Guy Fawkes Day, Page 2

  Chapter 1: Ramliyya: September, Twenty Years Later

  Omar Adil Al-Ajnabi gazed down over the starboard wing of his private jet towards the heat-blackened hills of Ramliyya. So much for the aerial view of the tiny, super-rich sultanate he supposed he called home, nestled between Yemen and Saudi Arabia on the coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It was a short hop across the Red Sea from his villa in the Eritrean capital, Asmara, which he now preferred to his more luxurious palace on the outskirts of Madinat Al-Aasima, the capital. At 2,000 metres, the Eritrean capital enjoyed a far cooler climate, and anyone who had spent a summer in the Ramli capital, sagging under temperatures of 50º Celsius and an intense, briny humidity would have understood the Arab sheikh’s choice of residence.

  The Ethiopian pilot banked steeply in preparation for landing. Al-Ajnabi fastened his seatbelt, continuing to stare blankly at the parched landscape below.

  The beautiful and solitary Eritrean flight attendant sitting opposite him studied the man who was at once her passenger, boss, and part-time lover. Al Ajnabi knew that most of those who saw him for the first time mistook for a European, not a Ramli millionaire. And as he looked back at his ‘hostess’, Zahra, he still chuckled with amusement and some considerable embarrassment recalling the glowing and detailed descriptions of his physical appearance he had overheard Zahra giving to a new hostess, Zeinab, when Zeinab had arrived in Asmara three nights ago fresh off a flight from the Yemen

  It was Al-Ajnabi’s European blood, Russian maybe, he had heard Zahra tell Zeinab, that gave the Prince his straight nose, green eyes and dusty blond hair that was always brushed backwards over the scalp to cascade long, loose strands across a deeply tanned forehead.

  The Prince’s age? Zahra had shrugged. Al-Ajnabi looked younger than his true age, she had whispered, for the youth you attributed to him at first glance was ultimately betrayed when you got close up by rivulets of sun-hewed wrinkles around the eyes and mouth that suggested an age of anywhere between forty and fifty years. The Prince was only a little above average height, but from intimate contact, Zahra giggled, she could assure Zeinab that the Prince had a toned and athletic build.

  Recalling all this whispered conversation brought a flush to Al-Ajnabi’s face and he knew that Zahra would have no idea what his coy smile signified. Instead, he glanced away again to resume his private and varied musings that flitted as bumpily across mind as the turbulent Red Sea air outside the window.

  When his thoughts returned to his business, Al-Ajnabi’s fingers absent-mindedly creased down the full-flowing robes of Arab royalty, embroidered with black and gold sashes that he had donned for this return. Now and again he checked the positioning of his ghutra headdress, whose black and gold lattice enveloped his shoulders and upper back. The sandals were all together more comfortable than this stuffy, ceremonial gear, made of simple leather and embossed with gaudy and very real gemstones.

  The plane banked and the pilot’s voice crackled over the intercom:

  ‘We will be landing at Madinat Al Aasima in five minutes, Hadratak.’

  Al-Ajnabi looked up to catch a beautiful smile from Zahra, no doubt inspired by what she had interpreted as flirting when he had looked her up and down just a few minutes ago. Zahra was sweet, very sweet, he was forced to admit, but… He had trained himself over the years not to get too involved with any of his personal assistants, two more of which, in addition to Zeinab and Zahra, he kept discretely in villas in Cairo and Beirut. And even if he had believed in Western-style romantic love, there was no room for it in his hectic projects. This return flight to Ramliyya signified the start of the end game. It was just as well there was no emotional baggage, well, at least no recent emotional baggage, to divert even a fraction of his attention from the denouement of a project which he had spent the last eight years crafting together.

  With a sigh of regret his eyes left Zahra and he returned one final time to the view from the window, watching the whitewashed buildings of the capital skimming by underneath the wing. Red Sea oil revenue had paid for all this opulence, revenue that had been further swollen by the discovery of one of the world’s largest gold mines in the hills behind Madinat Al Aasima. The result had been to catapult Ramliyya from poverty worse than that of neighbouring Yemen to a per capita income exceeding that of any kingdom or sultanate in the Arabian Peninsula. Yet the fantastic changes wrought by supertankerloads of petrodollars held little appeal for Al-Ajnabi. Down below they could enjoy their air-conditioned marble palaces, their Mercedes, servants and swimming pools. It was illusory, short-term decadence fed by the Great Delusion. And it was precisely towards fighting the Great Delusion, while Planet Earth still had a ghost of a chance of survival, that he planned to devote his own enormous slice of the Ramli cash cake.

  Seconds later Captain Teshome cushioned the wheels of the tiny jet onto the tarmac with a precision gained from years spent landing Russian Tupolevs on the knife-edged runways of besieged hilltop garrison towns during the long Ethiopian civil war. A landing crew was already waiting at the royal terminal to facilitate His Excellency’s prompt passage from the steamy heat of the gangway to the air-conditioned interior of the terminal.

