Rage by Simon Conway

Author:Simon Conway [Conway, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781444719543
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2011-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

Shamal

I felt the shaking as a vibration, distorted as if I was submerged in thick fluid. It seemed to have been going on for a long time. The shadow of someone was leaning over the bed, a hand gripping my bicep. I squinted upwards and a bird seemed to strut above me with its emerald-blue neck outstretched and its tail feathers fanned and on each feather a single iridescent eye.

‘Rise and shine,’ said a soft and familiar voice.

‘Malak,’ I croaked.

He was perched on the edge of the bed, wearing a sarong wrapped around his skinny midriff. On his hairless chest was an elaborate peacock tattoo.

‘What are you doing here?’ I managed.

‘Didn’t you get my messages?’ he said, his tattooed fingers gently stroking the flesh of my upper arm.

I sat up abruptly and swung my legs off the bed, setting the soles of my feet on the cold tiles. I scratched my hands across my scalp. ‘I threw my phone in the sea.’

‘After your friend Alex told you that the police have issued a warrant for your arrest?’

‘Yes.’ I staggered about naked, picking up my clothes. ‘You’ve been listening in.’

‘That’s an expensive shirt,’ Malak said. ‘Did Miranda give it to you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you tell her anything?’

I rounded on him, angrily. ‘That’s an interesting tattoo, Malak. Did the Yezidis give you that?’

‘No,’ he replied, calmly. ‘This was done to me later. In prison.’

There was a pause.

‘You know I remember her, from Abu Ghraib; from the prison,’ he said. ‘I know who she is underneath.’

There was a further pause.

‘What do you want?’ I asked, repeating the question that I had asked him the night before.

Malak smiled. ‘Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me.’

‘What secret’s that?’ enquired Spicy from the doorway.

‘It’s time we took Jonah back to the desert,’ Malak said.

‘We’ll all go,’ said Spicy. ‘After breakfast we’ll take a drive out to the Zone. Bacon and eggs, anyone?’

‘Bacon?’

‘Yes, old chap, the forbidden swine. Robin has rather thoughtfully smuggled a few rashers in. Like it crispy?’

‘We’ll be along in a minute,’ Malak told him. Spicy raised his eyebrows and headed back towards the kitchen whistling.

Malak was still staring at me.

‘What is it that you want?’ I demanded.

‘We’re all on the same side,’ he said.

‘Are we?’

We drove across the city to the oilfield road and out across the shimmering asphalt, into the closed military areas. We worked our way up a convoy of over a hundred US vehicles, tank transporters and container lorries interspersed with Humvees. CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopters roared overhead.

The morning was clear but there was a stark and brittle quality to the air. The sunlight was reflected off the dunes like a sheet of polished metal. Dust devils snaked across the sand and spent themselves on the edges of the expressway. Exhaust fumes rolled in through the windows and the heat boiled out of the sun, scorching the plastic seat covers and curling the paint on the mottled bonnet of the Land Cruiser. The asphalt road was wet-black and rippling in the distance, distorted by heat waves.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.