their mobile phones. A handful of flies moved in lazy circles around the empty but uncleared tables and the room smelled faintly of burned toast. Carver was about to leave when he noticed someone sitting alone at one of the outdoor tables, just the other side of the French windows. The woman was wearing a loose-fitting headscarf and she had her hand raised in his direction.

  ‘William Carver, man of the hour!’

  The voice was the same Antipodean growl he’d heard the night before, from among the group of hacks drinking at the pool bar. He narrowed his eyes and stared at the woman’s long face.

  ‘Jean?’

  ‘Well done! Got it in one, Jean it is. As we both live and breathe.’ She waved him over. ‘Come. Sit.’

  Jean Fitzgerald was an old friend; at one point a close one. A fellow foreign correspondent who had a few more years and a dozen more disasters and wars under her belt than Carver. When he was starting out in the misery business – Jean’s favoured description of the work they did – she had been helpful. Kind, at a time when kindness was in short supply.

  ‘You’re not swimming this morning?’

  Carver shook his head.

  ‘I was out here last night, asking people where to find you. Next thing I see is you, ploughing up and down the pool, didn’t want to interrupt you. So what’s going on? How come you’re swimming?’

  ‘How come you’re wearing a headscarf?’

  ‘I’m being culturally sensitive, you prick.’

  Carver smiled.

  ‘Plus, my long Titian locks ain’t what they used to be.’ She lifted a hand and removed the headscarf revealing a still impressive mess of coppery curls. She saw Carver looking. ‘I rather enjoyed watching you swim.’

  William said nothing.

  ‘Your front crawl reminded me of a deep-sea fishing trip I went on one time. I saw this huge wahoo, hooked hard by its mouth, being slowly dragged to the stern side, flailing all the way.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Your breaststroke, though – that wasn’t bad, almost elegant. So how come you’re swimming? Swimming is exercise, not something I associate with Billy Carver.’

  Carver looked at his feet. ‘My doctor thought it might be a good idea.’

  Jean shook her head. ‘Doctors! Fifty-plus years I went without seeing one. Now I’m in there every other week.’ She saw him look around for a waiter. ‘I think we missed the best of breakfast. I hope we did anyway, the coffee tastes like hot mud. You want some?’

  ‘Sure.’

  They shared the pot of sulphurous coffee and while they drank, they talked. The last time Carver had seen Jean she’d been married; hitched to an old newspaperman called Raglan Jones, a contemporary of Carver’s from back when they’d both worked on local newspapers.

  ‘How’s Raglan?’

  ‘He’s dead. Heart attack.’

  ‘Shit, Jean, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ She shrugged. ‘No one deserved it more than Rags. He really worked at it. You remember how he was: the smoking, the drinking, the eating – especially the bloody eating.’ She took a packet of red Marlboro and a book of matches from her pocket. ‘You still smoke?’

  Carver shook his head.

  ‘Good for you.’ She placed a cigarette in her mouth, handed the matches to William and waited patiently while he fumbled around, trying to get the flimsy cardboard match to strike. He managed on the third attempt.

  As Jean dipped her face to the flame he studied her: she still had the same dark eyes, long straight face and aquiline nose that had encouraged admirers to compare her with Modigliani’s women. He recalled reading a piece recently where Jean had bemoaned the passing of her Modigliani days and suggested that she now looked more like one of Picasso’s women, with bits of face all over the place.

  She took a deep pull on the cigarette, held it then let it go, screwing one eye shut against the smoke. ‘Yeah, so Rags fell off the twig two years back. We’d been separated for a while when it happened. He traded me in for a younger model.’ Carver was about to apologise again but Jean held up a hand to stop him. ‘He was running the obits page at the Telegraph.’ Jean grinned. ‘That was ironic – he used to spend hours polishing his own tribute. In the end he didn’t even get a full obituary, because a whole bunch of bishops and air chief marshals died that week. He ended up with one of those little boxes down the bottom. The also-dead section he used to call it.’ She took a long pull on her cigarette. ‘He’d have been bloody furious about that.’

  ‘It’s good to see you again, Jean; you look … you look well.’

  ‘Give me a break, Carver, we both know what that is: it’s a hell of a lot of slap. I had to bring three bags with me on this trip: one for make-up, one for clothes and one for drugs.’