  ‘You have come just in time, akhuyya,’ said Prince Faysal, greeting Al-Ajnabi with four kisses on each cheek. ‘The doctor says my father will not see another night.’

  ‘He is conscious?’

  ‘Yes, but he is not strong enough to talk.’

  ‘Then let us go at once. Afterwards, we will talk.’

  The soldiers and officials who tormented the common air passenger with immigration checks and customs controls of unsurpassed severity anywhere in the world parted in grinning phalanxes in front of Prince Faysal’s entourage. Al-Ajnabi had hoped that Prince Faysal’s presence would speed things up, but as ever, he was forced to stop time and time again in a hubbub of crescendoing greetings, while one familiar face after another rushed to clasp his hand, slap his back or kiss him six times on the cheeks. And these were only the important Ramlis. Looking around at the larger groups of police, soldiers and immigration officers clasping guns or prayer beads and wearing glitzy Ray Bans, Al-Ajnabi knew that the whisper in all these clustering congregations would be that the European stranger who had saved the old sultan in his darkest hour was destined only to increase his enormous influence with the accession of the impressionable Prince Faysal. And such speculation, he felt assured, would be close to the truth.

  Outside the terminal sat two black Mercedes with tinted windows, each surrounded by a swarm of security guards, back up cars and motorcycle escorts. Al-Ajnabi ushered Zahra into the first, sending her to wait for him in his mansion tucked in the hills a half-hour’s drive from the city, before joining Faysal for the ride north along the coast to the royal palace, a ride spent exchanging more greetings and pleasantries. Most of the conversation was ritual and formulaic, as Arabian etiquette and the precarious condition of Faysal’s father dictated. Al-Ajnabi was not impatient. He would leave the more important discussions till later, till after he had said his farewells to the old man.

  In the intense glare of late afternoon, the sand flats, shore and steamy sea were blended into a confusion of blue and ochre tones. The palace sat astride a rocky promontory jutting splendidly into the Red Sea, connected only by a narrow causeway to the mainland. Since the attempted coup ten years back, the old sultan had lain up almost exclusively in this semi-island retreat. Al-Ajnabi had always been glad of the old man’s seclusion and paranoia.

  And now, dashing from the chill of the Mercedes’ interior into the icebox air conditioning of the palace, Al-Ajnabi had mixed feelings about this deathbed visit to the man whose largesse had provided him with a fabulous fortune and who had adopted his former bodyguard as a son. But Al-Ajnabi hadn’t come back just to see the weak, vain and timid old man into the next world. He had come because this was the moment. This was to be the time they had agreed upon, he and Faysal. But would Faysal have changed his mind? Would the prospect of power have
corrupted the young man, made Faysal lukewarm about sponsoring the forthcoming agenda?

  ‘Father, he has come,’ Faysal announced, swinging open the gold-plated doors to the Sultan’s bedroom. A French doctor and nurse were fussing around the bed, scuttling between the drips and stands.

  Al-Ajnabi kissed the old man. The Sultan’s breath was dry, his eyes flitted fearfully here and there, lips quivering querulously underneath the oxygen mask.

  Al-Ajnabi clasped the old man’s desiccated hand and kissed the reptilian skin. He hoped that his eyes said another thing, for inside his mind raced as he held the hand of the old man whose life he had once saved This is it for you old man, and it’s no good looking at me like that, he thought. Even if I could, I would not save you again. Today, it is your death I want. Now do what I need you to do!

  Drawn by news of the new arrival, the Sultan’s other sons, brothers and nephews began to throng the bedside. Each man came to greet Al-Ajnabi before moving closer to the bed to check the old sultan’s health. The greetings were long and tedious, and Al-Ajnabi found it difficult to restrain his impatience. It was sunset and time for maghreb prayer before the French doctor pronounced the sick man to be in need of rest. Al-Ajnabi hoped it would prove to be of the permanent variety. The sooner Sultan Adil Al-Janoubi drew his last breath, the sooner he could begin.

  Back inside the maze of reception rooms, Al-Ajnabi eventually detached Faysal from his relations, leading him outside to the terraces, where the heavy air held everything, including the sea, in stifled submission. He pressed the younger man’s elbow, looking deep into those dark eyes.

  ‘Ya Faysal, everything is still as we agreed?’

  Faysal nodded, scratching his beard in thought:

  ‘Still the same plan?’

  ‘Always the same.’

  ‘Then so am I, akhuyya. It will be as we agreed. Whatever you need is yours.’

  ‘You are a true brother, Faysal. And you will not regret your support.’

  ‘When will you leave?’ asked the younger man.

  ‘After the funeral I will leave for Beirut. There is much to organize.’

  ‘Be careful,’ Faysal urged, looking reflective once again. ‘But more than that, akhuyya—be successful!’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Al-Ajnabi smiled, tasting the briny humidity as he let out a heavy sigh. ‘I will put your family’s money to better use than it has known, and maybe, ya Faysal, Ramliyya will become famous for more than its oil.’