  Carver shifted in his seat. The painkillers he’d taken hadn’t kicked in yet. ‘What kind of stuff?’

  ‘You name it: antidepressants, anti-anxiety, anti-ageing. Anti pretty much anything you can think of in fact. Then there’s the sleeping pills, blood thinners …’

  ‘Painkillers?’ Carver asked casually.

  ‘Are you kidding? Sure painkillers. I’ve got these Kiwi pain pills – they take everything away.’ She blew a plume of smoke up into the sky and stared at the palm trees, spiky silhouettes against the cornflower blue. ‘Where does it hurt?’

  Carver shrugged. ‘The knees. Neck. My back.’

  ‘Ah, the back, tell me about it. My backbone’s like the rubble of Tangshan. Hurts like hell in the mornings. I can help you with that, no worries. I wanted to ask a favour anyway.’

  ‘What kind of favour?’

  ‘You’ve been chasing this Arab Spring thing around a while. I was going to ask you to bring me up to speed, tell me which way Egypt’s going to topple.’

  Carver grinned.

  ‘What’s so bloody funny?’

  ‘I get to bring the great Jean Fitzgerald up to speed? How come? Haven’t you had time to sleep with the chief of police or the Reuters guy yet?’

  Jean pulled a face. ‘I really wish I’d never said that.’

  A year or so back, during a long and, Carver thought, rather fawning Woman’s Hour interview, Jean was asked how she managed to survive and thrive, working in the difficult places she’d worked. She’d been in a playful mood and the answer she gave was that as soon as she arrived in whatever hellhole it was she was reporting from, she would first seduce the chief of police and then the local Reuters correspondent. A bit of pillow talk from these two provided pretty much all the information she needed. Her remarks were widely reported.

  ‘I should’ve kept my big mouth shut. It was just a joke and now it’s the only thing anyone remembers about me. That was never my modus operandi anyway. I’ve only ever slept with one chief of police and shagging the Reuters correspondent rarely gets you anything – apart from a dose of the clap.’

  Carver grinned, Jean Fitzgerald was more than a breath of fresh air – she was a force ten gale when she was in the mood.

  By the time Patrick arrived at the Seti to rendezvous with Carver, he and Jean had been swapping old stories for over an hour. As Patrick strode across the dining room and out into the garden he saw Carver’s shoulders shaking. As he got closer he saw that his colleague was … well, the only word for it was giggling – not something Patrick remembered seeing before. Carver introduced him and Jean stubbed out her cigarette, stood and shook his hand.

  ‘So you’re Boy Wonder to Billy Carver’s Batman. I heard some people talking ’bout you on the plane. Flattering stuff.’

  Patrick blushed and was reaching for the right response when Carver interrupted.

  ‘A planeload of hacks was it?’

  Jean nodded. ‘Yeah, that’s the bad news. Yesterday’s BA flight was stuffed full of the usual suspects,
including your old mate John Brandon. Although he turned left rather than right, of course.’

  Carver shook his head. ‘The circus has arrived.’

  ‘’Fraid so. A hundred or more on my flight and more to come, I reckon.’

  Patrick chipped in. ‘Another plane arrived this morning, the reception’s packed. It’s pretty buzzy.’

  Carver scowled. The news that a load more journalists had joined the fray helped focus his mind. He swallowed the last of his coffee with a grimace and ordered Patrick to go and see if there were any taxis outside the hotel.

  ‘We’ll leave in ten.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘I’ll tell you in the car.’

  Patrick said goodbye to Jean.

  She waited until he was out of earshot. ‘Sweet kid.’

  Carver was sifting through the contents of his plastic bag. ‘What? Oh yeah.’

  ‘He adores you.’

  ‘Nonsense.’

  ‘He does. I wish I could find a young bloke to look at me the way he looks at you.’

  Carver was checking his MiniDisc recorder. ‘He’s the best producer I’ve ever worked with. Best in the BBC or anywhere else as far as I’m concerned.’

  Jean smiled. ‘And I bet you tell him that all the time.’

  ‘Don’t want him getting big-headed.’

  ‘’Course not. So where are the pair of you rushing off to?’

  William shrugged. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Probably head down to Tahrir, see what’s going on and—’

  ‘Cut it out, Carver. I know you. You get a certain look about you when you’re sniffing down a story. Don’t worry, I’m not the competition anymore.’

  ‘Just as well.’